Utah News

The U.S Army is looking to improve some of their materials and they’re asking scientists at the University of Utah to help. A little over a year ago, the United States Army put out a request for proposals. They have a “weight” problem and need some help in fixing it.

“A soldier carries say something like 30 pounds of batteries in the field ..that’s a lot. If we can reduce that, that would make a big difference to how the soldier can move around for example.”

Saturday afternoon marked the 125th graduation ceremony and a milestone for nearly 4,500 students at Utah State University. Among students receiving bachelor's degrees is 98-year-old American Studies student, Twila Boston.

Twila grew up on a farm in Fremont and Loa, Utah, and left for nursing school in 1932 on her 19th birthday. She worked for many years as a nurse. When she returned to higher education recently, she joked it seemed the right thing to do:

"What else is there to do at my age except eat and read and sleep?"

Utah Governor Gary Herbert has a new energy advisor and at least one environmental group is already calling foul. Herbert announced today that Cody Stewart, who’s currently serving as Lieutenant Governor Greg Bell’s Chief of Staff, will help the governor increase energy development in the state. But as Whittney Evans reports, HEAL Utah says his interests are with big oil and gas.

Cody Stewart says his number one priority as energy advisor to the governor will be to increase the development of energy in the state of Utah.

For the second time in two days a human-caused wildfire has erupted in southern Utah—this time just west of St. George in an area called Anasazi valley.

The fire is on mostly public land west of St. George, and south of old Highway 91.

The fire started on Wednesday around 3:30 in the afternoon. Like the Toquerville fire there is not threat to structures. The Anasazi valley fire has not yet been mapped for its size.

Utah's Washington County has joined Mohave County, Arizona and other Uranium mining concerns in filing a lawsuit against the Federal Government.

The lawsuit is directed against Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, the Department of Interior, the BLM and BLM Director Robert Abbey.

It calls for the reversal of Salazar's 20-year ban on new mining claims in one-million acres of public land adjacent to Grand Canyon National Park, announced in January.

Three St. George high school students have been arrested and charged with kidnapping. UPR's Chris Holmes tells us that the serious charges in this case are hardly typical for juvenile arrests.

The victim, a middle school-aged girl, was jogging on Monday evening when cut off by a pick-up truck. Three masked boys emerged and forced her into the bed of the truck, closing the bed lid and locking her inside.

Administrators at Hurricane High School in Washington County initiated the familiar call to evacuate the school and gather outside in the predetermined places for an accounting, but this time it was not a drill.

Early Monday morning, a teacher noticed smoke coming from the the school's wood shop room. He alerted authorities and the school was evacuated. The fire occurred in the shop's dust ventilation system, and although some smoke and water damage resulted, the small shop is in a building separate from the rest of the school, so the damage and potential threat was very limited.

Utah Senators Orrin Hatch and Mike Lee joined a minority of senators last week in voting against reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act. The Alliance for a Better Utah believes that a vote against reauthorizing the Act represents a callous insult not just to the women of Utah but to the entire population of Utah and the United States.

Alliance for a Better Utah Executive Director, Maryann Martindale told UPR's Kerry Bringhurst that:

Organizations in Utah who serve residents receiving Medicaid and State Child Health Insurance are calling for Utah lawmakers to hold a special session to allocate money that would be used to help those whose personal information was stolen when a state computer system was hacked.

Judi Hilman is with the Utah Health Policy Project. She says the state is not doing enough to help the more than 800,000 victims:

Hoping to muster up a stronger voice to direct towards Washington, Governor Gary Herbert met with the Governors of Wyoming and Idaho on Friday in the first ever “Rocky Mountain Roundtable.”

“This is really a beginning, the desire to communicate better as governors with each other and learn from each other, our success and our failures, and see if we can become better governors. And unite our voices where we have common concern.”

Last week 59-year-old Victoria Grover from Maine parked her rented car on Hell's Backbone Road in remote Southern Utah and set out for a day hike to Sand Creek and back. But when sunset came she was nowhere near her car.

On Wednesday she broke her leg while moving through the rugged terrain and spent the next 4 days and nights stranded in the wilderness.