Green Bay News

LA CENTER, Wash. (AP) — A Washington teen who strapped fake explosives to his body in a stunt to ask a date to prom has been suspended from school.

The Columbian newspaper in Vancouver reports that the five-day suspension will prevent Ibrahim Ahmad from attending La Center High’s dance Saturday.

The 18-year-old senior says he was trying to go all out with his proposal, wearing a vest filled with paper-tube props made to look like explosives. At lunchtime, Ahmad stood on the cafeteria stage and held a sign that said he was “the bomb” and inviting his would-be date to prom.

Superintendent Mark Mansell says Ahmad’s actions were inexcusable and that he deserved punishment for disrupting the learning environment.

Ahmad says the girl accepted, so they will likely go to dinner on prom night.

SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) – Twin blasts from the Calbuco volcano in southern Chile have sent vast clouds of ash into the sky, increasing concerns that it could contaminate water, cause respiratory illnesses and ground more flights.

The volcano erupted Wednesday afternoon for the first time in more than four decades, sending a towering plume of ash more than 6 miles (10 kilometers) into the air. Emergency officials were taken by surprise and had only a few minutes to issue an alert.

Calbuco had another spectacular outburst early Thursday lightning crackling through a dark sky lit orangish red by the explosion.

As the ash cloud spread, “people went into a state of panic,” said Miguel Silva Diaz, 28, an engineer who lives in Puerto Montt, a city about 14 miles (22 kilometers) from the volcano.

“Then, at around 1 a.m., I heard a loud noise, as if somebody had detonated an atomic bomb.”

No injuries were reported and the only missing person since the eruption was found on Thursday. Authorities evacuated 4,000 people as gas and ash continued to spew, and they closed access to the area around the volcano, which lies near the cities of Puerto Varas and Puerto Montt, some 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) south of Santiago.

“I was shocked. I had just arrived home when I looked through the window and saw the column of smoke rising up. We called our families, posted photos,” said Daniel Palma, 30, a psychologist who lives in Puerto Varas.

“We woke up today with a blanket of fog and it hasn’t cleared. We have a layer of smoke above us,” Palma said, adding that many are concerned about the possible effects of the ash on their health.

President Michelle Bachelet declared a state of emergency, saying the eruption of Calbuco is “more serious and unpredictable” than the one last month at the Villarica volcano, which also forced the evacuation of thousands.

Ash continued to fall Thursday in Puerto Montt and other nearby cities, said 30-year-old Patricio Vera, the director of a local radio station. Varas said that after the eruption, hundreds of people rushed to get gas, forcing stations to ration sales, while supermarkets closed early to avoid the risk of looting.

The 6,500 foot (2,000-meter) Calbuco last erupted in 1972 and is considered one of the top three most potentially dangerous among Chile’s 90 active volcanos.

LATAM airlines cancelled flights to and from Puerto Montt because airborne ash can severely damage jet engines.

In 2011, a volcano in the Caulle Cordon of southern Chile erupted violently, forcing the cancellation of hundreds of flights and the evacuation of more than 3,500 people. Stiff winds blew ash, and the thick abrasive soot coated slopes in the sky resort city of San Carlos de Bariloche, over the border in Argentina.

By Thursday afternoon, much ash had made its way to Villa La Angostura, Argentina, a small town about 56 miles (90 kilometers) northeast of the volcano. Cars and streets were coated with a thin layer of ash, but people were otherwise going about their business.

“We are praying that the volcanic activity will be as short as possible,” said mayor Roberto Cacault.

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Video journalist Gonzalo Keogan in Villa La Angostura, Argentina, and Eva Vergara in Santiago contributed to this report.

The recipients of the 22nd Annual Golden Apple Awards were honored April 22, 2015, at the Radisson Hotel and Conference Center in Ashwaubenon.

BOSTON (AP) – The prosecution rested its case Thursday during the penalty phase of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s trial after playing a video showing the mother of 8-year-old Martin Richard crouched over him and resting her head on his chest as he lay dying.

“I heard ‘please’ and ‘Martin’ being uttered by Denise Richard,” said Steve Woolfenden, a man who was lying on the pavement next to Martin and his mother after the second bomb exploded.

“Just pleading with her son,” Woolfenden said, as prosecutors played a video that showed Denise Richard leaning over close to her son, then putting her head down on him.

The boy bled to death on the sidewalk.

Woolfenden’s left leg had been sheared off. He described frantically trying to get his 3-year-old son, Leo, out of his stroller. As he lay on the pavement, he saw Martin and Denise Richard.

The prosecution rested its case against bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on Thursday in the penalty phase of the trial. They will get a chance for rebuttal after the defense presents its case, which is expected to begin Monday.

Tsarnaev was convicted this month of all 30 charges against him. Three people were killed and more than 260 others were wounded when twin bombs exploded near the finish line of the marathon April 15, 2013.

A jury must decide whether to sentence him to life in prison or to death.

Also testifying Thursday was Heather Abbott, whose left leg was amputated after the bombing. She described her own painful loss, then identified photos of 16 others who lost limbs as prosecutors tried to drive home the brutality of the attack to jurors who will decide the bomber’s fate.

Abbott, of Newport, Rhode Island, said she was catapulted through the entrance of a restaurant when the second bomb exploded. She said her foot felt like it was on fire, so she began crawling to follow a crowd of people trying to get away from the bomb.

Later, in the hospital, a doctor recommended amputating her left leg below the knee. Her heel had been entirely blown off, and her foot was severely damaged.

“It was probably the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make,” she said.

Prosecutor Nadine Pellegrini asked Abbott to identify photographs of other amputees she has come to know since the bombing. The photos showed the amputees wearing prosthetic limbs, in wheelchairs and on crutches.

Another amputee, Marc Fucarile, testified Thursday from a wheelchair.

Fucarile, whose right leg was blown off in the bombing, glared at Tsarnaev as he sat about 10 feet away at a table with his lawyers. Tsarnaev did not look at him and stared straight ahead impassively.

Fucarile said he has had more than 60 surgeries. Two years after the bombing, it is still unclear whether his left leg can be saved, he said.

“We are going to try,” he said.

CHARLOTTE, North Carolina (AP) — Former CIA Director David Petraeus, whose career was destroyed by an extramarital affair with his biographer, was set to be sentenced Thursday in federal court in Charlotte for giving her classified material while she was working on the book.

Petraeus will appear at the sentencing, which comes two months after he agreed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor count of unauthorized removal and retention of classified material.

The plea agreement carries a possible sentence of up to a year in prison. In court papers, prosecutors recommended two years of probation and a $40,000 fine. But the judge is not bound by that and could still impose a prison sentence.

The agreement was filed in Charlotte, where Paula Broadwell, the general’s biographer and former lover, lives with her husband and children.

The affair ruined the reputation of the retired four-star Army general who led U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

As part of his deal, Petraeus agreed not to contest the set of facts laid out by the government.

Prosecutors said that while Broadwell was writing her book in 2011, Petraeus gave her eight binders of classified material he had improperly kept from his time as the top military commander in Afghanistan. Days later, he took the binders back to his house.

Among the secret information contained in the “black books” were the names of covert operatives, the coalition war strategy and notes about Petraeus’ discussions with President Barack Obama and the National Security Council, prosecutors said.

Those binders were later seized by the FBI in an April 2013 search of Petraeus’ Arlington, Virginia, home, where he had kept them in the unlocked drawer of a desk in a ground-floor study.

Prosecutors said that after resigning from the CIA in November 2012, Petraeus had signed a form falsely attesting he had no classified material. He also lied to FBI agents by denying he supplied the information to Broadwell, according to court documents.

Petraeus admitted having an affair with Broadwell when he resigned as CIA director. Both have publicly apologized and said their romantic relationship began only after he had retired from the military.

Broadwell’s admiring biography of him, “All In: The Education of David Petraeus,” came out in 2012, before the affair was exposed.

Petraeus held the CIA post less than a year, not long enough to leave a significant mark on the spy agency. The core of his identity has been a military man.

With a Ph.D. and a reputation as a thoughtful strategist, Petraeus was brought in by President George W. Bush to command multinational forces in Iraq in 2007, a period when the war began to turn in favor of the U.S.

Petraeus’ command coincided with the “surge” of American forces in Iraq and a plan to pay Sunni militias to fight al-Qaida in Iraq.

With American help, the Sunni tribes were able to push out insurgents and enable U.S. troops to withdraw in 2011. Those same Sunni areas are now controlled by the Islamic State group, which evolved from the remnants of al-Qaida after Iraqi’s Shiite-led government proved weak.

BOSTON (AP) — Former New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez has been moved to a new prison a week after he was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life behind bars.

A state prisons official says Hernandez was moved Wednesday to the maximum-security Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center in Shirley.

Hernandez had been at Cedar Junction prison in Walpole since he was convicted April 15 of killing 27-year-old Odin Lloyd in 2013. Lloyd was dating the sister of Hernandez’s fiancee.

Souza-Baranowski is the state Department of Correction’s newest prison. It opened in 1998 and is about 40 miles west of Boston.

It houses more than 1,000 inmates and is named for two department employees killed during a failed escape attempt in 1972.

WASHINGTON (AP) – Federal prosecutor Loretta Lynch won confirmation to serve as attorney general Thursday from a Senate that forced her to wait more than five months for the title and remained divided to the end.

The 56-43 vote installs Lynch, 55, now U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, as the first black woman in the nation’s top law enforcement post. She will replace Eric Holder, a perennial lightning rod for conservatives who was once held in contempt of Congress.

The vote total for Lynch was the lowest for any attorney general since Michael Mukasey won confirmation with 53 votes in 2007 after Democrats decried his refusal to describe waterboarding as torture.

For Lynch, the issue that tore into her support with Republicans was immigration and her refusal to denounce President Barack Obama’s executive actions limiting deportations for millions of people living illegally in this country. Questioned on the issue at her confirmation hearing in January, she said that she believed Obama’s actions were reasonable and lawful.

Democrats angrily criticized Republicans for using the issue against her, but Republicans were unapologetic.

Announced GOP presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said Lynch’s comments rendered her “unsuitable for confirmation as attorney general of the United States. That was a shame.”

Yet after returning from the campaign trail to rail against Lynch on the Senate floor, Cruz was the only senator absent when the vote was called.

Still, Lynch won the support of 10 Republicans, more than expected in the days heading into the vote. In a surprise, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., was among those voting “yes.”

The long delay in confirming Lynch since she was nominated in November incensed Democrats, with Obama himself weighing in last week to lament Senate dysfunction and decry the wait as “crazy” and “embarrassing.” There were various reasons for the delay, most recently a lengthy and unexpected impasse over abortion on an unrelated bill to combat sex trafficking.

Yet Democrats controlled the Senate when Lynch was nominated last November and could have brought up her nomination for a vote then. They held off with the GOP’s encouragement after being routed in the midterm elections, and spent the time confirming judges instead.

There was an expectation that Republican leaders would move Lynch’s nomination swiftly this year, especially since most GOP members of Congress loathe Holder, who’s seen as too politically close to Obama and even more liberal. But instead, the nomination became tangled in the dispute over Obama’s executive actions on immigration, and seemed to stall.

Lynch, who grew up in North Carolina, has been the top prosecutor since 2010 for a district that includes Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and Long Island, a role she also held from 1999 to 2001.

NEW YORK (AP) — Commissioner Rob Manfred says Pete Rose will be allowed to participate in activities surrounding this summer’s All-Star Game in his hometown of Cincinnati.

Rose, baseball’s career hits leader and a former Reds star player and manager, agreed to a lifetime ban from the sport in 1989 after a Major League Baseball investigation concluded he bet on his team to win while he was managing the club.

Manfred said initial thoughts about Rose’s role at the July 14 game will come from Reds owner Bob Castellini.

“I’ve agreed with Mr. Castellini that we’re going to have a conversation about what specific kind of participation the Reds are interested in, and we have not had that conversation yet,” Manfred said Thursday during a meeting with the Associated Press Sports Editors. “You can rest assured that he will about allowed to participate in some of the activities.”

MLB permitted Rose to take part in the All-Century team announcement at Atlanta’s Turner Field during the 1999 World Series and a Reds ceremony in 2013 honoring their 1975 and ’76 championship teams.

In 24 seasons in the majors, Rose had 4,256 hits, won three World Series titles and was voted the 1963 NL Rookie of the Year and the 1973 NL Most Valuable Player. A 17-time All-Star, Rose made the team at five different positions.

Rose, who turned 74 this month, applied for reinstatement in September 1997 and met in November 2002 with Commissioner Bud Selig, who never ruled on the application. Rose submitted another application for reinstatement after Manfred succeeded Selig in January.

“We have gathered volumes, I mean literally volumes of documents, related to the original investigation,” Manfred said, explaining how they had been brought out of storage. “They’re in the process of organizing those, preparing summaries so that I can review those documents.”

MLB has spoken with Rose’s representatives about how the process for Manfred’s evaluation will go forward. Manfred said it was too early to estimate a timetable.

Fox, which will televise the All-Star Game, said last weekend it had hired Rose as a studio analyst this season. Because of the ban, Rose is not allowed in areas of ballparks not open to fans, except with special approval from the commissioner’s office.

“Fox’s decision is their decision,” Manfred said. “It’s really not something that we have any contractual control over or that we ever had any input in.”

Rose has been ineligible for the Hall of Fame ballot because of the lifetime ban. Manfred was asked about the distinction between Rose and players tainted by allegations of steroids use, who are eligible for the Hall but have fallen short of election.

“I don’t accept the analogy between steroids and gambling,” Manfred said. “I see gambling as different in a sense that baseball’s rules on gambling have been in place literally for decades. They’ve been clear. They spell out specific penalties. The reason those rules exist is that gambling is corrosive in a number of ways, including raising the specter of somebody of not doing everything they can to win. Steroids — a very, very different kind of issue.”

NEW YORK – Donald Driver is the all-time receptions and yardage leader for the Green Bay Packers, and will be making one more play for the team in the upcoming NFL Draft. Driver will be announcing the team’s second round pick in Chicago on Friday night.

Driver, a seventh round pick in 1999, will be one of a list of NFL Legends asked by the NFL to announce the 2nd round pick. He will be joined by Pro Football Hall of Famers Jim Kelly for the Bills, Dick Butkus for the Bears and Darren Woodson for the Cowboys.

Here is a complete list of the teams and the former player who will announce the team’s second round pick:

Arizona Cardinals ADRIAN WILSON S
Atlanta Falcons TODD MCCLURE C
Baltimore Ravens DUANE STARKS CB
Buffalo Bills JIM KELLY QB
Carolina Panthers PAT TERRELL S
Chicago Bears DICK BUTKUS LB
Cincinnati Bengals ICKEY WOODS FB
Cleveland Browns HANFORD DIXON CB
Dallas Cowboys DARREN WOODSON S
Denver Broncos RICK UPCHURCH WR
Detroit Lions CHRIS SPIELMAN LB
Green Bay Packers DONALD DRIVER WR
Houston Texans ERIC BROWN S
Indianapolis Colts BILL BROOKS WR
Jacksonville Jaguars GREG JONES FB
Kansas City Chiefs GARY GREEN CB
Miami Dolphins DWIGHT STEPHENSON C
Minnesota Vikings EJ HENDERSON LB
New England Patriots TY LAW CB
New Orleans Saints JON STINCHCOMB T
New York Giants SHAUN WILLIAMS S
New York Jets EMERSON BOOZER RB
Oakland Raiders WILLIE BROWN CB
Philadelphia Eagles JON RUNYAN T
Pittsburgh Steelers MEL BLOUNT CB
St. Louis Rams PISA TINOISAMOA LB
San Diego Chargers ANTHONY MILLER WR
San Francisco 49ers CHARLES HALEY LB/DE
Seattle Seahawks KENNY EASLEY S
Tampa Bay Buccaneers MIKE ALSTOTT RB
Tennessee Titans MICHAEL ROOS T
Washington Redskins BRIG OWENS S

WASHINGTON (AP) – The U.S. government intends to make payments to the families of two al-Qaida hostages that President Barack Obama says were accidentally killed in a drone strike.

Obama press secretary Josh Earnest won’t say how much will be given. But he says compensation will be provided to the families of American Warren Weinstein and Italy’s Giovanni Lo Porto.

Both men were captured years ago while working as aid workers in Pakistan. Obama says he deeply regrets that they were killed on a counterterrorism mission in January.

The president says the mission targeted an al-Qaida compound, but the U.S. did not know the hostages were being held there.

MADISON, Wis. (AP) – Wisconsin regulators have given final approval to a $580 million high-voltage power line that will run between Madison and La Crosse.

The Public Service Commission approved the 180-mile line on Thursday. American Transmission Co. and Xcel Energy next month plan to begin negotiations with homeowners along the route.

The utilities say the 345,000-volt line will give the state a more robust electrical system as coal plants are retired, provide savings to Wisconsin customers and make it easier to import wind energy from Iowa and Minnesota.

But critics question whether the project is needed given that electricity sales have been flat in recent years.

Opponents of the project were expected to challenge in court the PSC’s approval of the power line.

Construction is slated to begin in about a year.

TOWN OF ST. MARIE – The Green Lake County Sheriff’s Dept. is involved in a tactical situation with an armed man, according to Chief Deputy Mark Putzke.

The incident is happening in the area of Hwy. 73 and County Y, north of Princeton. At this point, no roads are closed but people are advised to avoid the area.

No details about the event started have been released.

NEW YORK (AP) — As truth wars go, Vani Hari of the Food Babe blog has produced a doozy.

The former management consultant turned healthy-living activist has a best-selling book and an army of supporters. And with the help of her fans, she’s led numerous successful online petitions to persuade food industry giants to rid their products of ingredients she deems unacceptable.

What Hari doesn’t have, critics argue, is a background in related sciences or nutrition. And since starting her Food Babe blog in 2011, she’s made mistakes that have landed her in a feeding frenzy.

“I think she means well, but I wish she would pick more important issues and pay closer attention to the science,” said Marion Nestle, a nutrition, food studies and public health professor at New York University.

Hari certainly isn’t the first food activist without a science background. So why has she become the food revolution figure that so many love to hate?

“Because we’re winning,” Hari said in a recent interview, citing numerous commitments by companies to provide more “clean” and “simple” ingredients, often in response to her campaigns.

The answer from Dr. Steven Novella, a clinical neurologist and assistant professor at Yale University’s school of medicine, is more complicated. The working skeptic — he has a podcast and blogs — is one of Hari’s most vocal foes. “It’s almost like she’s a food terrorist,” he said. “She will target some benign ingredient that has a scary sounding name. Her criteria is if she can’t pronounce it then it’s scary.”

You bet, said Hari, who thinks a host of chemicals and additives used in the U.S. have no business being consumed, and notes that many are not allowed or are strictly limited in Europe and elsewhere.

The heat for Hari, who grew up on processed food, is fairly recent as her presence has grown. She gets nearly 5 million blog readers a month. She also gets death threats. And she’s banned so many people from her streams that they now have their own page on Facebook.

“I really do believe the attacks on me and this movement is a distraction from the need to reform the food system,” Hari said by phone from Charlotte, North Carolina, where she lives. “My sole purpose is to get people healthier. Unfortunately, many of the critics out there, their sole purpose is only to criticize.”

Much of the bashing, she said, amounts to “needles in haystacks.” Among errors often cited by detractors are a couple that occurred in her early days. She deleted the posts and later acknowledged the mistakes.

One, from August 2011, had her taking issue with the air on planes being mixed with up to 50 percent nitrogen. She failed to consider that the atmosphere is comprised of 78 percent of the latter.

Another, from July 2012, trashed microwaves as destroying nutrients in food and producing malformed water crystals. The second notion is based on a bizarre theory by a controversial Japanese researcher who maintains that water crystals turn ugly when exposed to foul language.

“These were before I decided to make this my career. It’s like saying that the New York Times or whoever aren’t allowed to make mistakes. Back then I was blogging as a hobby,” said Hari, who supports some alternative approaches to health and healing.

But even beyond these more egregious examples, Hari’s mainstay tactics include overstating health risks and linking artificial ingredients with their non-edible uses, the latter a particularly effective way of rallying support. Last summer, for example, she took issue with Anheuser-Busch and MillerCoors over a foam stabilizer and several other ingredients.

In that post, she referred to propylene glycol, also found in airplane deicing liquid. Other bloggers claimed she meant propylene glycol alginate, an unrelated substance that comes from kelp. Neither were among ingredients in Budweiser and Miller Lite (which the companies posted in response to Hari), though both are allowed by U.S. regulators.

“What she does over and over again is target a chemical and try to provoke a disgust reflex by talking about what other purposes a chemical is used for or where it’s derived from,” Novella said.

Why do companies cave? Subway, for instance, removed azodicarbonamide, a chemical in its bread also found in yoga mats. But it’s also found in plenty of other bread products, and is well-studied and safe, says Novella. He theorizes it’s just easier, to some companies, to make questioned ingredients disappear.

“I think it’s making a return-on-investment kind of evaluation. They figure choice A, explain to the public why this scary sounding chemical is safe or B, just get rid of it,” Novella said.

It was Hari’s railing against “toxic” levels of sugar and a widely used caramel coloring in the Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte that helped motivate Yvette d’Entremont in Los Angeles to begin blogging about her at Scibabe.com. Known as Science Babe (Note, there’s another Science Babe out there), d’Entremont is by far Hari’s most entertaining and trash-talkiest critic.

Under the headline, “The ‘Food Babe’ Blogger is Full of (Expletive),” d’Entremont — who once worked as an analytical chemist for a pesticide company — took after Food Babe earlier this month on Gawker over the seasonal latte.

“She took caramel color level IV and said that it was in (the government’s) carcinogen class 2B. It sounds horrible, but there’s another thing in the cup that is carcinogen class 2B: the coffee, because of the acrylomide from the roasting process,” d’Entremont said.

“Between her egregious abuse of the word ‘toxin’ anytime there’s a chemical she can’t pronounce and asserting that everyone who disagrees with her is a paid shill, it’s hard to pinpoint her biggest sin,” d’Entremont said.

As for sugar in the latte, the average adult would need to down 40 to 50 of them in a sitting to have a toxic dose, counters d’Entremont. “And at that point you would also have a toxic dose of water and caffeine.”

OSHKOSH – A man who broke into an apartment, argued with the resident, and choked him to death was sentenced Thursday to 30 years in prison.

Sean Oehlke was also placed on extended supervision for 15 years after his release, according to online court records.

Winnebago County Judge Barbara Key sentenced Oehlke to 20 years in prison on the second-degree reckless homicide charge for the Oct. 23 death of William Summers. Key then added another decade on the burglary conviction.

Town of Menasha police say Oehlke broke into an apartment Oct. 24 and a confrontation led to the death of Summers. Oehlke placed Summers into a headlock until the victim went limp, according to the criminal complaint.

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Visiting Minnesota, likely Republican presidential candidate Scott Walker is discounting the idea that Wisconsin’s economy has performed worse on his watch than its Democratic-led neighbor.

Walker maintained Thursday that Wisconsin made gains since he took office and that the comparison to Minnesota needs extra context. Walker says Wisconsin’s unemployment rate has tumbled since he took office in 2011. Minnesota’s jobless rate has consistently been lower than Wisconsin’s but never climbed as high during the Great Recession.

Walker offered his assessment after following a closed meeting with Minnesota House and Senate Republicans. While in Minnesota, he was also scheduled to speak in private settings to top business leaders and a conservative group.

He reiterated his plans to wait until after Wisconsin’s budget passes in June to declare his presidential-race plans.

NEW YORK (AP) – Scientists are getting their best look yet at the DNA code for the woolly mammoth, thanks to work that could be a step toward bringing back the extinct beast.

Researchers deciphered the complete DNA code, or genomes, of two mammoths. The new genomes are far more refined than a previous one announced in 2008.

One new genome comes from a mammoth that lived about 45,000 years ago in northeastern Siberia. The other comes from a creature that lived about 4,300 years ago on Russia’s Wrangel Island in the Arctic Circle.

The results are announced in a paper released Thursday by the journal Current Biology. The DNA was extracted from a tooth and a sample of soft tissue.

• Click here to read the full journal article

Woolly mammoths, which were about as big as modern African elephants, sported long curved tusks and thick hairy coats. They are the best-known species of mammoth, with information coming from frozen and often well-preserved carcasses in Siberia.

The Wrangel Island population was the last of the creatures to go extinct. Some scientists have suggested that mammoths could be created anew through genetic engineering, an idea not everybody favors.

Love Dalen of the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm, an author of the new study, said re-creating mammoths is not a goal of his research team. He also said it’s “very uncertain” that it’s even possible.

Still, he wrote in an email, “Our genomes bring us one critical step closer to re-creating a mammoth…. I think it would be cool if it could be done, but I’m not sure it should be done.”

One ethical drawback, he said, is that elephants would be used as surrogate mothers to carry the genetically engineered mammoth embryos. That species mismatch might lead to problems that cause the mothers to suffer, he said.

Hendrik Poinar of Canada’s McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, who is another study author, said the new work “gives us at least a blueprint to work from.”

Poinar said mammoths could be a welcome addition if re-introduced to the wild, but if they were made just for exhibition at zoos, “I don’t see any good in that at all.”

STAR PRAIRIE (AP) – St. Croix County sheriff’s officials say a driver is in jail after striking and killing a man who was walking along a highway.

Twenty-eight-year-old Jeffrey Boardman of New Richmond was walking with another man on Highway C near Star Prairie about 2:30 a.m. Thursday. Boardman was struck and killed. The other man was not injured.

Sheriff’s Capt. Jeff Klatt tells KARE-TV that the 23-year-old female driver could appear at a bail hearing later Thursday.

WASHINGTON (AP) – Adam Gadahn, a former Little Leaguer who grew up to become a spokesman for Osama bin Laden, was born in 1978 in Oregon as Adam Pearlman.

Gadahn, who had treason charges pending against him, was killed in a drone strike in January, the White House acknowledged on Thursday. Another January drone strike killed Ahmed Farouq, the operations leader for Al-Qaida in Pakistan, as well as an American hostage and an Italian hostage.

Gadahn’s father, a musician in California, changed his name from Pearlman to Gadahn in the 1970s. Gadahn, who was raised as a Protestant Christian, grew up and was home-schooled on a goat farm in Riverside County, California.

In 1995, at age 17, he converted to Islam at a mosque in nearby Orange County. A few years later, he moved to Pakistan, where he joined al-Qaida as a propagandist. Using the name “Azzam the American,” he appeared in numerous al-Qaida videos, denouncing U.S. moves in Afghanistan and elsewhere and threatening attacks on Western interests abroad.

His work led to Gadahn becoming the only American charged with treason since the World War II era.

U.S. authorities filed treason charges against him in 2006 and had offered a $1 million reward for information leading to his arrest or conviction. The FBI’s Reward for Justice program, which lists wanted terrorists, said Gadahn was 5 feet 11 inches tall and weighed a little more than 200 pounds. He had brown hair, brown or hazel eyes and had scars on his chest and right forearm.

Further details about Gadahn surfaced in documents leaked by former National Security Agency analyst Edward Snowden.

The documents show that bin Laden’s inner circle was frustrated when, in 2010, attention in the U.S. shifted to the economic downturn without linking al-Qaida to the damage. “All the political talk in America is about the economy, forgetting or ignoring the war and its role in weakening the economy,” Gadahn wrote.

The papers also showed that he was a student of U.S. media. Gadahn described ABC as “all right, actually it could be one of the best channels as far as we are concerned,” criticized CNN as being too close to the government and heaped scorn on Fox News, which “falls into the abyss, as you know, and lacks neutrality.”

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) – What better way to celebrate the Hubble Space Telescope’s quarter-century in orbit than with cosmic fireworks?

On Thursday – one day before the 25th anniversary of Hubble’s launch – NASA released an image taken by the space telescope showing a brilliant breeding ground for stars. This stellar nursery is 20,000 light-years from Earth in the Constellation Carina.

NASA’s science mission chief John Grunsfeld told the crowd gathered for the unveiling at the Newseum in Washington that the fact it’s taken thousands of years for the light from these bright, young stars to reach us means “they planned really far in advance.”

Grunsfeld was among five former shuttle astronauts who flew on Hubble missions who attended the ceremony. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden also was there; he helped deliver Hubble to orbit on April 24, 1990 aboard space shuttle Discovery.

• Click here to learn more about Hubble’s 25th anniversary

Bolden said neither he nor anyone else back then expected the space telescope to work much beyond 15 years – or accomplish so much. From its approximately 350-mile-high perch, Hubble has made more than 1.2 observations of more than 38,000 celestial objects.

“A quarter-century later, Hubble has fundamentally changed our human understanding of our universe and our place in it,” Bolden said

Noted Grunsfeld: “Hubble inspires the world.”

NASA expects Hubble to keep producing first-class science for at least five more years.

The observations for the anniversary picture were collected in 2013 and 2014.

Another NASA ceremony will take place Friday night at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum.

GOODYEAR, Ariz. (AP) – Phoenix Mercury standout player Brittney Griner and fiancee and fellow WNBA player Glory Johnson were arrested on suspicion of assault and disorderly conduct following a fight at their home in suburban Phoenix.

The two 24-year-olds were booked into jail in Phoenix following their arrests Wednesday and later released. Agents for the players did not immediately respond to requests for comment Thursday.

Officers arrested Griner and Johnson, who plays for the Tulsa Shock, after a fight between the couple turned physical, Goodyear police spokeswoman Lisa Kutis said. No weapons were involved, and neither woman required hospital care for their minor injuries, Kutis said.

The pair announced their engagement late last summer and expected to wed next month.

Both teams said in statements that they were looking into the situation and would not comment further.

“Of course our first concern is for Glory’s well-being and health,” Shock president Steve Swetoha said.

Griner helped the Phoenix Mercury win a championship this past September. She led the league with a record 129 blocks and was the WNBA Defensive Player of the Year. She also helped the U.S. win a gold medal last month at the world championship.

Griner is a two-time AP college basketball player of the year and led Baylor to a 40-0 season and the 2012 NCAA title. She was the No. 1 pick by the Mercury in the 2013 draft.