Green Bay News

WISCONSIN RAPIDS (AP) – A Marshfield man has been found guilty for allegedly stealing more than $50,000 in a Green Bay Packers ticket scheme.

The Marshfield News-Herald Media reports 37-year-old Patrick Blachut pleaded no contest Wednesday to four felony and five misdemeanor counts of theft by false representation, as part of a plea agreement. Three additional felony counts and three other misdemeanor counts were dismissed.

According to court documents, Blachut offered to sell 15 people Packers tickets in September. Several people paid more than $6,000 each for what they thought would be season tickets.

The complaint says Blachut admitted to taking the money.

Wood County District Attorney Craig Lambert said he would request three years in prison and three years of extended supervision, followed by three years of probation. Sentencing is Aug. 6.

PORTAGE, Wis. (AP) — Gov. Scott Walker says he would be “pleased” if a repeal of Wisconsin’s prevailing wage law were a part of the state budget, but he’d also be satisfied with significant changes to the requirement setting construction wages for public works jobs.

Walker reiterated his support Thursday for a full repeal, saying he believes that makes sense and is what he prefers.

But Republican leaders in both the Senate and Assembly say they don’t have the votes to pass a full repeal. A bill that would do that cleared an Assembly committee on Wednesday.

Putting the issue in the budget makes it easier to pass, because it forces lawmakers to vote on it along with hundreds of other items in the two-year spending plan.

PORTAGE, Wis. (AP) — Gov. Scott Walker says he remains opposed to a vehicle registration fee increase or gas tax hike to help pay for state highway construction and repair in Wisconsin.

Walker commented Thursday as lawmakers on the Legislature’s budget-writing committee are working to finish the two-year state spending plan by Friday. One of the last unresolved issues is how to pay for roads.

Walker’s plan relied on $1.3 billion in bonding. But lawmakers have balked and are talking about raising vehicle registration fees or delaying massive projects, like the Zoo Interchange in Milwaukee.

Walker says the only way he’d agree to a gas tax or vehicle registration fee increase is if other taxes are reduced an equal amount.

OSHKOSH – A worker at an Oshkosh zoo accidentally left open a gate to the wolf area before a child was bitten, a police report indicates.

The incident happened Friday at the Menominee Park Zoo. The police report says, after word of the bite spread, the worker called the parks operation manager and told him the gate was left open and should not have been.

According to the report, the 3-year-old boy’s mother told police she saw a group of 15-20 people up close to the wolves, and took her son to that area. She said she was taking pictures of the wolves, and as she was putting her cellphone away, she heard people yelling that her son’s fingers were inside a chain-link fence surrounding the wolves. As she looked up, a 12-year-old wolf bit the boy in the middle and ring fingers of his left hand, drawing blood.

The report says health officials advised the boy’s parents to have him get rabies shots in case the wolf was infected. The report says zoo officials did not want to have the wolf euthanized, which would be necessary to test it for rabies. A rabies test requires that brain tissue be sampled, which cannot be done on a live animal.

However, parks officials have said the state Division of Public Health mandated the wolf be euthanized and tested for rabies.

Hail and flooding caused headaches for people in Upper Michigan May 27-28, 2015.

MADISON (AP) – The Wisconsin contestants in the Scripps National Spelling Bee have been eliminated.

The Wisconsin State Journal reports all three contestants were eliminated Wednesday in National Harbor, Maryland. Those were Badger State Spelling Bee champion Ashwin Sankrithi of New Berlin and the state’s two runners-up – Martius Bautista of Madison and Meghna Datta of Cross Plains.

The preliminaries consisted of a multiple choice test that was administered Tuesday, as well as two rounds of oral spelling on stage Wednesday.

Sankrithi, Bautista and Datta did not score high enough to make Thursday’s semifinals.

WISCONSIN DELLS (AP) – Police have identified a Chicago man whose body was found in the Wisconsin River near Wisconsin Dells after he had gone missing.

The Columbia County Sheriff’s Office identified the man Wednesday as 21-year-old Andreas S.C. Baban. The sheriff’s office says he was found dead by a dive team around 6 p.m. Monday.

According to authorities, Baban was fishing on a rock island in the river Saturday evening and tried to get back to shore, but appeared to get caught in a strong current and went underwater. Attempts to rescue him by family and witnesses were not successful.

Authorities searched for the man Saturday and Sunday before finding his body Monday.

GREEN BAY – Just in time for the first Saturday Farmers Market in Downtown Green Bay, the Eggs N’ Bacon Wagon is back in town.  The local food truck will once again be serving up breakfast at the weekly event.  Ben Michiels, aka “Uncle Egg,” fired up the griddle for Good Day Wisconsin this morning to show us a few things on the menu this year. The market runs Saturdays from 7am to noon May 30th through October 31st. It takes place on South Washington Street in downtown Green Bay.

Michiels says the Eggs N’ Bacon wagon will also be taking part in the Summer in the Park free weekly music series. He’ll be serving lunch to the crowds at Whitney Park every Thursday in June, July and August from 11:30am-2pm.

For other events, and menu items, be sure to follow Eggs N’ Bacon Wagon on Facebook.

GREEN BAY- It’s a great time of the year to take a stroll through Heritage Hill State Historical Park.

On Sunday, May 31, an event called Cruise Into Summer will take place. It runs from 10-4:30 p.m.

Click on the video to learn more.

Flooding has forced the Stephenson Michigan School District to close Thursday.

We talked to the Menominee, Michigan Sheriff’s Department, it tells us some severe storms rolled through Wednesday night.

Many people we talked to say the hail was intense.

We are sending a crew to the area and will bring you more information as learn it.

SUPERIOR, Wis. (AP) – Two men have walked away from a small plane that crashed at Superior’s Bong Memorial Airport.

WDIO-TV reports the crash happened around 2:15 p.m. Wednesday in an open field on the airport’s west side. Superior Fire Department Battalion Chief Steven Edwards says the pilot reported experiencing mechanical difficulty before the plane went down.

The runway was reopened shortly after 3 p.m. following the departure of the pilot, passenger and emergency personnel from the scene.

The crash will be investigated by the Federal Aviation Administration.

Expect a mix of sun and clouds Thursday with a few showers or thunderstorms to pop up this afternoon in the area but most of us will stay dry.

Highs will be near 80 and winds will be south at 10 to 15 mph.

A storm system and cold front approaches from the west Thursday night and brings a chance of rain overnight, becoming likely Friday.

CHILTON- Chilton Police are investigating an incident of “swatting.”

Officials were alerted around 11 p.m. Wednesday about a possible tactical situation at a home in the 400 block of Madison Street.

A SWAT team along with other agencies created a perimeter in the area and some residents were evacuated.

After an investigation, officials realized the call was a hoax or “swatting.”

“Swatting” is calling in an emergency that isn’t actually happening.

Chilton Police Chief Craig Plehn tells FOX 11, the family inside the home where police were called was sleeping at the time. Police woke them up.

Plehn says the investigation continues and charges, including misuse of 9-1-1 may be filed.

No one was hurt.

Chief Plehn says a lot of resources were used and is just happy everyone is safe.

MILWAUKEE (AP) – Ryan Vogelsong allowed one run in six innings to win his third straight start, Joe Panik hit a two-run homer and the San Francisco Giants completed a three-game sweep in Milwaukee with a 3-1 victory Wednesday over the Brewers.

The Giants bullpen finished off the last-place Brewers with three hitless innings, capped by Santiago Casilla’s 1-2-3 ninth for his 14th save.

Both teams squandered numerous early scoring chances. The Giants stranded six runners through the first four innings, but they finally broke through on Panik’s shot to right for a 2-1 lead in the fifth off starter Mike Fiers (1-5).

Gregor Blanco added an insurance run with a pinch-hit sacrifice fly in the ninth.

It was more than enough cushion for Vogelsong (4-2), who allowed just Elian Herrera’s RBI single with two outs in the fourth.

Milwaukee could have had a bigger inning if Khris Davis wasn’t thrown out at home after appearing to hesitate while breaking from third on a hard grounder to first by Adam Lind.

After a single by Aramis Ramirez, Herrera followed with his one-bouncer through the hole into left with to score Lind from third to give Milwaukee a 1-0 lead.

Vogelsong otherwise finished May with another effective outing. The Giants have won all five of Vogelsong’s starts this month, with the veteran right-hander having given up just four earned runs in 31 2-3 innings during that stretch.

Fiers was OK working on three days’ rest in place of Wily Peralta (left oblique), who was placed on the 15-day disabled list this week. The lanky right-hander allowed eight hits and had six strikeouts in five innings.

Milwaukee lost its fifth straight. Davis did provide a bright spot in the lineup after hitting two triples, both on hard-hit shots the other way to right.

TRAINER’S ROOM

Giants: RH starter Jake Peavy was scheduled to make the second start of a minor league rehab assignment on Wednesday night for Triple-A Sacramento against Nashville. Peavy has been on the 15-day disabled list since April 18.

Brewers: C Jonathan Lucroy (broken toe) begins a rehab assignment on Thursday at Class-A Brevard County. Lucroy, who has been sidelined since April 21, could return to the team on Monday in St. Louis. … Manager Craig Counsell said that SS Luis Sardinas will see some time at second base with regular SS Jean Segura (broken pinky finger) expected to return from the disabled list on Friday.

UP NEXT

Giants: RHP Chris Heston (4-3) makes his first career start against Atlanta when San Francisco returns home to start a four-game series against the Braves.

Brewers: A day off Thursday will give the team another day to figure out which starter will be called up from Triple-A Colorado Springs to take Peralta’s spot over the long haul. Peralta could be out at least a month. RHP Jimmy Nelson (2-5) will start when Milwaukee opens a three-game series with visiting Arizona on Friday.

Click here to learn more about careers at Faith Technologies.

BOSTON (AP) – A college friend of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev might have prevented a university police officer’s shooting death by helping authorities find Tsarnaev instead of helping him, the officer’s family said in a court filing Wednesday.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology Officer Sean Collier was killed in an encounter with Tsarnaev and his brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, in Cambridge hours after authorities publicly released photographs and videos of them as suspects in the April 2013 bombing, which killed three people and injured more than 260. Tamerlan later died after a shootout with police in Watertown, and Dzhokhar was found hiding in a covered boat docked in a backyard there.

Federal prosecutors filed the statement by Collier’s stepfather, Joseph W. Rogers, along with a recommendation for a seven-year sentence for Tsarnaev’s friend Dias Kadyrbayev. That sentence is the maximum agreed to when Kadyrbayev pleaded guilty last year to impeding the bombing investigation.

Kadyrbayev is being sentenced on June 2. A message seeking comment from his attorney wasn’t immediately returned Wednesday.

Prosecutors say there’s no evidence Kadyrbayev knew about the plot to detonate two pressure cooker bombs loaded with shrapnel near the marathon’s finish line. They say he recognized Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s photo when authorities released it and he removed Tsarnaev’s laptop and backpack from his dorm room at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.

“Had the defendant done the right thing, and called the police,” Rogers said, “the Tsarnaev brothers’ murderous rampage across Cambridge and Watertown may have been prevented.”

Tsarnaev’s lawyers acknowledged his role in the deadly bombings, and he was convicted of many criminal charges. A jury last month sentenced him to death.

Two more of his friends have been convicted of impeding the investigation. They are to be sentenced June 5.

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) – Internet gambling is off to a slow start in the United States, with banks hesitant to handle credit card payments for online bets and some politicians and casino moguls pushing to ban it, but there remains potential for great growth, participants in a major gambling conference agreed Wednesday.

Despite the nascent industry’s many challenges, including illegal offshore websites that casinos admit are easier to use, gradual improvements are happening, they said.

Three states currently offer Internet gambling: New Jersey, Delaware and Nevada. Other states are considering doing so, including California and Pennsylvania.

New Jersey took in $122 million from Internet gambling last year; Delaware took in nearly $2.1 million and Nevada won $8.1 million at poker, the only game it offers online, from February to November of last year, when it stopped reporting online revenue results.

In March, Morgan Stanley cut its estimate of the potential U.S. Internet gambling market by nearly half. The firm now estimates the nationwide online betting market at $2.7 billion by 2020, down from an initial estimate of $5 billion.

Speaking at the East Coast Gaming Congress in Atlantic City, casino operators, payment processors and legislators agreed the legalized online gambling industry is still being held back by the refusal of some banks to handle Internet betting transactions, and the relatively limited liquidity in games of online poker that would be improved by having more states join together to increase prize pools.

“The biggest challenge of Internet gambling in the U.S. is that this is an industry still looked at as having been born out of sin,” said Gil White, whose law firm represents 888 Holdings. “The new world of Internet gambling is clearly regulated and regulatable.”

When online gambling began in 2013, many customers had a hard time making deposits to fund their accounts because banks refused to authorize the transactions. That has improved somewhat with new transaction codes adopted by Visa last month to narrowly recognize Internet gambling transactions from state-regulated, approved sites. That has raised Visa acceptance rates for Internet gambling from the 18 to 22 percent when it first started to about 50 percent now, said Joe Pappano, senior vice president of Vantiv Gaming Solutions, which handles electronic transfers for New Jersey online gambling sites.

Thomas Winter, vice president of online gambling for the Golden Nugget Atlantic City, also said his casino is seeing half of all attempts to fund Internet betting accounts using Visa cards accepted.

“It’s improving, but it will take time,” he said.

Raymond Lesniak, a New Jersey state senator who sponsored his state’s Internet gambling law, was blunt about the biggest challenge facing online gambling.

“The biggest problem is Sheldon Adelson,” he said of the Las Vegas Sands chairman who has vowed to spend as much as necessary to ban Internet gambling in the U.S. Adelson says he fears for exploiting “vulnerable people” and worries about children being able to access betting websites.

“When a billionaire says he’ll spend whatever it costs to stop Internet gambling, that scares the bejeezus out of legislators,” Lesniak said.

Proposed legislation to ban Internet gambling is being considered by Congress but has not yet been brought to a vote.

David Rebuck, director of New Jersey’s Division for Gaming Enforcement, said the crucial questions of preventing illegal activity and protecting customers have already been mastered, which should encourage other states to approve Internet gambling as well. He also said sports betting, if it is legalized nationwide, will take place primarily over the Internet. New Jersey is waging a court battle to overturn a ban on sports betting in all but four states.

Rebuck also said state lotteries could be the next wave of growth for Internet gambling nationwide.

MADISON, Wis. (AP) – The Legislature’s finance committee has authorized borrowing tens of millions of dollars for building projects around the state.

The committee voted 12-4 Wednesday to approve four projects, including a science lab at Carroll University, an Eau Claire arts center, an agricultural education center in Manitowoc and renovations at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s chemistry building.

The Carroll lab would be funded with $3 million in bonds and $23.5 million in gifts and grants. The arts center would be funded with $15 million in bonding. The agricultural center would be funded with $5 million in bonding and $6.6 million in gifts and grants. The UW-Madison chemistry building renovations would be funded with $86.2 million in bonding and $21.6 million in gifts and grants.

WASHINGTON (AP) – Those automated phone calls during the dinner hour, late at night or to your wireless phone can be so frustrating – and the government is taking note.

The head of the Federal Communications Commission circulated a proposal Wednesday designed to close loopholes, reaffirm current anti-robocall rules, and encourage wireless and wireline carriers to do more to fight against unwanted telemarketing calls and spam text messages to consumers.

A key part of the plan: clearing up any confusion over whether the phone carriers can offer blocking services – so-called robo-blocking technology that could help people stop the unwanted calls.

“We are giving the green light for robocall-blocking technology,” FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler wrote in a blog-post on the commission website.

Phone companies have said that they worry that automatic call-blocking might run afoul of laws requiring them to connect phone calls.

In his blog, Wheeler said the technology can be offered without violating the rules. “The FCC wants to make it clear: telephone companies can – and in fact should – offer consumers robocall-blocking tools,” he said.

Another part of the plan aims to make it easier for consumers to say “no” to robocalls and texts. People would simply be able to say “stop” and cannot be told that they need to fill out a form and mail it in to get the calls to cease. And for people who switch phones and inherit a new phone number, the Wheeler proposal says they should not be subjected to unwanted calls that the previous owner consented to.

Unwanted robocalls, robotexts, and telemarketing calls are the biggest source of consumer complaints at the FCC, with the agency receiving more than 215,000 complaints last year alone.

Consumer groups praised the Wheeler plan, which the commission will vote on at its June 18 meeting.

“This should clear the way for companies to offer the call-blocking tools that people want to stop robocalls from invading their homes morning, noon and night,” said Delara Derakhshani, policy counsel for Consumers Union.

An industry group, US Telecom, said it was studying Wheeler’s proposal. “USTelecom supports the FCC’s efforts to provide consumers with options to mitigate unwanted phone calls, and to take strong enforcement actions against illegal robocallers,” spokeswoman Anne Veigle said.

She declined to say specifically whether the group supports Wheeler’s plan to allow or encourage the phone companies to offer the blocking technologies to consumers.

Another group, CTIA-The Wireless Association, said there are a number of apps and features available to consumers to help stop robocalls and other intrusions. “While we are still reviewing the details of the chairman’s proposals, we remain committed to working with all interested parties to help protect consumers while preserving choice and promoting innovation,” the association’s statement said.

A spokeswoman for AT&T referred a reporter to US Telecom for comment. Representatives of Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile didn’t immediately have a comment.

Some lawmakers questioned parts of the proposal.

Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., a member of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, expressed concern about an exception in the proposal that would allow free calls or texts in some circumstances, such as to alert a consumer to possible fraud on a bank account or to remind a person about an important prescription refill.

The proposed exemptions, he said in a statement, “will result in an increase in unwanted calls and texts to consumers without their consent.”

The commission had received more than 20 petitions from companies – including bankers, debt collectors, app developers, retail stores, and others – seeking clarity on rules pertaining to robocalls. Dozens of state attorneys general also had asked the FCC to weigh in on whether blocking robocalls might violate any telecommunications statutes.

Millions of people have placed their phone numbers on the federal Do Not Call Registry, which bars telemarketers from calling the numbers on the list. But scammers pay no attention to the registry, contributing to the many complaints about telemarketing calls to the FCC and the Federal Trade Commission. Often, it’s hard to track down the scammer making the automated calls since current technology allows them to fake or “spoof” caller ID information, so the number you see on your caller ID isn’t the real number and usually leads to a disconnected number or something other than the source of the original call.

___

Associated Press writers Anne Flaherty and Marcy Gordon contributed to this report.

OSHKOSH – Five days after a wolf bit a young child at Oshkosh’s Menominee Zoo, park officials are still trying to figure out how the public had access to a restricted area.

Kim Proctor’s been going to the Menominee Zoo for years and was there Friday morning with family. But something struck Proctor and her daughter as odd.

“We were up in the viewing area. By the wolves and the elk and we noticed people behind, on the walkway,” she recalled. “And I first thought, the zoo part (was redone), and that you could go back there, but then we noticed it was a single, chain fence and there was several adults and children back there.”

“It was a single, chain-link fence and I’ve never been to a zoo where you could go back there.”

Proctor says there were at least a dozen children and adults in the area, which turns out is restricted to the public and typically gated. There are no signs marking the area as restricted. It’s an area that is typically gated.

Oshkosh Park District officials say a child in that area, put his or her fingers through a fence and received minor injuries to two fingers when the wolf, named Rebel, bit them.

“We were mandated by the state Division of Public Health to have the wolf euthanized,” said Ray Maurer, the Oshkosh Parks Department director, “It was not an option for us. It was through the state health department that we were given instructions that we needed to have that animal euthanized.”

The wolf was tested for rabies and the results came back negative. Rebel and three of his litter mates were brought to the zoo last fall from Yellowstone National Park, through a donation from the Oshkosh Zoological Society.

Maurer says the parks department is looking into how – or why – the gate to the restricted area was accessible by the public.

“We’re still looking at, investigating the situation to see how or why it happened, and that’s part of our investigation, to look at if it was allowed open, why it was open and so forth.”

“How can that all happen without someone taking notice?” I asked him.

“Again, that’s part of what we’re looking into at this point, I can’t comment until we have talked with all of our staff that had been involved, so at this point, I don’t know the time frame, at this point.”

Proctor says it’s a sad series of events that likely could have been easily prevented – on all accounts.

“It’s error on a lot of people’s fault, the people should have had common sense not to go back there,” she said. “In the first place, I don’t know how the door was left open or how it became open.”

Something Maurer says he and park staff is working to figure out.