When the State of Wisconsin announced a deal with the tech manufacturing company Foxconn, many Wisconsinites were first struck by the price tag. The initial announcement of $3 billion dollars in subsidies, was the largest subsidy in the state’s history.

By some estimates that number has since risen to $4 billion dollars. But as the plans for the factory move forward, more residents have become concerned about some of the other aspects of this deal. Some are concerned about the plant’s intense water needs, others have raised issues with the types of jobs they will be providing.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court is considering a case involving academic freedom. Suspended Marquette University Professor John McAdams is arguing that the Jesuit institution is denying him the academic freedom that his contract promised.

Marquette disciplined the political science professor after he posted something on his conservative blog critical of a student teacher. McAdams has been suspended for more than three years, two of them without pay.

It was on this date in 1999 that two students at Columbine High School in Colorado murdered 12 fellow students and one teacher in an attack that shocked the nation.  While subsequent school shooting have been shocking as well, they have also taken on a saddening regularity.

On this 19th anniversary of the shooting, Lake Effect essayist Marnie Mamminga thinks back on the 2nd anniversary, while she was still a teacher in Illinois:

The last time wine contributor Ray Fister joined Lake Effect's Bonnie North, he talked about the impact that a historically bad wildfire season in California was having on the wine grape industry.

It’s been several months since those fires, and Fister says, "It's amazing how things have come back" in the Napa and Sonoma regions.

Milwaukee history is inextricably linked to immigration, from the first German, French, and English immigrants who shaped the city’s founding, to Polish and Irish immigrants that helped build it into an industrial powerhouse, to the Latino immigrants that have redefined the near south side.

The Milwaukee community is remembering the late civil rights leader Vel Phillips who passed away Tuesday. She was 94 years old.

Phillips broke a number of barriers in her lifetime, including as the first black secretary of state, and the first African American – and woman – to serve on Milwaukee’s Common Council.

In 2008, she told WUWM – in an interview about black leaders -- that she got a lot of press coverage in that role.

Humans have visually oriented brains. Our vision evolved to help us survive predators and also helped us capture our dinner. As Shiela Reaves says, our vision evolved to help us defeat camouflage.

Reaves is a professor of Life Sciences at UW-Madison, and a member of the UW McPherson Eye Research Institute.

But today there is a different stress on our vision. We are bombarded by images. Some of us look at computer screens all day, absorbing the pictures Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and other apps offer us. We watch many hours of television.

People who shop at Boston Store could soon be seeing "Going Out of Business" sales -- and the loss of 2,200 jobs in Wisconsin.

A U.S. bankruptcy court Wednesday approved the sale of Boston Store's parent, Bob-Ton Stores, Inc. to a couple of liquidation companies.

Bon-Ton operates 260 stores in 24 states, including Boston Store and Younkers stores across Wisconsin.  The news is a blow to Milwaukee, including at the flagship Boston Store downtown, and the corporate offices in the same building.  

Milwaukee civil rights icon Vel Phillips has passed away. Phillips was the first African American woman on the Common Council, where she pushed -- for years -- to end housing discrimination.

Longtime NPR newscaster and Wait! Wait! Don't Tell Me sidekick Carl Kasell died this week of complications from Alzheimer's disease.  He was 84 years old.  On today's show, we revisit our 2012 interview with him, recorded while he was in town recording an episode of the comedy quiz show.