Green Bay News

Learn how to help monitor the population of Wisconsin’s 12 frog and toad species.

MADISON (AP) – The state Assembly has passed a bill that would make lying about serving in the military a crime.

The Republican-authored bill would make falsely claiming military service or an award related to military service a misdemeanor punishable by up to nine months in jail and $10,000 in fines. If someone makes those claims with the intent to commit or aid another crime he or she would be guilty of a felony punishable by up to six years in prison and $10,000 in fines.

The Assembly passed the measure on a voice vote Tuesday. The bill now goes to the state Senate.

Kimberly’s Brice Swick talks about his team’s win over De Pere on Monday.

MADISON (AP) – Colored lights on motorcycles would be legal under a bill the state Assembly has passed.

Current Wisconsin law prohibits operating a motor vehicle with lights other than white or amber in front and red in the rear.

The bill’s Assembly sponsor, Republican John Jagler of Watertown, says colored LED lights are becoming more popular on motorcycles. Under the bill, people could equip their motorcycles with any color lights aside from red, blue or amber as long as they shine down and don’t flash or rotate.

Jagler says he introduced the bill at the request of a constituent who got a ticket for violating current light prohibitions. He says more lights will increase motorcycle visibility.

The Assembly passed the bill on a voice vote Tuesday. It goes next to the Senate.

MADISON (AP) – Assembly Speaker Robin Vos says people should donate to Wisconsin Public Television and Wisconsin Public Radio in the face of cuts Gov. Scott Walker has proposed in his state budget.

Walker’s budget would slash $5 million from the board that operates public broadcasting. Walker has said public television and public radio should be able to absorb the cut through fundraising.

Vos said during a news conference on Tuesday that his alarm clock clicks on to Wisconsin Public Radio and people should make a donation to the operations if they want to help.

He said lawmakers’ priorities as they revise Walker’s budget are finding more money for K-12 education, transportation and the University of Wisconsin System.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House says President Barack Obama is removing Cuba from a list of state sponsors of terrorism, a key step in President Barack Obama’s bid to normalize relations between the two countries.

The White House says on Twitter that Obama has submitted to Congress required reports and certifications indicating his intent to take Cuba off the list.

Obama made the final decision following a State Department review of Cuba’s presence on the list.

Many years ago, the U.S. stopped actively accusing Cuba of supporting terrorism.

Cuba was one of four countries on the U.S. list of nations accused of repeatedly supporting global terrorism. The countries still on the list are Iran, Syria and Sudan.

Obama announced in December that the U.S. and Cuba were ending a half-century of hostilities.

MADISON (AP) – Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos says he supports raising state park fees and soliciting corporate sponsorships for the facilities.

Gov. Scott Walker’s budget calls for eliminating all funding for state parks derived from tax dollars. The spending plan would raise annual admission fees by $3 and nightly camping fees by $2. Department of Natural Resources Secretary Cathy Stepp told lawmakers last month that the agency was considering selling naming rights for parks in an effort of generating more revenue.

Vos said during a news conference Tuesday that he doesn’t have a problem with corporations sponsoring state parks. He noted that legislators are looking for corporate sponsorship to help defray the cost of a new Milwaukee Bucks arena so finding sponsorships for other state amenities isn’t a bad idea.

MADISON (AP) – Assembly Speaker Robin Vos says increasing SeniorCare fees would be reasonable since they’re so modest as lawmakers revise Gov. Scott Walker’s budget.

The governor’s spending plan calls for requiring enrollees in the popular prescription drug program to first sign up for the federal Medicare Medicare Part D. Rep. John Nygren, Republican co-chairman of the Legislature’s finance committee, has said that idea is dead.

Vos, a Rochester Republican, said during a news conference that raising the $30 annual SeniorCare enrollment fee slightly would be reasonable since it’s so inexpensive to get into the program right now. He didn’t offer specifics, saying Assembly Republicans still need to talk about it.

He said encouraging people to sign up for Medicare Part D but keeping SeniorCare as an option is reasonable, too.

MADISON (AP) – Wisconsin lawmakers have advanced a measure that would allow students at private driving schools to learn the rules of the road online rather than in the classroom.

The state Assembly approved the bill Tuesday on a voice vote.

Current Department of Transportation regulations require private driving classes to occur in a classroom. The bill would allow driving schools the option of providing online courses. Public schools that offer driver’s education already provide online training.

Students would still be required to pass a state-approved driver education course, log 30 hours of behind-the-wheel experience and pass a driving skills test before receiving a drivers’ license.

The measure now moves to the Senate.

MADISON (AP) – The state Assembly’s leader says a plan to cap tuition increases for University of Wisconsin System resident undergraduates is reasonable but doesn’t change his position that system autonomy wouldn’t serve any purpose.

Gov. Scott Walker’s budget calls for maintaining a freeze on resident undergraduate tuition through mid-2017 and decoupling the system from state oversight. Critics maintain that would allow regents to raise tuition dramatically.

Walker modified his budget on Monday to cap resident undergraduate tuition increases to the rate of inflation post-freeze. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, a Rochester Republican, said Tuesday that the cap makes sense because parents wouldn’t have to worry about huge tuition hikes. But he says he still doesn’t support autonomy because he doubts the regents will use it to run the system more efficiently and cheaply.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House signaled Tuesday that President Barack Obama would sign a proposed compromise giving Congress a say on an emerging deal to curb Iran’s nuclear program — and a chance to undercut any agreement it doesn’t like.

Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee reached a compromise on the bill as Secretary of State John Kerry and other members of the Cabinet visited Capitol Hill for a second straight day to sell lawmakers on details of a possible final deal and plead for time to reach an accord with Tehran by the end of June.

International negotiators are trying to reach a deal that would prevent Iran from being able to develop nuclear weapons. In exchange, Tehran would get relief from economic sanctions that are crippling its economy.

Obama, who wants a deal with Iran to burnish his foreign policy legacy, has been in a standoff for months with lawmakers who not only believe that Congress should have an opportunity to weigh in, but remain skeptical that Iran will honor any agreement.

The compromise bill that the committee is to vote on Tuesday would shorten from 60 to 30 days the amount of time Congress would have to review any final deal. During that time, Obama would be able to lift sanctions imposed through presidential action, but would be blocked from easing sanctions levied by Congress.

Twelve more days would be added to the review period if Congress passed a bill and sent it to the president. There would be additional 10 days during which the president could veto it — something he initially threatened to do.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the White House would withhold final judgment on the bill while it works its way through Congress, wary that potential changes could be made in committee that would render it unpalatable. But he said the White House could support the bill in its revised form.

“Despite the things about it that we don’t like, enough substantial changes have been made that the president would be willing to sign it,” Earnest said.

Moreover, if the deal is submitted after July 9 — a short time after the final agreement is to be reached on June 30 — the review period would revert to 60 days. Under the compromise bill, the president would be required to certify to Congress every 90 days that Iran is complying with terms of any final agreement.

Meantime, there was evidence that GOP senators were backing off their anti-Iran amendments.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who announced his candidacy for president on Monday, had proposed an amendment that would require Iran’s leaders to accept Israel’s right to exist. Rubio said his amendment probably could pass in the committee, but ultimately “could imperil the entire arrangement.”

Earlier, Sen. Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, had said he hoped the compromise bill would be approved overwhelmingly by the committee and sent quickly to the Senate.

“Hopefully, it’ll move to the floor and be able to generate a veto-proof majority,” said Corker, R-Tenn., referring to the 67 votes it would need on the Senate floor to override a presidential veto. But that was before the White House signaled that the new compromise version might be acceptable.

There is strong bipartisan support on Capitol Hill for Congress to review any deal that the U.S. and five other nations are able to negotiate with Iran. And many remain wary that any deal will eventually be reached.

In a speech on the Senate floor, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said: “The American people should have a say.”

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, told reporters, “Congress should absolutely have the opportunity to review this deal. The administration appears to want a deal at any cost.”

Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., said he was confident that compromises will hold, but said “It’s the Senate. … It’s not over till it’s over.”

He said Democrats are expected to withdraw their support of the legislation if Republicans successfully push amendments that would pull the bill as it’s written “sharply to the right.” He was referring to amendments proposed by Republicans to make the administration certify that Iran is not supporting terrorism and had publicly renounced its threat to destroy Israel — two hurdles that would be nearly impossible to scale.

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Associated Press writers Charles Babington, Josh Lederman and Alan Fram contributed to this report.

CHICAGO (AP) — A federal appeals court in Chicago has upheld a lower court ruling that tossed U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson’s challenge to the federal health care overhaul.

Tuesday’s unanimous opinion says the Wisconsin Republican has no standing to sue because he hasn’t shown how executive rules adopted after President Barack Obama’s reform harmed him personally.

7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals specifically rejected Johnson’s contention that his reputation was diminished because the rules gave his own staffers exclusive benefits that his Wisconsin constituents weren’t entitled to receive.

The three-judge panel says it couldn’t see how Johnson’s reputation “could be sullied or his electability diminished by being offered, against his will, a benefit that he then decided to refuse.”

It says citing political damage as a harm was too “hypothetical.”

BOSTON (AP) — Jurors in the federal death penalty trial of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev must stay away from this year’s marathon and any events related to the anniversary of the 2013 attack, a judge warned Tuesday.

Judge George O’Toole Jr. called jurors in to court to give them the warning as they wait for the penalty phase of the trial to begin April 21. The second anniversary of the bombings is Wednesday. This year’s marathon is scheduled for April 20.

O’Toole said he gave jurors the warning in court — despite the fact that most of them live outside Boston — to stress the importance of avoiding any events related to the marathon and media coverage of the events.

“I trust that you have been doing this all along,” O’Toole said.

The marathon is run on Patriots’ Day, a holiday in Massachusetts that commemorates the first battles of the Revolutionary War.

Last week, Tsarnaev was convicted of all 30 charges against him. O’Toole told the jury that the next phase of the trial — called the penalty phase — is expected to last about four weeks. The same jury will be asked to decide if Tsarnaev should be sentenced to death or spend the rest of his life in prison.

Three people were killed and more than 260 were injured when two bombs exploded near the finish line of the marathon April 15, 2013.

GOLDSBORO, N.C. (AP) — Police said Tuesday they were investigating the fatal shooting of a gay community college worker as a possible hate crime.

The shooting victim, 44-year-old campus print shop director Ron Lane, was gunned down by former student Kenneth Morgan Stancil III on Monday morning, police said. Lane dismissed Stancil from the print shop’s work-study program in March because he had too many absences.

Police have not released a motive in the shooting and said the men’s relationship was purely a supervisor-student one. Calls to Stancil’s home were not returned and family members declined comment to an Associated Press reporter.

Lane’s supervisor at the college said Lane was gay, but police refused to say why a hate crime was being investigated.

“At this time, I’m not prepared to divulge that information,” Goldsboro police Sgt. Jeremy Sutton said at a news conference.

Experts who track hate groups said Stancil’s facial tattoo with the number “88” was a clear indication of a neo-Nazi, who have been accused of attacking gays. However, police have not said whether Stancil held white supremacist beliefs.

Police say the 20-year-old Stancil entered the Wayne Community College print shop where he used to work and fired once with a pistol-grip shotgun, killing Lane, his former supervisor, just as Lane was arriving for work. The shooting sparked a campus-wide lockdown as police stormed the building searching for Stancil, who immediately fled on a motorcycle. The manhunt lasted for nearly a day and ended with Stancil’s arrest on a Florida beach.

“Mr. Stancil had a calculated plan,” Sutton said.

After the shooting, police found the motorcycle abandoned in a median on Interstate 95 in Lumberton, North Carolina, about 80 miles south of Goldsboro, where the college is located.

Police figured Stancil was headed south and alerted law enforcement along the East Coast. After releasing a photo of Stancil with a facial tattoo he had gotten as recently as Saturday, police said people reported several sightings of him.

An arrest photo of Stancil released by Florida authorities show him with the number “88” on his left cheek, a number used by racist extremists, said Brian Levin, a criminal justice professor and director of the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. Because “H” is the eighth letter of the alphabet, 88 equates to HH or “Heil Hitler,” Levin said.

“That’s something we pretty much exclusively see in the neo-Nazi world,” Levin said. “Those who get facial tattoos, tend to be the uppermost, anti-social part of the scale.”

Neo-Nazis have a long and violent antipathy toward gays, said Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups and other extremists throughout the United States.

Early Tuesday, more than 500 miles from the school, a beach patrol officer found Stancil sleeping on a beach with a knife, authorities said. Police don’t know how he got there.

“Our officer did a well-being check on the subject and woke him up,” Tamra Marris, a spokeswoman for Volusia County Beach Safety Ocean Rescue said in an email. “Initially the subject had a knife on him and was ordered to put the knife down. The subject complied with the officer’s orders and the subject was apprehended without incident.”

Police have not found the 12-gauge shotgun they believe was used to kill Lane.

Goldsboro police and the Wayne County district attorney’s office will work to have Stancil extradited to North Carolina to face charges. His first court appearance in Florida was scheduled for Tuesday afternoon.

Stancil had no criminal record before the shooting, police said.

Brent Hood, coordinator of education support technology at the college, was Lane’s supervisor for the past three years. He said he thought Stancil killed Lane because he was upset over being dismissed, not because he was gay.

“I guess from my point of view, he (Stancil) was angry over getting dismissed from his duties,” Hood told The Associated Press. “If he had other reasons or motives, it was not clear when he worked here. He worked very well with Ron; he worked very well with my other employees.”

Hood said Lane’s partner of 12 years had disappeared in July and his remains were found several months later. Police said Chuck Tobin killed himself.

“When I made the announcement across the employee email that Chuck had been found, he (Lane) said he was OK with me saying Chuck was his partner for 12 years,” Hood said. “The administration was a little concerned. But Ron wanted it to be said that way.”

Meanwhile, students returned to class at the college Tuesday.

“It’s a day of healing. We will be paying personal tributes to Ron Lane,” school spokeswoman Tara Humphries said.

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Waggoner reported from Raleigh. Associated Press writer Jack Jones in Columbia, South Carolina, also contributed to this report.

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) – Dead fish continued to wash up Monday on the banks of a Rio de Janeiro lake that’s slated to hold Olympic rowing competitions during the 2016 games.

Fish die-offs are a frequent occurrence in Rio’s waterways, which are choked with raw sewage and garbage. The latest incident, affecting thousands of small silvery fish called twaite shad, began several days ago at the Rodrigo de Freitas lake, where the Olympic canoeing and rowing events are to be held.

With neighbors complaining about the stench, employees of the city’s waste management company worked Monday to clear away the dead fish.

“Every year there are these die-offs, sometimes bigger, sometimes smaller,” said photographer Alex Moutinho, who has lived near the lake for over three decades. “It’s one more Brazilian shame.”

In a statement, the city’s environmental secretariat said the latest incident was the result of recent rains and high sea levels, which caused the lake’s water temperature to plummet. The statement stressed that twaite shad are sensitive to variations in temperature, adding that oxygen levels in the lake were normal.

Previous fish die-offs in the lake have been blamed on pollution-related drops in oxygen levels. The cause of February die-off of twaite shad in the Guanabara Bay, where the Olympic sailing events are to be held, were not known.

Rio’s water quality has become a contentious topic ahead of the 2016 Olympics. Authorities had pledged to clean up some of the waterways including the Guanabara Bay ahead of the games but now admit those promises won’t be met, sparking sailors to voice worries about possible health and safety threats posed by competing in the sewage- and garbage-filled waters.

Residents concerned about the water quality of a canal in the Rio neighborhood of Recreio staged a protest Sunday. Hundreds of demonstrators linked arms along the Canal das Taxas, which is filled with raw sewage from nearby condominiums. The canal flows into a lagoon where the Olympic Park is being built.

GREEN BAY — Green Bay basketball has a new head coach. A college basketball source tells FOX 11 former Florida Southern College coach Linc Darner is set to take over the Phoenix. He will take over for Brian Wardle who left to take the head coaching job at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois.

Darner led Florida Southern to an NCAA Division II national championship this year. He’s coached at Florida Southern for the last nine seasons. As a player, Darner was a two-time team captain playing for Purdue University from 1990-1994.

Others who interviewed to be Green Bay’s head coach include St. Norbert men’s basketball coach Gary Grzesk and one of Wardle’s top assistants Brian Barone.

PULASKI – A video showing a Pulaski High School student hitting another student in the lunchroom is being investigated.

A statement from the Pulaski Community School District’s Communications Coordinator, Kimberly Uelmen, says, “As a District and community we are committed to providing a safe and welcoming environment for all students. We take this incident and all student safety matters very seriously. While we cannot discuss specific student or personnel issues, the Pulaski Community School District is continuing to review its approach to this specific matter and the actions of the District at all levels before, during and after the incident. This will include consideration of this situation specifically as well as District policies and practices.”

FOX 11 spoke to Tim Pine, the parent of the alleged victim. He said the incident happened last month and he wants the school to do more.

Pine also said he, along with the parent of teen who appears to be the aggressor in the video are working together to resolve the issue.

The mother of the alleged aggressor told FOX 11 her son was given a four-day suspension, apologized to the victim, and is facing battery and disorderly conduct charges.

Both parents say they are not available for an on-camera interview today.

• Click here to watch the video on Facebook

FOX 11’s Gabrielle Mays will have more on FOX 11 News at Five.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Percy Sledge, who soared from part-time singer and hospital orderly to lasting fame with his aching, forlorn performance on the classic “When a Man Loves a Woman,” died Tuesday in Louisiana. He was 74.

Dr. William “Beau” Clark, coroner for East Baton Rouge Parish, confirmed to The Associated Press that Sledge died early Tuesday morning, about an hour after midnight, of natural causes in hospice care.

A No. 1 hit in 1966, “When a Man Loves a Woman” was Sledge’s debut single, an almost unbearably heartfelt ballad with a resonance he never approached again. Few singers could have. Its mood set by a mournful organ and dirge-like tempo, “When a Man Loves a Woman” was for many the definitive soul ballad, a testament of blinding, all-consuming love haunted by fear and graced by overwhelming emotion.

“When a Man Loves a Woman” was a personal triumph for Sledge, who seemed on the verge of sobbing throughout the production, and a breakthrough for Southern soul. It was the first No. 1 hit from Alabama’s burgeoning Muscle Shoals music scene, where Aretha Franklin and the Rolling Stones among others would record, and the first gold record for Atlantic Records.

Atlantic Records executive Jerry Wexler later called the song “a transcendent moment” and “a holy love hymn.” Sledge’s hit became a standard that sustained his long touring career in the U.S., Europe and South Africa, when he averaged 100 performances a year, and led to his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2005. It was a favorite at weddings — Sledge himself did the honors at a ceremony for musician and actor Steve Van Zandt — and often turned up in movies, including “The Big Chill,” ”The Crying Game” and a 1994 Meg Ryan drama named for the song’s title.

“When a Man Loves a Woman” was re-released after being featured in Oliver Stone’s Vietnam War film “Platoon” in 1987 and reached No. 2 in Britain. Michael Bolton topped the charts in the 1990s with a cover version and Rolling Stone magazine later ranked it No. 53 on its list of the greatest songs of all time.

Recognizable by his wide, gap-toothed smile, Sledge had a handful of other hits between 1966 and 1968, including “Warm and Tender Love,” ”It Tears Me Up,” ”Out of Left Field” and “Take Time to Know Her.” He returned to the charts in 1974 with “I’ll Be Your Everything.”

Before he became famous, Sledge worked in the cotton fields around his hometown of Leighton in northwest Alabama and took a job in a hospital in nearby Sheffield. He also spent weekends playing with a rhythm-and-blues band called the Esquires. A patient at the hospital heard him singing while working and recommended him to record producer Quin Ivy.

In the 2013 documentary “Muscle Shoals,” Sledge recalled recording the song: “When I came into the studio, I was shaking like a leaf. I was scared.” He added that it was the “same melody that I sang when I was out in the fields. I just wailed out in the woods and let the echo come back to me.”

The composition of the song has long been a mystery. Some thought that Sledge wrote it himself. Sledge said he was inspired by a girlfriend who left him for a modeling career after he was laid off from a construction job in 1965, but he gave the songwriting credits to two Esquires bandmates, bassist Calvin Lewis and organist Andrew Wright, who helped him with the song.

While identified with the Muscle Shoals music scene, Sledge spent most of his career living in Baton Rouge. He was inducted in the Alabama Music Hall of Fame in 1993 and the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame in 2007.

In April 1994, Sledge pleaded guilty in federal court to tax evasion involving income from concerts in the late 1980s. He was sentenced to six months in a halfway house, given five years of probation, and ordered to pay $96,000 in back taxes and fines. When he pleaded guilty, he told the judge, “I knew I owed more.”

Sledge had surgery for liver cancer in January 2014 but soon resumed touring.

MILWAUKEE (AP) – Milwaukee police say investigators have identified a male suspect in the fatal shooting of two people at the scene of a traffic accident that killed a toddler.

Lt. Mark Stanmeyer said Tuesday that police are still looking for that suspect.

Authorities say 40-year-old Archie Brown Jr. was fatally shot after the van he was driving struck and killed 2-year-old Damani Terry outside a residence on the city’s near northwest side Sunday. The toddler’s 15-year-old brother, Rasheed Chiles, was also struck by gunfire outside the home and died later at a hospital.

Witnesses say the brothers were attending a party at the house when the accident and shootings took place about 5 p.m.

WASHINGTON (AP) – President Barack Obama pledged $200 million in humanitarian aid to Iraq Tuesday to help those displaced by Islamic State militants, an offer of assistance that appeared to fall short of the Iraqi prime minister’s request for greater military support.

Obama made the financial commitment during an Oval Office meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi in the Oval Office.

Speaking to reporters at the end of the meeting, Obama said Iraqi forces are getting better equipped and trained since al-Abadi’s election seven months ago. He also noted Iraq and a U.S.-led coalition have recovered about one-fourth of the territory the Islamic State had captured in the country.

However, Obama said the process of pushing back the militant group will be long and it was crucial for the U.S. to help support families who have been displaced by the militants.

Al-Abadi told reporters Monday that an increase in U.S. airstrikes, weapons deliveries and training has helped roll back Islamic State forces, but he needed greater support from the international coalition to “finish” them. “We want to see more,” he said.

The Iraqi leader made a similar appeal in the Oval Office, saying he hoped for more international cooperation to minimize the crisis in the region.

Obama said the two leaders also discussed Iran’s involvement in the fight against militants in Iraq, a major point of concern for the U.S. Shiite militias believed to be backed by Iran are playing a major role in helping the Iraqi military roll back IS advances in the country.

Obama said that the U.S. expects that Iraq would have close coordination with its majority-Shiite neighbor, Iran. But he said that any foreign assistance must be orchestrated through Iraq’s government and be answerable to Iraq’s chain of command.

“It is very important for us to coordinate our activities going through Iraq,” Obama said.