Green Bay News

NEW YORK (AP) — A whippet named Burt that vanished on the streets of New York City five months ago has finally made it home.

The Fire Department of New York said Burt’s incredible journey came to end early Tuesday at the height of the winter storm when he was rescued at a training facility on Randall’s Island.

“As soon as he saw his owner, the dog started wagging his tail, licking her,” said David Kelly, a firefighter who reunited the pair.

According to a Facebook page, Burt — a brindle-colored puppy both “devilishly handsome” and “bashful” — wandered off near his Upper Manhattan home in August.

Over the months, there were possible sightings near Grant’s Tomb and the Upper West Side. But the site says the dog’s first birthday in November came and went with him still missing.

About a month ago, Kelly spotted a scraggly-looking dog — he first assumed it was a greyhound — while working an overnight shift at the firefighting facility on the island located in the East River. The island is generally accessible by car, though there’s one pedestrian bridge connecting it to the Upper East Side.

Kelly nicknamed the stray “The Rock” — the same one used for the facility. He also put out canned dog food for it in the same spot every night, but Burt was wary.

“Every time I’d go up to him, he’d run off,” Kelly said.

Worried about the dog’s safety in the approaching snowstorm, Kelly decided to set a trap by putting the food in a cage. The trap worked and, after scanning the Internet for missing whippets, Kelly came across the Facebook page titled “Bring Burt Home.”

So he did.

 

GREEN BAY – It’s one of the most popular nights of the year for the Green Bay Gamblers as they host their 16th annual Teddy Bear Toss Night on Saturday Jan. 31 at the Resch Center.

Every fan is asked to bring a new teddy bear to the game to be donated to pediatric patients at Aurora BayCare Medical Center and other community organizations.

When the Gamblers score their first goal against the Chicago Steel, teddy bears will fill the air as fans toss their bears on the ice.

More than 6,500 teddy bears were donated last year. Since the event’s inception, the Teddy Bear Toss has collected more than 84,500 teddy bears for children.

Tickets for the game are available online at www.gamblershockey.com, at all Ticket Star locations, including the Resch Center Box Office, and by phone 800.895.0071.

McRAE, Ga. (AP) – Authorities have positively identified two bodies as those of a Georgia couple who disappeared after driving three hours away to buy a classic auto, and the suspect already in custody has been charged with murder and armed robbery.

These photos provided Monday, Jan. 26, 2015, by the Cobb County Police Department, shows from left to right, Elrey “Bud” Runion, of Marietta, Ga. Runion, 69 and his wife, June Runion, of Marietta, Ga. Runion, 66. The couple was reported missing after driving across the state to check out a classic car advertised on Craigslist, and police say the man who last had phone contact with them faces charges. Investigators have obtained warrants for 28-year-old Ronnie Adrian “Jay” Towns on charges of giving false statements and criminal attempt to commit theft by deception. Towns hasn’t been accused of harming the couple. (AP Photos/Courtesy of the Cobb County Police Department)

Telfair County Sheriff Chris Steverson said 69-year-old Elrey “Bud” Runion and his 66-year-old wife, June, were shot to death and that 28-year-old  Ronnie Adrian “Jay” Towns of McRae has been charged with malice murder and armed robbery.

Towns was initially charged with giving false statements and criminal attempt to commit theft by deception.

Authorities have said Bud Runion posted a Craigslist ad last week seeking a classic car and traveled to Telfair County with his wife to meet the potential seller. The two were reported missing and their SUV and bodies were found Monday.

(CNN) – Dr. Josef Mengele, the so-called “Angel of Death,” is a common thread in the documentary as each survivor recounts chilling encounters with him.

Eva Kor is one of only 150 survivors among the 3,000 twins experimented on by Mengele. Eva and her sister are seen in an iconic liberation photo when they were just 10 years old. Eva is one of the few survivors who “forgives” the Nazis.

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer toured Auschwitz with Eva as she talked about her horrors as a child there.

Click on the links to the left to watch more Voices of Auschwitz stories.

(CNN) – Anita Lasker-Wallfisch survived Auschwitz because she played cello in the women’s orchestra. Under the direction of Gustav Mahler’s niece, Alma Rosé, she played marches intended to stir the forced labor or entertain amid the cruelty.

After the war she made her way to London, married pianist Peter Wallfisch and made her career as a cellist, helping to found the English Chamber Orchestra. Her grandson scored the music for Tuesday’s ceremony and for a film directed by Steven Spielberg to be played at the ceremony.

Anita will play her cello for the first time in many years to record her grandson’s music.

Click on the links to the left to watch more Voices of Auschwitz stories.

(CNN) – Almost 70 years have passed since Renee Firestone was forced into a crowded cattle car heading for Auschwitz.

After the war Renee became a successful fashion designer by painting parachutes into fancy skirts, but gave it up so she can educate future generations about genocide and religious tolerance.

Renee recalls many horrific stories, but says “my revenge to Hitler: my three great-grandchildren!”

Click on the links to the left to watch more Voices of Auschwitz stories.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) – Google said Tuesday it has selected four metro areas in the Southeast to receive its fiber optic service that can deliver Internet speeds at more than 50 times the national broadband average.

The company said it will bring gigabit-speed service to Nashville, Tennessee; Atlanta; and Raleigh-Durham and Charlotte in North Carolina. Google officials said five Western cities previously identified as finalists remain in the running for fiber down the line.

“We had four cities here in the Southeast that were ready to go,” said Kevin Lo, Google’s general manager for fiber services. “I want to be really clear that this is not ‘no’ to anybody for the other five metro areas.”

The other five cities in the running are Phoenix; Salt Lake City; San Jose, California; Portland, Oregon; and San Antonio.

Google Fiber boasts that its service can download an entire movie in less than two minutes and that it has vast potential in business, science and education.

Lo cited the example of a geneticist in Provo, Utah, who can download an entire human genome, or about 200 gigabytes worth of data, via Google Fiber in less than half an hour. That compares with 77 hours at traditional broadband speeds.

“The next chapter of the Internet will be written at gigabit speeds,” Lo said.

Launched as an experimental project in 2010, Google Fiber is available in Provo; Kansas City, Missouri; Kansas City, Kansas; and Austin, Texas.

Google is hoping the competition will prod existing Internet service providers such as Comcast, Verizon Communications and AT&T Inc. to upgrade their networks so they can run at faster speeds. Google figures it would still benefit in that scenario if the improvements to rival networks spur more Web surfing.

Prices for Google Fiber are comparable to or below what most households already pay. For example, in the two Kansas City markets, Google Fiber charges about $70 per month for just high-speed Internet service, or $120 for an Internet and TV package.

Lo declined to say when the service would be available to customers in the new cities, but officials in Charlotte said they hope the work to be complete within the next two years.

President Barack Obama earlier this month urged greater access to faster Internet speeds as a way to create jobs and make local businesses more competitive in the global economy.

The president is calling for a repeal of restrictions on local communities creating their own broadband networks, a stance at odds with major cable and telephone companies that often provide Internet service with little competition.

Obama has also angered the industry by calling for new Federal Communications Commission rules that treat Internet service providers as public utilities.

WASHINGTON (AP) – The chairman of a special House committee investigating the deadly 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, promised Tuesday to “ratchet up” an inquiry he said is being hobbled by resistance from the Obama administration.

Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., said the committee has recently received 15,000 pages of new documents, but needs greater cooperation from the State Department and other agencies to do its job.

“Letters haven’t worked. Southern politeness hasn’t worked. We’re going to ratchet it up,” Gowdy said at the end of a two-hour hearing that at times turned into a partisan grudge match.

Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the panel’s senior Democrat, complained that the committee’s investigation was moving at a “glacial” pace and said he and other Democrats “have grave concerns about the partisan path this committee has taken over the past year.”

Cummings accused Gowdy of excluding Democrats from the investigation, noting that Gowdy has held private meetings with at least five witnesses without Democrats present.

“You may have authority under House rules to conduct secret interviews and exclude Democrats, but doing so forfeits your right to continue calling this investigation ‘bipartisan,’ ” Cummings told Gowdy.

The remarks came as the committee held its third public hearing since its creation last May amid promises of bipartisanship and cooperation. Eight months later, the panel has devolved into finger pointing and accusations of political grandstanding and power plays.

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said Gowdy and other Republicans had placed the committee’s credibility at risk by excluding Democrats from key parts of the investigation. The GOP-led panel appears to be conducting “a drawn-out, partisan fishing expedition” to discredit prominent Democrats, Schiff said. Chief among the possible targets is former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who led the State Department when the attacks occurred and is widely expected to run for president in 2016.

The 12-member panel was created last May to investigate the September 2012 attacks on a U.S. post in eastern Libya that killed Chris Stevens, the U.S. ambassador, and three other Americans.

Schiff and other Democrats complained that Republicans waited for nearly six months to request documents from the State Department and other agencies. Schiff called on Gowdy to lay out the scope of his investigation immediately and adopt a set of rules “that will give Congress and the country the assurance that this will not be yet another politicized and partisan exercise at taxpayer expense.”

If the investigation “does not produce a bipartisan report, it will have been a complete failure,” Schiff said.

Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., said Democrats were being hypocritical, complaining about the panel’s slow pace while not helping it move more quickly.

“They talk about us being too slow, yet they act as if their job is to play defense” for the Obama administration, Pompeo said.

The partisan tone marked a sharp turnaround for a panel that had won praise for a bipartisan approach through its first two public hearings. At one point, Gowdy allowed a Democratic member to participate by video conference after he underwent surgery.

Gowdy’s approach has drawn criticism from some conservatives, who accuse him of failing to stand up to what they see as obstruction by the Obama administration related to the events in Benghazi, a topic that’s been the subject of numerous congressional investigations.

A report by the House Intelligence Committee report last fall found that the CIA and the military acted properly in responding to the 2012 attacks. Debunking a series of persistent allegations hinting at dark conspiracies, the panel determined there was no intelligence failure, no delay in sending a CIA rescue team, no missed opportunity for a military rescue and no evidence the CIA was covertly shipping arms from Libya to Syria.

Cummings, who has clashed with Republicans such as Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., over Benghazi and other issues, has previously praised Gowdy for a bipartisan approach to the Benghazi inquiry.

But he said Tuesday that he and his colleagues have grown increasingly concerned that they are being shut out by the GOP majority. Cummings cited a GOP-approved rule that allows Gowdy to meet privately with committee witnesses and unilaterally issue subpoenas for witnesses or documents “without any public discussion or debate, even if there is significant disagreement from other members of the committee.”

He and other Democrats “simply ask for a public debate and a vote by committee members on these actions when there is significant disagreement,” Cummings wrote in a letter to Gowdy.

Gowdy said after the meeting that he was likely to call Clinton as a witness, but not until he receives more emails and other documents from the State Department.

(CNN) – Elizabeth Ungar Lefkovits had a wonderful life in Hungary until the Germans invaded in March, 1944.

Elizabeth recalls being forced into the cattle cars with more than 100 people. When they arrived at Auschwitz after 10 days with no food or water, at least 5 people had died. She vividly recalls Dr. Josef Mengele, the notorious Nazi camp physician who determined who would live and who would die, looking her straight in the eyes. She was holding her older sister’s baby and he yelled at her “you are too young, give the baby back to her mother”. Her sister took her baby and was sent to the gas chamber while Elizabeth was sent to slave labor.

She and her younger sister were in the same barracks for months until they became separated. Elizabeth clings to the hope that her sister is still alive and continues searching for her.

Click on the links to the left to watch more Voices of Auschwitz stories.

GRAND CHUTE – A three-year-old boy fell into a grease pit last Friday.

Grand Chute fire officials say the boy was standing on top of the pit at the Denny’s restaurant in Grand Chute.

“The child had fallen through an in place but unsecured manhole cover which had approximately four feet of cold grease contents inside of it,” said Matthew Kasriel, division chief with Grand Chute Fire Department.

When the fire department arrived, the boy’s parents already pulled him out of the pit.

Officials say the boy was treated inside the restaurant and then taken to St. Elizabeth Hospital. Authorities did not have an update on how the boy is doing.

“Fire personnel assisted in ensuring that the manhole covers were secured in place mitigating that hazard.”

Officials notified Outagamie County Public Health about the incident.

FOX 11 contacted the public health department and Mary Dorn, a public health officer, said the department does not investigate these types of incidents.

Grand Chute’s community development department says it’s the restaurants responsibility to make sure its grease pits are secure.

FOX 11 made multiple attempts to contact Mark Enders, the area manager for Denny’s, but he did not respond. We also left messages with Denny’s corporate office.

FOX 11’s Gabrielle Mays is working on this story and will have a full report tonight on FOX 11 News.

TWO HARBORS, MN – Tuesday mushers will be crossing the finish line in the 2015 John Beargrease sled dog race.

The race started Sunday in Two Harbors, Minnesota.

46 dog sled teams are braving the frigid weather for the sled dog marathon.

Mushers are competing for a $45,000 prize on a course that is slightly shorter than the original 384 mile competition.

Race coordinator, Alex Angelos, said, “About three different races going on. About two different start locations. About three different finish locations. Just trying to see if we could pull it off under these conditions but lo and behold here we are, you know, look at it.”

The race is a qualifier for Alaska’s flagship Iditarod race, March 7.

 

WARNING: Some of the images in the video above are disturbing and graphic in nature.

(CNN) – He witnessed some of the worst carnage of the 20th century and has a chest full of medals to prove it. Pyotr Shogin is a veteran of Stalingrad and Kursk, some of the bloodiest battles of World War II.

But it’s the memory of Auschwitz, he says, that continues to haunt him.

“We didn’t know what it was at first. We entered the gates and saw a light railway track with lots trollies. Then we noticed that the trollies were designed to go straight into some ovens. We counted 9 really big ovens with cast iron doors,” Shogin said through an interpreter.

What he had found were, of course, the ovens used to incinerate bodies – how the Nazis disposed of their victims. But that horror only dawned on Shogin, when he and his comrades opened the doors of the storage buildings next door.

“We opened one door and loads of shoes fell on us. The whole building was filled with shoes, men’s, women’s, children’s.  We thought, ‘oh my God’. The building opposite was filled with sacks. And what do you think was inside them? Peoples’ hair! Short, medium, long all packed in those sacks. Later we heard the hair was to stuff mattresses for German sailors serving on submarines,”

It is with immense pride that Shogin, along with many other Red Army veterans, look back on their role as liberators of Auschwitz.

But even 70 years since these atrocities were revealed, it’s pride mixed with pain at what the Nazis did.

A blizzard hit the northeastern part of the U.S. Jan. 26 and Jan. 27 causing damage in the Boston area and stretches of lower New England.

Searching for Super Bowl highlights next week after the big game?

They’ll be available, legally, straight from the source.

The NFL has protected its video as fiercely as any league, pushing most users to its website or to its broadcast partners.

On Monday, the league and YouTube announced a partnership between two of the most powerful brands in the marketplace, creating an official NFL channel on the video website. Clips will also be directly viewable through simple Google searches.

Content posted daily to the portal by the league will include game previews, in-game highlights, post-game recaps and clips featuring news, analysis, fantasy football advice and other original programming from NFL Network and NFL.com. Highlight packages from the current postseason were already viewable Sunday, and plenty of Super Bowl programming was scheduled to appear throughout the week and after the game.

Game highlights and other content will also be available through Google’s search engine, which will display official NFL videos along with related news and information in a box at the top of the page. Kickoff times and broadcast information for every NFL game will be prominently displayed.

Google acquired YouTube in 2006. The tandem previously formed partnerships with the other three major American sports leagues, MLB, the NBA and the NHL. Google has been trying to mine more revenue from YouTube, which is positioned for further growth as consumers continue to shift toward online and mobile viewing and away from live television.

“We continue to see an insatiable appetite for digital video content, and this partnership further expands fans’ ability to discover and access NFL content throughout the year,” Hans Schroeder, the NFL’s senior vice president of media strategy, business development and sales, said in a statement distributed by the league.

Previously, the NFL videos that popped up in a YouTube search weren’t sanctioned. The NFL, like many other entities and organizations, has used a YouTube tool called “Content ID” to be able to block unlicensed videos.

Football fans still flocked to the site, of course. Maybe they pulled up one of those “Bad Lip Reading” montages of silly voice-overs accompanying game clips. Or in the hunt for that favorite highlight – “Odell Beckham Jr. one-handed catch,” for instance – they found a bunch of shaky camera-phone videos that some New York Giants fan took of the TV screen.

Now those searches will be more fruitful.

The billion-dollar question, then, is whether this partnership will pave the way for eventual live streaming of games through the YouTube site rather than over the air or on cable. Probably not anytime soon, though. NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said “the focus is on non-live highlights.” He added that “the agreement will provide tremendous exposure for our broadcast partners.”

YouTube spokesman Matt McLernon, pointing to the site’s past streaming of live Olympic events, said the opportunity is there and the technology is waiting if the league were to decide to do so.

“We would welcome it with open arms if the NFL or any other league” wanted to show live games on the site, McLernon said.

Terms of the deal were not provided. But it’s a safe bet that it’s worth a lot of money.

The league, citing Nielsen data, said the 2014 regular season reached 202.3 million unique viewers, representing 80 percent of all television homes and 68 percent of potential viewers in the U.S., and NFL games accounted for the entire top 20 and 45 of the top 50 most-watched television shows last fall.

BRZEZINKA, Poland (AP) — A Jewish leader stood before 300 survivors of the Nazis’ most notorious death camp on Tuesday and asked world leaders to prevent another Auschwitz, warning of a rise of anti-Semitism that has made many Jews fearful of walking the streets, and is causing many to flee Europe.

Ronald Lauder, the president of the World Jewish Congress, made his bleak assessment on the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, speaking next to the gate and the railroad tracks that marked the last journey for more than a million people murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

He said his speech was shaped by the recent terrorist attacks in France that targeted Jews and newspaper satirists.

“For a time, we thought that the hatred of Jews had finally been eradicated. But slowly the demonization of Jews started to come back,” Lauder said. “Once again, young Jewish boys are afraid to wear yarmulkes on the streets of Paris and Budapest and London. Once again, Jewish businesses are targeted. And once again, Jewish families are fleeing Europe.”

Polish born Holocaust survivor Halina Birenbaum, seen on top screen, speaks in a tent raised at the entrance of the Birkenau Nazi death camp in Oswiecim, Poland, Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2015, during the official remembrance ceremony. About 300 survivors gathered with leaders from around the world to remember the 1.1 million people killed at Auschwitz-Birkenau and the millions of others killed in the Holocaust.(AP Photo//Czarek Sokolowski)

The recent attack in Paris, in which four Jews were killed in a kosher supermarket, is not the first deadly attack on Jews in recent years. Last May a shooting killed four people at the Jewish Museum in Brussels and in 2012 a rabbi and three children were murdered in the French city of Toulouse.

Europe also saw a spasm of anti-Semitism last summer during the war in Gaza, with protests in Paris turning violent and other hostility across the continent.

“This vilification of Israel, the only Jewish state on earth, quickly became an opportunity to attack Jews,” Lauder said. “Much of this came from the Middle East, but it has found fertile ground throughout the world.”

One Holocaust survivor, Roman Kent, became emotional as he issued a plea to world leaders to remember the atrocities and fight for tolerance.

“We do not want our past to be our children’s future,” the 85-year-old said to applause, fighting back tears and repeating those words a second time.

U.S. President Barack Obama, who was in Saudi Arabia to pay respects after the death of King Abdullah, issued a statement paying tribute to the 6 million Jews and millions of others murdered by the Nazis.

“The recent terrorist attacks in Paris serve as a painful reminder of our obligation to condemn and combat rising anti-Semitism in all its forms, including the denial or trivialization of the Holocaust,” Obama said. A U.S. delegation to the ceremony was led by Treasury Secretary Jack Lew.

In Jerusalem, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial, where he said: “My job as prime minister of Israel is to make sure that there won’t be any more threats of destruction against the state of Israel. My job is to ensure that there won’t be any reasons to establish any more memorial sites like Yad Vashem.”

The commemorations in Poland, which during World War II was under Nazi occupation, were also marked by a melancholy awareness that it will be the last major anniversary that a significant number of survivors will be strong enough to attend.

“The survivors are completely gutted that in their lifetime they went through what they went through and that now they are at the end of their life and they don’t know what kind of world they are leaving for their grandchildren,” said Stephen Smith, executive director of the USC Shoah Foundation. “That is very disappointing for them. We have let them down.”

Politics also cast a shadow on the event, with Russian President Vladimir Putin absent — even though the Soviet Red Army liberated the camp — the result of the deep chill between the West and Russia over Ukraine.

Among those in attendance were French President Francois Hollande, who has vowed to fight the violent extremism that has wounded his nation, as well as the presidents of Germany and Austria, the perpetrator nations that have spent decades atoning for their sins.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko was also there in a sign of Poland’s strong support for Ukraine in its conflict with Russia.

Poland apparently snubbed Putin, though officials don’t say that openly. The organizers, the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum and the International Auschwitz Council, opted for a form of protocol this year that avoided direct invitations by Poland’s president to his foreign counterparts. The organizers instead simply asked countries that are donors to Auschwitz, including Russia, whom they planned to send. Poland’s Foreign Ministry says Putin could have attended if he wished.

The Russian delegation was led by Sergei Ivanov, Putin’s chief of staff.

The public spat comes at a low point in relations between Russia and the West, following Moscow’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, and its support for the rebel forces battling Kiev’s troops in eastern Ukraine. Poland has been vocal in condemning Russia’s actions in Ukraine, which has plunged the continent into one of the worst East-West crises since the end of the Cold War.

Some of the survivors said they thought Putin should have been there, given the fact that Soviet soldiers fought and died to liberate the camp, and Russia is the successor state to the Soviet Union.

“They lost their lives and we should honor them,” said Natan Grossmann, a survivor who now lives in Munich.

In Moscow, Putin visited the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center and used the occasion to press the Russian points on Ukraine. He spoke of the Ukrainian nationalists’ collaboration with the Nazis in killing Jews during the war, and he accused Ukrainian authorities today of killing civilians in Donetsk and Luhansk in cold blood.

_____

Associated Press writers Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow and Ian Deitch in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

 

LOS ANGELES (AP) – A preliminary hearing for former NFL All-Pro safety Darren Sharper on charges that he drugged and raped two women he met at a West Hollywood nightclub has been tentatively set for Feb. 17.

A Los Angeles Superior Court judge set the new hearing date Tuesday after meeting privately with prosecutors and defense lawyers.

Sharper says he agrees with the delay.

Judge Michael Pastor says the hearing was postponed because of scheduling and evidence issues that he didn’t explain.

Sharper has pleaded not guilty to giving women drugs and raping them while they were unconscious. He’s been in custody since February.

Sharper faces similar charges in Arizona and Louisiana, and federal authorities have ordered the Los Angeles sheriff to turn him over to U.S. marshals in New Orleans by Feb. 23.

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

BOSTON (AP) – The monster storm in Boston has brought with it another monster – a yeti.

The white, furry phantom has been getting laughs by walking through the blizzard in a sasquatch suit.

One was spotted in downtown Copley Square. Another was sighted trying to hail a cab in suburban Somerville.

New England Cable News reporter Tony Sabato tweeted a photo of the not-so-elusive creature. Above a snapshot of the yeti looking rather pensive, he wrote, “Found the yeti in the blizzard at Copley Square in Boston.”

It wasn’t immediately clear whether there were one or more yetis roaming the Boston streets.

As of midday Tuesday, the abominable snowman hadn’t revealed his or her true identity.

MADISON (AP) – A Republican state senator says he does not believe the state can force failing public schools to be converted into independent charter schools.

Sen. Paul Farrow made his comments Tuesday while testifying in support of a measure he introduced that does not include sanctions. Assembly Republicans are backing a different approach with sanctions.

Gov. Scott Walker has said he does not support sanctions and wants to provide information for parents to decide where to send their children.

Republicans who control the Legislature haven’t been able to agree on what approach to take.

The Assembly bill also assigns letters grades to schools and allows private schools in the voucher program to take different tests than ones used in public schools.

The Senate bill does not have any of those elements.

LOS ANGELES (AP) – A preliminary hearing for former NFL All-Pro safety Darren Sharper on charges that he drugged and raped two women he met at a West Hollywood nightclub has been tentatively set for Feb. 17.

A Los Angeles Superior Court judge set the new hearing date Tuesday after meeting privately with prosecutors and defense lawyers.

Sharper says he agrees with the delay.

Judge Michael Pastor says the hearing was postponed because of scheduling and evidence issues that he didn’t explain.

Sharper has pleaded not guilty to giving women drugs and raping them while they were unconscious. He’s been in custody since February.

Sharper faces similar charges in Arizona and Louisiana, and federal authorities have ordered the Los Angeles sheriff to turn him over to U.S. marshals in New Orleans by Feb. 23.

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. (AP) – Tiger Woods was all smiles Tuesday – and with a full set of teeth.

Woods gave a play-by-play account of how his front tooth was knocked out in Italy on Jan. 19 while celebrating girlfriend Lindsey Vonn’s record 63rd World Cup victory. He said one tooth was chipped and the other was cracked. Both were replaced before he arrived to start his season at the Phoenix Open.

He said he wore a skeleton-patterned scarf over his face to avoid being recognized, making a crack about how difficult that can be for a man of black heritage at a World Cup ski race in Italy.

“Not a lot of brown dudes at ski races, OK?” he said with a laugh, as cameras clicked at his smile.

Woods said when the race was completed, the podium presentation was moved up on a hill for the photographers. He went to the top of the hill, behind the cameras.

“All the camera guys are below me on their knees or moving all around, trying to get a picture because she’s hugging people, saying congratulations to the other racers as they are coming down,” he said. “Some already finished, some are there already in the changing area. Dude with a video camera on his shoulder right in front me, kneeling, stood up and turned and caught me square on the mouth.”

Woods said he tried to keep his mask on “so the blood is not all over the place.” He said the videographer hit the tooth on which he had root canal, chipping it. He said the other tooth had to be fixed, too, because it had cracks through it.”

The photo of Woods missing a tooth became as big a sensation as Vonn’s record victory. There did not appear to be any swelling on Woods’ mouth when a photographer captured the image of his mouth slightly open and the scarf lowered.

Nicola Colli, the secretary general of the race organizing committee, told The Associated Press he was among those who escorted Woods from the tent to a snowmobile for him to leave “and there was no such incident.”

“When he arrived he asked for more security and we rounded up police to look after both him and Lindsey,” Colli had said.

Whether anyone believed the story from a week ago was not his concern.

“Dude, you guys … it’s just the way the media is,” he said. “It is what it is.”

Woods is playing his first official PGA Tour event since he missed the cut at the PGA Championship in August. But the biggest topic after he played nine holes under a cloudy sky Tuesday morning was the mystery of his missing tooth.

Except that Woods said there was no mystery at all – except for the attention it received.

“It’s a new world,” he said. “We need to talk about something. Have to fill up space. The story is about Lindsey breaking the record. That’s the story. I mean, geez, every sport you get teeth knocked out, and unfortunately I wasn’t actually competing and got my teeth knocked out.”

Asked if his tooth was a cap to begin with, Woods said, “These are permanent, yeah.”

Woods said the flight home to Florida was the most painful.

“I couldn’t eat, couldn’t drink until he fixed them, put the temporaries on,” Woods said. “I couldn’t have anything touch it. Even breathing hurt, because any kind of air over the nerve … the tooth was still alive, was cracked.”

When asked if the photographer realized what he had done, Woods replied, “He didn’t care.”