Green Bay News

NANJING, China (AP) — For the past year, Wang Zheng has been avoiding one place: the modest apartment where his parents had been living for more than 20 years in downtown Nanjing until they vanished along with the ill-fated Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.

Scrolls of paintings by his father, Wang Linshi, are in piles in the living room, the guest bedroom, and the studio. Paintbrushes — their heads long dry — hang from a workstation in a row. In the kitchen, the floor and stove have collected a thin layer of dust.

Wang Zheng, the only son of Wang Linshi and Xiong Deming, said he only comes into the apartment in this eastern Chinese city when absolutely necessary.

“I spend as little time as possible,” the 30-year-old said. “It’s uncomfortable here. I always dream about my parents after coming here.”

Like other relatives of the 239 people that disappeared aboard MH370 in the early hours of March 8, 2014, Wang has gone through an emotional roller coaster that has hurled him through grief and hope, guilt and anger over the past year.

Apart from the rest of the world, the families have banded together in a desperate, continuing quest to find the plane and their loved ones. Many other people have long accepted the Malaysian government’s pronouncements that the passengers surely have been lost in the ocean.

The relatives continue to petition governments, pore over details of technical analyses, raise doubts and demand answers. They feel helpless most of the time, praying during day and sobbing at night.

“The public does not understand us, but we need to know the truth,” Wang said.

Losing loved ones who are unaccounted for is especially excruciating, said Pauline Boss, professor emeritus of family social science at University of Minnesota. She coined the phrase “ambiguous loss” and has spent her career studying how people cope with it.

“They are suffering the most difficult kind of loss that you could imagine,” Boss said, adding that the sufferings transcend wealth, education, culture and religion. “Your loved ones have vanished and you have no proof of death. But human beings need to have a body, they need to have proof or evidence, or they will forever hold onto the sliver of hope that their loved ones are still alive.”

Worried that authorities might end the search efforts, family members of MH370 passengers and crew members have urged them to continue scouring every possible place.

“It’s almost a year. There is no proof, no debris, not a single piece of evidence to tell us that they are really in the Indian Ocean,” said Jacquita Gomes, wife of inflight supervisor Patrick Gomes, said at her home in a suburb of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’s capital. “If this is really the end, show us something. Even if it’s just one finger, then we can say goodbye properly and send him to our Lord.”

“We cannot move on, we cannot let go because we don’t know what happened,” said Grace Subathirai Nathan, whose mother, Anne Daisy, was on the flight. “It’s impossible for us to write off someone we love so much.”

On Facebook and Twitter, the family members have banded together in a support group under the name “Cry for Truth.” Social media have made it easier for them to support each other, share information and make collective decisions when responding to authorities or the media.

In a statement issued Thursday, the group criticized the Malaysian government for saying there was no hope of survivors weeks after the disappearance, and for officially saying in January that everyone aboard was presumed dead.

“We do not accept this proclamation and will not give up hope until we have definitive proof of a crash and a determination of location — even if it is just one piece of the wreckage,” the statement said.

In China, the family members have joined a mobile phone group chat in which they take roll-call votes on how to respond to officials, so that they can present a united front. Authorities keep a wary eye on them to discourage activism.

In Beijing, a small group of wives and mothers and sisters have turned to Buddhism, making ritual treks to local temples to pray for safe return of their loved one.

Relatives also have personal ways to cope. Nathan has been wearing a pair of diamond heirloom earrings, sleeping with her mother’s photos and reading her Bible. Gomes often goes to the laundromat in the wee hours, finding solace in the spinning of the machines.

In Nanjing, Wang’s grandmother is surviving on a glimmer of hope, his aunt Xiong Yunming said. “My mother is waiting for her daughter and son-in-law to return, though tears roll down her cheeks every time she raises a rice bowl,” the aunt said. “In a way, no news has been good news.”

The vacuum of concrete information has fed speculation. Though search officials say satellite data indicates the plane went down in a remote stretch of the Indian Ocean, Xiong believes the plane was hijacked and taken to a U.S. military base.

“We are in an age of high technology, and I think the truth has been covered up,” the retired businesswoman said.

“I think everything is possible,” Wang said after listening to his aunt’s analysis. “Nothing can be ruled out when nothing can be proved.”

Wang traveled to Beijing the day after the plane went missing and returned home nearly two months later, agonizingly, with no answer. “Life was wretched,” Wang recalled.

Realizing the fragility of life, Wang decided to have a child to keep the bloodline and to bring in some joy to disperse the gloom, although the new life that came in January brought both happiness and poignancy.

He has sought escape by spending time with his in-laws rather than his own family, and by immersing himself in his work as an information technology engineer.

“I started to work overtime often and long, hoping the work would dumb me,” Wang said.

But he is not broken.

“I have been trying to adjust myself. I cannot fall, because I don’t want my parents — upon their return — to see I am collapsing and languishing,” he said. “I must take care of myself, take care of my family, and I must stand tall and pursue the truth as we are waiting for them to return.”

For that same reason, he insists that his parents’ apartment remain untouched.

“Let’s decide what to do with it once they are back,” said.

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AP writer Eileen Ng in Kuala Lumpur contributed to this report.

ALGONAC, Mich. (AP) — A man’s plan to walk from Detroit to Toronto ended Thursday in the middle of frozen Lake St. Clair, when an icebreaker spotted him, the U.S. Coast Guard said.

A lookout on the Cutter Neah Bay spotted the 25-year-old man walking on the lake about 9:30 a.m. Thursday, 1 ½ miles from Ontario’s Seaway Island, the Coast Guard said in a statement. It said the 140-foot icebreaker sent a crew on foot to check on him.

The crew questioned him, treated him for hypothermia, and “assisted him aboard the cutter,” the Coast Guard said.

“He was in the beginning stages of hypothermia,” Lt. Joshua Zike, commander of the cutter, told the Times Herald of Port Huron. “It took him a long time to formulate his thoughts.”

The man, a U.S. citizen, wasn’t dressed for conditions on the lake, had no flotation gear and no form of communication, the Coast Guard said. Zike said he was carrying a backpack with food and clothes, a sleeping bag and tarp.

The man told the Coast Guard that he left Detroit about two nights earlier and spent Wednesday night in the Crib Lighthouse on Lake St. Clair. Seaway Island is about 20 miles from downtown Detroit.

The Coast Guard released a video of the rescue Thursday night.

The cutter docked at Algonac, where emergency medical workers treated the man, the Coast Guard said.

RENO, Nev. (AP) – Prosecutors are dropping the case against a Nevada woman who spent more than 30 years in prison for a 1976 murder before a judge ordered a new trial based on recently discovered DNA evidence, the district attorney said Friday.

Washoe County District Attorney Chris Hicks told reporters that there will be no retrial of Cathy Woods in the fatal stabbing of Michelle Mitchell on the edge of the campus of the University of Nevada, Reno.

A judge threw out the conviction in September after new DNA evidence linked the Reno crime scene to an Oregon inmate who now faces murder charges in California in a string of killings about the same time.

Washoe District Judge Patrick Flanagan ordered the 64-year-old Woods to appear at a retrial July 13. But Hicks said during a news conference at the county court complex that he’s filing a motion to dismiss the case.

Woods’ public defender and the FBI say DNA found on a cigarette butt at the Reno crime scene suggests the real killer is a former Oregon prison inmate recently charged in the deaths of two women among five victims in what became known as the “Gypsy Hill” murders near San Francisco about the same time Mitchell’s throat was slashed.

Woods, now 64, was convicted in 1980 and again five years later. The convictions were based largely on the confession she made in 1979 at the psychiatric hospital in Shreveport, Louisiana, where her mother committed her months earlier.

Prosecutors at those trials argued that only Mitchell’s killer could have known the information Woods provided to police in her confession.

The Nevada Supreme Court overturned the initial conviction based partly on the trial judge’s refusal to allow defense attorneys to present evidence that Woods could have learned everything she told investigators from newspaper accounts.

Nevertheless, Woods’ lawyers were unable to persuade the jury in the second trial to disregard her earlier confession, public defender Maizie Pusich said.

“It’s very hard to argue (that) you shouldn’t believe her, because, why would someone confess to something like that?” Pusich said before Judge Patrick Flanagan granted her motion in September for a new trial.

“What we have now is significant evidence that shows that the jury should not have accepted everything that Cathy Woods said from the hospital in Shreveport at face value,” she wrote in the motion for a new trial.

Pusich said Woods doesn’t remember acknowledging the killing while hospitalized in March 1979.

“I’m told it was a product of wanting to get a private room,” Pusich told The Associated Press earlier. “She was being told she wasn’t sufficiently dangerous to qualify, and within a short period she was claiming she had killed a woman in Reno.”

Rodney Halbower, 66, was serving a 30-year sentence for attempted murder in Oregon when he was extradited to San Mateo County in California, and charged in January with murder in the 1976 deaths of Paula Louise Baxter, 17, and Veronica “Ronnie” Anne Cascio, 18, near Pacifica.

Halbower had been arrested for the rape of a 33-year-old woman in Reno in November 1975 – three months before Mitchell was killed not far away. He was released on bail and barely a month later, the series of “Gypsy Hill” murders began. Cascio’s body was found Jan. 8, 1976, and Baxter’s on Feb. 4.  Mitchell was killed Feb. 24.

Floodwaters ruined hundreds of toys wrapped and ready for delivery next Christmas season to needy children, part of wild weather swings in Kentucky that dumped up to 2 feet of snow in some areas and trapped travelers on highways for nearly a day.

Flooding in the state’s Appalachian region appeared limited to areas near rivers swollen by rain and snow melt before the snowstorm walloped the state Wednesday evening and Thursday, state emergency officials said Friday.

In Harlan County, Jim “Muggins” Bennett said flooding from the nearby Cumberland River seeped into sheds where he stores toys for his long-running operation of delivering Christmas presents to children, the Tri-City Empty Stocking Fund.

About half his stockpile for the next holiday season was ruined, he said.

“You want to sit down and cry a little bit,” the 74-year-old ex-coal miner said Friday. “But we don’t want to let this slow us down.”

Bennett and his wife, Naomi, have delivered toys and food boxes for area people for nearly 35 years. It’s grown to include about 3,000 toys and 600 food boxes each season. The Bennetts rely on donations, but they also buy gifts.

Bennett, who started the giveaways while laid off from the coal mines, said he and his wife are determined to make their full deliveries in December. There’s no waiting until Christmas – the kids tear open the gifts as soon as they get them.

“We sit there and watch them, and it makes tears come to your eyes,” he said.

Elsewhere in the region, a handful of people were evacuated by boats from their homes on Thursday due to river flooding in portions of Pike County, said Deputy County Judge-Executive Brian Morris.

The worst of the flooding in eastern Kentucky appeared to have ended, as rivers were receding or close to going down, said Tony Edwards, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Jackson.

“Right now everything seems to be improving for the most part,” he said.

Meanwhile, temperatures plunged below zero early Friday, and ongoing wrecks had highway crews struggling to keep traffic flowing on interstates that turned into parking lots and agonizingly long waits for motorists a day earlier.

“Our road crews have been working in very difficult circumstances,” state transportation Secretary Mike Hancock said.

Some motorists endured logjams lasting nearly 24 hours from Wednesday evening into Thursday along a stretch of Interstate 65 near Elizabethtown.

Travelers ran into more stops Friday on I-65, with the same cause – tractor-trailer rigs that crashed in the slick conditions, state highway officials said.

Near Munfordville, a tractor-trailer that jumped a barrier wall had southbound traffic on I-65 backed up for nine miles before being cleared Friday morning, officials said.

The epic traffic snarls were compounded by several factors adding to the woes for travelers and road crews, highway officials said.

Heavy rains ahead of the snowstorm prevented crews from treating roads with salt or chemicals, said state Transportation Cabinet spokesman Chuck Wolfe.

The Elizabethtown area – which turned into ground zero for the traffic delays – was hit by some of the state’s heaviest band of snowfall, he said. More than 20 inches fell in the area.

“So keeping up with the snow with our plows was a major challenge to begin with,” Wolfe said. “It was quickly compounded by a rash of tractor-trailers jackknifing and blocking the entire roadway. Snow plows and other responders couldn’t get through.”

Once the wrecked trucks were removed, a process that took hours, roads were still strewn with abandoned or disabled vehicles, he said.

APPLETON – Mayor Tim Hanna has signed on to a friend-of-the-court brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to declare same-sex marriage legal nationwide.

Hanna joins more than 200 other mayors from around the country in supporting the brief filed by Mayors for the Freedom to Marry. The brief reads, in part, “municipalities, as the level of government most closely connected to the community they serve, bear a great burden when a target sector of their populace is denied the right to marry. When the freedom to marry is denied, municipalities are the first level of government to suffer the impact.”

• Click here to read the full brief

“Appleton has been a local leader in marriage equality, instituting policies for same sex benefits for city employees in 2011,” Hanna said in a news release.

In April, the Supreme Court is scheduled to take up gay-rights cases that ask them to overturn bans in four states and declare for the entire nation that people can marry the partners of their choice, regardless of gender.

Proponents of same-sex marriage have said they expect the court to settle the matter once and for all with a decision that invalidates state provisions that define marriage as between a man and a woman. On the other side, advocates for traditional marriage have said they want the court to let the political process play out, rather than have judges order states to allow same-sex couples to marry.

The court’s final decision is expected by late June.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

BAYFIELD – Before thousands of people flocked to see the the Apostle Island ice caves, the area was a hub for logging and mining of the highly valued Apostle Island sandstone used to build courthouses and mansions.

While the cliffs and their ‘caves’ are certainly the size of some mansions, the geological structures have a much richer history.

Julie Van Stappen, the planning and resource manager for the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, says the cliffs are around a billion years old, “The geology of the park is really precambrian sandstone and there’s really three sandstone formations within the park, and the one that makes the really fancy caves is the devils island formation and it’s very finely layered. So the wind and the waves act on it to sculpt these gorgeous cliffs.”

So what about those caves?

The National Park Service doesn’t keep track of the number of caves, partly because they aren’t necessarily caves at all.

“Some people think of caves and they’re not like these long tunnels,” Van Stappen explains.

The national park is made up of 21 islands and the Lake Superior coastline. Earth Day founder, Wisconsin Governor and U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson, and President John F. Kennedy played a big part in the national park’s founding.

“The original proposals date back to the 40’s for the area, and something that was an impetus and actually finally getting it to be a national park was a visit by John F. Kennedy. He was a sailor and this has been a popular area for sailing for many years,” Van Stappen says.

Not long before his assassination in Dallas.

In 1970, the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore became what it is today. Giving people an up-close view of nature’s beauty.

To see more pictures of the ice caves and get information on weather conditions, click here.

FREMONT – One man was killed in a stabbing Friday morning, with a woman in custody.

The domestic incident happened at an apartment complex at 397 Jefferson St., with the call coming at 2:43 a.m., according to a release from the Fremont Police Department.

A 43-year-old man was killed. A 43-year-old woman is in custody. No names have been released.

No court appearance is expected today, according to the Waupaca County District Attorney’s Office.

GREEN BAY – A Tennessee-based company is proposing a $10 million psychiatric hospital project for Green Bay.

Strategic Behavioral Health would like to build a 72-bed facility in the I-43 Business Park on the city’s far east side. The company would buy 10 acres of city-owned land between Einstein Way and Ontario Road for $494,000.

The company specializes in mental health and substance abuse care through acute, outpatient, and residential services.

Kevin Vonck, the city’s director of economic development, says Strategic Behavioral Health chose to build in Green Bay after a nationwide analysis of where there is a need for mental health and substance abuse care.

City staff says the project will initially create 100 to 150 jobs, with average hourly wages between $18 and $22. The hospital will employ about 200 people at full operating capacity.

Strategic Behavioral Health is requesting financial assistance from the city. A five-year tax increment financing plan would be setup with a cap of $1 million.

FOX 11’s Ben Krumholz will have more on this project on FOX 11 News at Five.

Here is the schedule of public hearings before the Joint Finance Committee on the 2015-17 state budget:

Wednesday, March 18 (10 a.m.-5 p.m.)
Brillion High School
Endries Performing Arts Center
W1101 County Road HR
Brillion, WI 54110

Friday, March 20 (10 a.m.-5 p.m.)
Alverno College
Pitman Theatre
3400 South 43rd Street
Milwaukee, WI 53234

Monday, March 23 (10 a.m.-5 p.m.)
University of Wisconsin-Barron County
Fine Arts Theatre
1800 College Drive
Rice Lake, WI 54868

Thursday, March 26 (9:30 a.m.-4 p.m.)
Reedsburg High School
CAL Center Auditorium
1100 South Albert Avenue
Reedsburg, WI 53959

DE PERE – A good portion of students and staff at Hemlock Elementary School are all sporting the same hairdo now.

Eighty-seven people voluntarily shaved their heads, or donated more than ten inches of their hair, to support children battling cancer.

All students and staff also performed a parody rendition of Taylor Swift’s Shake it Off, which they changed to “shave it off.”

The event benefits St. Baldrick’s Foundation, which funds childhood cancer research grants. The school raised several thousand dollars in donations. The inches of donated hair go to Locks of Love, which creates wigs for young cancer patients.

FOX 11’s Kelly Schlicht was at the event. Hear more from students, staff, and the parent of a childhood cancer survivor tonight on FOX 11 News at Five.

OCONTO – An Oconto Falls woman has been charged in connection with the fatal heroin overdose of an Abrams man.

Tiffany A. Gerrits, 23, was arrested Wednesday, Oconto County sheriff’s officials say. She is suspected in the death of Donald J. Hudson, who was 21 when he died last Aug. 29 at his home. Investigators say an autopsy showed he died of a heroin overdose.

Gerrits is charged with first-degree reckless homicide by delivering drugs, manufacturing or delivering heroin and possession of heroin with the intent to deliver. A judge set her bond at $250,000 on Thursday.

She is due back in court next Thursday.

GREEN BAY – Fox River Trail users, watch out for maintenance work on a stretch of the path next week.

The Brown Co. Park Dept. says utility line maintenance work is set for Wednesday and Thursday between Marine and Porlier streets. Parts of the trail will need to be temporarily closed while work is being done.

Although the trail is not maintained during the winter, parks officials expect spring-like weather to spur more people to use the trail.

NEW YORK (AP) — LaGuardia Airport has both its runways open now that a Delta jetliner that skidded and smashed through a fence has been removed.

Port Authority spokesman Joe Pentangelo says the second runway was reopened around 10:30 a.m. Friday. The airport’s other runway was reopened about three hours after Thursday’s accident.

Cranes were used overnight to remove plane.

Six people were hurt in the incident Thursday. The nose of the plane came to rest just feet from icy Flushing Bay.

The plane has been taken to a hangar.

The National Transportation Safety Board plans to retrieve the flight data and cockpit voice recorders and to document damage to the aircraft.

NEW YORK (AP) — In the Dow’s elite club, Apple is in and AT&T is out.

Apple will replace AT&T in the Dow Jones industrial average after the close of trading on Wednesday, March 18, the managers of the index announced early Friday. Apple will start trading as part of the 30-stock Dow at the opening of trading the next day.

THE REASON

S&P Dow Jones Indices said it’s making the move in response to a planned stock split for Visa, another member of the 119-year old barometer of the stock market. After its four-to-one stock split, Visa will wind up with a lower price. S&P said that would reduce the weight of the information technology sector in the Dow, because Visa, a credit-card and payment-processing giant, counts as a tech stock. Adding Apple will help balance out this reduction.

TRADING PLACES

The last big Dow shake-up came in September, 2013 when Goldman Sachs, Nike and Visa knocked out Alcoa, Bank of America and Hewlett-Packard.

DOW’S LEVEL

Unlike other stock-market measures, the Dow weighs members by their prices, so a large change in the price of one stock can have a big effect on the overall index.

S&P said swapping Apple for AT&T won’t alter the Dow’s level.

At $736 billion, Apple is the world’s largest company by market value, but the Dow only accounts for a stock’s price.

IN-AND-OUT

AT&T, meanwhile, has bounced in and out of the blue chip average over the Dow’s long history. It first entered in 1916 as American Telephone & Telegraph, joining Central Leather, Studebaker and other industrial giants in an elite club of 20 companies. In recent times, AT&T was kicked out in 2004 only to return the following year when it merged with SBC Communications.

Apple’s stock rose $2.44, or 2 percent, to $128.79 on Friday. AT&T sank 46 cents, or 1 percent, to $33.54.

RACINE (AP) – A Racine man accused of killing his roommate is being held on $1 million cash bond.

A criminal complaint says a dispute over money motivated 27-year-old Jacob Rogers to kill his friend, Andrew Jones. Acquaintances say the 27-year-old victim was the godfather of Rogers’ newborn daughter and was at the hospital for the birth just days before he was killed.

Police say Jones was shot multiple times at a Racine apartment Monday. Rogers was arrested Tuesday night following a manhunt.

He’s charged with first-degree intentional homicide and possessing a firearm as a felon. Court records don’t list a defense attorney.

MADISON – After a debating the bill all night, the Wisconsin state Assembly has passed right-to-work legislation.

The bill passed 62-35.

Debate began in earnest on the bill at 2 p.m. Thursday. Democrats railed against it, saying it was designed to destroy unions and bolster Walker’s presidential aspirations.

But Republicans say they want to give workers the choice of whether to pay union dues.

Twenty-four other states have right-to-work laws.

Gov. Scott Walker has said he plans to sign the bill on Monday.

This is a breaking news update. More information will be added as it becomes available.

BARABOO, Wis. (AP) – Circus World, with its roots in the Ringling Bros., says it’s committed to keeping elephants in its shows in Baraboo.

The parent company of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus plans to eliminate elephants from its circus performances by 2018. Feld Entertainment says some cities and counties have passed “anti-circus” and “anti-elephant” ordinances, making touring difficult with changing regulations.

Baraboo was home to the Ringling Brothers when they began their first tour as a circus in 1884. Today, Circus World continues big top shows with performers from all over the world. Executive director Scott O’Donnell says Circus World has a great environment for the elephants and an exemplary record for keeping them safe.

O’Donnell tells WKOW-TV state and federal inspectors visit the circus regularly.

GREEN BAY – A panel of 70 prospective jurors will be called in the case of a man accused of possessing ricin, should the case go to trial.

Kyle Smith, 21, faces two counts: knowingly developing and possessing ricin for use as a weapon, and having ricin not in its naturally occurring form and not for a reasonable purpose. The first count carries maximum penalty of life in prison, while the second count has a maximum penalty of ten years in prison.

A trial in federal court is scheduled to start March 16. William Kerner, Smith’s attorney, said during a hearing Thursday that prosecutors have a made a plea agreement offer, according to court records. However, Kerner has not reviewed the draft plea agreement with Smith.

Also at the hearing, Judge William Griesbach ruled on which portions of the videotaped interview Smith did with Oshkosh Police will be allowed to be shown to the jury.

According to a criminal complaint, Oshkosh police and the Wisconsin National Guard found 1 1/2 grams of ricin in Smith’s apartment on Halloween.

MILWAUKEE (AP) – Milwaukee police have shot and killed a man who was holding a knife on his estranged wife.

Police say officers were called to a home on the city’s south side shortly before midnight Thursday on a report of a man threatening his wife with a knife. Authorities say the man had a history of domestic violence and that the courts had ordered him not to contact his estranged wife.

Officers say they tried negotiating with the man, but he refused to drop the weapon. Police say an officer who thought the man was going to stab the woman shot and killed him.

The 44-year-old woman is OK. Her 45-year-old husband died at the scene.

The 27-year-old officer who shot the man is on administrative duty, as protocol requires.

APPLETON- There will be a lot of laughs Friday night at the Fox Cities Performing Arts Center.

It’s the Laughter is the Best Medicine annual event, benefiting Theda Care Family Foundations.

The money raised will help fund a new cancer center.

And headlining the event, a couple comedians, Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood.

The event is Friday night at 7:30.

Limited tickets are still available.

For more information, click here.

Both Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood joined Good Day Wisconsin.