USA TODAY International Edition
50 ★ States
News from across the USA
ALABAMA Florence: Officials say a project to repair the University of North Alabama Planetarium and Observatory should be done by Jan. 1.
ALASKA Quinhagak: This Alaska Native community’s airport is unable to receive night flights or medevac flights because of disabled runway lights, officials say.
ARIZONA Phoenix: An appeals court says state law doesn’t permit judges to deny name- change requests made only because the requesting person wants to reflect a gender transition.
ARKANSAS Jonesboro: Officials have voted to rename Commercial Drive in honor of Martin Luther King Jr.
CALIFORNIA Indio: The globally recognized Indio International Tamale Festival returns Saturday and Sunday, bringing six stages with live entertainment, four beer and wine gardens, carnival rides and more.
COLORADO Grand Junction: The Bureau of Land Management has proposed transferring federal lands to the state to pay off a government debt dating back to 1876.
CONNECTICUT Hartford: Gov. Ned Lamont says special elections will be held Jan. 14 to fill two vacancies in the state House of Representatives.
DELAWARE Seaford: Dan Brissey, serving his fourth overseas tour with the National Guard, had a request for help: He’d made friends with a stray cat in Afghanistan and felt he couldn’t leave her there, but the cost to bring the cat home was steep at $ 3,000. In just two days, donations to get Sully the kitten to Brissey’s home in Seaford burst past that goal.
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA Washing
ton: In an unprecedented move, the D. C. Council wants to expel a member, Jack Evans, for ethics violations.
FLORIDA Tallahassee: State education officials and advocates say about 200,000 students could become ineligible for automatic free school lunches under a Trump administration proposal expected to reduce the number of food- stamp enrollees.
GEORGIA Macon: Studio A at Capricorn Sound Studios, which helped propel the Allman Brothers Band and other groups to stardom in the ’ 70s, will reopen this month, after years of work by Mercer University and other supporters to restore and equip it with state- of- the- art technology.
HAWAII Wailuku: A new county financing tool known as a community facilities district could be used to raise millions of dollars for a project to restore part of the Maui coastline damaged by erosion, officials say.
IDAHO Boise: Democratic state House Minority Leader Mat Erpelding announced Wednesday that he will resign Friday.
ILLINOIS Chicago: The interim police superintendent has demoted a commander whom the city’s inspector general accused of directing on- duty officers under him to babysit his son with special needs.
INDIANA West Lafayette: Purdue University plans to study the safety of electric skateboards and scooters in response to a rash of serious injuries on campus.
IOWA Ames: Rachel Junck, a 20year- old Iowa State University student, has become the youngest woman elected to office in state history by winning a seat on the City Council.
KANSAS Topeka: A prisoner rights group says the state Department of Corrections unfairly censors publications even with the adoption of a new policy and the elimination of a banned book list.
KENTUCKY Fort Knox: About 350 free Christmas trees are being offered to military service members and their families after a tree lighting ceremony Thursday.
LOUISIANA Logansport: A 122year- old hardware and department store that once saw a visit from an ammo- seeking Bonnie and Clyde is closing. N. J. Caraway & Co. has been serving customers since 1897.
MAINE Portland: Regulators are limiting the amount of herring that fishermen can catch in the inshore Gulf of Maine until the year’s end.
MARYLAND Baltimore: State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby says she’s concerned about the integrity and credibility of about 305 city police officers, but the department stands by most of them.
MASSACHUSETTS Boston: Young adults who had been in the custody of the state will maintain health insurance coverage until their 26th birthday under a new law.
MICHIGAN Houghton: Scientists say gray wolves relocated to Isle Royale National Park are adjusting nicely to their new surroundings and finding plenty of prey.
MINNESOTA St. Paul: The Center for Biological Diversity has put the state Department of Natural Resources on notice that it plans to sue the agency for failing to protect Canada lynx from trappers.
MISSISSIPPI Hattiesburg: A statue of slain civil rights leader Vernon Dahmer now sits outside the Forrest County Courthouse. The bronze sculpture was commissioned to honor the NAACP leader who was killed by Klansmen for trying to get black people registered to vote.
MISSOURI St. Louis: Only a few of the state’s police agencies submit data to an FBI program that tracks officer- involved shootings, a St. Louis Post- Dispatch analysis finds.
MONTANA Great Falls: This year marked the city’s snowiest fall on record, the National Weather Service says, with 60.4 inches, shattering the 1985 record of 29.1 inches.
NEBRASKA Bellevue: Local leaders have voted down a measure that would have allowed the firing of elected officials for leaking information from closed- door meetings.
NEVADA Las Vegas: A mother says she received a $ 3,000 bill after doctors removed a plastic doll shoe stuck in her daughter’s nose.
NEW HAMPSHIRE Concord: Gov. Chris Sununu has signed an executive order preparing the state for future offshore wind development.
NEW JERSEY Newark: State Attorney General Gurbir Grewal issued a handful of new directives Wednesday to law enforcement, aimed at overhauling how police and prosecutors handle investigations, including the release of video from incidents involving officers. The change is meant to promote transparency and trust with the public, Grewal said.
NEW MEXICO Albuquerque: The city is taking more heat for flaws in its crime statistics. The Albuquerque Journal reports the numbers released in July and at the end of 2018 have been revised dramatically to include hundreds – and in some cases thousands – more incidents than were reported initially.
NEW YORK New York: The mayor signed a bill Wednesday that transfers control of the nation’s largest public burial ground, on Hart’s Island just off the Bronx, from the correction department to the parks department.
NORTH CAROLINA Pittsboro: The United Daughters of the Confederacy has lost a bid to put a Confederate monument back on the grounds of a courthouse after county officials removed it.
NORTH DAKOTA Grand Forks: Andrew Armacost, a brigadier general and retired dean at the Air Force Academy, will be the next president at the University of North Dakota.
OHIO Columbus: A proposal aimed at outlawing abortions would present some doctors with a choice between facing potential criminal prosecution or attempting a procedure considered medically impossible – the reimplantation of an ectopic pregnancy.
OKLAHOMA Oklahoma City: Gov. Kevin Stitt says he opposes a proposed state question that would restrict prosecutors from using previous felony convictions to enhance sentences in certain criminal cases.
OREGON Salem: State Police failed to reveal DNA evidence that could have exonerated a man who spent nine years in prison for his girlfriend’s killing, a judge ruled in overturning the conviction of Nicholas McGuffin.
PENNSYLVANIA Harrisburg: Slot play is such big business in the state that it helps subsidize horse racing. A USA TODAY Network investigation revealed that Pennsylvania is not alone in subsidizing the U. S. horse racing industry, but the Keystone State does push it the most money.
RHODE ISLAND Providence: The “Little Roady” self- driving shuttle service has taken more than 25,000 trips during its first six months of operating in the state, according to the Department of Transportation.
SOUTH CAROLINA Greenville: A record number of animals were killed during takeoffs and landings at Greenville- Spartanburg International Airport last year.
SOUTH DAKOTA Pierre: Gov. Kristi Noem has offered her budget proposals for the next year while acknowledging money is tight and instructing state agencies to reduce spending. The Republican governor told legislators to brace for slower growth.
TEXAS Edinburg: A local judge has ordered supporters of President Donald Trump not to build their planned private border wall on a section of land near the Rio Grande.
UTAH Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter- day Saints is reaffirming its support for refugees and encouraging members to create welcoming communities for them.
VERMONT Montpelier: The state saw a record year for nesting loons in 2019, with the 101 pairs being the most since the state began tracking loons in 1978, the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife says.
VIRGINIA Roanoke: City officials have rebuffed pleas by gun advocates asking it to declare Roanoke a socalled Second Amendment sanctuary.
WASHINGTON Spokane: The state’s commissioner of public lands has released a proposal to raise some $ 63 million a year to prevent and fight wildfires via a small surcharge on property and casualty insurance.
WEST VIRGINIA Wellsburg: The state has received a $ 1 million federal grant for a flood control project in the city.
WISCONSIN Madison: A new sampling of a batch of wells in southwestern Wisconsin found a majority contaminated with fecal matter.
WYOMING Casper: A report from legislators says they and their staff have handled increasingly intensive workloads in the past few years. Officials say Wyoming lawmakers are some of the nation’s lowest- paid, but the Legislature says rates should stay low in the spirit of public service.