Time for another batch of stories that caught our attention this week:

Obesity now causes more deaths than smoking in Australia, The Sydney Morning Herald recently reported. New data from Western Australia show that the number of times excessive weight has been linked to ill health more than doubled in six years. In 2006, excessive weight accounted for 8.7 percent of disease. Tobacco had fallen to 6.5 percent.

Police in Louisville will soon receive subpoenas to appear in court electronically, according to the Louisville Courier-Journal. An estimated 10 percent of the 100,000 paper subpoenas issued annually never reach the officers, which is one reason they fail to show up for court. Officials hope that the electronic upgrade will cut down on time-consuming paperwork and increase the officers’ accountability.

Facing a potential shortage of primary care doctors nationwide, nurse practitioners may take a larger role in seeing and caring for patients, The Associated Press reported. Studies suggest that the quality of care is very comparable between doctors and nurse practitioners, according to the article. However, the American Medical Association remains concerned about patient safety if nurse practitioners are given more authority over patients.

Another Thursday means another dose of things that caught our eye this week:

Given the deadly explosion at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch Mine near Montcoal on Monday, a story of a few weeks ago remains painfully timely. At a mine safety conference at Wheeling Jesuit University, the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration reported that fewer than one in 10 mines across the country had installed communications and tracking equipment required by the 2006 MINER Act. The requirement was intended to help miners escape in case of fire or explosion. At Upper Big Branch, the equipment had been partly installed. Who knows if fully installed equipment would have helped rescuers locate the missing miners in this case, but what about hundreds of other mines across the country?

Too many papers to grade? A biz prof at the University of Houston upped the amount of writing required of students, but found that she and her teaching assistants were too pressed for time to give valuable detailed feedback to students, so she outsourced the grading to a Virginia-based company. Much of the actual grading and critiquing is done in places such as Bangalore, reports the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Compounds in food cans, but also in nail polish and shampoo have been linked to early puberty in girls, setting them up for diabetes and other health problems, reports the Telegraph in London. The stuff is even found in coatings on medicines and vitamins.

Here’s our weekly look at stories and developments that attracted our attention this week:

Daniel Gilbert of the Bristol Herald Courier produced a lengthy series about a myriad of problems with Virginia’s system for handling royalties from natural gas drilling operations in the state’s southwestern counties. The series, Underfoot, Out of Reach, was among the winners announced this week of the annual Investigative Reporter and Editors journalism contest. Among the other winners and finalists was the Gazette’s Eric Eyre, a finalist for his series of articles about fraud in the Workforce West Virginia agency.

In the wake of two recent fatal shootings by police officers, Portland’s City Council voted unanimously to adopt changes to the city’s independent police oversight division, the Oregonian reported. The reforms included authorizing the city auditor, rather than the chief of police, to nominate citizens to the police review board. The oversight division’s director now has to sign off on all internal affairs investigations, and the division has the authority to initiate investigations of police misconduct of its own accord.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is considering changing its policy and disclosing details of its investigations into alleged wrongdoing by individuals and firms even when cases settle before trial, according to this story in the Washington Post. Traditionally, when individuals and companies settle SEC lawsuits, few details become public. The prosposed changes might discourage wrongdoers from settling, warn critics, but supporters maintain that more transparency will help restore public confidence in the regulatory agency and its enforcement.