Green Bay News

PHOENIX — Ryan Braun can’t pinpoint the exact date, but he can remember with some clarity when his right thumb began bothering him.

“It was a changeup against Joe Kelly in St. Louis,” Braun said Wednesday as he reported to spring training with the rest of Milwaukee’s position players. “I think it was an extra-inning game at some point in 2013.”

“It’s been a while since I’ve felt as good as I do now,” he said.

A little research can pinpoint the moment exactly: It was May 18, 2013. Braun led off the 10th inning with a single against Kelly in what would ultimately be a 6-4 victory for the Brewers.

The numbers back up Braun’s memory.

That single improved his career batting average to .314. In 920 games to that point, he’d hit 210 home runs with 671 RBIs.

Since then, though, Braun has batted just .264 with 20 home runs and 91 RBIs in 159 games — he missed the last 65 of that 2013 season because of a suspension for his role in the Biogenesis drug investigation.

The 2011 NL MVP last year posted a career-low .266 batting average with 19 home runs and 81 RBIs. In September, he hit .210 with a home run and five RBIs over the final 23 games.

In the days after the season ended, Braun underwent a procedure to freeze the balky nerve that was causing problems.

Since then, Braun says he’s felt good. Really good. And with the 2015 season a few weeks away, he’s hoping to finally turn the page on the most difficult stretch of his eight-year career.

“It’s an important year for him,” Brewers manager Ron Roenicke said. “That’s why it’s nice to see him coming healthy and hopefully, we can keep him that way. When he’s healthy, we know what he is capable of doing.”

So far, Braun says there are no signs of trouble. He began swinging a bat a little earlier than usual during the offseason but reported to camp feeling fine and fully expecting a normal workload.

“I’ve been able to do everything I would typically do over the course of an offseason, which is encouraging,” he said. “Hopefully I’ll be healthy. But aside from that, I don’t think I’ll be limited or anything. I’ll have to be conscious about how many extra swings I take and stuff like that, but aside from that I should be able to do everything.”

More than anyone else, Braun’s health will go a long way in determining the Brewers’ fortunes. It’s no coincidence that his September swoon coincided with a late-season collapse that left Milwaukee home for the playoffs despite leading the NL Central for 150 days.

“I think we’ve addressed that enough,” he said. “Obviously, it was difficult, but it was last year.”

“When you show up this year, you know you can’t do anything about last year. None of us can change what happened. We wish things would have ended differently than they did but they didn’t,” he said. “Hopefully, the focus is on this year and doing everything we can to prepare the best that we can every day to be successful and to get off to a good start in April.”

SBG Bureau – Washington DC) A major offensive to retake Iraq’s second-largest city from Islamic State militants is tentatively planned to begin in the spring, Pentagon officials have said.

ISIS took the city last summer as Iraqi forces dropped their weapons and ran for their lives.

ISIS flags flying over Mosul, Iraq show the extremists remain steadfast in ruling Iraq’s second largest city with sheer terror. Now, U.S. backed Iraqi troops think re-taking the city could be a turning point.

Many others are not so sure.

Clifford May of Defense of Democracies doesn’t think America’s focus is on the right targets. Mosul is only one city. ISIS ideology is spreading like a web in Africa, the Middle-East and far-east.

“The current policies are not adequate for the challenge against ISIS or the Islamic State in what I’d call the broader movement,” May says. “A holy war against infidels to destroy what they see as the Judeo-Christians or crusader Zionist Empire invasion remains the objective.”

Up to 25-thousand Iraqi troops would lead the effort to retake Mosul in April or May. Kurdish troops would try to prevent ISIS from escaping to the North and West of Mosul once the attack.is underway.

The Pentagon refuses to say if U.S. ground troops will be involved.

The plan the world now knows, seems futile to some experts.

Founder for the Center for Security Policy Frank Gaffney is skeptical. “This sets up another delusional pursuit of one particular manifestation of the disease.”

Meantime, Iraqi officials say they don’t have the weaponry needed for an assault on Mosul –since ISIS confiscated their weapons when they took the city last year.

But the Pentagon insists thousands of weapons are being shipped and more are on the way.

Meantime, just this week, ISIS blew up the city library with I-E-Ds and set fire to 8000 rare books and manuscripts celebrating Iraqi culture. Records of “the cradle of civilization” are now gone forever.

“That’s why something must be done about these extremists,” Says May. “The Muslim population needs its religion and culture back. The Islamic state is spreading. Al Qaeda is growing and the Islamic Republic of Iran is becoming more powerful”.

(CNN) Finally there’s a way to get your Girl Scout cookie fix year-round.

The organization has teamed up with Wicked Cool Toys to create the first ever Girl Scout cookie oven. It features mixes inspired by some of the most popular cookies like Thin Mints and Trefoils.

The oven has a viewing window and a warming station to heat and melt icing.

The Wicked Cool Toys Girl Scout line is expected to hit U.S. retailers beginning this fall.

The oven will cost about $59 and the cookie mix refill packs, $6.99.

FRESNO, Calif. (AP) – Floyd and Violet Hartwig died holding hands at the end of a marriage lasting 67 years.

Their daughter, Donna Scharton, said Thursday that once the family sensed the couple was close to death, they pushed their two hospice beds together, gently joining their hands. Floyd went first, followed by Violet five hours later. They died Feb. 11 at home in Central California, as they had wished.

Scharton says her parents’ romance sparked at a dance hall when Floyd, a decorated Navy sailor, was home on shore leave. They went on to have three children, four grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren.

Scharton says that people often commented on her parents’ connection.

Cynthia Letson says that once her grandfather passed, the family told her grandmother that she could go too.

LONDON (AP) — The world knows him as “Jihadi John,” the masked, knife-wielding militant in videos showing Western hostages being beheaded by the Islamic State group. A growing body of evidence suggests he is a London-raised university graduate, described by one man who knew him as kind, gentle and humble.

The Washington Post and the BBC on Thursday identified the British-accented militant from the chilling videos as Mohammed Emwazi, a man in his mid-20s who was born in Kuwait and raised in a modest, mixed-income area of West London.

The Center for the Study of Radicalization and Political Violence at King’s College London, which closely tracks fighters in Syria, said it believed the identification was correct.

Asim Qureshi of CAGE, a London-based advocacy group which works with Muslims in conflict with British intelligence services, said he saw strong similarities between the man in the video and Emwazi, whom he knew from 2009 to 2012.

But he said “I can’t be 100 percent certain.”

“The guy’s got a hood on his head. It’s very, very difficult,” Qureshi said.

British anti-terror officials wouldn’t confirm the man’s identity, citing a “live counterterrorism investigation.” National Security Council spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan said the U.S. couldn’t confirm or deny the identity, either.

“Jihadi John” appeared in a video released in August showing the slaying of American journalist James Foley, denouncing the West before the killing. Former IS captives identified him as one of a group of British militants that prisoners had nicknamed “The Beatles.”

A man with similar stature and voice also featured in videos of the killings of American journalist Steven Sotloff, Britons David Haines and Alan Hemming and U.S. aid worker Abdul-Rahman Kassig.

According to The Washington Post and the BBC, Emwazi was born in Kuwait, grew up in west London and studied computer programming at the University of Westminster. The university confirmed that a student of that name graduated in 2009.

“If these allegations are true, we are shocked and sickened by the news,” the university said in a statement.

The news outlets said Emwazi was known to Britain’s intelligence services before he traveled to Syria in 2012, and Qureshi said he had accused British spies of harassing him.

Qureshi said Emwazi first contacted CAGE in 2009. Emwazi said he had traveled to Tanzania with two other men after leaving university, but was deported and questioned in Amsterdam by British and Dutch intelligence services, who suspected him of attempting to join al-Shabaab militants in Somalia.

The following year, Emwazi accused British intelligence services of preventing him from traveling to Kuwait, where he planned to work and marry.

CAGE quoted an email Emwazi had sent saying, “I had a job waiting for me and marriage to get started. But now I feel like a prisoner, only not in a cage, in London.”

“The Mohammed that I knew was extremely kind, extremely gentle, extremely soft-spoken, was the most humble young person that I knew,” Qureshi said.

He said he hadn’t had contact with Emwazi since January 2012.

Qureshi accused British authorities of alienating and radicalizing young British Muslims with heavy-handed policies.

“When we treat people as if they are outsiders, they will inevitably feel like outsiders, and they will look for belonging elsewhere,” he said.

No one answered the door at the brick row house in west London where the Emwazi family is alleged to have lived. Neighbors in the surrounding area of public housing projects either declined comment or said they didn’t know the family.

Congregants leaving a local mosque after afternoon prayers said they didn’t know Emwazi and didn’t believe he had worshipped there.

Neighbor Janine Kintenda, 47, who said she’d lived in the area for 16 years, was shocked at the news.

“Oh my God,” she said, lifting her hand to her mouth. “This is bad. This is bad.”

Shiraz Maher of the King’s College radicalization center said he was investigating whether Emwazi was among a group of young West Londoners who traveled to Syria in about 2012.

Many of them are now dead, including Mohammad el-Araj, Ibrahim al-Mazwagi and Choukri Ellekhlifi, all killed in 2013.

Emwazi survived, and has become one of the most prominent members of IS, a fighter whose confidence and Western accent are calculated to strike fear into viewers of the group’s grisly videos.

Maher said Emwazi’s background was similar to that of other British jihadis, and disproved the idea “that these guys are all impoverished, that they’re coming from deprived backgrounds.”

“They are by and large upwardly mobile people, well educated,” he said.

The daughter of British aid worker Haines, who was killed in September, told ITV News that identifying the masked man was “a good step.”

“But I think all the families will feel closure and relief once there’s a bullet between his eyes,” Bethany Haines said.

Sotloff’s family hopes his killer will be caught and go to prison, saying they felt “relieved” and “take comfort” after Emwazi’s identity was revealed, according to the BBC.

“We want to sit in a courtroom, watch him sentenced and see him sent to a super-max prison where he will spend the rest of his life in isolation,” the family added, according to the BBC.

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Associated Press writers Raphael Satter and Danica Kirka contributed to this report.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – Two stolen Italian books dating to the 17th century that were discovered in the San Francisco Bay Area and many other plundered ancient artifacts will be returned to their country of origin, federal officials say.

The books, “Stirpium Historiae” and “Rariorm Plantarum Historia Anno 1601,” were taken from Italy’s Historical National Library of Agriculture and sold to an antiquities dealer in Italy, Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in a statement. The Bay Area buyer willingly surrendered the books to investigators.

ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations unit will return other cultural treasures to the Italian government this week, including a 17th century cannon, 5th century Greek pottery and items dating to 300-460 B.C.

The items were stolen in Italy and smuggled into the U.S. over the last several years. Their value was not released.

“The cultural and symbolic worth of these Italian treasures far surpasses any monetary value to the Italians,” Tatum King, acting special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in San Francisco said in the statement.

Agents also recovered four stolen artifacts reported missing in July 2012. Three Roman frescos dating to 63-79 A.D. and a piece of dog-figure pottery from the 4th century B.C. that were illegally pilfered from Pompeii were recovered from a private art collection in San Diego and will be returned to Italy.

Eleven investigations nationwide led to the recovery of the antiquities. U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Rome’s force for combatting art and antiquities crimes helped Homeland Security Investigations officials in New York, Boston, Baltimore, Miami, San Diego and San Francisco.

“This repatriation underscores the strong level of judicial cooperation between the U.S. and Italy, and the great attention that both countries assign to the protection of cultural heritage,” said Claudio Bisogniero, Italy’s ambassador to the U.S.

The U.S. government has returned more than 7,200 artifacts to 30 countries since 2007, including paintings from France, Germany, Poland and Austria; 15th to 18th century manuscripts from Italy and Peru; and items from China, Cambodia and Iraq, the statement says.

BEIRUT (AP) — The number of Christians abducted by the Islamic State group in northeastern Syria has risen to 220 in the past three days, as militants round up more hostages from a chain of villages along a strategic river, activists said Thursday.

In Iraq, the IS extremists released a video purportedly showing militants using sledgehammers to smash ancient artifacts in Iraq’s northern city of Mosul, describing the relics as idols that must be removed.

This week’s abductions of the Christian Assyrians in northeastern Syria is one of the largest hostage-takings by the Islamic State since their blitz last year that captured large swaths of both Syria and Iraq last year. The fate of the captives was not known.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the militants picked up dozens more Christian Assyrians from 11 communities near the town of Tal Tamr in Hassakeh province.

The province, which borders Turkey and Iraq, has become the latest battleground in the fight against the Islamic State group in Syria. It is predominantly Kurdish but also has populations of Arabs and predominantly Christian Assyrians and Armenians.

IS began abducting the Assyrians on Monday, when militants attacked a cluster of villages along the Khabur River, sending thousands of people fleeing to safer areas.

Younan Talia, a senior official with the Assyrian Democratic Organization, said IS had raided 33 Assyrian villages, picking up as many as 300 people along the way. It was not possible to reconcile the numbers, and the fate of the hostages remained unclear.

State-run news agency SANA and an Assyrian activist group, the Assyrian Network for Human Rights in Syria, said the group had been moved to the IS-controlled city of Shaddadeh, a predominantly Arab town south of the city of Hassakeh. The Observatory, however, said they were still being held in nearby Mt. Abdulaziz.

The mass abduction added to fears among religious minorities in both Syria and Iraq, who have been repeatedly targeted by the Islamic State group. The extremists have declared a self-styled caliphate in the regions of both countries that are under their control, killing members of religious minorities, driving others from their homes, enslaving women and destroying houses of worship.

The group has killed captives in the past, including foreign journalists, Syrian soldiers and Kurdish militiamen. Most recently, militants in Libya affiliated with IS released a video showing the beheading of 21 Egyptian Christians.

The extremists could also use the Assyrian captives to try to arrange a prisoner swap with the Kurdish militias they are battling in northeastern Syria.

The Observatory said negotiations through mediators were taking place between Arab tribes and an Assyrian figure to secure the hostages’ release.

The U.N. Security Council on Wednesday evening “strongly condemned” the abduction and demanded the immediate release of others abducted by the Islamic State and similar groups.

The White House condemned the attacks, saying the international community is united in its resolve to “end ISIL’s depravity.” ISIL is one of several alternative acronyms for the IS group.

The Assyrians are indigenous Christian people who trace their roots back to some of the ancient Mesopotamians — the ancient Assyrians whose artifacts the Islamic State is now destroying in Iraq.

The five-minute Islamic State video released Thursday shows a group of bearded men inside the Mosul Museum using hammers and drills to destroy several large statues, which are then shown in pieces and chipped. The video then shows a black-clad man at a nearby archaeological site inside Mosul drilling through and destroying a winged-bull Assyrian protective deity that dates back to the 7th century B.C.

“Oh Muslims, these artifacts that are behind me were idols and gods worshipped by people who lived centuries ago instead of Allah,” a bearded man tells the camera as he stands in front of the partially demolished winged-bull.

“Our prophet ordered us to remove all these statues as his followers did when they conquered nations,” the man in the video adds.

The video was posted on social media accounts affiliated with the Islamic State group and though it could not be independently verified it appeared authentic, based on AP’s knowledge of the Mosul Museum.

Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city and the surrounding Nineveh province fell to the militants last June, after Iraqi security forces melted away.

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Associated Press writer Sinan Salaheddin contributed to this report from Baghdad.

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP) – Members of Congress are calling for quick action at a crucial spot in the Chicago area to block Asian carp from reaching the Great Lakes.

Legislation introduced Thursday would order the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to take steps such as placing carbon dioxide bubble screens, underwater sound cannons and other devices at the Brandon Road Lock and Dam to repel the invasive fish.

The lock and dam on the Des Plaines River is considered a choke point where authorities could prevent the carp from reaching Lake Michigan, about 40 miles away.

Sen. Debbie Stabenow and Rep. Candice Miller of Michigan are sponsoring the bill, which also authorizes the Corps to find a long-term solution to the threat of invasive species crossing between the Great Lakes and Mississippi River watersheds.

MILWAUKEE (AP) – A teenager accused of driving a stolen SUV in a hit-and-run crash that killed a Milwaukee couple is charged with five felonies.

Milwaukee County prosecutors say 18-year-old Michael Hobbs was driving the SUV at a high rate of speed Sunday when he ran a stop sign and hit a car, killing 74-year-old Bernard Hanson and 64-year-old Mary Hanson. A third vehicle was also struck, injuring the driver.

Authorities say two 14-year-old girls, a 16-year-old girl and a 20-year-old man were passengers in the SUV and fled along with Hobbs. He’s charged with second-degree reckless homicide, hit and run resulting in death and driving a vehicle without the owner’s consent.

NEW YORK (AP) – A man prosecutors portrayed as one of al-Qaida’s early leaders was convicted Thursday of conspiracy in the deadly bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa following a trial that showcased the terror group’s early days.

An anonymous jury returned a verdict in Khaled al-Fawwaz’s case after 2 1/2 days of deliberating. The monthlong trial unfolded in a heavily fortified courthouse where federal guards stood outside with machine guns and spectators had to pass through a special metal detector outside the courtroom.

Al-Fawwaz stood expressionless as the verdict was read, pursing his lips briefly. He could face life in prison.

Prosecutors said al-Fawwaz, a 52-year-old Saudi Arabian, was a close confidant of Osama bin Laden and made sure bin Laden’s death threats against Americans were heard and noticed worldwide in 1998.

Al-Fawwaz led an al-Qaida Afghanistan training camp in the early 1990s, helped a terrorist cell in Kenya and schemed with bin Laden to open a media information office in London, where al-Fawwaz became bin Laden’s link to journalists in the West before the August 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, prosecutors said. The attacks killed 224 people, including a dozen Americans.

Al-Fawwaz “operated at the very heart of this conspiracy,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Sean Buckley said in his closing argument.

Defense lawyers said al-Fawwaz was a dissident who sought peaceful reform in his homeland and was dismayed by Osama bin Laden’s shift toward violence.

“There is no hate in the heart of Khaled al-Fawwaz,” defense lawyer Bobbi Sternheim told jurors.

The trial showcased al-Qaida in its infancy, when its members numbered in the hundreds and it plotted terrorist attacks that eventually drew the attention of criminal investigators a world away. Witnesses included an American former al-Qaida member who said bin Laden asked him in 1995 to kill Egypt’s president by ramming the president’s plane with bin Laden’s in midair. The New York Police Department’s counterterrorism and intelligence chief, John Miller, testified about meeting al-Fawwaz in London in 1998, when Miller was a TV news correspondent.

An al-Qaida roster of original members lists bin Laden first and al-Fawwaz ninth, and 18 copies of bin Laden’s 1996 declaration of war – signed by bin Laden – were found in al-Fawwaz’s London apartment, prosecutors said. U.S. special forces found the roster in an al-Qaida leader’s home after the Sept. 11 attacks, the government said.

Al-Fawwaz made sure bin Laden’s declaration of war reached the world by communicating with the media and helping translate bin Laden’s words for multiple audiences, prosecutors said.

“Murderous words lead to murderous action,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicholas Lewin told jurors.

But Sternheim said al-Fawwaz just tried to change Saudi Arabia peacefully and knew bin Laden when the al-Qaida leader had peaceful aims.

“It is very clear that Osama bin Laden took a very bad turn, and the turn that he took shocked, disturbed and angered Khaled al-Fawwaz,” Sternheim told jurors.

She also said it would be “reckless” to make assumptions about the al-Qaida roster since jurors were never shown who created it and why.

Al-Fawwaz did not testify. Arrested in London in 1998, he was extradited from Great Britain in 2012.

New York juries have convicted five other people in the embassy attacks. Al-Fawwaz had been scheduled to stand trial with a co-defendant, Abu Anas al-Libi, but he died last month after a long illness.

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Associated Press writer Larry Neumeister contributed to this report.

ATLANTA (AP) – The curvy Coca-Cola bottle is celebrating its 100th birthday, and an art museum is exploring the origins and influence of a bottle design that’s so recognizable, you’d know the brand if you held it in the dark.

“The Coca-Cola Bottle: An American Icon at 100″ opens Saturday at Atlanta’s High Museum and is set to run through Oct. 4. Visitors can see original design illustrations, a prototype of the 1915 design and the work of artists who have been inspired by the now-classic design.

Coca-Cola is headquartered in Atlanta.

“To do something that not only stays its course for the company over 100 years, but that also becomes a cultural icon that really is recognizable all over the world, is amazing,” said High head of museum interpretation and exhibition curator Julia Forbes. “It really is a design success story.”

The exhibition walks visitors through the history of the bottle’s design, which was conceived as a way to distinguish Coca-Cola from a multitude of imitators.

In a 1915 memo, the company asked glass companies to come up with “a bottle which a person could recognize even if they felt it in the dark, and so shaped that, even if broken, a person could tell at a glance what it was.”

The Root Glass Company in Terre Haute, Indiana, developed the winning design in “Georgia Green” glass with a bulge in the center and ridges down the sides. The exhibition includes a concept sketch and patent for the contour bottle design, both dating from 1915. An original prototype bottle from 1915, one of two known to exist, is also on display.

Opposite a display of Coca-Cola bottles through the years are two dozen posters by contemporary designers created in response to an invitation from Coca-Cola last year to imagine the next century. They were instructed to consider attributes like “universal happiness” and “stubborn optimism” and to use the colors red, black and white.

An entire gallery in the exhibition is devoted to Andy Warhol. On one wall are two paintings of single Coca-Cola bottles inspired by old ads, one a bit abstract with smudgy lines and the other with lines so crisp and clean it doesn’t even look like a painting. These works from 1961 and 1962 came at the beginning of Warhol’s Pop art style using commercial images.

A Warhol quote from 1975 is printed on the gallery wall: “What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coca-Cola, Liz Taylor drinks Coca-Cola, and just think, you can drink Coca-Cola, too.”

The exhibition concludes with a gallery of photos from the mid-1930s through the present. In some, the photographer is clearly using a Coca-Cola bottle or logo as art, while in others the bottle and logo just happen to be present.

Two photos of Times Square from the mid-1930s and one from the late 1990s include Coca-Cola advertisements. The logo also pops out in shots of rural highways and stores, as well as urban landscapes. Photographer Imogen Cunningham in 1953 shot landscape photographer Ansel Adams sitting in his truck with a glass bottle of Coca-Cola in hand.

“They show the ubiquity of Coca-Cola,” Ted Ryan, who oversees archives for Coca-Cola, said of the photos. “It’s in Times Square. It’s in China. It’s on the street. It’s everywhere.”

The exhibition is a collaboration between the High and Coca-Cola, and kicks off a yearlong celebration of the instantly recognizable bottle that will include advertisements highlighting its design in more than 140 countries, Ryan said.

“It all starts here at the High,” Ryan said. “We wanted to start in our home.”

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) – Computers, cellphones and landlines in Arizona were knocked out of service for hours, ATMs stopped working, 911 systems were disrupted and businesses were unable to process credit card transactions – all because vandals sliced through a fiber-optic Internet cable buried under the rocky desert.

The Internet outage did more than underscore just how dependent modern society has become on high technology. It raised questions about the vulnerability of the nation’s Internet infrastructure.

Alex Juarez, a spokesman for Internet service provider CenturyLink, said the problem was first reported around noon Wednesday, and customer complaints immediately began to pour in from the northern edges of Phoenix to cities like Flagstaff, Prescott and Sedona. Service began coming back within a few hours and was reported fully restored by about 3 a.m. Thursday.

CenturyLink blamed vandalism, and police are investigating.

The CenturyLink-owned cable – actually, a set of cables bundled together in a black jacket a few inches in diameter – was buried several feet under the rocky soil in a dry wash, about a quarter-mile from the nearest houses and a couple of miles from an outlet mall. Vehicles can navigate the area easily, but foot traffic there is rare, Phoenix police spokesman Officer James Holmes said.

“It’s almost as if someone had to know it was there,” Holmes said.

Police believe the vandals were looking for copper wire – which can fetch high price as scrap – but didn’t find any after completely cutting through the cable, probably with power tools, Holmes said.

“Your average house saw and wire cutters wouldn’t do it,” Holmes said. He said the damage was estimated at $6,000.

As the outage spread, CenturyLink technicians began the long, tedious process of inspecting the line mile by mile. They eventually located the severed cable and spliced it back together.

CenturyLink gave no estimate on how many people were affected, but the outage was widespread because other cellphone, TV and Internet providers used the cable, too, under leasing arrangements with the company.

Mark Goldstein, secretary for the Arizona Telecommunications and Information Council, said such networks ideally should have built-in redundancies that can allow data transmissions to be diverted to another different line if a cable cut or damaged. But that was not the case here.

The challenge in Arizona, he said, is that large swaths of the outage area are a mishmash of federal lands that all have complicated ownership issue.

“You can’t just like go through the mountains and bury fiber. Part of the problems have to do with landownership in Arizona. So much land is Bureau of Land Management, the National Park Service or tribal,” Goldstein said.

The details of the vandalism came to light on the same day the Federal Communications Commission in Washington voted to impose stricter regulation over Internet service providers like Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile.

The plan, which puts the Internet in the same regulatory camp as the telephone, requires Internet service providers to act in the “public interest” and bans business practices that are “unjust or unreasonable.”

Police investigating the vandalism in Arizona asked local residents to come forward if they saw anyone walking or driving in the area around the time service went out. Any charges resulting would not be limited to vandalism, Holmes said.

“It’s endangerment,” Holmes said. “When you think about that, if someone has an emergency and the only means they have of contacting or getting assistance is through their cellphone, that’s just not a good thing.”

During the outage, Flagstaff’s 69,000 residents struggled to go about their daily business.

Zak Holland, who works at a computer store at Northern Arizona University, said distraught students were nearly in tears when he said nothing could be done to restore their Internet connection.

“It just goes to show how dependent we are on the Internet when it disappears,” he said.

Many students told Holland they needed to get online to finish school assignments. University spokesman Tom Bauer said it was up to individual professors to decide how to handle late assignments.

Kate Hance and Jessie Hutchison stopped at a Wells Fargo ATM to get cash because an ice cream shop couldn’t take credit cards without a data connection. They left empty-handed because the outage also put cash machines out of service.

“It’s moderately annoying, but it’s not going to ruin my day,” Hutchison said.

At Flagstaff City Hall, employees were unable make or receive calls at their desks. The city relied on the Arizona Department of Public Safety for help in dispatching police and firefighters.

In Prescott Valley, about 75 miles north of Phoenix, authorities said 911 service was being supplemented with hand-held radios and alternate phone numbers.

Yavapai County spokesman Dwight D’Evelyn said authorities couldn’t get access to law enforcement databases either.

Weather reports from the region weren’t able to reach anyone. During evening newscasts, Phoenix TV stations showed blank spaces on their weather maps where local temperatures would normally appear.

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Associated Press writer Terry Tang in Phoenix contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON (AP) – Two days before a partial agency shutdown, House Speaker John Boehner repeatedly refused Thursday to say if the House will vote on pending Senate legislation to fund the Department of Homeland Security without challenging President Barack Obama’s immigration policy.

“When I make a decision I’ll let you know,” Boehner said at a news conference he leavened with humor –  puckering his lips at one point as if to send kisses in the direction of a reporter who had posed a question.

The Republican-controlled Senate is on track to pass legislation providing full funding for the Homeland Security agency by the weekend.

Nor would Boehner say if the House would vote on legislation that provides funding for less than the seven months envisioned in the Senate bill. Some Republicans have suggested as much, saying that would give time for a lawsuit challenging Obama’s actions to proceed through the courts.

A federal district judge has blocked Obama’s immigration policies from taking effect, but the administration has appealed the ruling to an appeals court and the president said Wednesday he will pursue the case to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary.

The White House has declined to say if Obama would sign a short-term measure, and congressional Democratic leaders sidestepped questions on the subject during the day.

There was no shortage of partisan rhetoric as the struggle wore on.

Boehner said that Obama has said he opposes filibusters, but sat “like a bump on a log” while Senate Democrats blocked action on a House-passed bill that provides funds for homeland security and rolls back his immigration orders.

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of California said of Republicans, “Shutting down government is their motive.”

At the crux of the stalemate is a pair of directives Obama issued in 2012 and last year to ease the threat of deportation for millions of immigrants living in the country illegally, and the Republicans’ attempt to cut homeland security funding as leverage to roll them back.

Some conservatives have downplayed the implications of a partial shutdown, noting that of the department’s 230,000 employees, some 200,000 would continue to report to work because they are deemed essential, although they would not get paid until the situation is resolved.

Front-line employees at agencies such as Customs and Border Patrol, the Secret Service and the Transportation Security Administration would continue to report to work. Airport security checkpoints would remain staffed, immigration agents would be on the job, air marshals would do their work and Coast Guard patrols would sail on.

Boehner met privately with McConnell on Wednesday afternoon, their first meeting in two weeks, but he gave no indication during the day of how he might resolve what has become a high-stakes leadership test two months into full Republican control of Congress.

Hours after Boehner spoke, the Senate did act, voting 98-2 to advance the Homeland Security funding bill over its first procedural hurdle. Several more votes will be required to bring the bill to final passage, but that outcome in the Senate is assured with lawmakers of both parties ready to put the fight behind them.

The $40 billion legislation would fund the agency through Sept. 30, the end of the budget year. Gone would be the contentious immigration language from the House-passed version that repealed Obama executive actions as far back as 2012 granting work permits and deportation stays to millions of people in the country illegally, including immigrants brought here as kids.

Instead, McConnell envisions a separate vote on a narrower immigration measure to undo just Obama’s most recent immigration directives, from November. The measure would leave in place protections enacted in 2012 for younger immigrants, but even so Democrats are not likely to approve that bill, and it faces a certain Obama veto.

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Associated Press writers Jennifer Kerr, Andrew Taylor, Charles Babington, Alan Fram and Stephen Ohlemacher contributed to this report.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The $150,000 pearl-adorned dress Lupita Nyong’o wore to this year’s Academy Awards has been reported stolen, sheriff’s officials said Thursday.

Deputies responded to a West Hollywood hotel late Wednesday after the custom Calvin Klein Collection by Francisco Costa dress was reported missing from the actress’s hotel room, sheriff’s Sgt. Richard Bowman said.

Bowman said Nyong’o was present when deputies took a report about the theft.

Detectives were at the hotel Thursday looking for clues, including whether surveillance footage would reveal what happened to the elaborate gown.

The custom ivory dress included 6,000 pearls of various sizes. Nyong’o won an Oscar in 2014 for her role in “Twelve Years a Slave” and was a presenter at Sunday’s ceremony.

Her publicists said Thursday they would not comment on the theft.

Nyong’o, 31, has become a darling of Hollywood’s red carpets in the past two years, with commenters and fans praising her fashion choices.

She accessorized the dress with Chopard diamond drop earrings and three Chopard diamond rings. Before the awards ceremony, she told The Associated Press on the red carpet, “I’m just wearing my diamonds and pearls. My homage to Prince,” referring a popular song by the musician.

Nyong’o told a reporter for Yahoo Style that she was involved in the design process of the dress.

“We talked about it being fluid and liquid,” she told the site. “I wanted it to be an homage to the sea.”

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Associated Press writers Leanne Italie and Alicia Rancilio in New York contributed to this report.

ETNA, Maine (AP) – State police say the 75-car pileup that injured at least 17 people on a Maine interstate is likely the largest motor vehicle crash in state history.

Police say the pileup on Interstate 95 began in Carmel and Etna at about 7:30 a.m. Wednesday when the vehicles became entangled in chain-reaction crashes caused by snow and speed.

Police say they are still compiling paperwork from all the crashes and interviewing drivers who were involved.

Lt. Sean Hashey says investigators may never determine exactly how the events unfolded because of how many vehicles crashed. He did not rule out the possibility of criminal charges.

The accident closed a northbound stretch of the highway for about five hours near the Bangor area.

GREEN BAY – The Brown County United Way announced they exceeded their 2014 campaign goal by more than $1,000.

The organization had a goal to raise $4,060,000 for its 2014 Annual Giving Campaign. They ended up raising $4,061,359.

“I’m thrilled that we met and exceeded the goal,” said Campaign Chair, Susan Finco of Leonard and Finco Public Relations. “To me this indicates that our community understands the importance of the United Way, its programs and initiatives.”

Funds raised by the campaign support 40 programs and initiatives throughout Brown County.

FOND DU LAC – A woman who stole more than $250,000 from her employer was sentenced to six years in prison.

Denise Heffner was also placed on extended supervision for 15 years during Wednesday’s sentencing hearing by Judge Richard Nuss, according to online court records.

Prosecutors say Heffner was a bookkeeper for Sesing Construction from April 2005 until October 2013. While she worked there, she transferred money to herself without the business owners’ permission. She admitted taking about $253,000.

She was convicted of three counts in a business setting. Restitution has not been determined.

(CNN) Italian fisherman Dino Ferrari has been fishing for 20 years and he’s caught hundreds of catfish before, big, European catfish. But at 280 pounds, this latest one was the cat’s pajamas. Dino says the 40 minute struggle to land the fish on Italy’s Po river left this lure slightly damaged.

A federal judge has cleared the way for Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson to be reinstated, ruling that an NFL arbitrator “failed to meet his duty” in a child abuse case that shook the league.

U.S. District Judge David Doty issued his order Thursday, less than three weeks after hearing oral arguments. Doty overruled NFL arbitrator Harold Henderson’s denial of Peterson’s appeal.

The league suspended Peterson through at least April 15 under its personal conduct policy. But Doty said in his 16-page ruling that Henderson “simply disregarded the law of the shop and in doing so failed to meet his duty” under the collective bargaining agreement.

NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said the league will “review the decision.”

NFL Players Association executive director DeMaurice Smith said in a statement the decision was a “victory for the rule of law, due process and fairness.”

The crux of the issue was the application of the enhanced personal conduct policy, increasing a suspension for players involved with domestic violence from two games to six games. Because that was implemented after the injuries occurred to Peterson’s son, delivered by a wooden switch that Peterson was using for discipline, the union contended that the prior standard of punishment should apply.

“Our collective bargaining agreement has rules for implementation of the personal conduct policy and when those rules are violated, our union always stands up to protect our players’ rights,” Smith said. “This is yet another example why neutral arbitration is good for our players, good for the owners and good for our game.”

Doty’s courtroom has long been a ground zero of sorts for NFL labor matters, and his ruling pattern has favored the union more often than not.

The increased penalty for domestic violence arose from the furor over the league’s handling of former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice, who was seen on surveillance video knocking out the woman who’s now his wife with a punch in an elevator.

Rice was initially suspended for two games before Commissioner Roger Goodell declared the ban indefinite. The arbitrator who heard Rice’s appeal, former U.S. District Judge Barbara Jones, ruled that Goodell’s decision was “arbitrary” and an “abuse of discretion.”

Despite the NFL’s argument that the ruling by Jones was irrelevant to Henderson’s, Doty disagreed.

“The court finds no valid basis to distinguish this case from the Rice matter,” Doty said.

Now there’s the matter of Peterson’s future with the Vikings.

He’s under contract through 2017, carrying a $15 million salary cap hit for 2015, and several high-ranking Vikings officials have said definitively they want him to return. General manager Rick Spielman said last week he expects Peterson to be back. But Peterson has expressed some uneasiness, telling ESPN in a recent interview he felt betrayed by the organization during the process of Goodell placing him on paid leave while the child-abuse case played out in court in Texas.

The market opens with the new league year March 10, at which time the Vikings could trade Peterson if they so decide. If they cut him, they’d owe him no more money and take only a $2.4 million hit to their salary cap.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Internet service providers like Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile now must act in the “public interest” when providing a mobile connection to your home or phone, under rules approved Thursday by a divided Federal Communications Commission.

The plan, which puts the Internet in the same regulatory camp as the telephone and bans business practices that are “unjust or unreasonable,” represents the biggest regulatory shakeup to the industry in almost two decades. The goal is to prevent providers from slowing or blocking web traffic, or creating paid fast lanes on the Internet, said FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler.

The 3-2 vote was expected to trigger industry lawsuits that could take several years to resolve. Still, consumer advocates cheered the regulations as a victory for smaller Internet-based companies which feared they would have to pay “tolls” to move their content.

Net neutrality is the idea that websites or videos load at about the same speed. That means you won’t be more inclined to watch a particular show on Amazon Prime instead of on Netflix because Amazon has struck a deal with your service provider to load its data faster.

Opponents, including many congressional Republicans, said the FCC plan constitutes dangerous government overreach that would eventually drive up consumer costs and discourage industry investment.

Republican FCC Commissioners Mike O’Rielly and Ajit Pai, who voted against the plan, alleged that President Barack Obama unfairly used his influence to push through the regulations, calling the plan a “half-baked, illogical, internally inconsistent and indefensible document.”

Michael Powell, a former Republican FCC chairman who now runs the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, warned that consumers would almost immediately “bear the burden of new taxes and increased costs, and they will likely wait longer for faster and more innovative networks since investment will slow in the face of bureaucratic oversight.”

Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, said he would pursue industry-friendly legislation, although it was unlikely that Obama would sign such a bill. The FCC’s five commissioners are expected to testify before a Senate panel March 18.

“One way or another, I am committed to moving a legislative solution, preferably bipartisan, to stop monopoly-era phone regulations that harm Internet consumers and innovation,” Thune said in a statement this week.

It’s not true that consumers would see new taxes right away. The Internet Tax Freedom Act bans taxes on Internet access, although that bill expires in October. While Congress is expected to renew that legislation, it’s conceivable that states could eventually push Congress for the ability to tax Internet service now that it has been deemed a vital public utility.

“Read my lips. More Internet taxes are coming. It’s just a matter of when,” Commissioner Pai said.

For years, providers mostly agreed not to pick winners and losers among Web traffic because they didn’t want to encourage regulators to step in and because they said consumers demanded it. But that started to change around 2005, when YouTube came online and Netflix became increasingly popular. On-demand video became known as data hogs, and evidence began to surface that some providers were manipulating traffic without telling consumers.

By 2010, the FCC enacted open Internet rules, but the agency’s legal approach was eventually struck down. FCC officials are hoping to erase the legal ambiguity by no longer classifying the Internet as an “information service” but a “telecommunications service” subject to Title II of the 1934 Communications Act.

That would dramatically expand regulators’ power over the industry by requiring providers to act in the public’s interest and enabling the FCC to fine companies found to be employing “unreasonable” business practices.

The FCC says it won’t apply some sections of Title II, including price controls. That means rates charged to customers for Internet access won’t be subject to preapproval. But the law allows the government to investigate if consumers complain that costs are unfair.

Also at stake Thursday was Obama’s goal of helping local governments build their own fast, cheap broadband. Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Wilson, North Carolina, have filed petitions with the agency to help override state laws that restrict them from expanding their broadband service to neighboring towns.

The FCC approved these petitions, setting a precedent for other communities that might want to do the same.

Nineteen states place restrictions on municipal broadband networks, many with laws encouraged by cable and telephone companies. Advocates of those laws say they are designed to protect taxpayers from municipal projects that are expensive, can fail or may be unnecessary.