Author: jplucas

On a lazy summer day outside the Memorial Union, UW senior Travis Dewolfe remembers last spring’s uncertainty on campus over the H1N1 swine flu virus.

“They were telling us to wash our hands more,” said Dewolfe.

Of the campus’s other precautions at the time, he added, “I think the things they added to campus fueled more worry than there should have been.”

At the time, buildings were bombarded with signs. Hand-washing stations were set-up. Many of those are still around now.

A decades-old homicide charge was dismissed Monday against a Milwaukee man who spent nearly two dozen years in prison before new forensics tests raised questions about the evidence used to convict him.

Robert Lee Stinson, 44, shook hands with his attorneys, then hugged several relatives who wiped tears from their eyes.

The new tests on the evidence were conducted at the urging of the Wisconsin Innocence Project, a group of University of Wisconsin-Madison law students and professors who work to overturn wrongful convictions.

In the event of a widespread and severe outbreak of the H1N1 swine flu virus, a pandemic committee has doubled its efforts this summer to prepare the UW-Madison campus for any and all effects.

Campus Health Services Director Dr. Sarah Van Orman said a pandemic committee was set up several years ago. It has met at least twice as often this summer, following the first case of H1N1 in Wisconsin.

The local food movement has one UW Madison dining service getting produce that’s not miles from the table…but just yards away. Shamane Mills reportsâ?¦

When Teresa turned sluggish and started wearing out her litter box four years ago, Rich and Cheryl Mealle brought their black, short-haired cat to the vet. The news was bad.

Though just 4, Teresa suffered from advanced kidney failure. The one hope: a kidney transplant at the University of Wisconsin’s veterinary school in Madison.

When asked Saturday, the tall, gaunt man in a tall, black hat reeled off his mobile phone number.

Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle, standing nearby, feigned shock. â??Abraham Lincoln has a cellphone,â? Doyle said with a laugh.

It wasnâ??t really Abraham Lincoln, but under the leafy old trees at Camp Randall Memorial Park, you could pretend it was.

Governor Jim Doyle joined President Abraham Lincoln and his wife Mary Todd at Camp Randall. Most of the people were actors, but the history was very real.

It was all part of a Civil War re-enactment event in Madison on Saturday.

Camp Randall, now the site of the University of Wisconsin football team’s stadium, served as a training camp for Union soldiers for a brief time. It was also a prisoner of war camp for Confederate soldiers.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison is launching a national search for a new admissions director as part of an administrative reorganization.

Admissions and Visitor and Information Programs director Steve Admunson will lose oversight of admissions but remain in charge of other programs, such as campus tours and the Parent Program.

Admunson will now report to Vince Sweeney, who has been named the school’s first vice chancellor for university relations. The admissions office will still be part of the school’s Division of Enrollment Management.

The U.S. Coast Guard helped rescue three out-of-state rafters who got stranded in Aniakchak National Monument and Preserve.

The rafters saw their equipment washed away in severe weather, forcing them to use a personal locator beacon to send out a 9-1-1 call to Katmai National Park.

The Coast Guard says a helicopter from Air Station Kodiak, flying below 100 feet, found the precise location from where the signal was being transmitted.

Treated for mild hypothermia Tuesday were 52-year-old Harry House of Madison, Wis., 37-year-old Megi Morishita of Newport, Ore., and 37-year-old Tom O’Keefe of Seattle.

Some diners at UW Madison are enjoying really fresh veggies. They don’t come much fresher than the salad greens being served at Frank’s Place dining facility in Holt Commons. The produce is grown just a few hundred feet away, and supplements the salad bar offerings to some 800 high school students on campus for various summer camps.