(PANGUITCH) – A Panguitch man was sentenced today in 6th District Court in Panguitch for sodomy and sexual abuse of a young girl. Court reports say that 54-year old Brent Worthen pled guilty to first degree sodomy of a child and was sentenced to a maximum of six years to life in the Utah State Prison. Worthen was on lifetime parole in Arizona for child sex abuse when he moved to Panguitch. His prison sentence in Arizona came from his conviction of child molestation of a young girl there. Arizona officials say they’re “patient” and want Worthen to serve the maximum time possible in Utah before they transport him to Arizona to serve a five to 15-year sentence for violating parole. In handing down the sentence, Judge Marvin Bagley said he didn’t need to preach to Worthen, the sentence speaks for itself.

(GRAND JUNCTION, Colo.)-KJCT-TV, Channel 8 in Grand Junction, Colo. reports Interstate 70 just east of Grand Junction has been reopened after a rockslide struck near Cameo, Colo. Wednesday.

Near Cameo, located about 21 miles east of Grand Junction, the interstate was closed for nearly four hours with traffic backed up for miles.

The rocks, which fell on the freeway around 5:30 a.m., were cleaned up while the Colorado Department of Transportation said they don’t know what triggered the slide.

C-DOT personnel said traditionally rockslides don’t occur in the Grand Junction area but drivers should be careful anyway.

(FILLMORE)-A Millard County Sheriff’s Lieutenant has retired and a detective has been terminated after allegations they covered up for a registered sex offender who had a gun in his home.

Millard County Sheriff Robert Dekker confirmed Wednesday that Lieutenant Roger Young has taken retirement and Detective Bill Jackson has been terminated.

Jackson has appealed to a county board and remains suspended with pay until he receives a hearing, Dekker said.

Dekker expects the hearing to take place within a few weeks.

Dekker said the moves came after a report from Sevier County Attorney Dale Eyre found Young and Jackson hindered the investigation into whether Jackson’s father, a registered sex offender, had a gun in his home.

In July 2008, Merlin Jackson had a medical emergency outside of his Fillmore home and Millard County deputies responded.

As medical personnel wheeled Merlin Jackson outside of his home, a deputy saw a rifle in a gun cabinet.

Merlin, who is now 76, was convicted in 1997 of felony forcible sexual abuse and remains on the state’s sex-offender registry.

Utah law makes it a criminal offense for felons to possess weapons.

When the deputy told Young what he saw, Young told him to handwrite a report, seal it in an envelope and slide it under Young’s office door or place it in his inbox, according to a report by Iron County detectives.

Normally, police reports are entered into Millard County’s electronic database while the Iron County report indicated Bill Jackson later retrieved the gun, but did not enter it into evidence.

Eyre says Young and Jackson violated procedure and recommended administrative discipline.

However, Eyre did not believe they committed a criminal offense and said he could not prove Merlin Jackson was in possession of his gun and therefore could not prove a criminal coverup by Young and Bill Jackson.

Merlin Jackson entered a guilty plea in abeyance to the gun possession earlier this year. However, his attorney, Jim Slavens, also argued prosecutors couldn’t prove Merlin was in possession of the gun.

The abeyance plea means Merlin Jackson is free and the case will be dismissed after a year if he commits no more crimes.

Dekker said Young had planned to retire as recently as this year, but Dekker stated he’s sure the specific timing is related to Eyre’s findings.

(SALT LAKE CITY)-Utah-based Western Governors University has garnered two more prestigious honors, further bolstering the credentials of the online institution’s efforts to revitalize how higher education is delivered.

The McGraw-Hill Companies has named WGU President Robert Mendenhall, who helped establish the nonprofit school a decade ago and has led it ever since, a 2010 winner of the McGraw Prize in Education.

The prize is awarded annually to three education visionaries in honor of the late Harold W. McGraw Jr., the one-time CEO of the publishing house McGraw-Hill and grandson of the company’s founder.

The prize includes a $25,000 check and a bronze sculpture.

WGU was also recently honored with the Ralph E. Gomory Award for Quality Online Education by the Sloan Consortium, an association of organizations engaged in online learning.

The award is annually given to schools demonstrating commitment to assessing and improving the quality of online education programs.

In addition to Mendenhall, this year’s McGraw winners include Christopher Cerf, the creator of the popular childrens’ show “Between The Lions,” which airs on PBS, for elementary education and Larry Rosenstock, the founding principal of High Tech High, a network of charter high schools serving minority and disadvantaged students that has successfully placed nearly all of its graduates in college, for secondary education.

Former Utah Governor Michael Leavitt recruited Mendenhall from Brigham Young University in the late 1990s to help launch his idea for a new kind of university.

The school, run out of a Salt Lake City office building, now has 20,000 students with representatives from each of the 50 states in professional degree programs targeting education, business, health and information technology.

(MINNEAPOLIS)-Delta Air Lines Inc., the only major U.S. airline that is primarily nonunion may have instigated changes when 50,000 employees began voting on whether it remains that way Wednesday.

The votes are the last act of Delta’s absorption of Northwest Airlines, which it bought in 2008.

Flight attendants began voting on a potential union Wednesday while three groups of ground workers are expected to vote in the next few months.

This could be the impetus of major change for Delta as only pilots are unionized among the bigger workgroups.

The Atlanta-based company has had few labor problems compared with most major airlines, while the last strike was a mechanic’s walkout in 1947.

However, at heavily unionized Northwest, labor relations were often combative with only two strikes since 1998.

Delta is on the verge of becoming the second largest worldwide airline as this week, United and Continental combine this week to form the new No. 1.

Unions have sought to gain traction at Delta before but have been unsuccessful.

Union supporters gathered at Delta headquarters to encourage co-workers to vote for the AFA after they decried what they called harassment by Delta management about the vote.

Other Delta workers opposed to the union gathered in a Delta parking lot at Atlanta’s Hatfield-Jackson International airport.

The flight attendant balloting will run through November 3 and more union votes are coming.

About 14,000 fleet service workers, such as baggage handlers, vote between October 14 and November 18 while a vote is also expected for 16,500 passenger service workers such as gate agents.

Additionally, 700 stock clerks working in a Delta maintenance facility vote from October 25 to November 22.

The union on the ballot for the workers is the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.

(BLUFFDALE)-The Utah Department of Corrections wants to send more male prisoners to county jails as a short-term solution to potential overcrowding.

As of Thursday morning, the Utah State Prison at Point of the Mountain says there’s only room for two more inmates.

The department says it expected to run into the overcrowding issue by the end of the year while the prison population is growing faster than predicted at a rate of 10 to 15 inmates per month.

The short-term solution the department has entertained involves a jail contract program while the prison’s contact with 21 counties allows a certain number of inmates to those jails while paying for each inmate.

Currently, the prison is capped at 1,265 inmates it can outsource while it has asked the Legislature to go up to 1,400.

Steve Gehrke of the Corrections Department met with lawmakers Wednesday while the department needs approval from the Legislature to use part of the corrections budget for the jail contract program.

The department also plans to ask the legislature for money when it is back in session.

Long-term fixes including the possibility of constructing new buildings at the Gunnison prison.

The department says current funds will last until the Legislature reconvenes in January.

Meanwhile, as bed space fills up at the State Prison, the department says the jails have room to take up more inmates.

(SALT LAKE CITY)-Police say a lockdown at the University of Utah Hospital was enforced because of a rogue hunter on campus.

Wednesday afternoon, authorities locked down the hospital and the Jewish Community Center after someone reported seeing a man wear camouflage and carrying binoculars and a gun behind the hospital.

Officers never found the man but believe he was simply going into the adjacent foothills to hunt.

University of Utah Police Department Lieutenant, Lynn Rohland, says numerous hunts are going on right now in Utah and it’s permissible to hunt behind the hospital in Dry Canyon and other nearby areas.

The lockdown was repealed around 6:30 p.m. Wednesday.

(SALT LAKE CITY)-Utah Governor Gary Herbert has called for an audit of the Utah Department of Transportation in the wake of a series of stunning revelations about the controversial bid process for the huge I-15 reconstruction project in Utah County this year.

In a letter written to UDOT Executive Director John Njord Wednesday, Herbert said uncertainty has arisen concerning certain UDOT practices.

Additionally, the governor said public confidence in UDOT, as well as his personal trust, must be restored in the organization.

In hopes of restoring the trust, Herbert proposed for an independent audit of UDOT by the state auditor, while also asking the auditor to share the results with him and the state Legislator when results have been found.

Furthermore, Herbert instructed that until the audit is complete, UDOT must not bring any bid protest settlement over $100,000 to him for review and approval.

UDOT said they anticipate the results of the audit although Herbert’s rival, Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon, said he disapproves of the governor’s tactics in making the organization a “scapegoat.”

(SALT LAKE CITY)-Federal authorities are suing a Utah construction company, alleging racial discrimination at the workplace.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission accused builder Holmes & Holmes Industrial Inc. of Magna of firing two black workers complaining about racial taunts and epithets on a job site from managers and other employers.

When the workers in question complained to supervisors, both verbally and in writing, they were fired, the suit attests.

The lawsuit, which was filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City, seeks back pay with interest for the workers, brothers Antonio and Joby Bratcher as well as an injunction against the company from further workplace harassment and employment practices training.

Antonio and Joby, each of which were reliable workers at North Salt Lake’s Chevron refinery, endured two years of taunts and epithets while making $17 an hour.

Other workers at the company, which included whites and Navajos, confirmed the Bratchers’ statements while their boss said the brothers could either deal with his terse statements or be fired.

EEOC regional attorney, Mary Jo O’Neill, says it’s deplorable that the brothers were forced to put up with this abuse and that their employer’s behavior was unacceptable.

(SALT LAKE CITY) – Dozens of U.S. soldiers from Utah returned home from serving in Iraq this week. Thirty-nine soldiers are back home after a diverse mission in Iraq during the past year, finishing their tour during a larger drawdown of U.S. combat troops. Specialist Derek Peterson and his wife, Lynnie, were separated by deployment when their daughter, Ava, was only two weeks old. The National Guard troops touched down in Utah at about 4pm Tuesday, while their families waited to welcome them home. Military reports said this was not the first time members of the 285th Aviation Unit were deployed. Chief Warrant Officer Andrew Lovejoy, a maintenance test pilot, spent 18 months in Iraq five years ago. Sgt. Jason Townsend said the mission was worth the sacrifices. A total of 50,000 U.S. troops still remain in Iraq with a deadline for full withdrawl by the end of 2011.

(ELSINORE) – Firefighters battling the Twitchell Canyon Fire have completed fireline operations at the northwest corner of the fire. Mop-up operations continue in that area but interior fires will still be seen from I-15 and I-70. Fire officials say that hotshot crews are moving into the southwest corner of the fire to begin line construction. The incident commander expects light winds today should push the fire towards the north, which should aid the firefighter’s efforts. Reports say the fire has now grown to nearly 42,500 acres and is 28% contained with 433 firefighters working the fire and 29 minor injuries reported. Ten forest roads still remain closed and all forest around the proximity of the fire also remain closed for public and firefighter safety.