Sorted by date Results 1 - 25 of 34
DENVER (AP) — An owner of a Colorado funeral home accused of abandoning nearly 200 bodies in a building for years was worried as far back as 2020 about getting caught, a prosecutor said Thursday at a hearing where the prosecution objected to lowering his bond. "My one and only focus is keeping us out of jail," said one text message allegedly written by Jon Hallford that a prosecutor read in court. Arguing for maintaining a high bond for Jon Hallford, Senior Deputy District Attorney Rachael Powell said Hallford wrote that text in May of 2020. S...
CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — She refused to ban books, many of them about racism and the experiences of LGBTQ+ people. And for that, Suzette Baker was fired as a library director in a rural county in central Texas. "I'm kind of persona non grata around here," said Baker, who had headed the Kingsland, Texas, library system until she refused to take down a prominent display of several books people had sought to ban over the years. Now, Baker is fighting back. She and two other librarians who were similarly fired have filed workplace discrimination c...
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — A state senator from North Dakota, his wife and their two young children died when the small plane they were traveling in crashed soon after a refueling stop in Utah, a Senate leader said Monday. Doug Larsen's death was confirmed Monday in an email that Republican Senate Majority Leader David Hogue sent to his fellow senators and was obtained by The Associated Press. The plane crashed Sunday evening shortly after taking off from Canyonlands Airfield about 15 miles (24 kilometers) north of the desert recreation town of M...
CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — Abortion bans set to take effect this week in Wyoming and North Dakota were temporarily blocked Wednesday by judges in those states amid lawsuits arguing that the bans violate their state constitutions. A judge in Wyoming sided with a firebombed women's health clinic and others who argued the ban would harm health care workers and their patients, while a North Dakota judge sided with the state's only abortion clinic, Red River Women's Clinic in Fargo. The Wyoming law was set to take effect Wednesday. The North Dakota l...
LANDER, Wyo. (AP) — The aroma of sizzling meat in melted butter wafts from a cast iron pan while Jaden Bales shows his favorite way to cook up the best steak cuts from a big game animal. The deep red backstrap pieces, similar to filet mignon of beef, are organic and could hardly be more local. They're from a mule deer hit by a car just down the road from Bales' rustic home in a cottonwood grove beneath the craggy Wind River Range. Bales was able to claim the deer thanks to a new state of Wyoming mobile app that's helping get the meat from a...
SARATOGA, Wyo. (AP) — The North Platte River in southern Wyoming has been so low in places lately that a toddler could easily wade across and thick mats of olive-green algae grow in the lazy current. Just over two years ago, workers stacked sandbags to protect homes and fishing cabins from raging brown floodwaters, the highest on record. Neither scene resembles the proper picture of a renowned trout fishing destination, one where anglers glide downstream in drift boats, flinging fly lures in hope of landing big brown and rainbow trout in the sh...
RAWLINS, Wyo. (AP) — The Wyoming Republican Party voted overwhelmingly Saturday to censure U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney for voting to impeach President Donald Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. Only eight of the 74-member state GOP's central committee stood to oppose censure in a vote that didn't proceed to a formal count. The censure document accused Cheney of voting to impeach even though the U.S. House didn't offer Trump "formal hearing or due process." "We need to honor President Trump. All President Trump did was call for a...
CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — The largest wildfire in Colorado history grew overnight as high winds pushed the blaze through rural communities and the forecast predicts more "extreme fire behavior" on Saturday. Gusts of up to 70 mph (112 kph) overnight created "very significant" fire activity, especially along the southeast section, said Cass Cairns, a spokeswoman for the Cameron Peak fire efforts. "The plan today is to try to hold the fire to the east," Paul Delmerico, operations chief for the Cameron Peak fire said early Saturday. "We're facing t...
CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — They've been pulled from steep canyons and rushing rivers, sometimes no longer breathing, after chasing a cryptic poem's clues and promise of treasure deep into the Rocky Mountains. Now, many of those who've encountered imperiled or dead treasure seekers over the past decade have the same reaction to news that an unidentified person supposedly has found Forrest Fenn's purported $2 million treasure at an undisclosed location. "We are very happy," said Dan Johnson, spokesman for Dinosaur National Monument. A decorated U...
CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — A man pets a wild bison on the head. Rescuers pull a treasure seeker from a snowy canyon. A woman taking photos stumbles into scalding water. Visitors to Yellowstone National Park often leave common sense and situational awareness at home, as those examples in the past year show. Now, as Yellowstone and other national parks end a two-month shutdown due to the coronavirus, park officials ask visitors to take simple precautions: wash hands, keep a safe distance apart, wear protective face coverings in public. But it's u...
CHEYENNE, Wyoming (AP) — Three of America's most well-known national parks — Yellowstone, Grand Teton and Great Smoky Mountains — closed their gates Tuesday as people shut in because of the coronavirus lost more options for recreation. They join a growing list of National Parks sites from New York to California that have closed, including the Statue of Liberty and Alcatraz. Yellowstone, the world's first national park, and neighboring Grand Teton, announced their closures hours after Great Smoky Mountains in Tennessee. They follow closu...
CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — It's longer than two city buses, weighs more than a Boeing 747 fully loaded with passengers and can pull 16 Statues of Liberty over a mountain. The Big Boy No. 4014 steam locomotive rolled out of a Union Pacific restoration shop in Cheyenne over the weekend for a big debut after five years of restoration. It then headed toward Utah as part of a yearlong tour to commemorate the Transcontinental Railroad's 150th anniversary. Big Boys hauled freight between Wyoming and Utah in the 1940s and 1950s. Of the 25 built by the A...
CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — They're calling it the "Jurassic Mile," where dinosaurs once chased prey through muck and some of the biggest creatures of 150 million years ago lumbered over a tropical flood plain. This summer, the Children's Museum of Indianapolis will coordinate a project that will bring over 100 scientists from the U.S. and Europe on a three-month dig at a newly discovered site in the Bighorn Basin of northern Wyoming. Organizers aren't saying exactly where the site is to discourage any looters and curiosity-seekers — suffice it to...
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — A judge blocked oil and gas drilling across almost 500 square miles (1,295 sq. kilometers) in Wyoming and said the U.S. government must consider climate change impacts more broadly as it leases huge swaths of public land for energy exploration. The order marks the latest in a string of court rulings over the past decade — including one last month in Montana — that have faulted the U.S. for inadequate consideration of greenhouse gas emissions when approving oil, gas and coal projects on federal land. U.S. District Judge...
CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — The U.S. government approved plans Tuesday to expand a Wyoming uranium mine while it considers a proposed new mine by the same developer not far away. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management will allow Littleton, Colorado-based Ur-Energy to more than double the surface area of its Lost Creek Mine while tapping deeper deposits underlying the sagebrush country of south-central Wyoming. The BLM is meanwhile considering the company's plans for a new mine in Shirley Basin about 50 miles (80 kilometers) east of Lost Creek. The BLM is...
CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — If you ever wished to gaze at a stomping, snorting, neighing panorama of Western heritage from your living-room window, now could be your chance. A classic image of the American West — wild horses stampeding across the landscape — not only has endured through the years but has multiplied past the point of range damage. Through May 3, the U.S. government is seeking more private pastures for an overpopulation of wild horses. Many consider rounding up wild horses to live out their lives on private pastures a reasonable appro...
DENVER (AP) — The fiance of a Colorado woman who has been missing since Thanksgiving Day was arrested Friday on allegations of killing the mother of his child, and police said she likely died at her house in a mountain town. But authorities declined to say whether they had found the body of Kelsey Berreth, 29, what led to the arrest of Patrick Michael Frazee and what motive there might be for Berreth's disappearance and slaying. Frazee, 32, was arrested at his home in the alpine town of Florissant on suspicion of murder and solicitation of m...
LARAMIE, Wyo. (AP) — When two roofing workers beat a young gay man to death in Wyoming in 1998, the gruesome crime quickly reverberated around the U.S. and turned the sandy-haired college student into a powerful symbol of the quest for acceptance and equal rights. But two decades after Matthew Shepard was bludgeoned, tied to a rail fence and left to die on the cold high prairie, the emotions stirred up by his slaying linger in Wyoming, which still struggles with its tarnished identity and resists changes sought by the LGBTQ community. "We're no...
CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — A debate over whether the Yellowstone ecosystem's grizzly bear population can thrive while being hunted will be put to the test this fall after Wyoming officials on Wednesday approved the state's first grizzly hunt in 44 years. The hunt, approved 7-0 by the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission, could allow as many as 22 grizzlies to be killed in a wide area east and south of Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks. Hunt proponents and opponents made last-minute pleas before the commission, which held several public m...
CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — How does a bighorn sheep say "cheese?" Some charismatic critters caught by motion-detecting wildlife cameras seem to know how to strike a pose. But it's not just show business. As these devices get ever smaller, cheaper and more reliable, scientists across the U.S. are using them to document elusive creatures like never before. "There's no doubt — it is an incredible tool to acquire data on wildlife," said Grant Harris, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wildlife biologist based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Remote cam...
CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — President Donald Trump's administration is rescinding proposed rules for hydraulic fracturing and other oil- and gas-drilling practices on government lands, government officials announced Thursday. The rules developed under President Barack Obama would have applied mainly in the West, where most federal lands are located. Companies would have had to disclose the chemicals used in fracking, which pumps pressurized water underground to break open hydrocarbon deposits. The rules to be rescinded Friday were supposed to take e...
CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — Ten more buffalo are set to join a nascent herd on the starkly beautiful landscape of a Wyoming American Indian reservation, a project significant to tribal members who went over a century without living with the animals dear to their culture. The buffalo to be released Saturday by the Eastern Shoshone Tribe and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will join 10 released last fall on the Wind River Indian Reservation. A calf was born to the first group in May. The buffalo known formally as American bison roam a fenced-in e...
CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — Wyoming is among the coal-friendliest states, but ongoing worries about how the state's first major new coal mine in decades could affect the environment and people living nearby dealt a serious setback to the project Tuesday. A state environmental review panel, the Environmental Quality Council, voted 4-1 to send the mine permit application for the proposed Brook Mine near Sheridan back for more work by the mine developer. The council overrode the state Department of Environmental Quality, which had deemed Lexington, K...
CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — President Donald Trump's efforts to increase U.S. energy production got a boost Thursday from Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, who pledged to streamline permitting for oil and gas drilling and hold more frequent sales of drilling rights on federal lands. Zinke signed an order calling for faster and more efficient oil and gas permitting to clear a backlog of federal drilling permits in U.S. Bureau of Land Management offices out West. "There has to be a process that doesn't over-delay things so we can't get anything done in t...
CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — President Donald Trump's efforts to roll back coal and climate-change regulations aren't discouraging a utility from making a $3.5 billion investment in wind energy, the bulk of which will build dozens of new wind turbines in the top coal-producing state. Rocky Mountain Power is ready to present its detailed wind plan to regulators in Wyoming, Utah and Idaho, utility officials announced Thursday. The plan includes building new power lines and putting longer blades on existing wind turbines so they can generate e...
