STATE- BY- STATE

News from across the USA

ALABAMA Dothan: Songwriter Perry Carlton “Buddy” Buie, whose credits include songs performed by B. J. Thomas, The Classics IV and the Atlanta Rhythm Section, died Saturday, AL. com reported. In 2010, he was inducted into the state Music Hall of Fame.

ALASKA Fairbanks: Participants in the Composing in the Wilderness program soaked up inspiration at Denali National Park and Preserve and the Yukon- Charley National Preserve, created musical compositions and will hear those pieces performed live at the “Sounds of Nature: Alaskan Premieres” concert Tuesday, newsminer.com reported.

ARIZONA Phoenix: At Track Night in America events, the Sports Car Club of America offers people the chance to drive their own cars on a racetrack, the Republic reported. Asphalt- bubbling heat has tested the limits of drivers and their machines.

ARKANSAS Newport: As a student, Jerry Rucker confessed to ArkansasOnline, he broke scores of windows at the W. F. Branch School. Nearly half a century later, Rucker, 58, is taking part in in a communitywide effort to clean up the abandoned buildings and grounds to restore the school.

CALIFORNIA Los Angeles: Suite holders’ experience can be far different from that of the average sports fan in the bleachers. They enjoy air conditioning, high- def TVs and fully stocked refrigerators. Such luxuries are no longer exclusive to the wealthy. A thriving secondhand rental market has emerged, the Times reported.

COLORADO Craig: Rancher Glenn Gariner is offering a $ 500 award for information after his horse was found dead in a pasture after the July 4 weekend, KUSATV reported.

CONNECTICUT Hartford: The city opened four cooling centers — North End Senior Center, South End Wellness Center, Parkville Senior Center, and the Hispanic Health Council— to battle the summer heat.

DELAWARE New Castle County: County Executive Tom Gordon is pushing to link private security cameras into the county’s emergency command center, The News Journal reported.

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA: The Washington Post reported on a study in the Journal of Developmental and Behavior Pediatrics that linked higher rates of TV watching among 2- year- olds with a higher likelihood of being bullied in the sixth grade.

FLORIDA Cape Coral: Community Homes LLC, a custom home builder, has run into trouble — leaving the city with partially completed houses whose owners are getting tagged with liens by unpaid subcontractors. The News- Press reported the city has suspended the builder’s permitpulling privileges until it gets proof his financial condition has stabilized.

GEORGIA Atlanta: Whitney Ryan Ashmore, 39, a Polk County jailer, was arrested after allegedly being found at the facility with contraband, including marijuana and tobacco, the Journal- Constitution reported.

HAWAII Lihue: A brush fire burned 40 acres behind the Lihue Airport after an all- day blaze, The Garden Island reported.

IDAHO Boise: A local boat builder has left town, leaving behind unfinished boats, complaints and lawsuits, the Idaho Statesman reported.

ILLINOIS Chicago: The Tribune reported on a band of archaeological surveyors battling mosquitoes and underbrush in the Forest Preserve District of Cook County in their search for artifacts of human habitation. The forest preserves’ 70,000 undeveloped acres are an archaeological treasure, yielding 550 historically rich sites.

INDIANA Crown Point: A three- day celebration is planned this week to mark the opening of the new John Dillinger Museum in Crown Point’s Old Lake County Courthouse, The ( Munster) Times reported.

IOWA Iowa City: A judge set a $ 1 million cash- only bond for a man who police say murdered Susan Pearl Kersten in 1995. Steven John Klein, 54, was arrested in Muscatine, The PressCitizen reported.

KANSAS El Dorado: Divers were to resume the search for a 26- year- old man who fell into the Walnut River and never resurfaced, KAKE- TV reported.

KENTUCKY Louisville: State audits of companies that provide Medicaid- funded homes and services for adults with disabilities are sending shock waves through the businesses, which say the state is demanding repayment of millions of dollars for what amounts to minor paperwork errors, The Courier- Journal reported.

LOUISIANA Lacombe: Firefighters responding to a report of a large fire found the smoldering remains of several trucks — including two garbage trucks, The Times- Picayune reported.

MAINE Fryeburg: A man was rescued after his canoe capsized on the Saco River, the Portland Press Herald reported.

MARYLAND Ocean City: Frustrated with noisy part- time neighbors, residents in Ocean City’s handful of single- family neighborhoods are calling for officials to crack down on vacation rentals, the Daily Times reported.

MASSACHUSETTS Boston: A growing number of students at Massachusetts community colleges are borrowing money to pay for school, and in recent years an increasing percentage have defaulted on their loans, a review by The Boston Globe has found.

MICHIGAN Grand Blanc Township: Bella Chinoni, 6, who been given olive oil infused with medical marijuana since January, has had her life- threatening seizures practically disappear, and parents Ida and Denny Chinoni want state law changed to permit the infusions, the Detroit Free Press reported.

MINNESOTA Paynesvsille: A proposed wind project that was supposed to make Stearns County a leader in renewable energy production and provide thousands of dollars in annual income to local farmers is on hold, the St. Cloud Times reported.

MISSISSIPPI Purvis: Lamar County logged its largest oneyear spurt in seven years in terms of overall dollars and growth percentage. The county, which topped for the first time in 2014 the half- billion dollar mark in assessed property value, grew by another $ 12.4 million in 2015, a 2.4% increase, the Hattiesburg American reported.

MISSOURI Columbia: A child was shot in the arm and taken to a local hospital, KRCG- TV reported.

MONTANA Deer Lodge: A 68year- old woman has pleaded not guilty to elder abuse after authorities accused her of cashing a senior citizen’s checks totaling more than $ 48,000 and stealing his cat, the Montana Standard reported.

NEBRASKA Lincoln: School officials have budgeted $ 1.2 million to hire additional teachers for an influx of students who speak little English, the Lincoln Journal Star reported.

NEVADA Carson City: Dozens of private school parents gathered in Las Vegas and Carson City last week to voice their concerns to the Nevada Treasurer’s Office over a new state law that gives parents $ 5,000 for private school tuition or homeschooling costs, but only if their child attends 100 consecutive days in public school first, the Reno Gazette- Journal said.

NEW HAMPSHIRE Portsmouth: Only 1% of New Hampshire’s 8,000 full- time firefighters are women, the Portsmouth Herald reported.

NEW JERSEY Plainfield: The state reached a $ 12.5 million settlement with a man wrongfully convicted of murdering two children in 1985, the Courier- News reported. Byron Halsey was exonerated and released from prison in 2006 after DNA proved he was not the killer.

NEW MEXICO Santa Fe: A uni- versity professor is taking his pursuit of a death certificate for Billy the Kid to New Mexico’s highest court. The Santa Fe New Mexican reported that historian Robert Stahl filed a petition with the New Mexico Supreme Court to order the state’s medical examiner to create the document. According to most accounts, the Kid was fatally shot by Lincoln County Sheriff Pat Garrett in 1881.

NEW YORK Buffalo: Legendary sportscaster Van Miller died last week after a brief illness, WGRZTV reported. He was 87. The much- beloved “Voice of the Bills,” called play- by- play over the course of four decades.

NORTH CAROLINA Wake County: Students will get some relief this fall as the state’s largest school district cuts the number of locally required exams from three to one, The News & Observer reported.

NORTH DAKOTA Mandan: Local officials have chosen JLG Architects to design a $ 22 million sports complex here, the Bismarck Tribune reported. Voters in June approved a three- fourths percent sales tax to fund the facility near the Tesoro oil refinery north of Interstate 94.

OHIO Ripley: Victoria Kennerd, a mother pregnant with her fifth child, and two of her children were killed after a torrential downpour swept away their mobile home, The Cincinnati Enquirer reported. The victims were part of a family of six huddling for safety in the mobile home when Red Oak Creek flooded and swept the home away; the family’s father and two sons survived.

OKLAHOMA Holdenville: A Tulsa man drowned and a local man was injured trying to rescue him at Holdenville City Lake, The Ada News reported.

OREGON Portland: Three men were arrested after a confrontation at Detroit Lake. The Oregonian reported that a group of 15 to 20 men got into a fight with the Marion County Sheriff’s marine patrol.

PENNSYLVANIA Harrisburg: A retired Gettysburg College pro- fessor will spend two to four years in prison for trying to meet a 15- year- old boy for sex in what was really an online sting run by the state attorney general’s office, the Gettysburg Times reported. Robert Viti, 69, was sentenced by a Dauphin County judge.

RHODE ISLAND Newport: The Rhode Island Department of Health says water quality at Fort Adams State Park and King Park beaches here is now safe for swimming.

SOUTH CAROLINA Pickens County: State officials are taking over the investigation into the death of Olivia Grimes, 16, of Lakeland, Fla., who fell from a rope swing at a Christian camp on Sassafras Mountain, The Greenville News reported.

SOUTH DAKOTA Waubay: Residents are working to recover from heavy storm damage. Mayor Kevin Jens told KDLT- TV that the town is resilient.

TENNESSEE Brownsville: This community is pushing the Justice Department to reopen a 75- yearold civil- rights case in which Elbert Williams is believed to be the first NAACP official killed for seeking to register black voters, National Public Radio reported. Clues about Williams’ 1940 murder are thought to be buried with him Taylor Cemetery, an African- American cemetery that dates to the late 1800s.

TEXAS Austin: Police want to add more than 400 officers to the force over the next five years, the Austin American- Statesman reported.

UTAH Kanab: A new zip line employee fell to his death while trying to assist a rider. The employee was pulled from the deck to a position along the line about 150 feet off the ground, where he lost his grip and fell, The Spectrum reported.

VERMONT Burlington: Burlington police officer Leanne Werner, suspended because of drunken driving allegations, was expected to face more serious criminal charges after one of two elderly people she struck died, Burlington Free Press reported. Omer Martin, 74, of St. Albans died at University of Vermont Medical Center on Saturday.

VIRGINIA Roanoke: The state grows less than half the grapes needed by the commonwealth’s rapidly expanding wine industry, the Richmond Times- Dispatch reported. Grape- production rates cannot sustain growth in the winemaking business.

WASHINGTON Vancouver: A Clark County jury on Monday awarded nearly $ 1 million to a welder who was injured on the job. The Columbian reported that Charles Pamplin was injured in a December 2010 oil rig construction accident.

WEST VIRGINIA Charleston: After 458 baptisms, 165 confirmations, 248 weddings and 369 funerals, the Rev. Olof Scott will retire July 31 as priest and dean of the St. George Orthodox Cathedral, the Gazette reported.

WISCONSIN Appleton: Appleton and the AIDS Resource Center of Wisconsin will hold a training session Thursday on how to administer an antidote to opiate overdoses. The training was prompted by a string of heroin overdoses that took place recently within an 18- hour period, The Post- Crescent reported.

WYOMING Laramie: About 100 more students are expected to attend the University of Wyoming this fall than last year, the Laramie Boomerang reported.