Green Bay News

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – The NFL is moving back extra-point kicks and allowing defenses to score on 2-point conversion turnovers.

The owners on Tuesday approved the competition committee’s proposal to snap the ball from the 15-yard line on PATs to make them more challenging. In recent seasons, kickers made more than 99 percent of the kicks with the ball snapped from the 2.

That proposal places the 2-point conversion at the 2, and allows the defense to return a turnover to the other end zone for the two points, similar to the college rule.

New England and Philadelphia also made suggestions on changing the extra point, but the owners went with the powerful committee’s recommendation.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – The NFL is moving back extra-point kicks and allowing defenses to score on 2-point conversion turnovers.

The owners on Tuesday approved the competition committee’s proposal to snap the ball from the 15-yard line on PATs to make them more challenging. In recent seasons, kickers made more than 99 percent of the kicks with the ball snapped from the 2.

That proposal places the 2-point conversion at the 2, and allows the defense to return a turnover to the other end zone for the two points, similar to the college rule.

New England and Philadelphia also made suggestions on changing the extra point, but the owners went with the powerful committee’s recommendation.

HOWARD – Multiple fire crews are battling a fire at Bay Auto Parts on Velp Avenue in Howard, Tuesday afternoon.

Howard/Lawrence, Pulaski Tri County, Suamico and Green Bay Metro Fire are all on scene.

Traffic is heavy on the west side of Green Bay near Military Avenue and Velp Avenue.

We have a crew going out to the scene and will have more details as they become available.

Video submitted by Mike Cropsey through ReportIt. Shows a fire at Bay Auto Parts on Velp Avenue on May 19, 2015.

We’ve seen some nice weather at times this spring, and many gardens have sprung as a result.

But you need to take some precautions tonight to protect your plants from a frosty fate.

Conventional wisdom says to hold off planting until a certain upcoming holiday weekend.

“Memorial Day Weekend,” says Jamie Hemenway-Peotter, Design Manager at Mayflower Greenhouse. “But I have to admit, I just can’t restrain from planting stuff early, too.”

But late-season cold snap Tuesday night means you might have to do a little prep work to protect some more delicate flowers.

“Tropicals, any kind of hibiscus, mandevilla, anything like that, succulents,” to name a few, says Hemenway-Peotter.

If possible, the easiest thing to do is just bring them inside.

Kim Stiller from Suamico was at Mayflower picking up some mandevillas.

“They do real good on my front porch. I put my other ones in the garage already last night so I’ll just leave them there for a while until the weather clears,” she said.

If you can’t bring your plants inside, you can cover your plants with plastic sheets, cloth sheets, or garbage bags.

If you’re going with that method, put a stake in the ground next to the plant to make sure weight of any cover doesn’t crush the plant.

For any particularly sensitive plants, more than one covering can be used.

As for gardens, things like lettuce and spinach will survive a frost just fine.

“Your tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, all of that should be covered tonight just to be safe,” says Hemenway-Peotter.

If you do have some plants that get nipped by frost, she says to head out early in the morning before they thaw out and spray some cold water on them.

It’ll help them warm up more slowly, which could lessen the damage done by the frost.

GREEN BAY – A multi-year reconstruction project that has plagued drivers in Winnebago and Brown Counties will add another hiccup to drivers’ plans Tuesday night and next week, as lane closures begin again.

Southbound lanes between West Mason Street and Highway 172 will close from 8 p.m. until 5 a.m. Wednesday. The Lombardi southbound on-ramp will remain closed through that time until Thursday morning.

It’s just a portion of the length of the I-41 work in Brown County that stretches for nearly 17 miles.

“Let’s get in, get it all done and get out mentality,” said Eric Gwidt, the Wisconsin Dept. of Transportation’s I-41 project manager.

It’s that mentality that Gwidt says the DOT has had for the project, since it started in Winnebago County in 2009 and in Brown County in 2010.

The lane closures between 172 and Mason Street will repeat for northbound 41 later next week.

Gwidt says the median road surface has been completed and lanes need to be moved to construct the outer lanes.

“It’s another staging change; we’re changing from one phase of the project to another.”

As the project inches closer to completion, Gwidt and the DOT say the project is currently on track and within its $1.05 billion budget. Another $115 million has been set aside, just in case something unexpected happens.

“There’s a contingency worked into that allotted amount of money for issues that arise, and we’re under that.”

But not out of the woods just yet. The interchange connecting northbound 41 to I-43 will open late this summer. However southbound ramps to 43 will then close for an entire year, as will ramps to Velp Avenue.

“The north end probably has the largest traffic impacts for the next year and a half.”

Gwidt says the 41 project is slated to be completely done by 2017.

APPLETON – A potential buyer has surfaced for the Radisson Paper Valley Hotel.

Appleton Mayor Tim Hanna announced the development Tuesday. He said Florida-based Inner Circle Investments has a contract to buy the downtown Appleton property.

“We have been eagerly waiting for the right buyer to take ownership of the Radisson Paper Valley Hotel,” Hanna said in a news release. “The Paper Valley is an important business for the Fox Valley and an important part of our plans to build an exhibition center which should make our community a key destination for businesses seeking a first-rate conference center.”

Inncer Circle Investments is the real estate division of Inner Circle US. City leaders say the company owns and operates hotels throughout the U.S., many of which operate under the Radisson brand.

“We have been impressed with the response that we’ve received from the Fox Cities communities and we look forward to becoming an integral part of the community and providing a hotel the community will be proud of,” Joe Gillespie, Managing Partner of Inner Circle Investments, said in a news release. “The Radisson Paper Valley Hotel offers an exceptional opportunity to continue the Radisson relationship in a strong economic market.”

The hotel is currently owned by a group of investors that once held the property’s mortgage. Those investors bought the hotel in early 2013 after a previous owner defaulted on the mortgage. In an auction last December, a $17.6 million bid was placed, but the owners did not accept that bid.

The hotel has been key to plans to build an exhibition center downtown. In March, the city agreed to buy land for the project from Outagamie County. Plans call for the Radisson Paper Valley Hotel to manage the exhibition center.

Inner Circle Investments has experience owning and managing downtown hotels with attached conference centers, city officials say.

FOX 11’s Alex Ronallo is working on this story and will have a full report tonight on FOX 11 News at Nine.

MADISON, Wis. (AP) – The Legislature’s budget-writing committee plans to approve a Republican-backed plan that would convert the worst-performing Milwaukee Public Schools into independent charter or private voucher schools under control of the county executive.

The proposal has been floated by Joint Finance Committee co-chair Sen. Alberta Darling and fellow committee member Rep. Dale Kooyenga. The committee planned to vote on it Tuesday as it deals with a variety of education issues.

Darling says in the first year three schools would be converted, with five in the second year.

She and Kooyenga have defended the plan, saying it offers an opportunity to turnaround the struggling schools. Opponents, including the Milwaukee and statewide teachers unions, have said the proposal is part of a plan to privatize public schools.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) – ConAgra Foods is likely to face a criminal charge now that the U.S. government has completed its investigation of the company’s 2007 peanut butter recall.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Georgia, Pam Lightsey, said Tuesday that prosecutors plan to reveal details of the investigation Wednesday.

ConAgra spokeswoman Teresa Paulsen declined to comment, but the company has said it was negotiating an end to the investigation that would likely include a misdemeanor charge of shipping tainted products.

ConAgra recalled all its peanut butter in 2007 after its Peter Pan and Great Value peanut butter was linked to a salmonella outbreak that sickened at least 625 people in 47 states. The peanut butter was produced at ConAgra’s Sylvester, Georgia, plant.

NEW YORK (AP) – An investigation of a pair of New York City drug traffickers has resulted in a record seizure of more than 150 pounds of heroin from Mexico worth at least $50 million, authorities said Tuesday.

The Drug Enforcement Administration and Special Narcotics Prosecutor Bridget Brennan called the heroin seizure the largest ever recorded by the DEA in New York state. Agents also arrested Jose Mercedes and Yenci Cruz Francisco, both of the Bronx, and recovered $2 million in cash.

Authorities believe the ring had been receiving similar-size shipments each month from suppliers in Mexico. They say it was a main source of heroin for users in New York City, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.

“To put it in perspective, this load was so large it carried the potential of supplying a dose of heroin to every man, woman and child in New York City,” Brennan said in a statement. “While this important seizure stopped a huge amount of heroin from flooding our city, it also highlights the critical need to intercept heroin before it ever reaches our region.”

According to a criminal complaint, investigators monitoring wiretaps learned the defendants were expecting a large drug shipment over the weekend. They followed the two suspects as they traveled in tandem in a Chevy Suburban and another vehicle to an industrial area of Montville, New Jersey, where tractor-trailers were parked, and then to a residential part of the Bronx, the complaint says.

After a drug-sniffing dog detected drugs inside the parked SUV, agents stopped Mercedes for questioning as he pulled up in a car that contained a smaller amount of heroin, authorities said. The suspect told agents there was a larger amount of drugs in the SUV and gave them instructions on how to open secret compartments inside the vehicle, they said.

A search of the Suburban resulted in the recovery of 70 kilograms – about 154 pounds – inside two compartments, authorities said. Another search at a nearby apartment turned up $2 million underneath a floor, they said.

Mercedes and Francisco were ordered held without bail. An attorney for the men, Patrick Brackley, said they were “looking forward to their day in court.”

TOWN OF MONTPELIER – A loose bull and cow had to be lassoed in Kewaunee County.

Workers on horseback could be seen lassoing the animals in the middle of traffic that had stopped on Highway 29. The animals were two of three that had gotten loose from their pen. The first bull was captured earlier in the day.

Click the play button above to watch.

Click the link to the left for the full story.

FOND DU LAC – Thanks to some local firefighters, a flock of ducklings were reunited safely with their mother.

On Tuesday afternoon, the Fond du Lac Fire Department rescued 11 ducklings from a storm sewer on the corner of S. Military Road and Ruggles Street.

Fire crews tweeted out the following video of the rescue:

Family of ducklings rescued from storm sewer. pic.twitter.com/p8i7KGcx2b

— Fond du Lac Fire (@fdlfire) May 19, 2015

Once free, the ducklings waddled to their mother who was nearby.

pic.twitter.com/Qh47Q99pty

— Fond du Lac Fire (@fdlfire) May 19, 2015

GREENVILLE – The website for the Outagamie Co. Airport is currently down.

For a time, messages regarding Palestinian politics appeared at www.atwairport.com, with a claim “Hacked by El Moujahidin.”

Around 2:20pm, the airport tweeted this message:

Our website is down. Travelers please check airline websites for flight arrival and departure updates. We apologize for the inconvenience.

— Outagamie Airport (@ATWairport) May 19, 2015

FOX 11’s calls to the airport and county for comment were not immediately returned.

SHAWANO – A man who stole several vehicles – and smashed a stolen semi into other vehicles – was sentenced to four years, six months in prison.

Calvin Ossman was convicted of six counts, including vehicle theft, criminal damage to property, and fleeing an officer for the Aug. 1-3 incidents.

Ossman was also placed on extended supervision for 30 months at the May 8 sentencing, according to online court records.

Police said he stole a semi and smashed several vehicles during a chase in the Clintonville and Belle Plaine areas. He later stole other vehicles before being found in a barn.

MADISON, Wis. (AP) – The Legislature’s budget committee is set to vote on Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal to require drug screenings for recipients of public aid programs like food stamps and unemployment benefits.

The Assembly last week approved a pair of similar bills. The Joint Finance Committee on Tuesday is also voting on the issue and is expected to go along with what the Assembly did.

Under the change, applicants for state job training programs such as Wisconsin Works, people on the FoodShare program and most of those seeking unemployment benefits would have to take a questionnaire that may subject them to drug tests later.

Those who fail the drug tests would get taxpayer-funded treatment.

A federal waiver would be needed, and similar requirements have run into legal challenges in other states.

WASHINGTON (AP) – Under pressure from U.S. safety regulators, Takata Corp. has agreed to declare 33.8 million air bags defective, a move that will double the number of cars and trucks included in what is now the largest auto recall in U.S. history.

The chemical that inflates the air bag can explode with too much force, blowing apart a metal inflator and sending shrapnel into the passenger compartment. The faulty inflators are responsible for six deaths and more than 100 injuries worldwide.

The announcement was made Tuesday afternoon by the heads of the Department of Transportation and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which reached an agreement with Takata after sparring with the company for the past year over the size of the recalls and the cause of the problem.

Eleven automakers, including Honda Motor Co. and Toyota Motor Corp., have recalled 17 million vehicles in the U.S. and more than 36 million worldwide because of the problem. It’s unclear which manufacturers will be most affected by the expansion of the recall.

The Takata air bag recall dwarfs last year’s highly publicized recall of 2.6 million General Motors small cars for defective ignition switches and Toyota’s recalls of 10 million vehicles for problems with unintended acceleration.

NHTSA Administrator Mark Rosekind said investigations by the agency and auto industry haven’t determined precisely what’s causing Takata’s inflators to explode, but said the agency cannot wait for a cause to take action.

“We know that owners are worried about their safety and the safety of their families,” he said. “This is probably the most complex consumer safety recall in U.S. history.”

He said people who get recall notices in the mail should immediately make an appointment to get their cars fixed.

____

AP Auto Writer Dee-Ann Durbin contributed from Detroit.

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Black religious leaders in the Madison area are calling for the resignation of a white police officer who fatally shot a biracial teenager in Wisconsin’s capital city.

The Wisconsin State Journal reports members of the African-American Council of Churches said Monday that they want Officer Matt Kenny to step down. A prosecutor announced last week that Kenny would not be charged in the March shooting death of 19-year-old Tony Robinson.

Bishop Harold Rayford said church council members believe Kenny acted “irrationally and improperly” in shooting Robinson. He said they wouldn’t feel safe if Kenny returned to the streets.

Kenny is on paid leave pending an internal investigation. His attorney has said Kenny wants to return to his job. The police chief has said he fears for the officer’s safety.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration hopes to save the bees by feeding them better.

A new federal plan aims to reverse America’s declining honeybee and monarch butterfly populations by making millions of acres of federal land more bee-friendly, spending millions of dollars more on research and considering the use of fewer pesticides.

While putting different type of landscapes along highways, federal housing projects and elsewhere may not sound like much in terms of action, several bee scientists told The Associated Press that this a huge move. They say it may help pollinators that are starving because so much of the American landscape has been converted to lawns and corn that don’t provide foraging areas for bees.

“This is the first time I’ve seen addressed the issue that there’s nothing for pollinators to eat,” said University of Illinois entomologist May Berenbaum, who buttonholed President Barack Obama about bees when she received her National Medal of Science award last November. “I think it’s brilliant.”

Environmental activists who wanted a ban on a much-criticized class of pesticide said the Obama administration’s bee strategy falls way short of what’s needed to save the hives.

Scientists say bees — crucial to pollinate many crops — have been hurt by a combination of declining nutrition, mites, disease, and pesticides. The federal plan is an “all hands on deck” strategy that calls on everyone from federal bureaucrats to citizens to do what they can to save bees, which provide more than $15 billion in value to the U.S. economy, according to White House science adviser John Holdren.

“Pollinators are struggling,” Holdren said in a blog post, citing a new federal survey that found beekeepers lost more than 40 percent of their colonies last year, although they later recovered by dividing surviving hives. He also said the number of monarch butterflies that spend the winter in Mexico’s forests is down by 90 percent or more over the past two decades, so the U.S. government is working with Mexico to expand monarch habitat in the southern part of that country.

The plan calls for restoring 7 million acres of bee habitat in the next five years. Numerous federal agencies will have to find ways to grow plants on federal lands that are more varied and better for bees to eat because scientists have worried that large land tracts that grow only one crop have hurt bee nutrition.

The plan is not just for the Department of Interior, which has vast areas of land under its control. Agencies that wouldn’t normally be thought of, such as Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Transportation, will have to include bee-friendly landscaping on their properties and in grant-making.

That part of the bee plan got praise from scientists who study bees.

“Here, we can do a lot for bees, and other pollinators,” University of Maryland entomology professor Dennis van Englesdorp, who led the federal bee study that found last year’s large loss. “This I think is something to get excited and hopeful about. There is really only one hope for bees and it’s to make sure they spend a good part of the year in safe healthy environments. The apparent scarcity of these areas is what’s worrying. This could change that.”

University of Montana bee expert Jerry Bromenshenk said the effort shows the federal government finally recognizes that land use is key with bees.

“From my perspective, it’s a wake-up call,” Bromenshenk wrote in an email. “Pollinators need safe havens, with adequate quantities of high-quality resources for food and habitat, relatively free from toxic chemicals, and that includes pollutants as well as pesticides and other agricultural chemicals.”

Berenbaum said what’s impressive is that the plan doesn’t lay the problem or the solution just on agriculture or the federal government: “We all got into this mess and we’re going to have to work together to get out of it,” she said.

The administration proposes spending $82.5 million on honeybee research in the upcoming budget year, up $34 million from now.

The Environmental Protection Agency will step up studies into the safety of widely used neonicotinoid pesticides, which have been temporarily banned in Europe. It will not approve new types of uses of the pesticides until more study is done, if then, the report said.

“They are not taking bold enough action; there’s a recognition that there is a crisis,” said Lori Ann Burd, environmental health director for the advocacy group Center for Biological Diversity. She said the bees cannot wait, comparing more studies on neonicotinoids to going to a second and third mechanic when you’ve been told the brakes are shot.

“Four million Americans have called on the Obama administration to listen to the clear science demanding that immediate action be taken to suspend systemic bee-killing pesticides, including seed treatments,” Friends of the Earth food program director Lisa Archer said in statement. “Failure to address this growing crisis with a unified and meaningful federal plan will put these essential pollinators and our food supply in jeopardy.”

But CropLife America, which represents the makers of pesticides, praised the report for its “multi-pronged coordinated approach.”

The report talks of a fine line between the need for pesticides to help agriculture and the harm they can do to bees and other pollinators.

Lessening “the effects of pesticides on bees is a priority for the federal government, as both bee pollination and insect control are essential to the success of agriculture,” the report said.

NEW YORK (AP) — For Shannon Henderson, getting a cold or flu could be the difference between putting food on the table and going hungry.

As a part-time customer service representative at a Wal-Mart in Sacramento, California, Henderson is one of an estimated 40 million American workers for who calling in sick is a luxury. If they don’t work, they don’t get paid.

“I’m super afraid of getting sick,” said Henderson, 29, who slathers on hand sanitizer at work in hopes of fending off illness.

Paid sick leave is the next frontier in the fight for the country’s lowest earners. Some of the same workers’ rights groups that grabbed headlines recently by pushing companies for wage hikes are steering the conversation toward paid sick leave. The debate has caught the attention of governments and companies alike.

President Barack Obama is calling for federal legislation that would require companies to guarantee workers paid sick days. And since San Francisco started requiring that in 2007, nearly 20 cities and three states — Connecticut, Massachusetts and California — have passed similar measures. New York, Maryland and other states are considering laws too. And McDonald’s Corp. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which have announced wage hikes recently, are making changes to their paid sick leave policies.

“Paid sick days are a job issue,” said Ellen Bravo, executive director for Family Values @ Work, a network of coalitions fighting to pass paid sick days and family leave policies. “When you don’t have sick pay, you get docked.”

The new focus comes amid wide disparities between the benefits received by the top and bottom rungs of the corporate ladder. Sixty-one percent of U.S. workers get at least one paid sick day, according to a national compensation survey of employee benefits conducted last year by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But only 20 percent of workers whose wages are at the bottom 10 percent get paid sick leave, compared with 87 percent in the top 10 percent. There’s also a difference when comparing part-time and full-time employees: Seventy-four percent of full-time workers get paid sick leave, while 24 percent of part-time workers do, according to BLS.

Despite the disparities, some industry groups are fighting against laws requiring sick leave pay. Lisa Horn, director of congressional affairs at Society for Human Resource Management, a human resource management trade group, says many companies are leaning toward policies that lump sick, personal and vacation days together. But she says laws force companies to scale back on those benefits to keep down the costs associated with people taking sick days off.

“These mandates have a chilling effect on employers’ ability to innovate and be creative with their leave options,” she said.

Eileen Appelbaum, senior economist at Center for Economic and Policy Research, says mandated sick pay has not had a negative impact on some companies that have been surveyed. According to a survey the group did of businesses in Connecticut, which has required paid sick leave since 2012, one-third of workers took no paid sick leave. “They treat them as insurance,” she said.

Big companies with operations nationwide are changing their paid sick leave policies ahead of legislation.

In February, Wal-Mart, the largest U.S. private employer, said within about a year it would end the one-day wait for sick pay for all full-time U.S. workers. That’s a change from the current system that requires Wal-Mart workers in the U.S. to wait a day to use sick days, which means they have to use personal days on the first day out sick. (Full-time workers can earn up to two personal days and about six days of sick leave pay a year.)

Randy Hargrove, a Wal-Mart spokesman, said the company also is reviewing its sick policy for part-time workers, who account for half of its 1.3 million-person workforce in the U.S. Currently, if part-time workers are ill, they have to use personal days.

McDonald’s is taking a different approach by lumping personal and sick days together. Starting July 1, full-time and part-time workers at company-owned restaurants will begin to accrue personal paid time off after one year of service that can be used for sick leave.

An employee working an average of 20 hours a week will be eligible to accrue about 20 hours of paid time off a year. If employees don’t take the earned time off, they will be paid for the value of it. The benefits apply to only McDonald’s company-owned restaurants, which represent about 10 percent of its more than 14,300 restaurants nationwide.

“We’ve listened to our employees and learned that — in addition to increased wages — paid personal leave … would make a real difference in their careers and lives,” McDonald’s President and CEO Steve Easterbrook said in a statement.

Workplace experts expect other companies to follow Wal-Mart and McDonald’s. “More employers are voluntarily adopting paid sick leave programs,” says Mark Girouard, an employment attorney at Nilan Johnson Lewis who represents national retailers.

That is welcome news to workers who struggle to make ends meet when they take a sick day.

Henderson, the customer service rep, works under the 34 hours per week average that would make her a Wal-Mart full-time employee, so the company’s policy change doesn’t affect her. She said she’s looking forward to California’s sick leave mandate, which goes into effect in July and allows workers one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours worked.

The single mother of an infant makes $10 a week — an annual paycheck of a little over $16,000. Henderson, who says she can’t afford to take time off, has gone to work with a runny nose and no voice. But last year, she said she took time off when she was pregnant because of morning sickness.

“We are human,” said Henderson, who is a member of a labor-backed group OUR Walmart, which has pressed the retailer for higher wages and expanded benefits. “We can’t control being sick.”

CEDAR FALLS, Iowa (AP) — Hillary Rodham Clinton on Tuesday pressed the State Department to expedite the release of 55,000 pages of emails from her time as secretary of state, telling reporters in Iowa, “I want those emails out.”

Clinton reiterated her push to release the emails shortly after a federal judge rejected the State Department’s proposal to disseminate portions of the emails by next January and said the agency must instead conduct a “rolling production” of the records.

Clinton, the Democratic front-runner in the 2016 presidential election, said she wanted the documents to be released as soon as possible, saying, “Nobody has a bigger interest in getting them released than I do.” Asked if she would demand their release, Clinton said of the emails, “They’re not mine. They belong to the State Department.”

Clinton spoke after a small business event for her campaign in Iowa, the home of the nation’s first presidential caucuses. The disclosure that she conducted State Department business on a private email account has been a controversy from the very inception of her campaign this year and raised questions about her commitment to transparency.

During the Tuesday hearing, a federal judge gave the State Department a week to craft a schedule for releasing the records, according to Vice News lawyer Jeffrey Light.

Department spokesman Jeff Rathke said the State Department would comply with the court’s order for the “rolling production” of emails.

The agency had made its initial proposal in a federal court filing Monday night, in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by Vice News.

In the filing, John F. Hackett, who is responsible for the department’s responses to FOIA requests, said that following a review of the emails, the department will post the releasable portions of the 55,000 pages on its website. He said the review will take until the end of the year — and asked the court to adopt a completion date of Jan. 15, 2016, to factor in the holidays. That’s just a couple of weeks before the Iowa caucuses and early state primaries that follow.

In Monday night’s filing in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Hackett said the State Department received the 55,000 pages of emails from Clinton in paper form.

“Given the breadth and importance of the many foreign policy issues on which the secretary of state and the department work, the review of these materials will likely require consultation with a broad range of subject matter experts within the department and other agencies, as well as potentially with foreign governments,” he said. “…The department is committed to processing the 55,000 pages as expeditiously as possible, while taking into consideration the department’s other legal obligations.”

He said he the department understands the considerable public interest in the records, but said the size of the collection, the nature of the emails and the interest of several agencies present challenges.