STATE-BY-STATE
ALABAMA Huntsville: Fashion Week celebrates its fifth anniversary with 25 runway shows, headlining designer Mychael Knight, exclusive shopping and VIP fashion mixers, AL.com reported.
ALASKA Juneau: Three Tlingit paddles about 3 feet long were missing from the Glacier Valley Elementary School library, the Empire reported. A 4-foot-tall Tlingit walking stick with a wolf head was also missing.
ARIZONA Flagstaff: Police asked for tips after almost 30 trees were illegally felled near Buffalo Park, the Arizona Daily Sun reported.
ARKANSAS Little Rock: Small-scale food producers are struggling to make a profit, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported. C.J. Sentell, production manager of Grass Roots Farmers’ Cooperative, a small-farm co-op, said places that will process a small farmer’s poultry that are USDA-approved are a key piece of infrastructure missing from the local food scene.
CALIFORNIA Anaheim: Police defended their handling of a Ku Klux Klan rally in which three people suffered stab wounds and 13 people were arrested, the Los Angeles Times reported.
COLORADO Colorado Springs: A former coach at a cheerleading school here has acknowledged sexually assaulting a 13-year-old student, The Gazette reported.
CONNECTICUT Greenwich: Greenwich High has ditched plans for graduates to wear gender-neutral caps and gowns, the Greenwich Time reported. Students will now have a choice of wearing white or red gowns. Female graduates traditionally wear white and male graduates don red.
DELAWARE Ocean View: A YouTube video of an Ocean View police K-9 unit allegedly speeding westbound on highway 264 in North Carolina has surfaced and prompted a flurry of calls for action against and in support of the officer, The News Journal reported.
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA: Archipelago is on a different level of tiki kitsch, The Washington Post reported. It’s the only bar and grill in town where you can sit on a stool carved to resemble a tiki god and sip a Mai Tai while checking out a shrine of Tom Selleck memorabilia.
FLORIDA Melbourne: About 150 people were evacuated from a movie complex after an employee found a suspicious package, Florida Today reported.
GEORGIA Savannah: The curbside recycling program, which began seven years ago, has always accepted paper, plastics, metals and glass. It still does, but for the past six months that glass hasn’t been recycled, the Savannah
Morning News reported. About 1.1 million pounds of glass has gone to landfills since August.
HAWAII Kaaawa: The northbound, or makai, lane of Kamehameha Highway has been closed after high surf eroded the lane, Hawaii News Now reported. It’s not known when repairs may be done or completed.
IDAHO Bonners Ferry: A man who fatally shot a dog he thought was a wolf was sentenced to two years of probation, The Spokesman-Review reported.
ILLINOIS Chicago: The archdiocese announced it will hand over the historic Shrine of Christ the
King church, which was slated for demolition after it was damaged in a fire, to the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest, which plans to rebuild the 92-year-old structure, the Chicago Tribune reported.
INDIANA Fort Wayne: Police are seeking information in the slayings of three Muslims last week here, The Indianapolis Star reported.
IOWA Nora Springs: The owner of a strip club says he’s not worried about efforts to change the city’s zoning and close his business because he considers it a “theater of performing arts.” Dale Peterson, who recently opened the Pole Barn Theater, told the Globe Gazette the city’s plan to change zoning for adult entertainment won’t stop him.
KANSAS Wichita: Police asked local officials to consider regulating massage businesses in hopes of reducing human trafficking.
The Wichita Eagle reported that Deputy Chief Hassan Ramzah says the move is aimed at keeping the community safe.
KENTUCKY Louisville: AT&T filed a federal lawsuit over action taken here that will let Google Fiber install equipment on AT&T’s utility poles, The Courier-Journal reported.
LOUISIANA Marrero: After plans to build a gas station — and cut down several trees in the process — were denied by the Jefferson Parish Council, the proposed gas station’s owners and developers are suing the parish, The Times-Picayune reported.
MAINE Portland: The state’s fox hunting season has ended for the year. It began on Oct. 17.
MARYLAND Ocean City: A powerful nor’easter in January poured thousands of cubic yards of sand into the Ocean City Inlet, The Daily Times reported, so the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will begin dredging the channel by the end of the first week of March.
MASSACHUSETTS Stoughton: The local police department will offer its station as a “safe zone” for people conducting in-person exchanges of items bought online. The department said on its Facebook page that the station’s
lobby and parking lot are now available for purchases agreed upon over sites such as Craigslist, eBay and Online Yard Sale.
MICHIGAN Kalamazoo: The youngest victim of a Feb. 20 shooting spree here, Abigail Kopf, 14, has been taken off a ventilator and is breathing on her own, WZZM-TV reported.
MINNESOTA Savage: The Dan Patch Line bridge across the Minnesota River will swing shut to carry rail traffic this spring for the first time in nearly a decade, the Star Tribune reports. Minor repair work on the bridge started after Thanksgiving and will be completed in time for the expected opening of service.
MISSISSIPPI Biloxi: Two people were arrested on charges they tried to sell thousands of dollars’ worth of stolen cards used in the role-playing game Magic at a shop here, The Sun Herald reported.
MISSOURI Columbia: University of Missouri libraries will offer fewer subscriptions to academic journals and databases to cope with a budget reduction, The Columbia Daily Tribune reported.
MONTANA Great Falls: Efforts to resume Amtrak service to Culbertson, Mont., are gaining momentum, the Great Falls Tribune reported.
NEBRASKA McCook: San Francisco-based Boutique Air will provide flights to Denver from McCook this summer, the McCook Gazette reported. Boutique’s air service contract begins June 1 and expires May 31, 2018.
NEVADA Las Vegas: Local police caught several teens suspected of shoplifting BB guns from a Walmart, KSNV-TV reported.
NEW HAMPSHIRE Derry: Higher-than-normal levels of lead were found at an elementary school, so faucets were changed and a water treatment system will be installed, the New Hampshire Union Leader reported.
NEW JERSEY Toms River: Police are trying to identify a white male, possibly in his early to mid-20s, who took two purses from a home while a family slept, the Asbury Park Press reported.
NEW MEXICO Santa Fe: Ladder Ranch, which is owned by media mogul Ted Turner, will temporarily shelter five Mexican gray wolves on their way to Mexico, the Albuquerque Journal reported. The New Mexico Game and Fish Commission gave unanimous approval for a permit to host Mexican wolves as part of a federal species recovery program.
NEW YORK Yonkers: As much as 600 gallons of oil drained into the Bronx River on Saturday as hazmat crews scrambled to clean up a large oil spill, The Journal News reported. The truck, carrying 6,000 gallons of home-heating oil, had pulled into a driveway at an apartment building when the leak began, spilling about 2,000 gallons into the roadway in front of the building.
NORTH CAROLINA Fayetteville: Residents of a gated community near here are trying to figure out why areas of the neighborhood remain flooded days or weeks after it rains. Gates Four Homeowners Association Secretary Mike Molin told The Fayetteville Observer that the problems started about a year ago.
NORTH DAKOTA Minot: Minot State University President Steven Shirley says one staff member will be eliminated as a result of approximately $2 million in budget cuts at the school, KXMC-TV reported. The cuts are part of 4% budget cuts for all state-funded entities ordered by Gov. Dalrymple.
OHIO Dayton: Pastor William Schooler, 70, of St. Peters Missionary Baptist Church was fatally shot in his office at the church, the Dayton Daily News reported.
OKLAHOMA Bethany: Daniel Timothy Johnson, 32, is accused of executing a large-scale counterfeiting operation, The Oklahoman reported. He is charged in Oklahoma City federal court with possession of counterfeited securities of the United States. The charge came after months of investigation by Secret Service agents.
OREGON Boardman: The U.S. Department of Agriculture has approved an $11 million loan for a project to build a biorefinery here that would convert farm waste into natural gas and liquid fertilizer, the East Oregonian reported.
PENNSYLVANIA Gettysburg: A small plane crashed into trees near here. WGAL-TV reported that the pilot was trapped in the trees, with the plane lodged in the branches, for almost three hours.
RHODE ISLAND Providence: The first new building on the former Interstate 195 land is expected to be completed this summer on one of two parcels bought by Johnson & Wales University. The school bought the land for $3.9 million from the state Department of Transportation in 2012.
SOUTH CAROLINA Greenville: National PTA will honor Joy Grayson with the Shirley Igo Advocate of the Year Award at the association’s 2016 Legislative Conference in March. As vice president of advocacy for the South Carolina PTA, Grayson led the adoption of an annual legislative platform for the association,
The Greenville News reported.
SOUTH DAKOTA Mitchell: The city will implement new 911 technology, linking all dispatch centers in the state. The Daily Republic reported that the dispatch centers are transitioning to Next Generation 911.
TENNESSEE Watertown: A Wilson County school bus driver, Joe Thompson, 80, is now a Grammy winner, picking up the award in mid-February as part of the gospel quartet The Fairfield Four, The Tennessean reported. The group won for best Roots Album.
TEXAS Dallas: Southern Methodist University announced that it has raised $1.15 billion in a campaign that started in 2006, the largest amount ever by a private university in Texas, The Dallas Morning News reported.
UTAH Salt Lake City: Private landowners can keep anglers out of streams that flow through their properties as the state’s high court considers an appeal of a judge’s decision to open the areas to the public, the Salt Lake Tribune reported.
VERMONT Burlington: Ellen Martinsen, a researcher who splits her working life between the University of Vermont’s biology department (where she earned her Ph.D.) and the Conservation Biology Institute in Washington, D.C., has confirmed widespread malarial infections in native white-tail deer. Until this year, it was commonly believed that the Plasmodium parasite had no native mammal hosts in the Western Hemisphere, Burlington Free Press reported.
VIRGINIA Richmond: The Times-Dispatch reported that Public Schools Superintendent Dana Bedden was the region’s highest-paid public employee last year, earning $290,244, according to a review of public salaries.
WASHINGTON Seattle: If the weather is favorable, the Museum of Flight will receive a recently restored Boeing 727 prototype on Wednesday after its final flight from Paine Field in Everett. Upon landing, the 727 will taxi directly into the museum’s parking area, where the engines will be shut down for the last time.
WEST VIRGINIA Davis: Timberline Four Seasons Resort reopened a chairlift that dropped a couple of dozen skiers about 30 feet to the ground last month, the Charleston Gazette-Mail reported.
WISCONSIN Green Bay: Human error prevented some Green Bay residents from receiving the absentee ballots they requested for February’s primary elections, Green Bay Press-Gazette reported.
WYOMING Jackson: Wildlife managers say there have not been any major changes in the number of bighorn sheep, moose and bison populations in the region, the Jackson Hole News & Guide reported. A recent Wyoming Game and Fish Department aerial survey found that the Jackson moose herd was unchanged in size compared with a year ago. The moose herd is estimated at 450 animals.