Features

Twelve times over five years, Yazmin Cruz and Marcio Hernandez went to court to try to make their uncontested divorce happen. Twelve times, their paperwork got caught in a snag, and to their great consternation, kept their marriage intact.

This month, they were back in Sacramento’s William R. Ridgeway Family Relations Courthouse, for the 13th time. Once again, something came up: a child support issue. But this time, they would not leave the building in frustration. This time, they had signed up for the Sacramento Superior Court’s new one-day divorce program.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel ordered the furlough of 680,000 civilian employees for one day a week, from early July through September, to avoid taking deeper cuts in training and maintenance, which could have degraded readiness to the point of threatening “core missions,” he said.

The Department of Defense furlough plan will cut work hours and pay of most civilian employees by 20 percent for up to 11 weeks to save $1.8 billion. And Hagel doesn’t rule out needing another furlough plan in 2014.

Roaches that have been hard to trap may be a variety that find sugar doesn’t taste quite so sweet as bait anymore, a study suggests.

Most cockroach baits cover poison in a layer of glucose, a sugar. Some mutant German roaches, the most common species of pest found in houses, apartments, restaurants and hotels, now taste glucose as bitter, researchers said Thursday in a study released in the journal Science. This change in palate enables them to avoid traps.

OGDEN — Some people can bake a cake while others can’t stir the batter.

That’s how George Shafer describes learning how to fly an airplane.

You either can or you can’t and you either love it or you don’t.

Shafer loves it and he can obviously fly because he just got his license to do so.

MORGAN — Debate is making a comeback at Morgan High School.

A vote from the Morgan County School Board three years ago got the ball rolling, allowing Morgan High to form a debate team. It started as an after-school team activity. Last school year, the team boasted 20 students.

For the 2012-2013 year, the after-school club was supplemented with a Debate I and Debate II class that officially became part of the academic year schedule. Now, the team is up to 35 members, with 21 actively competing at region and state competitions.

OGDEN — Amanda Moore couldn’t stop smiling. The Ogden High School senior had just completed her clinical exams for her Certified Nursing Assistant certificate earlier in the day and said she enjoyed every minute of it. She felt her experience, in Brent Richardson’s CNA class at Ogden High School, was outstanding.

“It’s great to help people you know can’t do it by themselves,” she said of her clinical experience.

The class has been challenging, she said, but she has loved it. Moore plans to go to Weber State University this fall and to pursue a nursing degree.

OGDEN ­— More students are graduating in the Ogden School District in 2013 than in any of the past 30 years. If things stay on track, Ogden High School will have about 100 more students graduate this year than last year, and Ben Lomond, which has a 90 percent graduate rate for seniors, will stay about the same.

Approximately 398 seniors will graduate from Ogden High this year, and 266 from Ben Lomond.

“The teachers are working really hard to hold on to our students,” said Ogden High School Principal Stacey Briggs.