50 ★ States

News from across the USA

ALABAMA Montgomery: A state agency says it will work with private groups to encourage more elderly and disabled people to get vaccines for COVID-19, which is on the rise as the state’s inoculation rate trails the U.S.

ALASKA Juneau: A state court judge is set to hear arguments Monday in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of a voter-approved initiative that would end party primaries in Alaska and institute ranked-choice voting in general elections.

ARIZONA Phoenix: Gov. Doug Ducey has signed legislation banning state or local governments from requiring training in “critical race theory” and a bill that will allow small-business owners to avoid paying a voter-approved 3.5% income tax surcharge to boost school funding. He also signed a measure that tightens the state’s sex education law and requires parents to give permission for instruction that includes the U.S. Supreme Court ruling legalizing gay marriage.

ARKANSAS Little Rock: State Police on Friday handed over to prosecutors the results of the agency’s investigation into a deputy’s fatal shooting of a white teenager, Hunter Brittain, that has drawn the attention of civil rights activists nationwide.

CALIFORNIA Burbank: Batman’s secret cave, Harry Potter’s cupboard under the stairs and the apartment from “Friends” are major centerpieces to a huge studio lot expansion. Warner Bros. Studio Tour Hollywood recently reopened more than a year after doors were shuttered because of the pandemic.

COLORADO Durango: A 10-year-old died of plague in La Plata County, San Juan Basin Public Health said Friday. Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and health officials are investigating.

CONNECTICUT Hartford: State employee union leaders are suing to stop Gov. Ned Lamont’s order to have workers return to the office now that much of the state has emerged from the pandemic, accusing him of violating prior telework agreements reached with the unions and ignoring the benefits of working from home.

DELAWARE Lewes: More than 111 years after it sank off the coast and 43 years after divers found and looted it, researchers can finally – and officially – say where the USS Nina is located and why the U.S. Navy steamer built in the 1860s likely sank. A two-day mission led by University of Delaware oceanographer Dr. Arthur Trembanis used the school’s new autonomous underwater vehicle to help identify the sunken ship.

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA Washington: With more homicides so far in 2021 than by this same time in 2020 and carjacking incidents skyrocketing, the police department is trying to get a handle on the crimes by getting back to the basics of community policing. D.C. police officers in the 4th District have been hitting the streets, knocking on doors and starting conversations, WUSA-TV reports. FLORIDA St. Petersburg: Red tide could cause people along parts of the Gulf Coast to experience respiratory irritation, health officials warned.

GEORGIA Atlanta: The Biden administration’s decision to reevaluate Georgia’s plan to overhaul how residents buy health insurance under the Affordable Care Act came as a “surprise” and suggests it wants to revisit the plan’s approval, which is not allowed, Gov. Brian Kemp’s office said.

HAWAII Honolulu: To protect historic lands at Puuhonua o Honaunau National Historic Park from invasive goats, officials will distribute at least 700 animals to the public in a lottery. IDAHO Boise: Gov. Brad Little on Friday mobilized the Idaho National Guard to help fight wildfires amid an ongoing drought and extreme heat.

ILLINOIS Springfield: Visitors to this year’s Illinois State Fair will be able to visit one of the nation’s historic highways with the creation of the Route 66 Experience. The multiyear project will turn the Springfield fairgrounds’ Gate 2 into a year-round destination for visiting a microform of the Mother Road in the state.

INDIANA Bunker Hill: Six inmates are alleging in lawsuits that they were kept in near-total darkness for weeks at a time and suffered electric shocks from exposed, dangling wires at a state prison.

IOWA Ventura: Five local boys have spent their time this summer helping close to 200 turtles safely cross the road running between a marsh wildlife area and Clear Lake, the Mason City Globe Gazette reports.

KANSAS Cheney: A farmer has invented robots that can behead weeds and reduce pesticide use. Clint Brauer uses the weeding bots on other farmers’ soybean crops and hopes to work with sorghum, cotton and possibly canola farmers.

KENTUCKY Frankfort: The state Capitol is open again for visitors, with new security regulations in place, including measures detailing the types of masks allowed – visitors can’t bring them from home – but still allowing people to carry any gun, with certain limits on ammunition and how firearms are secured.

LOUISIANA Lake Charles: The state’s newest food trail has the quirky name No Man’s Land: Gas Station Eats. No Man’s Land was one of the names for a buffer zone between U.S. and Spanish territories for about 13 years after the Louisiana Purchase. The food trail is starting with three stops in each of seven southwest Louisiana parishes, The American Press reports.

MAINE Bangor: The state is nearly tripling the number of acoustic shark detectors in coastal waters a year after its first fatal shark attack.

MARYLAND Towson: Mobile crisis teams in Baltimore County respond to fewer than half of calls to help people having mental health crises. But a pilot program funded by a $1.6 million federal grant aims to add more behavioral health professionals and set up a system to redirect some 911 calls away from police, The Baltimore Sun reports.

MASSACHUSETTS Plymouth: Archaeologists combing a hill near Plymouth Rock where a park will be built in tribute to the Pilgrims and their Native American predecessors discovered it’s not the first time the site has been used as a memorial. David Landon of the University of Massachusetts-Boston’s Fiske Center for Archaeological Research said his team unearthed a cache of personal items he thinks were buried in the 1800s, likely by a brokenhearted settler who outlived all her children.

MICHIGAN Lansing: The state Supreme Court on Friday reaffirmed an earlier decision that could lead to the repeal of a law Gov. Gretchen Whitmer used to order restrictions related to the coronavirus last year.

MINNESOTA Minneapolis: As shots stagnate, the state is planning to close all but one of its COVID-19 mass vaccination sites by Aug. 7.

MISSISSIPPI Greenwood: The Justice Department is continuing its investigation into the killing of Emmett Till, the Black teenager whose slaying 65 years ago in the Mississippi Delta community of Money sparked outrage and illustrated the brutality of racism in the segregated South. Relatives of Till said they didn’t know of anyone in the family who’d received official notification that the review had ended, a key step in the department’s process.

MISSOURI Jefferson City: Three of top health officials said Friday that trusted local leaders and community representatives must be the primary influencers in the state’s efforts to reduce a surge in COVID-19 cases. Republican Gov. Mike Parson said last week that he does not support a suggestion from the Biden administration that government employees go door-to-door to urge people to get vaccinated.

MONTANA Helena: Gov. Greg Gianforte has discontinued Montana’s membership in a coalition of two dozen states dedicated to fighting climate change. The U.S. Climate Alliance is a nonpartisan group committed to achieving the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement.

NEBRASKA Omaha: Roughly 200 people were possibly exposed to a rabid bat while staying overnight at Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium, the zoo said.

NEVADA Reno: The U.S. Department of Energy has agreed to pay the state $65,000 after the government mislabeled and mischaracterized low-level radioactive waste shipped to a disposal site north of Las Vegas for more than five years.

NEW HAMPSHIRE Concord: A council tasked with addressing broad issues around housing affordability and stability in the state seeks to increase housing availability by 13,500 units by 2024, according to its plan released Friday.

NEW JERSEY Seaside Heights: Gov. Phil Murphy signed a package of bills Friday aimed at moving the state closer to its goal of generating 100% of its power from clean sources by 2050. The measures make it easier to develop some solar energy projects and to locate and build electric vehicle charging stations.

NEW MEXICO Santa Fe: Republican lawmakers are asking the state attorney general to weigh in on a spending dispute with the Democratic governor over $1.75 billion in federal pandemic relief aid.

NEW YORK Albany: The state is seeing an uptick in COVID-19 cases as vaccination rates slowly rise, data released Saturday shows. About 525 people a day tested positive for the coronavirus in New York for the seven days through Friday, a 42% increase from the prior week.

NORTH CAROLINA Fayetteville: Fayetteville State University has used pandemic relief funds to clear $1.6 million in tuition debt for nearly 1,500 students.

NORTH DAKOTA Bismarck: A network and technology services provider says it’ll invest $200 million to upgrade and expand its fiber network in the state. Midco said it’s part of a larger $500 million investment to its network in the upper Midwest that will benefit telehealth, education, government operations and remote working.

OHIO Rootstown: An Ohio State Highway Patrol trooper successfully performed the Heimlich maneuver after a man allegedly attempted to swallow a bag of cannabis when he was pulled over for speeding. He was cited and released at the scene.

OKLAHOMA Oklahoma City: Health officials on Friday urged more residents to get vaccinated amid an alarming spike in new COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations, especially in the northeastern part of the state.

OREGON Pendleton: Dozens of baby hawks, desperate to escape a blast of early summer heat in recent weeks, bailed from their nests and plummeted to the ground. Calls poured into Blue Mountain Wildlife day after day as temperatures pushed beyond 110 degrees across the area. Lynn Tompkins told the East Oregonian that she hadn’t seen anything like it in her 30 years as director of the wildlife rehabilitation center outside Pendleton.

PENNSYLVANIA Pittsburgh: The Carnegie Museum of Natural History has returned to public view a 19thcentury diorama that shows lions attacking a camel and its human rider, about a year after covering it up in response to complaints about how the courier was depicted and the use of an actual human skull and jaw.

RHODE ISLAND Providence: Gov. Dan McKee has vetoed legislation that would make property owners register with the state before listing short-term rentals through online lodging websites, to the chagrin of some concerned about the unregulated nature of the industry.

SOUTH CAROLINA Columbia: Conservationists have pulled a rare, historic canoe, possibly 200 to 250 years old, from the Chattooga River and plan to put it on display.

SOUTH DAKOTA Sioux Falls: Two Native Americans announced Thursday that they were joining a lawsuit against South Dakota alleging that state agencies failed to offer voter registration services.

TENNESSEE Nashville: A federal judge on Friday halted enforcement of a new state law requiring businesses to post special signs if they allow transgender people to use the bathroom of their choice.

TEXAS Austin: A Houston man who received widespread attention after standing six hours in line to cast a ballot in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary was in jail Friday on charges that it was illegal for him to vote at all because he was on parole. Andre Segura, an attorney for the ACLU of Texas who is representing Hervis Rogers, said his client did not know he was ineligible to vote.

UTAH Milford: Researchers at the Utah-based FORGE lab are working on technology to create geothermal reservoirs almost anywhere in the world, KUER reports. Geothermal power already exists but currently makes up just 0.4% of energy production in the U.S.

VERMONT Winooski: The state is undergoing a pandemic-related liquor shortage, regulators say, leading to empty shelves in some stores and warehouses, WCAX-TV reports.

WASHINGTON Tacoma: A federal jury has convicted a timber thief who authorities said started a large forest fire three years ago in a case that prosecutors said marked the first time tree DNA had been introduced in a federal trial.

WEST VIRGINIA Charleston: Gov. Jim Justice called on Saturday for the resignation of a lawmaker who posted a sexually explicit TikTok video to his public account. State Del. Joe Jeffries was stripped of a committee assignment Friday after word spread of the social media posting, according to a statement from House Speaker Roger Hanshaw, who called his fellow Republican an “embarrassment.”

WISCONSIN Madison: A bishop has taken the unusual step of removing a priest from the ministry after he made a series of divisive remarks about politics and the pandemic. The Diocese of La Crosse said in a statement Friday that Bishop William Patrick Callahan has issued a decree immediately removing the Rev. James Altman as pastor of St. James the Less.

WYOMING Gillette: A rancher who was pinned by an all-terrain vehicle survived on beer and bottled water for two days. Frank Reynolds, 53, was trying to round up a cow and calf on a neighbor’s pasture outside Gillette when the vehicle tipped over on him July 4, Reynolds told the Gillette News Record.