Green Bay News

NEENAH – Blue-green algae washing ashore on the northern end of Lake Winnebago.

It could potentially put people’s health at risk.

Neenah Parks Department workers Ty Hegg and Connor Behm checked out the conditions at Fresh Air Park, Monday morning.

“Like if you touch it, you just have small green particles on your hand. You have to wash your hands before you eat, or other things like that,” said Connor Behm, Neenah Parks Department Worker.

The algae is actually bacteria. It arrived early this year.

“Typically we start to see it around the Fourth of July weekend, where we get the first sunny days. This time it’s mid-June instead of the beginning of July,” said Rob McLennan, D.N.R. Water Resources Field Supervisor.

McLennan says the algae can create more than a mess.

“People need to be aware of of what it looks like. Because we can’t say that a given spot on the lake is safe, because the wind can blow it in, or blow it out in a matter of hours,” he said.

And just downstream in Menasha, the water started going green a couple days ago. The health department posted water quality advisory signs at parks around town.

“It can potentially form a toxin, that could be fatal to animals, especially  pets. It will cause contact dermatitis with children, and potentially some gastro-intestinal problems if they consume it,” said Todd Drew, Menasha Health Department Sanitarian.

Drew says he checks the lake water each week.

“Just looking at the clarity of the water, the sample was, you couldn’t even see through it, it was so green,” he said.

Officials say some rain, wind, and cooler temperatures may help. But at this point, it could be a very green summer.

“With the runoff we’ve had, I’m anticipating a pretty bad blue-green algae season, but it’s hard to tell. But for right now, I think it may end up being a bad one,” said McLennan.

Experts say the algae could continue to bloom on Lake Winnebago until September.

Only one closing based on a check Monday afternoon. That was the Boom Bay Boat Landing on Lake Poygan.

Several beaches face elevated bacteria, and one caution warning.

To learn more about Wisconsin Beach Health, click here.

MILWAUKEE (AP) – Brewers center fielder Carlos Gomez has been scratched from the starting lineup for Monday night’s game against Kansas City with right leg tightness.

Gomez has had problems with the leg since spending two weeks on the disabled list in late April for a hamstring injury. He also missed a few games last week.

Lately, Gomez appears to be bothered more by the upper part of the leg. He has said he has been playing with a wrap near his hip.

He is hitting .270 with five homers and 24 RBIs, plus six stolen bases. He got Milwaukee’s only hit Sunday off Max Scherzer in a 4-0 loss to Washington.

Gerardo Parra moved from left to center and replaced Gomez in the leadoff spot. Shane Peterson was put into the lineup in left.

There are reports of street flooding from the Fox Valley to the Green Bay area.

The Outagamie County Sheriff’s Department says it is calling in extra staff members to work as the flooding continues. Employees are working to identify flooded areas and barricade streets as soon as possible. Some roads are being reported to have very deep water, making them impassable.

Drivers are being asked to avoid all unnecessary travel and avoid driving through flooded roadways.

Flooding has been reported especially in the Appleton, Grand Chute and Freedom areas in Outagamie County. Streets near downtown Green Bay have also been flooding.

MILWAUKEE (AP) – The City of Milwaukee Health Department says Milwaukee has a confirmed case of bacterial meningitis.

Officials on Monday would not say the gender or age of the patient. But officials say the person was diagnosed at a hospital in the Milwaukee area “and is receiving appropriate care.”

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports the health department has identified close contacts to the patients and has provided medical resources, including antibiotics.

The disease is spread through the exchange of respiratory and throat secretions, most often through direct, close contact with an infected patient. Close contact would include kissing, sharing a drink or lip balm and eating with the same utensils.

Symptoms include a rapidly developing fever, headache and stiff neck. Bacterial meningitis can be treated with antibiotics.

MARS, Pa. (AP) – Earth to Mars: Happy New Year!

That’s the sentiment being offered this weekend in Mars, Pennsylvania, as NASA and other space enthusiasts gather to honor the red planet.

The Martian New Year occurs about every two Earth-years. On Friday and Saturday, NASA will sponsor exhibits and activities in the borough of Mars, about 20 miles north of Pittsburgh.

The agency hopes to encourage young people to study science and technology fields that will further NASA’s goal of sending humans to Mars in the 2030s.

Mars on Earth has a population of about 1,700 and a sculpture of a flying saucer in the heart of town. Its festival includes a science fiction costume contest.

The next celebration is scheduled for May 5, 2017.

Photos of heavy rain and flooding in Northeast Wisconsin.

BHAKTAPUR, Nepal (AP) — Nepal on Monday reopened most of the cultural heritage sites that were damaged in a pair of devastating earthquakes, hoping to lure back foreign tourists.

The April 25 and May 12 quakes killed more than 8,700 people and damaged hundreds of thousands of buildings in Nepal, including old temples, palaces and other historical structures that are popular with tourists.

Six of the seven UNESCO World Heritage sites closed after the quakes were reopened Monday, Tourism Minister Kripasur Sherpa said.

“We are urging people to come to Nepal for holiday to help Nepal rebuild,” Sherpa said in Bhaktapur, a city outside of Kathmandu filled with ancient temples, and which is among the reopened heritage sites.

The sites were closed due to the damage from the quakes, but also over concerns about the safety of tourists.

Bhesh Narayan Dahal, chief of Nepal’s Department of Archaeology, said that measures have been taken to ensure that tourists are safe, and that there are plans to provide safety helmets for visitors in some places.

Some 741 heritage structures were damaged in the quakes, and it will take at least $18 million to rebuild and restore them, Dahal said.

Nepal is hosting an international donors’ meeting next week in Kathmandu, the capital, to seek money to help rebuild the Himalayan country following the quakes.

About 800,000 foreign tourists visit Nepal every year and the government is worried that a fear of earthquakes will stop many from visiting.

UNESCO, the United Nations’ cultural heritage organization, had raised concerns last week about the reopening of the heritage sites, urging tourists to be extra cautious and reconsider visiting them.

The agency also asked the government to restrict tourists’ access to locations where structures had collapsed and that were still considered unsafe.

LONDON (AP) — Queen Elizabeth II led commemorations Monday to mark the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta — but the human rights the document helped enshrine are at the center of a modern political feud.

British Prime Minister David Cameron and U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch joined the queen and other royals for a ceremony at Runnymede, a riverside meadow west of London where, on June 15, 1215, despotic King John met disgruntled barons and agreed to a list of basic rights.

The Magna Carta — Latin for Great Charter — is considered the founding document of English law and civil liberties and was an inspiration for the U.S. Constitution.

It established the principle that the king was subject to the law, rather than above it, and stipulated that “no free man shall be seized or imprisoned … except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land.”

The original charter was short-lived. King John almost immediately went back on his word and asked the pope to annul it, plunging England into civil war. It was re-issued after the king’s death.

Lynch said the charter “was neither expansive nor long-lived … but its adoption served as a signpost on a long and difficult march.”

“The principles traced back to Magna Carta represented a concept that is nothing less than the dignity of man,” she said.

Cameron said it was modern Britons’ duty to safeguard the charter’s “momentous achievement.”

But opponents accuse him of trying to undermine rights. Cameron’s Conservative government wants to replace the Human Rights Act — whose supreme arbiter is a European court — with a British Bill of Rights, a move opponents fear could weaken key protections.

Cameron said the Magna Carta had inspired everyone from women’s suffrage campaigners to Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela, who cited it at his trial in 1964.

But he added that “ironically … the good name of ‘human rights’ has sometimes become distorted and devalued,” in an apparent reference to present-day political debates.

“It falls to us in this generation to restore the reputation of those rights, and their critical underpinning of our legal system,” he added.

Shami Chakrabarti of rights group Liberty said Cameron “could give a master class in bare-faced cheek, using Magna Carta day to denigrate our Human Rights Act.”

The 800th anniversary has brought commemorations including a British Library exhibition that united the four surviving original copies of the document, written by scribes on sheepskin parchment.

On Sunday, Britons were invited to raise a toast to liberty with a cup of tea at “LiberTea” events across the country.

And the government said the Magna Carta could also be thanked for Britons’ right to a full pint of beer. The charter stipulated that there must be standard measures for wine and beer nationwide.

“We should all be proud of our nation’s great history as a brewing powerhouse,” said government pubs minister Marcus Jones. “Therefore it is only right we celebrate Beer Day Britain alongside the Magna Carta today.”

JACKSONVILLE, Ark. (AP) — A civilian armed with a rifle was shot and critically wounded after trying to enter Little Rock Air Force Base on Monday, though it wasn’t immediately clear why the man was trying to enter the sprawling base, military officials and police said.

Col. Charles Brown Jr., the commander of the base, said an SUV jumped a curb and knocked over a street sign near the base’s front gate before the driver got out with a rifle. Brown said guards began firing after seeing the man was armed.

Brown said at a news conference Monday afternoon that he didn’t know whether the man fired his weapon at the scene, or if the man said anything to the guards.

The base issued a statement earlier Monday saying the man was hospitalized in critical condition, and that an injured bystander also was taken to the hospital. No details were released about either person.

The base went on lockdown after the 9:15 a.m. shooting, and heavily armed security personnel sealed off access to the base, which is about 15 miles northeast of Little Rock. The main gate and a smaller entrance were open by early Monday afternoon at the base, home to a major C-130 training facility.

A bomb squad checked an SUV parked near a curb and sidewalk outside a visitor center at the base’s main gate. All four of its doors, along with its tailgate, were opened, and officials told those standing nearby to take cover behind other vehicles as workers wearing ordnance-disposal gear approached the vehicle.

Jacksonville Police Sgt. Dustin Brown said a civilian attempted to gain access to the base, though he had no information on the age or condition of the person who attempted to gain access to the base. Guards turned away a steady stream of cars and also prevented people from leaving the base, which abuts Jacksonville.

Lt. Amanda Farr, a spokeswoman for the 19th Airlift Wing, said numerous agencies including the FBI were working to ensure the base was safe.

“They’re all coordinating together to secure the area,” she said.

OAK ISLAND, N.C. (AP) — Local authorities defended their response Monday after two young people lost limbs in separate, life-threatening shark attacks in the same beach town in North Carolina.

A 12-year-old girl from Asheboro lost part of her arm and suffered a leg injury, and a 16-year-old boy from Colorado lost his left arm about an hour later and 2 miles away late Sunday afternoon.

Both had been bathing about 20 yards offshore, in waist-deep water. Authorities said they don’t know whether the same shark was responsible.

“We moved very quickly yesterday after the first attack. We were trying to get people on the beach with megaphones and ATVs to warn people to get out of the water,” Oak Island City Manager Tim Holloman said at a news conference.

Town employees drove along beaches announcing the attacks and urging people to get out and stay out of the water, but the instructions were voluntary and not mandatory. Holloman said officials are still researching whether they could legally force an evacuation in the event of a future shark attack.

The sheriff’s department also got a helicopter in the air and a boat just offshore, “so I think we were active as quickly as possible,” Holloman said.

Earlier Monday, Mayor Betty Wallace told The Associated Press that information was too spotty after Sunday’s first attack to justify immediately clearing the water, but that after the second attack, they did warn swimmers to get out.

Witnesses described a frightening and chaotic scene as the attacks disrupted one of the first busy weekends since public schools let out for the summer. The girl was bleeding heavily, and other beachgoers applied makeshift tourniquets while asking her questions to try to keep her conscious.

It was “quite nightmarish,” vacationer Steve Bouser told the AP. “I saw someone carry this girl (out of the water), and people were swarming around and trying to help … It was quite terrible.”

Surgeons amputated the girl’s left arm below her elbow, and she has tissue damage to her lower left leg. The boy’s left arm was amputated below his left shoulder. Both were in good condition Monday at the New Hanover Regional Medical Center in Wilmington, said hospital spokeswoman Martha Harlan. Neither name was released.

Both survived because bystanders helped stanch their bleeding and emergency personnel worked quickly to stabilize and airlift them to the hospital 25 miles away, said Brunswick County Emergency Services director Brian Watts.

“Without that, we would have had a different outcome,” he said.

Holloman said a friend of the boy applied a tourniquet. He said Monday afternoon that the boy was from Colorado Springs, correcting earlier information that he was from North Carolina.

A surf camp scheduled for this week has been canceled.

“We just thought that was a prudent measure. A lot of inexperienced people out there flailing around is not necessarily a good thing,” he said.

Unprovoked shark attacks on humans are extremely rare. There were 72 around the world in 2014, including 52 in the U.S., according to the International Shark Attack File at the Florida Museum of Natural History. Three of them — all outside the U.S. — were fatal.

The first emergency call came in about 4:40 p.m., followed by a call about the boy at 5:51 p.m., local officials said. And just four days earlier, a 13-year-old girl suffered small lacerations on her foot from a shark bite on Ocean Isle Beach, about 15 miles from Oak Island. Both towns are on barrier islands just off the coast.

Investigators said they didn’t know whether the same shark attacked both of Sunday’s victims, nor the size of the shark in either attack.

Deputies using boats and helicopters to monitor the water after the attacks did see a 7-foot shark between where the incidents happened, Sheriff John Ingram said. Another shark was spotted Monday morning.

Holloman said Oak Island is working with local law enforcement and the Shark Research Institute to locate that shark, but he wouldn’t say what would happen if they find it.

The town’s beaches were open Monday, and officials said they can’t stop people from swimming. North Carolina faced dangerously hot temperatures of 100 degrees or more, with a heat index showing it felt as hot as 107 degrees on the shore.

“There’s no way we’re going to stop people from going into the water,” said Watts. “There’s really no way to control that.”

Holloman encouraged swimmers to avoid people who are fishing, stay out of the water if they have bleeding cuts and not to swim in murky waters, or after a storm.

“Oak Island is still a safe place,” Holloman said. “We’re monitoring the situation. This is highly unusual.”

Many people were staying out of the water on Monday, said Lori Little, of Claremont, N.C., who was vacationing with her husband.

“I would describe the beach as empty as compared to as when we were here yesterday. There were a lot of people here yesterday. In the water, in and out of the water. I have not seen that today at all.”

“I don’t think people are quite ready to get in the water yet,” she added.

Larry James, of Asheville, N.C., has come to Oak Island for 20 years to vacation. He was on the beach with his six-year-old granddaughter, Maggie, and his wife.

“Right now, we’re going to be a lot more careful, that’s for sure. We won’t be out in the water so far. Ankle deep at the most.”

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Associated Press writers Jack Jones in Columbia, S.C., and Jonathan Drew in Raleigh contributed to this report.

The world’s largest volleyball tournament is taking place July 10-12, at Brighton Acres in Oshkosh. Registration is now open for the 2015 Waupaca Boatride/US Open Grass Volleyball Tournament. Watch the video for more information.

MANITOWOC – Police are searching for the driver of a vehicle that hit a bicyclist without stopping on Maritime Drive Sunday.

Manitowoc officials say a man was riding his bicycle northbound in the 100 block of Maritime Drive around 8:45 a.m.

The bicyclist said he was hit in the rear tire by a car. The impact of the collision sent the bicyclist off the roadway and he struck a metal post of a traffic sign.

The bicyclist, who was not wearing a helmet, required stitches in his left forearm and had abrasions on his back. He was transported to the hospital for treatment and his injuries are considered to be non-life threatening.

The bicyclist said he was riding on the road due to runners who were using the Mariners Trail due to the HFM Marathon that was in progress.

Police recovered a piece of the car at the scene.

Police are looking for a 2005 to 2008 Toyota Corolla that is bluish green in color. The car could be missing the front bumper insert which is a filler piece where a fog lamp would normally be, had the car been equipped with fog lamps. The car may or may not have sustained much damage other than this missing part.

Anyone with information about this crash is asked to call the Manitowoc Police Department at 920-686-6551.

MADISON (AP) – The outspoken founder of the Madison-based Freedom From Religion Foundation has died.

The foundation wrote on its website Monday that 88-year-old Anne Nicol Gaylor died just before midnight Sunday following complications from a May 30 fall in her apartment.

Gaylor co-founded the atheist and agnostic awareness group in 1976 along with her daughter Annie Laurie Gaylor. The elder Gaylor served as president until 2004.

The group has grown to be the largest of its kind in the country, frequently filing lawsuits defending the separation of church and state. The group also annually puts up a display each holiday season in the Wisconsin state Capitol celebrating atheism.

Gaylor also co-founded the Women’s Medical Fund, an abortion rights charity that has served more than 20,000 Wisconsin women.

Find current conditions of beaches around Wisconsin.

Target will sell its pharmacy and clinic businesses to the drugstore chain CVS Health for about $1.9 billion in a deal that combines the resources of two retailers seeking to polish their health care reputations.

The acquisition allows CVS Health to reach more patients and expand its in-store MinuteClinic brand, which it has been growing aggressively for the past several years. It also gives the nation’s second-largest drugstore chain a retail presence in new markets like Seattle, Denver, and Salt Lake City.

Target customers, in turn, will gain access to CVS Health Corp.’s pharmacy care programs that help them manage their prescriptions, find low-cost generic drugs and buy specialty medications, a rapidly growing slice of the pharmaceutical market.

Drugstore chains, grocers and big retailers like Target and Wal-Mart have all pushed deeper into customer health in recent years, in part to serve the aging baby boom generation and the millions of uninsured people who are expected to gain coverage under the federal health care overhaul. They’ve added walk-in clinics to their stores and, in some cases, expanded the care those clinics provide to include monitoring chronic conditions like diabetes.

Retailers also are putting more health care products on their shelves.

Drugstores have long-since slowed their push to grow by building new stores and shifted to expanding what their existing stores offer. That includes groceries and other non-pharmacy items, aside from health care products, as they try to attract customers who are looking to buy more in a single stop.

CVS Health gained national attention last year when it announced it would pull tobacco from its store shelves as part of a push to improve its reputation as a health care provider. The drugstore chain also changed its name to CVS Health from CVS Caremark last year as part of its increased focus on health.

Target had already quit selling tobacco in 1996.

The deal announced Monday includes more than 1,660 pharmacies in Target stores that will be branded as CVS/pharmacy. The agreement also calls for new Target stores to include a CVS/pharmacy if they are going to offer pharmacy services.

Target Corp.’s nearly 80 clinic locations will be rebranded as MinuteClinic. CVS Health will also open up to 20 new clinics in Target stores within three years of the deal’s closing.

In addition, Woonsocket, Rhode Island-based CVS Health and Minneapolis-based Target plan to develop five to 10 smaller stores over two years. The stores will be branded as TargetExpress and include a CVS/pharmacy.

Target has nearly 1,800 stores and also sells products through its Target.com website. The retailer, which caters to customers who have a little more money than Wal-Mart shoppers, is trying to reinvent itself as a more nimble and innovative company and is trying to reclaim its reputation as a cheap chic retailer under CEO Brian Cornell.

It expects after-tax proceeds of about $1.2 billion, which it plans to use buying back stock, among other capital priorities.

CVS Health will pay for the deal with new debt and has lowered its share repurchase guidance for this year to $5 billion from $6 billion. CVS Health runs 7,800 drugstores and nearly 1,000 walk-in medical clinics, a total it plans to expand to 1,500 clinics by 2017. It also operates one of the nation’s largest pharmacy management businesses, which runs prescription drug coverage for insurers, employers and other big customers.

Shares of CVS Health Corp. climbed 89 cents to $103.11 by midday Monday while Target rose $1.24 to $80.71.

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AP Business Writer Michelle Chapman contributed to this report from New York. Murphy reported from Indianapolis.

GREEN BAY – Gas prices have gone up because of a drop in supply, experts say.

GasBuddy.com says the average price in the Green Bay area is up 8 cents per gallon the past week, to $2.75. That’s up 19.3 cents in the past month.

Nationally, the price is up about 5.5 cents in the past week to $2.81, which is about 11.1 cents higher than a month ago.

“Thanks to a large surprise decline in both crude oil and gasoline inventories last week, gasoline prices unexpectedly regained upward momentum,” Patrick DeHaan, GasBuddy senior petroleum analyst, said in a news release.

“The government’s weekly report on petroleum supplies was a major departure from what we’ve seen this far in 2015: major jumps in crude inventories, so the market reacted significantly to the year’s first big decline in supply. Meanwhile, continued and new glitches in the Great Lakes region has led to a big spike in prices throughout Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, West Virginia and Wisconsin. It’s been a rough week at the pump as unexpected malfunctions and summer maintenance have led to very tight supply in the region. The rest of the country saw modest increases in the last week with the primary catalyst being the lousy EIA report. Should we see another big surprise this week, I don’t want to see the market’s reaction. I see oil currently overvalued and believe the market will eventually come to its senses.”

While the price in the Green Bay area is up recently, it’s still down 93.5 cents per gallon from a year ago, GasBuddy says. Nationally, the average price of gas is down 85.8 cents from this time in 2014.

MADISON (AP) – Republican Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald plans to meet with other legislative leaders on Monday as an agreement on several key issues in the state budget remains elusive.

Fitzgerald spokeswoman Myranda Tanck says he is meeting with other legislative leaders on Monday night. She declined to say who was going to be at the meeting.

The budget-writing Joint Finance Committee has not meet since May 29. It was expected to come back for perhaps its final meeting on Wednesday, but that had not been formally announced.

Republicans are struggling over how to pay for highways and transportation projects, a $500 million financing plan for a new Milwaukee Bucks stadium and what changes to make to the state’s prevailing wage law that sets a minimum salary for workers on certain jobs.

MADISON (AP) – The chairman of the Wisconsin Medical Examining Board is responding to a recent audit that found nearly one in 11 licensed physicians in Wisconsin were not in compliance with continuing education requirements.

Physicians in Wisconsin must log 30 hours of continuing medical education every two years, a requirement past board chairman Sheldon Wasserman says is lowest in the nation.

But, the current chairman, Dr. Kenneth Simons, says there are several states that have no continuing education requirements for licensed physicians, including Colorado, South Dakota, Montana and Indiana.

Simons says there are other avenues for keeping physicians at the top of their game. He says board certified doctors must maintain their certification through continuing education, among other things.

The Wisconsin State Journal reported regulators found 8 percent of doctors selected in a random audit failed to meet continuing education requirements for licensing.

Photos submitted to ReportIt, June 14-20, 2015.

SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — The president of the NAACP’s Spokane, Washington, chapter has resigned as furor mounted over her racial identity after her parents said she has falsely portrayed herself as black for years though she is actually white.

The announcement that Rachel Dolezal was stepping down was posted Monday on the civil rights group’s Facebook page.

Dolezal has been a longtime figure in Spokane’s human-rights community and teaches African studies to college students.

The city of Spokane is investigating whether she lied about her ethnicity when she applied to be on the police board.

Her mother, Ruthanne Dolezal, said the family’s ancestry is Czech, Swedish and German, with a trace of Native American heritage.