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Two women and two girls were shot dead in Madison and Middleton Thursday night in separate incidents and police were searching for one man who they believe to be responsible for the killings. Suspected in the deaths is Tyrone M. Adair, 38, police said. He is described as black, 5 feet, 10 inches tall, 175 pounds with brown eyes. He may be driving a silver GMA Acadia with Wisconsin license 342-EBI. Police said he should be considered armed and dangerous. A mother and her daughter were found shot to death in their car in their garage at 6827 Park Edge...

MADSION, Wis. -- At a busy Madison Common Council meeting Tuesday night, council members voted to make the plastic pink flamingo the official city bird. The new mascot was debated for five minutes, and then the Common Council voted 15-4 to make the plastic pink flamingo the official city bird, reported TV station WISC. The idea was sparked by a 1979 prank when pranksters on campus put out 1,008 of the birds. "It sure lives in Madison lore as a really fun thing," said Wisconsin State Journal writer Doug Moe. Moe proposed the idea in a column, and Alder Marsha...

MADISON (WKOW) - Some UW Hospital patients may have been exposed to a rare but deadly brain disorder. UW Hospital officials have told 53 patients they have an extremely low risk of contracting a rare deadly brain disorder after being operated on with contaminated surgical instruments. The instruments were used on a woman who had surgery on June 11th and died Tuesday from a brain disorder, creutzfeldt-jakob disease. The hospital got the diagnosis of the fatal disease just this past Monday. According to hospital spokeswoman, Lisa Brunette, the hospital immediately pulled all the affected instruments and sterilized them again. Then,...

NEW YORK (AP) — One trip for their Jack Russell terrier in a plane's cargo hold was enough to convince Alysa Binder and Dan Wiesel that owners needed a better option to get their pets from one city to another.

NEW ORLEANS -- Mayor Ray Nagin described his experience being quarantined in China amid fears of swine flu exposure as "very surreal" in an interview with WDSU on Wednesday night.

JANESVILLE (WKOW) -- A benefit performance in Janesville by American Idol finalist Phil Stacey was supposed to support the care of four year old Rylee Jo Williams, but Williams' parents said they received nothing from the show's promoter. Johnathan Williams of Middleton said concert goers May 29 even dropped money into donation jars and bought special cloth bracelets with Rylee's name, but no money has been turned over. "And the bracelets, we put them there for money for Rylee," Williams told 27 News. "That he (promoter) wanted to keep it all, (it's) just a little stunning. Just baffles me." Promoter...

MADISON (WKOW) -- Governor Doyle announced Thursday all of Wisconsin's nearly 60,000 state employees will receive furloughs of more than three weeks over the next two years to help the state cope with a balooning budget deficit.

On the day Kevin Weaver almost died, he remembers walking inside his Ocoee home with his dog. Then, nothing. He has no memory of the diabetic seizure that caused him to collapse and hit his head. Or when his dog, Belle, got the cell phone that is always on the coffee table and bit into the number 9 on the keypad. This automatically dialed 911. The next thing Weaver recalls is waking up in the hospital. The dog was there, too. "There is no doubt in my mind that I'd be dead if I didn't have Belle," said Weaver, 34,...

NEW ORLEANS - Dakota the dog is finally back in New Orleans. It's another tearful reunion. It's also extremely rare. Despite efforts by hundreds of volunteers, unprecedented cooperation by animal groups, millions of donated dollars and wide use of the Internet, the reunion rate of owner and pet separated by Katrina is less than 15 percent.

More than two months after Hurricane Katrina blew in, animals are still being found alive in New Orleans, pulled out of attics and from beneath flooring or off of the streets, where they’ve been surviving on sheer will and the kindness of strangers who leave food for them. Some are little more than skin wrapped around bones. Starving, dehydrated and depressed, they still greet people trustingly, perhaps somehow recognizing that they represent salvation from their utterly bewildering circumstances.

THIBODAUX -- In the chaotic days following Hurricane Katrina, the Rev. Jim Morrison strolled the Nicholls State University campus looking for a way to help the thousands New Orleans evacuees who sought sanctuary there. Morrison’s walk led to an unplanned effort that helped more than 130 people hang on to the pets they had risked their own safety to keep.

Tahlequah has quite a few celebrity canines who've made the pages of the Daily Press. Just a few examples are Ruby the Redbone hound, who starred in the remake of "Where the Red Fern Grows"; Coach, the Labrador retriever who helped find victims of 9/11 World Trade Center attacks; Baden, the waving Collie; and Chica, the three-legged Rat Terrier who has her own chauffeur. Now we have Tanya the poodle, who comes to Tahlequah from New Orleans, via Dallas. Tanya's human companions are Lloyd and Rosemary Griffin, New Orleanians who recently moved to Tahlequah from the evacuee center at Camp...

After watching heartrending scenes from hurricane zones, New York emergency officials are changing their rules so people can bring their pets to shelters in a disaster. That means pet-loving New Yorkers won't face the same wrenching choice as in New Orleans, where residents were forced to abandon their pets before entering shelters - or risk their lives to stay at home with their cats and dogs. "We've always had a strong position that only service animals would be allowed in shelters," said Joseph Bruno, head of the city Office of Emergency Management. "We're going to have to change our approach...

14 dogs were shot at a school that was used as an evacuation center, and some blame the police. CNN's Anderson Cooper reports.

Live thread for Pet Evacuation Assistance and Information.

HOUSTON - Wednesday evening, a frail, silent Peggy Jourdan huddled around a table in a tent outside the Houston Astrodome with five other Hurricane Katrina evacuees. All listened intently while social worker Rita Adair described the furnished apartments, jobs and new friends waiting for her and her two grown daughters in Madison. (excerpted...)

Last night I saw a new anti-smoking commercial. The narrator was comparing smoking to drowning, while the visual showed water filling a house, complete with a drowning a person. The last image showed a submerged body suspended in water inside a home. My sister and I just exchanged glances as in "How poor in taste is that?" especially with regard to all those who drowned as a result of Katrina and the aftermath. It reminded me of the Koolaid commercial that played during a newscast reporting the Jonestown massacre. I just wondered if others saw it and what their thoughts...

Hope vanities are okay in the chat section... This Catahoula puppy, Maisie, has spent most of her short life at the Brighton, TN shelter. I'm not from TN, but happened to come across this puppy on the net, and she really resembles one of the dogs I currently have when she was a puppy. I spoke with the shelter and they expect she will be put down within a few days because she's "already been at the shelter a long time." Maisie is 2 1/2 - 3 months old. Posting here just on the outside chance somebody might be interested...

PULLEYS MILL -- Friends will begin combing the Johnson County countryside again this morning, hoping to find a champion Rottweiler who ran away from the scene of an accident on Interstate 24 that killed her owner on Monday. The dog's owner, Diane Martin of Chicago, died from injuries she received when her RV crashed into a rock wall near mile marker 2, just east of that interstate's split with Interstate 57.