It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming for Monday, May 4th. I’m Mac Watson.
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Multiple Wyoming lawmakers and a Cheyenne-based car dealer voiced concern Friday over a federal requirement for mandatory “kill switches” in 2027 model vehicles. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that one dealer calls it “Big Brother,” while a state legislator says it’s “draconian.”
“Representative Daniel Singh has been outspoken on this for a while, and he's called it satire, not policy. He was not alone, however, Representative Landon Brown, who chairs the Transportation Committee, voiced milder but similar versions of that same alarm and consternation. And Representative Mike Yin, a Democrat, told me it's the state's business if the state wants to hand down some kind of mandate like this, not the federal government. And he said, ‘I don't know why the federal government's always trying always trying to tell us what to do.’”
The requirement passed in the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, but it’s about to become a reality as 2027 model year vehicles trickle into the market starting this year.
Read the full story HERE.
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Father Chad Ripperger is one of the Roman Catholic Church’s most experienced and well-known exorcists. Cowboy State Daily’s Zak Sonntag reports that originally from Casper, Ripperger speaks with a mechanic's calm about the discipline he never asked for — fighting demons.
“He wanted to be a priest and an academic and really focus on Catholic academics. He was asked by the church to focus on exorcism. And this was at a time when the church was globally focusing on expanding exorcism institutionally, and that started in 1999 and it's just been building and building ever since.”
Father Ripperger tells Cowboy State Daily that he's gained visibility in recent years after successive popes have directed dioceses to expand the use of exorcism in response to what Ripperger says is a rise in diabolic influence.
Read the full story HERE.
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A California man who was killed by elephants while on safari in Africa was a frequent hunter in Wyoming and close friends with a Douglas outfitter. Cowboy State Daily’s Mark Heinz reports that Dax McCarty says the media portrayal of his friend, California vineyard owner Ernie Dosio, is wrong.
“He said, you know that those menial portrayals of him is just a rich guy that was over there killing things just for thrills, you know? He said, ‘That's wrong. That's a misconception. That's not who this guy was.’ And then I also talked to a couple Wyoming residents who have actually been on safari hunts in Africa and they said, Yeah, it's no joke over there, you have to have your stuff wound up tight. You have to have your head on a swivel.”
McCarty tells Cowboy State Daily that according to what he was told by Dosio’s family, Dosio died almost instantly when he was gored by a female elephant, on April 17 in the central African country of Gabon.
Read the full story HERE.
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The maker of an AI-powered robot chef that will cook for you wants to move its manufacturing from China to Cheyenne. Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean reports that Foodease CEO Kishore Kodru says once you load the robot with ingredients, it will drop them into the pan, stir and cook according to an app-driven recipe.
“A lot of people conflate this or confusing this with a crock pot. It's not a crock pot, because with a crock pot, you dump all the ingredients in at once, and they all cook for the same amount of time. This is putting each ingredient in as needed. What Kishore would like to do, if he could get enough interest in this product, he'd like to move the manufacturer. To America. So that's kind of how that played out. It's not that this is a Chinese company locating in America. They'd like to move it to Cheyenne Wyoming instead.”
Kodru is normally a real estate developer and business owner in Cheyenne, but has lately become one of Foodease’s primary beta testers.
Read the full story HERE.
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I’ll be back with more news from Cowboy State Daily right after this.
Cowboy State Daily news continues now…
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A woman sex-trafficked by a Satanic cult still haunts — and motivates — former Converse County Undersheriff Justin Scott. Cowboy State Daily’s Jen Kocher reports that although Scott was forced to medically retire from law enforcement, he’s found a new mission to rescue human trafficking victims in Wyoming.
“He started his nonprofit to basically dispel the misnomers about human trafficking and educate the community about what human trafficking is and what it looks like in Wyoming. And from there, he joined forces with another leading advocate of anti human trafficking, leader in the state. Terry Markham is the executive director and co-founder of uprising and Sheridan, and it is an anti human trafficking nonprofit that focuses on educating and training students, the community, law enforcement and other organizations and individuals.”
Scott tells Cowboy State Daily there’s enough demand in Wyoming to support building the first human trafficking safe house in Wyoming and his group is raising money to build a facility that would provide resources along with housing to help trafficking victims transition back into productive lives.
Read the full story HERE.
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Hyattville carpenter Kirk Odegaard builds basic, Old West coffins and caskets for those who want a Western funeral. Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi reports that Odegaard says the service he provides is the way of the West.
“One day his neighbor walked in and made a particularly humbling request. He wanted Kirk to build a casket for his wife, who was not dead, but had some terminal conditions. She knew she was going to die, and they had already discussed they wanted a dust-to-dust burial. Simple coffin, no vaults, nothing fancy, just a pine box to be placed in that would eventually return to the earth. And now Kirk, inspired by that particular story, wants to offer the same thing to other Wyomingites who might want to end their lives in that old west tradition.”
For $750, Odegaard will make anyone a high-quality, Old West casket or coffin. A basic wooden box that’s appropriate for any funeral, whether it's a friend’s, family member’s, or your own.
Read the full story HERE.
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Novelty signs that say things like “trespassers will be shot, survivors will be shot again” are good for laughs in gun-friendly Wyoming. But Cowboy State Daily’s Mark Heinz reports that legal authorities say prosecutors could use the sign to allege the shooter had a predisposition to violence.
“I reached out to some fire, to some firearm self defense experts, and also a couple legal eagles. If you have a sign like that, and you actually have to use your firearm for self defense is that setting you up for a creative prosecutor, if they decide to try to prosecute it as an unjustified shooting, is going to go, ‘Aha! He had a sign showing that he was just waiting for someone that he could shoot.’ They still don't think it's a good idea. One guy who actually has those types of signs. He says, ‘I put those in around my house or my bar for novelty, for joke, haha, purposes. I wouldn't put him out on my fences, because, as he put it, it would open me up for liability.’”
Ryan Semerad, a trial attorney at Fuller & Semerad in Casper, tells Cowboy State Daily that a judge or jury in a post-shooting case will scrutinize the defensive shooter’s conduct leading up to and during the incident, but probably won’t be concerned with a supposedly threatening sign as an indication someone is just itching to shoot someone.
Read the full story HERE.
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A new study shows that when salmon are given cocaine, they swim farther and faster. Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi reports that researchers say there was no risk to humans in conducting the experiment as “you would need to eat thousands" of these cocaine-addled fish to feel the impact of the drug.
“It's obvious the illicit drugs are going to have an impact on animals once those chemicals get into their systems. The question that these scientists are trying to answer is how it affected the behavior of these young salmon. And what they determined is that these salmon, yes, they swam first, faster, but they also swam farther. They went further into this natural lake in Sweden. And what we can take away from that is that it's actually detrimental to their overall well being, because that's energy they're expending to get places that's due to a chemical change in their brains. It's not something they would do naturally, and that's energy that they could be using to survive gather food, and it might lead them to places where there's less food and more predators.”
Jack Brand, a professor and biologist with the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, was the lead author of the new paper who told Cowboy State Daily that the new study was inspired by a desire to understand how illicit drugs impact natural ecosystems.
Read the full story HERE.
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And that’s today’s news. Get your free digital subscription to Wyoming's only statewide newspaper by hitting the Daily Newsletter button on Cowboy State Daily Dot Com - and you can watch this newscast every day by clicking Subscribe on our YouTube channel, or listen to us on your favorite podcast app. Thanks for watching - I’m Mac Watson, for Cowboy State Daily.
