Utah State News Service

By Paige Cavaness A Salt Lake Tribune sports reporter tweeted after a Utah State University football game at 1:06 a.m. Sunday morning that he was drinking "a Coors Light while driving in Sardine Canyon." Steve Luhm, who had just left Maverik Stadium following the Aggies' 38-20 victory over Fresno State University, noted in the tweet that he was celebrating the Chicago Cubs' first visit to the World Series in more than 70 years.  Luhm's followers quickly took screenshots of the tweet and replied in bewilderment that Luhm was admitting to drinking while driving on one of the most dangerous roads in Utah. Luhm deleted the tweet about 40 minutes later, but not before replying to critics.   "Sipping one 12-punce beer during a two-hour drive is hardly dangerous," he wrote. "I am not stupid. Good grief." That tweet has also since been deleted. Followers commented that they hoped the typo for the word "ounce" was simply due to ...

By Bronson Teichert If rhetoric foretells policy when it comes to international trade, it might not matter who wins the presidency in November. Utah’s farmers could lose big. That’s the contention of several Utah economists who say the politics of public perception, rather than sound policy, appear to be driving the debate on trade agreements that benefit American agriculture. “From the point of economics, I see politically where people will talk about trade and say we are disadvantaged in some way,” said DeeVon Bailey, a professor of agriculture and applied economics at Utah State University. “But in the case of agriculture, that’s not true.” Yet between barbed exchanges during three debates culminating Wednesday in Las Vegas, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton found détente on trade. Both favorably spoke of renegotiations of the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Trans Pacific Partnership and economic relationships with China. NAFTA includes the United States, Cana...

By Hannah McDonald The Utah State University Board of Trustees voted on Friday to approve a new amnesty policy — a student code amendment that protects students who request emergency help while engaged in illegal activity. Student body present Ashley Waddoups and her executive council approved the policy on   Sept. 12 . “We don’t want any student who’s been drinking underage or drinking on campus to be afraid to call the police,” Waddoups said. “With amnesty, you can call the police and say, ‘Hey, there’s a problem going on down there.’ If you call and alert them, you’re not going to be in trouble.” Medical amnesty became a state law in 2013. The policy grants immunity to illegally intoxicated minors who report a legal or medical emergency, provided they cooperate with law enforcement officers and emergency personnel.  Utah State University’s policy is an extension of the state law, protecting individuals from academic discipline for breaking university-enforced rul...

By Nicholas Porath The Logan City Police Department is awaiting lab results in multiple investigations in which synthetic opioid abuse is suspected. If confirmed, the cases would be the first ones in Logan involving U-47700, commonly referred to as “pink” or “pinky.” The cases come a month after the overdose deaths of two Park City teens who are suspected to have been using pink in September, and Logan police Sgt. Brooks Davis said he is worried about the easy availability of the substance, which is currently unregulated. “Any time you are able to get something so deadly over the internet, it’s a huge concern for us,” Davis said. “I don't see it getting shut down anytime soon. You can’t regulate it very easily.” Davis said he has seen a significant increase in the abuse of opioids of all kinds since the beginning of his career with Logan. “I only saw heroin maybe once or twice prior to 2007,” Davis said. “It has exploded since then. There has been an explosion in opioid addi...

By Jensie Bahr A quarter-century relationship between the Utah State University women’s basketball program and the nation of Australia has reached an all-time high. Four Aussies will put on Aggie uniforms this season, the most ever for a program that has had at least one Australian on the roster for close to 25 years. “We enjoy recruiting international players and utilizing the diversity they bring to the team,” assistant coach Ben Finkbeiner said. “We’ve had great success recruiting foreign players for our basketball program. The system that the Australians in particular come out of make them a good fit for us.” Australians don’t have basketball teams in high school. They play on club teams that play against high-level competition – sometimes going up against veteran players with years of experience. “This makes them very good fundamentalists and well-rounded players – they’re not one dimensional,” Finkbeiner said. Olivia West, a freshmen guard for the Aggies, is one of f...

By Nicholas Porath Cache Valley smoke and vape stores expressed relief and concern after the kratom ban was temporarily lifted on Sept. 30. The decision to delay the ban was announced by the Drug Enforcement Administration only hours before it was set to be scheduled as a controlled substance. The only comment the DEA has made about the delay is to allow a “modified comment process.” Logan’s Timberline Smoke Shop still has leftover stock from before the ban was announced. Owner Bob Hanselman is glad the store is able to continue carrying kratom, and believes that the prosed ban was ridiculous. “The things they alleged, the FDA alleged, aren't factual,” he said. “As long as it’s legal, we’ll continue to carry it.” The Blue Sphynx in Providence is currently all sold out of kratom, but will be ordering a limited quantity to replace its stock. General manager Fred Done is cautious about the ban coming back into effect.  “The verbiage of what I read online ...

By Miranda Tilley  Parking enforcement companies in Logan are worried a new ordinance regulating the time in which boots must be removed from cars could kill business and result in more towed cars. The regulation, passed by the Logan City Council on Tuesday, gives parking enforcers 90 minutes to remove boots from vehicles. It came in response to citizen complaints about excessive response times. The council had considered punishing enforcers with a class C misdemeanor for long responses. After hearing feedback from local parking enforcement companies, however, councilors voted to force the companies to offer free boot removal instead. Sam Bateman, a driver for Cache Auto Booting Services, fears the new ordinance will negatively affect his paycheck. “This job has been my primary source of everything except groceries, which we pay for with plasma money,” Bateman said. “I would be very thankful if this did not go through.” When a car is booted a notice is l...

By Judd Workman A new Logan business is celebrating its grand opening Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. with special deals and a chance to win prizes. Located at 1 N. Main Street in downtown Logan, Clover Patch Quilt Shop specializes in providing high-end quilting fabric. The shop is the second location for a family-owned business that began in Santa Clara, Utah. Randy Sedgwick, who owns the store along with his daughter, Vicki Laursen, always wanted to start a business in Cache Valley. Now that it’s happened, he said, the biggest hurdle has been “getting the word out.” “Part of the grand opening is letting people know we’re here,” Sedgwick said. “Vicki and I have been visiting all of the quilt guilds in the valley, handing out flyers and introducing ourselves.” Along with prizes and giveaways at the grand opening, there will be demonstrations for those who do not yet quilt but who are interested in learning. Although the shop’s main focus is to sell fabric, it also offers...

By Rebekah Rodriguez The Utah Department of Agriculture and Food is no longer accepting trichomoniasis tags on bulls as a form of official individual identification, and beef producers are expressing concerns the change will mean new costs. “As an ag industry, we have appreciated being able to use the trich tags as an official ID because it serves a dual purpose,” said Brent Tanner, the executive vice president of the Utah Cattlemen’s Association. Being able to use the already required trichomoniasis vaccination tag as a form of official identification was cost effective and beef producers would like to continue to see it used, he said. Tanner said that soon the government will ask for a different form of ID and producers are concerned about the extra costs and labor associated with it. But according to the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food the tags should never have been used as individual identification and the recent change was made to correct a mistake. ...

By Hannah McDonald The national clown-sighting phenomenon has reached Utah State University, where police have so far responded to three calls about clown-related incidents. “I don’t know what’s brought this on,” Utah State Police Captain Steve Milne said. “We’ll continue to follow up on each and every one, but at this point there’s no criminal violation.” Ethan Muhlestein, a freshman majoring in wildlife science, was the second student to contact the university police. Muhlestein was driving a friend back home to Valley View Tower, near the campus center, around   1 a.m.   on Tuesday   when he saw an oddly dressed individual standing with another person. “I was thinking to myself, ‘This doesn’t look right,’” he said. “So I flipped the car around and shined my brights on both of them, and there was just this clown that was holding something in his hand. I assumed it was his mask. There was another car in the parking lot, and he started to shine his brights, too...

By Jessica Dryden Community members are scrambling to find support for their bookmobile — the library-on-wheels that has been serving rural Cache County for the past 50 years. The Cache County Council will meet Tuesday to determine the bookmobile’s fate. With annual costs as much as $98,000, county executive Craig Buttars isn’t sure the county can afford the service anymore. “I am recommending that the funding for the bookmobile be discontinued because the offerings of the bookmobile are a duplication of services in many ways,” Buttars wrote in an e-mail. He wrote that the money saved would go toward “essential county services such as roads, fire and law enforcement.” A Facebook page entitled “Save the Rich/Cache Bookmobile” has been created by the Cache Valley Library Association in an effort to garner support and awareness within the community. The page’s creators are urging community members to contact county council members and voice their concern over the possible loss ...

By Zac Lyon Organizers of a game pitting Utah State University students against the living dead are trying out new strategies to ensure the desperate effort to evade a ravenous legion of brain-hungry zombies doesn’t impact class attendance. "We've gradually been changing the emphasis of the game over the past few years," said Brock Rohloff, the president of the annual Humans vs. Zombies contest, which has in years past included thousands of students armed with toy weapons. "We've abandoned the use of Nerf guns, and we've made the games more about developing leadership skills and teamwork. This year, we wanted to make sure that students were actually going to classes throughout the week." In the past, Rohloff said, students avoided attending classes in order to avoid being tagged by members of the opposing team. "There had been a lot of frustration from teachers because students were avoiding their classes," Rohloff said. This year or...

By Miranda Tilley Some Logan residents have been illegally adding to their antler collections by poaching the deer that roam the city’s streets. According to city officials a few bow hunters have either shot or harvested deer in the Hillcrest, Adams and Island neighborhoods over recent weeks. “In one instance, the deer died right in front of a resident and people came and just picked it up and took it away,” Logan councilwoman Jeannie Simmonds said.  A program in North Logan, developed with the assistance of the Division of Wildlife Resources last year, authorized highly skilled archers to shoot deer that were living within that city’s limits. The program was intended to manage the overall population of urban deer while not necessarily eliminating them altogether. Logan city mayor Craig Petersen stressed that this program does not exist in his city, and called on residents to report any hunters seen in town. “People had seen bow hunters and they thought Logan city ha...