Green Bay News

DE PERE – De Pere will sound a little more musical in the next few months.

De Pere’s EastWest Musicfest kicks off their summer concert series featuring musical performances every Friday night.

The event partners with Mile of Music to help preserve music by local artists around the area.

Musician Michael Gillespie and Cory Chisel will perform this Friday.

Chisel said De Pere is a perfect location for this event, “I have a mission to spread original great artists to really great cities and De Pere fits that right on.”

The free events will include 75 live music performances over six summer Fridays at venues on both sides of the Fox River.

 

EDMONTON, Alberta (AP) – Canada coach John Herdman pretty much summed up the prevailing sentiment when he was asked what he was looking forward to most about the Women’s World Cup.

“Winning,” Herdman said.

Join the crowd, coach.

Canada, ranked No. 8 in the world, opens women’s soccer’s premier tournament with a group-stage match against No. 16 China on Saturday in Edmonton, one of the six Canadian cities hosting the monthlong event. The final is July 5 in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Fox 11’s assignment manager blogs about the World Cup schedule & its impact on other Fox 11 programming

Twenty-four teams are competing this year, up from 16 that took part in the 2011 tournament in Germany. Japan won that one on penalty kicks in a memorable final against the United States.

The Americans, ranked No. 2, are among the favorites, along with top-ranked Germany and third-ranked France. The U.S. women are in Group D, the so-called “Group of Death” that includes upstart Australia, Sweden and former U.S. coach Pia Sundhage, and perennial African champion Nigeria.

Group D opens with a match between the United States and Australia in Winnipeg on Monday, but probably the most anticipated match of the group stage is the showdown between the U.S. and Sweden next Friday. It pits Sundhage against former assistant Jill Ellis, who took over the U.S. team last spring.

The players, many of whom played for Sundhage, were keeping perspective on the match.

“It’s just another game for us, it’s just another in the group round,” said U.S. defender Meghan Klingenberg. “We’re not looking at is as the ‘Group of Death’ or the easiest group, or whatever it is. We’re just looking at it as a game we have to win because we want to be on the podium at the end of this tournament.”

Some things to watch as the tournament gets underway:

THE SHOW MUST GO ON: The women’s game and the World Cup have not really been touched all that much by the scandal rocking FIFA, the sport’s international governing body.

The only telltale sign of its impact came when FIFA Secretary General Jerome Valcke withdrew from the tournament’s opening news conference in Vancouver. He was replaced by Tatjana Haenni, FIFA’s deputy director of the competitions division and head of women’s soccer.

At the news conference, Canadian Soccer Association President Victor Montagliani was asked if there were any improprieties associated with Canada’s bid for the event – a reflection of the corruption allegations facing FIFA as a whole.

The question was a bit amusing because Canada was the only country that bid. Zimbabwe withdrew.

“I actually think that it’s a positive thing that the first tournament after whatever happened last week is the Women’s World Cup. Because women’s football is a very pure form of football. And I think women’s football can shine some light in the dark clouds that are hanging over the game,” Montagliani said.

ASSESSING THE UNITED STATES: There have been mixed reviews of the U.S. team in the matches leading up to the World Cup, starting with an uncharacteristic loss to France in Lorient in February and ending with a listless 0-0 draw against South Korea in New Jersey last Saturday.

The players themselves say they are unconcerned, trusting a process. “Everybody, don’t freak out,” forward Abby Wambach said. “We’re going to be fine.”

TURF WARS: The event is the first senior World Cup, for the men or women, to be held on artificial turf.

That hasn’t gone over well with many players, who believe that artificial turf exacerbates injuries and changes the way the ball moves.

Wambach led a group of players who filed a legal challenge last fall, alleging gender discrimination – because the men’s World Cup is always played on real grass. The players withdrew their action earlier this year when it became clear it wouldn’t be considered before the event.

All six stadiums and 18 practice fields in Canada are outfitted with fake turf.

GOAL LINE TECHNOLOGY: This is the first Women’s World Cup that will use goal-line technology aimed at taking the guesswork out of the ref’s hands when it comes to those critical goal/not-goal questions.

The Hawk-Eye system trains seven cameras on each goal. If there’s a score, a signal is transmitted to a watch worn by each match official.

Goal-line technology was also used in the men’s World Cup last year in Brazil. That system was provided by the German company GoalControl.

So what spurred technology’s intrusion into the Beautiful Game? The 2010 World Cup. A shot by England’s Frank Lampard in the second round against Germany was clearly over the line, but disallowed. That goal would have tied it 2-2. Instead Germany won 4-1.

SAYING GOODBYE: Several stars have announced that this will be their final World Cup, including Japan’s Homare Sawa, who is playing in her sixth – a record among women and men.

German goalkeeper Nadine Angerer also said she is retiring after this year. And Wambach will likely to hang up her cleats – although she may stick around for the 2016 Olympics.

“We have stars like Alex Morgan and Sydney Leroux and Megan Rapinoe who are going to continue on for many years on this team. And hopefully I’m going to be riding out off into the sunset with a World Cup championship,” Wambach said. “For me it would be an amazing thing to be able to leave this team on a high note and know that it’s in good hands with those players.”

(CNN) – Recently Denmark announced that it wants its restaurants, gas stations, and retailers to go cashless.

Under this new proposed law, which would go into effect in January, businesses would be allowed to ban all cash transactions.

Instead, they would accept credit cards and debit cards, as well as newer technologies like mobile pay services.

So could this work in the U.S.?

Probably not because Americans use cash at a much higher rate than other European countries.

A 2012 survey of nearly 2,500 consumers showed that 40 percent of transactions in the U.S. involve cash. Compare that to other countries like Scandinavia, for instance, where cash is used less than 6 percent of the time.

You can see why the U.S. has a long way to go.

In Denmark, this law wouldn’t apply everywhere. Services deemed essential, such as hospitals and pharmacies, would still be required to take cash.

 

WASHINGTON (AP) – A government watchdog says Social Security overpaid disability beneficiaries by nearly $17 billion over the past decade.

Many payments went to people who earned too much money to qualify for benefits, or to people who weren’t disabled anymore. Some payments went to people who had died or to prison inmates.

In all, a 10-year study by the agency’s inspector general found that nearly half of the 9 million people receiving disability payments were overpaid.

The study released Friday says Social Security recouped about $8.1 billion, but it often took years to get the money back.

The Social Security Administration did not respond to a request for comment Friday.

CAMDEN, N.J. (AP) — With his plastic bag of clothes resting by the bench, Bruce Chorzelewski is sitting down at an upright piano in front of City Hall and improvising a tune.

It’s the first chance he’s had to play a piano since last fall, when he was in a mental health center. The instrument is weather-worn, some keys are missing and others, he says, are dead, but playing brings calm to a man whose life has been turbulent.

“It relaxes me,” says Chorzelewski, 51, who remembers the 1980s — before a brain injury, two heart attacks and a stroke, depression, alcohol addiction and stints of homelessness — when he played guitar in clubs with a band called Destiny.

The piano is part of a pop-up park that opened last year on Roosevelt Plaza, a new park in Camden, a city that ranks among the country’s most impoverished and crime-ridden.

Chorzelewski, a former supermarket manager who has been living on the streets for the past few days after a rift with his roommates, had been eyeing the keyboard for a while but played it for the first time on a hot day last week after an appointment at a mental health center. He likes guitar best, but given his financial condition, doesn’t have one right now.

The piano is his instrument. It’s everyone’s.

The players that day had different stories. Yet for all of them, the public piano meant a place to achieve a few moments of inner peace.

Kobie Mack dropped by during a lunch break from his work as a plumber on a construction project a few blocks away to play some neo-soul/R&B/rock and roll compositions of his own, his hard hat sitting by the bench.

“If you can play a broken piano,” he said triumphantly after his time at the keys, “you can play anywhere.”

“I think this is the greatest thing they’ve ever done out here,” said Mack, 42, who sang along as he played. “There’s a lot of talent here.”

The Camden one certainly isn’t the first public piano. In a project that does not include the Camden instrument, British artist Luke Jerram has been putting pianos in public places since 2008. More than 1,300 pianos have been put in 46 cities worldwide, each with the instruction, “Play Me, I’m Yours.”

Camden, a former industrial hub across the Delaware River from Philadelphia, is different from most places.

About 40 percent of the 77,000 residents live in poverty, and one-third of the adults do not have high school degrees. There were 32 homicides in the city last year — and that was a huge improvement from 2012, when there were a record 67.

There’s an almost constant effort to reinvent the city. In the past few years, the county government has taken over police patrols and hired more officers, and the state has taken over operations of the school district. State tax incentives are also being used to attract more businesses.

The pop-up park that includes the piano is part of a project to bring life to underused open places.

It’s on the site of the former Parkade building, which housed offices and a big parking garage. That building went up in 1955 as a way to try to keep suburbanites coming to the city’s department stores — now all long gone. The building stood for decades as an eyesore, and then things got worse in 2003, when the Legionnaires’ disease bacterium was detected there.

Now, it’s a green oasis in the city’s heart that has won a handful of design awards. Professionals from City Hall eat lunch there on nice days, people coming or going to a methadone clinic across the street sit on benches, and sometimes women hand out religious pamphlets.

Joe Sikora, president of Sikora Wells Appel, the landscape architecture firm that designed the park and dreamed up including the piano, said the plan was to put the instrument away for the winter. But it became such a part of peoples’ routines that it could not be removed. He said it will be replaced in coming weeks with another used — and possibly more durable — instrument.

Reinaldo Suarez, whose gray beard falls to the middle of his chest, said he has been playing his salsa compositions on it since the piano arrived under a small tin roof.

He shows the marks on his arms from years of heroin addiction and talks about how, when he was in prison in Philadelphia more than 20 years ago for auto theft, he spent his time getting his GED and making music.

He’s self-taught, he says, and plays only his own songs — another trait shared by several of the people playing.

“When you write a song,” he said, “you’ve got to write a song from your heart.”

 

APPLETON – A $1 million donation to a Lawrence University scholarship fund honors an outgoing leader.

The university says the anonymous donation establishing the Terry and Mary Franke Scholarship Fund recognizes Terry Franke’s four and a half years as the chair of Lawrence’s Board of Trustees. The fund is part of Lawrence’s “Full Speed to Full Need” campaign, which will be used exclusively for scholarships to help meet students’ financial need. The university has raised $46.5 million of its $50 million goal for the fund.

“Terry Franke has led the Lawrence Board of Trustees during a time of immense growth and significant change for the university. I cannot think of a better way to acknowledge his service to his alma mater than this wonderful gift to establish the Terry and Mary Franke Scholarship fund,” Mark Burstein, university president, said in a news release.

Franke is a 1968 Lawrence graduate who served 16 years on the board and became chair in 2011.

Oshkosh native Susan Stillman Kane is succeeding Franke as chair of the board.

WASHINGTON (AP) – Consumer borrowing surged again in April, helped by the largest gain in credit card borrowing in a year.

The Federal Reserve says consumer borrowing expanded by $20.5 billion in April, down only slightly from a gain of $21.3 billion in March which was the biggest increase in eight months.  The strong gains pushed consumer credit to a fresh record of $3.38 trillion.

Borrowing in the category that includes credit cards jumped by $8.6 billion, the largest rise in 12 months. Borrowing in the category that covers auto and student loans advanced a solid $11.9 billion, after an even bigger $16.5 billion increase in March.

Economists expect consumers, who have seen strong job gains over the past year, will keep borrowing and spending in coming months, helping to boost overall economic growth.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) – GOP presidential hopefuls are taking a break from the hotel ballrooms and church basements where they usually campaign.

Several are going to the “Roast and Ride” event in Iowa this weekend. It features a pig roast, motorcycles rides and speeches. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry are expected to ride.

It’s a new event in Iowa. The big draws used to be a straw poll that is becoming less relevant and the annual Democratic steak fry that ended last year. The “Roast and Ride” event is being held by freshman Sen. Joni Ernst.

Also attending are Sens. Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham, former Gov. Mike Huckabee, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina.

VIENNA (AP) — OPEC decided to keep its oil output target on hold Friday and predicted prices would remain low for the foreseeable future — good news for both for oil-hungry international industries and consumers at the gas pump.

The cartel said its output level would remain at 30 million barrels a day despite the fact that prices were still low compared with a year ago. It left it to member states to restrain any overproduction, an acknowledgment of the cartel’s inability to enforce its own limits as it struggles to control world supply and prices.

With non-OPEC oil producing countries ready to ramp up production if prices go much above present levels, OPEC’s secretary general said the cost of crude will stay relatively low for a while.

“The reality now is that we cannot have these S100 (prices) anymore,” Abdullah al-Badri told reporters.

The international price of crude was down $1.62 at $62.10 after Friday’s announcement, having traded above $115 a barrel in 2014.

While the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries accounts for over a third of the world’s oil, its power to determine supply and demand has been steadily eroding as outsiders capture large shares of the market. It gave up imposing quotas on individual members four years ago after these were consistently ignored.

That has led to an overhang in recent months of more than 1 million barrels a day of OPEC production beyond the target. But the likelihood of continued overproduction persists.

OPEC powerhouse Saudi Arabia is fighting to keep market share against U.S. shale oil, Iran plans to increase production in anticipation of an end to sanctions that have crimped its crude exports and other countries are trying to compensate for low prices by selling more.

“OPEC realizes … that it is now in a highly competitive market, in which its own members will compete against each other and collectively against non-OPEC producers, and in particular shale producers,” said John Hall of Alfa Energy in London.

Announcing the decision to keep the present target, an OPEC statement urged members “to adhere to it.” But al-Badri, the secretary general, acknowledged that, as in the past, countries had only been assigned “indicators” — not quotas — in attempts to hew to the target.

In contrast, Saudi and Iranian comments Friday reflected the countries’ determination to produce what they decide.

“Production policy is a sovereign right,” Naimi told reporters.

Iranian Petroleum Minister Bijar Namdar Zangeneh, meanwhile, advised OPEC to make room for increased output from his country as early as the end of the month. That’s the target date for a deal between Tehran and six world powers envisaging an end to sanctions on the Islamic Republic in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program.

Iran hopes to ramp up production by up to 1 million barrels a day within a year once sanctions are gone, and Zangeneh said his country doesn’t “need any decision from the OPEC side to return to the market, because it’s our right.”

OPEC powerhouse Saudi Arabia and their Gulf allies are best set to continue all-out producing — even though they, like others, are selling at a loss.

But they can afford to do so.

The Saudi sovereign wealth fund stands at over $700 billion and the coffers of the other Gulf nations are also well stocked. The Saudis, who effectively set OPEC policy, were the prime drivers in the decision in November to keep the 30 million barrel-a day target, the seventh time in three years that the group opted for the status quo.

But the less well-off among OPEC states are hurting.

Among them is Algeria, which has long depended on high oil and gas prices to operate an extensive welfare state and has been harshly hit by the shale boom, which generates the same light blend that it sells. For Venezuela, where crude accounts for 95 percent of all exports, the price slump has hugely exacerbated that country’s economic hardship — the country needs prices above $120 a barrel just to break even. And Nigeria was forced to trim its 2015 budget by 12 percent because of low crude prices. Oil makes up 75 percent of its exports.

Still even OPEC’s poorer nations know that past OPEC remedies of cutting production to drive up prices will no longer work, with the growing clout wielded by non-OPEC players.

Al-Badri on Friday defended the decision to maintain the production ceiling in hopes of defending market share despite plunging prices as “a decision of both the rich and the poor.”

 

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. employers added a robust 280,000 jobs in May, showing that the economy has regained momentum after starting 2015 in a deep slump.

The unemployment rate ticked up to 5.5 percent from 5.4 percent in April, the government said Friday. But that occurred for a good reason: Hundreds of thousands more people began seeking jobs in May. Not all of them found work and so were counted as unemployed.

Last month’s strong job growth reflects a vote of confidence by employers, a sign that they foresee a broader rebound for the U.S. economy after it shrank during the first three months of the year. The government also revised up its estimate of job growth during March and April by a combined net 32,000.

The steady hiring should help drive the economy through the rest of the year, overcoming the drags caused by a stronger dollar hurting exports and cheaper oil slashing into revenues for the energy industry.

“We’ve restored income for well over 3 million people over the past 12 months, and that’s adding a lot of spending power to the economy,” said Carl Tannenbaum, an economist at Northern Trust.

Construction, health care and hospitality companies drove the May job growth. On the negative side, persistently cheaper oil led energy companies to shed workers for a fifth straight month.

Average hourly wages rose 2.3 percent from a year earlier, showing some pick-up. Pay is barely rising above inflation, a persistent trend that has limited the economy’s growth. But the average hourly wage is now approaching $25, a level that appears to be bringing unemployed workers hurt by the 2008 financial crisis and sluggish recovery back into the job market.

The percentage of people with jobs or searching for work increased to 62.9 percent in May, up a tenth of a percentage point.

“Even the modest gains are pulling in some of the people on the sidelines,” said Ryan Sweet, an economist at Moody’s Analytics.

Stock investors are processing what the job growth means for the economy and the policies of the Federal Reserve, which is expected to raise rates from record lows at some point later this year. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index was largely flat in morning trading.

Over the past three months, employers have added an average of 207,000 jobs. That’s a decent gain, though lower than last year’s average of 263,667.

Prices for the benchmark 10-year Treasury note fell after the jobs report was issued, raising its yield to 2.42 percent from 2.35 percent just before the figures were announced. U.S. stock futures held steady.

Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen has said she expects the Fed to raise rates this year if the economy continues to improve, thereby ending nearly seven years of record-low rates.

On Thursday, though, the International Monetary Fund suggested that the Fed should hold off on raising rates until 2016. IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde, saying a rate increase could disrupt the economy, urged the Fed to await signs of healthy wage growth.

“This evident strength in the labor market probably isn’t enough to persuade the Fed to hike rates in July, but it leaves a September liftoff looking more likely than ever,” said Paul Ashworth, chief U.S. economist at Capital Economics. “Only 24 hours later, the IMF’s suggestion that the Fed should wait until 2016 looks very dated.”

Though employers continue to hire freely, consumers — the main engine of the U.S. economy — remain fairly cautious. Still, Friday’s solid jobs report confirms the economy’s vitality.

The 3 million new paychecks added over the past year have helped raise spending on housing and autos. Sales of newly built homes have surged 23.7 percent through the first four months of 2015 compared with a year ago, government data show. Rising demand for new homes led construction firms to hire 17,000 workers in May.

Americans bought 1.64 million vehicles in May, the most since July 2005. Manufacturers added 7,000 jobs last month, primarily in the auto sector.

Retailers added 31,400 employees, health care companies 57,700. The leisure and hospitality industry, which includes restaurants, added 57,000.

The weekly number of people applying for unemployment benefits — a proxy for layoffs — has remained under a historically low 300,000 for more than four months. By holding on to nearly all their workers, businesses are ensuring that they will have the capacity to respond to greater customer demand.

But the economy faces other challenges. The dollar has appreciated about 19 percent in the past year against other major currencies. That trend has made U.S. goods costlier overseas, thereby squeezing exports and the U.S.-based branches of foreign companies.

Nor has cheaper gasoline delivered much help. Instead of sparking the wave of consumer spending that many economists had expected, a nearly 45 percent drop in oil prices since July has damaged a U.S. economy increasingly reliant on energy drilling. The energy industry has let go of workers and cut orders for pipelines and equipment.

The mining sector, which includes oil and gas, trimmed 17,200 workers from their payrolls last month.

Falling unemployment usually leads to fewer people seeking work, forcing employers to boost wages. But plenty of people are still searching for jobs. The aftermath of the recession has left 8.5 million people unemployed and seeking work, about 1.3 million more than were jobless before the downturn began in late 2007.

Companies often increase pay when their workers become more productive. Yet productivity fell at a 3.1 percent annual rate in the first quarter — a sharper drop than the decline estimated a month ago, the government said Thursday.

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AP Economics Writer Christopher S. Rugaber contributed to this report.

 

KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) — A U.S. military helicopter that crashed in Nepal last month on an earthquake relief mission was carrying five more passengers than first thought, raising the death toll to 13, Nepal’s army said Friday.

Authorities initially said six U.S. Marines and two Nepalese soldiers were killed.

DNA tests and investigations by experts from both countries confirmed that five other people on the chopper were local villagers, the army said in a statement. The five reportedly were injured people being transported to a medical facility.

The UH-1 “Huey” helicopter crashed May 12 in the northeastern mountains, and the wreckage was found after days of intense searching. The first three charred bodies were retrieved by Nepalese and U.S. military teams, and the rest were found a day later.

The U.S. relief mission was deployed after a magnitude-7.8 earthquake hit Nepal on April 25. A magnitude-7.3 quake struck on May 12 and hours later the helicopter crashed.

Four of the Marines were part of the Marine Light Attack Helicopter Squadron 469 of the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing based at Camp Pendleton near San Diego, California. Two other Marines were combat cameramen based in Japan.

The cause of the crash has not been determined. U.S. military officials have said that an Indian helicopter in the air nearby heard radio chatter from the Huey about a possible fuel problem.

Earlier this week, a private helicopter chartered by Doctors Without Borders crashed after hitting power cables, killing all four people on board. Three victims were Nepalese and the other was a Dutch woman.

The government and aid agencies have used helicopters to carry relief materials to mountainous regions where earthquake damage or the lack of existing roads has made delivery of aid all but impossible.

The two earthquakes have killed more than 8,700 people, injured thousands and destroyed many buildings.

 

PHOENIX (AP) — It didn’t take much rain to set a record in Phoenix.

The National Weather Service says the .01 inch of rain recorded at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport by 7 a.m. Friday was the largest amount for June 5.

There has not been any precipitation recorded previously on the date in the desert city.

June is normally dry in Phoenix, but a thunderstorm with moisture from remnants of Tropical Storm Andres provided a bit of a change.

“We’ve now got #RainOnThe5thOfJune. Officially measuring 0.01″ at Sky Harbor. Record broke,” the weather service office said in a Twitter post.

 

MARSEILLE, France (AP) — A state prosecutor says a co-pilot with a history of depression who crashed a Germanwings airliner into the French Alps had reached out to dozens of doctors ahead of the disaster, a revelation that suggests Andreas Lubitz was seeking advice about an undisclosed ailment.

Meanwhile, families of those killed in the crash received long-awaited news that they will start receiving bodies next week.

Marseille Prosecutor Brice Robin, who is leading a criminal investigation into the March 24 crash that killed all 150 people on board Germanwings Flight 9525, told The Associated Press that he has received information from foreign counterparts and is going over it before a meeting with victims’ relatives in Paris next week.

In that closed-door meeting at the French Foreign Ministry on June 11, Robin will discuss his investigation and efforts to reduce administrative delays in handing over the victims’ remains to grieving families, his office said Friday. Those remains are still in Marseille, frustrating some families.

Investigators say Lubitz intentionally crashed the jet after locking the pilot out of the cockpit. German prosecutors have said that in the week before the crash, he spent time online researching suicide methods and cockpit door security — the earliest evidence of a premeditated act.

Robin told the AP late Thursday that Lubitz had also reached out to dozens of doctors in the period before the crash. That suggests Lubitz was desperate to find an explanation for some mental or physical ailment, even as he researched ways of killing himself and others. Robin would not address the question of what symptoms Lubitz was assessing.

Germanwings and parent company Lufthansa had no comment Friday on the finding, citing the ongoing investigation. Prosecutors have previously said they found torn-up doctors’ notes excusing Lubitz from work at his home, including one covering the day of the crash, and that he appears to have hidden his illness from his employer and colleagues.

Germanwings and Lufthansa have said that Lubitz had passed all medical tests and was cleared by doctors as fit to fly.

Robin noted delays in embalming the remains of the victims, which he said must be done according to the national rules of each of the 19 countries the victims came from. That complex process has prompted agonizing waits for many families.

Earlier this week, plans to repatriate the remains of the victims had been put on hold because of errors on death certificates. However, Elmar Giemulla, a lawyer representing several German families, said some of them were informed Friday that the repatriation will now go ahead as planned June 10.

Lufthansa said Friday that an MD11 plane will transport the remains of 30 victims from Marseille to Duesseldorf on Tuesday, and they will be handed over to relatives on Wednesday.

Further remains will be transported to the victims’ homelands over the coming weeks, it said.

Robin said he had received responses to a formal French request for international cooperation in his probe, including from Germany — home to about half of the victims, and to Germanwings and its parent company Lufthansa. Robin said he would address the media after thoroughly examining the responses and meeting the families next week.

For now, “I have decided to prioritize the victims’ families,” he said.

 

LONGMONT, Colo. (AP) — Residents and authorities surveyed the damage from tornadoes that crushed houses and dropped hail that piled up like snow as the threat loomed of more severe weather Friday in northern Colorado.

Twisters on Thursday night destroyed at least three homes and damaged more than two dozen others, but weather and darkness hindered people from taking a closer look at the damage.

The strong storm system also hit the Denver area, bringing hail the size of quarters and opening a sinkhole about 15 feet deep that swallowed a police SUV.

Sgt. Greg Miller said he could hear water all around him in the hole on a Sheridan street, and he crawled out a window, pulled himself up on the roof and then up to the pavement above.

A bolt of lightning illuminates the sky as a summer storm packing high winds and heavy rains sweeps over downtown Denver late Thursday, June 4, 2015. Severe weather has hit in several locations along Colorado’s Front Range during the day, prompting forecasters to issue tornado and flood warnings for the night ahead. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

“I’m glad it happened to me and to no one else,” Miller told Denver news station KMGH-TV.

At least three homes were demolished Thursday in the town of Berthoud, about 40 miles north of Denver, said Lori Hodges, director of the Larimer County Office of Emergency Management.

The National Weather Service said at least two other tornadoes touched down in the afternoon near the tiny town of Simla, about 60 miles southeast of Denver. Elbert County officials said at least six homes were damaged there, one severely.

Scott Oliver, who lives in northern Boulder County, told The Daily Camera newspaper that he went to move his car because of hail when he saw the tornado touch down.

“It was probably on the ground two minutes,” he said. “It was just kicking up everything. It was terrible.”

Oliver said that when he saw a piece of roof go flying by, “it was clear it packed a punch.

“When the roof blew by, we knew it was serious,” he said, adding that his neighbor was forced to dive beneath a tractor and then into a ditch as the tornado approached.

Hail stacks up under the windshield wipers of a vehicle after a summer storm packing high winds and heavy rains swept over downtown Denver late Thursday, June 4, 2015. Severe weather has hit in several locations along Colorado’s Front Range during the day, prompting forecasters to issue tornado and flood warnings for the night ahead. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

North in Wyoming, residents in the tiny town of Lusk were cleaning up from flooding unleashed by a freak thunderstorm. Water and electricity has been restored to most of the town’s 1,500 residents after up to 6 inches of rain fell, collapsing a bridge, damaging homes and businesses, and sending about a dozen people to higher ground.

But major highways in and out of Lusk still were closed to most traffic Friday. A flash flood watch has been posted for a large area of north-central Wyoming where many rivers and streams are running high from snowmelt and rain.

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Associated Press writer Bob Moen contributed to this report from Cheyenne, Wyoming.

 

MILWAUKEE (AP) – University of Wisconsin System regents have voted to add faculty tenure protections to its policies as state legislators consider dropping those assurances from Wisconsin statutes.

The Journal Sentinel reports Regent Mark Bradley says the board is doing what it is able to do to protect tenure.

The Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee recently voted to remove tenure from state law as it debated a two-year budget. The committee also added language that gives the UW System and the regents more room to lay off or dismiss tenured faculty. The tenure provides protection for faculty members to express ideas without fear of retaliation.

The Republican-controlled Legislature will have the final say on whether tenure becomes system policy or remains in state law. A UW task force is working on tenure and layoff policy to be considered next April.

NEW YORK (AP) – Yahoo will close its maps page, and several other sites, as it focuses on its search business, communication tools and content.

The Internet company said Friday that it will close its map, which gives users driving directions and traffic conditions, at the end of the month.

Yahoo will also close several sites worldwide, including Yahoo Music in Canada and France, Yahoo Movies in Spain and Yahoo Autos in the U.K. Yahoo’s main Philippines page will also close, and users will be sent to Yahoo Singapore instead.

The company announced the closings in a blog post. A Yahoo representative declined to comment further.

Yahoo Inc. is streamlining its business as it tries to increase its audience and capture more ad dollars. It announced a deal Wednesday to show a live NFL game, and it has signed other content deals with media companies.

NEW YORK (AP) – Billie Jean King believes Caitlyn Jenner has given people clarity about transgender issues beyond the progress already seen four decades after they shared the international spotlight as athletes.

“The interview with then-Bruce Jenner, and now Caitlyn Jenner, really helped people to be clear in understanding, especially about gender vs. sexuality,” the 71-year-old former tennis star said in an interview with The Associated Press. “Everybody’s always getting very confused with that. Then they finally realized they have nothing to do with each other.”

King won the last of her 12 Grand Slam singles titles in 1975, a year before Bruce Jenner earned the unofficial title of “world’s greatest athlete” by winning gold in the decathlon at the Montreal Olympics.

Tennis champion Billie Jean King poses for portraits Thursday, June 4, 2015, in New York. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)

Jenner, 65, publicly transitioned from Bruce in an interview with ABC’s Diane Sawyer in April to Caitlyn on the cover of Vanity Fair this week.

“I am so happy he’s finally going to be comfortable in his own skin; finally Caitlyn will be,” King said. “It’s been a long journey for Caitlyn, and I’m really happy for her.”

King occasionally traveled in the same circles with Jenner, given they were two of the most recognizable athletes in the 1970s.

“He was amazing when he won the decathlon, so I would run into him every so often,” King said. “We actually did a commercial together, but I don’t think they ever showed it.”

King was 29 when she defeated former professional tennis player Bobby Riggs, 55, in the famed “Battle of the Sexes” match in 1973, putting gender issues in the spotlight.

She later helped pros accept a transgender player in their ranks after she started the Women’s Tennis Association in 1973.

Renee Richards, who was denied the opportunity to play as a woman in the 1976 U.S. Open, was born Richard Raskind, a former captain of the Yale tennis team who had sex reassignment surgery.

The New York Supreme Court ruled in Richards’ favor, allowing Richards to join the women’s pro tour in 1977.

King said she called the players together after meeting with Richards for four hours and receiving confirmation from doctors that she was a woman.

“I said ‘We’re going to have her on the tour, so get used to it.’ Some were unhappy, some were trying to figure it out. But it worked out fantastic,” King said. “The players ended up loving Renee.”

King played doubles with Richards, who reached the U.S. Open women’s doubles finals in 1977 with Betty Ann Stuart. Richards, who was also a renowned ophthalmologist, later coached Martina Navratilova and “really improved her backhand,” King said.

King marvels at how attitudes about sexual identity have changed since the early 1970s.

“Being educated, learning, having knowledge is so much better,” she said. “Usually things become less shame-based the more you know. An unknown is usually what people usually fear the most.”

Jenner introduced Caitlyn via Twitter and soon after was named the recipient of the Arthur Ashe Courage Award for the upcoming ESPY Awards on July 15. King, who was outed as a lesbian in 1981, won the award for individual contributions that “transcend sports” in 1999.

“Caitlyn’s in for a whirlwind. She already has been, but it’s going to be crazy,” King said. “I think it’s really appropriate that Caitlyn’s won the Arthur Ashe Courage Award.”

WHITEMAN AIR FORCE BASE, Mo. (AP) – A grandson and namesake of the man who piloted the B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, during World War II took over leadership Friday of the United States’ aging fleet of nuclear-capable B-2 stealth bombers.

Brig. Gen. Paul W. Tibbets IV took command of the 509th Bomb Wing during a ceremony at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, replacing Brig. Gen. Glen VanHerck, who has led the wing since February 2014.

Tibbets’ grandfather, Paul W. Tibbets Jr., was assigned to a predecessor of the 509th Bomb Wing when he piloted the Enola Gay in the world’s first atomic bomb mission on Aug. 6, 1945. The bomb destroyed much of Hiroshima and killed tens of thousands of its citizens. Paul W. Tibbets Jr. died in 2007.

The government in Japan has said that thousands of people have been categorized as still sick from the Hiroshima bombing’s radiation.

Three days after Hiroshima another U.S. B-29 dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki, killing about 70,000 people. Japan surrendered six days later, ending the war.

Tibbets told about 500 people attending the ceremony in a hangar at the base that his grandfather would be “touched by your appreciation for his service and the service of those that he was with back in that time.”

His grandfather would also tell them, Tibbets said, that “he’s counting on you, he’s counting on us, today’s generation of airmen, to continue as you do each and every day to raise the bar and set the standard and continue the great work that our nation relies on us to to do.”

Tibbets, 48, previously served as deputy director for nuclear operations for the U.S. Strategic Command at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska. He also trained on B-2s at Whiteman in the 1990s, commanded a bomb squadron at the base and was a vice commander of the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing in southwest Asia in 2010-2011. His awards include the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Bronze Star for service and the Legion of Merit.

The Bomb Wing at Whiteman is responsible for flying the fleet of 20 nuclear-capable B-2 stealth bombers to targets around the world, often directly. The B-2, which has been at the Missouri base since 1993, has been flying since the 1990s and is still the world’s only long-range bomber with technology that makes the batwing aircraft difficult for radar to detect and track.

Paul W. Tibbets IV’s role leading the 509th Bomb Wing comes as the Air Force has been seeking to build a next-generation long-strike bomber, estimated to cost at least $55 billion for up to 100 planes.

A 2014 report from the Congressional Research Service said the nation’s existing long-range bomber fleet “are at a critical point in their operational life span.” Because of their age, the report said, “military analysts are beginning to question just how long these aircraft can physically last and continue to be credible weapon systems.”

It’s unclear how many B-2s or other bombers would be replaced under any new bomber program.

A turning point for the Allies in World War II, known as D-Day, June 6, 1944

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) – Criminal charges were filed against the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis on Friday for its handling of a priest who molested children, with a prosecutor saying church leaders “turned a blind eye” to problems with the priest.

Ramsey County prosecutors charged the archdiocese as a corporation with six misdemeanor counts alleging that it failed to protect children. No individual church leaders are named in the criminal complaint.

The charges stem from the archdiocese’s handling of the Rev. Curtis Wehmeyer, who was eventually sent to prison for molesting two boys. Attorneys for several victims who sued the archdiocese have alleged that church officials waited too long between when they confronted Wehmeyer in 2012 and when they informed police, which they say gave Wehmeyer time to destroy evidence.

Wehmeyer, a former priest at Church of the Blessed Sacrament in St. Paul, later pleaded guilty to molesting two boys and was sentenced to five years in prison.

“It is not only Curtis Wehmeyer who is criminally responsible for the harm caused, but it is the archdiocese as well,” Ramsey County Attorney John Choi said Friday. He said the archdiocese “time and time again turned a blind eye” to what was going on with Wehmeyer.

The six counts are all misdemeanors, punishable by a fine of a few thousand dollars. Choi said though penalties may seem light, the charges are important in holding the archdiocese accountable.

Asked whether individuals might be charged, Choi said only that the county’s investigation continues.

A spokesman for the archdiocese didn’t immediately return a message seeking comment on the charges.