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This is your WFHR Daily News Roundup for locally grown radio 97.5 FM and 13.20 AM
WS Country 105.5 FM WIRI in Wisconsin Rapids.
For WFHR and WIRA News, I'm Melissa K.
There's a dense fog advisory today until noon.
It's going to be hard to see and that will make driving conditions hazardous.
The temperatures could also cause slippery spots on untreated roads and sidewalks.
Be cautious and turn your headlights on.
A big mistake from the clerk's office in Madison.
About 200 Madison ballots from the November election weren't counted.
While staff were reconciling the results and doing some cleanup, they found 193 absentee ballots from wards 56, 65 and 68.
They say they found the first batch more than six weeks ago on November 12th.
They emptied the tabulator bin for wards 65 and found a sealed courier bag with 67 absentee ballots inside.
They also found a ballot for wards 68, which was a sorting error.
The second batch of ballots was found during the reconciliation process.
Clerks and staff start that right away.
That's when they essentially confirm voter participation totals.
They ended up finding a sealed absentee courier envelope with 125 ballots.
The city clerk's office notified the Wisconsin Elections Commission and the mayor's office on December 20th.
Now these 193 ballots are not enough to change the results of any election.
People who live in Madison wards 56, 65 and 68 might be wondering whether their vote was counted.
The clerk's office says they're reaching out to every individual voter whose ballot was found to let them know and to apologize.
To prevent this in the future, the Madison City clerk's office will be giving every polling place a list of envelope seal numbers, so they'll be able to verify that all were counted.
Meanwhile the mayor says they'll be starting a thorough review of the city's election policies and procedures.
She said in order to keep Madison's high standard of election integrity, she's committed to quote,
taking whatever corrective action is necessary.
Wisconsin recently adopted a constitutional amendment requiring voters in state and local elections to be US citizens.
But there isn't currently a system in place to verify proof of citizenship.
This fact check was reported by Tresha Young from Wisconsin Watch.
In Wisconsin voters must attest to US citizenship when registering, but officials don't systematically verify it.
Assembly speaker Robin Boss raised the issue in November after voters amended the state constitution to limit voting to citizens only.
No Wisconsin communities allow non-citizens to vote.
There's no evidence that significant numbers of non-citizens vote illegally.
Falsely claiming citizenship when registering to vote is a felony.
A University of Maryland survey found over 9% of voting age US citizens lack easy access to proof of citizenship.
I'm Tresha Young for Wisconsin Watch. Learn more at WisconsinWatch.org.
The holiday season is a wonderful time for beautiful decorations.
However, you want to be sure those cheerful delights don't cause a fire. Lisa Hale has more.
The use of candles for ambiance and decoration, holiday lighting, lots of plugs, fireplaces, dry trees, cooking, all carry a risk of residential fires.
Appleton Fire Department Public Information Officer Alex Quintana.
So the holiday season brings increased fire risk for many reasons.
We have decorative lighting with that comes potentially overloading outlets.
Maybe some holiday decorations that you've had for quite a few years or maybe even quite a few generations.
So, you know, upkeep on those. You can out for freight wiring.
Quintana says cooking and kitchen accidents are the number one reason for residential fires.
Connecting all of African heritage, Quanza is the newest of the winter holidays. Lisa Hale has the story.
Created in 1966, Quanza honors African culture and heritage.
Alfonso Simpson, Jr. is the director of African American Studies at UW-Ashkash.
Simpson says Quanz is a day for all African Americans to connect to their heritage, their past, and their futures.
Giving Americans of African descent something to hold on to because what we have always been committed to is never leaving our cultural heritage.
Giving our cultural memory are our roots when we were taken from the continent of Africa and brought here.
We were stripped of everything except our cultural memory.
That could not be taken away. And so we held on to those principles.
And it's not just in Quanza, but it even ties over into everything that we do and that we are today.
Each day in Quanza honors one of the seven principles.
Unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics,
purpose, creativity, and faith.
For civic media news, I'm Lisa Hale.
Major phone changes are coming. Stuart J. Wattles has the 411.
Your call is important. However, it'll have to be a cellular call.
Starting in 2029, AT&T will stop offering a traditional landline phone service.
The company says the copper lines and their maintenance is expensive.
About 360,000 people in the state still get the old school hookup.
AT&T says they do have a system that allows old phones to connect to their cellular network.
Want more news from WFHR?
You can sign up for our newsletter that comes out every week on Thursdays at noon at WFHR.com.
One of the globe's biggest businesses is putting a pause on a major Racine County project.
Stuart J. Wattles has more.
Microsoft has temporarily suspended construction on portions of its massive data center complex in Mount Pleasant.
The Milwaukee Business Journal reports that the company is working to refine the project's design.
Microsoft has announced plans to invest $3.3 billion into create 2,300 union construction jobs by next year.
The business journal says the company is telling them that the project is still on track despite the pause.
The village of Mount Pleasant has issued a statement stating confidence in Microsoft's plans.
More Wisconsinites are seeking telemedicine abortion care even though it's banned by state law.
The 1849 abortion law caused a temporary statewide ban on abortion services after Roe vs. Wade was overturned in 2022.
Even after the ban was lifted because of a court ruling last year, the demand for abortion medication via telemedicine remained high.
Shield laws allow providers in states with fewer abortion restrictions to provide pregnancy ending medications even to patients in states with abortion bans.
Here's Jenny Higgins from UW-Madison's Collaborative for Reproductive Equity.
Suggesting that even when brick and mortar facilities are offering abortion care in our state, telehealth abortion still is a really important service that many people in our state are taking advantage of through the shield laws.
There have been about 130 orders for abortion pills per month made through shield law providers since July of 2023, according to We Count Data.
There have also been reports of stockpiling nationwide since the election.
In a recent interview, President-elect Donald Trump said he would probably not restrict medication abortion pills during his second term.
I'm Melissa K for WFHR and WIRI News.
The Bucks drop one to the nets on Mike Clemens with sports. The Bucks lost at home.
To the Brooklyn Nets, 111-105, Damien Lillard and Janice both out with what's described as a non-COVID illness, Doc Rivers says the net's defense made the difference.
I thought the pressure got to us. I thought we didn't handle it very well. They sped us up. We broke our offense.
The Bucks traveled to Chicago to play the Bulls tomorrow night. NFL Packers holding practice for Sunday's game in Minnesota.
Matt Loflur as the bout the status of Defensive Back Jair Alexander.
Now it's a broken record. Ask me about Jair every day, but you should get the look at him today.
The hardest chance to plan this week out of the month. I'd say probably not.
What's standing in the way? His knee. He's limited. His knee.
Is it just not reacting like you want to tour?
No, I don't know. I'm not a medical guy. I just go by what I see and what they tell me.
Men's College hockey. The Badgers take on Ferris State at 5 o'clock tomorrow night in the holiday face-off at 5-Surf form in Milwaukee.
Wisconsin 7-10-1 for the season so far.
We'll ever work out from us from that standpoint, but for us right now it's us getting our book of business done this week and being focused for the puck drop.
Finding a way to get that game in our side of the ledger.
That's the Badgers head coach Mike Hastings with sports. I'm Mike Clemens.
Thanks for watching.
The film Gross Point Blank did not have a funny script according to many driver.
Paul Hogan's Crocodile Dundee co-star has passed away at the tender age of 90.
He played opposite Hogan in the charming 1980s comedy that made everyone think they could pull off an Australian accent.
Bert the Crocodile died at Crocasaurus Cove, sort of like the Beverly Hills retirement home for Crocodiles in Australia.
Bert's acting work was commended in the Crocodile franchise, but he had trouble landing roles afterwards, probably because of either bad representation, the fact that he was never good at auditioning or there were just not enough roles written for Crocodiles.
In typecasting news actor Jared Lido will play the role of Skeletor in the new live-action film Masters of the Universe.
Lido is embracing the villain role as the skeleton who is a skull-faced arch enemy of He-Man.
The Oscar-winning actor and star of Dallas Byers Club has agreed to join the project alongside director Travis Knight.
Cast members already in place include Alison Brie and Idris Alba.
Lido embraces playing outlandish characters.
MGM Amazon is the studio behind the film which opens June 5th, 2026.
There are those who don't think COVID was real.
1923 actress Danielle Vassanova is not one of them.
Vassanova starred in 1923, the Yellowstone prequel, and she was one of the first people to suffer from COVID-19 long before it became widespread.
The actress said she was diagnosed with strep throat, but shortly after, her organs shut down, and she died for three minutes.
Vassanova will star opposite Michelle Pfeiffer in a new Yellowstone spinoff called Madison.
For more showbiz fun, tune in the night light with me, Peach Waba, weeknight from 6-8pm on the Civic Media Radio Network.
We have some dense fog this morning.
It is going to be drizzly, foggy, cloudy here all day with rain likely by later this afternoon or high today,
44, rain tonight between a quarter and a half inch of rain possible with a low of 36 tomorrow,
some rain in the morning, some gradual clearing in the afternoon, with a high of 44.
I'm meteorologist Sean Cable. Right now, it's 39.
That's your WFHR and WIRI daily news roundup from Civic Media.
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