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Spain and Morocco arrest 14 people in a joint operation targeting suspected recruiters for the so-called Islamic State group.

A group of chimpanzees, used for American medical research, have been released back into the wild in Liberia.

Kenya's Supreme Court says that the government should abide by a lower court's decision to give teachers a pay rise of at least 50%.

A South African court convicts a Czech businessman, who has been linked to organised crime in the country, of attempted murder and kidnapping.

by Cynthia Gordy

Yelp may be best known for its restaurant and nightclub reviews, but the site’s seeds were actually planted when CEO Jeremy Stoppelman had trouble finding recommendations for a local doctor. Health providers now account for a rapidly growing six percent of Yelp’s reviewed businesses. Thanks to a new partnership with ProPublica, the site’s star ratings system is being supplemented with objective healthcare data.

ProPublica is helping Yelp to identify health metrics – including average wait times for emergency rooms and fines paid by nursing homes – to add to its provider pages. They are now available on nearly 26,000 pages, and more are coming soon. As part of the partnership, Yelp also is allowing ProPublica unprecedented access to its 1.3 million health reviews to help with our reporting.

This week, Stoppelman joins ProPublica senior reporter Charles Ornstein to discuss the debate over online reviews of health providers and Yelp’s increasing use of data across the site.

(Illustration: Emily Martinez/ProPublica)

Highlights from their conversation:

• Despite claims to the contrary by some displeased doctors, patients seem qualified to evaluate medical services. Stoppelman points to emerging academic research showing “a correlation between the ratings of a medical establishment and other sources of information that are perceived as quite objective.” Patients also provide insights on the full experience, not just the actual medical care delivered. (5:05)
• Yelp is poised to become a “one-stop shop,” integrating data across several review categories. Along with new information on its health provider pages, some of Yelp’s restaurant pages now feature health inspection scores. While Stoppelman says consumer opinions are important, other sources of information make Yelp “that much more powerful of a tool.” (7:55)
• The federal government has the green light to join the Yelp masses. The site already has thousands of reviews of federal agencies, but for years those agencies were not authorized to reply. A new partnership between Yelp and the federal government has changed this, allowing government organizations to claim their own pages and start interacting with the public. (13:20)

Listen to this podcast on iTunes, SoundCloud or Stitcher. For more on ProPublica’s partnership with Yelp, read Ornstein’s story, ‘Stay Far, Far Away’ and Other Things Gleaned From Yelp Health Reviews.

Sierra Leone releases its last known Ebola patient, according to the World Health Organization.

An Egyptian government minister calls on the citizens of his country to raise the $25m (£15.76m) needed to buy an ancient statue.

by Amanda Zamora

Today, ProPublica is teaming up with the journalism crowdfunding site Beacon to encourage more coverage of workers' comp across the country.

Nearly a century after most states established protections for the American worker, at least 33 have reduced benefits, created hurdles to getting medical care or made it more difficult to qualify for workers' comp, according to an ongoing investigation by ProPublica and NPR. It's an issue that potentially affects hundreds of thousands of workers who report serious work-related injuries or illnesses every year.

 As part of our investigation, Insult to Injury, we asked people to tell us about their experiences navigating workers' comp claims — and more than 300 have shared their stories so far.

Now, we're partnering with Beacon to invite journalists to take these stories — along with state-by-state research, detailed benefits data, and our Reporting Recipe — to help us document the impact of workers' comp reductions across the country.

Beacon's platform gives journalists the tools they need to fund their work by connecting directly with engaged readers. Its goal is to power impactful, in-depth stories that matter to the public – a mission that aligns with our own. In the past, Beacon has successfully funded projects on mass incarceration, net neutrality, climate change and more.

Here's how journalists can join the Beacon-ProPublica workers' comp partnership:

1. Dig into the story. Check out ProPublica's Reporting Recipe for background on workers' comp, benefits data and policies by state.

2. Find a source. Sign up here to be matched with workers who've been affected where you live.

3. Pitch your project. Think you've got a solid story in the works? Awesome! Head to Beacon to pitch your project and start raising funds. It could be a story, an interactive or a multimedia project, as long as it builds on ProPublica's workers' comp investigation to explore the impact in your city or state. As an added incentive, Beacon will match the first $250 raised for any ProPublica-based pitches – just make sure to add the "Workers' Comp" tag.

4. Send us your story! Local journalists play a vital role in making broader accountability issues — like disparities in workers' comp — accessible and relevant to communities most affected. We're excited to be opening up our investigation to support Beacon journalists who share our mission. We look forward to seeing your great work.

by Michael Grabell

With income inequality and economic fairness at the center of national discussion, workers' compensation provides the perfect lens for examining how the social compact has changed. It is one of America's first safety net programs. And unlike other laws, it spells out a company's responsibility for its workers.

The American workers' comp system was born in the early 1900s as a "grand bargain" forged by business and labor as awareness grew about the grisly workplace accidents that came with industrialization. Workers gave up their right to sue their employers — even in cases of gross negligence — protecting businesses from lawsuit judgments that could bankrupt them. In exchange, workers were promised medical care for their injuries, enough wages to help them get by while they recovered and compensation for permanent disabilities.

But as a ProPublica investigation has found, state after state has been dismantling its workers' comp system, denying injured workers help when they need it most and shifting the cost of work-related disabilities onto public programs like Social Security Disability Insurance.

With more than 3.7 million work-related injuries and illnesses reported in 2013, these changes are hurting households across the country. But workers' comp legislation rarely gets significant news coverage, in part because it's such a bureaucratic system that varies state to state.

With this Reporting Recipe, we want to make it easier for journalists to find and report stories on changes in workers' comp policies and the impact on local workers. Read on for reporting tips, data and help finding potential sources. Still have questions? Email us at workerscomp@propublica.org.    

What's happened in your state?

New laws in 33 states essentially did three things: They reduced benefits, gave employers and insurers more control over medical care or made it more difficult for workers with certain injuries and diseases to qualify.

To give the public a better sense of the national scope of the changes, ProPublica scoured state laws and built a database highlighting the most significant provisions. You can find it here. How have policies changed in your state? What groups or companies influenced those changes? How do they compare to those in neighboring states?

For more context on policies by state, here are a few other resources that might be helpful:

• U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration report on workers' comp changes

• National Academy of Social Insurance annual workers' comp report

• Workers Compensation Research Institute studies

• National Council on Compensation Insurance state presentations

Finally, many state workers' comp systems produce their own annual reports with specific statistics. Be sure to check their websites.

Wait — aren't workers' comp costs going up?

Insurance premiums for workers' comp are affected by several factors, such as the company's history of workplace injuries, the number of workers it has and how much it pays them. When the economy is growing, as it is now, businesses hire more workers and give raises and their premiums typically go up.

But workers' comp rates — the amount employers pay for every $100 they pay in wages — are at or near historic lows in almost every state in the country. The state of Oregon has been tracking this since the mid-1980s. Find the average premium rates for employers in your state here. Are businesses claiming the rates are rising when the data shows they're falling?

How do I find out what the workers' comp benefits and rules are in my state?

During our reporting, one expert told us, "If you've read one workers' comp law, you've read one workers' comp law." There is no federal oversight of workers' comp. So benefits can vary dramatically even for states right next to one another.

For example, the maximum compensation for the loss of an eye is $27,280 in Alabama, but $261,525 in Pennsylvania. We found two workers who lived within 75 miles of each other and suffered arm amputations under similar circumstances. One received $45,000 in compensation for the loss of his arm while the other received lifetime benefits that could exceed $740,000 over 50 years. Why the vast difference? They worked in different states.

You can find the maximum amount of benefits workers can receive for permanent injuries to various body parts by state in this interactive graphic.

But be careful with how you report these numbers. There's a lot of nuance. The maximums are based on various circumstances, such as the worker's wages, the severity of the injury and sometimes age and education. Read our methodology page as well as the footnotes that accompany each state. For more detail about calculating the benefits, check the state law or contact your state's workers' comp bureau. Here's a list with links to their workers' comp agencies by state.

So how do I find workers who've been affected?

We asked our readers to tell us about their experiences with workers' comp and have heard from more than 300 people so far, including nearly 200 employees who said they are interested in being put in touch with reporters in their region. Journalists can sign up to be matched with a potential source by completing this form. Here's a quick look at the workers' comp stories we've received so far:

Several states including Florida, Illinois and California also allow the public to browse recent decisions or search for workers' comp cases by claimant name or employer.

In addition, local workers' comp attorneys, unions and worker advocacy groups can be helpful in finding injured workers. The Workers' Injury Law & Advocacy Group has a directory of lawyers who specialize in representing injured workers with workers' comp claims. The National Council for Occupational Safety and Health and Interfaith Worker Justice both have information about local worker centers around the country.

Get your story funded: If you're a local journalist, see our Beacon partnership to learn more about how to raise funds to report this story.

The parents of Reeva Steenkamp criticise the verdict in the Oscar Pistorius murder trial for the first time, saying their daughter's killing was deliberate.