Episode Details

It's time to take a look at what's happening around Wyoming, for Wednesday, January 15th. I'm Wendy Corr, bringing you headlines from the Cowboy State Daily newsroom - brought to you by Visit Casper. Visit Casper invites you to come enjoy the Casper International Film Festival, January 31 through February 2. A broad range of films from local and international filmmakers will be shown. Learn more and get your tickets at visitcasper.com.

Sweetwater County authorities are searching for a plane that left an airport outside Rock Springs on Tuesday morning and never landed in California as planned.

Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland reports that the plane, a Piper Comanche private aircraft, left the Southwest Wyoming Regional Airport Tuesday, piloted by a 50-year-old man from Green River - but he failed to make his scheduled destination in California.

"They used automatic surveillance broadcast data and cell phone ping data to isolate where they believe it is. but it's in a really rugged, mountainous area in Sweetwater County, they think so they concentrated efforts on that area throughout the afternoon, after they got the missing persons call. But then, you know, cloud cover, harsh conditions and terrain caused them to regroup and pull back around 6pm and then, when I talked to the spokesperson, Deputy Jason Mower, Director of Public Affairs for the sheriff's office, he said that they were scrambling at that time to get nighttime aerial units in the air that could that could survey the the area."

As of Tuesday evening, searchers had narrowed their efforts to the area of Pine and Little Mountain, southwest of Rock Springs, in an area described as forested and mountainous terrain, also featuring steep cliffs and ravines.

Read the full story HERE.

The Wyoming Legislature gaveled in for its 68th session Tuesday - with lawmakers pushing for their personal projects and agendas.

Politics reporter Leo Wolfson was in attendance at the opening ceremonies in the Wyoming House of Representatives Tuesday, which took on a decidedly partisan tone with numerous biblical phrases and references to the American founding fathers mentioned throughout.

"I think what was really kind of startling in that this is an event that really typically is pretty non partisan for the most part, and you don't see a lot of these type of commentaries being made, but this is probably a prelude to what we're going to see for the upcoming legislative session, with a lot of politically charged type bills and partisanship on full display and rancor. In the Senate, it was very different. There was minimal speeches, given the Senate's a little bit of a different situation too, because only half their members are new."

However, fireworks were sparked on the first day in the Wyoming Senate, when an attempt was made by Senator Larry Hicks to prevent Eric Barlow from being nominated for chairman of the Senate Health, Labor and Social Services Committee, because of his stance on abortion.

"This was based off of Hicks' insinuation that Barlow is not necessarily pro life on abortion. If you look at Barlow's voting record, that is really not seeming to be the case. It seems like he's been pretty consistently pro life on abortion throughout his time in the legislature. But Hicks clarified for me that he was really more referring to some of the decisions that Barlow made with bills when he was Speaker of the House, as far as which bills he sent to committees and which bills he sent to his drawer to not be heard again."

Barlow was still approved with a 28-3 vote. Hicks, along with Senators Cheri Steinmetz of Lingle, and Laura Pearson of Kemmerer, were the only members to not support the nomination.

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