Organic farmers sustain huge losses From GMO contamination
DANFORTH, ILL. – On a warm September day on the cusp of harvest season, about 70 farmers from throughout the Midwest drove to a cavernous metal equipment barn on Harold Wilken’s organic grain farm in...
View ArticleFrom jail architects to jail teachers in the era of mass incarcerations
The presidential debates confirmed that reducing America’s burgeoning incarceration rate is a bipartisan goal. “Three-strikes-and-you’re-out,” tougher drug sentencing even for non-violent drug crimes...
View ArticleMore jobs in clean energy than in fossil fuels
Aaron Mair, national president of the Sierra Club, spoke in Peoria at the state NAACP conference and said it’s a “false trick” to protect the coal industry because it provides jobs. Now Robert...
View ArticleTreat the patient, not the cancer: Injecting compassion into med school
BY CLARE HOWARD Dr. Bento Soares knows cancer too intimately from both a personal and academic perspective. He moved here 11 months ago for his position as senior associate dean for research in cancer...
View ArticleCentral Illinois: A Cancer Cluster?
BY CLARE HOWARD Kim Crandall walks her dogs, Roo and Mia, everyday on the streets around her Morton home and in the nearby park bordering corn and soybean fields. The walk gives her time to reflect on...
View ArticleAgriculture biotechnology: challenging law; violating justice
Biotechnology in agriculture is upending traditional notions of justice and liability; public policy is failing to keep up with the problem. Both chemical and organic farmers are venting frustration...
View Article“Unimaginable injustice”; 45 years in prison:
Is Cleve Heidelberg INNOCENT? BY CLARE HOWARD On a cold, gray Friday afternoon in mid-January, Marcella Teplitz and Andrew Hale drove east on Harmon Highway from the site of the old Bellevue Drive-In...
View ArticleEditorials
Women, Civil Rights, Income Inequality and Abortion The recent Supreme Court ruling in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt made no poetic sweeping affirmations that women have a basic human right to...
View ArticleLegacy of Heidelberg Trial: Loss, Death Threats, Questions
UPDATE: Judge Albert Purham orders appointment of special prosecutor to review Cleve Heidelberg case from 1970. Steve Heidelberg remembers nothing from the 1970 murder trial of his father Cleve...
View ArticleHunger, Gleaning and Clarence
SPRINGFIELD – The ancient Biblical practice of gleaning fields after harvest to collect remnants of food for the hungry is spreading from fields to markets, and a newly enhanced federal tax benefit is...
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