What We've Found: Nonprofit theft, hungry refugees, aid to Pakistan, senior bonuses, EPA vows better water and a flood of drilling wastewater imminent in PA

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What We've Found: Nonprofit theft, hungry refugees, aid to Pakistan, senior bonuses, EPA vows better water and a flood of drilling wastewater imminent in PA

POSTED: Friday, October 16, 2009, 3:04 PM
Filed Under: What We've Found

Julia Harte with your morning fix.

Six workers at a nonprofit agency in Philadelphia that distributes state funds to low-income mothers and their children stole $375,000 from the program by creating checks in the names of fake recipients of the aid and redeeming them for groceries.

As World Food Day dawned this morning, the United Nations World Food Program announced a funding shortage was forcing it to cut back food aid to thousands of Bhutanese refugees living in Nepal, with bigger cuts possibly ahead.

The United States promised Pakistan $7.5 billion in aid over the next five years, after assuring the Pakistani government that the aid was meant as a goodwill gesture in the fight against the Taliban and not an effort to gain influence over Pakistani politics.

Obama was encouraging Congress to award senior citizens one-time payments of $250 to make up for the fact that social security benefits will not increase this year for the first time in thirty years.

Enforcement of the Clean Water Act will be improved, executives with the Environmental Protection Agency promised yesterday, declaring that "if states are falling down on the job, we’re going to reverse the permits they've issued, and if they're not enforcing the law, we'll step in and do it ourselves."

The nine million gallons of wastewater produced each day by Pennsylvania oil and gas wells is going to be more like 19 million gallons by 2011, according to the state's Department of Environmental Protection, which is more than state waterways can possibly handle.

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