News from across the USA

ALABAMA Opelika: A weekend house fire claimed the life of a local woman. The Opelika-Au

burn News reported that Betsy Marie Hamby, 47, died in the fire, which happened in the Beauregard community. ALASKA Fairbanks: U.S. Census data show that more people move to Alaska from Texas than from any other state, the Fairbanks

Daily News-Miner reported. An estimated 3,172 new Alaskans per year came from Texas between 2009 and 2013. ARIZONA Flagstaff: Officials are trying to figure out why state anglers are getting few fish despite well-stocked waters. The

Arizona Daily Sun reported that the Arizona Game and Fish Department is close to completing a four-year study of trout-stocking practices across the state. ARKANSAS Little Rock: The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported that residents want to re-establish the Weiner School District as a home to a K-to-12thgrade agriculture academy. CALIFORNIA Seal Beach: A baby girl is doing well after her roadside birth on Interstate 405 near here, the Orange County Register reported. COLORADO Denver: Stapleton residents woke up to signs Sunday demanding the neighborhood change its name. The fliers were posted by Black Lives Matter 5280, a group objecting to the name because it honors the late Benjamin Stapleton, a five-term Denver mayor who historians say won the 1923 election with Ku Klux Klan support. He reportedly denounced the Klan later in life, KUSA-TV reported. CONNECTICUT Hartford: Most of the medical marijuana patients in Connecticut are being seen by a handful of doctors, the New

Haven Register reported. State Consumer Protection Commissioner Jonathan Harris has launched a public service campaign to increase the number of doctors registered in the medical marijuana program. DELAWARE Dover: Attorney General Matt Denn proposed four action plans to curb drug abuse, including standardizing regulations to govern how freely doctors and other providers prescribe opiate drugs, The News

Journal reported. DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA: The earliest known photo of the Smithsonian Castle, the Smithsonian’s first building, went on display in the great hall of the Castle, The Washington Post reported. FLORIDA Pensacola: Police are awaiting autopsy results after a dead body was found at the Confederate Monument downtown, the News Journal reported. GEORGIA Augusta: More than a dozen handguns were stolen after thieves broke into Cabela’s Outpost here, The Augusta Chronicle reported. HAWAII Hilo: The Mauna Kea visitor center has reopened after being closed for more than a month during protests about the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope atop the mountain, the

Hawaii Tribune-Herald reported. IDAHO Boise: Officials are examining a local spring, KTVB-TV reported. A dog reportedly died after drinking from the water. ILLINOIS Wilmington: An environmental non-profit group is raising money to install a webcam to record a small herd of about two dozen bison that will arrive this fall at Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie. The Daily

Southtown reported that the National Forest Foundation has set up an online crowd-funding campaign to raise $17,000. INDIANA Carmel: Mayor Jim Brainard has drafted a new antidiscrimination ordinance in the wake of the continuing fallout over the state’s controversial “religious freedom” law, The

Indianapolis Star reported. The City Council will consider the ordinance Aug. 17, though passage seems assured. IOWA Des Moines: Stubbornly low commodity prices are sending a nervous ripple throughout the farm economy as growers struggle to lock in a profit before bumper corn and soybean crops this fall. Operating expenses for fertilizer, rent, seed and other farm inputs have remained high as prices have dropped about 60% for corn and 45% for soybeans since their 2012 highs, The

Des Moines Register reported. KANSAS Topeka: An audit at Auburn-Washburn Unified School District 437 showed that the 6,200-student district could save $68,000 a year by replacing four of its 10 nurses with health aides, The Topeka Capital-Jour

nal reported. KENTUCKY Radcliff: Daniel Cox has been charged with murder in the death of his 4-month-old son,

The Courier-Journal reported. LOUISIANA Thibodaux: Nicholls State is the sixth-most expensive of the nine University of Louisiana System universities — down from third-most expensive — after being the only one to not raise tuition this year. The

Daily Comet reported that Nicholls President Bruce Murphy criticized the practice of raising tuition and fees to offset fewer state dollars. MAINE Portland: Operators of the Nova Star ferry service between here and Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, announced that they plan to operate the vessel on a new route across the English Channel between Boulogne, France, and Ramsgage, England this winter, the Portland Press Herald reported. MARYLAND Thurmont: An active hand grenade was removed from a McDonald’s parking lot Sunday, according to Frederick County fire officials. Officials say it took almost two hours to remove the device, WUSA-TV reported.

MASSACHUSETTS Mendon: A house fire that killed a local man and his dog appears to have been deliberately set, WBZ-AM reported. MICHIGAN Empire: Parts of northern Michigan’s Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore reopened a week after severe storms and violent winds uprooted trees, scattered debris and spoiled the landscape in the popular tourist area, according to the National Park Service. MINNESOTA Minneapolis: The Veterans Administration has been using unqualified medical personnel to do examinations for traumatic brain injuries at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center, according to documents obtained during a KARE 11 News investigation. MISSISSIPPI Biloxi: Tulane University plans to open its Mississippi Coast campus on Sept. 8. Karen Lucas, Tulane University Mississippi Coast associate dean, told WLOX-TV that staff will start moving in before Labor Day weekend.

MISSOURI Pinhook: The South

east Missourian reported that bulldozers leveled the final vestiges of this community, which was purposely flooded in May 2011. MONTANA Bozeman: This is proving a big year for spiders and aphids in deciduous trees, the Montana State University Extension Service reported. Montana has had a couple of outbreaks of forest tent caterpillars, and canker worms are in some urban areas, as well as an invasion of weevils. NEBRASKA Bloomfield: A man accused of stealing cattle faces multiple felony charges in Knox County, the Lincoln Journal Star reported. Timothy Ketelsen, 44, is accused of stealing cattle on at least five different occasions since November. Authorities say he sometimes enlisted his sons, ages 16 and 14, to help him load steers onto trailers at night. NEVADA Reno: Lightning sparked a small wildfire, killing one firefighter and injuring another, the Reno Gazette

Journal reported.

NEW HAMPSHIRE

Concord: The state’s summer turkey survey is open and runs until Aug. 31. This effort helps biologists estimate how many young turkeys survive into adulthood in a particular year. NEW JERSEY Belmar: Elias, a 100-pound, nearly 7-foot male hammerhead shark, was seen off the coast over the weekend. Elias, who is being tracked by OCEARCH, last surfaced less than 4 miles offshore Sunday morning, the Asbury Park Press reported. NEW MEXICO Albuquerque: Don Moya, the chief financial officer for Albuquerque Public Schools, was placed on paid administrative leave for undisclosed reasons, the Albuquerque Journal reported. NEW YORK Buffalo: Local hospitals are seeing a noticeable uptick in births, almost nine months after a historic November snowstorm trapped a lot of western New Yorkers inside for days, WGRZ-TV reported. NORTH CAROLINA Fort Bragg: Gen. Robert Abrams took over leadership of U.S. Army Forces Command here. His father is a former Army chief of staff in the 1970s for whom the military named the M1 Abrams battle tank. NORTH DAKOTA Bismarck: North Dakota State University was awarded a $72,500 federal grant for medical research. The money from the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering will go toward developing a “smart” drug delivery system, which will enhance a drug ’s efficacy and concentration while reducing side effects. OHIO Dayton: The new $250,000 statue of Ohio inventor Thomas Edison for Statuary Hall at the U.S. Capitol will be installed there this fall, The Dayton

Daily News reported. The cost includes returning a statue of former governor William Allen, a Democrat from the 1800s who supported Southern slave owners, to an undisclosed spot in Ohio. OKLAHOMA Tulsa: Feasting on ice cakes made with fish, three tiger cubs celebrated their 1st birthday at the Tulsa Zoo last week, the Tulsa World reported. OREGON Portland: City officials could spend tens of millions more developing affordable housing, The Oregonian reported. The Portland Housing Advisory Commission last week unanimously recommended spending at least 50% of money within urban renewal districts on affordable housing.

PENNSYLVANIA

Pittsburgh: Children living in poverty rose from from 17% in 2008 to 19% in 2013, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported. RHODE ISLAND Providence: The University of Rhode Island and Rhode Island School of Design were awarded $6 million from the National Science Foundation to study the future of the region’s dams, the Providence

Journal reported. SOUTH CAROLINA Lyman: The mayor here was arrested in connection with a wiretapping investigation, The Greenville News reported. Rodney Dean Turner, 58, was charged with wiretapping and misconduct in office by a public official for allegedly entering into secret negotiations, issuing franchises and contracting to lease property owned by the town, according to warrants. SOUTH DAKOTA Rapid City: Mike Pflaum, the incoming superintendent of Badlands National Park, says he’s open to a plan to create a tribal national park in the Badlands. The proposal would establish on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation the country’s first tribal national park. TENNESSEE Jackson: Letetia Henley Kirk, who was Elvis Presley’s private nurse and lived on the grounds of Graceland, is releasing a book about her life around the music legend and his family, The Jackson Sun reported. TEXAS Austin: The Texas Education Agency says about 94% of districts and 86% of schools meet the state’s minimum education standards. UTAH Salt Lake City: Members of the Utah State Board of Education plan to revise a proposed set of middle-school science standards after feedback from parents, teachers and other citizens, KSL-TV reported. VERMONT South Burlington: SolarCity opened a facility here. SolarCity, based in San Mateo, Calif., was founded in 2006 by two brothers, Lyndon and Peter Rive, and their cousin, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, reported the

Burlington Free Press. VIRGINIA Doswell: The Shockwave, the first stand-up roller coaster on the East Coast when it opened in 1986, made its last run at Kings Dominion, the Richmond

Times-Dispatch reported. The ride is being removed for future growth. WASHINGTON Seattle: A local neighborhood is requesting a formal homeless camp. KING-TV reported that community leaders in Yesler Terrace say recurring problems with homeless living along Interstate 5 could be solved with a city-sponsored camp. WEST VIRGINIA Charleston: Urban deer hunts have succeeded at thinning local whitetail populations, the Charleston Gazette

Mail reported. State-sanctioned urban archery hunts in municipalities began in 1996 as a way to reduce deer populations and damage. Eleven municipalities now have urban hunting seasons. WISCONSIN Green Bay: Two ambitious Howard-Suamico eighth-graders did a lot more this summer than spend their time at the beach. Emerson Dycus and Sarah McAllister sent three science experiments into outer space as part of a NASA-sponsored science contest, The Green

Bay Press-Gazette reported. WYOMING Casper: As the coal industry reels, school facility funding appears headed for trouble. There are now only seven leases from which the state draws money, the Casper Star-Tribune reported. Within the next year, that number will shrivel to two and then zero by fiscal year 2018.