IOWA CITY (AP) — The undercover bust of a violent pimp and his prostitutes in Omaha during the College World Series last year led investigators to a nationwide sex trafficking ring, according to a federal indictment recently unsealed in Iowa.The 50-page indictment alleges that Johnelle L. Bell of New Jersey and his associates forced women ages 17 through 21 to prostitute themselves across several states for years before the pimp was stopped in Omaha.The government said Bell used coercion and violence to force the women to act as his sex workers between November 2009 and June 2011.Bell, 27, and three women were arrested June 18 in Omaha after undercover officers set up a sting with one of the prostitutes in a hotel.Bell was picked up ... Continue reading →

The news is spreading here in New Orleans and across the journalism world: the fabled Times-Picayune, as we all know it, may cease to exist. Visitors tour Hurricane Katrina front pages from The Times-Picayune newspaper in New Orleans and the Sun Herald of Biloxi and Gulfport, Mississippi, as part of the 'Covering Katrina' exhibit at the Newseum in Washington, DC. (Image credit: AFP via @daylife) Writing in The New York Times, David Carr gave details in today’s edition of what seems to have been a closely guarded secret. According to his sources, Newhouse Newspapers, a division of Advance Publications, the Times-Pic’s owner, plans to discontinue the daily paper and embrace the model that it used in Ann Arbor, Mich. That means relying heavily on the ... Continue reading →

The criminal case against a Perry, Iowa, man in the drunken-driving death of a former classmate revolved around the question of who was driving.Authorities said it was the man who survived, Thomas Dugan, and last week a jury agreed. Now Dugan faces a mandatory 25-year prison sentence after being convicted of vehicular homicide by reckless and drunken driving in the August 2009 death of Adam Anderson of Bagley, Iowa.The verdict followed a 3�-day trial in the District Court of Guthrie County.The fatal crash took place following the 10-year reunion for Panorama High School. The pair were in Anderson's 2003 Ford Mustang on a paved road near Yale, Iowa, Guthrie County Sheriff Marty Arganbright has said. At an intersection, the road turned to gravel, and the ... Continue reading →

The New Orleans Times-Picayune, which distinguished itself amid great adversity during Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, is about to enact large staff cuts and may cut back its print publishing schedule to several days a week, according to two employees with knowledge of the plans.Newhouse Newspapers, which owns the Times-Picayune, will apparently be working off a blueprint the company used in Ann Arbor, Mich., where it reduced the frequency of the Ann Arbor News, emphasized the Web site as a primary distributor of news and in the process instituted wholesale layoffs to cut costs.A request for comment from the newspaper’s editor, Jim Amoss, late Wednesday night was not returned.The plans have been kept under wraps, but the newspaper will likely cease to exist as a ... Continue reading →

Picture courtesy of Jeffrey Cooper, of UNMC Flesh-eating bacteria are nasty stuff. Thirty to 40 percent of people who contract them will die, and many more will need to have limbs amputated.Fortunately for Jane Bisenius, doctors in Iowa and Nebraska were able to defeat the bacteria without them costing her a limb or her life.Bisenius, who's from Schaller, Iowa, is one of six patients hit by flesh-eating bacteria, or necrotizing fasciitis, who have been treated at the Nebraska Medical Center's hyperbaric oxygen unit in the past month or so. That's the most patients with the condition ever treated by the unit in such a short period of time. Most of the patients are doing well, officials said.Dr. Jeff Cooper, medical director of the Nebraska Medical ... Continue reading →