Top Stories, Easter Sunday

Local Guardsmen Enjoying Easter Before Deployment

4/8/12 - About 130 Wisconsin National Guard soldiers are spending Easter with their families, before they take off for Afghanistan. Members of the 11-hundred-57th Transportation Company, based in Oshkosh, have been training at Camp Shelby in Mississippi since mid-February. Commander Chris Menden said the training ended last Sunday – and the troops are on a week’s leave with their families before returning on Monday for final medical evaluations. The group will spend nine months in Afghanistan providing security for convoys. It’s the unit’s fifth mission since 1990, and the first in about six years. While at Camp Shelby, the group received a surprise visit from former Packers’ quarterback Brett Favre and his wife Deanna, who live close by at Hattiesburg Mississippi. They signed autographs and posed for pictures with the soldiers.

FAA Green Lights Operation Migration

4/8/12 - A 10-year-old project to re-introduce endangered whooping cranes in the Eastern U-S has been given a new lease on life. The F-A-A granted a two-year rule exemption to let Operation Migration pay the pilot of a light sport aircraft to guide baby cranes each fall from Wisconsin to Florida. That’s where the cranes meet up with possible mating partners during the winter. Cranes were on their way to Florida a few months ago when a former pilot filed a complaint with the F-A-A – and the government grounded the mission, saying it’s against federal rules to pay ultra-pilot pilots. But Operation Migration said its pilots were paid for what they did on the ground, and not in the air. The F-A-A granted a temporary exemption in February that allowed the trip to continue. But by then, project leaders said it was too late, and the cranes spent the rest of the winter at a refuge in Alabama. In granting the two-year exemption, the F-A-A told the group to make some changes. The pilots will need private licenses instead of light-sport craft licenses. And by next year, the planes must be upgraded from experimental light aircraft to a special light craft that more closely resembles a single-engine plane.

Home Remodeling Scams Starting Early

4/8/12 - The early spring brought an early start to the home remodeling season – plus the scams that go with it. Dane County sheriff’s deputies said an older farm couple got a bill for almost 18-hundred dollars, after a contractor said he wanted to check the lightning rod cables on a shed. The person then replaced 12-feet of cable without telling the farmers, or giving them a contract in advance as required by law. Sheriff’s spokeswoman Elise Schaefer says traveling “gypsy” contractors roam the rural areas looking for easy touches – mainly the elderly. She says those folks are often promised good deals by offering materials they claim are left over from another job – and when the inflated bills come, the homeowners feel pressured into paying them. Schaefer says those contacted by those types of contractors should call law enforcement immediately – and trade notes with neighbors.

Warm Weather Affecting Wine Makers

4/8/12 - The record warmth in March might have felt good – but it’s now causing lots of problems for Wisconsin’s fruit growers and wine-makers. Places that didn’t get below 50-degrees on a few nights in March put a false alarm into budding vines and orchards, and they started growing too early. Now that it gets below freezing at night, those vines face the risk of dying. And producers fear thousands-of-dollars in losses. Owners of the Wollersheim Winery at Prairie du Sac are trying to fight the elements with what’s called a “Frost Dragon.” It’s a large machine that warms up the vineyards, and keeps frost from coming up. But winery vice president Julie Coquard says the machine won’t save the vines if it gets below 25-degrees at night – and it’s “iffy” at 27-or-28.

Milwaukee Officials Investigating PD Cavity Searches

4/8/12 - Members of the Milwaukee Common Council say they think more transparency will give the public more faith in an investigation of the police department. Seven officers and one sergeant are being investigated on allegations of making illegal body cavity searchers. The aldermen are asking that Milwaukee police, and the Fire and Police Commission, release the findings of their investigation with 30 days of completion. The Common Council will review the proposed resolution calling for more transparency at its next meeting.

Teen To Be Seated On Pierce County Board

4/8/12 - A high school senior from northwest Wisconsin will join his local county board on April 17th. Travis Nez, an 18-year-old from Phillips, was elected to the Price County Board last Tuesday. He won by 94 votes over John Reardon, a local businessman who mentored the youngster in business and politics. Reardon says Nez will have to deal with spending millions of tax dollars – and Reardon hopes he’s up to it. Nez says he is, and he’ll make his new county post a top priority in spite of a tight schedule. Nez expects to graduate from Phillips High School next month.

Death Rates Not Affected By Experiment

4/8/12 - A new report said death rates did not go down, after a six-year experiment that rewarded hospitals for improving their quality of care. Wisconsin’s largest hospital chain, Aurora of Milwaukee, was among the top performers in the project. It received almost two-million-dollars in extra Medicare payments for achieving benchmarks during the program. But in general, researchers at Harvard said the experiment showed how difficult it is to measure quality – even though it’s vital in making sure that Americans get more value for their health care dollars. Starting this fall, the federal health care law is scheduled to start giving financial incentives to hospitals which are based on their quality. The study in which Aurora Health Care participated measured 33 procedures for Medicare patients – like whether patients were given antibiotics within a prescribed time limit before-and-after surgery. But John Toussaint of the Theda-Care Center for Health-Care Value in Neenah says patients care much more about outcomes than the processes which were highlighted in the study. But experts say outcomes are much harder to quantify.

Two Dozen Doctors Disciplined For Sick Notes

4/8/12 - Nearly two dozen doctors have been disciplined for giving sick notes to demonstrators at last year’s labor protests. About half of them were fined. The demonstrators were mostly teachers who took sick time to join thousands as they protested at the state Capitol. In some cases, doctors in senior positions at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health were ordered to surrender their positions for up to four months for approving the bogus sick notes.

Wisconsin Honey Production Lower In 2011

4/8/12 - Wisconsin’s busy-bees were not as busy in 2011. The state’s honey production was down 12 percent from the previous year. The U-S-D-A said Wisconsin made three-point-six million pounds of honey in the past year, down from four-point-one million in 2010. But Wisconsin’s decline was smaller than the nation as a whole. Almost 150 million pounds of honey were made in the U-S in 2011, a drop of 16-percent. One reason is that the numbers of honey-producing bee colonies has slipped. And because of that, we’re paying more for honey. The average price to producers is 1.73-a-pound, 11 cents more than in 2010. Wisconsin is the country’s ninth-largest honey-maker. North Dakota is Number-One, followed by California and South Dakota.

Lake Michigan Shipwreck Located

4/8/12 - A group that searches for ship-wrecks has found what it believes to be a 19th-century vessel that sank in Lake Michigan 138 years ago. The Michigan Shipwreck Research Association says that it located the boat in about 350-feet water off the coast of Grand Haven Michigan. And they believe it to be the Saint Peter, a 90-foot two-masted schooner. It was delivering wheat from Chicago to Buffalo when it went down in 1874 about 35 miles east of the Milwaukee shore. All crew members on the boat survived. The research group said it located the vessel during a dive last fall – but it was not mentioned publicly until this week. The group plans to discuss its explorations during a program on April 21st in Holland Michigan.

‘Pacific’ Author Coming To Madison

4/8/12 - The man who wrote “The Pacific” will be featured at a fund-raising dinner for the Wisconsin Veterans Museum in Madison. Hugh Ambrose wrote the best-selling book about a group of Marines who fought the Japanese during World War Two. Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, and Gary Goetzman produced a related cable T-V series for H-B-O. Hugh Ambrose, son the late historian Stephen Ambrose, will talk about his experiences in researching and writing “The Pacific.” The veterans’ museum fund-raiser will be held on May third at Madison’s Monona Terrace.