HIGHLIGHT: KENTUCKY
Williamstown: A Bible-themed attraction that features a 510-foot-long wooden Noah’s Ark plans to begin fundraising for an expansion. The Ark Encounter said it would take about three years to research, plan and build a “Tower of Babel” that will “tackle the racism issue” by helping visitors “understand how genetics research and the Bible confirm the origin of all people groups around the world.” Answers in Genesis, the ministry behind the ark, preaches a strict interpretation of the Earth’s creation in the Bible. The expansion plans also include an indoor model of “what Jerusalem may have looked like in the time of Christ.”
ALABAMA Tuskegee: A City Council member using a saw cut into a 115year-old Confederate memorial Wednesday but failed to topple it before the sheriff showed up, marking the latest move in a push to remove the contentious monument from the nearly all-Black town.
ALASKA Juneau: A group seeking Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s ouster has yet to gather enough signatures to force a recall election, nearly two years after getting started.
ARIZONA Phoenix: Arizona’s secretary of state on Wednesday asked the state attorney general to investigate whether former President Donald Trump and his allies broke the law in trying to pressure Maricopa County officials after the 2020 election.
ARKANSAS Little Rock: The state reported 1,000 new coronavirus cases Wednesday – its biggest one-day spike in nearly five months. Gov. Asa Hutchinson said this week that he would tour the state for a series of community “conversations” aimed at getting more people vaccinated.
CALIFORNIA San Francisco: Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday kicked off California’s $1.1 billion plan to clean trash and graffiti from highways, roads and other public spaces, an effort he said will beautify the state and create up to 11,000 jobs.
COLORADO Denver: The state will ban single-use plastic bags and polystyrene food containers in 2024 under a law signed by Gov. Jared Polis.
CONNECTICUT Hartford: Officials at Eversource, the state’s largest electric utility, insisted Thursday that they are prepared for the impact of Tropical Storm Elsa, while continuing to defend their response to a storm last August that left thousands without power for more than a week.
DELAWARE Rehoboth Beach: A 45foot section of the historic Henlopen Hotel’s facade fell onto the boardwalk Sunday, but the city and hotel said the damage is strictly cosmetic.
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA Washington: The fencing installed around the U.S. Capitol after the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection will start being removed as soon as Friday, but most visitors are still not allowed inside the iconic building, the House sergeant-at-arms said in a memo Wednesday.
FLORIDA North Miami Beach: A building that was evacuated last week over safety concerns must stay unoccupied until the condo association submits a new 40-year recertification report that addresses all structural and electrical issues, city officials said Thursday. The building is about 5 miles from Surfside, where a condo collapsed June 24.
GEORGIA Atlanta: Tom Houck, who drove Martin Luther King Jr. and his family around the city during the civil rights movement, is reopening his Civil Rights Tours Atlanta bus tours after shutting down during the pandemic. Tourism connected to the movement in the capital is slowly returning, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. The National Center for Civil and Human Rights has seen a 5% increase in attendance over the past several weeks, and the APEX Museum has also seen an uptick in attendance since it reopened.
HAWAII Honolulu: The median sale price for single-family homes on Oahu, just shy of $1 million, hit another record in June – the fifth time that’s happened in the past six months.
IDAHO McCall: A conservation group has formed hoping to preserve stateowned land around Payette Lake where a private firm has proposed a huge land swap that could lead to developing much of it with homes.
ILLINOIS Chicago: A man who was in custody after police found a rifle with a laser sight in a hotel room that overlooks a Lake Michigan beach over the July Fourth weekend made bond and then proposed to his girlfriend upon his release. Authorities say a member of the cleaning staff at the W Hotel told police they observed the rifle, a handgun and ammunition on a 12th-floor windowsill.
INDIANA Fishers: The suburban city is looking to manage the tenants that move in after big box stores move out. A proposed ordinance before the City Council would give councilors final say on what businesses can move into vacant stores of more than 25,000 square feet if their purpose is different from the previous use.
IOWA Des Moines: Iowa Finance Authority Director Debi Durham says she takes full responsibility for launching too early a program that was meant to provide emergency rental and utility assistance to residents affected by the pandemic but has delivered only a tiny fraction of the funds. But she told the IFA board Wednesday that the federal funds came with few rules, and the program was more difficult to get up and running than anticipated.
KANSAS Americus: A civil rights group is threatening to sue the North Lyon County school district if it doesn’t train employees about LGBTQ rights in response to an eighth grade student being suspended from riding a school bus after saying, “I’m a lesbian.” A Kansas Association of School Boards investigation found that the bus driver and the principal of Dieker’s K-8 school sexually harassed her.
LOUISIANA New Orleans: A book festival debut that was canceled by the pandemic has been rescheduled for October. Most of the authors scheduled for March 2020 will be at the New Orleans Book Festival at Tulane University, including Malcolm Gladwell and John Grisham.
MAINE Portland: The governor has signed off on a prohibition of offshore wind projects in state waters in a bid to ease concerns voiced by the commercial fishing industry.
MARYLAND Baltimore: Police officers have a practice of picking up overtime shifts on paid vacation to get double the money, a report from the city’s inspector general found.
MASSACHUSETTS Canton: A federal appeals court has overturned the Food and Drug Administration’s ban on use of electric shock devices on people with mental disabilities by a residential school. The Judge Rotenberg Educational Center is the only institution in the U.S. that still uses shock therapy to modify residents’ behavior, the Boston Globe reports.
MICHIGAN Lansing: State auditors will review the accuracy of the number of coronavirus deaths linked to long-term care facilities. GOP lawmakers have questioned whether there is an undercount.
MINNESOTA Duluth: Once hunted to the brink of extinction, elk could be reintroduced to the northeastern Minnesota forest. The Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa has submitted a plan to the Department of Natural Resources to move 100 to 150 elk from existing herds.
MISSISSIPPI Biloxi: The pharmacy school at William Carey University is now fully accredited. It’s considered an “accelerated program,” meaning students can complete it in two years and 10 months instead of the usual four years.
MISSOURI Jefferson City: Restaurants will be able to sell to-go cocktails permanently under a bill Gov. Mike Parson signed Wednesday.
MONTANA Great Falls: In a study that ranked all states’ patriotism, the Treasure State wound up on top. Researchers for WalletHub cited exceptionally high participation in civic groups and the military.
NEBRASKA Lincoln: Media mogul and billionaire bison rancher Ted Turner is donating an 80,000-acre ranch he owns to his own nonprofit agriculture ecosystem research institute and says he might do the same with four other ranches in Nebraska’s Sand Hills. But he’ll continue to pay taxes on the land, much to the relief of local officials and state leaders, the Omaha World-Herald reports.
NEVADA Reno: The state’s coronavirus positivity rate has more than doubled over the past month to 7.9%, and the average number of new daily cases statewide has hit its highest level since February, health officials say. As of Tuesday, Nevada had the nation’s third-highest count of new cases per capita.
NEW HAMPSHIRE Concord: An investigation has recovered more than $140,000 in back wages owed to 66 delivery employees for Checkmate Pizza, the U.S. Department of Labor said.
NEW JERSEY Atlantic City: A yearlong, coronavirus-inspired ban on smoking inside the city’s casinos has expired. But not everyone is happy about it, and even the governor is hinting he might look favorably on a bill that would permanently ban smoking inside the gambling halls.
NEW MEXICO Gallup: A hospital says it is eliminating nearly 80 jobs as it responds to reduced patient counts following a $14 million loss in 2020. Rehoboth McKinley Christian Health Care Services said its losses resulted from the suspension of elective surgeries and nonessential services during the pandemic.
NEW YORK Albany: The state can try to sue gun manufacturers over harm caused by their products under legislation that Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed this week, though it’s unclear whether it can survive a court challenge over a 2005 federal law granting gun-makers immunity.
NORTH CAROLINA Asheville: Because of the difficulty in renaming streets and trouble it may cause businesses, the city should scrap the idea of eliminating slaveowner names from roadways, said the chair of the citizen commission that advises Asheville and Buncombe County on African American history and culture.
NORTH DAKOTA Bismarck: The state has sued the Biden administration over its suspension of new oil and gas leases on federal land and water, saying the move will cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue.
OHIO Columbus: Tougher criminal penalties for hazing will take effect this fall, nearly three years after the death of the college student for whom the legislation is named. Republican Gov. Mike DeWine signed “Collin’s Law” on Tuesday.
OKLAHOMA Oklahoma City: Overall collections to the state’s treasury continue to set record highs fueled largely by an influx of federal pandemic funding over the past year, State Treasurer Randy McDaniel said Wednesday.
OREGON Salem: Oregon Public Broadcasting reports as of the deadline Tuesday, a campaign by gun rights supporters to recall Senate Republican Leader Fred Girod had not turned in any signatures, according to the Secretary of State’s Office.
PENNSYLVANIA Philadelphia: A local man has been charged with assault and recklessly endangering another person for allegedly knocking over a Black Lives Matter protester and beating him during protests last summer. The encounter drew national attention as videos and photos of a vigilante group taking selfies with police, being thanked by some officers and delivering pizza to the police station went viral.
RHODE ISLAND Providence: Gov. Daniel McKee has signed into law a bill authorizing the opening of socalled harm reduction centers where people dealing with addiction can take heroin and other illegal drugs under the supervision of medical professionals.
SOUTH CAROLINA Columbia: The South Carolina State Fair has started accepting entries for the baking, animal, arts and other contests judged at the event, which will run Oct. 13-24. The deadline is Sept. 1.
SOUTH DAKOTA Pierre: The South Dakota Attorney General’s Office says law enforcement should honor tribalissued medical marijuana identification cards held by non-tribal members off the reservation, a view not shared by Gov. Kristi Noem’s administration and the state Highway Patrol. South Dakota doesn’t plan to begin issuing state medical marijuana cards until November.
TENNESSEE Nashville: After lawmakers chastised state health officials for encouraging teenagers to get COVID-19 shots, the Tennessee Department of Health instructed its county-level employees to halt vaccination events focused on adolescents and stop online outreach to teens, according to department emails.
TEXAS Austin: A study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters says scientists at the University of Texas were the first ever to witness a black hole gulping down an entire star in one bite. The Jan. 5, 2020, phenomenon marked the first time such an event has been recorded.
UTAH Salt Lake City: Schools across the state gained access to an additional $205 million in federal relief Wednesday. Utah Superintendent Sydnee Dickson said the state plans to use the extra funding to cover the costs for boosting its summer school and after-class offerings with a particular focus on helping children from underserved communities, The Salt Lake Tribune reports.
VERMONT Derby Line: Seven people apprehended after entering the state illegally from Quebec by driving across the lawn of a library built in both the U.S. and Canada were immediately returned to Canada, the U.S. Border Patrol said Thursday.
VIRGINIA Richmond: Workers at the beleaguered Virginia Employment Commission are still responding to only a “small portion” of calls for help related to unemployment benefits, a state official told lawmakers Tuesday, presenting troubling preliminary findings from an ongoing audit.
WASHINGTON Olympia: The state’s death toll from last month’s recordbreaking Pacific Northwest heat wave has risen to 78. A year earlier, Washington had just seven heat-related deaths from mid-June to the end of August, the state Department of Health said Thursday. From 2015 to 2020, there were a total of 39 deaths.
WEST VIRGINIA Charleston: Gov. Jim Justice on Thursday ordered stepped-up enforcement of speed limits on major highways a week after an accident killed two people.
WISCONSIN Whitefish Bay: Gov. Tony Evers signed the Republican written state budget Thursday, en acting a two-year spending plan that includes a $2 billion income tax cut while making 50 largely minor partial vetoes, saying unfinished business still needs to be addressed.
WYOMING Cheyenne: The state is looking at how it might send National Guard troops or other help to bolster security at the Mexico border, Gov. Mark Gordon said.