Green Bay News

MENASHA – The fish may be biting but is the ice safe?

Anglers were out on Little Lake Butte des Morts Friday, hoping to squeeze every last drop out of the ice fishing season.

Tony Swiontek ventured as close as anyone to the edge of the ice.

“We still got about 12 inches of good solid ice. After today, I don’t know,” said Tony Swiontek, Neenah.

Swiontek says he doesn’t mind sharing his spot with others, like a man in a fishing boat on the open water nearby.

“Maybe he knows right where the hot fishing spot is,” he said.

A little closer to shore, Carl Peeters hauled in some perch.

“It’s been slow, but the fish we catch have been half-way decent,” said Carl Peeters, Little Chute.

Dozens of fishermen covered the frozen shallow bays near the Fox Cities trestle trail.

Don Van Handel says the edge of the lake usually melts first.

“The ice will be good but the shorelines will go. You won’t be able to get on the shoreline. But some guys put boards out, and then you walk across them,” said Don Van Handel, Little Chute.

Neenah-Menasha Fire Rescue responds to a couple ice calls each year on Little Lake Butte des Morts. The assistant chief reminds people to bring a charged cell phone, and wear a life jacket, because ice conditions can change by the hour.

“Especially if we get some wind conditions that start picking up. That’s going to really break the ice, and cause some shifts occurring out there,” said Mike Sipin, Neenah-Menasha Fire Rescue Assistant Chief.

Van Handel says he knows bad ice when he sees it.

“When it gets black. When you see black spots, don’t go there. Pretty soon the water will be running in the holes. It will be swirling in the holes. Then your ice is going fast,” he said.

Fishermen we talked to say conditions on this part of the lake may last another week.

Until then, they will try their luck both on, and under the ice.

“I moved all over this bay just looking for a few perch. Hopefully to get a meal for tonight, but as of right now, I don’t thing I’m going to make it,” said Swiontek.

Emergency crews remind people that no ice is ever safe, particularly not now.

Click here for more information on Blue Bell ice cream recall.

DALLAS (AP) – Officials say three people have died after developing a foodborne illness linked to Blue Bell ice cream products.

That prompted the first product recall in the Texas creamery’s 108-year history.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration says five people in all developed listeriosis in Kansas after eating products from one production line at the Blue Bell creamery in Brenham, Texas.

The FDA says listeria bacteria were found in samples of Blue Bell Chocolate Chip Country Cookies, Great Divide Bars, Sour Pop Green Apple Bars, Cotton Candy Bars, Scoops, Vanilla Stick Slices, Almond Bars and No Sugar Added Moo Bars.

Blue Bell says its regular Moo Bars were untainted, as were its half gallons, quarts, pints, cups, three-gallon ice cream and take-home frozen snack novelties.

GREEN BAY – Police say the family of Philip Jeanquart told them he suffered from a form of dementia.

The 68-year-old was found dead Thursday evening, near Suring. His vehicle was found on an abandoned logging road. Police say Jeanquart was not in the vehicle, but his dog, Ruby, was. The Green Bay man’s body was found a few feet away from his car in the woods. Investigators say they have not confirmed how he died, but say there is no sign of foul play.

Family friends and police aren’t sure what might have led Jeanquart to drive with his dog to northern Oconto County.

“As far as we know, he doesn’t have any family members or did not know anybody in the area,” said Lt. Keith Gering of the Green Bay Police Department. “We’re thinking due to his medical condition that he was possibly confused and gotten lost.”

Getting confused is one of the warning signs for dementia.

“Memory isn’t the only thing,” said Dr. Tracy Sherman, a specialist in geriatric medicine for Prevea Health. “You see orientation or keeping track of day, date and where am I.”

Sherman provided us some facts on dementia. She says symptoms are typically found in people after they turn 65. She says at age 75 about 20 percent of people develop Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer’s is the most common cause of dementia. At age 85, that number increases to around 40 percent.

“If you’re getting older, your 85, and you can’t remember what somebody just told you, that’s not normal aging,” said Sherman. “People sometimes think what do you expect at age 85 right? But that’s not normal.”

Other warning signs are trouble finding words, getting lost, and behavior changes, including depression, anxiety, and paranoia.

“At the very beginning, most people are very independent and they can continue to be independent for quite a long time,” said Sherman. “How long is different for each individual.”

It’s up to loved ones to help determine someone’s level of independence, including when someone should give up their driver’s license.

“There is nothing by law that prevents them from having it, so if a family member or a friend for that matter thinks that somebody they know may have some kind of medical condition that would prevent them from driving safely, we absolutely encourage them to report them,” said Gering.

People can do that through their police department or the department of motor vehicles.
According to the CDC, Alzheimer’s disease is the sixth leading cause of death in the United States.

Xavier played Hayward in a Division 3 state girls basketball game Friday at the Resch Center.

MADISON (AP) – Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s tale of how he came to hold the family Bible that President Ronald Reagan used when taking the oath of office doesn’t match the memory of the presidential library curator charged with caring for the book.

A likely Republican candidate for president, Walker grew up during Reagan’s presidency and holds him as a political role model. Walker, 47, frequently notes that his wedding anniversary and Reagan’s birthday fall on the same date.

At a 2013 Reagan Day dinner in Milwaukee, Walker told a Reagan story that he said “gives me a little bit of a shiver.”

He described being invited by Nancy Reagan to give a speech at the Reagan Library near Los Angeles in November 2012, five months after he won a recall election that stemmed from his successful effort to curtail the union rights of public employees in his state. Walker said he met with Nancy Reagan before the speech and told her that he had won the recall on the eighth anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s death.

Walker went on to describe how, during a tour of the library before the speech, the library curator “unbeknownst to me” had taken the Reagan family Bible out of its display and readied it for him to look at.

“And they brought over a pair of white gloves to me and they said, ‘No one has touched this since President Reagan. It is his mother’s Bible that he took the oath of office on. Mrs. Reagan would like you to hold it and take a picture with it’,” Walker said in a YouTube video of part of the speech posted by a reporter for the liberal magazine The Progressive.

Audience members can be heard gasping, then applauding as Walker tells the story.

But library artifacts curator Jennifer Torres told The Progressive magazine in a series of emails that it was Walker who had asked to view the Bible while at the library.

“We decided to remove the Bible the day Gov. Walker was in town to comply with his request, took the Bible back to collections after the photo and re-installed it on exhibit a few days later,” Torres said in the March 4 email.

Torres also said in the email that Walker’s assertion that he was the first person to touch the Bible since Ronald Reagan was untrue.

“Since the president’s passing, several staff members and conservators have handled the Bible, all while wearing gloves,” Torres said in the emails. “It is unknown if President Reagan was the last to have to have touched the Bible without gloves, but it is doubtful.”

Torres said Walker was the only visiting dignitary to have handled the Bible, adding that he was also likely the only one to have made such a request.

Asked about the discrepancy between Walker’s telling and Torres’ recollections, Kirsten Kukowski, a spokeswoman for Walker’s political group, Our American Revival, said in a statement that, “Gov. Walker was honored to speak at the Reagan Library and to hold his mother’s Bible. He was and continues to be one of his heroes, a president for the ages that accomplished great things for our country.”

Torres did not respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press, but Jennifer Mandel, another Reagan library employee, confirmed that Torres had sent the emails describing Walker’s request to see the Bible.

PHOENIX (AP) – Amid persistent complaints about veterans’ health care, President Barack Obama acknowledged lingering weaknesses Friday in the federal government’s response to the chronic delays and false waiting lists that triggered a national outcry over the Veterans Affairs health system last year.

Obama said that while VA Secretary Robert McDonald is “chipping away” at the problem, it was clear there was still more work to do.

“It’s important that veterans know that somebody’s got their backs, and that if there are problems that we’re not being defensive about it, not hiding it,” Obama said.

In his first trip to the Phoenix VA hospital whose practices sparked the scandal, Obama announced the creation of an advisory committee to recommend further steps the VA could take to improve veterans’ access to health care.

Obama met with veterans, VA employees and elected officials, including Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake, Arizona’s two Republican senators. He said lawmakers specifically raised questions about the slow pace of implementing a new law meant to increase health care choices for veterans. Mental health and suicide prevention are also areas of concern, he said.

“Trust is something you can lose real quick,” Obama said, promoting the need to restore trust and confidence in the VA system. But, he added, “Every veteran I talked to today said that the actual care they received once in the system was outstanding.”

Obama’s visit came amid questions from lawmakers who say veterans are still not benefiting from changes in the law that were meant to improve their access to care. A month ago, Obama drew criticism for traveling to Phoenix without stopping at the VA hospital.

McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, blasted the president’s visit as a “photo op.” He said the foot-dragging in implementing VA reforms showed that Obama’s administration had given up on reform before it even started.

“The American people – and veterans in particular – should be as unimpressed by the President’s high-profile but empty gesture today as I am,” said McCain, who scheduled a news conference outside the VA to respond on camera to the president’s visit.

As Obama flew to Phoenix, the White House defended the VA’s actions to correct problems.

“Long after it fades from the headlines, this is something a lot of people have been working on and that he president feels strongly about,” White House spokesman Eric Schultz said.

Obama also announced the creation of an advisory committee to address ways to improve the VA’s service to veterans. The committee will consist of representatives from the private sector, veterans’ organizations, government, health sciences and academics.

The Phoenix VA Medical Center prompted the scrutiny last year following reports that dozens of veterans died while awaiting treatment at the hospital. The ensuing scandal prompted the ouster of VA Secretary Eric Shinseki. The agency’s Phoenix director, Sharon Helman, also lost her job.

A series of government reports said workers throughout the country falsified wait lists while supervisors looked the other way. While veterans encountered chronic delays, the reports found managers who falsely appeared to meet on-time goals received bonuses.

In the aftermath, Congress approved a sweeping law to overhaul the VA and appropriated money to make it easier for veterans to get VA-paid private health care. It also limits the time VA employees have to appeal firings for alleged wrongdoing.

The Phoenix office brought a respected former director out of retirement to take controls of the office for a one-year assignment. Glen Grippen told an Arizona legislative panel this week that the Phoenix office has hired 320 new staff since January 2014, is opening three new Phoenix-area clinics and is preparing to remodel its main Phoenix hospital.

The VA says that between May 1 and Dec. 31 of last year it completed more than 37 million appointments nationwide, 1.8 million more than for the same period in 2013. The Phoenix VA health care system completed more than 476,000 appointments between May and Jan. 31 of this year, an increase of 19 percent over the previous year. The VA also said the Phoenix system completed 94 percent of appointments from October through January within 30 days of the date preferred by the patient.

But the doctor who sounded the alarm on problems with the Phoenix VA and helped bring about the changes said he is still frustrated about what he sees as a slow pace in reforms being carried out. He said McDonald has a nearly impossible job.

“If I ask you to go out and lift a 10,000-pound boulder and you go out and give it your best and can’t do it, does that make you a bad guy? No. The boulder was just too big for anyone to lift,” Dr. Sam Foote told The Associated Press on Thursday. “And that’s somewhat of the situation that they’re in.”

AURORA, Colo. (AP) – A woman walking past a Colorado pizza shop was hit by a car, landed on its hood and was pushed through a plate glass window into the store.

Amazingly, she immediately hopped off the car amid debris and escaped serious injury.

A surveillance camera captured Wednesday’s incident outside – and inside – the Pudge Brothers Pizza shop in Aurora.

KUSA-TV reports the car’s driver apparently hit the gas pedal instead of the brake, jumped the sidewalk the woman was walking along, and crashed into the store. No one inside was hurt.

Aurora police didn’t immediately return a phone call seeking additional details, including the identities of the woman and the car’s driver.

TOMAH (AP) – Police say the death of a man at the Econo Lodge motel in Tomah has been ruled a homicide.

Officers were called to the motel Wednesday morning to find 43-year-old Derek Magnuson, of Tomah, dead in one of the rooms. Police initially said his death appeared suspicious.

In a statement Friday, Lt. Ron Waddell says the preliminary autopsy found that Magnuson was a homicide victim.

But police aren’t saying how he died and are providing few other details.

Waddell says only that “maintaining the integrity of this case” will benefit the investigation, and that details will be released “when appropriate.”

He says current information indicates there’s no threat to the public.

On Capitol Hill, the snow has melted, but there was a new chill this week between Democrats and Republicans over a one-page-letter; penned by Tom Cotton, a freshman Republican Senator from Arkansas.

You can read the letter here.

Cotton is an Iraq War veteran and at just 37-years-old is the youngest member now serving in the Senate. This week he cornered the spotlight for railing against negotiating with Iran.  Cotton said his letter “states basic facts of American Constitutional law to Iran’s leaders,” adding, “if Congress doesn’t approve a deal, Congress will not accept a deal.”

Still, The Obama administration is moving forward with its plan to get a nuclear deal hammered out with Iran.

On Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest criticized Cotton.

“Attempting to sandbag the president of the United States in the midst of negotiations that’s he’s engaged in,  not just with Iran, but our international partners is not just unprecedented, but inappropriate.”

47 Republican senators in all signed the letter, which Sen. Cotton defended.

“I consider it a badge of honor that I and so many other Republican senators are being attacked by a murderous dictator like Ayatollah Khamenei,” Cotton said.

Iran has until March 24 to complete the deal, which is with not only the United States, but its partners, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany.

FERGUSON, Mo. (AP) — The protesters who spent eight months pressing for changes in Ferguson’s police practices after the fatal shooting of Michael Brown take credit for this week’s resignations of the city manager and the police chief.

And they insist they still have unfinished business, with many planning to stay in the streets until the mayor of the St. Louis suburb is forced out and the entire police force dissolved.

“We will protest until we see everything in our favor. This movement has legs,” Derrick Robinson, a protest organizer, declared Friday. “We’re out here fighting for justice and equality, and that’s what we’ll continue to fight for.”

Part of the movement has also been channeled into pressing for legislative change. On Wednesday, about two dozen people from the Don’t Shoot Coalition and the American Civil Liberties Union traveled to the Missouri Capitol in support of the “Fair and Impartial Policing Act,” a measure that would strengthen state laws about racial profiling by police and require law officers to undergo “anti-bias” training.

The Justice Department fueled the sense of achievement among activists, announcing in a scathing report last week that its probe of Ferguson’s justice system in the wake of Brown’s death found racial bias in the city’s policing and in a municipal court system driven by profit extracted from mostly black and low-income residents.

That same report also cleared former Ferguson officer Darren Wilson in the Aug. 9 death of Brown, the unarmed 18-year-old who for protesters became a symbol of unjustified use of force and unfair treatment of minorities by police.

The Justice Department’s conclusions drew a muted response among activists. Only a few dozen protesters gathered that night outside Ferguson’s police station — the nexus of many demonstrations. That was in sharp contrast to the throngs that turned out there and across the nation in the days after Brown’s death and in November, when a Missouri grand jury declined to indict Wilson.

The comparatively sparse turnout by protesters raised questions about whether the movement had lost momentum. Organizers said the federal government’s conclusions had been expected after some of the findings were leaked in the weeks before the formal announcements.

Rasheen Aldridge, a 20-year-old regular at the protests, considers Ferguson his generation’s Civil Rights Movement. That idea, he said, seemed to grow more relevant after the recent killing of an unarmed biracial man by a white officer in Madison, Wisconsin, and the suspension of a University of Oklahoma fraternity chapter that was caught on video singing a racist chant.

Aldridge, head of Young Activists United St. Louis, said he did not expect the protest movement “to grow into the energy that it has, empowering young people not to be silent anymore and to take action and fix it.”

“This is the new time to make changes,” added Aldridge, also a member of the Ferguson Commission, a group tasked by Missouri’s governor to address underlying social and economic problems. “This is our time.”

Some demonstrations in the months after Brown’s death were marred by looting and arson fires that targeted businesses. Organizers blamed those incidents on outside agitators.

That was the case again Thursday, when two police officers helping monitor protests outside the police department were shot in an attack that was still under investigation. The officers were later released from the hospital, and no arrests have been made.

The gunfire drew instant, broad condemnation from activists. Dozens of protesters gathered again Thursday night in Ferguson, expressing sympathy for the wounded officers and praying for peace during a candlelight vigil.

“We cannot afford these kinds of incidents happening. That gets us absolutely nowhere,” said St. Louis activist John Gaskin III. He called the gunfire “disgraceful and cowardly” and said people “need to be working for reforms and justice, not revenge.”

Robinson said the wounding of the officers “definitely set us back.” But he believes protesters can regain what they lost.

“Even last night as we protested, police were very gracious to us,” he said Friday. “That shows a lot of trust to us.”

Gaskin said protesters should take stock in the Ferguson house cleaning they helped achieve.

“Although the work is not nearly done,” he said, “this is a time for practitioners of democracy to pat themselves on the back for significant change.”

APEX, N.C. (AP) — Of all the pieces Julie Moore crafts in her home studio, the most popular is a brightly colored fabric vessel she calls “the party jar.”

But in this case, the guest of honor is inside the jar.

“People that are vivacious and celebrate life — this one is what they really like,” she says, lifting the ornately woven lid from the urn. “I want it to be a piece of art that they look at and they don’t think, ‘Oh. That’s Dad’s ashes.'”

Cremations in the United States have tripled since 1985, accounting for about 44 percent of all “dispositions,” according to the Cremation Association of North America. With families becoming increasingly transient, the organization expects that to grow to 55 percent over the next decade.

And as cremations soar, more people are looking for urns that, well, don’t look like urns.

“At least one in five Americans have an urn in their house,” says Robin Simonton, executive director of Raleigh’s historic Oakwood Cemetery. “And if you’re going to put someone on your mantle, you want them to look nice.”

On April 19, Oakwood is hosting its first Urn Art & Garden Faire — a juried competition that’s drawn entries from across the country. Although the idea of a national urn contest has raised some eyebrows, Simonton thinks it’s an appropriate way to recognize this trend in “the personalization of death.”

Some have taken it to an extreme.

Foreverence, a funeral products company in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, uses 3-D printing to allow customers to design urns in the shape of a favorite musical instrument or car, and to even create a lifelike bust of the deceased. For the family of Devo guitarist Bob Casale, the company created an urn shaped like “The Energy Dome” — the synth pop/new wave band’s iconic tiered hat.

Oakwood has received more than two dozen entries, made of everything from wood, ceramic and fabric to North Carolina longleaf pine needles. The farthest submission is from Wyoming. Crafted of tooled leather, it features an American Indian brave, slumped in the saddle, and the words: “A horse we all must ride someday.”

Jason Van Duyn began making urns a couple of years ago after reading an article about a woodworker who volunteered his time to make containers for veterans whose remains were coming home in cardboard boxes. He looked at what was out there on the market and wasn’t impressed.

The Raleigh woodturner works almost exclusively with trees that have died naturally, going where the wood’s grain and imperfections take him. His urns range in price from $300 for a 70-cubic-inch piece made from a black cherry stump to $5,200 for a 450-cubic-inch red maple burl “companion” urn.

“It’s kind of on par with somebody who would get a really nice casket,” says Van Duyn, who works out of his garage. “So it’s something that the owner would be happy to have on display and that they can feel proud of and they can feel good about their loved ones being in.”

Moore got into funerary art through her own interest in “green burial.” She started with shrouds, pillows and quilts to be placed in simple pine boxes; the urns seemed a natural progression.

Often, the family will send her items of the deceased’s clothing. She recently made an urn out of T-shirts from a teenage boy who’d committed suicide.

“It made a very pretty urn,” she says. “And it was the colors of HIS life.”

Each comes with a tightly woven sateen drawstring bag that can be buried or used to scatter the ashes, Moore says. Urns intended for burial are made entirely of organic, biodegradable materials.

Moore began showing her pieces about two years ago. Sometimes, her conceit is a bit too effective.

“I had one woman who was holding it and, ‘Oh, it’s so pretty. It’s beautiful. What do you put in here?’ And I said, ‘Well, actually, you put cremains in there. It’s for ashes,'” Moore says with a grin. “She dropped it and ran as if she’d, like, touched death or something.”

Raleigh resident Norma Marti bought her own party jar about two years ago.

“I turned 60 that year, and so that last quarter century of life was looming,” she says. “I thought, ‘Well, that’s really cool.’ And I can actually display it as art — until it’s needed.”

When guests ask about the piece in her family room bookcase, she doesn’t tell them it’s a funerary urn. But her children know what it’s for.

“When the time comes,” she says with a chuckle, “then hopefully I’ll be able to fit into it.”

NEW YORK (AP) – The price of oil is on yet another ride down as swelling global supplies overwhelm rising but still relatively weak demand.

The price of oil fell 10 percent this week, approaching its lowest price in six years, and many expect it to fall further in the coming weeks because supplies are still heading up and the summer driving season is still months away.

The lower crude prices will mean gasoline prices will slide lower in the coming weeks, and many drivers will likely pay under $2 a gallon in the summertime for the first time since 2004.

Oil prices had appeared to stabilize in a range nearly 15 percent higher than the depths they had reached in late January. But on Friday the International Energy Agency called a recent rise in oil prices a “head fake” and a “facade of stability.”

“The rebalancing (of supply and demand) triggered by the price collapse has yet to run its course,” the agency wrote in its monthly oil market report.

On Friday, oil fell $2.21, or 5 percent, to $44.84 a barrel, within 40 cents of its low for the year of $44.45. Here’s what’s behind the recent drop, and what else to look out for in the coming months.

FLOOD OF OIL

Oil has collapsed from over $100 because rising global supplies – especially in the U.S. – outpaced weak demand. The increase in U.S. production last year was the third-biggest one-year increase in the history of the global oil industry, according to BP.

That has pushed oil levels in storage to their highest ever in the U.S. and far higher than normal around the world. Analysts expect supplies to continue to build, forcing prices gradually lower, until refiners ramp up to make gasoline for the summer driving season.

But analysts say price of oil could fall sharply – to under $40 a barrel and perhaps even briefly to $20 – if supplies grow so much that storage tanks fill up.

WHAT ABOUT MY GAS PRICE?

Gasoline prices rise nearly every year around this time. This year has been no different. After reaching a low of $2.03 a gallon in late January, the national average retail price rose every day for more than a month, reaching $2.46 on March 7, according to AAA.

But the spring surge is likely over, according to Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst at the Oil Price Information Service. The national average has slipped lower every day for the past week, falling to $2.44 on Friday, and Kloza expects it to fall the rest of March and April.

The national average won’t fall all the way to its January low, Kloza said, in part because refiners must still switch to more expensive summer blends of gasoline to meet clean air standards. But he expects drivers in much of the nation, especially in the South, to be paying less than $2 a gallon at times this spring and summer.

“This is something unique,” Kloza says. “The market (decline) is going to make it so you don’t even notice when your local station switches from winter to summer gas.”

WHAT WILL PRODUCERS DO?

Low prices have forced oil companies to slash spending on new exploration and production, and forced oil service companies facing a slowdown in drilling to lay off thousands of workers.

When drillers stop sinking new wells into the ground, production begins to fall and prices rise. The number of rigs operating in the U.S. fell for the 14th straight week to their lowest since March of 2011, the oil services company Baker Hughes reported Friday.

But it is still unclear whether producers in the U.S. have cut back enough to help rebalance supply and demand. And while some OPEC members have called for the cartel to reduce output in an effort to force prices up, the group’s most powerful member, Saudi Arabia, and other Gulf states have shown little interest in cutting back.

Despite the slowdown in drilling, U.S. production is still rising because projects started last year are still ramping up.  Many oil companies say they can still make money at low prices if they drill only in their most cost-effective oil fields. But those fields are cost-effective because they produce a lot of oil, and that means output might not fall as much as expected.

U.S. production is not expected to start to slip until June, according to the Energy Department, and even then the declines are expected to be slight. And though U.S. production is expected to decline every month in the second half of the year, production in December of this year will still be higher than production during every month last year.

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) – The alumni of a fraternity chapter at the University of Oklahoma shut down after members were caught engaging in a racist chant have hired a high-profile Oklahoma attorney to represent them and have severed communications with its national headquarters.

Attorney Stephen Jones, who gained national prominence as the attorney for convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, confirmed Friday that he was hired by alumni members who served on the board of the university’s local Sigma Alpha Epsilon chapter.

Jones said he does not represent two members of the fraternity who were expelled from the university after they were caught on video leading a racist chant that referenced lynching and said African-Americans would never be allowed as members.

He said he was planning to meet with his clients Friday, and he couldn’t say whether he would represent current members of the fraternity who are being investigated by university officials for their role in the chant.

“Obviously there are issues about First Amendment rights, due process and real estate issues, but we’re still gathering documents,” said Jones, who has also represented several Oklahoma politicians in high-profile corruption cases.

Jones also ran unsuccessfully as a Republican for U.S. Senate in 1990 against David Boren, who is now OU’s president.

A spokesman for the fraternity’s national headquarters said Friday that officials with the Oklahoma chapter have stopped communicating with them.

“We have not heard from the Oklahoma chapter,” spokesman Brandon Weghorst said. “They have not engaged us since the time the chapter was closed.”

Weghorst said the national fraternity is moving forward with plans to expel all of the suspended members of the OU chapter, a move that will permanently revoke their membership.

Meanwhile, Weghorst said the national fraternity is continuing its investigation into SAE chapters at other universities, and planned to release an update on those investigations later Friday. He confirmed Thursday that investigations were underway into chapters at the University of Texas-Austin and Louisiana Tech University in Ruston.

The national SAE fraternity has said some allegations of racism, which it acknowledges, refer to incidents from more than 20 years ago. But the fraternity maintains that none of its official chants are racist and that members of the Oklahoma chapter likely learned the one that was recorded from fellow chapter members.

In Boulder, Colorado, the SAE chapter hung a banner this week outside their fraternity house that reads: “Not on our campus. Not in our chapter. Colorado Chi brothers stand against racism or hate of any kind.”

The University of Washington in Seattle is investigating allegations that members of the SAE chapter there made racial slurs and obscene gestures to black students during a demonstration last month. The UW fraternity chapter’s president, Michael Hickey, told the Seattle Times he believes the slurs came from nonmembers.

___

Associated Press writer Teresa Crawford in Chicago contributed to this report.

MADISON (AP) – A mental health researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison won’t take newborn monkeys away from their mothers as part of an upcoming study.

Dr. Ned Kalin tells the Wisconsin State Journal that complaints from animal rights groups weren’t behind the change in the study. Rather, he says other research found anxiety isn’t increased when newborn monkeys are separated from their mothers.

More than 383,000 people had signed an online petition asking that the study be canceled. The anxiety and depression study plans to put monkeys through stress tests and euthanize them after a year to study their brains.

Hannah West, executive director of Alliance for Animals and the Environment, says the group still opposes the study. But says she’s happy the newborns won’t be taken from mothers, no matter the reason.

PARIS (AP) — Two men with ties to one of the three gunmen who terrorized Paris were handed preliminary charges Friday, the Paris prosecutor said, describing hundreds of texts, regular meetings and DNA recovered from a stun gun among the belongings at a bloodied kosher supermarket.

The two men, identified as Amar R. and Said M., were given preliminary charges for participation in a terrorist group with the intent to commit crime.

Prosecutors said Amar R., a jailhouse acquaintance of Paris terrorist Amedy Coulibaly, had exchanged more than 600 texts with Coulibaly from September to January and met him on Jan. 5 and Jan 6. That was just a day before two brothers killed 12 people at the Charlie Hebdo satirical newspaper in Paris on Jan. 7 and before Coulibaly shot dead a policewoman on Jan. 8 and killed four of his hostages on Jan. 9 at a Paris kosher grocery store.

DNA from Said M. was recovered from a stun gun in Coulibaly’s belongings at the market, the prosecutor said.

Said M. and Amar R. contacted each other more than 1,200 times between February 2014 and January 2015 and saw each other regularly, the prosecutor said. The statement said the two men destroyed their telephone microchips on Jan. 9, the day Coulibaly and brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi were killed in separate standoffs with French security forces.

Two other people taken into custody at the same time, including a policewoman who was in a relationship with one of the suspects, were released, the prosecutor said. They had also been suspected of links with Coulibaly.

Europe 1 radio reported that the kosher grocery was expected to reopen Sunday for the first time since the attacks. The printing office where the Kouachi brothers holed up for hours before coming out shooting at police remains closed.

In a posthumous video, Coulibaly claimed allegiance to the Islamic State group, but it is not known who edited and released the footage on the Internet. His widow left France days before the attacks and is believed to be in Syria.

The Kouachis claimed the attacks for al-Qaida’s branch in Yemen, where one of the brothers is believed to have traveled for paramilitary training with the terror group. But no one with any ties to the brothers has been charged. Investigators are trying to unravel how the three men orchestrated the attacks — and whether they had help — in the months since Coulibaly’s release from prison and the end of French surveillance of the brothers.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A knife-carrying Army veteran who scaled a White House fence and dashed into the executive mansion before being caught pleaded guilty Friday in connection with the case.

Omar Gonzalez pleaded guilty to entering or remaining in a restricted building or grounds while carrying a deadly or dangerous weapon and assaulting, resisting or impeding a Secret Service officer.

The Sept. 19 incident in which Gonzalez was able to breach White House security preceded the disclosure of other serious Secret Service breaches in security for President Barack Obama and ultimately led to Julia Pierson’s resignation as director of the agency after 18 months on the job.

President Barack Obama, the first lady and their daughters were not home when Gonzalez got inside the mansion, though Obama and his daughters had just left the White House aboard a helicopter on their way to Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland.

After Gonzalez’s arrest, investigators found hundreds of rounds of ammunition, a machete and two hatchets in his car. A folding knife he was carrying in his pants pocket when he was arrested had a blade that was 3.5 inches long, according to the Secret Service.

Gonzalez, who previously lived in Copperas Cove, Texas, allegedly told a Secret Service agent after his arrest that he “was concerned the atmosphere was collapsing and needed to get the information to the president of the United States so that he could get the word out to the people.”

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — A group retracing the steps of the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery Voting Rights March is set to arrive at the Alabama Capitol.

Marchers will hold a voting rights rally on the Capitol steps Friday afternoon. Marchers departed Selma on Monday for the 54-mile walk.

The march comes after the nation marked the anniversary of Bloody Sunday, in which civil rights demonstrators were attacked by law enforcement on the city’s Edmund Pettus Bridge. Televised images galvanized support for the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Participants in the anniversary march have called for a restoration of the Voting Rights Act requirement that states with histories of minority voter suppression get federal permission before changing voting laws.

Martin Luther King III, son of the famed civil rights leader, will walk the march’s final leg.

CHICAGO (AP) – Sam Dekker scored 17 points, Frank Kaminsky added 16 points and 12 rebounds and No. 6 Wisconsin beat Michigan 71-60 in the Big Ten tournament quarterfinals Friday.

Dekker and Kaminsky, the Big Ten Player of the Year, combined to score all their team’s points in a decisive 9-2 run that broke a 54-all tie late in the second half. The top-seeded Badgers (29-3) opened the tournament on a winning note and will meet Penn State or Purdue in the semifinals on Saturday.

Zak Irvin led Michigan (16-16) with 21 points and 11 rebounds. Ricky Doyle scored 12 and Spike Albrecht added 10 points for the Wolverines, who lost despite shooting 52 percent and committing just five turnovers.

Wisconsin, which beat Michigan in overtime in January, simply got all it could handle. The Badgers closed the first half on an 18-4 run to take a five-point lead, but the Wolverines hung in until the closing minutes.

Back-to-back layups by Kaminsky with about five minutes left put the Badgers ahead for good. He also made a big play after Doyle scored for Michigan, diving for a loose rebound to keep the possession alive. That led to a 3 by Dekker to make it 61-56 with 3:42 left.

Irvin then turned the ball over. Dekker made two free throws to push the lead to seven with 2:27 left after rebounding his own missed jumper, and the Badgers hung on from there.

The way the first half ended, it looked like Wisconsin might run away with this one. Michigan, which jumped on Illinois early in Thursday’s win, was leading 22-13 with 8:11 remaining after Albrecht pulled up for a 3-pointer. But Wisconsin took over after that.

Dekker started the big run with a dunk and layup, and Bronson Koenig nailed back-to-back 3s to make it 31-26 in the closing minute, drawing big cheers from the Badgers’ fans.

Kaminsky had eight points and eight rebounds in the first half. Dekker scored eight, including six during that run.

The Wolverines got 10 points each from Albrecht and Irvin, and the teams combined for just five fouls in the first 20 minutes.

TIP INS

Michigan: G Derrick Walton Jr. was in uniform but did not play. He has been sidelined since Jan. 24 because of a left toe/foot injury

Wisconsin: This is the fourth time the Badgers are the No. 1 seed.

UP NEXT

Michigan: Postseason to be determined.

Wisconsin: Plays Penn State or Purdue in Saturday’s Big Ten tourney semifinals.

(Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)

YUMA, Ariz. (AP) – Marine Corps officials have released the identity of a Marine who died after a civilian airplane crashed on a runway at a southwest Arizona military base.

The Marine Corps Air Station in Yuma says 23-year-old Lance Cpl. Anthony T. DuBeau died Wednesday from injuries he suffered after a T-59 Hawk crash-landed.

According to the Marine Corps, DuBeau was hurt when the aircraft “impacted a government vehicle.”

The pilot and passenger on the T-59 were examined at a hospital and released.

The cause of the crash is under investigation.

DuBueau, a native of Kenosha, Wisconsin, enlisted in the Marine Corps in April 2013. He was assigned to Headquarters and Headquarters Squadron at Air Station Yuma.

Marine officials say his daily duties included inspecting the airfield.