Disease takes ‘catastrophic’ toll on bats
MILWAUKEE— A deadly bat disease continues to spread across Wisconsin, exacting what a Department of Natural Resources official said is a “catastrophic” toll on the state’s cave-dwelling bats.
Wisconsin has one of the largest hibernating bat populations in the Midwest. Two years ago, white-nose syndrome was found in eight counties and now it has spread to 14, the DNR said. This year, surveyors found sites in their second and third year of infection are experiencing population decreases of 30 percent to 100 percent, the DNR said.
The disease has repercussions for agriculture because bats pollinate, disperse seeds and consume volumes of insects.
Hate crime charges
Four Texas men were indicted Wednesday by a federal grand jury on hate crimes charges for allegedly using Grindr — a dating app for gay men — to target victims they intended to rob in a multicity scheme.
On Grindr, the men would pretend to be gay and arrange to meet at the victims’ homes. Once inside, the men, carrying a gun, would assault their victims, restrain them and make “derogatory statements” about their sexual orientation.
The hate crime charge — conspiring to cause bodily injury to people because of their sexual orientation — carries a maximum penalty of life in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Price defends arrest
Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price defended police who arrested a reporter Tuesday at West Virginia’s capitol, saying they “did what they felt was appropriate.”
When asked if he felt the reporter, Public News Service journalist Dan Heyman, had been too aggressive and whether he should have been arrested, Mr. Price said Wednesday it was “not my decision to make,” according to The Associated Press. “That gentleman was not in a press conference,” he was reported as saying.
Officer’s trial begins
TULSA, Okla. — The prosecution and the defense agreed on this: On Sept. 16, 2016, a white police officer fatally shot a black driver on a street in north Tulsa.
Beyond that, the two sides disagreed on why the shooting had taken place as they made their opening statements Wednesday in the manslaughter trial of Betty Jo Shelby, the Tulsa officer charged in the death of the driver, Terence Crutcher.
Also in the nation …
A hole that was discovered this week on top of a nuclear waste storage tunnel has been plugged with dirt, ending an emergency situation at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state, U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry said Thursday. … Cigna Corp. can walk away from its $48 billion merger with Anthem Inc., a Delaware judge ruled Thursday almost three months after another court blocked the deal as anticompetitive. … A judge has found former U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown, D-Fla., guilty of fraudulently taking hundreds of thousands of dollars from a bogus charity following an indictment on federal corruption charges. … A Philadelphia judge has ordered prosecutors to charge the speeding Amtrak engineer involved in a 2015 derailment that killed eight and injured about 200, days after they declined to do so.