Green Bay News

WASHINGTON (AP) – New federal grants will help 10 states test programs to help food stamp recipients find jobs, from using career coaches to quicker training courses to mental health assistance.

The grants, announced Friday in Georgia by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, come as the Republican Congress is exploring ways to cut the program, which cost $74 billion last year – twice its cost in 2008.

Some in the GOP have proposed stricter work requirements as a way to do that. But the Obama administration sees better worker training as an alternative to cuts or stricter work requirements.

Vilsack said the grants will help USDA identify what works and what doesn’t in terms of getting people to work.

The food stamp program has long been the center of political wrangling in Washington, with elective officials debating it virtually endlessly. Republicans for the most part have called it a government give-away and have worked historically to rein it in, if not eliminate it. Many Democrats, particularly those in the party’s liberal wing, have steadfastly fought cuts to the program, calling it an essential element of the federal government’s safety net for the poor.

Washington provides the money for food stamps, now called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. But it is administered by the states, with regulations varying from state to state. As part of the grant program, the  Agriculture Department is contracting two private research organizations to evaluate the states’ performance.

Only about a fifth of the 46 million SNAP recipients are eligible for training. The rest are elderly, disabled, children or already in the workforce.

Vilsack said 35 states applied for the $200 million in grants, which were part of a wide-ranging farm bill that became law last year.

Among the winners:

In Georgia, participants would use an online tool developed by the state to create individualized work plans. In Kentucky, the state will work with local employers and teach skills for in-demand jobs, like food service. California will test child care programs for people who need work training as part of a family-centered approach.

Other states receiving the grants are Delaware, Kansas, Illinois, Mississippi, Vermont, Virginia and Washington state.

Congress’s virtually annual fight over the cost of food stamps grew more intense as the benefit rolls started climbing during the Great Recession, which was  under way when President Barack Obama took office in 2009.

The Republican House passed a bill in 2013 that would have allowed states to put broad new work requirements in place. The bill also would have ended government waivers for some states that allowed able-bodied adults without dependents to receive food stamps indefinitely. Current law only allows those adults to receive the benefits for three months in a three-year period.

Democrats, in keeping with traditional practice, opposed major cuts to the program, and the final farm bill only made an estimated 1 percent cut, with no new work requirements.

Vilsack has encouraged better worker-training programs as one way to trim the cost; the farm bill established the grants for states to test programs.

Republicans have also supported that approach.

House Agriculture Committee Chairman Mike Conaway, R-Texas, praised thecf grants, saying that states’ innovative approaches “will help able-bodied SNAP recipients climb the economic ladder.”

Still, the fight over foods stamps is continuing.

As in past years, a House budget proposed this week would transform the program into block grants to states, a move that could cut tens of billions from the program. A Senate version of the nonbinding budget resolution called for cuts to programs like SNAP but was not as specific in how they should be done.

Vilsack said he has “deep concerns” about the House proposal and said the job training is a better way to make SNAP work.

With block grants, “you are either going to cut people or cut benefits, and both approaches are the wrong way,” Vilsack said.

WASHINGTON (AP) – The chairman of a House committee investigating the deadly 2012 attacks in Benghazi on Friday formally requested that Hillary Rodham Clinton turn over her email server for an independent review.

Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., sent a letter requesting that Clinton, a likely Democratic presidential candidate, turn over to the State Department inspector general or other third party the server she used for official State Department business. The aim would be to have a third party determine what records should be made public.

“Though Secretary Clinton alone is responsible for causing this issue, she alone does not get to determine its outcome,” Gowdy said in a statement. His request to turn over the server is “in the interest of transparency for the American people,” Gowdy said of the former secretary of state.

Clinton has pledged that all her work-related email will be made public but has acknowledged deleting thousands of messages related to personal matters. Clinton has said the server “will remain private.”

House Speaker John Boehner has not ruled out a vote in the full House to force Clinton to turn over the server if she declines to make it available.

Clinton is considered the Democratic front-runner if she decides to seek the presidency, and the high-profile Republican investigations are likely to dog her in the run-up to the 2016 election.

Meantime, the Justice Department said this week that it shouldn’t be required under the Freedom of Information Act to provide emails from Clinton that were sent from or received by her private account. Government lawyers said in a filing to a federal appeals court late Thursday that the FOIA law “creates no obligation for an agency to search for and produce records that it does not possess and control.”

The Justice Department acted on the State Department’s behalf in a lawsuit by Freedom Watch, a conservative group led by Larry Klayman, who has filed dozens of lawsuits against the Clintons in the past. Klayman asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to hold the former secretary and top aide Cheryl Mills in criminal contempt in relation to its request for documents.

Klayman says the court also should issue a subpoena for the seizure and production of the computer file server that was used to store and process Clinton’s emails. The Justice Department said the requests should be denied.

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Associated Press writer Ken Thomas contributed to this story.

HUNTSVILLE, AL (WAFF-TV) – Ask yourself this question — if you were 86, would you strap on a pair of ice skates and some padding and go play ice hockey?

Would you join a hockey league?

Fred Hudson of Alabama is doing just that.

He is spending his retirement on the ice and it could land him in the Guinness Book of World Records as the oldest man in the U.S. still playing hockey.

 

 

The Wisconsin Supreme Cout has suspended for a year the law license of a woman who represented a secretive Shawano-based group.

Naomi Isaacson was the CEO of the Samanta Roy Institute of Science and Technology, or SIST. She was accused of violating both the Wisconsin Rules of Professional Conduct for Attorneys and the Minnesota Rules of Professional Conduct.

The justices’ decision is quite blunt.

“It is difficult to summarize the verbose and grandiose allegations leveled by Attorney Isaacson against the courts generally, specific judges, other counsel, appointed officers, and third parties.  The OLR’s complaint contains over 70 paragraphs providing detailed context for and quoting from specific sworn and verified statements she made in court filings,” the Supreme Court wrote.

“She engaged in a pattern of intentional misconduct in multiple tribunals over a period of at least 17 months.  Continuing the offensive conduct after being sanctioned by the courts shows a lack of remorse… She repeatedly made frivolous and harassing personal attacks and discriminatory statements in numerous documents filed in various matters.  She continued to make false statements about members of the judiciary and others after being formally sanctioned for her conduct.”

“Based on the record presented, we are satisfied that a one-year suspension is sufficient in view of the seriousness of her professional misconduct and will serve to deter similar behavior and protect the public from similar misconduct in the future,” the court concluded.

Her Wisconsin law license has been suspended since May 2011 for noncooperation with the state’s investigation.

Sam Burkart breaks a 69-69 tie with 6.1 seconds to play and the Xavier holds off East Troy’s last-second shot attempt to win a Division 3 boys basketball state semifinal game, 70-69, at the Kohl Center on Friday.

WASHINGTON (AP) – House Speaker John Boehner is heading to Israel as already strained relations between the White House and newly re-elected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hit a new low this week.

On the surface, the Republican leader’s announcement Friday that he’ll visit Israel looks like a jab at the White House.

But a congressional aide insisted that Boehner’s trip – during the two-week congressional recess that begins March 30 – was planned before new rifts developed over Netanyahu’s address to Congress and the prime minister’s remarks this week about the peace process. The aide spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to publicly disclose details of the trip.

President Barack Obama bristled when Boehner invited Netanyahu to address U.S. lawmakers earlier this month about his fears that an emerging nuclear agreement would pave Iran’s path to nuclear weapons.

Relations took another hit Monday when Netanyahu made hard-line statements against the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Speaking on the eve of his re-election, Netanyahu said there could be no Palestinian state while regional violence and chaos persist – conditions that could rule out progress on the issue for many years. That ruffled the Obama administration, which views a two-state solution as a top foreign policy priority and had dispatched Secretary of State John Kerry for months of shuttle diplomacy in an effort to reach an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement that never materialized.

On Thursday, Netanyahu seemed to backtrack, saying in a TV interview that he remains committed to Palestinian statehood – if conditions in the region improve. Netanyahu told MSNBC that he hadn’t changed his policy and that he remained committed to the two-state vision he spelled out in a landmark 2009 speech.

Obama called Netanyahu to congratulate him on his re-election, but also told the Israeli leader that the U.S. is reassessing its approach to Israeli-Palestinian peace in light of his comments about a Palestinian state. A White House official said Obama also raised Netanyahu’s critical comments about Israeli Arabs ahead of the election, which the White House has denounced as a “cynical” effort to mobilize voters.

Asked whether Obama got a better understanding of Netanyahu’s position on a Palestinian state after talking with him, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Friday: “That was not the result of the call.”

Earnest said the administration has not decided what a reassessment in policy might mean. But he noted that in the past, the U.S. has regularly opposed U.N. resolutions to create a Palestinian state by arguing that such a two-state arrangement should be negotiated between the parties.

“What has now changed is that our ally in those conversations, Israel, has indicated that they are not committed to that approach anymore,” Earnest said.

Republicans have seized on the strained ties.

On Capitol Hill on Thursday, Boehner, R-Ohio, mocked the administration’s chilly reaction to Netanyahu’s election victory.

Asked about Obama’s lukewarm response, Boehner said, “Lukewarm?” and laughed heartily.

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., who wrote a letter signed by 46 other GOP senators that warned Iran that any deal could be scrapped by Obama’s successor, scolded administration officials for their handling of U.S.-Israel relations.

“The Obama administration … has gone off the deep end and let their personal bitterness towards the Israeli prime minister drive their public foreign policy toward our closest ally,” Cotton said.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., a potential presidential candidate, said in a floor speech Thursday that the rift between Obama and Netanyahu needs to be worked out privately to avoid empowering U.S. and Israeli enemies.

“This president is making a historic mistake,” Rubio said. “Allies have differences, but allies like Israel, when you have a difference with them and it is public, it emboldens their enemies to launch more rockets out of southern Lebanon and Gaza, to launch more terrorist attacks, to go to international forums and delegitimize Israel’s right to exist. And this is what they’re doing.”

“This is outrageous. It is irresponsible. It is dangerous, and it betrays the commitment this nation has made to the right of a Jewish state to exist in peace,” Rubio said.

But the rift remains for now.

White House chief of staff Denis McDonough plans to give a speech Monday to a liberal-leaning Jewish group that often criticizes the Israeli government, especially Netanyahu, and has expressed deep disappointment at his re-election.

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Associated Press writer Jim Kuhnhenn contributed to this report.

LINDEN, N.J. (AP) – A car carrying three off-duty New Jersey police officers who had just left a strip club drove the wrong way down a New York City highway and crashed head-on into a tractor-trailer early Friday, killing an officer and a civilian and critically injuring two other policemen.

It wasn’t immediately clear why the officers’ car was heading north in the southbound lane of the Staten Island highway. New York Police Department spokeswoman Kim Royster said it appears the men were coming from a party and there’s no indication of alcohol in the car.

However, she said, police are going to review video footage and interview patrons and employees of the Curves strip club. If they find reasonable suspicion that the men were drinking, they’ll get a warrant to test their blood samples for alcohol, Royster said.

The dead were identified as two 28-year-old men, one a Linden police officer and the other a civilian, officials said. Both were passengers in the car. The 27-year-old driver and a 23-year-old passenger, also Linden police officers, were listed in critical condition at hospitals on Staten Island, authorities said. The truck driver suffered injuries that weren’t believed to be life-threatening.

Video taken by a surveillance camera at a gas station shows a car traveling the wrong way on a service road minutes before the wrong-way crash on the adjacent highway. A southbound exit ramp leads from the highway onto the service road.

Gas station attendant Ramzi Abdelhaq told WABC-TV he’s seen cars traveling the wrong direction on the service road before. The time stamp on the video showing the car reads 4:48 a.m. Police received a 911 call of a crash on the highway at 4:51 a.m.

One tractor-trailer swerved out of the way of the car on the West Shore Expressway on Staten Island, but a second didn’t have enough time to veer away before the crash, Royster said. She said the driver of the tractor-trailer passed a blood-alcohol test and does not appear to be at fault.

Royster said the car’s black box will help investigators determine how fast they were traveling.

Images of the crash scene show the truck and car smashed against the center guardrail and the car ravaged.

“Linden is a very small town. Everybody knows everybody,” Linden Mayor Derek Armstead told WCBS radio. “The officers involved are very proactive in our community, and it is just a sad day in Linden, it really is.”

Linden police Capt. James Sarnicki said all three officers were relatively new to the force. The officers’ names weren’t being released until their families could be notified.

He said that Armstead and police Chief James Schulhafer were heading to the two Staten Island hospitals where the surviving officers were taken and that a chaplain and grief counselors are at police headquarters.

In his 37 years working for the department, Sarnicki said, he couldn’t remember any officers being killed in the blue-collar refinery town of 41,000 residents just across the water from Staten Island.

“People are in a somber mood. I could see some officers with tears in their eyes. It is an emotional day for all of us. Like I said, we are a family and we’re all hurt by this,” he said. “It’s tragic for people to lose their lives at such an early age, whatever the reason.”

Flags in front of Linden City Hall, which are part of a war memorial surrounded by smaller American flags, were lowered to half-staff Friday morning.

“This is devastating, devastating,” said Reese Lospinoso, 57, a bartender who grew up in Linden and has lived here most of his life. “The police in Linden are looked at very, very highly. They’re very well-respected in our town.”

Armstead said more information would be released later Friday. A news conference was scheduled for 3 p.m. at City Hall.

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Pearson reported from New York. Associated Press writers Kiley Armstrong and Ula Ilnytzky contributed to this story from New York.

 

WASHINGTON (AP) – Americans want lower taxes and more government spending both at once, although their support for spending more tax dollars on health care has dropped dramatically. They’re likelier than ever to not feel connected to any particular religion, but no less likely to believe in God. And for the first time, most want to legalize marijuana.

Those are among findings from the 2014 General Social Survey, which has been measuring trends in American opinion and behavior since 1972.

The survey, which is conducted by the independent research organization NORC at the University of Chicago, puts wide-ranging and long-running questions about a large array of issues to the public. Data from the 2014 survey was released earlier this month, and an analysis of its findings was conducted by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the General Social Survey.

Five things to know about the survey’s findings:

LOWER TAXES, MORE SPENDING

It’s no wonder Washington is tied in knots trying to please the people. The people want more spent on many government programs, yet lower taxes for themselves..

Out of 22 spending items asked about in the survey, Americans are more likely to want cuts than increased spending on only four of them – welfare, foreign aid, assistance to big cities and the space program.

Education rates as Americans’ highest priority for spending more money, with 70 percent saying the country spends too little. Foreign aid is what most Americans would like to see cut, with 69 percent saying the country spends too much on that.

Majorities of Americans want more spending on Social Security, assistance to the poor, alternative energy sources, crime and drug addiction. But that doesn’t mean they want to pay for that themselves. More than half of them – 57 percent – say their own taxes are too high.

STILL BELIEVERS, BUT NOT JOINERS

The portion of Americans saying they have no religious preference has increased dramatically since 1972, when only 5 percent of Americans said they didn’t identify with any particular religion. In 2014, 21 percent of Americans said they had no religion – a record high. Younger Americans are especially likely to fall into that group, with 30 percent of those under age 35 saying they have no religion.

But that doesn’t mean Americans are more likely to be atheists than they used to be. Just 3 percent say they don’t believe in God, while 5 percent say they’re agnostic.

Fifty-eight percent say God does exist, and 70 percent believe in life after death.

UP WITH POT

For the first time since the survey first asked the question in 1975, a majority of Americans supported legal marijuana in 2014. Fifty-two percent of Americans now say marijuana should be legal, while 42 percent think it should be illegal. That’s a big jump in support for legalizing the drug since 2012, when only 43 percent said they were in favor. Twenty-five years ago, in 1990, just 16 percent supported legal marijuana.

Majorities of blacks and whites support legalizing marijuana, the survey finds, but only 38 percent of Hispanics say the same.

The survey finds support for legalizing the drug rose among all age groups in 2014, though the youngest adults – those under age 35 – are most likely to say it should be legal.

EROSION ON HEALTH CARE

The percentage of Americans who think the country spends too little on improving and protecting health has dropped dramatically since 75 percent said so in 2008, probably as a result of the 2010 enactment of President Barack Obama’s health care law.  But more than half of Americans – 57 percent – still think the country should be spending more.

There’s major partisan division on the issue. The survey finds 67 percent of Democrats and 58 percent of independents, but only 41 percent of Republicans, say the country is spending too little.

CONFIDENCE IN BANKS REBOUNDS SLIGHTLY

Only 15 percent of Americans say they have a great deal of confidence in banks and financial institutions, but that actually marks a rebound from a record low reached during the great recession. In 2010, only 11 percent said they had a lot of confidence.

The survey finds confidence in all three branches of government, and in the media, to be at record lows.

BOISE, Idaho (AP) – Potatoes that won’t bruise and apples that won’t brown are a step closer to grocery store aisles.

The Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved the genetically engineered foods, saying they are “as safe and nutritious as their conventional counterparts.”

The approval covers six varieties of potatoes by Boise, Idaho-based J. R. Simplot Co. and two varieties of apples from the Canadian company Okanagan Specialty Fruits Inc.

Okanagan, based in British Columbia, is trying to make apples a more convenient snack with its non-browning version. The company says bagged apples wouldn’t have to be washed in antioxidants like they are now, a process that can affect taste. Neal Carter, the company’s founder, says they want to see bagged apples become as prolific as bagged baby carrots.

“We know that in a convenience-driven world, a whole apple is too big of a commitment,” Carter said.

The apples are dubbed Arctic Apples, and Carter said he wants them to be labeled as such, since they bring an advantage to the marketplace. The first two varieties to get the non-browning treatment will be Granny Smith and Golden Delicious, and Carter says there won’t be significant plantings until 2017.

Simplot calls its potatoes Innate and the varieties selected include Ranger Russet, Russet Burbank and Atlantic.

“We’re trying to improve potatoes so everyone gets a better experience, just like it’s right out of the field,” said Haven Baker, vice president of plant sciences for Simplot.

It could be years before the average customer is able to buy one of the potatoes. The company has about 400 acres of Innate potatoes in storage from the 2014 harvest that it plans to deliver to growers, packers and shippers to be sent to a tightly-controlled network for use in small-scale test markets.

The company said those markets haven’t been determined, and it’s not clear yet how the potatoes will be labeled. The company said it’s not selling Innate seed potatoes on the open market.

The potatoes have 40 percent less bruising from impacts and pressure during harvest and storage then conventional potatoes, which the company said could reduce the more than 3 billion pounds of potatoes discarded each year by consumers.

“I think everybody wants to get what they pay for,” said Doug Cole, Simplot’s director of marketing and communications.

The potatoes will have 70 percent less acrylamide, a chemical that can be created when potatoes are cooked at high temperatures, the company says.

The company is touting that as a potential health benefit, as some studies have shown acrylamide to be a potential carcinogen, though the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health says scientists “do not yet know with any certainty” whether the substance can be harmful in food.

The FDA in its approval Friday noted that acrylamide has been found to be a carcinogenic in rodents.

The FDA’s review process is voluntary. Both companies asked for a review to ensure their products met safety standards. As part of the process, FDA compares safety and data of the genetically engineered food in comparison to a conventional variety.

Aware of potential resistance from consumers, Simplot officials say Innate potato traits come exclusively from genes from domestic potato varieties.

However, one of the company’s oldest business partners – McDonald’s – has previously said it has no plans to use genetically modified potatoes. The company didn’t respond to inquiries from The Associated Press on Friday.

Gregory Jaffe, biotechnology director for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, in a statement Friday objected to the voluntary system for approving genetically engineered foods.

“There’s no reason why these “Arctic” apples and “Innate” potatoes would pose any food safety or environmental risk,” he wrote. “That said, the process for allowing such new crops is badly flawed. Congress should pass legislation that requires new biotech crops to undergo a rigorous and mandatory approval process before foods made from those crops reach the marketplace.”

Simplot is working on a second generation Innate potato that will have additional traits, including resistance to late blight, which the company said will result in a 25 to 50 percent reduction in the need for pesticides. Late blight helped cause the Irish potato famine of the mid-19th century.

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Jalonick reported from Washington.

PARIS (AP) – The German Grand Prix has been cut from 2015 Formula One calendar after neither of the country’s two circuits were able to make a deal with series promoter Bernie Ecclestone.

The World Motor Sport Council said in a statement on Friday that the race was withdrawn because the commercial rights holder “and promoter did not reach agreement.”

The German Grand Prix had been set for July 19. With the two circuits alternating annually, Nuerburgring was scheduled to stage the race. There will now be 19 races this season instead of 20.

The German race has been losing spectators steadily since the days of seven-time champion Michael Schumacher, even though Germany is home to Mercedes, the car maker behind the top team last season, and driver Nico Rosberg. Four-time champion Sebastian Vettel, who now drives for Ferrari, is also German.

MADISON (WMTV) – The WIAA is celebrating a major milestone this year – it’s turning 100.

Some fans recall their favorite memories in the 100 years of tournament history.

Lindsey Branwall has the story.

 

MADISON (AP) – Court records indicate a southeastern Wisconsin couple that didn’t show up for their animal cruelty trial after two bodies were found on their property each faced nearly 50 years behind bars.

David and Paula White each faced multiple felony and misdemeanor animal mistreatment charges after authorities found dozens of dead horses on their Pleasant Prairie farm. The jury began deliberations in their trial on Wednesday and convicted them on Friday afternoon.

The Whites, who are both in their 60s, didn’t come to court for the verdicts. Earlier that morning a fire broke out at their farm. Authorities discovered two bodies in the ruins.

It’s unclear if the bodies are the Whites. Authorities haven’t released their identities yet.

TUNIS, Tunisia (AP) – The two gunmen who killed 21 people at a museum in Tunis trained in neighboring Libya before carrying out the deadly attack and were known to authorities, Tunisian security officials said Friday.

The attack at the National Bardo Museum Wednesday has raised concerns about the spread of extremism in North Africa and particularly in Tunisia – the only country to emerge from the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings with a functioning democracy.

In the country’s capital Tunis, hundreds citizens on Friday thronged the main avenue where demonstrators overthrew dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali four years ago, celebrating independence day in defiance of the attacks that left 17 cruise ship tourists dead.

Some danced draped in Tunisian flags and others held aloft hand-written signs that read “JeSuisBardo” for “I am Bardo,” a slogan that has captured attention as an anti-terrorism rallying cry on social media.

“We are here to say ‘no’ to terrorism,” said Astal Marwen, a 19-year-old political science and law student, at the rally. “The attackers are part of a small minority, and they have the wrong conception of what Islam is.”

The attackers slipped out of the country in December and received weapons training in Libya which is awash in well-armed militias fighting for control, said Rafik Chelli, a top official in the Interior Ministry in a TV interview late Thursday.

One of them, Hatem Khachnaoui, 26, was from the central city of Sbeitla and had previously been arrested on terrorism charges before being released, according to Sabhi Jouini, a leading figure in the police union and a terrorism expert.

Sbeitla, home to some splendid Roman ruins, is in an impoverished region not far from the Algerian border where an al-Qaida-linked Tunisian group has carried out several attacks.

Khachnaoui’s father and sister in Sbeitla were arrested Thursday along with two others from the region on suspicion of supporting the attackers. Another five people with direct connection to the attack were picked up around the capital.

Khachnaoui’s associate, Yassine Laabidi was only 20 years old and had less of a record with police, though he is known to have worked in a travel agency and hails from the working class Tunis neighborhood of Ibn Khaldun.

The Islamic State group, based in Iraq and Syria, has claimed responsibility for the Bardo attack. Several well-armed groups in Libya have pledged their allegiance to the Islamic State.

Confronted with a poor economy, young Tunisians have disproportionately gone abroad to fight with extremist groups in Libya, Syria and Iraq, including some affiliated with the Islamic State. Tunisian authorities have estimated that of the 3,000 young people who left the country to fight with radical groups, about 500 have returned.

In claiming responsibility for the attack, IS issued a statement and audio on jihadi websites applauding the dead gunmen as “knights” for their “blessed invasion of one of the dens of infidels and vice in Muslim Tunisia.”

Analysts cautioned against seeing every such attack as evidence of a well-organized, centrally controlled entity spanning the Middle East, saying instead that small groups could merely be taking inspiration from the high-profile militant group.

Early Friday, victims’ families continued to arrive at Tunis’ Charles Nicolle hospital to help identify the dead and recover their bodies.

The latest tally of victims included four Italians, three Japanese and three French, two Spanish and two Colombians and one citizen each from Britain, Poland and Belgium, said Samar Samoud, medical adviser to the Tunisian health minister. The nationalities of three victims remain unclear.

French President Francois Hollande confirmed the French dead and said two others were in intensive care while five were only lightly wounded and would be returning to France tonight.

Two of the cruise ships that had passengers killed or wounded in the Tunis attack sailed into Spanish ports on Friday, with disembarking passengers telling reporters chilling tales of how they just missed being victims.

In Palma, Spanish cruise ship passenger Catalina Llinas told reporters she and her husband luckily chose a day trip Wednesday to the Roman ruins of Carthage near Tunis instead of the museum excursion. The couple’s tour bus, she said, passed by the Bardo museum just 10 minutes before the attacks.

“It could have been us,” she said.

The deaths of so many foreigners will damage Tunisia’s tourism industry, which draws thousands of foreigners to its Mediterranean beaches, desert oases and ancient Roman ruins. The industry had just started to recover after years of decline. The two cruise ship lines who had passengers killed in Tunis on Wednesday announced they were dropping Tunis from their itineraries for now.

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Maamoun Youssef in Cairo contributed to this report.

LAS VEGAS (AP) – Rape charges have been filed in Las Vegas against former NFL safety Darren Sharper, who already faces sexual assault charges in Los Angeles, New Orleans and the Phoenix area.

Sharper’s Las Vegas attorney, David Chesnoff, appeared Friday before a Las Vegas judge on two sexual assault charges involving two women in January 2014. Details of the allegations weren’t immediately available.

Chesnoff says Justice of the Peace Janiece Marshall set a court hearing for April 3.

The 39-year-old Sharper is jailed in Los Angeles, where he’s scheduled for a preliminary hearing Friday after pleading not guilty to drugging and raping two women in 2013.

Sharper retired in 2010 after a 14-year All-Pro as a defensive safety with the Green Bay Packers, Minnesota Vikings and New Orleans Saints.

TOKYO (AP) – For hamburger aficionados who want the smell even when they can’t get a bite, Burger King is putting the scent into a limited-edition fragrance.

Burger King said Friday that the Whopper grilled beef burger-scented cologne will be sold only on April 1, and only in Japan.

Sounds too good to be true? It’s not an April Fools’ Day joke, though the company chose the date deliberately.

The limited “Flame Grilled” fragrance can be purchased at 5,000 yen (about $40), including the burger. There will be only 1,000 of them.

Burger King said it hopes the scent would also seduce new grill-beef burger fans.

LONGYEARBYEN, Norway (AP) — For the best view of the solar spectacle of the year, Svalbard eclipsed the Faeroe Islands.

Sky-gazers in the remote Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard popped champagne corks, oohed and aahed as they witnessed a total solar eclipse Friday under perfect weather conditions.

A clear sky over the Arctic islands offered a full view of the sun’s corona — a faint ring of rays surrounding the moon — that is only visible during a total eclipse.

The total solar eclipse seen from Svalbard, Norway Friday March 20, 2015. An eclipse is darkening parts of Europe on Friday in a rare solar event that won’t be repeated for more than a decade. (AP Photo/Haakon Mosvold Larsen, NTB Scanpix)

“I was just blown away. I couldn’t believe it,” said Hilary Castle, a 58-year-old visitor from London.

Meanwhile, a blanket of clouds blocked thousands of people from experiencing the full effect in the Faeroes in the North Atlantic — the only other place on land where the eclipse was total. About 20,000 visitors had traveled to the two island groups to watch the spectacle.

“Well it was very close,” said Fred Espenak, a retired NASA scientist visiting the Faeroe Islands. “If the eclipse had been 25 minutes later, it would have been fantastic. But the clouds ruined it for us. So I’m very disappointed.”

A solar eclipse happens when the moon lines up between the sun and the Earth. This casts a lunar shadow on the Earth’s surface and obscures the sun. During a partial eclipse, only part of the sun is blotted out.

In the northern Faeroes, Sigrun Skalagard said birds went silent and dogs started howling when the daylight suddenly disappeared.

“Some people were surprised to see how fast it became dark,” she said.

The total eclipse lasted for 2 minutes and 45 seconds in the Faeroes.

In Svalbard, less than 620 miles from the North Pole, a few hundred people had gathered on a flat frozen valley overlooking the mountains, and people shouted and yelled as the sudden darkness came. A group of people opened bottles of champagne, saying it was in keeping with a total solar eclipse tradition.

“It was just fabulous, just beautiful and at the same time a bit odd and it was too short,” said Mary Rannestad, 60, from Minnesota.

A partial solar eclipse could be seen across Europe and parts of Asia and Africa. Britain’s Met Office said 95 percent of the sun was covered in the Hebrides, Orkneys and Shetland Islands, and one percent less further south in Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Cloudy weather put a lid across large parts of the continent, making it hard to see the eclipse. However, a thin cloud cover allowed people in Stockholm to watch the eclipse without protective glasses, as the faint disk of the sun could be seen through the overcast sky.

Across Europe, people were warned against looking directly at the sun — but that wasn’t the only hazard. In Switzerland police said a 49-year-old man in the eastern town of Baar was taken to a hospital with a suspected broken leg after falling off a roughly 50-centimeter (20-inch) high ramp as he watched the eclipse.

In Germany, a world leader in solar power, fears that the flood of sunshine after the eclipse would overload the system never materialized.

“We are very relieved,” Dirk Biermann, head of 50Hertz, one of Germany’s four transmission system operators for electricity, told the dpa news agency. “Everything worked out wonderfully.”

The total solar eclipse coincided with the spring equinox, one of two occasions each year when the day is equal in length to the night.

The eclipse also occurred as the moon passed at its closest point to the Earth in its orbit, adding its gravitational pull on the ocean to create stronger tides. The effect was most noticeable in the Bay of Fundy in eastern Canada — known for one of the highest tidal ranges in the world — and outside Saint Malo in northwestern France, said Michael Quaade, a Copenhagen University astronomer.

The last total eclipse was in November 2012 over Australia. The next one will be over Indonesia in March 2016, according to NASA.

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Gaschka reported from Torshavn, Faeroe Islands. Associated Press writers Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen, Karl Ritter in Stockholm, David Rising and Geir Moulson in Berlin and contributed to this report.

MADISON (AP) – A key Republican on the Legislature’s budget committee says he supports giving the state Justice Department more resources to investigate officer-involved deaths.

Rep. John Nygren of Marinette, who serves as the committee’s co-chairman, said in a statement Friday that officer-involved shootings are on the rise in Wisconsin and across the country.

Wisconsin law requires an outside agency to lead officer-involved death investigations and many agencies are turning to the DOJ. The agency asked Gov. Scott Walker for an additional $738,600 in the 2015-17 state budget to fund five positions that would handle such probes.

Walker chose not to include the funding in the budget. The budget committee will spend most of the spring revising Walker’s plan, however, and Nygren says he has a duty to ensure officer-involved deaths are investigated with integrity.

Learn more about the convention March 20-22 in Green Bay.

ADEN, Yemen (AP) – A group claiming to be a Yemeni branch of the Islamic State group says it carried out a string of suicide bombings in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, that killed a total of 137 people and injured 345 others.

The group posted an online statement saying that five suicide bombers carried out what it described as a “blessed operation” against the “dens of the Shiites.” The bombers attacked the Badr and al-Hashoosh mosques, located across town from each other, during midday Friday prayers.

The claim, posted in an online statement, could not immediately be independently confirmed and offered no proof of an IS role. It was posted on the same website in which the Islamic State affiliate in Libya claimed responsibility for Wednesday’s deadly attack on a museum in Tunisia.

PORT WASHINGTON (AP) – Wisconsin prosecutors want to introduce evidence showing the actor who played Screech in the 1990s TV show “Saved by the Bell” threatened to stab someone in one bar before he allegedly stabbed another person at a different bar Christmas Day.

Dustin Diamond pleaded not guilty in January to charges stemming from a scuffle at a Port Washington bar.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports the claim that Diamond threatened a patron at a different bar is part of “other acts” evidence Ozaukee County District Attorney Adam Gerol intends to introduce at Diamond’s trial on a felony charge of recklessly endangering safety and two misdemeanors.

But Diamond’s attorney has moved to exclude testimony and video of the earlier incident. A judge will hold a hearing on the dueling motions April 2.