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It’s shaping up to be a nice day, which means North Barstow Street in downtown Eau Claire should reopen.  Downtown Eau Claire posted to Facebook this week saying the closure was for utility and concrete work.  They said it should open tonight at 7, pending weather.

 A disappointing jobs report for April.  The Labor Department reports only 266-thousand new jobs were created last month and the unemployment rate ticked up to six-point-one percent.  The jobs number is a little more than one-fourth as many as analysts had forecast.  The experts had predicted one-million new jobs and the unemployment rate falling to five-point-eight percent.  The numbers indicate the nation’s economic recovery slowed a lot last month. But when it comes to unemployment, U.S. unemployment is at its

Police in Onalaska have a name to go along with the human remains found along the side of Highway 53 last month. Officers say the remains are those of Tyler Henry. He’d been missing since last September. Investigators say there’s no sign of foul play, but they’re not sure what the cause of death is.

Doctors and nurses haven’t been issuing as many jabs this week. The state’s Department of Health Services yesterday reported just over 76-thousand doses handed-out this week. That’s far from last week’s 225-thousand doses, and a long way from Wisconsin’s peak of 425-thousand doses in a week back in April. Those numbers are expected to jump by Monday when the full statewide count is reported, but health managers aren’t sure just how far those numbers will go up. CLICK HERE FOR MORE

The latest look into Wisconsin schools shows some of the impact of the coronavirus. The Wisconsin Policy Forum released a report yesterday that says enrollment is way down in the state, but graduation rates are up. The numbers come from both the end of the last school year and the beginning of this year. The Policy Forum says 25-thousand fewer kids are enrolled in Wisconsin schools, most of them are young kids who didn’t report to closed-down kindergarten classes. While graduation rates jumped for most students,

A 911 operator in Eau Claire has a stork pin and another story to tell forever. Eau Claire Police yesterday honored Danielle Wik for helping to deliver a baby over the phone last month. Wik says she was working on April 19th when a grandpa-to-be called and said his daughter was going into labor. Wik helped talk them through delivery, and the baby came before an ambulance could arrive. Wik says this is the fourth baby she’s helped deliver on

The next state budget will look a lot like Wisconsin’s last state budget. The Republicans who control the state legislature yesterday began work on what will likely be a 40-billion-dollar a year spending plan. They started by stripping-out Governor Evers’ proposed tax and spending increases, and ignoring his request to expand BadgerCare. State Rep. Mark Born said families in the state wouldn’t budget like the governor is proposing, so neither will lawmakers. The Republicans control the budget process, but the governor

The latest plan for the UW System wouldn’t get rid of campuses, but would regionalize the school. State Senator Roger Roth is asking lawmakers to vote today on a plan to organize the UW System’s 13 campuses into four regions. UW-Madison would be exempt, of course. Roth says regionalizing the school would allow the university to save money on everything from IT to food ordering. He says the university needs to modernize. UW President Tommy Thompson says the regional idea

At a special meeting of the Chippewa Valley Technical College (CVTC) District Board of trustees acted to approve the contract for Dr. Sunem Beaton-Garcia, the College’s next president. A public college administrator from Florida, Dr. Beaton-Garcia will serve as the eleventh president of CVTC, becoming the first woman and first Latina to lead the College. She succeeds Bruce Barker, who has served as president since 2008 and will retire July 1, 2021. Dr. Beaton-Garcia has more than 12 years of

Voting rights advocates are making their voices heard before Congress.  Testifying before the House subcommittee on elections, ACLU representative Sophia Lakin talked about how eligible minority voters have been targeted in recent legislation. Kaylan Phillips with the Public Interest Legal Foundation said the most significant problem in America is the “chronic inaccuracy and lack of integrity in the voter rolls.” Democratic Congressman G.K. Butterfield of North Carolina said areas with large minority populations have been targeted by conservative groups to