In April 2021, the federal government indicted a Southern Illinois University Carbondale professor under the “China Initiative,” alleging two counts of wire fraud and one count of making a false statement in regards to a National Science Foundation grant application made on behalf of the university. If convicted, Mingqing Xiao could have faced up to…
A group of lawyers who claimed Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley had committed ethics violations in connection with his challenges to the 2020 presidential election is appealing the rejection of their complaint by the Missouri Supreme Court’s chief disciplinary counsel. The appeal, which has not been previously reported, was with the Missouri Supreme Court’s advisory committee…
Although reporter Jim DeRogatis could have been forced to testify in the recent R. Kelly trial in Chicago, a federal judge declined to make him, deciding that defense attorneys had not made their case. It was a surprise–and a relief–for DeRogatis, who broke the R. Kelly sexual-abuse story in 2000 and has reported on it…
Darrel Rowland was the Columbus Dispatch’s longest-serving news journalist when Edwina Blackwell Clark, the paper’s executive editor, called him into her office in August. It was the day after the staff learned Gannett, the Dispatch’s parent company, had learned the paper would be affected by the conglomerate’s disappointing second fiscal quarter. Changes and cuts were…
We need to talk about abortion as self-defense. Terminating a pregnancy as an act of self-defense has been missing from the public conversation, despite media saturation with all manner of news and viewpoints about abortion—from the unprecedented leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion to the striking defeat of an anti-abortion ballot initiative in Kansas…