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News from around Wisconsin at 6:28 a.m. CDT

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MILWAUKEE - Although Brett Favre plans to skip the Green Bay Packers' mandatory minicamp this weekend, he might not be excused by Packers coach Mike McCarthy.

McCarthy was not available for comment Tuesday, but team spokesman Jeff Blumb said that as far as McCarthy was concerned, "the camp is mandatory."

The Packers' three-day minicamp begins Friday, and Favre could face fines from the team if he fails to show up without being formally excused.

Favre told the Biloxi (Miss.) Sun-Herald that because he is unable to practice while recovering from offseason ankle surgery, he is going to stay home in Mississippi _ where he'll apparently try his hand at party planning.

"They were going to have me sit out anyway," Favre said, in a story that appeared on the paper's Web site on Tuesday. "To be honest, we have (daughter) Brittany graduating in two weeks. Instead of going up there and not doing anything, I will be better off being at home because of graduation parties and banquets."

Favre said the move is not related to his frustration with the team's unwillingness to complete a trade for wide receiver Randy Moss.

"I am frustrated," Favre told the paper. "But being frustrated and not going are not related."

MADISON, Wis. (AP) _ A power plant operated by University of Wisconsin-Madison is allowing coal dust into the environment, polluting one of the city's prized lakes, state regulators say.

The Department of Natural Resources has warned the plant is violating the Clean Water Act by allowing dust from its coal pile to spill into a nearby neighborhood. When it rains, the coal dust runs into storm sewers that drain into Monona Bay, a popular fishing and recreation spot.

The DNR warned the university last week to stop the violations or face forfeitures of up to $10,000 per day.

"This material doesn't belong in our Madison lakes," said DNR official Tim Coughlin, who wrote the May 8 warning to the university after personally witnessing runoff of coal residue. "It's a pollutant."

The letter came just days after the Sierra Club sued the university for allegedly violating the Clean Air Act by failing to install modern pollution controls when making upgrades to the plant, which was built in the 1950s.

Environmentalists want the university to shut down the Charter Street plant, one of the biggest local sources of pollution, and switch to a cleaner-burning fuel. They seized on the DNR warning.

"The real problem is that there is way too much coal being pumped through Charter Street," said Brent Denzin, an attorney with Midwest Environmental Advocates, Inc.

WAUSAU, Wis. (AP) _ A Minnesota truck driver sentenced to life in prison for murdering six deer hunters in northern Wisconsin after a confrontation over trespassing was not a victim of a racially biased court system as he claimed, a state appeals court ruled Tuesday.

The 3rd District Court of Appeals rejected Chai Soua Vang's request for a new "minority counsel" to represent him.

"Our independent review of the record discloses no improper racial issues with regard to sentencing or otherwise for appeal," the three-judge panel said.

The appeals court upheld Vang's convictions for six counts of first-degree intentional homicide and three counts of attempted first-degree intentional homicide, agreeing with his attorneys that there was no merit to an appeal.

The fatal shootings occurred in November 2004 after a group of deer hunters in Sawyer County confronted Vang, 38, of St. Paul, Minn., over trespassing in a tree stand.

Vang, a Hmong immigrant and experienced hunter, testified during his trial that he shot the six white hunters and wounded two more in self-defense, claiming one of them fired a shot in his direction after they shouted racial epithets and cursed at him.

The two survivors testified that Vang had begun walking away from the confrontation when he turned and opened fire.

WASHINGTON (AP) _ A former high-ranking Justice Department official again came to the defense of the U.S. attorney in Milwaukee, telling a Senate panel Tuesday he couldn't fathom why Steve Biskupic would wind up on a list of targeted prosecutors whose performance and loyalty to President Bush were questioned.

"I don't know from firsthand knowledge that he was on a list," said Jim Comey, who was the deputy attorney general from 2003 to 2005. "I can't imagine why he would be put on a list ... "

Comey made the remarks at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing under questioning by Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis. Earlier this month, Comey defended Biskupic at a House Judiciary Committee hearing, calling the U.S. attorney an "absolutely straight guy" who would never prosecute anyone for political reasons.

Democrats have questioned whether political pressure from the Bush administration influenced Biskupic's prosecution of state worker Georgia Thompson, whose bid-rigging conviction was vacated last month by a federal appeals court for a lack of evidence. Republicans used the Thompson conviction in television ads last year to allege that Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle's administration was corrupt.

Biskupic "cares passionately about the independence of the Department of Justice," Comey said Tuesday, adding that Thompson's conviction reversal should not be read as an indication that there was a lack of good faith in the prosecution.

"Sometimes appeals courts disagree about the inferences to be drawn from the evidence and reverse a conviction," he said. "That doesn't tell you that the prosecutor is a bad guy. In fact, I know this one, and this is a good guy."

But Comey was less forthcoming on the subject of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who is under fire in Congress for the firing of eight U.S. attorneys.

A service of the Associated Press(AP)