Salt Lake City | featured news

I’m a damn genius. Not about everything, of course. Just history. I know this because I recently passed a test that only one in 50 people are capable of completing correctly. I’d feel better about it if I wasn’t so scared.
The test was administered online by Topix.com, which examines respondents on a variety of subjects, including technology, anatomy, health, celebrities and pets. You can’t get more sophisticated than being tested by computer.
In the “offbeat” section is the following challenge...

Washington • Sen. Orrin Hatch broke with President Donald Trump on Wednesday, disagreeing with the commander in chief’s new directive to bar transgender people from military service.
“I don’t think we should be discriminating against anyone,” Hatch, a Utah Republican, said in a statement on Twitter.

Former Interior Secretary Sally Jewell took sharp aim Wednesday at her successor’s national monument “review,” calling moves to shrink Bears Ears and other designations illegal gestures that puts President Donald Trump on “the wrong side of history” and at odds with what Americans expect for their public lands.
Speaking early Wednesday at the Outdoor Retailers final trade show in Salt Lake City, Jewell accused Trump of treating monuments like “contestants on a game show” and Interior Secretary R...

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Provo • The public got its first glimpse inside the Mormon Missionary Training Center makeover Wednesday as reporters and camera crews toured the facility adjacent to LDS Church-owned Brigham Young University.
Built in the 1970s to house about 2,300 missionaries, the faith’s flagship MTC now can train as many as 3,700 missionaries at a time.
Two new buildings include 200 classrooms and additional residence halls (especially for women), along with more than 100 practice teaching rooms and 13 comp...

Utah women are choosing home birth at a rate double the national average, and mothers who do so tend to be older and have more education than women who decide to give birth in hospitals, according to a state health department report released this month.
Planned home births made up 2.12 percent of all births in Utah in 2013, according to the report from the Utah Department of Health. The U.S.

A Tuesday sentencing for a Roy day care worker convicted of child abuse homicide for the 2014 death of an 8-month-old boy was delayed after the woman’s lawyers asked a judge to set aside her conviction.
In May, a jury convicted 36-year-old Tisha Lynn Morley of first-degree felony child abuse homicide for the February 2014 death of Lincoln Penland, who was fatally injured while at Morley’s in-home day care.
She was scheduled to be sentenced this week in 2nd District Court, but the hearing was pos...

Ogden, Utah • A judge has postponed sentencing for a Utah woman who faces up to life in prison after she was convicted of child abuse homicide at a daycare center in Roy.
Lawyers for Tisha Morley are accusing prosecutors of misconduct and asking Judge Scott Hadley to set aside the verdict in the death of an 8-month-old boy.
The Standard-Examiner reports Hadley put the sentencing on hold after defense attorneys filed a motion in court in Ogden on Tuesday arguing Morley should instead be sentenced...

Most Utahns say they would embrace the naming of a “homeless czar” to clean up Salt Lake City’s Rio Grande area, known for homelessness, drug trafficking and violence.
Of 614 registered voters questioned for a Salt Lake Tribune-Hinckley Institute of Politics poll, 68 percent said they were “definitely” or “probably” in favor of creating an independently appointed official to coordinate efforts to mitigate the stress and chaos around The Road Home.
Respondents, however, were not so keen on having...

Police on Wednesday were investigating yet another homicide in downtown Salt Lake City’s homeless district, just a day after a transient allegedly went on a rampage that left one dead and three others seriously hurt.
Salt Lake City Police Detective Robert Ungricht said 1:39 a.m. reports of gunfire brought officers to a sidewalk at 350 S. 400 West, where they found Shawn J.

Property-valuation notices now arriving in mailboxes statewide are delivering expensive news: 64 local governments are proposing property tax hikes this year.
Officials say they are needed for a range of things, from keeping up with inflation to allowing school districts to compete in what has become “salary wars” to attract and retain teachers.
A few local leaders are again using creative arguments to contend that they are not really raising taxes — even though definitions in state law say the...