Quick Picks focuses on a select few of the day’s stories from “Breaking on the Web.”

• The FDA began receiving complaints about contaminated syringes from a North Carolina plant in 2005 but didn’t recall them until December 2007, around the time that five people died and a hundred more were sickened by them, reports the News & Observer. An FDA spokeswoman told the paper that inspectors visited the plant at least six times between 1999 and 2007. But court documents show “flagrant violation[s]” at the plant, including a “chief microbiologist” who was a teenage dropout. 
• Climate change lobbyists are multiplying like bunnies in anticipation of a major overhaul of climate change legislation. According to an analysis by the Center for Public Integrity, the number of lobbyists focused on climate change—“special interests that seek to derail, blunt, or tailor any new climate policy to their narrow agendas” – has increased by more than 300 percent in just five years.

Check out more of our roundup of the best investigative stories around the Web.

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