Green Bay News

WASHINGTON (AP) — Loretta Lynch has been sworn in as the nation’s 83rd attorney general.

She was sworn in Monday at a Justice Department ceremony, with Vice President Joe Biden presiding. Lynch replaces Eric Holder, who left the job Friday after six years as attorney general.

The 55-year-old Lynch was confirmed by the Senate on Thursday following a months-long delay after her nomination got caught up in a dispute over human trafficking legislation.

She was previously the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, which encompasses much of New York City, and is expected to serve as the top federal law enforcement official for the remainder of the Obama administration. She’s the first African-American woman to hold the jobs.

MADISON (AP) – Authorities have identified a homicide victim in Madison more than a week after the man was found dead.

The Dane County Medical Examiner’s Office says the body of 76-year-old Larry Ewing was discovered in his Madison apartment April 18.

The medical examiner did not release a cause of death. The case is still under investigation. Police say Ewing was apparently targeted.

MADISON (AP) – The person who died from carbon monoxide poisoning at the Midwest Horse Fair in Madison has been identified as a Junction City man.

The Dane County Medical Examiner’s Office said Monday 61-year-old Lloyd Taylor died at a Milwaukee area hospital. He was taken there after he was found suffering the effects of carbon monoxide in his camper outside the Alliant Energy Center April 17.

Authorities say a generator in the camper was the likely source of the carbon monoxide.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Just two years ago, the Supreme Court struck down part of the federal anti-gay marriage law that denied a range of government benefits to legally married same-sex couples.

The decision in United States v. Windsor did not address the validity of state marriage bans, but courts across the country, with few exceptions, said its logic compelled them to invalidate state laws that prohibited gay and lesbian couples from marrying.

The number of states allowing same-sex marriage has grown rapidly. As recently as October, just over one-third of the states permitted same-sex marriage. Now, same-sex couples can marry in 36 states and the District of Columbia. A look at what is now before the Supreme Court, and the status of same-sex marriage around the country:

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WHAT’S LEFT FOR THE SUPREME COURT TO DO AMID ALL THIS CHANGE?

The justices on Tuesday are hearing extended arguments, scheduled to run 2½ hours, in highly anticipated cases about the right of same-sex couples to marry. The cases before the court come from Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee, all of which had their marriage bans upheld by the federal appeals court in Cincinnati in November. That appeals court is the only one that has ruled in favor of the states since the 2013 Windsor decision.

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WHAT’S AT STAKE?

Two related issues would expand the marriage rights of same-sex couples. The bigger one: Do same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry or can states continue to define marriage as the union of a man and a woman? The second: Even if states won’t allow some couples to marry, must they recognize valid same-sex marriages from elsewhere?

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WHAT ARE THE MAIN ARGUMENTS ON EACH SIDE?

The arguments of marriage-rights supporters boil down to a claim that states lack any valid reason to deny the right to marry, which the court has earlier described as fundamental to the pursuit of happiness. They say state laws that allow only some people to marry violate the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection under the law and make second-class citizens of same-sex couples and their families. Same-sex couples say that preventing them from marrying is akin to a past ban on interracial marriage, which the Supreme Court struck down in 1967.

The states respond that they have always set the rules for marriage and that voters in many states have backed, sometimes overwhelmingly, changes to their constitutions to limit marriage to a man and a woman. They say a lively national debate is underway and there is no reason for courts to impose a solution that should be left to the political process. The states also argue that they have a good reason to keep defining marriage as they do. Because only heterosexual couples can produce children, it is in the states’ interest to make marriage laws that encourage those couples to enter a union that supports raising children.

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IS THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION PLAYING A ROLE?

The administration is backing the right of same-sex couples to marry, although its argument differs in one respect. The plaintiffs say that the state laws should fall, no matter what standard the court applies. The administration calls for more rigorous scrutiny than courts ordinarily apply to most laws, saying it is appropriate when governments discriminate against a group of people. That already is the case for claims that laws discriminate on the basis of race, sex and other factors. But the administration is silent about what the outcome should be if the court does not give gays the special protection it has afforded women and minorities.

The Justice Department’s decision to stop defending the federal anti-marriage law in 2011 was an important moment for gay rights, and President Barack Obama declared his support for same-sex marriage in 2012.

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WHAT HAPPENS IF THE COURT STRIKES DOWN THE STATE BANS?

A ruling that same-sex couples have a right to marry would invalidate the remaining anti-gay marriage laws in the country. If the court limits its ruling to requiring states to recognize same-sex unions, couples in states without same-sex marriage presumably could get married elsewhere and then demand recognition at home.

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WHAT HAPPENS IF THE COURT RULES FOR THE STATES ON BOTH QUESTIONS?

The bans in 14 states would survive. Beyond that, confusion probably would reign. Some states that had their marriage laws struck down by federal courts might seek to reinstate prohibitions on gay and lesbian unions. Questions also could be raised about the validity of some same-sex weddings. Many of these problems would be of the Supreme Court’s own making.

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WHY IS THAT?

From October to January, the justices first rejected appeals from states seeking to preserve their marriage bans, then allowed court rulings to take effect even as other states appealed those decisions. The result is that the court essentially allowed the number of states with same-sex marriage to double.

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WHERE IS SAME-SEX MARRIAGE LEGAL?

Same-sex couples can marry in 36 states, the District of Columbia and parts of Missouri. More than 500 marriage licenses were issued to same-sex couples in Alabama this year after a federal court struck down the state’s ban. But probate judges have not issued any more licenses to gay and lesbian couples since the Alabama Supreme Court ordered a halt to same-sex unions in early March.

Gay and lesbian couples may not marry in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, most of Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, Tennessee and Texas.

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HOW MANY MARRIED SAME-SEX COUPLES ARE THERE IN THE U.S.?

Gary Gates, an expert at UCLA’s Williams Institute on the demography of gays and lesbians in the U.S., estimated that there were 350,000 married same-sex couples as of February. Gates relied on Gallup Inc. survey data and Census Bureau information to arrive at his estimate. That’s just 0.3 percent of the nation’s 242 million adults, Gates said. Almost as many same-sex couples are unmarried, Gates said.

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WHAT ARE THE NEXT ISSUES FACING GAY RIGHTS?

One fight in the news this year is over efforts to carve out religious exemptions for people and institutions that object to same-sex marriage. It is clear that churches do not have to marry same-sex couples if doing so violates their religious tenets, but what about county clerks? Can photographers refuse to shoot same-sex weddings? Can bakers decline to bake a cake for two men? Civil rights groups say they will continue pressing for other protections from discrimination against LGBT people in employment and housing, among other areas. Even if same-sex couples win the right to marry everywhere, people still can be fired because of their sexual orientation in more than half the states.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — After the earthquake hit Nepal, Prem Raja Mahat spent a sleepless night at his Baltimore home, trying again and again to reach his son, who was visiting friends and family back in Mahat’s home country.

“My wife was crying, crying so much, ‘My son is not here, keep calling, keep calling.’ All night I called, but I could not get through,” he said. “I could not work. I could not sleep. Everyone felt so bad.”

Power outages and communications problems have made life agonizing for the nearly 6 million Nepalese who live abroad — or about 22 percent of the population. They try desperately to reach loved ones through cellphones and global messaging apps, only to be met with silence or fleeting connections. They’re forced to wait for word to slowly trickle out of the impoverished country of 28 million whose communications have been shaken back to a different era.

The lucky ones received a quick call or text or an early posting on Facebook. But even they have had plenty of time to wait and wonder, as they viewed the devastation on TV and social media, how their loved ones were holding up, what they needed and when they might hear from them again.

Mahat is known to millions in Nepal as the “King of Folk Music,” though he has run restaurants in Baltimore for years. He said Monday in a phone interview that his son finally managed to reach him after he borrowed a charged phone.

“He is in a tent, staying outside of the home, under the skies,” Mahat said. “They are still not feeling safe because the earth is quaking” from aftershocks.

Access to electricity was usually the difference between whether separated family members were able to reach each other. People in Nepal relied on cars, solar sources and machines that save up energy for intermittent blackouts to charge up phones or sometimes get online, according to interviews with relatives outside the country.

Landlines and most cellphones weren’t working in lots of places, Mahat said, but when a power source was found, his son told him that people shared their charged phones, passing them around so everyone can try to contact people outside the country and tell them they are OK.

Two days after the disaster, rescue workers were still trying to navigate landslides and reach small mountain villages, where aid groups suggested the damage could be terrible. This is the worst earthquake to hit the South Asian nation in more than 80 years.

These expats tried everything they could think of to connect — phone calls, text messages, social media apps, friends of friends in those parts of Nepal less harder hit by the quake and so with better communications.

Damodar Gautam, a chef at Durga, a Nepalese restaurant in downtown Seoul, said he hadn’t been able to talk on the phone with his family, but he managed to connect right after the news broke via Facebook and Viber, a messaging app. Gautam, who has been in Seoul for three years, said there were some injuries but mostly everyone is OK.

Since that first contact, he said, Internet connections have been bad. Occasionally, he has been able to send a text message and get a reply. He said people were using cars and solar power to charge their phones. Success in getting through, he said, often depends on a family member’s particular situation, such as whether they had a power source and how much damage had happened around them.

The earthquake Saturday hit the capital, Kathmandu, but also small villages and the slopes of Mount Everest, where an avalanche buried part of a base camp packed with foreign climbers preparing to try for the summit.

K.P. Sitoula, who runs a restaurant in Seoul, says his family members in Nepal made it through in good condition because they live in a part of Kathmandu near the airport that has escaped much of the devastation the rest of the capital has seen.

The 46-year-old, who has lived in South Korea for 23 years, called his parents five minutes after he saw the news of the quake, and was told that they and his brothers and sisters were safe, although they’d been forced to take shelter in a nearby school.

Bigyan Bhandari, a 28-year-old Nepalese who works at Sitoula’s restaurant, said he was finally able to talk with his loved ones in Kathmandu after dozens of unsuccessful attempts to call them. “I miss my family members … too much,” he said, tears welling in his eyes.

Mahat, the folk singer and restaurateur, has tried to call other friends and family members, as well as other senior officials he knows, but he can’t get through.

He is, however, luckier than most because of his celebrity. He got a call from a friend who’s a high-ranking police official in Kathmandu, where more than 1,000 people were killed. That official has regular power and has been able to give Mahat updates on other friends and family members and what the local police are doing to try to help.

“The people (in Nepal) do not have the communications, the television or the computers, so we (outside Nepal) do not know anything about what’s going on,” Mahat said. “We want to tell them how much we are doing to try to help them … We need to know that they are OK or not. There is heartbreaking news about what is happening, but we still want to know.”

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AP writer Hyung-jin Kim contributed to this story from Seoul.

See an interactive map locating the epicenter of the Nepal earthquake and video explaining earthquakes.

LA CROSSE (AP) – A specially-trained team has rescued a person who fell from a bluff in La Crosse.

The Fire Department’s Technical Rescue Team was called to George’s Point on the bluff about 8 p.m. Sunday. The team used ropes to rescue the individual and bring that person back to the trail head. There’s no immediate word on the condition of the injured party, who was taken to a hospital.

Green Bay – Vicki got a Monday Morning Makeover thanks to Salon Aura in Green Bay.

Click on the video above to check out her transformation.

We are giving away 11 Toro Recycler Mowers.

You can still enter, click here.

We will be drawing 11 names. The qualifiers have until 9 a.m. the day their name is called to win the lawn mower.

List of winners:

Beth Greenwood, De Pere.

LA CROSSE (AP) – La Crosse police are investigating the death of a woman whose body was found in a downtown alley.

Authorities say the body was discovered about 7 a.m. Monday near Community Credit Union. The area has been cordoned off as investigators work the scene.

CENTENNIAL, Colo. (AP) – The key to the death penalty trial of a man who methodically shot at moviegoers at a Batman movie premiere will be what was going on inside his mind as he threw smoke canisters and then marched up and down the aisles, firing at anyone who tried to flee.

James Holmes acknowledges killing 12 people and wounding 70 more inside the packed theater, but has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. His lawyers will argue that he was too addled by mental illness to tell right from wrong.

And unlike most other states, Colorado puts the burden on prosecutors in insanity cases: They must convince jurors beyond a reasonable doubt that Holmes was sane. It adds another obstacle for a state that has already spent millions to manage an outsized number of victims, hundreds of witnesses and more than 85,000 pages of evidence.

Even so, experts say Holmes faces long odds. Insanity defenses are successful in only 25 percent of felony trials nationally, even less so in homicides.

“Lay people tend to think of people with mental illness as extremely dangerous, and that also influences jurors, especially if someone has killed someone,” said Christopher Slobogin, a professor of law and psychiatry at Vanderbilt Law School. “Usually there’s evidence of intent and planning that seems to be counterintuitive to the lay view of mental illness.”

Winning a trial on mental-health grounds is rare, but then again, so is a jury trial for a mass shooter, many of whom are killed by police, kill themselves or plead guilty.

A review of 160 mass shootings found killers went to trial 74 times, and just three were found insane, according to Grant Duwe, a Minnesota corrections official who wrote the book “Mass Murder in the United States: A History.”

Just one mass shooter has won a mental-health case in the last two decades, Duwe said: Michael Hayes, who shot nine people, killing four, in North Carolina in 1988.

Based on that, Holmes “faces some pretty long odds,” he said.

Holmes was arrested almost immediately, while stripping off his body armor in the parking lot outside the Century 16 movie theater. That he was the shooter who replaced Hollywood violence with real human carnage has never been in doubt. The victims include a 6-year-old girl, two active-duty servicemen, a single mom and an aspiring broadcaster who had survived a mall shooting in Toronto. Several died shielding friends or loved ones.

Nearly three years have passed as trial preparations were stalled by complicated legal debates over capital punishment and insanity pleas.

Prosecutors will argue that the once-promising doctoral candidate in neuroscience plotted and planned for months, amassing guns, ammunition, tear gas grenades and enough chemicals to turn his dingy apartment into a potentially lethal booby trap that could have caused even more carnage.

They’ll ask jurors to find him guilty, and if so, sentence him to death rather than life without parole.

If jurors decide instead that Holmes was insane at the time of the shooting, he would be committed indefinitely to a state psychiatric hospital.

Dueling mental health evaluations could factor in their deliberations. Judge Carlos A. Samour Jr. ordered a second exam after prosecutors said the first was biased. Defense attorneys have objected to the results of the second one, suggesting it might not help them.

Like many other details, the results of both exams have been kept from public view. Also secret is the list of people expected to testify.

Holmes faces 166 counts, including first-degree murder, attempted murder and an explosives offense.

The judge read each charge, naming each victim, out loud. It took nearly two hours.

Holmes’ trial could take at least four months or more and is sure to be emotionally wrenching. Jury selection alone took nearly three months as attorneys and the judge settled on 12 jurors and 12 alternates from a pool of 9,000. Experts said the jury selection was among the largest and most complex in history, in part because it was so difficult to find people who weren’t personally affected by the shooting.

Holmes’ parents begged prosecutors to consider a plea deal sparing his life and avoiding a drawn-out trial. But some survivors want Holmes executed, even if that means reliving horrific details.

“My intent to go down there is to see that that guy gets convicted of all 166 counts that were against him,” said Tom Sullivan, whose son, Alex, was killed while celebrating his 27th birthday and wedding anniversary.

W. David Hoover wants Holmes executed to avenge the death of his 18-year-old nephew, A.J. Boik.

“It still doesn’t bring him back, but we want justice,” Hoover said. “Real justice is going to happen when this animal leaves this Earth.”

MADISON, Wis. (AP) – Members of the Nepal Student Association at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are brainstorming on how to help relatives and friends in the aftermath of the earthquake that has killed 3,700 in their home country.

Association members met Sunday afternoon to talk about plans for collecting donations and raising awareness of the needs in the devastated country. Many members have family members who were directly impacted by the 7.8 magnitude earthquake.

Archana Shrestha is a graduate student studying meteorology at UW-Madison. She tells WKOW-TV her parents and her brother have been forced to sleep in their cars in Nepal.

Association members say there are about 20 students and faculty members from Nepal on campus and more than 200 Nepalese immigrants living in the city of Madison.

KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) – Shelter, fuel, food, medicine, power, news, workers – Nepal’s earthquake-hit capital was short on everything Monday as its people searched for lost loved ones, sorted through rubble for their belongings and struggled to provide for their families’ needs. In much of the countryside, it was worse, though how much worse was only beginning to become apparent.

The death toll soared past 3,700, even without a full accounting from vulnerable mountain villages that rescue workers were still struggling to reach two days after the disaster.

Udav Prashad Timalsina, the top official for the Gorkha district, where Saturday’s magnitude 7.8 quake was centered, said he was in desperate need of help.

“There are people who are not getting food and shelter. I’ve had reports of villages where 70 percent of the houses have been destroyed,” he said.

Aid group World Vision said its staff members were able to reach Gorkha, but gathering information from the villages remained a challenge. Even when roads are clear, the group said, some remote areas can be three days’ walk from Gorkha’s main disaster center.

Some roads and trails have been blocked by landslides, the group said in an email to The Associated Press. “In those villages that have been reached, the immediate needs are great including the need for search and rescue, food items, blankets and tarps, and medical treatment.”

Timalsina said 223 people had been confirmed dead in Gorkha district but he presumed “the number would go up because there are thousands who are injured.” He said his district had not received enough help from the central government, but Jagdish Pokhrel, the clearly exhausted army spokesman, said nearly the entire 100,000-soldier army was involved in rescue operations.

“We have 90 percent of the army out there working on search and rescue,” he said. “We are focusing our efforts on that, on saving lives.”

Saturday’s magnitude 7.8 earthquake spread horror from Kathmandu to small villages and to the slopes of Mount Everest, triggering an avalanche that buried part of the base camp packed with foreign climbers preparing to make their summit attempts.

Aid is coming from more than a dozen countries and many charities, but Lila Mani Poudyal, the government’s chief secretary and the rescue coordinator, said Nepal needed more.

He said the recovery was also being slowed because many workers – water tanker drivers, electricity company employees and laborers needed to clear debris – “are all gone to their families and staying with them, refusing to work.”

“We are appealing for tents, dry goods, blankets, mattresses, and 80 different medicines that the health department is seeking that we desperately need now,” Poudyal told reporters. “We don’t have the helicopters that we need or the expertise to rescue the people trapped.”

As people are pulled from the wreckage, he noted, even more help is needed.

“Now we especially need orthopedic (doctors), nerve specialists, anaesthetists, surgeons and paramedics,” he said. “We are appealing to foreign governments to send these specialized and smart teams.”

More than 6,300 people were injured in the quake, he said, estimating that tens of thousands of people had been left homeless. “We have been under severe stress and pressure, and have not been able to reach the people who need help on time,” he said.

Nepal police said in a statement that the country’s death toll had risen to 3,617 people. That does not include the 18 people killed in the avalanche, which were counted by the mountaineering association. Another 61 people were killed in neighboring India, and China reported 20 people dead in Tibet.

Well over 1,000 of the victims were in Kathmandu, the capital, where an eerie calm prevailed Monday.

Tens of thousands of families slept outdoors for a second night, fearful of aftershocks that have not ceased. Camped in parks, open squares and a golf course, they cuddled children or pets against chilly Himalayan nighttime temperatures.

They woke to the sound of dogs yelping and jackhammers. As the dawn light crawled across toppled building sites, volunteers and rescue workers carefully shifted broken concrete slabs and crumbled bricks mixed together with humble household items: pots and pans; a purple notebook decorated with butterflies; a framed poster of a bodybuilder; so many shoes.

“It’s overwhelming. It’s too much to think about,” said 55-year-old Bijay Nakarmi, mourning his parents, whose bodies recovered from the rubble of what once was a three-story building.

He could tell how they died from their injuries. His mother was electrocuted by a live wire on the roof top. His father was cut down by falling beams on the staircase.

He had last seen them a few days earlier – on Nepal’s Mothers’ Day – for a cheerful family meal.

“I have their bodies by the river. They are resting until relatives can come to the funeral,” Nakarmi said as workers continued searching for another five people buried underneath the wreckage.

Kathmandu district chief administrator Ek Narayan Aryal said tents and water were being handed out Monday at 10 locations in Kathmandu, but that aftershocks were leaving everyone jittery. The largest, on Sunday, was magnitude 6.7.

“There have been nearly 100 earthquakes and aftershocks, which is making rescue work difficult. Even the rescuers are scared and running because of them,” he said.

“We don’t feel safe at all. There have been so many aftershocks. It doesn’t stop,” said Rajendra Dhungana, 34, who spent Sunday with his niece’s family for her cremation at the Pashuputi Nath Temple.

Acrid, white smoke rose above the Hindu temple, Nepal’s most revered. “I’ve watched hundreds of bodies burn,” Dhungana said.

The capital city is largely a collection of small, poorly constructed brick apartment buildings. The earthquake destroyed swaths of the oldest neighborhoods, but many were surprised by how few modern structures collapsed in the quake.

On Monday morning, some pharmacies and shops for basic provisions opened while bakeries began offering fresh bread. Huge lines of people desperate to secure fuel lined up outside gasoline pumps, though prices were the same as they were before the earthquake struck.

With power lines down, spotty phone connections and almost no Internet connectivity, residents were particularly anxious to buy morning newspapers.

Pierre-Anne Dube, a 31-year-old from Canada, has been sleeping on the sidewalk outside a hotel. She said she’s gone from the best experience of her life, a trek to Everest base camp, to the worst, enduring the earthquake and its aftermath.

“We can’t reach the embassy. We want to leave. We are scared. There is no food. We haven’t eaten a meal since the earthquake and we don’t have any news about what’s going on,” she said.

The earthquake was the worst to hit the South Asian nation in more than 80 years. It and was strong enough to be felt all across parts of India, Bangladesh, China’s region of Tibet and Pakistan. Nepal’s worst recorded earthquake in 1934 measured 8.0 and all but destroyed the cities of Kathmandu, Bhaktapur and Patan.

The quake has put a huge strain on the resources of this impoverished country best known for Everest, the highest mountain in the world. The economy of Nepal, a nation of 27.8 million people, relies heavily on tourism, principally trekking and Himalayan mountain climbing.

BALDWIN, Wis. (AP) – Authorities say a 12-year-old Woodville boy is expected to make a full recovery after he was hit by a car while on a bicycle.

The St. Croix County Sheriff’s Office says the boy was in stable condition Sunday at a St. Paul, Minnesota, hospital following the Saturday crash.

The driver of the car wasn’t hurt in the collision. Authorities say he could be cited later for the crash, which remains under investigation.

MANITOWOC – Students will be showing off their mad science skills in an upcoming show at UW-Manitowoc.

The 13th annual Cool Chemistry event will take place at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday at the university’s theater in Lakeside Hall.

Students will perform experiments including explosions, magical color changes, at-home lava lamps, witch’s brew, dragon’s breath and more.

Children in the audience have a chance to help with some of the demonstrations and can perform their own “experiment” by making a type of “goo” or slime after the show.

The doors will open at 5:45 p.m., but the show is only available to the first 350 people.

FOX 11’s Pauleen Le spent the morning checking out some of the chemistry experiments.

For more information on Cool Chemistry, click here.

GREEN BAY- Warm and quiet weather continues this week.

We won’t see much, if any, precipitation over the next seven days which means fire danger will increase and become a real concern as we move into the next few days.

Keep a close eye on any burn restrictions.

Right now the DNR has Northeast Wisconsin under a high fire danger.

TOWN OF MATTESON- A Clintonville area woman was flown to a hospital after a motorcycle crash.

Officials say it happened around 7 p.m. Sunday in the Township of Matteson on 7th street in Waupaca County.

Officials say the 41-year-old woman hit a ditch and then went into a field.

We don’t know her condition.

GREEN BAY- We’ll see mostly sunny skies Monday and a high near 60.

Tuesday will start off sunny but clouds increase in the afternoon with a high near 62.

Wednesday’s high will be in the low to mid 60s with a mix of sun and clouds.

Click here for Director Meteorology Pete Petoniak’s full forecast.

KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) – The death toll from Nepal’s earthquake soared past 3,300 Monday, and how much higher it would rise depended largely on the condition of vulnerable mountain villages that rescue workers were still struggling to reach two days after the disaster.

Reports received so far by the government and aid groups suggest that many communities perched on mountainsides are devastated or struggling to cope. Udav Prashad Timalsina, the top official for the Gorkha district, near the epicenter of Saturday’s quake, said he was in desperate need of help.

“There are people who are not getting food and shelter. I’ve had reports of villages where 70 percent of the houses have been destroyed,” he said.

He said 223 people had been confirmed dead in the district but he presumed “the number would go up because there are thousands who are injured.”

Saturday’s magnitude 7.8 earthquake spread horror from Kathmandu to small villages and to the slopes of Mount Everest, triggering an avalanche that buried part of the base camp packed with foreign climbers preparing to make their summit attempts.

Timalsina said his district had not received enough help from the central government, but Jagdish Pokhrel, the clearly exhausted army spokesman, said nearly the entire 100,000-soldier army was involved in rescue operations.

“We have 90 percent of the army out there working on search and rescue,” he said. “We are focusing our efforts on that, on saving lives.”

Deputy Inspector General of Police Komal Singh Bam said Monday that Nepal’s death toll had risen to 3,218 people. That does not include the 18 people killed in the avalanche, which were counted by the mountaineering association. Another 61 people were killed in neighboring India, and China reported 20 people dead in Tibet.

Well over 1,000 of the victims were in Kathmandu, the capital, where an eerie calm prevailed Monday.

Tens of thousands of families slept outdoors for a second night, fearful of aftershocks that have not ceased. Camped in parks, open squares and a golf course, they cuddled children or pets against chilly Himalayan nighttime temperatures.

They woke to the sound of dogs yelping and jackhammers. As the dawn light crawled across toppled building sites, volunteers and rescue workers carefully shifted broken concrete slabs and crumbled bricks mixed together with humble household items: pots and pans; a purple notebook decorated with butterflies; a framed poster of a bodybuilder; so many shoes.

“It’s overwhelming. It’s too much to think about,” said 55-year-old Bijay Nakarmi, mourning his parents, whose bodies recovered from the rubble of what once was a three-story building.

He could tell how they died from their injuries. His mother was electrocuted by a live wire on the roof top. His father was cut down by falling beams on the staircase.

He had last seen them a few days earlier – on Nepal’s Mothers’ Day – for a cheerful family meal.

“I have their bodies by the river. They are resting until relatives can come to the funeral,” Nakarmi said as workers continued searching for another five people buried underneath the wreckage.

Kathmandu district chief administrator Ek Narayan Aryal said tents and water were being handed out Monday at 10 locations in Kathmandu, but that aftershocks were leaving everyone jittery. The largest, on Sunday, was magnitude 6.7.

“There have been nearly 100 earthquakes and aftershocks, which is making rescue work difficult. Even the rescuers are scared and running because of them,” he said.

“We don’t feel safe at all. There have been so many aftershocks. It doesn’t stop,” said Rajendra Dhungana, 34, who spent Sunday with his niece’s family for her cremation at the Pashuputi Nath Temple.

Acrid, white smoke rose above the Hindu temple, Nepal’s most revered. “I’ve watched hundreds of bodies burn,” Dhungana said.

The capital city is largely a collection of small, poorly constructed brick apartment buildings. The earthquake destroyed swaths of the oldest neighborhoods, but many were surprised by how few modern structures collapsed in the quake.

On Monday morning, some pharmacies and shops for basic provisions opened while bakeries began offering fresh bread. With power lines down, spotty phone connections and almost no Internet connectivity, residents were particularly anxious to buy morning newspapers.

Huge lines of people desperate to secure fuel lined up outside gasoline pumps; prices were the same as they were before the earthquake struck.

“We are not raising prices,” fruit seller Shyam Jaiswal said. “That would be illegal, immoral profit.”

As aid began pouring in from more than a dozen countries, aid workers warned that the situation could be far worse near the epicenter. The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake was centered near Lamjung, a district about 80 kilometers (50 miles) northwest of Kathmandu. While not far away, poor roads and steep mountains make Lamjung difficult to reach. Even before the quake, it could take six hours to drive from Kathmandu to parts of the area. Now, many of the few roads are believed to be cut off by small landslides.

The earthquake was the worst to hit the South Asian nation in more than 80 years. It and was strong enough to be felt all across parts of India, Bangladesh, China’s region of Tibet and Pakistan. Nepal’s worst recorded earthquake in 1934 measured 8.0 and all but destroyed the cities of Kathmandu, Bhaktapur and Patan.

The quake has put a huge strain on the resources of this impoverished country best known for Everest, the highest mountain in the world. The economy of Nepal, a nation of 27.8 million people, relies heavily on tourism, principally trekking and Himalayan mountain climbing.

MADISON (AP) – A Wisconsin lawmaker is trying again to increase penalties for drunken driving in the only state in the nation where first-time offenders face tickets, not jail time.

Rep. Jim Ott, R-Mequon, said he plans to introduce seven bills that would increase punishments for drunken driving offenses, including a measure that would require first-time offenders to appear in court.

“It will make an impression to offenders that this is the road they’re going down,” Ott said. “Hopefully standing in front of a judge will help them change their path.”

Current law doesn’t require a court appearance on a first offense, but does require it on subsequent offenses.

After hearing about cases of drunken drivers who rack up multiple offenses, Ott said he was spurred to action.

Ott said he also decided to reintroduce half a dozen other bills that died in the Legislature last session. It’s not clear whether they will face a similar fate this year, but the same Republicans who were in charge last session didn’t take a position Friday on the proposals.

Among them are bills that would increase the minimum sentence for drivers who injure or kill another person in an accident; eliminate a rule that reduces penalties for offenses that occur more than 10 years apart; increase minimum sentences for fifth- and sixth-time offenders; and close a loophole for offenders with suspended licenses who drive without an ignition interlock device. The ignition interlock device requires a driver to blow into a device similar to a Breathalyzer to start a car. The device must be in place for at least a year.

Federal road safety agencies have said ignition interlocks are a good way to prevent people from drinking and driving repeatedly.

In 2013, there were 185 drunken driving-related deaths and 2,660 injuries on Wisconsin roads, the state’s Department of Transportation reported. The 2013 data is the most recent finalized data made available by the department.

“It’s not a problem we’re going to solve by just adding a couple laws, but the idea is that if we create more of a deterrence and possibly reduce suffering, it’s got to help,” Ott said.

Though he acknowledged that the bills received mixed reviews when they were introduced in 2013, Ott said he was optimistic about their success this session.

Frank Harris, a lobbyist for Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), said the measures are a good start but don’t go far enough. The group has supported a separate bill that would require ignition interlocks for all drivers charged with a previous offense.

A spokesman for the Tavern League, the state’s powerful alcohol lobby, didn’t respond to a message seeking comment Friday.

Myranda Tanck, a spokeswoman for Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, and Kit Beyer, a spokeswoman for Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, said the lawmakers haven’t had time to consider Ott’s proposals.