Review-Journal columnist John L Smith has resigned from the Las Vegas newspaper in protest at a ban on writing about its new owner, Sheldon Adelson. Until this week, Smith, who Adelson once attempted to sue for defamation, wrote a popular column in the paper on issues facing Las Vegas, from human interest stories to politics. Adelson sued Smith in 2005 over his book Sharks in the Desert. The lawsuit stated that “Smith deceptively manipulates language, quotations, and sources in order to concoct the smear that Adelson had dealings with the Boston Mob when Adelson was in the vending machine business.” The…

Casino industry legend Sheldon Adelson confirmed Thursday that he is the new owner of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, ending a bizarre week of confusion and speculation as to who had just acquired Nevada’s largest newspaper. “We understand the desire of the hard-working staff at the R-J and others in the community to know the identity of the paper’s new owners, and it was always our intention to publicly announce our ownership,” said a statement by the Adelson family published in the Review-Journal, whose reporters had been working frantically to determine who their new boss is. In a strange move that triggered the ire…