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 Madison’s Center for Black Excellence and Culture is celebrating millions of dollars in fundraising.  The center says it recently got a two-and-a-half-million-dollar pledge from Ascendium, bringing its capital fundraising campaign to over 20-million dollars.  The goal is to raise 36-million dollars and to break ground on the center late this year or early next year.

Wisconsin is a top-ten state for millennials.  That’s according to WalletHub, which ranks Wisconsin eighth.  WalletHub says Wisconsin’s best individual category is civic engagement, where it ranks first.  WalletHub uses dozens of other metrics for its rankings including millennial unemployment rate and millennial voter-turnout rate.  The top state for millennials is Washington and the worst is Mississippi.

The Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP) has identified a case of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) in a backyard flock in Bayfield County. Birds at the site were depopulated to prevent spread of the virus. In Wisconsin, 22 flocks in 14 counties have been confirmed with HPAI. Flock owners are encouraged to continue practicing strong biosecurity measures to protect birds from the virus and, if possible, keep domestic birds indoors away from wild birds. CLICK HERE

Visit Eau Claire recently announced multiple grants that celebrate our local events and favorite places. The total is $81,700 in Tourism and Cultural Arts Grants and $64,000 in sponsorship funding to area organizations and events. The April grant pool received 13 cultural arts and 22 tourism applicants. CLICK HERE FOR MORE DETAILS

 Khari Sanford will likely spend the rest of his life in prison for killing his ex-girlfriend’s parents two years ago. A jury convicted him yesterday of the murders of Beth Potter and her husband, Robin Carre. They were found at the UW Arboretum in March of 2020. Sanford didn’t testify in the case, in fact his lawyers asked very few if any questions of the witnesses from the prosecution. Dane County’s D.A. said Sanford killed the two because he hated

Workers at Middleton’s Raven Software are the first video game workers in America to vote to unionize. Nineteen of the 22 workers at the Middleton office voted to form a union yesterday. The workers are quality assurance testers for Activision Blizzard. The team worked on the popular Call of Duty game. There’s no word just when the union will begin negotiations with Activision, or when a new contract will be coming.

Questions are coming up surrounding authorities’ response to concerns about a six-year-old’s safety before his death.  The family of Eli Hart says they expressed concern for his safety before he was found shot to death inside the trunk of his mother’s car.  Police pulled 28-year-old Julissa Thaler over Friday and found the boy’s body and a shotgun in her trunk.  Thaler is charged with his murder.

We know who, but we don’t know why. Police in La Crosse say 15-year-old Storm Vondrashek was the person killed in Sunday’s double shooting. Police will only say the shooting does not appear to be random. Vondrashek was a student at Logan High School in La Crosse. The city’s school district says there’s ‘minimal danger’ to other students, and said yesterday there will be counselors available for students who need to speak with someone.

Milwaukee’s medical examiner says a five-year-old’s death earlier this month could be fentanyl related. Prosecutors last week charged the boy’s mom, 24-year-old Kanesha Jones, with felony child neglect. Police found her son’s body at her home back on May 11th. She originally told investigators that her son simply went to sleep, but police later said she suspected he died after getting into her boyfriend’s stash of drugs. Jones is being held on 15 thousand-dollars cash bond.

School leaders in Wausau are trying to calm fears about changes to their sex-ed curriculum. Parents turned out at last night’s school board meeting to oppose what they feared would be a switch to abstinence-only classes. Superintendent Keith Hilts, however, said the only change for sex-ed in Wausau schools is the addition of a state-required lesson on dropping babies off at fire stations. He says they will continue to teach about sex and reproduction, including discussions about birth control, in