50 ★ States

ALABAMA Gadsden: Grant money was again the priority at the Gadsden City Council’s meeting last week, as members authorized city officials to pursue a nearly $1 million Transportation Alternatives Program grant from the Alabama Department of Transportation.

ALASKA Juneau: Eight young Alaska residents sued the state last week seeking to block a major natural gas project, the latest in a string of climate-change related lawsuits by youths arguing that government policies promoting fossil fuels violate their rights.

ARIZONA Phoenix: Phoenix remained the nation’s fifth largest city while two Arizona cities outside metro Phoenix reached important population milestones last year. A U.S. Census Bureau report indicated strong growth in cities outside of metro Phoenix, contributing to Arizona’s fast-growing status.

ARKANSAS Little Rock: Mainline Health Systems Inc. and Pulaski County Special School District announced a partnership to open a school-based health clinic in August that would provide services to students and staff, KATV reported.

CALIFORNIA Sacramento: California is facing its second consecutive year of a budget shortfall and could be headed for a third, fourth and possibly fifth. Those are the latest projections from the state’s leading nonpartisan fiscal agency, out with reports analyzing Gov. Gavin Newsom’s 2024-2025 budget and charting the state’s budget outlook over the next four years.

COLORADO Fort Collins: Wolf activity retracted in Larimer County but grew substantially in Routt County, including to the Wyoming state line, according to Colorado’s wolf activity map for May.

CONNECTICUT Norwich: The first Norwich Tech Community Day took place Friday. The yearly event gets students at Norwich Technical High School to help in the community.

DELAWARE Wilmington: A development company that has built distribution centers for Amazon and Walmart is suing New Castle County, claiming that government inaction has improperly delayed its controversial plan to construct a nearly 2.4 million-square-foot warehousing complex near Middletown.

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA Washington: An investigation is underway after a man and a girl were shot in Southwest, WUSA reported.

FLORIDA Tallahassee: Free speech advocates are accusing Florida education officials of misrepresenting state law, leading to a surge of public school library book removals.

GEORGIA Savannah: A Chatham County grand jury indicted two former Savannah Police Department officers on multiple counts of perjury and violating their oaths of public office.

HAWAII Honolulu: A judge in Hawaii last week ordered Bristol Myers Squibb and Sanofi to pay more than $916 million to the state for failing to warn non-white patients of health risks from its blood thinner Plavix, up from an earlier judgment of $834 million.

IDAHO Boise: Boise city and Ada County officials said this year’s float season on the Boise River could start in late June, Idaho Press reported.

ILLINOIS Springfield: After long negotiations and bargaining, the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine has come to an agreement about their contracts with their employees. The new contract includes a sustainable pay increase in addition to the 17.2% increase the school has made since 2019.

INDIANA Indianapolis: Eli Lilly and Co., is more than doubling its investment in its Boone County manufacturing site to increase production of ingredients in its blockbuster weight loss and diabetes drugs. The expansion to produce the ingredients in Zepbound and Mounjaro will increase the cost of the project from $3.7 billion to $9 billion. The Lilly site will be based in the LEAP Lebanon Innovation and Research District, a planned tech and manufacturing hub in Boone County. The expansion now will bring 900 full-time jobs to the area along with some 5,000 construction jobs.

IOWA Bondurant: A conservative advocacy group building a new headquarters near Bondurant has accused Polk County of denying a key tax exemption for political reasons. The Family Leader Foundation, a nonprofit Christian group led by prominent activist Bob Vander Plaats, filed suit against the Polk County Board of Review.

KANSAS Salina: With a deadline to spend everything coming at the end of this year, more than $7.5 million or 75% of Saline County’s American Rescue Plan Act or ARPA funds are “out the door.” That’s what county administrator Phillip Smith-Hanes said about the county’s allotment of federal government funding designed to help the nation recover from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

KENTUCKY Louisville: Newly released body camera footage from Louisville Metro Police shows two tense encounters between armed suspects and officers that police say prompted them to fire their guns, resulting in two deaths. The incidents happened within days of one another and involved four officers who fired their weapons.

LOUISIANA Thibodaux: A tortured and dying Thibodaux teen fought back causing a car crash in Texas that led to her rescue in April. The family is now raising money for the year’s worth of surgeries required for her recovery.

MAINE Scarborough: Three people, including a young child, were seriously injured in a crash that led to a lengthy road closure, News Center Maine reported.

MARYLAND Salisbury: The latest Chesapeake Bay Blue Crab Winter Dredge Survey has revealed an overall dip in crabs in Maryland waterways amid continuing decreasing numbers. According to the study, an estimated 317 million blue crabs were found in the Chesapeake Bay in 2024, compared to 323 million crabs last year.

MASSACHUSETTS Braintree: Four girls were stabbed in an “unprovoked” attack at a Massachusetts movie theater and two adults were stabbed a short time later at a fastfood restaurant before a suspect was arrested following a police chase, Braintree police said.

MICHIGAN Detroit: A targeted strategy to reduce gun violence in parts of Detroit with the city’s highest rates of violence will kick into gear again this summer, but this year’s effort also will expand to the city’s parks. The One Detroit partnership will offer a three-pronged approach of enforcement, prevention and reentry.

MINNESOTA Minneapolis: A man suspected of striking a man with his car in a Minnesota mosque parking lot, in what police believe was a hate crime, has been arrested.

MISSISSIPPI Jackson: Former U.S. Attorney Mike Hurst took the helm of the Mississippi Republican Party this month, and he said he is planning to continue several outreach programs within the party and grow the Republican base in Mississippi.

MISSOURI Springfield: The Springfield school board voted to reduce by half the amount of time each member is allowed to speak on a specific agenda item. Starting with the June 11 meeting, members will have a total of 10 minutes per topic to comment or ask questions. They receive an initial five minutes and then once every member has a chance to weigh in, they have the option of another five minutes.

MONTANA Helena: Tourists get to enjoy all the amenities of Missoula without having to pay local taxes for them, and Missoula County Commissioner Josh Slotnick told lawmakers he thinks they should pay their fair share, The Daily Montanan reported. Slotnick listed taxing tourists as one proposed solution the state could consider to help give some relief to residents, who recently saw a median property tax increase of 21%, during a presentation to the Local Government Interim Committee.

NEBRASKA Lincoln: Officials are searching for a South Dakota man who went missing after last being seen swimming in the Missouri River along the Nebraska shore, Omaha World-Herald reported.

NEVADA Reno: The Reno Air Racing Association chose Roswell, New Mexico, for its 2025 National Championship Air Races as it moves toward concluding six decades in Reno with an air show later this year. The 2024 event will occur in a non-racing format at the RenoStead Airport, the longtime home of the Reno Air Races, on Oct. 4-6, organizers said earlier this year.

NEW HAMPSHIRE Concord: The New Hampshire Senate killed a bill to expand the right to build accessory dwelling units, using a parliamentary tactic to prevent the proposal from returning again this year, New Hampshire Bulletin reported.

NEW JERSEY Trenton: NJ Transit is ahead of schedule on fulfilling a state mandate to convert its lightduty, non-revenue service vehicles to zero-emission models.

NEW MEXICO Carlsbad: A series of incidents at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant nuclear waste repository, including contamination found on a waste drum, led to a temporary pause of operations in the last month.

NEW YORK Albany: The state Department of Health received funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to conduct a five-year statewide project to learn more about per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, pesticides and heavy metals in New Yorkers. Aptly named Biomonitoring NY, the project aims to establish the typical range of about 40 chemicals and metals in residents through the collection of blood and urine samples.

NORTH CAROLINA Gastonia: A man accused of shooting and killing a 19-year-old woman will be held without bond on a charge of firstdegree murder.

NORTH DAKOTA West Fargo: Horace High School celebrated its first graduating class, KVRR reported.

OHIO Columbus: The Ohio Lottery has started notifying residents who may have had their personal information leaked after a Christmas Eve security breach. An unauthorized actor accessed the lottery’s internal office network on Dec. 24, 2023, and customer and retailer information was potentially exposed, according to a news release.

OKLAHOMA Oklahoma City: The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals is being asked to let prosecutors use a controversial confession as evidence in a murder case featured in the Netflix series, “The Innocent Man.” Karl Allen Fontenot faces a retrial in the infamous 1984 case if the videotaped confession can be admitted.

OREGON Salem: Oregon agricultural regulators are once again giving a boost to locally-owned slaughterhouses to build up local meat supply, Oregon Public Broadcasting reported. The Oregon Department of Agriculture this month announced a “substantial investment” of $8.2 million, intended to keep more meat local, the news outlet reported.

PENNSYLVANIA Erie: A 22-year-old resident of western New York has died from injuries he suffered when his all-terrain vehicle ran a stop sign and crashed into an SUV in Erie.

RHODE ISLAND Providence: A study of Rhode Island’s counterfeit oxycodone pills found that 99.3% were contaminated with fentanyl.

SOUTH CAROLINA Oconee County: An Oconee County sheriff ’s deputy who was shot following a traffic stop in November returned home last week after over six months of hospitalization and rehab, and one day after he was named the 2023 County Law Enforcement Officer of the Year by the governor.

SOUTH DAKOTA Sioux Falls: An arrest has been made in the April crash that left two juveniles dead and six others injured.

TENNESSEE Millersville: A group of residents is trying to remove Mayor Tommy Long from office, citing an abuse of power, corruption and dereliction of duty after the city saw a tumultuous start to 2024. Fourteen people signed an ouster complaint against Long, who has served as the city’s mayor since November 2022.

TEXAS Round Rock: A chemical company is expanding in Round Rock after a proposed facility about 28 miles north drew protests from residents concerned about air and water pollution.

UTAH Moab: Canyonlands National Park rangers are investigating “an archaeological theft incident” involving two park visitors at one of the Utah park’s historic cowboy campsites, according to a National Park Service news release. The incident took place at the Cave Spring Cowboy Camp, a cave-like shelter where cowboys would stay with their cattle from the late 1800s until 1975 when cattle ranching inside the park became prohibited.

VERMONT Burlington: The University of Vermont is halting plans for a $100 million housing project that would have housed about 540 undergraduate students. UVM said the project was no longer cost effective due to construction costs, a lack of available labor and high interest rates.

VIRGINIA Charlottesville: A father attempting to rescue his struggling son both drowned over the weekend at Lake Anna, authorities said.

WASHINGTON Kitsap County: An empty wing at the Kitsap Juvenile Detention Center has been converted into a walk-in public health clinic that county officials hope will provide care to those connected with the criminal justice system.

WEST VIRGINIA Martinsburg: A teenager was arrested in Texas and is being charged with making terroristic threats after allegedly being connected to bomb threats across the country. Among the incidents he is accused of is making a bomb threat during a Martinsburg City Council meeting in early May, according to the Martinsburg Police Department.

WYOMING Jackson: Officials are expecting Jackson Lake to reach max capacity as snowmelt pours into the Upper Snake River Basin, Jackson Hole News and Guide reported.