Green Bay News

GREEN BAY — According to Brandon Bostick and his agent Blake Baratz, the Green Bay Packers have released the third-year pro from Newberry College. In his three seasons, Bostick caught 11 passes for 123 yards and two touchdowns.

He spent the entire 2012 season on the Packers practice squad. Bostick of course grew huge criticism after dropping the onside kick by the Seattle Seahawks in the NFC Championship game. Bostick tweeted out quote: “Thankful To Spend The First 3 Years Of My Career In GB. Unfortunately My Time There Has Ended. I Appreciate The Support From Everyone In GB!”

The Packers have not yet confirmed the release.

WAUKESHA (AP) – One of two Wisconsin girls accused of stabbing a classmate to please the horror character Slender Man should face a lesser charge in juvenile court because she thought she was defending herself and her family from the creature, her attorney said Monday.

Each girl faces one count of being a party to first-degree intentional attempted homicide in adult court. Their cases have reached the preliminary hearing stage, where a judge decides whether enough evidence exists to order a trial.

Defense attorney Anthony Cotton began what’s expected to be a two-day proceeding by declaring that the evidence will show his 12-year-old client, Morgan Geyser, should really face a second-degree attempted homicide charge in juvenile court. She believed she had to kill a 12-year-old girl because she had brokered a deal with Slender Man that called for her and her co-defendant, Anissa Weier, to kill someone. In exchange, Slender Man would make them his servants. If they didn’t follow through, the creature – described as between 6 feet and 14 feet tall with tendrils sprouting from his back – would attack both girls and their families.

Cotton worked to show that the girl believed Slender Man was real, introducing multiple sketches of him from her notebook. The drawings were accompanied with phrases such as “never alone,” ”safer dead” and “can’t run.”

Waukesha Police Detective Michelle Trussoni testified that the other girl had told police that Cotton’s client told her about the deal and she felt she had to go along with the attack.

Weier’s attorney, Joseph Smith, Jr., tried to paint Cotton’s client as the mastermind. He played video of his client’s interrogation with police in which she said Cotton’s client did the stabbing and his client was terrified that Slender Man would kill her and her family. In the video, the girl says she turned her back when the other girl began stabbing the victim.

Weier was 12 at the time of the attack but has since turned 13.

Waukesha Police Detective Shelly Fisher testified that when she interviewed the victim in the hospital, she recounted how she had wanted to end her friendship with Geyser because the girl had become obsessed with Slender Man and was getting “scarier and scarier and weirder and weirder.” Fisher said the victim told her that Geyser would send her emails telling her horror characters were going to kill her.

Weier sometimes hit her but would often apologize when Geyser wasn’t around, Fisher said the victim told her.

According to court documents, the girls had been planning to kill the victim for months, discussing their scheme using code words. In May, they lured her to a Waukesha park, where she was stabbed 19 times.

The girls left the victim bleeding in the woods, according to prosecutors. She crawled to a sidewalk, where a bicyclist found her and called 911. The alleged attackers were found walking toward the Nicolet National Forest, where they say they thought they would join Slender Man.

FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) – Snow swirled sideways in Kentucky and the typically bustling state capital of Frankfort came to frozen halt Monday as a storm walloped parts of the South, which unlike the Northeast, had been mostly spared this winter.

That all changed with a mix of snow, sleet and freezing rain across the region, making roads treacherous and knocking out power to thousands of people. Luckily, the storm arrived on a holiday, Presidents Day, when many schools and businesses were already closed and the morning commute was not as busy.

Officials also made certain roads were prepared this year after Southern cities – most notably Atlanta – were caught off guard a year ago when a winter storm stranded thousands of people on interstates overnight. Raleigh suffered a similar fate last year.

Ice climber Scott Perkins, of Alpharetta, takes advantage of the winter weather to climb an ice covered cliff near the summit of Richard Russell Scenic Highway, one of Georgia’s highest elevations, on Monday, Feb 16, 2015, near Helen, Ga. Perkins said “ice climbers we hope for storms, we want storms.” Perkins said the storm system would make for more ice and better climbing conditions in a couple of days. (AP Photo/Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Curtis Compton)

Still, some weren’t quite ready for the winter blast.

RL Doss said he had already used his 1987 GMC Suburban – which can haul up to three-quarters of a ton with ropes and chains – to rescue several people and their cars on the hills surrounding Frankfort. Cars were fishtailing and sliding off the slick roads.

“I look at it this way. Everybody is trying to get out, to get their last bit of food and stuff, getting home from work and people leaving for work and stuff, and it happens,” he said, shivering in a pair of tan overalls pulled over a hooded sweat shirt.

And the truck, he said, glancing back at the burgundy behemoth, “I like to see what the truck can do and what it can’t do. I push it to its limits.”

In the Northeast, which has been slammed by seemingly endless snow, the white stuff had stopped falling but the temperatures were bitterly cold. New York City came close to breaking a 127-year-old record when the temperature in Central Park hit 3 degrees, just above the 1-degree record set in 1888, said Jeffrey Tongue, a National Weather Service meteorologist.

Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh said the latest snow storm left one person dead, apparently due to a heart attack while shoveling snow. A partial roof collapse at an eight-building apartment complex in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, left 500 to 700 people looking for warmth. In New Jersey, a 66-year-old woman who had been drinking at a benefit was found dead in the snow, just two doors from her home. Firefighters working to extinguish a blaze in Philadelphia left behind a building coated in icicles. No one was hurt.

The winter storm was headed toward the Carolinas on Monday night and then expected to crawl along the East Coast toward the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast.

Philadelphia firefighters work the scene of an overnight blaze in west Philadelphia, Monday Feb. 16, 2015, as icicles hang from where the water from their hoses froze. Bone-chilling, single digit temperatures have gripped the region, prompting the closure of all parish and regional Catholic elementary schools in the city of Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Jacqueline Larma)

Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear urged people to stay home if possible. The state was expecting anywhere from anywhere from 6 to 15 inches of snow by Monday evening.

Road crews struggled to make progress as the dry, powdery snow quickly piled up thanks to the frigid temperatures over the weekend that kept the ground and roads cold. Arkansas, where temperatures plummeted from the 70s on Saturday to highs in the 30s a day later, had nearly 30,000 people without power at the peak of the storm.

Back in Kentucky, Demario Toney was recently transferred for his job to Frankfort and was living in a hotel room with no microwave and no refrigerator, so he ventured out in the snow in a rental car to get some fast-food. On his way back, he got stuck trying to get back on a main road.

“I just got up and decided to go out and get something to eat,” he said. “But I didn’t know I was going to get stuck.”

Roads were slushy and traffic was moving slowly in Tennessee. Justyn Jackson, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Nashville, said the last bad winter storm in the city was 2010 when up to 4 inches of snow fell.

“A lot of cities up North, they deal with this several times during the winter. It’s really not uncommon for them at all,” Jackson said. “Down here, especially in Nashville, although it’s not rare, it certainly on average happens once or twice a winter.”

Georgia officials were taking no chances, bringing in more personnel to the state operations center and pre-treating roads with a mixture of salt and water. Atlanta was expected to get rain, dodging any icy or snowy conditions, a welcome forecast for residents who remembered the thousands of cars stranded on the highways last year.

Up to a quarter of an inch of ice could accumulate in a handful mountainous northern counties.

Gov. Pat McCrory says he hopes North Carolina government is “over-prepared and underwhelmed.” It’s been almost a year since a winter storm dumped as much as 22 inches of snow in the North Carolina mountains and pelted the eastern part of the state with ice. In Raleigh, much like Atlanta, many abandoned their cars alongside the road or in parking lots – if they could navigate.

John Moore, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Memphis, said he believes Tennessee was prepared in part because of the embarrassing scene that paralyzed Atlanta last year.

“We got the word out ahead of time to let people know, that even if we’re not expecting a lot, still check your forecast before you leave home in the morning because stuff can change so quickly,” he said.

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AP writers Lucas Johnson in Memphis, Tennessee; Julie Walker in New York and Allen Reed in Little Rock, Arkansas, contributed to this report.

MAYVILLE – Multiple agencies in Mayville responded to a 10 vehicle crash in the Piggly Wiggly parking lot on Feb. 13.

Mayville Police Department posted the surveillance video below on their Facebook page.

The cause of the crash is still under investigation but officials believe a medical emergency could have been a factor.

No one was seriously hurt in the crash.

 

HARRIS, Mich. – An Upper Michigan resort and casino is planning to expand.

The Hannahville Indian Community has announced its approval of funding for the two-year project at Island Resort & Casino. Plans include the addition of a spa, renovation of the Island Bar into a sports bar, a renovation of the bingo hall and a redesign of the hotel entrance. In all, the project is expected to add about 15,390 square feet of buildings.

A second golf course is also being planned to complement the Sweetgrass Golf Club, which is ranked nationally in several golf publications and serves as a stop on the LPGA Symetra Tour. Resort managers hope to have the golf course finished in 2017.

The project is estimated to cost around $8 million.

CAIRO (AP) — Egypt carried out airstrikes against Islamic State group targets in neighboring Libya on Monday and began a push for international military intervention in the chaotic North African state after extremists beheaded a group of Egyptian Christians.

The airstrikes bring Egypt overtly into Libya’s turmoil, showing Cairo’s alarm over the growing stronghold of radicals on its western border as it also fights a militant insurgency of Islamic State allies on its eastern flank in the Sinai Peninsula.

Libya is where the extremist group has built up its strongest presence outside Syria and Iraq, and the government of President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi is lobbying in Europe and the United States for a coordinated international response similar to the coalition air campaign in those countries.

“Leaving things in Libya as they are without decisive intervention to suppress these terror groups constitutes a clear danger to international peace and security,” Egypt’s Foreign Ministry said.

Egypt launched U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets from bases near its border several hours apart and struck targets in the eastern Libyan city of Darna, according to Egyptian and Libyan security officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk the press.

Egypt’s military announced the first round of strikes on state radio — the first public acknowledgement of military action in post-Moammar Gadhafi Libya.

The military’s statement said weapons caches and training camps were destroyed “to avenge the bloodshed and to seek retribution from the killers.”

“Let those far and near know that Egyptians have a shield to protect and safeguard the security of the country and a sword that cuts off terrorism,” it said.

The strikes came hours after the Islamic State group issued a grisly video of the beheadings of 21 Egyptian Christians — mainly young men from impoverished families — who had travelled to Libya for work. They were kidnapped in two groups in December and January from the coastal city of Sirte.

In the video, the hostages are marched onto what is purported to be a Libyan beach before masked militants with knives carve off their heads. At least a dozen killings are visible, but it isn’t clear in the video whether all 21 were killed.

Inside the church in the tiny Christian-majority village of el-Aour, home to 13 of the 21, relatives wept Monday and shouted the names of the dead in shock.

Babawi Walham, his eyes swollen from crying and barely able to speak, recounted how he and his extended family saw news of the video’s release on Egyptian TV Sunday night. His brother, a 30-year-old plumber named Samuel, was one of the men in the video.

“Each one of us was filled with grief, some collapsed or passed out. Our life has been turned upside down,” he told The Associated Press. “I watched the video. I saw my brother. My heart stopped beating. I felt what he felt.”

“I want the bodies back. These are good people. These are martyrs,” he said.

With almost no state control in much of Libya, extremists loyal to the Islamic State have seized control Darna and the central city of Sirte and have built up a powerful presence in the capital Tripoli and the second-largest city Benghazi.

Libyan Interior Minister Omar al-Sinki has said some 400 militants from Yemen and Tunisia have joined up with Libyan militias vowing allegiance to the Islamic State group.

Without publicly acknowledging it, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates carried out airstrikes against Islamist-allied militias last year, according to U.S. officials. Egypt and the Gulf are backing Libya’s internationally recognized government, which was driven into the far east of Libya after Islamist militias took control of the capital, Tripoli.

The Foreign Ministry in Cairo called Monday for political and material support from the U.S.-led coalition staging airstrikes against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria. But Egyptian security officials said Cairo does not want to be drawn into a costly ground war, and for now, wants any foreign military intervention restricted to airstrikes.

In support of this campaign, they said, Egypt has been amassing intelligence on extremists in Libya in a joint effort with the Libyan armed forces and West European nations, including France.

“We will not fight there on the ground on behalf of anyone, but we will not allow the danger to come any closer to us,” said one Egyptian official, who claimed that intelligence recently gathered in Libya suggested advanced preparations by Islamic State militants to cross the border into Egypt. He did not elaborate.

Egypt is already battling an Islamist insurgency in the strategic Sinai Peninsula, where militants recently declared their allegiance to the Islamic State. Those fighters rely heavily on arms smuggled from Libya, which has slid into chaos since the 2011 uprising that toppled Gadhafi’s 41-year rule.

El-Sissi spoke with France’s president and Italy’s prime minister Monday about Libya, and sent his foreign minister, Sameh Shukri, to New York to consult with U.N. officials and Security Council members ahead of a terrorism conference opening Wednesday in Washington.

“What is happening in Libya is a threat to international peace and security,” el-Sissi said.

The idea of a wider intervention has gained traction with Italy, whose southern tip is less than 500 miles (800 kilometers) from the Libyan coast. One of the militants in the video of the beheaded Egyptians boasted the group plans to “conquer Rome.”

Italian Defense Minister Roberta Pinotti said in an interview published Sunday in the Il Messaggero daily that her country is ready to lead a coalition of countries — European and North African — to stop the militants’ advance.

“If in Afghanistan we sent 5,000 men, in a country like Libya which is much closer to home, and where the risk of deterioration is much more worrisome for Italy, our mission and commitment could be significant, even numerically,” she was quoted as saying.

Italy, she said, is willing to take a lead role “for geographic, economic and historic reasons,” but she stressed that so far such an intervention is only theoretical. Asked if ground troops are a possibility, she said it would depend on the scenario.

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Michael reported from el-Aour, Egypt. Associated Press writers Nicole Winfield in Rome, Maamoun Youssef in Cairo and Adam Schreck in Dubai, United Arab Emirates contributed to this report.

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — The slain gunman behind two deadly shooting attacks in Copenhagen was released from jail just two weeks ago and might have become radicalized there last summer, a source close to the Danish terror investigation told The Associated Press on Monday.

Two Danish sources close to the investigation confirmed to the AP that the slain gunman was named Omar Abdel Hamid El-Hussein. They spoke on condition of anonymity because Copenhagen police have not named the gunman, who they said was a 22-year-old Dane with a history of violence and gang connections. Several Danish media have already named him.

One source told the AP that El-Hussein had been in pre-trial detention for a long time but was released two weeks ago. He also said the corrections authority had alerted Danish security service PET last year after they noticed worrisome changes in El-Hussein’s behavior last summer.

He wouldn’t give specifics but said such alerts are issued when inmates change their attitude or behavior in way that “sets off alarm bells.”

PET spokeswoman Lotte Holmstrup declined to comment on the report, saying “we are working on finding out what has happened.”

PET director Jens Madsen on Sunday confirmed that the gunman was known to the agency before the weekend attacks in Copenhagen that killed two people and wounded five police officers. He said the gunman may have been inspired by last month’s terror attacks by Islamic extremists in Paris that killed 17 people, but did not elaborate on when his agency began tracking him.

The news about the suspected gunman came as Danes mourned the victims of the country’s first fatal terror attacks in 30 years — and, in an unusual development, some also put flowers on the street at the spot where police killed El-Hussein. The prime ministers of Denmark and Sweden were expected to join thousands of people at memorials in Copenhagen on Monday evening.

While a Danish court on Monday jailed two suspected accomplices of El-Hussein’s for 10 days, Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt insisted there were no signs the gunman had any links to a wider terror cell.

“But we will, of course, in the coming time evaluate our fight against radicalization. We are already doing a lot,” she said.

In November 2013, police distributed photos of El-Hussein because he was wanted for a stabbing on a subway train in Copenhagen. At the time, police said he stabbed a 19-year-old man in his left thigh with a large knife.

It wasn’t immediately clear whether he was in pre-trial detention for that crime.

Investigators on Monday released more information about the gunman’s movements between the attacks, one Saturday afternoon at a cultural center and another early Sunday outside a synagogue, both in Copenhagen.

Police spokesman Joergen Skov said the gunman visited an Internet cafe late Saturday, about six-and-a-half hours after the first attack. Police raided the facility on Sunday and detained four people, including the two men arraigned on Monday, Skov said. The other two were released.

Investigators released new images of El-Hussein and asked witnesses who had seen him enter or leave the Internet cafe to contact police.

“We are of course interested in whether he was alone and whether he was carrying anything and in which direction he went,” Skov said.

Denmark’s red-and-white flag flew at half-staff from official buildings across the capital Monday. Mourners placed flowers and candles at the cultural center where documentary filmmaker Finn Noergaard, 55, was killed and at the synagogue where Dan Uzan, a 37-year-old security guard, was gunned down.

There was also a smaller mound of flowers where the gunman was slain, which critics said was an insult to his victims. Ozlem Cekic, lawmaker of the left-wing Socialist People’s Party, called it “a huge assault on the Danish population.”

Denmark has been targeted by a series of foiled terror plots since the 2005 publication of 12 caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in the Jyllands-Posten newspaper. The cartoons triggered riots in many Muslim countries and militant Islamists called for vengeance.

“I want to underline that this is not a conflict between Islam and the West,” Thorning-Schmidt said. “This is a conflict between the core values of our society and violent extremists.”

One of the participants in the free speech event targeted Saturday was Swedish artist Lars Vilks, who caricatured the prophet in 2007. Vilks, who was whisked away unharmed by his bodyguards, told the AP he thought he was the intended target of that attack.

Other participants said they dropped to the floor, looking for places to hide as the shooting started. The gunman never entered the center but sprayed it with bullets from outside in a gun battle with police.

World leaders, including British Prime Minister David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, condemned the Copenhagen attacks.

“The terrorist attacks have the same causes in Paris and Copenhagen,” Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo said Monday as she visited Copenhagen in a show of solidarity. “Our cities are symbols of democracy, Paris and Copenhagen. We are here and we are not afraid.”

Denmark’s last deadly terror attack took place in 1985, when a bomb exploded outside the Copenhagen office of airline North West Orient, killing a 27-year-old Algerian tourist.

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AP journalist Philipp-Moritz Jenne contributed to this report.

CHICAGO (AP) — U.S. teens are getting sleepier: Many lack even seven hours of shut-eye each night and the problem has worsened over two decades, a study found.

More than half of kids aged 15 and older would need to sleep at least two hours more each night to meet recommendations for adequate rest, heightening concerns about the impact on their health and academic performance. That’s according to researchers who analyzed the University of Michigan’s annual “Monitoring the Future” national surveys of youth behavior.

The study involved nearly 300,000 teens asked in 1991-2012 surveys if they regularly got at least seven hours of sleep nightly and enough sleep. Results were published in Monday’s Pediatrics.

Some highlights:

EYE-OPENERS

Experts generally recommend nine or 10 hours of sleep for teens; over half of the 15- to 19-year-olds surveyed in 2012 said they didn’t even get seven hours each night.

Declines in nightly sleep were seen in teens of all ages during the two decades. The biggest drop was among 15-year-olds — just over half the kids this age reported at least seven hours nightly in 1991, versus less than 43 percent in 2012. Also, about 30 percent of 15-year-olds reported getting what they considered enough sleep in 1991, versus 24 percent in 2012. Reports were slightly better for younger teens and worse for the oldest teens.

In most surveys, girls and non-whites were the least likely to report seven hours of sleep.

WHAT GIVES?

Reasons for the trend are uncertain but lead author Katherine Keyes, a Columbia University public health researcher, said factors that might have contributed include increasing use of social media, smartphones and other electronics, and rising rates of obesity, which has been linked with sleep deprivation. Other research has suggested that early school start times play a role and advocates have been pushing for later times for teens.

Kids who don’t get enough sleep are at risk for mood problems, depression, memory and learning difficulties and poor grades, said psychologist Daniel Lewin, a sleep specialist at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C. He said about 40 percent of U.S. high schools start classes before 8 a.m. — early morning hours that are teens’ “optimal sleep period.”

SOLUTIONS

The researchers say improving teens’ understanding of how much sleep they need, and the consequence of not gettinsnanog enough, could help. They also say reversing the trend will require public health efforts to raise awareness about the importance of sleep for teens.

OCONTO – A man convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend and her brother will not get a new trial, a judge decided Monday.

Daniel Schmidt is serving two consecutive life terms with no chance of parole for the May 2009 deaths of Kimberly Rose and Leo Marsh.

Schmidt’s post-conviction motion contended the judge incorrectly excluded testimony of a child psychologist to help evaluate a child’s testimony at trial.

In his two-page ruling, Judge Michael Judge said the defense did not establish the relevance of the testimony. The doctor listed five factors he believed a jury should consider, but did not have proof any of those were specifically issues in this case, the judge ruled.

MADISON (AP) – Democratic lawmakers say they hope Gov. Scott Walker will change his mind and accept federal dollars for Medicaid.

Rep. Daniel Riemer of Milwaukee and Sen. Jon Erpenbach of Middleton proposed a plan to expand Wisconsin’s BadgerCare coverage. They say it would save the state $240 million over the next two years.

But the bill faces opposition as it enters the Republican-controlled Assembly and Senate chambers. And Walker has said he won’t accept federal funds for the program.

The Democrats say they scaled back their proposal to make it more attractive to Republicans. The lawmakers previously called for full expansion of Medicaid coverage in Wisconsin, but say they will now settle for partial expansion. They said five other states under Republican control have implemented similar plans.

Kentucky is the unanimous No. 1 choice in The Associated Press Top 25 for the third straight week.

The Wildcats (25-0) received all 65 first-place votes from a media panel Monday after holding off LSU and rolling over South Carolina last week.

The top eight teams remained the same from last week, with Virginia at No. 2, followed by Gonzaga, Duke, Wisconsin, Villanova, Arizona and Kansas.

Utah moved into the top 10 for the second time this season, up two spots to No. 9. Louisville dropped three spots to No. 12 after losing to North Carolina State on Saturday.

Northern Iowa moved up two spots to No. 11 for its highest ranking ever.

OSHKOSH –  A man who allegedly broke into an apartment, argued with the resident, and choked him to death pleaded guilty to a reduced charge Monday.

Sean Oehlke will be sentenced April 23 for the death of William Summers, according to Winnebago County court officials.

Oehlke pleaded guilty to second-degree reckless homicide – a count reduced from first-degree – and to a burglary count.

Town of Menasha police say Oehlke broke into an apartment Oct. 24 and a confrontation led to the death of Summers. Oehlke placed Summers into a headlock until the victim went limp, according to the criminal complaint.

PORTAGE (WMTV) – An inmate death at the Columbia Correctional Institution last week is being ruled a homicide, according to the Dane County Medical Examiner’s Office.

An autopsy was conducted on Jerome A. Scott, 40, and the cause of death has been determined to be by ligature strangulation.

According to a release from the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office, a 42-year-old inmate that was involved in the homicide has been identified. The inmate’s identity will not be released until a criminal complaint has been filed by the Columbia County District Attorney’s Office.

Authorities said the involved inmates were both incarcerated for previous homicide related convictions. The homicide occurred in a cell that the two inmates shared.

WASHINGTON (AP) – Government surveyors have determined a new height for the Washington Monument that’s nearly 10 inches shorter than what has been thought for more than 130 years, officials will announce Monday.

The new measurement puts the monument at 554 feet, 7 and eleven-thirty-seconds of an inch, as measured from the floor of the main entrance to the top. Ever since the stone obelisk was completed in 1884, however, the historic height has been recorded at 555 feet, 5 and 1/8 inches. It’s a number circulated for decades on tours of the capital and in civics classes about the monument honoring the nation’s first president.

So could this be a case of an incredible shrinking monument? Has it sunk into the ground more than previously thought? No, not even close, said the chief scientist at the National Geodetic Survey, which conducted the measurement with accuracy to within one millimeter.

Modern international standards from the Council of Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat – an official guideline for building measurements – call for a different base point than what was likely used in the 1880s, said Dru Smith, chief geodesist with the National Geodetic Survey. The standard measures from the lowest open-air pedestrian entrance to the building.

“The building didn’t change height because of anything; it is just where you start from,” Smith said.

The original measurement conducted in 1884 by Lt. Col. Thomas Casey is believed to have used four brass markers as a base for measurement. Those markers remain in place 9 inches below ground off each corner of the monument. It’s possible the markers were at ground level in the past. A new plaza was installed around the monument more recently, and “it’s clear that what was ground level has changed over the years,” Smith said.

Measurements from the brass markers to the top in 1999 and 2014 essentially reconfirmed the original measurement, showing the 1884 measurement was done with “incredible accuracy.”

The only observable height change was the pyramid-shaped tip had been rounded off over time. Surveyors in 1934 also noticed the peak had been rounded and believed it was due to frequent lightning strikes that melted the aluminum tip.

“Well, this time around, we took very careful measurements,” Smith said. “We were able to determine about 3/8 of an inch had been melted off from the very top.”

That means the original 1884 measurement, completed with much less sophisticated equipment, was within ¾ of an inch of the findings from the newest survey, using the original brass markers as a base point.

“It’s remarkable, quite honestly, that they had the ability to get such an accurate measurement back in that time,” Smith said.

When the monument was completed in 1884, it was the world’s tallest structure until 1889 when the Eiffel Tower was built. It remains by far the tallest structure in the nation’s capital, which strictly restricts building heights. Most buildings are shorter than the U.S. Capitol dome, which rises 288 feet.

The new survey was conducted while the monument was wrapped in scaffolding for restoration work following a 2011 earthquake. Earlier survey results showed the monument did not sink any further into the ground as a result of the 5.8-magnitude earthquake. The monument was built on land that used to be underwater, and it has sunk about 2.2 inches since 1901.

Lest anyone be confused by the changing measurements, the National Park Service as caretaker of the monument has no intention of changing its brochures or description of the height to reflect the new numbers.

“For our purposes we’ll still use the historic height rather than the architectural height, since they’re measured from different places,” said spokeswoman Jenny Anzelmo-Sarles.

The extensive survey will give the Park Service new data as a baseline to track any changes in the monument’s height, tilt or compression in the future. The National Geodetic Survey and National Park Service revealed the survey results on President’s Day, which also celebrates Washington’s birthday.

“I think we can all agree the significance of the Washington Monument is really far greater than the architectural qualities or even its height,” said Mike Commisso, a cultural resources specialist for the National Mall. “It continues to serve as a memorial to one of the most influential and prominent public figures in our nation’s history.”

Photos of sturgeon speared on the Lake Winnebago system during the 2015 season.

Photos submitted to ReportIt, Feb. 15-21, 2015.

The WIAA has released the brackets for the 2015 WIAA state girls basketball brackets. Click on the video above for a breakdown of the brackets from the Fox 11 Sports Edge on Sunday night.

Games start Feb. 24.

In Division 1, De Pere and Appleton North received No. 1 seeds; in Division 2 Pulaski and West De Pere corralled top seeds; in Division 3, Little Chute, Roncalli. Kiel and Laconia were given No. 1 seeds; in Division 4, Algoma, St. Mary’s Springs, Bonduel and Wabeno/Laona were awarded top seeds; and in Division 5, GIllett was seeded No. 1.

Division 1, sectionals 1 & 2
Division 1, sectionals 3 & 4

Division 2, sectionals 1 & 2
Division 2, sectionals 3 & 4

Division 3, sectionals 1 & 2
Division 3, sectionals 3 & 4

Division 4, sectionals 1 & 2
Division 4, sectionals 3 & 4

Division 5, sectionals 1 & 2
Division 5, sectionals 3 & 4

Here is the schedule for the state semifinals and finals at the Resch Center:

SEMIFINALS
DIVISION 1
Semifinal Games – Friday, March 13
6:35 p.m. – Sectional #3 vs. Sectional #4
Approx. 8:15 p.m. – Sectional #1 vs. Sectional #2

DIVISION 2
Semifinal Games – Friday, March 13
1:35 p.m. – Sectional #3 vs. Sectional #4
Approx. 3:15 p.m. – Sectional #1 vs. Sectional #2

DIVISION 3
Semifinal Games – Friday, March 13
9:05 a.m. – Sectional #3 vs. Sectional #4
Approx 10:45 a.m. – Sectional #1 vs. Sectional #2

DIVISION 4
Semifinal Games – Thursday, March 12
6:35 p.m. – Sectional #3 vs. Sectional #4
Approx. 8:15 p.m. – Sectional #1 vs. Sectional #2

DIVISION 5
Semifinal Games – Thursday, March 12
1:35 p.m. – Sectional #3 vs. Sectional #4
Approx. 3:15 p.m. – Sectional #1 vs. Sectional #2

CHAMPIONSHIP SATURDAY – March 14

9 a.m. – 3-Point Challenge Competition

11:05 a.m. – Divisions 5, 4 and 3 Championship Games

6:35 p.m. – Divisions 2 and 1 Championship Games

Ticket information for games at the Resch Center.

LOS ANGELES (AP) – While much of the attention in the ongoing measles outbreak has focused on student vaccination requirements and exemptions, less attention has been paid to another group in the nation’s classrooms: Teachers and staff members, who, by and large, are not required to be vaccinated.

In most states, there is no law dictating which vaccines teachers and school staff workers are required to get. Some states provide a list of recommended vaccines, but there is no requirement or follow-up for teachers to receive them.

So when a measles case surfaced at a California high school, it was easy for officials to review student records, but there were no immunization records on file for employees.

That meant all 24 teachers and staff exposed to the employee with measles had to prove their immunity – records that, for most, were decades old.

The issue has surfaced from time to time in state legislatures and is likely to be raised again in response to the latest outbreak, which originated at Disneyland in December and has spread to a half dozen states and Mexico. Most of those who fell ill were not vaccinated. As of Friday, public health officials said 114 people had contracted measles.

“I was definitely shocked,” Rep. Joanna Cole, a Democrat in the Vermont Legislature, said when she learned in 2012 that there were no teacher vaccination requirements in her state. There are still no requirements today. “I guess we all just assumed that they would have them.”

Cole and other legislators and parents across the U.S. believe the blanket presumption that teachers are up to date on their vaccines should be re-examined. They note that most of those sickened in the current outbreak are adults, and that schools are one of the top places for the spread of communicable disease.

“I will be surprised if we don’t see some changes in the next year to year and a half,” said Kristen Amundson, executive director of the National Association of School Boards of Education.

Already, some states are considering measles legislation. In Vermont, Democratic Rep. George Till says legislators will try this year to eliminate philosophical exemptions for students and require that teachers be up to date on the same vaccines students must receive.

“If we’re trying to limit the spread in school, why just students?” Till said. A similar bill he introduced in 2012 was defeated amid strong opposition from anti-vaccine groups, and he expects another battle.

In Colorado, pro-vaccination groups have been pushing the Department of Human Services to require vaccinations for workers at child care facilities, another area with uneven employee immunization standards. Measles cases have been confirmed at day care facilities in Chicago and Santa Monica, California.

Barbara Loe Fisher, director of the National Vaccine Information Center, a Virginia-based nonprofit that favors letting parents decide whether to vaccinate, said the discussion on vaccination requirements has started to expand from schoolchildren to certain adult professions. She said her organization has a number of concerns about requiring teacher vaccinations, including safety and job protection for those who cannot or choose not to be immunized.

“I think at the end of the day, the most important principle to protect is the right to make an informed voluntary decision, and that includes teachers,” she said.

At Vista Murrieta High School in California’s Riverside County, a middle class community between Los Angeles and San Diego, all teachers and staff who had been exposed to the measles were able to return to work within one to three days. Teachers who were born before 1957 were immediately excused, assuming they had either had gotten measles as a child or been exposed to the disease.

Kathy Ericson, president of the Murrieta Teachers Association, said the instructors were willing to do “whatever needs to be done” to protect students. But she stopped short of saying whether vaccination or proof of immunization should be required for employment.

“Most of us don’t have our shot records,” she said. “It would be a hard thing to go back and prove.”

Several parents with students in Murrieta Valley schools said they believed it was important for teachers to show proof of immunity or get vaccinated to protect their children and others too young or vulnerable to get the vaccines themselves.

“It is everyone’s responsibility to keep students healthy and safe,” said Sherrie Zettlemoyer, the mother of two elementary-school students. “I believe if you can be vaccinated you should.”

WAUTOMA (AP) – Members of the Menominee Indian Tribe are about halfway through their journey from Keshena to Madison where they hope to meet with Gov. Scott Walker this week and change his mind about their plans for a casino in Kenosha.

About a dozen tribal members left Keshena Friday on foot in the bitter cold. The number of marchers has dropped and risen depending on the day. Menominee Chairman Gary Besaw says the walkers left Wautoma early Monday headed for Portage.

Walker has refused to give the tribe final approval for the $800 million Hard Rock casino project and hasn’t indicated that he’s open to reconsideration. The city of Zion, Illinois has approached the tribe about locating the casino in that community.

FOX 11’s Andrew LaCombe is catching up with the tribe today. He’ll have updates throughout the day on fox11online.com and a full report tonight on FOX 11 News.

MAUSTON (AP) – A Necedah woman charged with killing a 24-year-old man says he asked her to shoot him.

Twenty-one-year-old Natalie Murphy is charged with first-degree intentional homicide in the shooting death of Andrew Dammen. She’s being held on $250,000 cash bond in Juneau County.

A sheriff’s deputy responded to an apartment in the village of Necedah early Thursday. A criminal complaint says Murphy screamed “he’s dead, he’s dead” and directed the deputy to a bedroom. Daily Tribune Media reports Dammen was taken to Mile Bluff Medical Center where he was pronounced dead. The complaint says a lieutenant heard Murphy say she shot Dammen because he told her to shoot him.

Murphy is due back in court March 18. Her defense attorney, Stephen Mays, did not immediately return a call for comment.