Wisconsin tornadoes knock out power
MILWAUKEE -- At least three tornadoes touched down in Wisconsin amid powerful thunderstorms that caused widespread damage and left tens of thousands without power, officials said Thursday.
The severe weather stretched from the Mississippi River to Lake Michigan and began Wednesday evening in northwestern Wisconsin. By 2 a.m. Thursday, the numerous tornado warnings around the state had expired.
The National Weather Service surveyed hard-hit areas in southeastern Wisconsin and confirmed one tornado, probably rated EF1, caused damage around the Jefferson County community of Concord -- where the storm toppled farm buildings and left a path of destruction. By Thursday afternoon, the National Weather Service confirmed at least two other tornadoes were also responsible for damage near Waukesha and Watertown.
Electricity was knocked out to about 90,000 customers across Wisconsin, according to the tracking website PowerOutage, US. By late Thursday afternoon, nearly 24,000 customers were still without power.
Officer admits to attacking abuse suspect
KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- A former suburban Kansas City police chief who helped rescue a baby from an icy pond and later assaulted the man accused of trying to kill the infant has pleaded guilty in the case.
Greg Hallgrimson, 51, pleaded guilty in federal court Wednesday, the Kansas City Star reported. He was indicted in 2019 on a single count of violating the civil rights of Jonathon Zicarelli.
Prosecutors have said Hallgrimson threw a handcuffed Zicarelli to the ground, punched him in the face and told Zicarelli, "You deserve to die," after returning from the rescue mission to the Greenwood, Mo., police station. Zicarelli had earlier walked into the police station in December 2018 and said he had tried to drown his 6-month-old daughter in a nearby pond, police said.
Hallgrimson and another officer rushed to the pond and found the unconscious infant floating face up with her lungs full of water. Hallgrimson and the other officer worked to warm and revive the baby until paramedics arrived and rushed her to a hospital, where she was treated for severe hypothermia.
Hallgrimson was put on administrative leave shortly after being accused of assaulting Zicarelli, which prosecutors say was captured on video. He resigned in May 2019.
Zicarelli remains in Jackson County jail on pending felony charges of domestic assault and child abuse.
Biggest U.S. quake in 50 years harmless
ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- The largest earthquake in the U.S. in the last half century produced a lot of shaking but spared Alaska any major damage in a sparsely populated region, officials said Thursday.
The magnitude 8.2 earthquake was reported about 10:15 p.m. Wednesday and struck just south of the Alaska Peninsula, nearly 500 miles southwest of Anchorage. The quake was about 29 miles below the surface of the North Pacific Ocean, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
The Alaska Earthquake Center said on its website that it was the largest quake in the U.S. since a magnitude 8.7 quake in the Aleutians in 1965. A year before that, the magnitude 9.2 Good Friday earthquake devastated parts of Anchorage and other Alaska communities. That quake and ensuing tsunami killed 131 people from Alaska to California.
The late Wednesday quake produced a lot of shaking, but officials said no major damage was reported Thursday.
A tsunami warning for Alaska was canceled early Thursday when the biggest wave, of just over a half foot, was recorded in Old Harbor. A tsunami warning that also had been issued for Hawaii was canceled.
Owner loses chimps after complaint
JEFFERSON COUNTY, Mo. -- Six chimpanzees have been removed from their caretaker under a court order after People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals claimed in 2016 that the chimps were being held in inadequate conditions.
The chimps were removed Wednesday from a Festus-area facility. Jefferson County sheriff's deputies and the U.S. Marshals Service oversaw the removal of the chimps out of concern that their caretaker, Tonia Haddix, or others would try to block the effort.
U.S. District Judge Catherine Perry's order capped a years-long dispute over the fate of the chimps after a 2016 lawsuit claimed they were being held in "confined in cramped, virtually barren enclosures" at the Missouri Primate Foundation facility.
According to the suit, Haddix and the facility's treatment violated the federal Endangered Species Act.
In an earlier suit, Haddix had signed a 2020 consent decree with PETA in which she agreed to turn over four chimps and would have been allowed to keep three at a facility she was to build, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
PETA repeatedly complained that Haddix was not complying with the consent decree. At an April hearing in U.S. District Court in St. Louis, Perry ruled for the first time that she had violated the decree.