Puffin problems, Salt Lake water rights, Dylan art: News from around our 50 states

Alabama

Huntsville: Investigators say video from a city surveillance camera shows a woman get into a parked police van on her own, 12 days before she was found dead inside it. Police showed the video during a news conference Friday after showing it to the family of 29-year-old Christina Nance, al.com reports. “We will continue to work with them through this difficult time,” Police Chief Mark McMurray said in a statement. Civil rights attorney Ben Crump is representing Nance’s family as they continue to question the circumstances of her death. “We will get to the truth of what happened to Christina Nance, the young Black woman found dead in the police van in front of the Huntsville Police Department,” Crump said in a statement Wednesday. WHNT-TV reports Nance’s relatives said they still had questions after watching the video. Latausha Nance said she was hoping for a clear indication of how her sister died, but the video did not provide that. “Everything was blurry. I don’t know if that was my sister,” Latausha Nance told the station. Authorities said an officer walking to a police car Oct. 7 found Nance’s body in an unused prisoner-transport van at the Huntsville public safety complex. Nance was not in police custody at the time of her death.

Alaska

Anchorage: The city’s governing body has overridden the mayor’s veto of an emergency order instituting a mask mandate for 60 days. The Anchorage Assembly on Thursday overturned Mayor Dave Bronson’s veto of the measure requiring masks by most everyone in indoor public spaces on a 9-2 vote, Alaska Public Media reports. The assembly had held a public hearing for a regular mask measure that drew so much opposition and had so many people wanting to comment that it stretched over multiple days. But during a meeting Tuesday in which the proposal was not being heard, the Assembly approved an emergency ordinance putting a mask mandate in place. Bronson, a staunch critic of COVID-19 mandates, had vetoed the ordinance Wednesday. “I’m not doing this to spite the mayor or because he objects,” said Assembly member Chris Constant, who voted for the override. “I’m doing this because it’s the right thing to do.” The override drew boos from the crowd. Assembly member Crystal Kennedy, who cast one of the dissenting votes, said it’s clear how divided Anchorage residents are over the measure. “And the only thing that this particular override does is fuel that fire,” she said.

Arizona

Phoenix: Arizona’s three state universities will comply with a federal mandate for government contractors and require their employees to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by Dec. 8 unless granted exemptions, officials announced Friday. The requirement by the University of Arizona, Arizona State University and Northern Arizona University includes undergraduate and graduate students who are also university employees, the state Board of Regents said in a statement. The statement cited President Joe Biden’s executive order on compliance with federal COVID-19 workplace guidance and said the universities have “hundreds of millions of dollars in federal contracts, funding critical research, employment and educational efforts.” “We respect individual opinions regarding the vaccine and will include disability (including medical) and religious accommodations consistent with federal rules,” the statement said. The University of Arizona “already has received amended federal contracts that include this requirement,” President Robert Robbins said in statement. “While we respect individual opinions regarding the vaccine, we will continue with these mission-critical endeavors and will be complying with this new requirement.”

Arkansas

Fort Smith: Two people were found fatally stabbed, and a third person was shot and killed by an officer whose neck was slashed after he found a man beating one of the stabbing victims with a rock, authorities said Sunday. Fort Smith police received a pre-dawn 911 call about a man assaulting a person who was on the ground. The responding officer discovered Christofer Conner beating a 15-year-old boy in the face and head with a rock, said Fort Smith Police Chief Danny Baker. Police said they later determined the boy was Conner’s son. As the officer tried to place Conner, 40, in restraints, the suspect pulled out an edged weapon and sliced the officer’s throat and neck, Baker said. The officer then fired two shots at Conner, killing him. The officer was rushed into emergency surgery and was in stable condition Sunday afternoon, Baker said. His name was not immediately released. The boy was taken to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead. He had sustained multiple stab wounds and other injuries, Baker said. Other officers at the scene went inside a home and discovered “evidence of an extremely violent attack,” Baker said. They found the body of 42-year-old Julia Marie Moore inside the residence. Authorities believe she had been fatally stabbed. A 5-year-old child was found safe in the home.

California

Sacramento: More than a thousand people crowded the front steps of the state Capitol on Monday to protest Gov. Gavin Newsom’s decision to require all children eventually to get COVID-19 vaccines to attend public and private schools. Newsom’s mandate, announced earlier this month, made California the first state in the country to say it will require the shots for schoolchildren once the vaccines receive full federal approval. California has one of the highest vaccination rates in the country – over 85% of people 12 and older have gotten at least one shot, and 72% are fully vaccinated. But as in other places, the state has a vocal minority skeptical of both the vaccine and the government’s assurances of its safety. Many parents at the rally in Sacramento had pulled their children out of school to attend the rally, hoping the absences send a message to state officials. Parents carried signs that read, “My children won’t be a science experiment to make you feel safe,” and “My body, my choice.” One mother, Kendall Ramer, said she won’t vaccinate her children against COVID-19 because she feels there hasn’t been enough time to ensure the shots are safe. State officials have said the requirement could begin as early as next fall.

Colorado

Denver: The humpback chub, a rare fish found only in the Colorado River basin, has been brought back from the brink of extinction after decades of protection, though work must continue to ensure its survival, federal authorities said Monday in reclassifying the species from endangered to threatened status. The fish, which gets its name from a fleshy bump behind its head, was first listed as endangered in 1967, its habitat severely disrupted by dam construction. Its numbers also declined with the introduction of predatory, non-native aquatic species. Its change in status formally takes effect Nov. 17 under a rule published Monday in the Federal Register by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Environmentalists oppose the endangered status delisting. They argue the humpback chub’s future remains in peril as a megadrought, largely attributable to climate change, diminishes flows in the Colorado River basin, which includes seven U.S. states and Mexico. The delisting comes two months after the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation declared an unprecedented water shortage on the river. It also follows a July Fish and Wildlife proposal to move another rare Colorado River fish, the razorback sucker, from endangered status to threatened.

Connecticut

Hartford: More than 99% of affected state employees are complying with an executive order requiring COVID-19 vaccinations and testing, Democratic Gov. Ned Lamont said Monday. Out of the 32,000 workers at executive branch agencies, 28 probationary employees who failed to comply have been dismissed, and 20 more veteran staff members have been placed on unpaid leave so far. Those veteran workers have up to 45 days to comply with the order or face termination. “Talking to my fellow governors, people are pretty impressed that we’ve got probably 99% compliance among certain state employees,” said Lamont, who noted there were thousands of state workers who were not in compliance with his mandate at the beginning of October. Josh Geballe, Lamont’s chief operating officer, acknowledged the administration has initially been providing “significant grace periods” make sure people who got vaccinated at the last minute, as well as those who are unvaccinated and didn’t upload their weekly coronavirus testing results in time to meet the Sunday night deadline, are counted as being in compliance. But he warned that won’t last forever. “At some point, people need to be able to comply with the process without a lot of push from our HR teams,” he said.

Delaware

Wilmington: State Auditor Kathy McGuiness has asked a local judge to make taxpayers foot the bill for her legal defense as she fights criminal corruption charges. Separately, an attorney representing McGuiness is asking the court to sanction Attorney General Kathy Jennings for violations of rules governing attorney conduct for comments made during a press conference announcing the charges against McGuiness. She faces two felonies and multiple misdemeanors charging she rigged public payments to a campaign consultant to avoid regulator scrutiny, hired and supervised her daughter in the auditor’s office, and sought to intimidate employees who might help investigators looking into her conduct. She has pleaded not guilty to all the charges. A filed by her private attorney, Steve Wood, on Thursday cites a Delaware court rule that allows public employees facing civil litigation or criminal charges tied to their public work to receive a publicly funded attorney. Typically, that attorney is appointed from the ranks of the Delaware Department of Justice. But because the agency is the entity that brought the indictment against McGuiness, she is arguing for the court to appoint her private counsel to represent her at a rate of $550 per hour, plus $425 per hour for attorney work by associates and $325 per hour for paralegal work.

District of Columbia

Washington: The capital’s regional Metro system abruptly pulled more than half its fleet of trains from service early Monday over a lingering problem with the wheels and axles that caused a dramatic derailing last week. The ruling promises to complicate daily travel and commutes for thousands of riders for an unspecified length of time while the National Transportation and Safety Board investigates the issue. The Metro authority’s safety commission ordered the withdrawal of the entire 7000-series line of trains at dawn. The Kawasaki-made 7000-series are the newest set of trains in service, those 748 cars representing about 60% of the fleet. NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said Monday that a design flaw had been identified that caused the trains’ wheels to spread too wide on the axles, allowing the carriage to slip off the tracks. “We’re at the preliminary stage of our investigation – just trying to collect data and information,” she said. “This could have resulted in a catastrophic event.” The wheel issue is being blamed for a incident last week in which a car slipped off the tracks on the blue line near Arlington Cemetery. Homendy said the car had apparently derailed once and then reconnected with the rails by itself, before derailing a second time. Some passengers were trapped in a tunnel in a dark train car and had to be evacuated on foot.

Florida

Daytona Beach: A vendor at a major motorcycle rally briefly sold hats emblazoned with Nazi symbols, saying she considered them a tribute to World War II veterans who helped defeat the Germans. The vendor was selling the hats embroidered with swastikas and a skull-and-bones logo used by the Nazi SS at a stand during Biketoberfest, a festival that draws thousands of bikers to the Daytona Beach area this month. The vendor said she had sold the hats at other biker rallies around the country without complaint. The woman also sells rings, wallet chains and hats without Nazi logos. “It doesn’t mean what people think,” said the vendor, who would only give her name as Jenny. “A lot of people don’t know the history, so they label me a racist, which is not true at all.” Marvin Miller, president of the Jewish Federation of Volusia & Flagler Counties, expressed weary resignation about the items’ sale. “It’s just a shame in this day and age,” Miller said. “It never stops. We just have to deal with it and just remember that we’re still America. Unfortunately, people abuse some of the wonderful rights we have and take it to extremes to spread propaganda.” The owner of the property where Jenny was selling her goods ordered her to remove the Nazi merchandise, and she complied.

Georgia

Savannah: Officials have decided the Rock ’n’ Roll Marathon can proceed as planned next month as long as runners show they’re vaccinated against COVID-19 or recently tested negative for the coronavirus. Mayor Van Johnson announced that health advisers concluded infection rates in the area have declined enough to relax restrictions on large outdoor gatherings. More than 15,000 runners are expected for the marathon the weekend of Nov. 6. The event has become a staple road race in Savannah over the past decade but was canceled last year because of the pandemic. Face coverings will be required during indoor events, Johnson said, and runners who aren’t vaccinated will have to show proof of a negative test taken within the previous three days. While coronavirus infections have dropped steeply across Georgia since a late-summer surge of cases peaked in late August, barely half of people in Savannah and surrounding Chatham County have been vaccinated.

Hawaii

Kailua-Kona: Despite the pandemic, bike-share ridership remained strong on the Big Island partly because there was a rental car shortage. Bikeshare Hawaii Island was the first of its kind in the state when it was introduced in Kailua-Kona five years ago. While the pandemic put a strain on its counterpart in Honolulu, the Big Island program grew, West Hawaii Today reports. “We didn’t suffer at all during the pandemic,” said Jessica Thompson, executive director of Peoples Advocacy for Trails Hawaii. “We had the opposite experience as Honolulu’s bike-share.” The capital city’s program, Biki, experienced a 50% drop in trips due to the pandemic. To deal with losses, it decommissioned seven stations and reduced services. Rider rates on the Big Island started picking up in November 2020 and surpassed pre-pandemic levels, partly because of the rental car shortage, Thompson said. Grants from Hawaii County allowed the nonprofit to offer free bike-share membership to residents for three months for socially distanced exercise. “We had over 700 residents sign up,” said Tina Clothier, PATH’s former executive director. “When the tourists started coming back, rental cars were scarce and expensive, so our bike-share program was incredibly busy.”

Idaho

Coeur d’Alene: Wildlife managers in northern Idaho are warning people to be on the watch for grizzly bears after one was recently reported in the Coeur d’Alene National Forest. Idaho Fish and Game regional wildlife biologist Barb McCall Moore said in a statement that the bear was confirmed northeast of Magee on Oct. 6, the Coeur d’Alene Press reports. Bears are most active this time of year as they try to consume enough food to prepare for winter. McCall Moore said that means bears can be active throughout the day and night, covering large areas of ground as they search for food. Black bears are common throughout northern Idaho, but grizzlies are rarer and most often observed in the Cabinet and Selkirk mountain ranges. It’s estimated there are 40 to 50 in the northernmost part of the state. “In most Panhandle units, it is quite rare to encounter a grizzly bear,” Idaho Fish and Game Panhandle Region spokesman T.J. Ross wrote in an email to the Coeur d’Alene Press. “However, Unit 1 is home to an established population of grizzly bears in the Panhandle, so grizzly bear encounters are more common in the Selkirk and Cabinet mountains than elsewhere in the Panhandle.” Ross said most attacks occur by surprising a bear at close range. Intentionally shooting a grizzly bear is a felony and may include up to $10,000 in civil penalties.

Illinois

Chicago: A lawsuit seeks to block new state legislative district maps, saying Black residents of East St. Louis were unconstitutionally split up into multiple House districts to help white Democratic incumbents in neighboring districts win reelection. The federal lawsuit was filed Friday on behalf of the East St. Louis Branch NAACP, the Illinois State Conference of the NAACP, and the United Congress of Community and Religious Organizations. It says race played a role in the redistricting of House District 114, which is currently represented by Rep. LaToya Greenwood, who is Black. According to the lawsuit, one-fifth of the district’s Black voting-age population was moved into two nearby districts under the new legislative maps that Democrats approved and Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed into law last month as part of redistricting. Thousands of white voters were added to District 114, which the plaintiffs say jeopardizes the prospects of a candidate preferred by Black voters. The district has been represented by a Black legislator for decades, the lawsuit says. “It is unconscionable that in 2021 underhanded tactics are being used in a blatant effort to undermine and disenfranchise the Black electorate,” said NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson.

Indiana

Fort Wayne: Refugees and others who don’t have photo identification will soon be able to obtain a Fort Wayne community identification card. The cards that will be issued by Catholic Charities are authorized under an executive order issued this past week by Mayor Tom Henry. The new cards are meant to assist people, some of whom can’t obtain driver’s licenses, with tasks that require identification, such as accessing city services. Henry said the program is aimed at recognizing all people and demonstrating a welcoming community. Catholic Charities of Fort Wayne-South Bend said it has been involved with similar ID programs in South Bend, Goshen, Elkhart and Plymouth, with schools and hospitals among those accepting the cards. “We believe by issuing identification cards, our city and all of its citizens will benefit in areas of the economy, culture and safety,” said Dan Florin, the group’s interim CEO.

Iowa

Des Moines: Nearly two-thirds of the state’s Latino residents have not yet been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to the national leader of an advocacy group. Darryl Morin, president of Forward Latino, said his group is launching an ad campaign on Spanish-language radio and TV stations and in print media outlets to encourage more residents to seek the vaccines and help end the pandemic. “The Latino community has really suffered and bore a disproportionate impact,” Morin said in a news conference. He noted that many Hispanic residents hold jobs that were deemed essential, so they had to keep working throughout the pandemic. “They were the ones who ensured we had food on our shelves, meat in our freezers, cared for our elderly and so much more,” he said. Nationally, Latino residents have been nearly three times more likely than white residents to be hospitalized for COVID-19 and nearly twice as likely to die from it, Morin said. Morin said part of the problem is many Latino residents work multiple jobs at odd hours and may have trouble getting time off to obtain a shot. Also, he said, many have heard misinformation about the vaccines, including that they cause infertility or pregnancy complications or that people must be citizens and show government-issued identification to be vaccinated. Such ideas are untrue.

Kansas

Lawrence: Inmates with mental health issues are waiting months to get the medication and treatment they need to be deemed competent to assist in their own defense because a state hospital is so overtaxed. Douglas County Sheriff Jay Armbrister said the situation is so bad that the case of one man with severe mental health issues took six years to make it through the court system. The man ultimately was sentenced to 16 months – less than a quarter of the amount of time he had been incarcerated, the Lawrence Journal-World reports. Armbrister said the case encapsulates the “dark underbelly” of the state’s criminal justice system, which he believes fails to properly account for the mental health of those who are held in jail prior to conviction. A large part of the reason that man’s case took so long was a significant backlog of inmates ordered to receive mental health treatment at the Larned State Hospital in Pawnee County. The backlog has led to many inmates spending months, if not years, behind bars even though they haven’t been convicted of a crime. Armbrister said he believes the state must do more to fix the problem. “I firmly believe the state of Kansas needs to build another state hospital, somewhere in the (Kansas City) metro area,” he said. “Larned is basically being swamped.” The hospital’s backlog has affected the entire state.

Kentucky

Louisville: Police, prosecutors and nurses who conduct sexual assault exams for the city are fighting a proposal that would require a doctor to review a portion of the procedures, arguing it adds an unnecessary step that could ultimately harm victims. The proposed change to the sexual assault nurse examiners’ contract, which is up for renewal by the Louisville Metro Council, would require a physician review of 3% of exams each year – even though all exams already are peer-reviewed by nurses. A Louisville Metro Council committee is scheduled to discuss the contract and amendment Tuesday. Opponents say a physician review would not only duplicate efforts but also siphon money that could go toward other services for victims, delay assault investigations and sow doubt in court if, for example, a doctor disagrees with a nurse. The proposed amendment came about after Dr. Bill Smock, a physician trained in forensic medicine who works with the Louisville Metro Police Department, said he was asked to review an exam done by a nurse in the University of Louisville Hospital’s sexual assault nurse examiner program. He told a Louisville Metro Council committee he found what he considered an error in the documentation of a victim’s wound. Other medical professionals, however, said they don’t believe an error was made in that case.

Louisiana

Baton Rouge: The state’s prison system will again start allowing people to visit inmates, nearly three months after the visits were stopped because of the state’s surge in COVID-19 cases. The Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections said in a news release that scheduled visitation would begin at some state-run prisons Monday and will be phased in at other prisons through Oct. 30. People will be screened for symptoms of COVID-19. Face coverings, social distancing and other safety measures will be required. For contact visitation, inmates and the visitors must be fully vaccinated. If they are not, inmates and visitors must remain separated by a sturdy plastic screen. The prison system originally stopped visitation from March 12, 2020, until March 13 of this year. It suspended visitation again July 26. The department said prisons may begin phasing in general reopening plans, which include volunteers for faith-based programming, and they may plan to increase participation in vocational and educational programs. The department also said plans are being worked out to restart in-person visits between inmates and attorneys. Those have been done by phone and video calls.

Maine

Portland: The state’s beloved puffins suffered one of their worst years for reproduction in decades this summer due to a lack of the small fish they eat. Puffins are seabirds with colorful beaks that nest on four small islands off the coast of Maine. There are about 1,500 breeding pairs in the state, and they are dependent on fish such as herring and sand lance to be able to feed their young. Only about a quarter of the birds were able to raise chicks this summer, said Don Lyons, director of conservation science for the National Audubon Society’s Seabird Institute in Bremen, Maine. About two-thirds of the birds succeed in a normal year, he said. The puffin colonies have suffered only one or two less-productive years in the four decades since their populations were restored in Maine, Lyons said. Warm ocean temperatures this summer reduced the availability of the fish the chicks need to survive, he said. “There were fewer fish for puffins to catch, and the ones they were able to were not ideal for chicks,” Lyons said. “It’s a severe warning this year.” The islands where puffins nest are located in the Gulf of Maine, a body of water that is warming faster than the vast majority of the world’s oceans. Researchers have not seen much mortality of adult puffins, but the population will suffer if the birds continue to have difficulty raising chicks, Lyons said.

Maryland

Annapolis: The state is recommending people limit their consumption of certain fish in the Piscataway Creek in Prince George’s County because of PFAS contamination. The Baltimore Sun reports it’s the first time the state has issued such an advisory over elevated levels of chemical compounds known as per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances in seafood. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has determined that prolonged exposure to certain PFAS can increase the risk of health concerns. They include fetal development issues during pregnancy, as well as cancer, immune system damage, and damage to the liver, thyroid or other organ systems. For Piscataway Creek, the Maryland Department of the Environment is recommending that adults and children eat no more than one meal per month of redbreast sunfish. Adults should have no more than three meals per month of largemouth bass from the creek, and children should eat no more than two meals per month with the fish. Finally, children should eat no more than seven meals per month of yellow bullhead catfish from the creek. The department said that as a result of its findings, it plans to monitor fish elsewhere in the Potomac River watershed from this fall through next fall.

Massachusetts

Cambridge: As the third president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Francis Amasa Walker helped usher the school into national prominence in the late 1800s. But another part of his legacy has received renewed attention amid the nation’s reckoning with racial justice: his role in shaping the nation’s hard-line policies toward Native Americans as a former head of the U.S. office of Indian Affairs and author of “The Indian Question,” a treatise that justified forcibly removing tribes from their lands and confining them to remote reservations. MIT is now grappling with calls from Native American students and others to strip Walker’s name from a campus building that is central to student life – part of a broader push for the nation’s higher education institutions to atone for the role they played in the decimation of Native American tribes. “Walker might be the face of Indian genocide, and it is troubling that his name is memorialized at MIT,” said David Lowry, the school’s newly appointed distinguished fellow in Native American studies and a member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina. MIT President L. Rafael Reif wrote in a recent column in MIT Technology Review that addressing Walker’s legacy is an “essential step” in the school’s commitment to its Native American community.

Michigan

Lansing: Starting this month, 13 mental health and addiction clinics across the state will receive the same Medicaid funding as any other health center in an effort U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow said will help bridge the stigmatic and funding divide between mental and physical health. The selected Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics, which meet high standards of care for those in need of mental health and addiction services, will now be fully reimbursed by Medicaid, the same as other health care services, instead of relying on grants to supplement costs. “We haven’t been funding mental health and addiction treatment as health care for too long,” said Stabenow, who has led efforts to set standards for these clinics and now fund them the same as other health services. “We’ve said, ‘Health care above the neck is treated differently than health care below the neck.’ ” There are 33 CCBHCs in Michigan providing 24-hour-a-day crisis services. The senator said she hopes that eventually all the clinics will get Medicaid reimbursement. People who end up not being able to access help early on in addiction or a mental health crisis often end up utilizing clinic crisis services, said Sara Lurie, CEO of Community Mental Health Authority of Clinton, Eaton, Ingham counties.

Minnesota

Hibbing: A public art tribute to Bob Dylan was unveiled Saturday with the hopes of inspiring a new generation of young artists. The display of the Iron Range town’s most famous resident is located outside Hibbing High School, where the 80-year-old Dylan was a 1959 graduate. On one side of the display, a brick wall features the announcement of the Nobel Prize in Literature that Dylan was awarded in 2016. The opposite side of the wall features a series of stainless steel panels that contain lyrics from more than 50 of his songs. There’s also a bronze chair, similar to one in which he would have sat, that faces the school so people who use it will “have their backs to the lyrics, a physical representation of the songwriting process,” said Katie Fredeen, president of the Hibbing Dylan Project. The volunteer group spent five years and raised about $100,000 to design and build the tribute. The unveiling followed another tribute by group known as the Year of Dylan, which engraved a Dylan quote on a large rock on the Mesabi Bike Trail in Hibbing. The trail covers 135 miles of the Iron Range.

Mississippi

Tupelo: A City Council member and a local Democratic leader have pleaded not guilty to a charge accusing them of violating a state law against raffles to encourage voting. Tupelo City Council Member Nettie Davis and Charles Penson, chairman of the Democratic municipal executive committee, entered the pleas Friday to a misdemeanor indictment alleging they broke a law against raffling anything of value to encourage or discourage voting, the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal reports. Davis asked people at a municipal elections rally to donate money for cash prizes for people who voted, and Penson posted on social media that ministers spoke of financial incentives to vote – but no raffle was ever held, according to the newspaper. “Quite frankly, I was surprised to hear about this law that supposedly we have violated,” Penson said Friday. “It’s an obscure law. Nobody knew anything about it until it came out in the newspaper. Immediately, when we found that there was such a law and we could conceivably be in violation of it, we shut our operation down.” Lee County Circuit Court Judge John White released them without bond at their arraignment Friday. A $5,000 fine is the maximum penalty on the charge, though Davis could be removed from office if convicted.

Missouri

St. Louis: Backers of a trolley that closed almost two years ago because of financial troubles are hoping that a regional board will soon approve a $1.26 million federal grant to help get the line running again next year. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports trolley supporters say the grant would be used with accrued funds from the trolley’s own sales tax district to run the line free of charge from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Thursdays through Sundays through late 2023. Backers say that by then, the trolley could stand on its own financially. “There’s no downside to having this grant approved,” said Joe Edwards, the Delmar Loop entrepreneur and longtime booster of the 2.2-mile line. But some key players on the board of the East-West Gateway Council of Governments – among them St. Louis County Executive Sam Page and St. Louis Mayor Tishaura O. Jones – have yet to say how they’ll vote. And some others are skeptical or opposed. One “no” vote on the board when it decides Oct. 27 will come from St. Louis Aldermanic President Lewis Reed. Reed’s legislative director, Mary Goodman, said Reed feels there are other priorities that would be more beneficial to the region.

Montana

Browning: Funeral services for Blackfeet Chief Earl Old Person are set for Friday morning, with other opportunities to pay respects to the longtime leader during the week. Old Person died of cancer Oct. 13. He was 92. On Tuesday afternoon, Old Person will be brought to the Blackfeet Tribal Conference Room for a walk-through viewing, tribal officials said. On Wednesday afternoon, he will be escorted to the Browning High School gym, where he will remain until his funeral at 11 a.m. Friday. A special church service is planned for 7 p.m. Thursday. Old Person served for more than 60 years on the Blackfeet Tribal Business Council and was chairman of the council for more than 50 years. He has been the tribe’s chief since 1978. Old Person worked to preserve the tribal language, music and traditions and fought to block oil and gas development in the Badger-Two Medicine area, which is south of the Blackfeet Reservation and sacred to the tribe.

Nebraska

Omaha: The state’s court system agreed to release a nonprofit group’s analysis of state criminal justice data after the governor’s office refused to release the information. The state’s judicial branch released almost 100 pages of reports the nonprofit Crime and Justice Institute had presented to a group of officials who are trying to decide how to address Nebraska’s prison overcrowding. The Omaha World-Herald reports the director of the ACLU of Nebraska, Danielle Conrad, praised the decision to release the records Friday. “We really need to look hard at this data and this information and look hard at solutions,” she said. The reports show that Nebraska’s prison population grew by 21% between 2011 and 2020 even though overall admissions to the system decreased. Over that same time period, prison admissions with mandatory minimum sentences more than doubled. And the minimum sentence length for inmates was also up 25%, so inmates are staying longer. The reports also show that while 1 in 25 Nebraskans are Black, roughly 1 in 5 people admitted into Nebraska prisons are Black. State Sen. Steve Lathrop of Omaha, part of the state group reviewing Nebraska’s prison overcrowding, said the data from the nonprofit group can help the state decide what to do to respond to the problem.

Nevada

Reno: Though the dust of 2021’s unofficial Burning Man event has barely settled, the Burning Man Project is already dreaming about getting back into business. The organization announced that “Waking Dreams” will be official theme of the 2022 festival. Stuart Magnum, director of the Philosophical Center of Burning Man Project, wrote in a lengthy post on the Burning Man Project’s website that the theme will explore “the transformative power of dreams, both literal and figurative, and celebrate the dreamers who channel this potent energy in eye-opening, often surrealistic, sometimes life-changing ways.” It will have been three years since the last official Burning Man when thousands flock to northern Nevada for Burning Man 2022. Magnum described that time as “a thousand days and nights of pent-up hopes and desires, all coiled up in our psyches and ready to burst out onto the blank canvas of the Black Rock Desert.” Magnum’s post detailed some of the ways in which dreams and surrealism are an integral part of the event’s experience. “It is a signature aspect of Burning Man culture that we transform our dreams into actions in the world,” he wrote. “Not just an inner transformation but an externalization of that vision, bending the arc of reality toward the fantastic and bringing the world along for the ride.”

New Hampshire

Hanover: New solar arrays are expected to generate enough electricity to meet nearly 100% of the town’s municipal electricity needs through group metering. The town unveiled two adjacent ground-mounted arrays consisting of more than 4,000 panels Thursday. They were installed by Enfield-based ReVision Energy, which said the project is the largest single-site municipal solar array in New Hampshire. The purchase agreement will allow the town, population about 11,870, to acquire clean electricity at below-market rates for five years and then acquire the solar arrays as a long-term clean energy endowment. “In battling the impacts of climate change, communities need to be in a leadership role,” Julia Griffin, Hanover’s town manager, said in a statement. “One very important component of that is solarizing the heck out of every possible rooftop, and to pursue at the Town level large ground-mounted solar arrays.”

New Jersey

Asbury Park: Steven Van Zandt, Bruce Springsteen, Jon Stewart, Richie Sambora and more appeared Sunday at Asbury Lanes for an event benefiting the TeachRock school curriculum. Van Zandt’s new memoir, “Unrequited Infatuations,” was the focus of the day at Between the Lines. Sambora, Springsteen manager Jon Landau, R&B legend Nona Hendryx and actor Steve Buscemi participated in a panel, moderated by Stewart, that discussed the book. Springsteen then interviewed Van Zandt for more than one hour in a free-flowing conversation. The two have been friends since the mid ’60s. They would take trips to Greenwich Village to experience the music scene there together. “I’d go up into his room, and he was already starting to write songs, which, you know, it hadn’t occurred to me that you could write your own songs,” said Van Zandt, a Middletown native. “You were really far advanced at that point.” Van Zandt’s TeachRock curriculum, launched in 2013, is used in classrooms across the country, including the Garden State, where a collaboration with the New Jersey School Boards Association provides it to teachers and administrators in all of the state’s public school districts. Visit TeachRock.org for more information.

New Mexico

Albuquerque: The Land of Enchantment is home to vast forests and deserts, meandering rivers and streams, and a variety of wildlife. Now a coalition of outdoor recreation and conservation groups is pointing to an influx of federal stimulus money and a healthy state budget as funding sources for projects to protect and promote New Mexico’s natural resources. The groups are asking Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham to direct $65 million of the state’s remaining $1.7 billion in American Rescue Plan funding to “shovel-ready” conservation programs and projects. Brittany Fallon, policy director for the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance, said pandemic relief money puts the state in an “unprecedented” funding position. Economic Development Department data estimates that the outdoor recreation industry directly supports $1.2 billion in income and 33,500 jobs and contributes $2.3 billion to the state’s GDP. “We’re advertising all over the world for tourism to New Mexico, for people to come here and visit our places, and we’re not maintaining the trails,” Fallon told the Albuquerque Journal. “We’re not installing the trash cans that we need; we’re not doing the work we should be to conserve the places that we’re trying to make a linchpin of our economy.”

New York

New York: A man held at Rikers Island died shortly after a judge granted him emergency release, the man’s attorney said. The New York Post reports Victor Mercado, 64, was the 13th person to die in the city’s jail system in 2021. He had been held at Rikers Island since July, following his arrest on gun charges. Attorney James A. Kilduff and a Department of Correction spokesperson said Mercado, of the Bronx, died at Elmhurt Hospital at 12:39 p.m. Friday. Kilduff said Mercado – who had underlying health conditions and used a wheelchair in recent weeks – spent most of his time at Rikers in the infirmary. The attorney said he spoke with Mercado’s family Wednesday and learned Mercado had contracted COVID-19. Kilduff spoke with Mercado by telephone Thursday, following his transfer to Elmhurst Hospital. He said Mercado sounded “frightened” and asked Kilduff to help him “get me out of here.” On Friday morning, the attorney contacted the office of the Bronx district attorney, who agreed to ask the court for an emergency compassionate release. A judge granted the application after a noon video appearance. But Mercado’s brother told Kilduff soon afterward that it was too late. Kilduff said Mercado appeared in court Sept. 27 in a wheelchair to unsuccessfully ask to have his $100,000 bail lowered.

North Carolina

Corolla: The wild horses on the Outer Banks are in the midst of a fall feeding frenzy, and observers say persimmons are their overwhelming food of choice. The Corolla Wild Horse Fund said on social media that the American persimmon is a fruit-bearing tree native to the coast and can be found growing throughout where the horses roam. According to the organization, the fruit becomes ripe and sweet in the fall and becomes a source of food for the horses. Horses can be seen walking up to the persimmon trees to pluck the fruit from branches, or they forage for the fruit when it falls to the ground. A video on the fund’s Facebook page shows one horse feasting from a persimmon tree. The fund works to protect and manage the herd of Colonial Spanish Mustangs roaming the northern end of the barrier islands on the North Carolina coast. It also promotes continued preservation of the land as a permanent sanctuary for the horses.

North Dakota

Bismarck: The tribal college on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation and the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks are working together on a project to digitally preserve Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara language and culture. The schools will use a $500,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to fund the initiative, which includes a separate effort to boost the study of American Indian history in the Dakotas. Faculty and students at Nueta Hidatsa Sahnish College in New Town will conduct oral interviews with Three Affiliated Tribes elders and then inventory, preserve and digitize what officials say are “critically endangered” language resources and other at-risk traditional knowledge. The UND team will help with the digital collection. Together, the schools will create educational resources for the state’s new K-12 Native American history curriculum and as part of a special program on the tribal campus, The Bismarck Tribune reports. The Legislature earlier this year approved a bill that requires elementary school instruction to include an emphasis on the state’s federally recognized Indian tribes: the Three Affiliated Tribes, Standing Rock Sioux, Spirit Lake Nation, Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, and Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate Nation.

Ohio

Cincinnati: Veterinary technicians at the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden have been busy over the past six weeks, working to give 80 animals of all sizes two rounds of COVID-19 vaccines. The zoo’s team has given at least one dose to big cats, gorillas, bonobos, orangutans, red pandas, goats, giraffes, river otters, skunks, bearcats, and domestic dogs and cats that more commonly share space with humans. Second doses will be completed this week and next week, according to a release from the zoo. Normally, the zoo has about a year for animals that receive flu shots and other routine vaccinations to forget about the injection, but the second COVID-19 shots have to be given within three weeks of the first, Dr. Mark Campbell, the zoo’s director of animal health, said in a release. Months before the vaccine arrived, vet techs and zookeepers worked to get the animals comfortable with everything they would see and feel when they received the shots. “We were concerned that the fresh memory of the first injection would make animals less willing to offer a shoulder or thigh for the second round, but they did,” Campbell said. “That success is 100% due to the strong relationships these animals have with care staff and our animal health team.” No negative reactions to the vaccines have been observed.

Oklahoma

Oklahoma City: High-profile death row inmate Julius Jones and five others scheduled for execution could get a reprieve because of a federal appeals court decision Friday. Jones, 41, set to be executed Nov. 18, claims that he is innocent, that the real killer framed him and that his trial was unfair. Millions signed a petition in his support after ABC in 2018 aired the documentary series “The Last Defense” about his innocence claim. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals in September set execution dates for Jones and the five others after a federal judge kicked them out of a lawsuit over the lethal injection procedure. In orders Friday, the federal appeals court agreed with inmates the judge was wrong in declaring his ruling a final judgment. An assistant federal public defender representing Jones said Friday night that Oklahoma’s attorney general had previously “made a commitment to the court and the parties that the state would not carry out executions while this case was pending.” More than 30 death row inmates have challenged the constitutionality of the lethal injection procedure in Oklahoma City federal court.

Oregon

Salem: A county in southern Oregon says it is so overwhelmed by an increase in the number and size of illegal marijuana farms that it declared a state of emergency, appealing to the governor and the Legislature’s leaders for help. The Jackson County Board of Commissioners said law enforcement officers and county and state regulators and code enforcers are overwhelmed and warned of an “imminent threat to the public health and safety of our citizens from the illegal production of cannabis in our county.” Illegal marijuana grows have been a persistent problem throughout the West, even in states that have legalized pot. A megadrought across the West has created urgency, though, as illegal growers steal water, depriving legal users including farmers and homeowners of the increasingly precious resource. “Jackson County strongly requests your assistance to address this emergency,” the commissioners said in a letter to Gov. Kate Brown, Senate President Peter Courtney and House Speaker Tina Kotek. Only four Oregon Water Resources Department full-time employees handle complaints and perform all of their other duties in Jackson County and neighboring Josephine County, the commissioners said.

Pennsylvania

Philadelphia: A judge on Friday ordered the release of emails between suburban officials and the developer of a natural gas pipeline that was charged with environmental crimes related to construction of the multibillion-dollar project. Officials in Middletown Township have been refusing to produce the records for nearly a year, claiming they were exempt from disclosure under the state’s open records law. Energy Transfer, the owner of the Mariner East pipeline system, also opposed their release. A Delaware County judge ruled Friday that the records are public and ordered the township to turn them over to the owners of a 124-unit apartment complex along the pipeline route. Energy Transfer subsidiary Sunoco Pipeline LP, which has been installing two new pipelines to take natural gas liquids from the Marcellus Shale gas field in western Pennsylvania to an export terminal near Philadelphia, seized private property at Glen Riddle Station Apartments for the pipeline project. Glen Riddle’s owners say pipeline construction has threatened the health and safety of the residents. The pipeline’s route splits the apartment complex in half. The state attorney general’s office recently charged Energy Transfer with 48 criminal counts related to Mariner East construction, most of them for illegally releasing industrial waste.

Rhode Island

Providence: Victor Morente’s path toward a college degree would have been a lot easier if he and his family hadn’t been saddled with out-of-state tuition at the Community College of Rhode Island. Morente, who is now the spokesman for the state Department of Education, shared his story at the ceremonial signing of a bill that allows undocumented students to pay in-state tuition at the state’s three public colleges. Seventeen years in the making, the law codifies a policy approved by the Rhode Island Board of Governors for education in 2011. Under the Student Success Act, students are eligible if they attended high school for three or more consecutive years, graduated from high school, or received a high school equivalency diploma from Rhode Island and continue to reside in the state. Students must also file an affidavit saying they will file for lawful immigration status as soon as they are eligible. Morente emigrated from Guatemala to Providence when he was 6 years old. Although he had lived in Rhode Island for years and graduated from high school, he didn’t qualify for resident tuition. After years of saving, his family still could not afford full-time tuition, so Morente chipped away at his degree one course at a time. He earned his degree in 2014.

South Carolina

Charleston: The state has put up a portrait of a Reconstruction-era Black lawmaker in the state Senate chamber – part of an effort to recognize a broader array of historical figures in a place that long flew the Confederate battle flag at the Statehouse. Some lawmakers who worked for the recognition of the late Sen. Stephen Atkins Swails said they are unhappy the painting went up without a ceremony, The State newspaper reports. “I think it deserves more recognition than a last-minute, knee-jerk email from the president of the Senate under the cloak of darkness,” said Sen. Marlon Kimpson, D-Charleston. The newspaper reports that after an email about the portrait was sent to senators and staff Thursday, one white state senator hit “reply all” with a comment about Swails’ complexion. “That sure is the whitest looking black guy I’ve ever seen,” Republican Sen. Sandy Senn of Charleston wrote, adding an emoji of a person shrugging. “Anyway, thanks for sharing!” Reached Friday, Senn told The State she could not believe her response had become “this big news story.” “I really cannot understand why one of my Senate colleagues would think my observation, which was spot-on, was anything inappropriate or sinister because it wasn’t,” Senn said.

South Dakota

Sioux Falls: A natural gas company planning to replace dozens of miles of pipeline in southeast South Dakota has negotiated easements with most landowners affected by the project after suing some in federal court. Northern Natural Gas Co., based in Omaha, brought condemnation suits last month against the owners of 19 tracts of land. All but four have since negotiated easements. The company is planning to replace 79 miles of pipeline, stretching from South Sioux City to Sioux Falls, that was built in the 1940s and 1950s. Northern Natural Gas was given the power of eminent domain because the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission certified the project, but it said it prefers to negotiate agreements with landowners. It has negotiated settlements with 195 property owners in South Dakota and Nebraska. The pipeline replacement project started this year, and the company is planning to complete it by Nov. 1, 2022.

Tennessee

Nashville: The state is poised to spend approximately $900 million of its tax revenues on incentives, infrastructure projects and more under an agreement with Ford Motor Co., which has announced plans to build an electric vehicle and battery plant near Memphis. The sweeping spending package must be approved by the Republican-led General Assembly, which began the work Monday. Ford and South Korean battery maker SK Innovation announced last month that they would spend $5.6 billion to build a factory to produce electric F-Series pickups. The project, located near the small town of Stanton in rural Haywood County, is expected to create about 5,800 new jobs at the West Tennessee megasite by 2025. Republican Gov. Bill Lee has said Tennessee offered $500 million in incentives to help secure the project, but this week the state unveiled plans to spend hundreds of millions more. About $138 million has been budgeted for infrastructure and demolition work at the site, while $40 million has been proposed to build a new technical college in Haywood County. Another $200 million would be spent on road projects. There have been no details about how much the workers will be paid or whether they will vote for union membership.

Texas

Terlingua: A statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee that the city of Dallas removed from a park and later sold in an online auction is now on display at a golf resort in West Texas. The bronze sculpture, which was removed from the Dallas park in September 2017, is now at the Lajitas Golf Resort in Terlingua, the Houston Chronicle reports. The 27,000-acre resort, privately owned by Dallas billionaire and pipeline mogul Kelcy Warren and managed by Scott Beasley, the president of Dallas-based WSB Resorts and Clubs, received the statue as a donation in 2019. The 1935 sculpture by Alexander Phimister Proctor was among several Lee monuments around the U.S. that were removed from public view amid the fallout over racial violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. The artwork, which depicts Lee and another soldier on horses, was kept in storage at Dallas’ Hensley Field, the former Naval Air Station, until it was sold in 2019. Holmes Firm PC made the top offer for the sculpture, according to documents from the Dallas City Council. Terlingua, which is in Brewster County near Big Bend National Park and the Rio Grande, has less than 100 residents and no record of Black residents, according to recent census data. Black people make up just 1.7% of the population of Brewster County, according to census data.

Utah

Farmington: In an effort to help save the shrinking Great Salt Lake, environmentalists are attempting a novel idea: securing water rights for a terminal system. The Great Salt Lake is now nearly a foot below its last recorded level in 1963, alarming environmentalists and Utah’s policymakers. “Right now, Great Salt Lake is facing its lowest recorded levels ever since 1847,” said Marcelle Shoop, the director of the Audubon Society’s saline lakes program. “We’re anticipating even lower levels. We hope we don’t see that. With climate change and the serious drought and continued desires to divert more water, this is going to be a challenge.” Legally speaking, the lake is considered to have “no beneficial use” because it’s a terminal system – water that enters the Great Salt Lake ends there. That has historically contributed to some of the pressure to divert water away from it for agriculture, development and other needs. In an effort to help the Great Salt Lake recover, a coalition of environmental groups have partnered with Rio Tinto Kennecott and the Central Utah Water Conservancy District in a first: securing water rights for the lake itself. “Kennecott has a water right that’s currently in excess of our demands for our mining and industrial operations,” Ted Balling, Rio Tinto Kennecott’s senior adviser for water resources, told FOX 13. “We’re able to donate this water right, let it go down the Jordan River out to Farmington Bay to benefit the wildlife and habitat out there.” The donation, about 21,000 acre-feet of water, took years to secure.

Vermont

Burlington: The incoming class of 2025 at the University of Vermont is the largest and academically best-prepared undergraduate group in the school’s 230-year history, according to the university. UVM said more first-year students also hail from other regions of the U.S. than any previous class. The school said UVM attracted 38% more undergraduate applicants compared to last year. The new class is 2,932 first-time, first-year undergraduate students. The university also saw sizable increases in applications beyond the undergraduate level. Applications to UVM’s master’ss and doctoral programs were up 22%, resulting in the largest-ever entering cohort of grad students this fall. “Obviously, we are gratified to see increased interest in UVM among high school students and their families as well as those seeking advanced degrees,” UVM President Suresh Garimella said in a statement. “Our current students can be proud of the fact that the value of the UVM degree they are pursuing is well known far beyond the borders of Vermont.”

Virginia

Falls Church: After failing in its effort to draw new maps for General Assembly districts, the state’s new bipartisan redistricting commission is facing similar hurdles as it tries to map out congressional lines. The commission met Monday and reviewed a map that offered a compromise of sorts between those offered by Democratic and Republican consultants hired by the committee. As drawn, the map would create five safe Democratic districts and five relatively safe Republican districts. The final one, the 2nd District in parts of Hampton Roads, would be very competitive, with some analyses showing a slight GOP edge and others showing a slight Democratic edge. But in a state where Democrats currently hold seven of the 11 congressional districts and have won every statewide race since 2009, some Democrats say a 50-50 split in the lines unfairly cheats Democrats of their due. Del. Marcus Simon, D-Fairfax, said the map looks like something that could have easily been drawn by Republican partisans and is a nonstarter. James Abrenio, a citizen commissioner appointed by Democrats, agreed. “As it stands now, this is not a map I could vote for,” Abrenio said.

Washington

Seattle: The Washington State Department of Transportation has closed five rest areas north of the city along Interstate 5 because of excessive trash, vandalism and a staffing shortage. Rest areas closed Friday in both directions at Smokey Point between Marysville and Arlington and both directions at Custer, north of Bellingham, The Seattle Times reports. “We’ve seen broken toilets, broken sinks and stalls,” said agency spokesperson Bart Treece, who noted maintenance crew members work in pairs for safety now. “Some people extend their stays and leave trash.” The southbound Silver Lake rest area in South Everett, which was already closed, will remain shut. The closures will last at least three months and be reevaluated in 2022, the agency said. Normally, four full-time workers maintain the Smokey Point and South Everett rest areas, but there’s only one employed there, Treece said. That’s part of a 32-person shortage in maintenance workers in northwest Washington, caused in part when fears of recession led to a hiring freeze early in the COVID-19 pandemic. So far, there’s no plan to block the other 43 of WSDOT’s 48 rest stops for winter.

West Virginia

Glen Jean: A national park is telling visitors they need to stop throwing rocks down cliffs, saying it could kill climbers and hikers below. A Facebook post by the New River Gorge National Park and Preserve said a rock climber recently reported to park rangers that multiple people were throwing big rocks from the cliffs at Diamond Point on the Endless Wall trail to climbing areas more than 100 feet below. The park’s post said the climber saw at least one rock fall a couple of feet from someone who was climbing, saying it could have been a fatal accident. The park said signs instructing people not to throw rocks because of the climbers below are posted at the Diamond Point overlook and the rock climbing access spur trails. The park also said removing rocks damages the park’s natural resources. New River Gorge National Park and Preserve was added as a national park in December.

Wisconsin

Milwaukee: One in every 36 Black adults in the state is in prison – a rate that is the highest in the nation and more than twice as high as the national average. A report released last week by The Sentencing Project, a Washington, D.C.-based research organization that advocates for the reduction of incarceration in the U.S., found that despite Black people accounting for just 6% of Wisconsin’s population, they make up 42% of the state’s prison population and are incarcerated at 12 times the rate of white people. Hispanic people are incarcerated at more than twice the rate of white people in Wisconsin, surpassing the national average of 1.3 Hispanic people for every white person. Clarence Nicholas, president of Milwaukee’s NAACP chapter, said he was “disheartened but not surprised” with the contents of the report. He said Black people in Wisconsin have long suffered from systemic racism that creates disadvantages in employment, housing and education, which feeds into inequities of the criminal justice system. The report notes that states with the highest racial disparities in incarceration tend to be located in the Northeast or upper Midwest. Nationally, 1 in every 81 Black people is incarcerated, the report found.

Wyoming

Casper: State lawmakers have voted to hold a rare special session next week to counter President Joe Biden’s proposal to require COVID-19 vaccination for certain workers. Whether the session Oct. 26-28 in Cheyenne, at a cost of $25,000 per day, proceeds to discussing legislation remains to be seen. Disagreement over rules could lead to adjournment at the outset, the Casper Star-Tribune reports. One bill being drafted would ban vaccine passports. Another would impose a $500,000 fine for firing, demoting, promoting, compensating or refusing to hire employees based on vaccination status. Both are sponsored by Republican Rep. Chuck Gray, of Casper. Meanwhile, a bill sponsored by Sen. Tom James, R-Rock Springs, would provide for fines and jail for any public servant who tried to enforce federal vaccine mandates. Even if approved and signed into law by Gov. Mark Gordon, such bills may lack legal force. The U.S. Constitution prohibits state statutes from superseding federal law. How lawmakers will get to the point of considering legislation also remains to be seen. Although a simple majority – 36 of 59 in the House and 18 of 30 in the Senate – voted last week to hold the special session, there’s a higher bar to approve rules for the session.

From USA TODAY Network and wire reports

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Puffin problems, Salt Lake water rights: News from around our 50 states