STATE-BY-STATE
ALABAMA Birmingham: Sarah Jones, 29, a Mountain Brook native, founded the Introverted Alpha dating coaching service. “What we do is work with men, sometimes shy, sometimes not, when it comes to dating and interaction,” Jones told AL.com.
ALASKA Fairbanks: The National Park Service will offer two weekend clinics next month to introduce families to camping. At the Camping Adventures with My Parents (CAMP) program, rangers will teach participants the basics of setting up a camp at the Savage River Campground, newsminer.com reported.
ARIZONA Kingman: Geraldo Beltran-Torres, 20, an inmate recently transferred to a Pinal County Jail after riots at a private prison, was accused of stashing 31 baggies of methamphetamine, the Republic reported.
ARKANSAS Little Rock: State Attorney General Leslie Rutledge announced plans to train law enforcement officials and scrap dealers to combat metal theft, which can cost businesses millions of dollars a year in repairs, Arkansas Online reported.
CALIFORNIA Placerville: Facing an expanding caseload and federal budget sequestration, Snowline Hospice has turned to thrift stores to fund its free patient care. The six secondhand stores have become so popular that many locals mistakenly consider them to be the non-profit group’s mission, The Sacramento Bee reported.
COLORADO Denver: A dog that a Good Samaritan found with its mouth taped shut and its front paws taped together with duct tape Saturday is now recovering at a shelter, KUSA-TV reported.
CONNECTICUT Bridgeport: Part of the Bridgeport Correctional Center, known as the Fairmont Building, will close by the end of July, NBC reported. The Department of Correction said in a news release that the number of inmates is shrinking and closing of the 204-bed facility will save more than $2.1 million per year.
DELAWARE Rehoboth Beach: More than a third of the Rehoboth Beach Patrol’s 20 lifeguard stands went missing this past week, The (Salisbury, Md.) Daily Times reported.
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA: Some cafe owners are getting irritated by coffee “campers,” teleworkers who buy a single beverage, turn on their laptop and set up shop for hours.
FLORIDA Tallahassee: The state Supreme Court ruled last week that the state’s congressional maps don’t meet the requirements of a voter-approved constitutional amendment that prohibits political lines from being drawn to favor incumbents or a political party.
GEORGIA Atlanta: Lawyers for the Ku Klux Klan argued that the group should be able to adopt and clean a 1-mile portion of a road, the Journal-Constitution reported. In 2012, transportation officials rejected the white supremacy group’s request, and the KKK chapter sued.
HAWAII Honolulu: The city has hired a pest control company to reduce an explosion of feral chickens on the island, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported.
IDAHO Leadore: Authorities are looking for a 2-year-old boy who walked away from his family’s campsite at Timber Creek Campground, the Idaho Statesman reported.
ILLINOIS Chicago: About 20 North Side residents and boat owners urged the Lincoln Park Advisory Council to pull the curtains on concerts at Montrose Beach after two shows snarled traffic and stymied public access last month, the Tribune reported.
INDIANA West Lafayette: Craig Burden, 28, has been fired from his post as music pastor for Calvary Baptist Church in West Lafayette after being accused of voyeurism with a camera, the Journal & Courier has learned.
IOWA Des Moines: A rescue team was sent to help save a man who fell from a wheelchair into a park lake in Boone County on Saturday, The Register reported.
KANSAS Kansas City: A 5-yearold girl was wounded in a driveby shooting in here, KSHB-TV reported. Police say the girl was sleeping in a home when she was struck.
KENTUCKY Louisville: The Dude continues to abide in Louisville, which this weekend hosted the 13th annual the Lebowski Fest, a traveling fan festival, centered around the 1998 Coen Brothers movie The Big Lebowski, The Courier-Journal reported.
LOUISIANA New Orleans: Pizza NOLA plans a parking lot viewing party and costume contest for Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No! on July 22, The Times-Picayune reported.
MAINE Houlton: A small plane made an emergency landing on Interstate 95 in Maine, near the Canadian border, WCVB-TV reported. No one was injured.
MARYLAND Milton: After two years at the helm building community relationships, Allison Schell, director of the Milton Historical Society, has decided to leave for an opportunity with a museum in the Philadelphia area, the Daily Times reported.
MASSACHUSETTS Boston: The second annual Women’s Bike Ride and Festival in scheduled for Saturday, The Boston Globe reported. The aim to help women feel more comfortable riding in Boston.
MICHIGAN St. Johns: Nine days after fireworks spooked a 1,000- pound horse, Finneas was found in a field about a mile and a half from home, the Lansing State Journal reported.
MINNESOTA Minneapolis: When incoming freshman move into the dorms at the University of Minnesota this fall, there will be a new policy school officials hope will prevent sexual assault by defining what it means to give consent, KARE-TV reported.
MISSISSIPPI Lee County: Smoke, a missing Mississippi Highway Patrol bomb dog was found unharmed and a little hungry in a neighbor’s yard. Officials said they’re glad to have him back as he is the only explosive ordnance detection dog in the northern half of the state.
MISSOURI Kansas City: Authorities are investigating after a tractor-trailer crashed into a Missouri Department of Transportation building here, KSHBTV reported.
MONTANA Fort Belknap Indian Reservation: The bodies of 17 bison were found near a water trough over the Fourth of July weekend. The cause of the deaths is not yet known, but forensic analysis is underway. The Great Falls Tribune reported. that the dead bison were almost certainly members of a larger herd moved out of Yellowstone National Park in 2012.
NEBRASKA Marquette: Officials with a land trust say they are within $200,000 of buying a 650-acre, $1.9 million ranch near here. Prairie Plains Resource Institute Director Bill Whitney hopes to raise the remaining $200,000 by Nov. 25, The Grand Island Independent reported.
NEVADA Reno: The Washoe County School District Board of Trustees named Traci Davis as the new superintendent of schools, KTVN-TV reported. Davis was the interim superintendent.
NEW HAMPSHIRE Manchester: Officials have said the flesh damage seen on an overdose victim could be caused by infection from using dirty needles and poor health, not the heroin substitute Krokodil. The last confirmed use of the drug in the U.S. was in 2004 in Chicago, the New Hampshire Union Leader reported.
NEW JERSEY Trenton: Just five years after signing on to adopt Common Core State Standards, New Jersey officials are unceremoniously signing out, the Asbury Park Press reported. Despite the about-face, nobody is forecasting wholesale changes for public schools, and state officials, which have just started reviewing the standards, say they will keep controversial standardized tests.
NEW MEXICO Roswell: A 31⁄ 2- foot long lizard has gone missing here. KOB-TV reported that the Asian Water Monitor Lizard named Salazar escaped last week.
NEW YORK Buffalo: This city was the first stop on a photographer’s five-year journey to capture 100,000 people across the USA in portrait, WGRZ-TV reported. David Kafer, a Buffalo native who now lives in Santa Barbara, Calif., will be shooting here until Wednesday and hopes to photograph 3,000 people.
NORTH CAROLINA Durham: A neuroscience lab at Duke University claimed to have linked the brains of three lab rats and had them work together, using only electric pulses produced by their neurons, The News & Observer reported.
NORTH DAKOTA Mandan: The city is considering extending the time limit to park trailers or boats on the street in the summer. The Bismarck Tribune reported Police Chief Dennis Bullinger has asked to change a city ordinance in order to extend trailer parking from 12 to 72 hours.
OHIO Canton: Some people who live near the Pro Football Hall of Fame are raising concerns on how a proposal to develop the area by adding a hotel, restaurants and NFL-themed amusements might affect them, The Repository reported.
OKLAHOMA Tulsa: The recent record rainfall has put more stress on aging dams across the state, kfor.com reported. Most of the dams were built in the 1950s and meant to last about 50 years.
OREGON Salem: Swegle Elementary School parents received a letter stating their children would be turned over to authorities and kept overnight if they were not picked up on time after school, the Statesman Journal reported. The school district said the letter was sent in error.
PENNSYLVANIA Carrick: A 22-year-old man was in stable condition after being shot three times last night here, the Pitts- burgh Post-Gazette reported.
RHODE ISLAND Narragansett: Salty Brine Beach was evacuated after a “ground disturbance” — accompanied by a loud boom — stunned beachgoers and landed a woman in the hospital, the Providence Journal reported.
SOUTH CAROLINA Charleston: A new sex education program that would teach not only abstinence but also condom and contraceptive use drew heated discussion at a Charleston County School Board committee meeting last week, The Post and Courier reported.
SOUTH DAKOTA Pierre: Attorney General Marty Jackley says that county officials with religious objections to same-sex marriage can ask another official to issue a marriage license, the Argus Leader reported. However, the ACLU is challenging Jackley’s comments.
TENNESSEE Memphis: Zimm, a Sulawesi macaque who was on the loose for three days, was captured and is at the Memphis Zoo’s hospital for observation, zoo officials said in their blog. The 3-year-old, 10-pound monkey escaped her enclosure in Primate Canyon and wandered into the zoo’s culvert system.
TEXAS Austin: Hundreds of cases of echovirus have been reported the past two months in central Texas, starting much earlier than previous years. Playgrounds and splash pads are common places to catch the highly contagious virus, which causes fever, vomiting and diarrhea, kxan.com reported.
UTAH Salt Lake City: Firefighters rescued two cats that were having difficulty breathing after a house fire here, The Salt Lake Tribune reported. The firefighters gave them oxygen through oxygen masks specially sized and designed for cats. Both felines recovered and were reunited with their owners.
VERMONT Rutland: Rutland County Sheriff Stephen Benard wants to operate a county dispatch center to replace the one that will be lost when four centers around state are consolidated, the Rutland Herald reported.
VIRGINIA Doswell: Kings Dominion is eliminating the Shockwave roller coaster next month, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported. The nation’s oldest operating stand-up coaster will carry its last passengers Aug. 9.
WASHINGTON Tacoma: Mayor Marilyn Strickland wants to put a proposal for a $12 minimum hourly wage on the fall ballot to compete with a citizen’s initiative seeking a $15 wage, The News Tribune reported. She is asking for a gradual increase to $12 an hour by 2018.
WEST VIRGINIA Charleston: Parents, teachers and concerned citizens are being asked to evaluate education standards, wvpublic.org reported. The state Department of Education launched “West Virginia Academic Spotlight,” a five-month review of the Next Generation Content Standards and Objectives.
WISCONSIN Allouez: Because of state budget cuts, guards who work overnight in towers at the Green Bay Correctional Institute will be replaced with enhanced razor fencing, extra security cameras and a “human-presence detection system,” the Green Bay Press-Gazette reported.
WYOMING Rock Springs: Workmen are filling sinkholes following last week’s storm. The Rock Springs Rocket-Miner reported more than 100 reports of flood damage.