Green Bay News

MADISON (AP) – The punk rock band Dropkick Murphys is asking Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker to stop playing one of their songs, saying in a message on Twitter that “We literally hate you.”

Al Barr, Tim Brennan, Ken Casey, Jeff DaRosa, Matt Kelly, James Lynch and Scruffy Wallace with Dropkick Murphys performing at the Shaky Knees Music Festival on Friday, May 9, 2014, in Atlanta. (Photo by Robb D. Cohen/Invision/AP)

The band sent the message Saturday night after Walker took the stage at the Iowa Freedom Summit to their song “I’m Shipping Up to Boston.”

Dropkick Murphys has been vocally supportive of union rights and critical of Walker’s steps to effectively end collective bargaining for public workers in Wisconsin.

In 2012, the band also asked then-Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald, a Republican ally of Walker’s, not to play the song after he used at the state Republican Party convention.

Walker’s spokesman had no immediate comment Monday.

Walker has continued to play John Mellencamp songs even after the rocker expressed displeasure.

@ScottWalker @GovWalker please stop using our music in any way…we literally hate you !!! Love, Dropkick Murphys

— Dropkick Murphys (@DropkickMurphys) January 25, 2015

KEY WEST, Fla. (AP) — Millions of genetically modified mosquitoes could be released in the Florida Keys if British researchers win approval to use the bugs against two extremely painful viral diseases.

Never before have insects with modified DNA come so close to being set loose in a residential U.S. neighborhood.

“This is essentially using a mosquito as a drug to cure disease,” said Michael Doyle, executive director of the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District, which is waiting to hear if the Food and Drug Administration will allow the experiment.

Dengue and chikungunya are growing threats in the U.S., but some people are more frightened at the thought of being bitten by a genetically modified organism. More than 130,000 signed a Change.org petition against the experiment.

In this Thursday, Oct. 4, 2012 file photo, Carrie Atwood, an entomological technician with the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District, sorts and counts dead captured mosquitoes in Key West, Fla. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee, File)

Even potential boosters say those responsible must do more to show that benefits outweigh the risks.

“I think the science is fine, they definitely can kill mosquitoes, but the GMO issue still sticks as something of a thorny issue for the general public,” said Phil Lounibos, who studies mosquito control at the Florida Medical Entomology Laboratory. “It’s not even so much about the science — you can’t go ahead with something like this if public opinion is negative.”

Mosquito controllers say they’re running out of options that can kill Aedes aegypti, a tiger-striped invader whose biting females spread these viruses. Climate change and globalization are spreading tropical diseases farther from the equator, and Key West, the southernmost city in the continental U.S., is particularly vulnerable.

“An arriving person would be infectious for several days, and could infect many of the local mosquitoes,” Doyle said. “Within a few weeks you’d likely end up with several infected mosquitoes for each infected visitor.”

There are no vaccines or cures for dengue, known as “break-bone fever,” or chikungunya, which causes painful contortions. U.S. cases remain rare for now, but dengue sickens 50 million people annually worldwide and kills 2.5 percent of the half-million who get severe cases, according to the World Health Organization. Chikungunya has already overwhelmed hospitals and harmed economies across the Caribbean after infecting a million people in the region last year.

In this Thursday, Oct. 4, 2012 file photo, Jason Garcia, a field inspector with the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District, tests a sprayer that could be used in the future to spray pesticides to control mosquitoes in Key West, Fla. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee, File)

Insecticides are sprayed year-round from helicopters and door-to-door in charming and crowded neighborhoods throughout the Keys. But because Aedes aegypti don’t travel much and are repeatedly doused with the same chemicals, they have evolved to resist four of the six insecticides used to kill them.

Enter Oxitec, a British biotech firm launched by Oxford University researchers. They patented a method of breeding Aedes aegypti with fragments of proteins from the herpes simplex virus and E. coli bacteria as well as genes from coral and cabbage. This synthetic DNA has been used in thousands of experiments without harming lab animals, but it is fatal to the bugs, killing mosquito larvae before they can fly or bite.

Oxitec’s lab workers manually remove modified females, aiming to release only males, which feed on nectar and don’t bite for blood like females do. The modified males then mate with wild females whose offspring die, reducing the population.

Oxitec has built a breeding lab in Marathon and hopes to release its mosquitoes this spring in Key Haven, a neighborhood of 444 homes closely clustered on a relatively isolated peninsula at the north end of Key West.

FDA spokeswoman Theresa Eisenman said no field tests will be allowed until the agency has “thoroughly reviewed all the necessary information.”

Company spokeswoman Chris Creese said the test will be similar in size to Oxitec’s 2012 experiment in the Cayman Islands, where 3.3 million modified mosquitoes were released over six months, suppressing 96 percent of the targeted bugs. Oxitec says a later test in Brazil also was successful, and both countries now want larger-scale projects.

But critics accused Oxitec of failing to obtain informed consent in the Caymans, saying residents weren’t told they could be bitten by a few stray females overlooked in the lab.

Instead, Oxitec said only non-biting males would be released, and that even if humans were somehow bitten, no genetically modified DNA would enter their bloodstream.

Neither claim is entirely true, outside observers say.

“What Oxitec is trying to spin is that it’s highly improbable that there will be negative consequences of this foreign DNA entering someone that’s bitten by an Oxitec mosquito,” said Lounibos. “I’m on their side, in that consequences are highly unlikely. But to say that there’s no genetically modified DNA that might get into a human, that’s kind of a gray matter.”

Asked about these points, Creese says Oxitec has now released 70 million of its mosquitoes in several countries and received no reports of human impacts caused by bites or from the synthetic DNA, despite regulatory oversight that encourages people to report any problems. “We are confident of the safety of our mosquito, as there’s no mechanism for any adverse effect on human health. The proteins are non-toxic and non-allergenic,” she said.

Oxitec should still do more to show that the synthetic DNA causes no harm when transferred into humans by its mosquitoes, said Guy Reeves, a molecular geneticist at Germany’s Max Planck Institute. To build trust in any cutting-edge science, a range of independent experts — not just the company that stands to gain or the regulatory agency involved — should have enough access to data published in peer-reviewed journals to be able to explain the specific benefits and risks, he said.

“Failing to do this almost inevitably means a potential for controversy to be sustained and amplified,” said Reeves, adding that mosquito-borne diseases need more solutions. “We should not be closing down productive avenues, and genetically modified mosquitoes might be one of them.”

With the FDA watching, Doyle and Oxitec’s product development manager, Derric Nimmo, checked their frustration at public meetings in November and December, repeatedly fielding the same questions from the same critics.

Their selling points:

This experiment is self-limiting, using insects engineered to kill their progeny, not make them stronger. It is contained, since Oxitec’s mosquitoes won’t breed with other species. Killing off Aedes aegypti can protect human health while eliminating an invasive species. And most Key Haven residents responded positively to a district survey about the planned field test.

Using GMOs also could save money: The district spends 10 percent of its budget on Aedes aegypti, which represents less than 1 percent of the 45 mosquito species buzzing around the Keys.

Key Haven resident Marilyn Smith still wasn’t persuaded. The Keys haven’t experienced a dengue outbreak in years, and no chikungunya cases have been reported here, she said.

“If I knew that this was a real risk and lives could be saved, that would make sense,” Smith said. “But there are no problems. Why are we trying to fix it? Why are we being used as the experiment, the guinea pigs, just to see what happens?”

If the FDA decides against the test, or the modified mosquitoes fail to work as promised, Doyle will still need to kill the bugs.

“I’m convinced the only way to fight this is using the mosquitoes to fight each other,” he said.

GREEN BAY – Be careful on the roads this afternoon as snow is creating some slippery driving conditions.  Snow will continue into the evening hours and we’ll see 1 to 2 inches of accumulation by tonight.

The high will be near 27 with south winds at 10 to 15 mph.

Snowfall totals in the western part of the state where this snow band has come from are in the half inch to 2 inch range. Eau Claire has reported 1.4″ of snow and La Crosse 0.7″.

MADISON (AP) – Sen. Tammy Baldwin says she is accepting responsibility for not calling for an investigation sooner amid allegations that a Tomah VA medical center overprescribed opiates.

In a column published in newspapers across the state Sunday, the Democrat says she should have listened and communicated better with the constituent who first brought the issues to her attention in March.

• Click here to read the column

Baldwin says she accepts responsibility for mistakes made by her office and believes a 2014 investigation fell short in exposing problems at the medical center.

A 35-year-old former Marine died of an overdose in the center’s inpatient care unit in August.

Baldwin says she spoke with U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert McDonald last week. She said McDonald plans to launch a new investigation into the Tomah medical center.

Photos submitted to ReportIt, Jan. 25-31, 2015.

Be careful if you’re driving this afternoon because snow will make roads slippery.

Occasional snow will fall this afternoon and into this evening with most locations getting one to two inches.  High temperatures will top out near 27 with south winds at 10 to 15 mph.

After evening snow showers, skies will be mostly cloudy overnight with a low near 22.

Tuesday and Wednesday will be a bit milder. Expect partly sunny skies Tuesday with a high near 32, and Wednesday will be mostly cloudy with highs in the low 30s.

On Thursday there is another chance for some light snow and again a high near freezing.  Snow amounts with this system will be more in the 1-3″ range.

Friday will bring partly sunny skies and highs near 20.

Saturday we may see some light snow but little or no accumulation.  Highs will be near 24 but then it gets much colder.

Sunday’s high will only reach near 10 and Monday and Tuesday will be much colder than normal. (Normal high is 24)

Submitted Jan. 25, 2015 by USW 815, who writes:

“Video of a demonstration by USW Local 815 members on Thursday January 22, 2015 outside Seagrave Fire Apparatus, LLC.”

BROWN COUNTY – The Brown County OWI Task Force made more arrests over the weekend than it has made in almost three years.

The task force was deployed in the Hobart/Lawrence area Friday and Saturday nights. Officers say they made six arrests on Friday and 11 arrests on Saturday, the most since May 4, 2012. It was also the most arrests the task force has ever made in the Hobart/Lawrence area. In one case, an officer was taking a driver to the hospital for a blood draw when he noticed another erratic driver, stopped and arrested that driver.

In all, officers made a total of 103 stops. They issued 73 tickets and 87 warnings.

The task force had 15 officers out on Friday night and 16 on Saturday night.

MADISON (AP) – Assembly Speaker Robin Vos’s criticisms of the nonpartisan board overseeing Wisconsin elections, campaign finance and ethics laws were “just not true,” the chairman of the board said in a letter made public Monday.

Government Accountability Board Chairman Gerald Nichol sent the letter to Vos, a Republican, last week. It comes as Republicans who control the Legislature are looking at overhauling the makeup and function of the board, partly in response to anger over its role in the John Doe investigation that looked into alleged illegal activity by Gov. Scott Walker’s 2012 recall campaign and conservative groups.

• Click here to read the letter

While the Legislature has the right to make whatever changes it wishes, “the public debate about the GAB’s future should be based on the agency’s true record of accomplishments, not on unsubstantiated allegations,” Nichol wrote in the letter dated Jan. 22.

A spokeswoman for Vos said he was not immediately available to comment.

Nichol wrote in response to comments Vos made in a television news report where he said that staff at the GAB hired investigators to do work on the John Doe probe without the knowledge of the six judges on the board.

Nichol, a member of the board since its creation in 2008, said that he and the other judges are closely involved in overseeing all activities of staff.

“And I can assure you that the staff has taken no action in these matters without the Board’s full knowledge and prior approval,” Nichol wrote. He also generally defends the board’s actions in the letter, saying it does not undertake investigations lightly but when presented with “hard evidence that the law has been violated,” it must act.

“We do not undertake investigations lightly, and do not participate in fishing expeditions or partisan witch hunts,” Nichol wrote.

The investigation involving Walker’s recall campaign is on hold, with three separate lawsuits pending before the state Supreme Court. Wisconsin Club for Growth, one of the targeted conservative groups, is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to take up a federal lawsuit it brought alleging that the investigation was a violation of its constitutional free-speech rights.

Rep. Dean Knudson, R-Hudson, is working on a bill that he’s said would create a hybrid board including nonpartisan appointees as well as partisan ones. The former Elections Board, which was widely panned as ineffective before being replaced by the GAB, was comprised of partisan appointees.

 

OSHKOSH – Someone has been breaking in to Oshkosh homes through backyard patio doors.

Police say the burglaries have been happening in the early evening hours. They are being committed in areas where there is low lighting.

Things being stolen from homes are “limited,” police say. Investigators are refusing to say what exactly is being stolen, citing the ongoing investigation.

Police are reminding homeowners to lock their doors and leave a light on near doors. It’s also a good idea to make it appear someone is home by leaving lights on, putting the lights on timers or leaving a TV or radio on.

Anyone who sees a burglary in progress should call 911. Anyone with information is asked to call police at (920) 236-5700. Anonymous tips can be left with Crime Stoppers by phone at (920) 231-8477, by text message with the keyword IGOTYA to 274637 or online.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A small drone flying at low altitude crashed into the White House complex before dawn Monday, the Secret Service said. President Barack Obama was not at home and the White House said it did not pose a security threat.

The crash prompted an immediate lockdown of the White House grounds until officials could examine the drone. The Secret Service said the 2-foot-long device was a quadcopter — a small, unmanned aircraft that is lifted by four propellers.

“An investigation is underway to determine the origin of this commercially available device, motive, and to identify suspects,” said Secret Service spokesman Brian Leary. He said the drone crashed on the southeast side of the White House complex just after 3 a.m.

Many small quadcopters are essentially sophisticated toys that can also be useful for commercial operations like aerial photography and inspection. Often weighing only a few pounds, they sell for as little as a few hundred dollars or less, and were popular Christmas gifts last year. More elaborate models sell for thousands.

The president and first lady Michelle Obama are traveling in India and were not present for the incident. But it was unclear whether their daughters, Sasha and Malia, were at home with their grandmother, Marian Robinson, who also lives at the White House. Ahead of the president’s trip, aides said the daughters would remain in Washington so as not to miss school.

Police, fire and other emergency vehicles swarmed the White House in the predawn hours, with several clustered near the southeast entrance to the mansion. The White House was dark and the entire perimeter was on lockdown until around 5 a.m., when those who work in the complex were allowed inside.

After daylight, more than a dozen Secret Service officers fanned out in a search across the White House lawn as snow began to fall. They peered down in the grass and used flashlights to look through the large bushes that line the mansion’s driveway.

While the circumstances of this incident were not immediately clear, previous security breaches at the White House have led to questions about the Secret Service’s effectiveness.

Four high-ranking executives were reassigned this month, and former director Julia Pierson was forced to resign last year after a Texas man armed with a knife was able to get over a White House fence in September and run deep into the executive mansion before being subdued.

An independent panel that investigated the agency’s leadership and practices in the wake of the September incident and the disclosure of a previously unreported security breach that month recommended hiring a new director from outside the agency.

That report was the second critical review of the agency responsible for protecting the president. In November, the Homeland Security Department, which oversees the Secret Service, released an internal investigation about the fence-scaling incident that found poor training, staff and a series of missteps led to the breach.

Homeland Security investigators found, among other things, that uniformed agents patrolling the White House grounds the night of Sept. 19 mistakenly assumed that thick bushes near the mansion’s front door would stop the intruder.

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Associated Press writer Joan Lowy contributed to this report.

Sandy is getting a makeover on GDW!

It’s all part of our Monday morning makeover.

Sandy is 13 months cancer-free and she’s celebrating with a fresh new look.

Check it out!

MADISON, Wis. (AP) – Madison’s police chief plans to introduce a new initiative aimed at helping people with mental health issues.

WKOW-TV says Chief Mike Koval will introduce several new mental health liaison officers at a news conference Monday and talk about how they’ll be used in all of Madison’s police districts.

Last week, Koval created two new task forces – one on violent crime and the other focusing on burglaries.

MILWAUKEE (AP) – Detectives are interviewing neighbors on Milwaukee’s north side as they investigate the fatal shooting of a 24-year-old man.

Police were dispatched to the scene about 3:30 a.m. Monday and found the victim with a gunshot wound to his chest.

Officers say a suspect is in custody.

MILWAUKEE (AP) – A 20-year-old woman accused of stealing a 3-month-old Chihuahua from the yard of a Milwaukee pet owner has been charged with felony theft.

According to a criminal complaint, Jessica Setzer took the puppy from the south side home on Jan. 14 and ran off. Owner Antonio Herrera says he noticed the dog was missing from his fenced-in backyard and attempted to chase after the dog thief.

Police say they located surveillance footage of the suspect and arrested Setzer last weekend. Officers say she admitted to taking the dog but claimed it followed her out of the yard.

Police say Setzer sold the puppy and it took several days to track the animal down. The dog was reunited with Herrera on Wednesday.

Court records don’t list an attorney for Setzer.

CHICAGO (AP) – With virtually no hard proof that medical marijuana benefits sick children, and evidence that it may harm developing brains, the drug should only be used for severely ill kids who have no other treatment option, the nation’s most influential pediatricians group says in a new policy.

Some parents insist that medical marijuana has cured their kids’ troublesome seizures or led to other improvements, but the American Academy of Pediatrics’ new policy says rigorous research is needed to verify those claims.

To make it easier to study and develop marijuana-based treatments, the group recommends removing marijuana from the government’s most restrictive drug category, which includes heroin, LSD and other narcotics with no accepted medical use, and switching it to the category which includes methadone and oxycodone.

The recommended switch “could help make a big difference in promoting more research,” said Dr. Seth Ammerman, the policy’s lead author and a professor of pediatrics and adolescent medicine at Stanford University.

The academy’s qualified support may lead more pediatricians to prescribe medical marijuana, but the group says pediatric use should only be considered “for children with life-limiting or severely debilitating conditions and for whom current therapies are inadequate.”

The academy also repeated its previous advice against legalizing marijuana for recreational use by adults, suggesting that may enable easier access for kids. It does not address medical marijuana use in adults.

Studies have linked recreational marijuana use in kids with ill effects on health and brain development, including problems with memory, concentration, attention, judgment and reaction time, the group’s policy emphasizes.

The policy was published online Monday in Pediatrics. It updates and expands the group’s 2004 policy.

Since then, the marijuana movement has grown substantially. Recreational and medical marijuana use is legal for adults in four states – Alaska, Colorado, Oregon and Washington. Nineteen other states and Washington D.C., have laws allowing medical marijuana use only and most allow children to qualify, according to Morgan Fox of the Marijuana Policy Project, a national group that advocates marijuana policy reform and tracks state laws.

“The cart is so far ahead of the horse related to this drug,” said Dr. Angus Wilfong, of Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston. Marijuana has dozens of chemical components that need to be studied just like any drug to determine safety, proper doses and potential side effects, he said.

Wilfong was involved in a recently completed international study involving 30 children with severe epilepsy. About half got an experimental drug made with a marijuana compound that doesn’t make users high; the others received dummy medicine. Study results are being analyzed. Wilfong said five children from his hospital were involved and while he doesn’t know if any of them got the marijuana drug, none suffered any serious side effects.

Wilfong said he has a young seizure patient in a different, less rigorous study who has shown dramatic improvement after several months on the marijuana-based treatment, “but that doesn’t prove it was due to the” experimental drug,” he said.

NEW DELHI (AP) – President Barack Obama’s experience at India’s Republic Day celebration may have felt a little like his two presidential inaugurations.

He watched the two-hour parade of military hardware, marching bands and elaborately dressed camels from a rain-soaked, open-air reviewing stand.

The experience was somewhat similar to his inaugurations in Washington. But it was different in some respects, too.

Obama watched both inaugural parades from an enclosed, glass-fronted reviewing stand that temporarily erected on the north side of the White House. The weather both times was dry and biting cold. There were no tanks or other military hardware doing a slow roll up Pennsylvania Avenue.

No dressed-up camels, either.

But there are always plenty of marching bands.

The busy Northeast corridor prepared for a winter wallop that was expected to bring up to 2 feet of snow from northern New Jersey all the way up to Massachusetts.

Here’s what residents of the big cities in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic need to know about the coming storm:
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SNOWSTORM VS. BLIZZARD: WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE?

The National Weather Service issued a blizzard warning for a huge swath of the region, meaning potential white-out conditions as heavy snow swirls amid gusting wind. The weather service says a blizzard includes sustained or frequent wind gusts of 35 mph or greater and considerable falling snow that lasts for at least three hours. This storm is expected to last up to 36 hours in some locations, forecasters said.

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AIR TRAVEL

More than 1,700 flights scheduled for Monday are expected to be cancelled, according to the flight tracking site FlightAware. Most major airlines are allowing customers whose flights are canceled in the next few days to book new flights without paying a penalty. Customers ticketed on flights to dozens of Eastern airports are generally eligible for the allowance, though specific terms vary by airline.

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NEW YORK

A blizzard expected to dump 1 to 2 feet of snow should begin around midday Monday and last through Tuesday night. Nearly 200 Monday flights had already been canceled Sunday night at the three major airports serving the city.

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BOSTON

A blizzard warning will be in effect from 7 p.m. Monday to 1 a.m. Wednesday, with about 18 to 24 inches of snow forecast for the city, but up to 2 feet to the west. Hurricane force winds were predicted for Cape Cod and the nearby islands, and wind gusts of up to 75 mph were possible farther inland.

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HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT

From 20 to 30 inches of snow was predicted, including snowfall rates of 2 to 4 inches per hour at some points Monday night or Tuesday morning.

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PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND

Accumulations of around 20 to 27 inches were expected with locally higher amounts possible, plus blizzard conditions that include damaging winds and considerable drifting and blowing snow.

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PHILADELPHIA

An initial shot of one to three inches of snow early Monday is a prelude for the main storm that arrives about noon, when a winter storm warning goes into effect. Up to a foot of snow is expected before the storm ends about 6 p.m. Tuesday, with less to the west and more in New Jersey toward the coast.

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WASHINGTON-BALTIMORE

Snow should begin falling before noon Monday and end by midday Tuesday, with only about 1 to 2 inches accumulating in Washington but 2 to 5 inches in Baltimore.

SUAMICO – The Green Bay area may not have seen a lot of snow so far this winter, but there are still plenty of fun things to do in winter.

FOX 11’s Pauleen Le spent the morning at Barkhausen Waterfowl Preserve in Suamico checking out what’s going on including bird watching, hiking and other program available this winter.

For more information on Barkhausen Waterfowl Preserve, click here.

 

Airlines are cancelling thousands of flights into and out of East Coast airports as a major snowstorm packing up to three feet of snow barrels down on the region.

Almost 1,900 flights scheduled for Monday have been cancelled, according to the flight tracking site FlightAware. Nearly 1,800 additional flights have been scrapped for Tuesday.

Most major airlines are allowing customers whose flights are canceled in the next few days to book new flights without paying a penalty. Customers ticketed on flights to dozens of Eastern airports are generally eligible for the allowance, though specific terms vary by airline.

The National Weather Service predicts 2 to 3 feet of snow for a 250-mile stretch of the Northeast, including the New York and Boston areas. Philadelphia should get 14 to 18 inches.