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No hot air blowing about it…we have CLEAN air! A new report says the Eau Claire area has some of the cleanest air in the country.  According to the American Lung Association, the Eau Claire-Menomonie area has low levels of smog and never had days where soot in the air reached on unhealthy level from 2015 to 2017.  The La Crosse-Onalaska area also made the list.  Both areas are in the top 37 areas for clean air in the country. 

A federal judge is denying the Wisconsin Legislature’s request to be apart of a case battling some of the state’s abortion laws.  William Conley made the decision yesterday, saying the move is unnecessary and would cause unnecessary complications.  You may have seen this in the paper, as The Chippewa Herald reports Planned Parenthood brought the case against Wisconsin in January and it asks some of the state’s abortion laws be ruled unconstitutional.  The Republican-controlled legislature wanted to be apart of the case

UPDATE: Investigators in Minnesota say they are questioning three people in the death of a man from Barron.  Chris Etchison’s family reported him missing last week.  Police in Sandstone, Minnesota say they found his body in a cabin yesterday.  None of the three people being held are charged with his murder, yet. 

The man at the center of Eau Claire’s largest cocaine bust is looking at a trial.  A judge yesterday said there is enough evidence to move ahead with the charges against Samuel Serrano.  Eau Claire police say they found 67 pounds of cocaine in a trailer that he was driving earlier this month.  Federal prosecutors yesterday told the judge they may be looking at charges against Serrano as well.

An Eau Claire man will be almost 75-years-old when he gets out of prison for sexual assault.  A judge yesterday sentenced 35-year-old Trent Woodman to 38 years in prison.  Woodman pleaded no contest to charges that he abused a 14-year-old girl for months back in 2017.

One Wisconsin lawmaker wants to pay people from out of state to come to school here, and never leave.  State Rep. Dave Murphy is pitching a plan that would pay UW system graduates who make more than 40-thousand-dollars a year to stay in Wisconsin for seven years after graduation.  The grant would be worth ten-percent of the out of state tuition that someone would pay at a UW campus.  Murphy says the idea is to fill Wisconsin’s worker shortfall with

The next time someone wins 768-million-dollars playing Powerball, some Wisconsin lawmakers want to let them stay anonymous.  Speaker Robin Vos yesterday introduced a plan to change Wisconsin’s law that requires lotto winners publicy come forward.  He introduced the plan on the same day that Manuel Franco from West Allis claimed his state-record Powerball jackpot.  Vos says just because you hit it big doesn’t mean you lose your right to privacy. 

Wisconsin ranks dead last when it comes to participation in the school breakfast program.  Governor Tony Evers says that’s not what’s best for the state’s children and his budget, if passed, will fully fund school breakfast.  The Reedsburg School District made a move last week to include free breakfast at the district’s high school.  Its elementary and middle schools already offer free breakfast.

Two people are dead after a head-on car crash in Polk County.  The sheriff’s office says a car was eastbound on Highway 8 early yesterday morning when it crossed the center line and hit another car just east of 15th Street near the town of Beaver.  Both drivers were pronounced dead at the scene.

A Chippewa Falls man already in prison on drug charges is also accused of providing drugs to two men who died of an overdose.  Reports say Shane Johnson made his initial appearance yesterday on 12 charges including two counts of first-degree reckless homicide.  Johnson is accused of giving drugs to Nicholas Buck and Samuel Ott.  They died of an overdose four days apart in November of 2017.  Johnson is facing nearly 200 years in prison.