Merry Christmas! Choctaw County Genealogical Society will have its January meeting on Jan. 5 at 6 p.m.

Choctaw County Genealogical Society will have a special speaker at their January meeting. Danny Groat, a longtime CCGS member and a history teacher at Hugo High School, will be discussing the Dawes Act, tribal land allotments, and the resulting corruption and theft of the allotted land.

Misdemeanor 196 – Jonathan Isael Gallegos-Garcia: DUI, under 21. 197 – Michael Allen Bruce: Protective order violation.

The Grinch, 121 years old of Mount Crumpit, was arrested and booked into Choctaw County Jail on Dec. 13 after stealing presents from the town of Hugo during the annual Christmas parade.

Attorney General Gentner Drummond responded to a federal court judgment holding major poultry corporations responsible for phosphorus pollution in the Illinois River Watershed (IRW). The ruling requires Tyson, Cargill, George’s, Simmons and Cal-Maine to fund decades of cleanup and imposes strict restrictions on waste application practices.

A pre-preliminary conference was held Dec. 17 for Armando Mustafo Rojas-Caceras, who is the alleged suspect in the murder of Hugo’s Traci Byrd.

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HUGO — A new $160 million-dollar natural gas pipeline that will extend from the Bennington Natural Gas Hub 43 miles to Western Farmers Electric Cooperative’s Hugo powerplant, has been announced by One Gas, Inc., a natural gas distribution company. The new “large-diameter” pipeline is projected to move more than 100 billion cubic feet of natural gas annually to the current WFEC powerplant, which will open the door for the plant to generate an additional 400 mega- watts of electricity with five new gas-turbine generators.