Wyoming

Don't forget Wyoming. It's been overlooked in the hoopla surrounding Thursday's Iowa caucuses and next week's New Hampshire primary, but Wyoming Republicans will caucus on Saturday and choose delegates to the national convention in September. Candidates have paid little attention to the state, though. Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, Duncan Hunter and Ron Paul have passed through since September. Mike Huckabee, Rudolph W. Giuliani and John McCain have not.

The headline in the Casper Star-Tribune the other day pretty much said it all: "Tiny and very Republican, Wyoming is a Democratic player at last." Normally, it is not much fun being a Democrat here. The sparsely populated state -- with half a million residents, it ranks 50th in the nation -- has 59,130 registered Democrats, compared with 136,000 Republicans.

A spent Russian booster rocket reentered the atmosphere over Wyoming and Colorado, the North American Aerospace Defense Command said. Witnesses reported seeing flaming objects in the sky at the time the rocket was reentering, NORAD spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Sean Kelly said. A Wyoming state trooper found a large burned spot in the snow beside a highway but no debris. "It was pretty spectacular," said Riverton Police Capt.

Louisiana's decorated Easter egg for the White House Visitors Center is split like a jeweled clam and features a chef with a bottle of Tabasco. Alabama's is a red, white and blue homage to Space Camp. Wisconsin's is a glittering depiction of butterflies and flowers. Then there's Wyoming's: It bears a crudely drawn skiing egg, wings holding the poles.

The bodies of two climbers who apparently fell to their deaths on Grand Teton were recovered with the help of a helicopter, a park official said. "They were roped together," Grand Teton National Park spokeswoman Jackie Skaggs said. "We still don't know what happened and how it happened." The two dead climbers were identified as Alan Rooney, 38, and Jonathan Morrow, 28.

Wyoming aims to reduce the number of wolves in the state to near the minimum that the federal government will allow once the animal is removed from special protection status, a state wildlife official said. Wyoming and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have agreed that the state would not let its wolf population drop below 100. With more than 300 wolves estimated to live within the state, that could mean killing dozens.

John Barrasso, a conservative Republican state senator, was named as the country's newest U.S. senator to succeed the late Craig Thomas. The temporary appointment, announced by Wyoming's governor, is immediate but won't change the Senate's party breakdown since Thomas was also a Republican. Thomas died June 4 while being treated for leukemia. Barrasso, 54, will serve until the beginning of 2009.

A Laramie-based conservation group asked the Wyoming Environmental Quality Council to approve special designations to protect about 180,000 acres of Adobe Town, a unique formation of rocks, cliffs and spires in the southwestern part of the state. At the turn of the 20th century, Robert LeRoy Parker and Kid Curry -- better known as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid -- used Adobe Town to hide fresh horses, including those used to rob a train at Tipton in 1900.

A Wyoming rancher cannot use the federal racketeering law to seek damages against employees of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management whom he accused of harassment, the Supreme Court ruled Monday . The unanimous decision reversed a federal appeals court ruling. The earlier ruling had government officials fearing that if the high court permitted the case to proceed, it would spawn a bevy of litigation against federal employees merely trying to do their jobs.

A former Army sniper suspected of killing his estranged wife as she sang with a band died after he was found with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest, police said. David Munis, 36, was found by a search team and flown to Ivinson Memorial Hospital in Laramie, where he was pronounced dead, said Cheyenne Police Lt. Mark Munari. Munis apparently shot himself as officers closed in, Munari said.