Green Bay News

WASHINGTON (AP) — Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush will run for president in 2016, according to several senior aides, who confirmed Thursday that the Republican would formally announce his widely expected decision in Miami later this month.

As the son of one president and brother of another, Bush would be the third member of his immediate family to sit in the Oval Office. His decision ensures the possibility of a general election showdown between two political dynasties as Hillary Rodham Clinton eyes the Democratic presidential nomination.

Bush senior aides confirmed the 62-year-old Bush, who left the Florida governor’s mansion in 2007, will enter the race during an event at Miami Dade Community College soon after returning from a week-long European trip. The aides spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to preclude his formal announcement.

“My expectation, my hope, is I’ll be a candidate,” Bush said earlier in this week while attending an economic forum in Florida with other 2016 GOP prospects.

There’s been little mystery to Bush’s plans.

He’s been raising many millions of dollars for a separate political group that is expected to support his candidacy and perform many of the functions of a campaign, although with dollars not bound by the same federal requirements as a formal campaign committee.

Bush enters the race as the overwhelming favorite of the Republican establishment, and he is expected to dominate his GOP competitors in fundraising. Yet he faces considerable resistance from the party’s conservative flank, which holds outsized influence in the Republican presidential primary process.

Bush will enter a crowded primary field that includes Sens. Rand Paul, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, among others. Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry is also getting into the race, a decision he’ll make official Thursday in Dallas.

Meanwhile, Govs. Scott Walker of Wisconsin and Chris Christie of New Jersey have not yet formally announced their intentions, but have been hiring staff and visiting early-voting states such as Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

By announcing his candidacy, Bush must stop coordinating with Right to Rise, a so-called super PAC which can raise unlimited dollars so long as there is no interaction between it and the candidate or his lieutenants. Bush has been working closely with longtime adviser Mike Murphy, who is expected to run the group, while David Kochel, a veteran aide to Mitt Romney, is expected to manage Bush’s campaign.

“Gov. Bush is thankful for the support and encouragement he has received from so many Americans during the last several months and looks forward to announcing his decision,” spokeswoman Kristy Campbell said.

Bush teased his announcement Thursday morning, writing “coming soon” on Twitter with a link to the website, http://jebannouncement.com. On that page, the date 06.15.15 was listed, followed by the tease, “BE THE FIRST TO KNOW. RSVP NOW!” Bush also tweeted it in Spanish, “Próximamente 6.15.15.”

By promoting his announcement in this way, Bush is also trying to collect new data about potential supporters. To receive the announcement through the website, voters must provide their name, email address and zip code.

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Beaumont reported from Des Moines, Iowa

NEW YORK (AP) — PepsiCo is looking to launch a line of “craft” fountain sodas made with sugar in hopes of appealing to people who may shun big soda brands.

The company, based in Purchase, N.Y., says Stubborn Soda will be made with sugar, rather than the high fructose corn syrup used to sweeten many other sodas like Coke and Pepsi.

The line of sodas, which were first reported by the industry tracker Beverage Digest, will include flavors like black cherry with tarragon, orange hibiscus, pineapple cream and agave vanilla cream.

The push to develop a market for “craft” sodas comes as Americans have been cutting back on carbonated drinks generally, with people turning to a growing number of teas, waters and other choices in the beverage aisle.

Food and beverage executives say people are increasingly buying things they feel are natural or wholesome. The trend has also prompted Coca-Cola to introduce Coke Life, which is sweetened with a mix of sugar and the plant-derived sweetener stevia.

To keep up with changing tastes, there are signs restaurant chains are also looking to shake up their drink menus. Chipotle, which serves Coca-Cola fountain drinks, this past summer began testing a root beer that is organically sweetened. A spokesman for Chipotle, Chris Arnold, said in an email the test is ongoing, with the possibility of expanding it in coming months.

Gina Anderson, a PepsiCo representative, said Stubborn Soda is in an “incubation” phase and that company doesn’t yet have any restaurant clients to announce.

“It’s very new, they’re still learning from it and reaching out,” she said.

PepsiCo says its Stubborn Soda line is a follow-up to its recent launches of Caleb’s Kola and Mountain Dew Dewshine, which are sold in glass bottles and positioned as “craft” sodas.

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans voted Thursday to keep restrictions on Americans seeking to travel to Cuba, a setback to Obama administration efforts to ease the five-decade Cold War standoff.

The Republican-controlled chamber voted 247-176 to keep a Cuba-related provision in a transportation funding bill. The provision would block new rules issued in January that would significantly ease travel restrictions to Cuba and allow regularly scheduled flights for the first time.

The administration rules lifted a requirement that U.S. travelers obtain a license from the Treasury Department before traveling to Cuba. Instead, all that is required is for travelers to assert that their trip would serve educational, religious or other permitted purposes.

The White House has threatened to veto the bill, in part because of the Cuba-related provision. The measure is also caught in a battle between Republicans controlling Congress and the White House and its Democratic allies over spending levels for domestic agencies. The White House has issued a blanket veto threat against every GOP spending bill, and Senate Democrats weighed in on Thursday with explicit promises that they will filibuster the measures and block them from reaching Obama’s desk.

The Republican-backed Cuba provision is the handiwork of Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, a Cuban-American Republican from the Miami area.

Diaz-Balart said the Obama administration is wrong to lift the travel restrictions, noting that the flights would land at an airport that was partially owned by U.S. interests when it was seized by the Castro government.

“What you are saying is, ‘It’s OK to do business on property that was stolen from Americans,'” Diaz-Balart said.

But to most Democrats and a handful of House Republicans, the travel ban is an obsolete Cold War remnant.

“We need a 21st century approach to this nation 90 miles away from our shores. This is 2015 … not 1960,” said Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., whose attempt to strip Diaz-Balart’s provision from the transportation appropriations measure failed. “The rest of the world is doing business with Cuba, allows its citizens to travel to Cuba and also has normal diplomatic relations with Cuba.”

The GOP plan would thwart the new flights but leave in place new rules permitting the import of limited amounts of goods like cigars and rum.

Neither the travel restrictions nor a longstanding trade embargo has moved the Castro government toward democracy.

Agriculture organizations, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business interests have expressed support for the administration’s outreach to Cuba.

In the Senate, Democrats on Thursday threatened to block defense and other appropriations bills in hopes of forcing Republicans to the negotiating table for talks to replace automatic spending cuts known as sequestration slated to hit both the Pentagon and domestic agencies.

Democrats are also opposed to a $612 billion defense policy bill currently on the floor that does an end run around government spending caps that became law a few years ago. The bill calls for increasing defense spending by putting nearly $40 billion into a war-fighting account that is not subject to the spending caps.

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said Democrats would block “any appropriations bill until Republicans have sat down at the table and figured out with us how we’re going to properly fund the Defense Department and key (domestic) priorities.”

BROWN COUNTY – Crews will spend 10 days on the Fox River looking for sea lampreys later this month.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says workers will be on the river from June 16-25 to estimate how many of the invasive lampreys are in the water. The agency will then use the information to determine the need for lamprey control.

Sea lampreys have been in the Great Lakes since the 1920s. They attach to fish with a suction cup-like mouth, cut a hole into the fish and feed on the fish’s blood and body fluids. Officials say the average sea lamprey can destroy as much as 40 pounds of fish during its parasitic phase.

Se lampreys lay their eggs in gravel nests. After the larvae hatch, they drift into silty bottom areas where they burrow and live for several years. However, larvae sometimes drift out of streams and settle just offshore near stream mouths.

USFWS crews mostly use electrofishing to find the lampreys, sending an electrical current into the water that stuns fish and brings them to the surface temporarily. In deeper water, crews spray a chemical called Bayluscide 3.2% Granular Sea Lamprey Larvicide, which causes the lampreys to leave their burrows and swim to the surface, where they are collected. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says the lampricide does not pose any threat to the general population or the environment.

For more information on sea lamprey control efforts, call 1-800-472-9212.

VIENNA (AP) — Iran and six world powers on Thursday were approaching the final stretch in marathon talks aimed at restricting the country’s nuclear programs in exchange for sanctions relief.

The sides are aiming to have a deal by June 30. But with less than four weeks to go, some negotiators have said the talks might go beyond that date.

Any deal would cap nearly a decade of international efforts to restrict Iranian nuclear programs that could be turned toward making weapons. Tehran denies any interest in atomic arms, but wants an end to international sanctions.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who met Iranian Foreign Minister Mohamad Javad Zarif on Thursday, said in comments carried by Russian news agencies that Russia is working hard to contribute to the long-anticipated deal and called on others to help bring forward the resolution by the agreed date.

“The talks have entered the final stage and we are convinced that the parties ought to reach agreement on all technical issues in order to comply with the already agreed political framework,” he said, quoted by Tass.

The talks in Vienna on Thursday involve senior officials from Iran, the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany and follow a day of experts’ meetings.

Texas doctors say they have done the world’s first partial skull and scalp transplant to help a man with a large head wound from cancer treatment.

MD Anderson Cancer Center and Houston Methodist Hospital doctors announced Thursday that they did the operation on May 22 at Houston Methodist.

The recipient — Jim Boysen, a 55-year-old software developer from Austin, Texas — expects to leave the hospital Thursday with a new kidney and pancreas along with the scalp and skull grafts. He said he was stunned at how well doctors matched him to a donor with similar skin and coloring.

“It’s kind of shocking, really, how good they got it. I will have way more hair than when I was 21,” Boysen joked in an interview with The Associated Press.

Last year, doctors in the Netherlands said they replaced most of a woman’s skull with a 3-D printed plastic one. The Texas operation is thought to be the first skull-scalp transplant from a human donor, as opposed to an artificial implant or a simple bone graft.

Boysen had a kidney-pancreas transplant in 1992 to treat diabetes he has had since age 5 and has been on drugs to prevent organ rejection. The immune suppression drugs raise the risk of cancer, and he developed a rare type — leiomyosarcoma.

It can affect many types of smooth muscles but in his case, it was the ones under the scalp that make your hair stand on end when something gives you the creeps.

Radiation therapy for the cancer destroyed part of his head, immune suppression drugs kept his body from repairing the damage, and his transplanted organs were starting to fail — “a perfect storm that made the wound not heal,” Boysen said.

Yet doctors could not perform a new kidney-pancreas transplant as long as he had an open wound. That’s when Dr. Jesse Selber, a reconstructive plastic surgeon at MD Anderson, thought of giving him a new partial skull and scalp at the same time as new organs as a solution to all of his problems.

Houston Methodist, which has transplant expertise, partnered on the venture. It took 18 months for the organ procurement organization, LifeGift, to find the right donor, who provided all organs for Boysen and was not identified.

Boysen “had a wound that was basically all the way through his skull to his brain,” Selber said.

In a 15-hour operation by about a dozen doctors and 40 other health workers, Boysen was given a cap-shaped, 10-by-10-inch skull graft, and a 15-inch-wide scalp graft starting above his forehead, extending across the top of his head and over its crown. It ends an inch above one ear and two inches above the other.

Any surgery around the brain is difficult, and this one required very delicate work to remove and replace a large part of the skull and re-establish a blood supply to keep the transplant viable.

“We had to connect small blood vessels about one-sixteenth of an inch thick. It’s done under an operating microscope with little stitches about half the thickness of a human hair, using tools like a jeweler would use to make a fine Swiss watch,” said Dr. Michael Klebuc, who led the Houston Methodist plastic surgery team.

The pancreas and kidney were transplanted after the head surgery was done.

Boysen said he already has sensation in the new scalp.

“That kind of shocked the doctor. He was doing a test yesterday and I said, ‘Ouch I feel that.’ He kind of jumped back,” Boysen said. The new scalp also was sweating in the hot room — another surprise so soon after the operation, he said.

Boysen was to be discharged from the hospital on Thursday and will remain in Houston for two to three weeks for follow-up.

“I’m glad the donor family had the generosity and insight to approve us doing this … to get through their grief and approve the donation of this tissue besides the organs,” said Dr. A. Osama Gaber, director of transplantation at the Methodist Transplant Center.

Over the last decade, transplants once considered impossible have become a reality. More than two dozen face transplants have been done since the first one in France in 2005; the first one in the U.S. was done in Cleveland in 2008.

More than 70 hand transplants have been done around the world.

Last October, a Swedish woman became the first in the world to give birth after a womb transplant.

A host of patients have received transplants or implants of 3-D printed body parts, ranging from blood vessels to windpipes.

DOVER, Del. (AP) — Delaware residents are arriving at the state Capitol to pay last respects to former Attorney General Beau Biden.

Biden, eldest son of Vice President Joe Biden, died of brain cancer Saturday at age 46.

Gov. Jack Markell and former Gov. Ruth Ann Minner were among the crowd gathered Thursday. Beau Biden was to lie in honor in the Senate chamber following a processional from Wilmington to Dover.

Thursday’s services are the first in a series of public commemorations, which include a viewing at St. Anthony of Padua church in Wilmington on Friday, followed by a Saturday funeral Mass at which President Barack Obama will deliver a eulogy.

Beau Biden’s health declined after doctors discovered a brain lesion in 2013.

MADISON, Wis. (AP) – A fast-tracked Wisconsin bill that would ban non-emergency abortion procedures after 20 weeks of pregnancy advanced through a Senate committee Thursday, but its prospects remain unclear in the Assembly.

The Senate Committee on Health and Human Services approved the bill on a 3-2 party-line vote, with Republicans supporting it and Democrats opposing it.

Under the proposal, doctors who perform an abortion after 20 weeks in non-emergency situations could be charged with a felony and subject to $10,000 in fines or 3½ years in prison. As written, the bill doesn’t provide exceptions for pregnancies conceived from sexual assault or incest.

Committee chairwoman Sen. Leah Vukmir, R-Wauwatosa, refused to add a last-minute amendment from Sen. Jon Erpenbach, D-Middleton, that would have prioritized a mother’s care over that of a fetus in an emergency situation. Erpenbach said bill’s co-author, Senate President Mary Lazich, R-New Berlin, was trying to rush the bill through the Capitol, with unexpected consequences.

“This legislation is all about treating the fetus first, period. That’s it,” Erpenbach said. “The Senate president has been hell-bent on rushing this to the point that she doesn’t know what it is.”

Vukmir said the state’s existing abortion statute gave sufficient description on treating a mother and a fetus in an emergency situation before she called a vote.

While bill’s supporters and some doctors contend fetuses can feel pain after 20 weeks, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says evidence suggests that’s not possible until the third trimester begins at 27 weeks.

Senate leaders have said the full chamber will likely vote to pass the measure on Tuesday.

According to the most recent information from the state Department of Health Services, roughly 1 percent of abortions in Wisconsin in 2013 occurred after the 20-week mark – 89 of nearly 6,500 abortions performed that year.

Several states have passed 20-week bans, which depart from the standard established by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. That ruling established a nationwide right to abortion but permitted states to restrict the procedures after the point of viability – when a fetus could viably survive outside the womb under normal conditions. It offered no legal definition of viability, saying it could range from the 24th to the 28th week of a pregnancy.

But Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said on Wednesday that the abortion bill would not be taken up by the Assembly when that chamber meets on Tuesday. Vos said the Assembly did not plan to be in session again in June, except to debate the budget, and that his caucus had not yet discussed the abortion bill. The Assembly Committee on Health had yet to schedule a vote on the bill Thursday.

Gov. Scott Walker has said he would sign the bill.

OSHKOSH – A public memorial service is set for the CEO of an aviation manufacturer who was killed in a plane crash.

Visitation for Jeremy Monnett is scheduled for 10 a.m.-1:30 p.m. Sunday at Eagle Hangar inside the EAA AirVenture Museum. A service follows at 1:30 p.m. and a reception is set for 2 p.m. in the EAA Founders’ Wing.

The family asks that visitors not arrive before 10 a.m., as a private service is to be held then.

Monnett, 40, was killed when his plane went down Tuesday afternoon at Wittman Regional Airport in Oshkosh. He was the CEO of Sonex Aircraft of Oshkosh.

Mike Clark, 20, a mechanic who worked for Sonex, was also killed in the crash.

Information on a memorial fund in Monnett’s honor will be released later, Sonex says.

MADISON (AP) – A Wisconsin Senate committee has advanced a bill that would allow businesses to keep a supply of epinephrine injectors to combat life-threatening allergic reactions.

The health committee unanimously approved the bill Thursday. The committee changed the bill to clarify that businesses may offer the drug but aren’t required to have it on hand.

Schools are already allowed to keep a supply of the auto-injectors. The bill would allow camps, colleges, restaurants and other businesses to carry and administer the drug.

Auto-injectors are used to treat anaphylaxis, a potentially life-threatening allergic reaction that causes constricted airways and makes it difficult to breathe.

The Senate and the Assembly are expected vote on the measure on Tuesday.

ROTHSCHILD (AP) – A woman has died after a fire in her home in Rothschild.

The Rothschild Police Department says in a statement that 61-year-old Jan Pinkert-Grover was found unresponsive in her kitchen Wednesday night. She died at a hospital in nearby Weston. The cause of death has not been determined, and an autopsy is planned.

Firefighters believe the fire started in the kitchen area but the cause remains under investigation.

MADISON (AP) – An internal police investigation says an officer who shot and killed an unarmed man in March couldn’t have used a stun gun per the department’s policy.

The internal investigation made public on Thursday says officer Matt Kenny would not have been authorized to use a stun gun because he entered a residence alone. The probe says in a situation in which an officer enters a residence alone in an effort to save someone, he or she is expected to use a pistol to clear the scene. The report exonerated Kenny for using deadly force in the shooting death of 19-year-old Tony Robinson.

Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne in May said he would not charge Kenny in the incident.

ADDISON, Texas (AP) – Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry launched his presidential campaign four years ago as an instant front-runner – a proven job-creator with solid conservative credentials, formidable fundraising prowess and perhaps enough cowboy swagger to take Republicans by storm.

Then came his embarrassing “oops” moment during a debate and Perry’s tumble from powerhouse to punchline.

Now he’s running again, hitting Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina hard and early, and studying up on policy to become better prepared.

The former governor is making the widely expected announcement that he’s in the 2016 race on Thursday at an airport outside Dallas, a senior adviser to Perry told The Associated Press. The adviser requested anonymity to speak before the announcement.

In a website video released Thursday, labeled “Paid for by Perry for President,” Perry says the country needs a proven leader who can bridge partisanship. “A lot of candidates will say the right things,” he says in the video on rickperry.org. “We need a president who has done the right things.”

One of the few military veterans in the Republican field, Perry planned to make his announcement in an airport hangar, a sweaty setting in the humid Texas air.

Parked next to the small stage was a hulking C-130 the cargo plane, like one he flew for the Air Force. Its front flank featured a new coat of whitewash paint and a red, white and blue “Perry for President” banner with a red ‘P’ and white star in the logo.

He walked around the front of the plane a few hours before his announcement, thumping its exterior and smiling.

As Perry returns to presidential politics, the question remains: Will he get another solid chance?

“It’s going to be hard to make a first impression a second time,” said Ford O’Connell, a Republican strategist in Washington.

Despite his brain freeze on a Michigan debate stage in November 2011 – he forgot the third federal agency he promised to close if elected, then muttered, “Oops” – Perry still has the policy record that made him an early force last time.

Perry left office in January after a record 14 years as governor. Under him, the state generated more than a third of America’s new private-sector jobs since 2001.

While an oil and gas boom fueled much of that economic growth, Perry credits lower taxes, restrained regulation and limits on civil litigation damages. He also pushed offering economic incentives to lure top employers to Texas and repeatedly visited states with Democratic governors to poach jobs.

Another Texas Republican who has announced a presidential campaign, Sen. Ted Cruz, praised Perry as “a friend and a patriot.”

“Texas is a better state because of his principled leadership, and the GOP primary field will be better because of his candidacy,” Cruz said in a statement.

Perry was thought to be a cinch for four more years as governor in 2014, but instead turned back to White House ambitions.

His effort may be complicated this time by a felony indictment on abuse of power and coercion charges, from when he threatened – then carried out – a veto of state funding for public corruption prosecutors. That came when the unit’s Democratic head rebuffed Perry’s demands that she resign following a drunken driving conviction.

Perry calls the case against him a political “witch hunt,” but his repeated efforts to get it tossed on constitutional grounds have so far proved unsuccessful. That raises the prospect he’ll have to leave the campaign trail to head to court in Texas.

Perry blamed lingering pain from back surgery in the summer of 2011 for part of the reason he performed poorly in the 2012 campaign. He has ditched his trademark cowboy boots for more comfortable footwear and wears glasses that give him a serious look.

Perry also traveled extensively overseas and studied policy with experts and economists at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He met such business moguls as Warren Buffett and Rupert Murdoch.

Lately, Perry has traveled to Iowa, which kicks off presidential nomination voting, more than any GOP White House candidate.

“People realize that what the governor did in the high-profile debate, stumble, everyone has done at some point in their lives,” said Ray Sullivan, Perry’s chief of staff as governor and communications director for his 2012 presidential bid. “I think he’s already earned a second look, particular in Iowa.”

Perry’s camp notes that many past Republican candidates, including Mitt Romney in 2012, rebounded to win the party’s presidential nomination after failing in a previous bid. But O’Connell, the GOP strategist, said the 2016 field is “extremely talented and deep” compared with four years ago.

“For him to win the nomination,” O’Connell said, “he’s going to have to be great, but a lot of people are going to have to trip and fall along the way.”

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Peoples reported from Washington.

OSHKOSH – A recreational trail in Oshkosh has been added to the National Trails System.

The Tribal Heritage Crossing of the Wiouwash Trail is now on the national list, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell and National Park Service Director Jonathan B. Jarvis announced Thursday. It is one of 10 trails added to the system ahead of Saturday’s National Trails Day.

The Tribal Heritage Crossing runs along the causeway that carries Interstate 41 over Lake Butte des Morts. The trail opened in 2013 as part of the expanded highway. The trail features kiosks with information on Wisconsin’s 11 federally recognized Native American tribes, plus information on the natural history of the area. It includes areas for fishing.

The 1.8-mile trail connects to the Wiouwash State Trail at its north end.

The Tribal Heritage Crossing was the only trail in Wisconsin to be added to the system on Thursday. Each of the new national recreational trails will receive a certificate of designation, a letter of congratulations from Jewell and a set of trail markers.

• Click the video above to watch a computer animation of a trip on the trail
• Click here to learn more about the National Trails System
• Click here to learn more about the Tribal Heritage Crossing of the Wiouwash Trail

Watch our story on the trail’s dedication:

ROCHESTER, N.Y. (AP) – The first inductees into the new World Video Game Hall of Fame include “Pong,” the game that introduced millions to electronic play, “Doom,” which triggered a debate over the role of games and violence in society, and “Super Mario Bros.,” whose mustachioed hero has migrated to everything from fruit snacks to sneakers.

The first six games to enter the hall of fame cross decades and platforms, but all have impacted the video game industry, popular culture and society in general, according to the new hall at The Strong museum in Rochester, New York, where the games were enshrined Thursday.

Joining “Pong,” launched in 1972, “Doom,” from 1993, and 1985’s “Super Mario Bros.” are arcade draw “Pac-Man” (1980); Russian import “Tetris” (1984); and “World of Warcraft” (2004), which has swallowed millions of players into its online virtual universe.

The newly created World Video Game Hall of Fame pays homage to an industry that rivals Hollywood in the entertainment pecking order. The Strong, which bills itself as the national museum of play and also houses the National Toy Hall of Fame, has been preserving and collecting games and artifacts for years through its International Center for the History of Electronic Games.

The inaugural hall of fame class was recommended by a panel of judges made up of journalists, scholars and other experts on the history and impact of video games. They chose from among 15 finalists that also included: “Angry Birds,” ”FIFA,” ”The Legend of Zelda,” ”Minecraft,” ”The Oregon Trail,” ”Pokemon,” ”The Sims,” ”Sonic the Hedgehog” and “Space Invaders.”

Nominations for the hall can come from anyone and be from any platform – arcade, console, computer, handheld, mobile. But they must have had a long stretch of popularity and left a mark on the video game industry or pop culture.

“Doom,” for example, introduced the idea of a game “engine” that separated the game’s basic functions from its artwork and other aspects, but even more significantly was one of the early games cited in the debate that continues today over whether violent games inspire real-life aggression.

“World of Warcraft,” is the largest MMORPG – “massively multiplayer online role-playing game” – ever created and as of February, had more than 10 million subscribers, represented by avatars they create, according to The Strong.

More than 150 million Americans play video games, according to the Entertainment Software Association, and 42 percent play for at least three hours a week. In 2014, the industry sold more than 135 million games and generated more than $22 billion in revenue, according to the ESA.

Nominations for the hall of fame’s class of 2016 are open from now through the end of March.

WAUPACA – Sheriff’s officials arrested a woman for allegedly selling prescription drugs.

Authorities say they made the arrest Wednesday in the 400 block of S. Western Avenue in Waupaca.

Investigators say the woman twice sold Subutex to officers. Subutex is a drug used to treat opiate addiction and withdrawal. The woman got the drug from a clinic and would sell it or trade it for heroin, officials say.

More arrests are expected in the case.

The woman has not been formally charged.

A federal grand jury has indicted a Neenah woman for allegedly selling heroin.

Prosecutors say Brandi Kniebes-Larsen, 37, conspired with others to sell more than 100 grams of heroin in the Fox Valley area.

Because she has a previous drug conviction, Kniebes-Larsen would spend at least 10 years behind bars, and could be sentenced to life in prison, if convicted in this case.

MADISON (AP) – A state appeals court has denied a Wisconsin Rapids newspaper’s request for public records from the Wisconsin Rapids Public School District.

The 4th District Court of Appeals on Thursday upheld a Wood County judge’s finding that the documents are personal notes and aren’t subject to the state’s open records law.

The Voice of Wisconsin Rapids sought records related to sexual harassment allegations against Lincoln High School wrestlers in 2011. The newspaper sued the school district after officials refused to release hand-written documents created during employee interviews.

The appellate court said the judge acted appropriately. The court pointed out the documents are hand-written and fragmentary – some notes were scrawled on Post-It notes – and therefore personal and exempt from the law.

The newspaper’s attorney didn’t immediately respond to a voicemail.

MILWAUKEE (AP) – Authorities say a man was struck and killed by a school bus on a highway ramp in Milwaukee.

The Milwaukee County Medical Examiner’s Office says the death happened Thursday morning on a southbound ramp of Highway 41.

There was no immediate word on whether there were children on the bus or any other injuries.

KIEL – One segment of the Wisconsin Law Enforcement Torch Run for Special Olympics Thursday will honor the memory of Trooper Trevor Casper.

Organizers say a procession of law enforcement vehicles and about 50 participants will travel through downtown Kiel around noon.

They’ll leave the Kiel Police Department, head east on Fremont St. and travel to Trooper Casper’s gravesite at SS Peter & Paul Cemetery on Mueller Rd. for a brief memorial service.

Members of the public are encouraged to come out and show their support for Special Olympics.

Police say Steven Timothy Snyder killed Trooper Casper in a shootout March 24 in Fond du Lac. Snyder was a suspect in a bank robbery in Wausaukee.

FOX 11’s Andrew LaCombe is attending today’s events and will have a complete story tonight on FOX 11 News at Five.