There is no cold. Only absence of heat

Betsy Price

The News Journal

Yes, it's snowed a couple of times and snarled the roads and made schools change their schedules and created mayhem in grocery store aisles.

Yes, it's dropped to the single digits and everybody has been slogging around in coats, scarves and gloves.

And, yes, it is winter officially.

But it's not cold.

Because there is no cold. Only absence of heat.

"There's cold in the same sense that there's dark. You can't open the door to a room and have the dark spill out. Dark is the absence of light," says Dr. David Goldberg, a Drexel University physicist. "If you leave your door open when the air-conditioning is on, you're not letting the cold out. You're letting the heat in."

The idea that there is no cold is a fundamental building block in physics and thermodynamics. Kids study the concept in school, but it often fades into the haze of all the stuff they have to master to move on and up, when they're not praying for snow days so they can ditch class and homework entirely.

Tulasi Nandan Parashar, a post-doctoral researcher in physics and astronomy at the University of Delaware, explains the concept of heat by starting at the atomic level.

"Everything is made up of atoms – yourself, your desk, your belt, your cellphone," he says. "And atoms vibrate very fast. If they are free to move, they move around very fast. If they are in a solid state, they shake around in that position. There's random shaking of liquids, gasses and movement. It's a form of energy.

"The more shaking we have, the more energy is emitted and we call it hotter, or it has temperature."

Or heat.

There is a limit to that shaking, though: At absolute zero, at which point scientists believe all the motion of atoms ceases.

By international agreement, scientists always use the Kelvin scale to talk about absolute zero. The Kelvin scale starts there and has no negative numbers. If you are using the Fahrenheit scale, which America does, absolute zero would be – 459.67 degrees. In Celsius, it's – 273.15 degrees.

And while scientists have never been able achieve that low, they've come with billionths of a degree. Parashar believes it may be impossible to reach.

Even if scientists can't reach that point, there's plenty of good reason to keep trying to, Goldberg says. Materials act differently at that point, with metals flowing like liquids for one thing. Researchers believe computer chips made at that temperature could do much more than current chips.

And one group that's really interested in absolute zero is the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which is charged with time keeping, says Goldberg. A cold atom, as it turns out, is the best atom to use to set the national atomic clock, which is what time is based on in the United States. It's that agency's job to tell us exactly how long a second is, for example.

Part of Einstein's Theory of Relativity says that as things move around, their internal clock runs a little bit more slowly, he said. That makes it hard to get a precise read on exactly how much time is passing. So, to have the most accurate atomic block, it needs to be the coldest atomic clock, Goldberg says.

While scientists are working on reaching absolute zero, physicists and others aren't even sure they know what the hottest temperature is that could reached in the universe. They know that the interior of suns blaze away at millions of degrees Fahrenheit, and they believe there were some massively hot moments after the Big Bang that created the universe.

"We can make guesses at what point our science would break down at being able to measure it," Goldberg says. "Think of of a 1 with 32 zeroes after it as a degree. Just an incredible number. But hotter than that. We couldn't even know how to describe temperature at that point, that's such a ridiculous number. You might as well call it a gazillion.

"So, yes, there might be a hottest temperature, but we're so far away from being able to create hat, it's almost pointless to discuss it."

Even though in the world of science, people tend to talk about things as losing heat rather than getting cold, both Parashar and Goldberg say it's no big deal that people say they feel cold.

It's all relative, Parashar says.

"All that means is that the random thermal energy in the current environment is less than what your body is used to, and your body feels that. It's a relative term. For some fish, for polar bears, it's normal. But our normal summer would be hot for a polar bear," he says.

It's also true that as with many terms in this world, the world cold means several things, Goldberg says.

"Cold is one of those words that's both a sensation and as you're rightly saying, the lack of thermal energy, the lack of heat. It's two different things," Goldberg says. "You can certainly say it's dark out at night, but you can't say close the door, you're letting the dark in.

"It's just a way of thinking."

COLD TERMINOLOGY

The idea of cold affects a lot of normal expressions. It seems to have a lot of negative connotations.

• A cold fish – Someone who is reserved and doesn't seem to want to be friendly.

• Stone cold – Someone who is unfeeling. The phrase shows up in William Shakespeare's "Henry V:" "Cold as any stone."

• Cold comfort – Something that offers little reward or sympathy. Shakespeare used it in "King John:" "I do not ask you much, I beg cold comfort; and you are so strait / And so ingrateful, you deny me that."

• Blood run cold – Someone who is frightened.

• Break out in a cold sweat – Someone who is frightened.

• Cold cash –- Actual money.

• Cold feet – Someone who is afraid of doing something.

• Cold shoulder –- Someone who deliberately ignores another or severely curtails interaction with them. It first appeared in Sir Walter Scott's novel, "The Antiquary."

• Cold sober – Someone who is completely sober.

• Cold turkey – Someone who just ends a habit. It was originally drug slang.

• Come in from the cold – Someone who returns to safety or shelter.

• In cold blood – Someone without feeling.

• Cold day in hell – Something that will never happen or is highly unlikely.

• Out cold – Someone who is unconscious.

• Pour cold water on – Someone who tries to dampen enthusiasm for an idea.

SONGS WITH COLD IN THE TITLE

So, just imagine some physics and quantum mechanics experts were trying to make these songs scientifically accurate: "Absent From Heat as Ice?'" or "She's So Absent of Heat?"

• Foreigner's "Cold As Ice"

• The Rolling Stones' "She's So Cold"

• James Brown's "Cold Sweat"

• Breaking Benjamin's "So Cold"

• Rainbo's "Stone Cold"

• Kix's "Cold Shower"

• Def Leppard's "Blood Runs Cold"

• Little Feat's "Cold, Cold, Cold"

• Stevie Ray Vaughan's "Cold Shot"

• Paula Abdul's "Cold-Hearted"

• Foo Fighters' "Cold Day in the Sun"

COLD FACTS

• Coldest laboratory: In 2000, a team from Helsinki University of Technology cooled a piece of the rare metal rhodium to a 10th of a billionth of a degree above absolute zero. That made the lab briefly one of the coldest places in the universe

• Coldest place on Earth: The coldest temperature ever recorded is -128.56 Fahrenheit at Vostok station in Antarctica in 1983.

• Coldest city: Yakutsk, the capital of the republic of Yakutia in the Russian Far East (formerly part of Siberia) has an average January temperature is about -40 Fahrenheit and it has dipped to -83.

• Coldest in North America: At Snag airport, Yukon, Canada on Feb. 3, 1947, it was -81.4 Fahrenheit. An officer there said he could follow where people had been because their breath hung in the air for 15 minutes after they had left. The puffs sometimes froze and fell to the ground, where they smashed with a tinkle.

Vicky White: A respected officer turned into a fugitive who allgedly ...

CNN —

At 56, Vicky White was on the brink of retiring from an illustrious career as a corrections officer.

“She was a model employee,” said Rick Singleton, the sheriff in Lauderdale County, Alabama, where Vicky White worked for nearly two decades.

“All of her co-workers, all the employees in the sheriff’s office, the judges, all (had) the … utmost respect for her,” he said.

White, who was the county’s assistant director of corrections, was so well respected that “some of the older guys looked up to her as a mother figure,” Singleton added.

But despite Vicky White’s stellar reputation, the jail boss apparently helped “mastermind” a plan to flee with inmate Casey White, the sheriff told CNN on Tuesday.

After 11 days on the run, authorities found the pair Monday in Evansville, Indiana. Casey White was arrested. Authorities say they believe that Vicky White fatally shot herself. “We believe that she may have taken her own life,” said Dave Wedding, the sheriff in Vanderburgh County, Indiana.

Here’s what we know about what led up to Vicky White’s apparent transformation and death:

Officials believe the pair had a ‘special’ relationship

Vicky White, a widow with no children, and Casey White, a 38-year-old convicted felon and murder suspect, had a “special relationship,” Singleton said last week.

“We have confirmed through independent sources and other means that there was in fact a relationship between Casey White and Vicky White outside of her normal work hours – not physical contact – but a relationship of a different nature,” the sheriff said.

He said interviews with other inmates helped confirm a personal relationship between Casey White and Vicky White, who were not related. “We were told Casey White got special privileges and was treated differently while in the facility than the other inmates,” Singleton said.

Inmates said Casey White “was getting extra food on his trays” and “was getting privileges no one else got. And this was all coming from her,” Singleton said.

Confirmation of the relationship came from “other sources outside the detention center,” according to Singleton.

Investigators have traced the relationship back to early 2020. Casey White, who had been serving a 75-year sentence in a state prison for a series of crimes in 2015, was brought to the Lauderdale County jail in 2020 for his arraignment on murder charges in the death of Connie Ridgeway.

“As far as we know, that was the earliest physical contact they had,” the Lauderdale County sheriff said.

After the arraignment, Casey White returned to state prison. But Singleton said the officer and inmate kept communicating by phone.

Casey White was brought back to the Lauderdale County jail in February to attend court hearings related to his murder charges.

Lauderdale County District Attorney Chris Connolly said he was stunned that Vicky White may have been romantically involved with an inmate. “I never would have thought that in a million years,” said Connolly, who spoke with Vicky White almost every day for 17 years.

He said Vicky White was “the most solid person at the jail.”

“I would have trusted her with my life,” he said.

Vicky White funded the escape after selling her house

Shortly before her disappearance, Vicky White sold her home for $95,550 – less than half the current market value. County records list the total parcel value of the property at $235,600.

She also purchased a 2007 Ford Edge, one of several vehicles the pair used to flee. The Ford was found abandoned in Williamson County, Tennessee, hours after the prison escape.

Vicky White purchased a 2007 Ford Edge before disappearing. From US Marshals Service

“Clearly lots of planning went into this,” Connolly said.

During her time on the run, Vicky White became a fugitive with an arrest warrant in her name. She was accused of permitting or facilitating escape in the first degree, identity theft and forgery.

Singleton said he believes Vicky White “was basically the mastermind behind the whole plan.”

“He (Casey White) was behind bars. He really couldn’t plan too much behind bars. Personally, I think she was the one to put the plan together,” the sheriff said.

But former FBI Assistant Director Chris Swecker said he believes Casey White may have manipulated Vicky White. “This is not terribly unusual, that you have this guard falling in love with a prisoner who’s probably groomed her over a period of time,” Swecker said.

“So he obviously needed her. You would think someone with law enforcement experience – an assistant director of corrections in that county – would have thought a little bit farther down the line,” he said.

“She obviously lost all judgment over the last few months or so.”

She talked about retiring and going to the beach

The day Vicky White disappeared was supposed to be her last day at work, Singleton said.

She had worked at the department for almost two decades and submitted her retirement paperwork at the end of April, though the retirement papers had not yet been finalized.

Singleton said Vicky White had talked about retiring for three or four months prior to her disappearance. He said she talked about moving to the beach.

But Vicky White didn’t mention her retirement to her mother, Pat Davis, the mother told CNN affiliate WAAY.

Vicky White used her position as a boss to violate jail policy, sheriff says

As the second in command at the detention center, Vicky White used her position to execute the escape plan on April 29, Singleton said.

Vicky White said she was taking Casey White to a courthouse for a mental health evaluation and would then go get medical care because she wasn’t feeling well.

Authorities later discovered no hearing or evaluation was scheduled for Casey White that day. And Vicky White never arrived at the medical facility.

Video Ad Feedback Video shows the moment an Alabama inmate escaped 03:24 - Source: CNN

Vicky White violated jail protocol when she removed Casey White from the detention center by herself, Singleton said. The policy required Casey White to be escorted by two sworn deputies.

Her patrol car was later found abandoned in a shopping center parking lot, less than a mile from the detention center.

Officials obtained video showing the patrol car the pair left in. The video shows the car stopped at an intersection eight minutes after it left the jail. The intersection is about two blocks from the shopping center parking lot where the car was later found abandoned, Singleton said.

“It’s obvious from the evidence we have gathered that this was not – that he didn’t kidnap her or force her or anything as far as in the car once they left the facility,” Singleton said.

“She scheduled the van transport that morning, made sure all the other armed deputies were out of the building and tied up in court. Knew the booking officer wouldn’t question her, the assistant director when she told her she was going to take him to court and drop him off with other employees,” the sheriff said.

“She arranged – purchased the getaway car, she sold her house, got her hands on cash, she went shopping, bought clothes for him,” Singleton said Tuesday.

Not ‘the Vicky White we know’

Loved ones and former colleagues have been grappling with a barrage of emotions since Vicky White’s unexpected disappearance.

Davis, Vicky White’s mother, told CNN last week that they last spoke on April 29 – the day Vicky White disappeared.

“The whole thing has been a nightmare. I just want my daughter to come home. And to come home alive,” Davis said.

Davis said she had no idea about her daughter’s plans to flee with an inmate.

“She would come home after work, eat supper at my house, and pick up her dog. She’d walk her dog and that was her routine every day,” Davis said.

Singleton said the Vicky White who fled with an inmate is not “the Vicky White we know.”

“Vicky White was a member of our family. That’s why it was so hard in the first few days to grasp that she could actually do something like this because it was so out of character for her,” the sheriff said.

“In spite of what she’s done, Vicky was a friend to every one of us,” he said. “It has been an emotional roller coaster for our employees.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story had an outdated value for Vicky White's home; the most recent value was $235,600. It also included the wrong age for Connie Ridgeway; she was 59 when she died.

Alaa Elassar Holly Yan
Alaa Elassar
Holly Yan

Bangert: Waiting for a climate change on 'fake news'

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – The end of snow. What about the time The New York Times reported that it wasn’t going to snow again in New York City?

“That’s fake news,” came the voice, shouted Wednesday night from the back of the room in a standing-room-only portion of a packed Purdue Memorial Union North Ballroom. “I mean, it’s pushing an agenda.”

The pause that followed the question was awkward, for sure.

But it made the point, in its own way, about media trust and today’s consumers of news that C-SPAN founder Brian Lamb and Susan Page, Washington bureau chief for USA TODAY, already had been circling during an hour-long Q&A, part of the inaugural “Center for C-SPAN Conversation,” hosted by Purdue’s Center for C-SPAN Scholarship & Engagement.

Minutes earlier, Lamb, a Purdue grad who turned C-SPAN into an unfiltered look at congressional action, had zeroed in on the state of the media coverage and media expectations in the age of Donald Trump, using Page’s reporting in print and frequent appearances on TV and radio broadcasts of various stripes as a baseline.

“In all seriousness, I turn on Fox News and watch it and then I turn on CNN or MSNBC, they’re two different planets,” Lamb said. “It’s not just that they’re for or against. They’re just talking about two different worlds. … How can you go to all of them and still survive?”

Page’s response: She considered herself more of a reporter and analyst than a commentator.

Still …

“So, I go on Fox and say what I think about things, and I get all this hate-Twitter from people who think I’m very liberal,” Page said. “Then, I go on MSNBC and I say exactly the same things I said on Fox, and I get all this hate-Twitter from people saying I’m very conservative. After MSNBC, they say I love Trump. After Fox, they say I hate Trump. And I’ve said the same thing on both channels.

“They really are very different versions of the truth.”

In other words, it’s all in what we hear.

Better yet, it’s what we assume we hear and think we know.

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After a few uncomfortable beats of not knowing what to say about the fake-news claims about snow-less Manhattan winters from now on, Lamb pressed ahead to other audience questions and comments, most of which continued to poke around at questions about media trust and presidential tweets about “fake news.”

In the back of the room, though, smartphones were humming, courtesy of that guest WiFi at Purdue.

Wait, The New York Times said it wasn’t going to snow again?

Well …

Published Feb. 7, 2014, under an “Opinion” banner and a “The End of Snow?” headline, the piece by Porter Fox – features editor at Powder magazine and the author of “Deep: The Story of Skiing and the Future of Snow” – dissected the situation leading up to the Winter Olympics that year in Sochi.

The upshot: Test events in the Russian city had been canceled the February before because of 60-degree temperatures and browning slopes. That led to a study by a professor at the University of Waterloo in Ontario. The researcher supposed that, with an increase in the average global temperature of 7 degrees Fahrenheit possible by 2100, only six of the 19 cities that had hosted the Winter Olympics up until that point would be cold enough and snowy enough to host the games again in 2100.

Fox fretted about what warming patterns could mean for ski resorts in the U.S., based on similar models: For skiers, the prospects of disappearing snowpack and closed black diamond runs weren’t pretty.

That’s what the opinion piece, buy its global warming message or not, said.

But here’s what stuck, four years later, for that voice in the back of the North Ballroom: No more snow in New York City, says The New York Times.

There’s plenty of that to go around, really. And from both sides of the aisle.

The past week has been a bit of a case study, provided by Adam Wren, an Indianapolis-based writer who has been trolled on social media by those on the left since Politico published his March 30 piece, “My 72-hour safari in Clinton Country.”

“I told them I had traveled here to take the political temperature of Clinton Country,” Wren wrote, setting up a supposed deep dive into a part of Brooklyn that turned out strong for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, looking for someone who regretted not voting for Trump. “This place, I explained, seemed to be the epicenter of liberal consensus.”

In the land “where card-carrying members of the East Coast elite shop for groceries,” he said high in the article, “I wasn’t welcome to roam a single organic-mango punctuated aisle unless under the supervision of a co-op member.”

Lesson No. 1: Satire is hard. (Wren got ripped, early and often, by those who weren’t in on the joke or simply thought it fell short.)

Lesson No. 2, as Fly-Over Country already knows: It’s not fun to be painted with the broad brush by a parachuting reporter on an anthropological mission into the heart of a red state.

There’s nuance in them, there hills … and plains and backroads and beat-up factories and whatever.

Indiana wound up on a side of that broad brush again last week, when “Will & Grace” creator Max Mutchnick sent copies of John Oliver’s “A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo” to every elementary school library in the state.

Oliver’s book – a parody of “Marlon Bundo’s Day in the Life of the Vice President,” by Mike Pence’s daughter, Charlotte, and his wife, Karen– turns the children’s story about the Pence family’s pet rabbit into an LGBT-themed story of love and tolerance. It also was some Grade A trolling of the vice president and his view on gays and lesbians.

Mutchnick’s explanation: “Mike Pence has had an enormous platform in Indiana, and as it relates to gay people, he’s used it to spread a message of intolerance. By donating these books, I hope to counter those efforts and provide positive role models and a story of inclusion for children in Pence’s home state."

What title Mutchnick plans to send to the elementary schools of New York City, which produced Donald Trump, wasn’t immediately clear. Whether Mutchnick had a good read on Indiana, where Pence’s views had his re-election chances on the ropes in 2016 until Trump saved him, wasn’t immediately clear, either.

I don’t know, maybe that’s what a four-year-old opinion piece in the New York Times about the potential death of the ski industry meant for the ingrained climate change denial harbored in the back of the Union ballroom.

Two different planets.

Wednesday night, Lamb and Page groaned over the numbers released this week in a Monmouth University poll, in which 77 percent of Americans believe traditional major TV and newspaper media outlets report “fake news” at least occasionally. That’s up 63 percent who believed that last year.

They asked themselves whether there were ways back to accept truths at a time both described as the most unusual in their long careers spent covering presidents.

Neither had a solid answer, beyond more shoe leather spent trying to report, explain and put together pieces of what’s happening. Keep working to earn that trust.

That’s not going to be easy when trust depends more and more on which version of the truth people assume you’re telling.

Reach J&C columnist Dave Bangert at 765-420-5258 or at dbangert@gannett.com. Follow on Twitter: @davebangert.

Biden suspends new enrollments under 'Remain in Mexico' policy

NOGALES, Mexico — Horns blared from a speaker and filled the living room with banda music. Elena Ramirez kept a close eye on the stove, occasionally stirring the few dishes cooking on the burners.

Next to her, Antonia Castillo improvised, using two large metal containers and a heavy strainer to make coffee, straining the boiling water from container to container over the sink.

"Ni que Starbucks ni nada," Ramirez said: Starbucks doesn't have anything on Castillo's coffee.

"Anytime before going out, she always says, 'Let's drink coffee.' I'm really gonna miss drinking coffee with her and sharing breakfast with her," Ramirez added.

On the menu for this morning: chilaquiles in a creamy red sauce, eggs scrambled in a tomato sauce, and beans.

The two women worked seamlessly around each other. They've had plenty of practice.

Castillo fled violence in Honduras to seek refuge in the U.S., and has been in Nogales just under a year. U.S. border officials sent her with her 15-year-old daughter here, a city she had never set foot in before, under the Migrant Protection Protocols, also known as "Remain in Mexico."

Ramirez arrived in Nogales two months later, fleeing violence in the Mexican state of Guerrero after she denounced a cartel member of assaulting her. She uses an alias out of fear that the people she fled will find her here.

She had also hoped to claim asylum in the U.S. But Ramirez and her 13-year-old son arrived here after President Donald Trump's administration shut down asylum processing at the border in a bid to stop the spread of COVID-19.

With nowhere to go and without any friends in Nogales, Ramirez turned to Castillo, who she met at a migrant aid center. At the time, Castillo had been living with two other Honduran women and their two children, who she had met on the journey to the border.

A few weeks later, the four women and their children moved into an apartment on the city's north side, just a few blocks from the border fence that separates Nogales from its twin city in Arizona. They pay what they can, usually with money from relatives living in the U.S., who are willing to take them in if they make it to the country.

Castillo and Ramirez have forged a close bond. As the two eldest in the group of nine — five women and four minors — living in the apartment, they have become motherly figures.

The two women have built a sense of community and family in a place far from home, and far from where they envision their future, in the United States.

"Each day is an adventure in this house, in this home. That's how we wait for asylum, thanks be to God," Ramirez said. "At least right now, because at first, God had to tell me 'Look, here's your new family so you can have patience, because this will take a while.'"

As President Joe Biden's administration considers what to do about the nearly 70,000 asylum seekers that the U.S. government sent to Mexico under the Migrant Protection Protocols, migrants such as Castillo are already thinking of a life beyond the hardships they face at the U.S.-Mexico border.

That also means having tough conversations and the possibility of saying goodbye to people, like Ramirez, who they have grown close to during their time in Mexico.

"I will miss her company a lot. Here we have ourselves; I tell her that we're like sisters," Castillo said.

"I would like to be able to meet up on the other side, all of us. Hoping that God will allow us to reunite and possibly give us the opportunity to even share a home on the other side," she added.

Policy was launched two years ago

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, in partnership with the U.S. Department of Justice, rolled out the Migrant Protection Protocols on Jan. 29, 2019, at the San Diego-Tijuana border region. It was one in a series of tools that President Donald Trump's administration implemented to crack down on asylum and unauthorized immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Top officials such as former acting Homeland Security secretary Chad Wolf described it as a "game-changer." An agreement with the Mexican government has allowed U.S. border officials to send back more than 70,000 migrants to Mexico under the program, according to an analysis by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.

One year ago this January, the policy expanded to the entire southwestern U.S. border and the Department of Homeland Security began implementing it in Arizona. Since then, U.S. border officials have sent back 1,464 asylum seekers to Mexico through two Arizona border cities, San Luis and Nogales, government statistics showed.

That includes Castillo and the other two Honduran women, Maira Sanchez and Alejandra Ramirez (unrelated to Elena Ramirez). The Arizona Republic interviewed the three just days after the U.S. sent them to Nogales, Sonora, on Jan. 27, 2020.

Alejandra Ramirez, 21, the youngest of the three, described the challenges in adapting to the frigid winter weather in the city. Her son Matias, just eight months old at the time, was recovering from a respiratory infection.

"My son was shaking from the cold earlier and I felt very bad, so I laid down next to him and he fell asleep," she said. "But it has been difficult because where we lived it wasn't very cold, it's hot year-round."

Fast forward one year later, their situation, though still uncertain, has been a bit more stable as they've found a way to adapt, the three women told The Republic.

Originally, asylum seekers under "Remain in Mexico" were expected to attend their court hearings in U.S. border cities several weeks after they were sent back across the border. Alejandra Ramirez, Castillo and Sanchez traveled 340 miles to Ciudad Juárez for their first hearing in April, just as COVID-19 cases began to surge on both sides of the border.

By then, the U.S. government had frozen all court hearings for the Migrant Protection Protocols, so border officials gave them a notice with a new date. All hearings are postponed indefinitely, so there is a chance their upcoming hearing this March may be rescheduled again.

Migrant and human rights advocates are pushing for the Biden administration to immediately rescind the Migrant Protection Protocols and parole asylum seekers waiting in Mexico to the United States.

"There is great suffering here, there's great vulnerability here, and danger. And as a country we said we wouldn't do that, and we're doing it very intentionally. A lot of effort went into orchestrating all that suffering," said Sara Ritchie with the Kino Border Initiative, a nonprofit migrant aid center based in the twin cities of Ambos Nogales.

That is the center where Castillo and Elena Ramirez met. They provide meals, warm clothes and legal services, among other things, to deported and northbound migrants.

"What we see that is happening is that the U.S. is not upholding its very own law, and I think that is being overlooked," she added. "That is being ignored purposely. And I don't think a lot of people understand that."

For months, top officials in the Trump administration had warned against ending "Remain in Mexico" or any of the other border enforcement policies they have put in place.

Trump himself reiterated those warnings during his final visit to the U.S.-Mexico border as president on Jan. 12.

"If our border security measures are reversed, it will trigger a tidal wave of illegal immigration, a wave like you’ve never seen before," Trump said, speaking next to the 30-foot wall installed by his administration in Alamo, Texas.

"This will be an unmitigated calamity for national security, public safety, and public health," Trump added.

On Biden's first day in office, the Homeland Security Department announced it would immediately stop sending asylum seekers to Mexico under the "Remain in Mexico" policy as of Jan. 21. But the department emphasized that would only apply to new enrollments in the program.

Homeland Security officials also said they would keep all current restrictions at the border in place, for the moment. Additional details for asylum seekers already waiting in Mexico would be forthcoming, they said.

"All current MPP participants should remain where they are, pending further official information from U.S. government officials." the department said in a statement.

On his first day in office, Biden also announced a sweeping plan to reform the country's immigration system, including boosting immigration judges and funding to tackle the asylum application backlog and resources to address the root causes of immigration in Central America, where most of the participants of "Remain in Mexico" are from.

Jake Sullivan, Biden's incoming national security adviser, told Spanish news agency EFE in December that the administration would need time to develop the infrastructure at the U.S.-Mexico border to boost asylum processing and develop COVID-19 safety guidelines before allowing any individuals waiting in Mexico to be processed at the border.

Migrants are looking to Biden for help

Up until Biden's inauguration day, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the country's border enforcement agency, had continued sending migrants back to Mexico under the Migrant Protection Protocols, even though hearings have been indefinitely frozen since March.

As of April, the first full month when COVID-19 restrictions on asylum at the border began, the U.S. government sent back at least 5,493 migrants to Mexico under the Migrant Protection Protocols, CBP statistics showed.

Data from TRAC showed that increasingly more of those migrants had been from Cuba, Venezuela and other parts of South America, although the program originally was intended for migrants from the Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

Geovel Samá, 24, a Cuban migrant, was returned to Mexico through Arizona during the COVID-19 pandemic. He fled Cuba in November 2019 because his political activism against the government had led to increased repression.

He traveled to Nicaragua and then made his way north, across multiple countries, on his own. When he reached Mexico, he made his way in December 2019 to the border city of Sonoyta, across from Lukeville, because at the time they had not yet implemented "Remain in Mexico," he said.

Samá spent several months in the area waiting for an opportunity to claim asylum at the small port of entry. But he got stuck in Sonoyta when the U.S. government implemented pandemic restrictions at the border in March.

The city, which lies along a well-known drug- and human-smuggling corridor, presented lots of risks. During his time there, a group of men robbed him of his remaining money, Samá said. He filed a police report, and that allowed him to get a humanitarian visa.

The constant exposure to extortion and violence along Mexico's border cities is one of the main reasons why migrant advocates want the incoming Biden administration to immediately end "Remain in Mexico."

In December, Human Rights First, a nonprofit human rights group, updated their list documenting instances of violence, kidnapping and extortion of asylum seekers sent to Mexico under the Migrant Protection Protocols in the past two years.

There are now over 1,300 entries. Kennji Kizuka, a senior researcher who helped compile the list remotely by reaching out to shelters, attorneys and migrants themselves, said the true number is much higher.

"The reason why we want to update it, of course, is to just have more up-to-date information about what happened to people," he said. "But also in the hopes that the incoming administration will understand the gravity of the problems that they're facing, and in particular, just how dangerous the Migrant Protection Protocols have been."

Wary of those risks and the possibility that criminal groups would use force to recruit him, Samá said he crossed the border illegally into Arizona on July 10.

He walked for eight hours in the Sonoran Desert, when daytime temperatures hover over 110 degrees Fahrenheit, and without water, a situation that has contributed to the discovery of over 300 migrant remains in this particular stretch over the past 20 years, according to a mortality map managed by the nonprofit aid group Humane Borders.

"My intention was to find immigration, that is what I wanted," Samá said. "But I walked a lot because where I crossed, I'm not sure if they couldn't see me, or if it was too far. So I kept walking up because I didn't want to stay and wait."

A Pima County Sheriff's deputy eventually found him walking along a road and called the Border Patrol. He spent his 24th birthday in detention, he said. Agents sent him to Nogales under the Migrant Protection Protocols three days later.

In the city, the humanitarian visa he obtained after he was robbed has allowed him to work, and to apply for temporary residency in Mexico. Still, Samá said it's a struggle, and he depends on nonprofits like the Kino Border Initiative for support.

Over the past few months, he has closely followed election developments on social media. Biden's victory, and his promises to end the Migrant Protection Protocols have given him hope.

"I hope God allows everything to go well and that he truly does everything he promised, because it's not just me, many migrants are struggling," he said.

That hope is shared by thousands of other migrants waiting along the U.S-Mexico border, even though that could lead to some difficult decisions in the lives they have built in Mexico in the meantime.

Osbaldo Estupiñan Garcia also fled political repression in Cuba. U.S. border officials returned him to Nogales on Jan. 3, 2020, after he spent three months waiting for his chance to claim asylum. He was among the first migrants enrolled in the Migrant Protection Protocols in Arizona.

One year later, his life had changed drastically. He spoke to The Republic from the home he has shared for the past seven months with his girlfriend, who is from Nogales, and her two children.

With the prospect of leaving Mexico soon, Estupiñan Garcia and his girlfriend have started talking about their next steps. He remains committed to seeking asylum in the U.S. and helping his family back in Cuba. His girlfriend has started looking into getting a U.S. visa.

As he waits for his day in court, whether it's from his hearing scheduled for March or if Biden acts before then, he said he refuses to lose hope.

"You never lose the faith," he said. "What does happen at certain times is that you feel demoralized. You think that it feels more difficult and farther away. You see the moment get farther away, but you know it's there, so you never lose faith."

Pandemic complicates ending policy

As the incoming Biden administration moves forward in its push to overhaul the nation's immigration system, COVID-19 will remain one of the biggest roadblocks to fully ending the Migrant Protection Protocols.

Homeland Security officials made clear on Jan. 20 they would keep in place border restrictions, including Title 42. That policy has allowed the U.S. to turn back since March more than 393,000 migrants apprehended along the U.S.-Mexico border under an emergency authority from the U.S. Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention to prevent the spread of the virus, according to CBP.

States on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border are in particularly bad shape, as the spread of COVID-19 continues unmitigated. Border states such as Arizona, California and Texas on the U.S. side, and Sonora, Coahuila and Baja California in Mexico, continue seeing significant spikes in cases.

Criteria set by the Homeland Security and Justice departments earlier in the pandemic called for the resumption of court hearings under the Migrant Protection Protocols once all 11 border states — four in the U.S. and six in Mexico — reduced the spread of the virus, which appears untenable given that infection rates continue rising.

Mark Morgan, the acting director for Customs and Border Protection, has been one of the most vocal critics of Biden's pledge to end the Migrant Protection Protocols. He told The Republic that resuming court hearings involved a challenging balance because of the virus.

"We need to look at what's happening globally with the pandemic, and so we need to be sure that the steps we're taking are methodical and thoughtful in balancing that very real issue with the global pandemic, but also the real issue that we need to reopen and start the process again," he said.

Asylum seekers can check the status of their cases, or their next scheduled court hearing, online at the DOJ's EOIR Automated Case Information site, or by calling an information hotline.

Pending an overhaul of the program under Biden, CBP said that "when conditions are deemed safe," the Homeland Security and Justice departments will issue a public notification at least 15 days before court hearings resume, with "location-specific information" for asylum seekers.

Many migrant advocates are concerned that not all of the migrants sent to Mexico under the program will have the opportunity to have their day in court to make their claims for asylum.

TRAC data showed that 27,000 asylum seekers under the program had been regularly attending their hearings before the pandemic restrictions, while 12,000 more are waiting for their first hearing.

Others have given up and gone back to the countries they were fleeing, or moved elsewhere in Mexico in search of better economic opportunities or more safety.

Austin Kocher, a researcher with Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, said he was concerned in particular about the quality of the data and information that the U.S. federal government keeps, which could cause asylum seekers to fall through the cracks.

He pointed to issues with the family separation policy at the border, where the lack of proper data kept hundreds of parents from being reunited with their children. Over the course of his work at TRAC, Kocher said he has found all kinds of sloppiness with data management.

"One of the just really widespread issues is the government just does not care right now about the quality of its own data, of its own record keeping," Kocher said, adding that it was a disservice to the public's right now what their government is doing.

"We don't know because so many of their record-keeping practices are either secretive, or they're sloppy. Or they're both, they're secretive and they're sloppy," he added.

Nico Palazzo, an attorney with Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center in El Paso, has similar concerns. He helps asylum seekers sent to Mexico under "Remain in Mexico" and says many of them either don't have access to the internet or don't know how to follow up.

Palazzo, like other immigration attorneys, has been relying on social media apps such as Whatsapp to stay in touch with clients in Mexico because of pandemic restrictions and concerns. Since March, he has successfully paroled only one individual enrolled in the program into the U.S.

Palazzo accused Trump of weaponizing the pandemic against asylum seekers and of creating a humanitarian crisis in border cities such as Juárez, which was also ravaged by virus. That has left many migrants in desperate situations, he added.

Migrant advocates have put together recommendations for the Biden administration on how to wind down the program. One of the key points Palazzo is pushing is for the government to parole more asylum seekers and release them into the custody of relatives, rather than hold them in immigration detention centers.

"The fight against MPP has to be coupled against the mass detention of people who have committed no other crime than seeking asylum," Palazzo said. "Yes, it's great to get people of out MPP. But putting them into a detention center is not the solution, putting families in family detention center is not the solution."

Activists vow to keep pressure on Biden

Back in their shared apartment in Nogales, Castillo and Elena Ramirez remained upbeat and optimistic as they sat down for the meal they cooked for the entire household.

Once everyone finished eating, they danced to punta — the traditional, percussion heavy music from Honduras — as Matias, now 20 months old, ran around the apartment, eliciting more laughter and smiles.

Challenges and concerns persist. For one, the three Honduran women only have temporary status in Mexico. Sanchez, who was missing on that morning, and Elena Ramirez are the only one working. And COVID-19 remains a very real threat, on top of existing concerns over safety and security.

The four minors living in the house, the eldest of which is now 15 years old, have missed an entire year or school. Like other migrant families waiting in Nogales, they are unable to enroll their kids in school in Mexico.

Their hope is that their circumstances will change as Biden takes office.

Even Elena Ramirez, who is not enrolled in the Migrant Protection Protocols because the program does not apply to Mexicans, could also see relief. Biden has pledged to end the metering policy under which she would have to wait months before getting an asylum screening.

"Truthfully, my sense of urgency, rather than being about me is more about my son. Because there are no opportunities here. By that I mean safety, which is what I've come here seeking," she said.

Amid such hardship over the past year in Nogales, in addition to the close ties they have forged with each other, the women have found purpose.

Sanchez in particular has been active in advocacy work at the border. She helped organize and even spoke at several rallies in Nogales, calling on the Biden administration to resume asylum processing.

"It's important because we're helping ourselves, and because we make ourselves heard, in case they forget about us or they don't remember that they implemented this policy and they have us waiting here, separated from our families," she said. "So through marches and through the work of reporters, we're making ourselves heard."

Now that Biden has taken office as the new president of the U.S., Sanchez and the women she's grown close to vowed to keep the pressure on him until he keeps his word.

Have any news tips or story ideas about the U.S.-Mexico border? Reach the reporter at rafael.carranza@arizonarepublic.com, or follow him on Twitter @RafaelCarranza.

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Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter: What really happened that night?

Editor's note: This column was first published in The Record's edition of Sunday, March 26, 2000.

Almost everyone agrees on this singular fact that tells so much, yet so little:

The killers fired their first shots without saying a single word.

From there, the mystery that involves a man called "Hurricane" spread like cracks on a broken mirror.

It has been 34 years now, and people still can't agree on what happened at Paterson's Lafayette Grill. Did Rubin "Hurricane" Carter and John Artis brutally kill two people and fatally wound a third there on a June night in 1966? Or were Carter, then 29 and a well-known boxer, and Artis, 19 and a former high school track star who spent his days driving a delivery truck, unjustly imprisoned for most of two decades?

BACK IN THE NEWS:Revisiting the Hurricane Carter murder case: Son resurrects his detective father's memoir

To study the original case records now is to walk a path littered with perplexing questions and strands of facts that have been woven into myth. At the same time, such a journey also reveals evidence that has never been challenged – and, yet, still contributes to the mystery.

That night, there were two gunmen. One carried a 12-gauge shotgun, the other a .32-caliber pistol — probably a 7-shot, German-made revolver, say police ballistics experts. Both were black. Both came in through the front door.

It was early in the morning of June 17, 1966, a Friday. The 3 a.m. closing time at the Lafayette Grill drew near.

Inside were three men and one woman, all white, all of them regulars at the tavern, long known as a quiet watering hole on the border between Paterson's working-class Lithuanian and black neighborhoods. The place had a television above the bar, a pool table in the middle of a checkerboard linoleum floor, and a kitchen that served up burgers and fries.

Two men nursed drinks as they sat on bar stools. On the wall above the bar and surrounded by musical-note decorations, a framed portrait photo of President John F. Kennedy looked down. Beneath Kennedy's photo sat a clock designed to look like a large pocket watch. Beneath that, crime scene photos show a shelf with three White Rose whiskey bottles nestled amid a cluster of gins, vodkas and other spirits.

To the right of the two men sat a lone woman, who got off work earlier than usual that night from her waitress job at a country club. The day before, she had managed some free time to go shopping with her pregnant daughter for baby furniture. On this night, she stopped by the bar on the way to her Hawthorne home to drop off a deposit for a trip to Atlantic City later in the summer.

"It was prom season, so she usually worked later," recalls the woman's daughter. "She thought she was having an easier night, I guess."

Behind the counter, by a cash register and a sign that announced Budweiser "on tap," the bartender counted the day's receipts.

Perhaps bartender Jim Oliver recognized the killers when they came through the front door from 18th Street. Maybe he just saw their guns and knew trouble was coming. Whatever his thoughts at that fearsome moment, police say, one of Oliver's last acts of life was to hurl an empty beer bottle at the killers.

The bottle smashed against the wall by the door. As Oliver turned to run the length of the bar, past an ice cooler and toward the overhead television set, a single shotgun blast from about seven feet away tore into his lower back, the 12-gauge round ripping open a 2-inch by 1-inch hole and severing his spinal column.

Oliver died instantly, police say. He was 51 and had volunteered to tend bar that night because his girlfriend — a widow named Betty Panagia, who owned the Lafayette and lived in Saddle Brook — had been putting in long hours as Oliver recovered from a recent hernia operation.

As Oliver fell, a $10 bill and four $5 bills scattered on the floor. The cash register drawer remained open.

The next to die was Fred Nauyoks. The killer with the pistol shot him.

Nauyoks, a 60-year-old machinist who had stopped by after working at a local factory before heading to his Cedar Grove home, took a .32-caliber bullet just behind his right ear. The lead slug plowed into his brain stem, killing him instantly, autopsy records say.

Nauyoks was well-known in the area as a billiard player, and his relatives remember that he went by two nicknames — "Paterson Bob" and "Cedar Grove Bob." That night, Nauyoks' wife was in Michigan, visiting relatives. The next day, when she arrived home and was told of her husband's killing, grandson Tom Vicedomini remembers that she walked silently upstairs and donned a black dress.

With death arriving instantly, Nauyoks slumped on the bar, seemingly asleep, a cigarette still burning between his fingers when police arrived, his shot glass still standing on the bar next to cash to pay for his drink, his right foot still propped on the chrome leg of his bar stool.

Seated two stools away, William "Willie" Marins, 42 and also a machinist, had been battling numerous health problems, including tuberculosis, police say. The Lafayette even kept a special glass for Marins to drink from so he would not spread tuberculosis to other customers.

Marins, who lived nearby in Paterson, was also shot in the head by the man with the pistol. But he was lucky. The .32 slug hit him in the left temple and passed through his forehead near his right eye without killing him. He stumbled to the floor, and, he later said, played dead.

He would lose the use of his right eye, but could still describe the killers to police. He died in 1973 of causes unrelated to the shootings.

The woman was the killers' final target. And for her, court records indicate, one of the gunmen finally spoke.

As the others were shot, Hazel Tanis, 56, a waitress at Westmount Country Club in then West Paterson, was trying to hide near the front door.

"No," she cried, according to trial testimony from a witness in an upstairs apartment who heard a woman's scream as the man with the shotgun fired a blast into her upper right arm and shoulder.

"Finish her off," the man with the shotgun reportedly told his partner.

As Tanis slumped to the floor, the man with the .32-caliber pistol fired five shots at her from as close as 10 inches, hitting her four times — in the right breast, the lower abdomen, the vagina, and the genital area.

Miraculously, Tanis would struggle to live another month before finally succumbing to an embolism. But during that time she would give police a description of the killers and, says her daughter, would tell in detail how she tried to beg for her life.

"'I'm a mother. I'm a grandmother. Please don't shoot me,'" Tanis' daughter, Barbara Burns, now 55, recalls her mother telling her later in the hospital. Burns would later insist that her mother picked out mug shots of Carter and Artis, explaining: "You don't look a man in the eyes and plead for your life and forget what he looks like."

But the police say Tanis chose photos of other men — hence, another thread of mystery.

At the hub of almost every aspect of the mystery, however, are Carter and Artis. That night, neither was able to provide an ironclad account of their whereabouts at the time of the Lafayette Grill killings.

Carter, now 63 and a prisoners' rights activist in Canada, did not respond to numerous requests for an interview, although he has long proclaimed his innocence. Artis, 53 and a youth counselor in Virginia, reaffirmed his innocence in an interview, adding that "my heart goes out" to the victims' families "but, simply stated: I'm not the one."

Many police officers not only disagree with Carter's and Artis' not-guilty claims, but still resent being accused of railroading the two men. "I would never be involved in framing anyone," said retired Paterson Deputy Police Chief Robert Mohl, 66, of Toms River, who was a detective in 1966 and played a key role in the case.

That night, cops surmise that the killers needed only a minute — maybe less — to unleash their fusillade on all the victims.

Left behind, according to the original police report, was $72 in Nauyoks' wallet, $51 in Tanis' white purse, $30 on the floor by Oliver's body, and cash in the register that "appeared to be untouched." Police discovered months late that someone — but not the killers — removed cash from the register.

And from there, other mysteries would spread like those haphazard mirror cracks — mysteries (and pieces of mysteries) that have endured for 34 years.

Not even the precise time of the shootings is certain. All that's known is that someone — there is no indication whether the voice was male or female — telephoned the Paterson police headquarters at 2:34 a.m. with the message that "people had been shot" at the Lafayette Grill.

Who were these two gunmen?

What was their motive?

Why this bar, on this night, and these victims?

In a house a block away, the phone rang.

Finally home, after a long day, a Paterson police detective with a name that bespoke a humorous irony for his profession picked up the receiver.

"It was headquarters," recalls Jim Lawless, now 72, retired, and living in Fort Pierce, Florida, after rising to the rank of deputy chief in the Paterson Police Department. "They told me there was a shooting. I grabbed two guns and ran out the door."

Armed with his .357 Magnum service revolver and a 9mm semiautomatic pistol, Lawless stepped through the front door of the Lafayette Grill only minutes later, not knowing what he might confront.

The lights were on, he recalls. Near one end of the bar, he remembers hearing Tanis groan in pain. Gazing across the room, past the pool table, Lawless noticed Nauyoks and Marins. Pools of blood dotted the linoleum. At Nauyoks' feet sat a spent shotgun shell.

"It was," said Lawless, "like a slaughterhouse."

Before he had time to check behind the bar, Lawless heard the sirens of approaching police cruisers and an ambulance. Indeed, the scene was so gruesome that an ambulance technician would later testify that he slipped on the bloody floor. But the technician's testimony underscores a fact that has since come to hover over the killings: Cops were so lax in securing the crime scene that they were never able to detect whether the killers might have left footprints in the blood as they departed.

What's more, police never took fingerprints at the crime scene, never photographed tire skid marks from the getaway car even though witnesses said the car screeched away, never took fingerprints from the spent shotgun shell that was found on the bar's floor.

"There was something really wrong," said Richard Caruso, a former Essex County sheriff's detective who was part of a team of investigators assigned by the Passaic County Prosecutor's Office to reexamine the killings in 1975. "What's wrong with the physical evidence? How come they didn't take fingerprints?"

Caruso, now a lawyer in Brick Township and one of several members of the team who raised questions about the original police investigation, said he was eventually reassigned to "cleaning up a file room." In an interview, he said prosecutors and police not only stonewalled attempts to examine the case with a fresh eye but deliberately manipulated evidence.

That night in June 1966, there was no second-guessing of the police. After Lawless entered the bar, other detectives arrived to take over.

Lawless had another important case to resolve — a killing in another bar that night. But at that moment, as he stood on the bloody floor of the Lafayette Grill, he did not know how the two shootings would eventually be linked in the minds of prosecutors.

Six hours earlier and five blocks away from the Lafayette Grill, another bartender had been shot to death.

The death of Leroy Holloway, 48, the bartender-owner of the Waltz Inn, bore three distinct parallels to the Lafayette Grill shootings. Holloway was killed with a blast from a 12-gauge shotgun. The killer did not steal any money. And — perhaps most significant to prosecutors — Holloway's killer had a different skin color from his.

Holloway was black. His killer was white.

Jim Lawless had spent much of the previous six hours collecting evidence and interviewing witnesses at the Waltz Inn. But unlike the Lafayette killings, the Waltz Inn case was relatively easy to wrap up.

The killer, Frank Conforti, 48, who had recently sold the bar to Holloway, had stormed into the Waltz Inn to confront Holloway about lax payments. Witnesses said Conforti and Holloway argued, and then Conforti left and went to his car.

Minutes later, Conforti returned and without saying a word shot Holloway in the head, killing him instantly.

Police soon arrived, and escorted the handcuffed Conforti through a gauntlet of black residents to a waiting police car.

Conforti was eventually convicted of second-degree murder and spent almost 15 years in prison. "I've lost track of him," said his lawyer, Joseph J. Vanecek of Wayne. "But when he got out, he came by and thanked me."

Whatever the motives, the clientele at the Waltz Inn and Lafayette Grill underscored a well-known fact of life in Paterson. Like much of America in 1966, Paterson was a city divided by color lines. When it came to taverns, whites had their neighborhood bars, like the Lafayette Grill, and blacks had theirs, like the Waltz Inn.

The Lafayette Grill was on what was considered a border of sorts, a line of streets and frame homes that was slowly being integrated by black and Hispanic residents. Lafayette bartender James Oliver was said to have excluded or discouraged black patrons, according to trial testimony.

But that may be more of an accident of social customs than an outright act of racism. Paterson police say the Lafayette Grill occasionally had black customers. Bill Panagia, 64 of South Hackensack, the son of owner Betty Panagia and an occasional bartender there, said he doubted there was a whites-only code, but "every time I went in there, there were only whites."

Adds John Artis: "The Lafayette — the black contingent just didn't go there."

To go back 34 years in Paterson or many other American cities is to return to a time when America's racial crucible boiled with idealistic promise and fiery violence. Congress had passed landmark legislation to expand civil rights and social programs to eradicate poverty. But riots had erupted in Watts, Detroit — even in Paterson. And in Harlem, Malcolm X had been gunned down by three black men, one of whom was from Paterson. Newark's devastating riots were still a year away, the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. two years down the road.

In Paterson that night, police immediately suspected that the shooting of whites at the Lafayette Grill might have been an act of revenge for Leroy Holloway's killing at the Waltz Inn. Their suspicions were not just based on a hunch, though.

After Holloway was pronounced dead, his stepson, Eddie Rawls, went to police headquarters. Speaking to an officer, he wanted to know what was being done on his stepfather's case.

The officer told Rawls not to worry. But Rawls was not satisfied, according to trial and grand jury testimony. As he left the police station, Rawls reportedly shouted that if police didn't handle the case properly, he would take matters into his own hands.

Eddie Rawls was a bartender at the Nite Spot, a tavern just five blocks from the Lafayette Grill, on 18th Street. The Nite Spot was Rubin Carter's favorite hangout. The place even had a special "champ's corner" for the popular boxer.

For John Artis, the Nite Spot also was a favorite place to dance.

For prosecutors, this mere coming together of Rawls, Carter, and Artis became the basis for what they later called their "racial revenge theory" to explain the killings at the Lafayette Grill. For Carter and Artis, the theory would become one of the cornerstones of a decision by a federal judge in 1985 to free them from prison.

It was party night for Rubin Carter, and time to dance for John Artis.

On Thursday, June 16, Carter spent the day assembling boxing equipment and packing his rental car, a 1966 white Dodge Polara with blue and gold New York plates. He was scheduled to fight in August in Argentina against Juan "Rocky" Rivero, and this would be his last chance to let loose before training camp.

Carter's boxing career had suddenly reached a plateau. After four years of success, Carter lost a 1964 fight for the middleweight title. He would win only seven of his next 14 fights, losing six and tying one.

By Monday, he planned to be at a former sheep farm in Chatham, where he would begin the harsh physical regimen of running, weight lifting, and boxing that he would need to put his career back on track.

Carter had dinner at his Paterson home with his wife at about 5 p.m., then put on an outfit that surely would attract attention — black pants, red vest, and white sport coat. With his shaved head and bushy goatee, he was one of the most recognizable residents of Paterson.

Artis was also looking to have a good time. Two years earlier — June 17, 1964 — he had graduated from Paterson's Central High School, with an offer of a track scholarship to Adams State College in Colorado. One of his best friends was also heading to Adams to play football.

But only five weeks after graduation, Artis' mother died of kidney disease. Artis, an only child, remembers being devastated. "It was pretty difficult," he recalls. "My father and I were trying to regroup."

Artis put off college and got a job driving a truck for a local food deliverer. He played semi-pro football with the Paterson Panthers and kept in shape. But most nights, he headed for a club where he could show off his dancing skills. "My nickname was 'Dancing Boy,'" said Artis.

By 1966, he felt he was ready to try college. "My mom only got to the third grade, and my dad only made it to the ninth grade," said Artis. "I would be the first to go to college."

Plus, Artis was worried about being drafted into the Army and being sent to Vietnam. He had recently lost his student deferment and had been reclassified as 1-A for the draft. If he went to college, he wouldn't be drafted.

On the night of June 16, Artis put on a light blue mohair sweater with his initials monogrammed on the breast, light-blue pants, and gold suede loafers.

What happened with Carter and Artis over the next six hours is open to all manner of speculation — even today.

Carter and Artis, a decade apart in age, knew each other — both acknowledge that. But both say they did not know each other well. Prosecutors, however, say the two had spent considerable time together before June 16.

Paterson's current mayor, Marty Barnes, who knew Carter and Artis in the 1960s, said the two "didn't really hang together." Of Artis, Barnes said, "I always called him a wannabe. He was a little too young."

By 1966, Carter was well known in Paterson — and not just as a boxer. Like many black athletes, he had begun to speak out on race relations.

In 1963, Carter went to Washington, D.C., to demonstrate for civil rights and to hear Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. In 1965, however, Carter opted not to march with King in Selma, Alabama, because he feared he couldn't adhere to King's strategy of non-violence.

Perhaps most controversial, however, was a 1964 profile of Carter in the Saturday Evening Post just before his middleweight title fight. Among other things, Carter reportedly suggested to a friend that they "get guns and go up there and get us some of those police."

Paterson police would remember that.

Carter was at the Nite Spot tavern, according to trial testimony, when Eddie Rawls arrived with the news of his stepfather's murder.

What happened next is open to speculation. Prosecutors insist that Carter started talking about guns that had been stolen from him a year earlier — and that he suddenly wanted to find them. Carter denies this.

Carter notes, however, that after the news of the murder of Rawls' stepfather, many blacks talked of a possible riot or some sort of trouble — "a shaking," as Carter described it in his grand jury testimony.

What both sides agree on is that nothing even remotely resembling a riot took place.

Sometime between 2 and 2:30 a.m., Carter and Artis found themselves together at the Nite Spot. Artis said he needed a ride home and remembers Carter telling him he had to "earn" his ride — meaning that Artis would have to drive Carter home, too.

Artis recalls that he nodded. Carter flipped him the keys to his white Dodge.

What emerged next is a tale with two distinct plots — or, as U.S. District Court Judge H. Lee Sarokin said in his landmark 1985 decision overturning Carter's and Artis' convictions, "two dramatically different versions of events" with evidence that is "often conflicting and sometimes murky."

What is known is that within minutes after Paterson police arrived on the gruesome scene at the Lafayette Grill, they were told by witnesses that the killers had escaped in a white sedan with blue and gold license plates.

A radio call went out to Paterson police cruisers to be on the lookout for a white car. But as with other bits of evidence, this radio call was framed by a simple problem: What time did the call go out?

Even today, no one is entirely sure.

Police say that just after the 2:34 a.m. call to headquarters about a shooting, a police cruiser heading toward the Lafayette Grill spotted a white car with New York license plates, followed by a black car, speeding along 12th Avenue in a direction that might have been heading toward Route 4.

Instead of turning the corner and chasing the cars, the cruiser took a roundabout route by the Passaic River in what police later explained was an attempt to cut off the white car near the Paterson-Elmwood Park border. When the police cruiser arrived at the border, no car was in sight.

Drifting slowly down Broadway back into the center of Paterson, the cruiser, driven by Sgt. Theodore Captor, again saw a white sedan with New York plates — Carter's car, with Artis at the wheel. Another man, John Royster, who has been described in trial records as something of a local barfly, was in the passenger seat. Carter was in the rear, lying on the seat.

Captor, who recognized Carter, politely told the three men that there had been a shooting, and then let Artis drive away. Captor then headed to the Lafayette Grill, where witnesses told of a getaway car with blue and gold license plates and a distinctive butterfly design for the rear lights.

Captor says this description fit Carter's car. He and his partner returned to the streets to try to find it.

Around 3 a.m., Captor found the car — this time, with only Artis and Carter inside — at Broadway and 18th Street. Other police cars pulled up, and Carter and Artis were ordered to follow a police convoy back to the Lafayette Grill, about 10 blocks away.

Again, here is where the tales by the prosecution and defense split into distinctive sets of facts.

Witnesses, including shooting victim Willie Marins, described the gunmen as light-skinned, thin, black men, both about 6 feet tall, wearing dark clothing, and with one having a pencil-thin mustache.

Carter is 5-foot-7, Artis 6-foot-1. Carter was stocky and muscular, Artis angular, but not thin. Both have dark skin. Neither had a pencil-thin mustache, but Carter had a thick goatee.

And both were dressed in light-colored clothing.

But at the scene, police were interviewing two other witnesses who would play integral — and controversial — roles in the case.

Patricia Graham Valentine, then 23, and a waitress at a delicatessen across town near the courthouse, lived in an apartment one floor above the Lafayette Grill. Valentine says that when she heard gunshots and a woman's voice scream "no," she looked out the window and saw two black men escape in a white car. The other witness, Alfred Bello, also 23, told police he was on the sidewalk outside the bar when two black men left the Lafayette and sped away in a white car.

Carter's car seemed to match Valentine's and Bello's descriptions of the getaway car — right down to the distinctive butterfly description of the taillight chrome that both reportedly gave to police. But, again, there was one important difference.

Valentine and Bello said the rear lights lit up across the back of the getaway car. The taillights on Carter's Dodge Polara had a butterfly chrome setting, but they lit up only on the edges, not across the back. Another type of Dodge — the Monaco — had across-the-back butterfly lights.

This distinction — and a later reference in grand jury testimony by Valentine to a Monaco — later prompted Detective Richard Caruso to wonder if police might have been coaching witnesses on the scene to frame Carter. Caruso even made note of his concerns in a secret file — later dubbed "The Caruso File" — that was a subject of a bitter legal fight after Carter and Artis were convicted again for the Lafayette Grill killings in 1976.

The file was never made public because Judge Sarokin stepped in and set Carter and Artis free. But Caruso agreed to talk about its contents, and The Record obtained affidavits corroborating his findings.

Among other concerns, Caruso believed Valentine had changed her testimony to the police — "hardened it," in police lingo — to adapt her description of the getaway car to Carter's rented Dodge. What also struck Caruso as being especially odd was that the police never bothered to photograph tire skid marks even though Valentine and another witness told police the getaway car screeched as it sped away. If the police were able to obtain photos of tire tracks, they could have compared them to Carter's car, said Caruso.

What's more, even though police said they searched Carter's Dodge, Caruso discovered that they did not test the carpet for possible bloodstains from the killing scene. Caruso also noticed that shooting victim Willie Marins, who failed to identify Carter — even after Carter was brought to the hospital where he was being treated — was, in fact, familiar with Carter's face and should have recognized him.

And finally, said Caruso, when he and others tried to question Valentine and other witnesses, they discovered that a Passaic County prosecution detective, Lt. Vincent DeSimone, may have been coaching them in ways that would implicate Carter.

"There was even a code word that we had to use that would indicate that a witness would be free to talk to us," said Caruso. "The code meant that we had been cleared by DeSimone."

DeSimone died in 1979. But his son and others doubt that he engaged in such tactics. "The people involved in the prosecution are people of the utmost integrity," said Passaic's current prosecutor, Ronald Fava. "They would never do anything unethical, much less participate in a framing."

The questions of police tactics would soon come to dominate almost every syllable of testimony by the other witness police encountered outside the crime scene, Alfred Bello — in part because of what he was doing on Lafayette Street at 2:30 a.m. when he lived several miles away in Clifton.

Bello told police he was walking down Lafayette Street to buy a pack of cigarettes when he heard shots and saw two black men with guns leave the bar and jump into the white getaway car with blue and gold plates and butterfly taillights.

Actually, Bello later admitted that he was trying to burglarize a nearby warehouse with a partner, Arthur Bradley, when he went for cigarettes and saw the gunmen and getaway car. His actions — to defenders of Carter and Artis, anyway — beg this question: Why would someone interrupt a burglary to buy cigarettes?

Asked in a recent interview, former Paterson Deputy Chief Robert Mohl has an answer: "Are you a smoker? If you are, you understand when you get the urge."

Beyond that, however, Bello's actions seem odd.

Also odd — or morbid — is what Bello did before police arrived at the Lafayette. Bello stepped over the bleeding bodies and took $62 from the cash register. When police learned of this theft, they would pressure Bello to tell more about what he knew of the gunmen — while also promising him leniency.

In the minutes after the shootings, Bello told police only that the gunmen were black. Two months later, complaining of threats by friends of Carter, Bello told then-Sergeant Mohl that the man with the shotgun was Carter. Bello also admitted to Mohl that he and Bradley later returned to the warehouse after the Lafayette killings and broke in.

"My father had no use for Alfred Bello," said James DeSimone of Wyckoff, the son of the detective who promised leniency to Bello in exchange for his testimony identifying Carter and Artis as the gunmen. "Alfred Bello was in the wrong place at the wrong time."

But that night, with Carter and Artis on the scene of the killings, Bello was not identifying anything more than a getaway car that resembled Carter's Dodge. Carter's white jacket had no evidence of blood that might have spurted from the shooting victims. Neither did Artis' clothes. A police search of the Dodge at the scene turned up no guns, no bloodstains — nothing to indicate Carter and Artis were linked to the killings. Police never found the weapons.

Nonetheless, police ordered Carter and Artis to headquarters for questioning, this time by then-Lieutenant DeSimone.

Looking back now, both sides in the case are still deeply split over whether police had any reason to be suspicious of Carter and Artis.

Cal Deal, a former reporter for The Herald-News of Passaic and Clifton, who covered the 1976 trial and befriended police and victims' families, now runs an anti-Carter website from his office in Fort Lauderdale, where he works as a graphics consultant for trial lawyers.

Deal says he has traced the movements of Carter's car on the night of the shootings and concludes that Carter and Artis were the killers. "If you study the evidence, it just makes sense," says Deal.

On the other side, Carter biographer James Hirsch says Carter's and Artis' movements actually prove their innocence. "Rubin's behavior on that night is inconsistent with guilt," said Hirsch, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who shares royalties with Carter from his biography, "Hurricane." "If you believe that Carter did this, you have to believe that he and Artis would manage to get rid of the weapons and their bloody clothes, and casually drive around the streets of Paterson until police picked them up."

Hirsch contends that the expected behavior of killers would be to speed out of Paterson as quickly as possible — hence, the theory that police missed the real getaway car when they took a roundabout route to chase.

Nonsense, says Deal. "What's the likelihood that there would be two white cars with blue and gold license plates in that part of Paterson at that hour?"

The question still rings as lively today as it did 34 years ago.

It was just after 3 a.m. on June 17 when Carter and Artis arrived at Paterson police headquarters.

By 4 a.m., the two would be confronted by two pieces of damning evidence. Even though police searched Carter's Dodge at the Lafayette Grill, another search was conducted at police headquarters.

In the trunk, under some boxing equipment, police say they found an unused 12-gauge shotgun shell. On the floor of the front seat, they said, they found an unused .32-caliber cartridge.

Neither the shotgun shell nor the pistol bullet would match those in the shootings, but the fact that they were the same calibers as the killers' weapons heightened police suspicions of Carter and Artis.

But Carter's and Artis' defense lawyers became suspicious for their own reasons. Although the police say they found the shotgun shell and bullet the night of the shootings, they did not log the items in as evidence until five days later. In later trials, the defense would suggest that the shotgun shell and bullet were planted by the police. "Whatever happened to bag and tag?" asked Fred Hogan, an investigator for the state Public Defender's Office, in referring to common police procedure to log evidence from a crime scene immediately and seal it in a plastic bag.

Hogan, who assisted Carter and Artis in their appeals, would later become a controversial figure himself. Prosecutors charged that he offered money to witnesses in exchange for their testimony — a charge that was never proven despite three grand jury investigations. Today, Hogan says he offered no money to witnesses. "Absolutely not," said Hogan, still an investigator for the state Public Defender's Office. "If I had done anything illegal or immoral or unethical, I would have been given two things — an indictment and a pink slip."

But that night, if police were suspicious of Carter and Artis, it's hard to fathom what happened in the hours after the shootings.

Police did not conduct paraffin tests to detect traces of burned gunpowder on the hands or clothes of Carter and Artis. Such tests were common in 1966, and in a June 29, 1966, appearance before a grand jury, Lieutenant DeSimone was asked why a test was not conducted.

"We do not have the facility to take a paraffin test at present," said DeSimone, adding that the authorities would have had to bring in an expert fairly fast before gunpowder residue had disappeared. Added DeSimone, "With the time element, it would have proved naught."

But DeSimone and the police that day decided to bring in an expert to conduct lie detector tests.

Carter and Artis were asked to take lie detector exams — and both agreed. Also, Eddie Rawls was brought to police headquarters for questioning and asked to take a lie detector test.

Each side would later use the lie detector results — and immediate police reaction to them — to try to prove its case.

In a written report on the tests, obtained by The Record, Artis was said to have "no knowledge" of the Lafayette Grill shootings but had "suspicions as to who was responsible."

The report, written by a polygraph expert brought in from the Elizabeth Police Department, said Carter did not participate in the killings "but had knowledge as to who was responsible."

Eddie Rawls was the last to be tested. The report said that "Rawls had done the shooting and/or had knowledge of it."

With Rawls, however, the report cautioned that the "short test conducted on Rawls was not conclusive because of the fact that Rawls was in a state of fatigue."

Five days later, Rawls was asked to take the test again, but he refused. Later, he would be implicated — but never charged — in trying to help arrange for witnesses to offer false alibis for Carter and Artis. He would also refuse to testify, telling prosecutors through his lawyer that if subpoenaed, he would cite his constitutional right against self-incrimination.

What's more — and adding to the controversy — another polygraph report that turned up in 1976 tied Carter and Artis to the killings. Carter's and Artis' lawyers say the 1976 report is a forgery.

Rawls was never arrested, but that didn't ease suspicions. In the 1976 trial, Prosecutor Burrell Ives Humphreys said, "Eddie Rawls is all over this case," and he theorized that Carter and Artis hid the weapons at Rawls' house.

Humphreys and DeSimone were so convinced of Rawls' involvement that they obtained a court order in 1976 to dig up the grave of Rawls' murdered stepfather to see if the guns had been hidden in the coffin. No guns were found.

"He's probably a co-conspirator," said former Paterson Deputy Police Chief Robert Mohl, "but I can't prove it."

Said Carter's biographer: "Eddie Rawls is definitely the wild card."

Today, Eddie Rawls' whereabouts are unknown.

Alfred Bello and Arthur Bradley have also slipped from view.

After testifying in 1966 that Carter and Artis were at the Lafayette Grill, Bello and Bradley both recanted their testimony to Fred Hogan in 1974 — thus setting in motion a series of legal steps that led to a new trial.

In the 1976 retrial, Bello withdrew his recantation and said Carter was at the scene with a shotgun. Bradley refused to testify again for the prosecution. In 1981, Bradley told a court that he had "no memory" of what happened that night in 1966 at the Lafayette Grill.

Carter's and Artis' lawyers went on to other cases, including assisting on appeals with the Baby M surrogate mother case. Artis' first lawyer, Arnold Stein, became a judge.

Several members of the prosecution teams also became judges — namely Humphreys, Vincent Hull, Ronald Marmo, and Fred Devesa.

H. Lee Sarokin, the federal judge who set Carter and Artis free, retired and is now living in California. He told colleagues he inquired about playing himself in the recent film on the case, but was turned down by the movie producers.

Before he died in 1979, Vincent DeSimone wrote a memoir of his experiences in the case with a retired Paterson journalist. The memoir, which was never published, was titled "The Media Meddlers."

Patricia Valentine now lives in Florida, and recently released a statement through the anti-Carter website saying that there is "absolutely no doubt in my mind" that the car she identified 34 years ago on Lafayette Street was Carter's. "Rubin Carter is an evil man in love's clothing," said Valentine.

The Lafayette Grill is now called Len's Place. Today, its clientele mostly reflects the neighborhood of Hispanics and other immigrants who have moved into Paterson.

After the killings, the Panagia family never reopened the Lafayette Grill. Owner Betty Panagia refused to return, said her son, Bill Panagia. She died in 1984 of liver cancer.

Each Christmas, Bill Panagia says he makes a special trip to a cemetery in Paramus and places a wreath on the grave of Jim Oliver, the bartender who took his mother's place that night at the Lafayette Grill.

"He was a very nice person," said Panagia.

Matthias Rimml: Austrian climber found dead on the slopes of Mount ...

CNN —

The body of an Austrian climber who was last heard from a week ago has been found on the slopes of Alaska’s Mount Denali, authorities said on Friday.

An aerial search spotted the body of Matthias Rimml in the fall zone below Denali Pass, the National Park Service said. His body has not yet been recovered as authorities will rely on a ranger patrol that’s adapted to high altitude to facilitate the effort.

The 35-year-old was alone and was the first registered climber this season to attempt climbing the 20,310-foot peak, the tallest in North America.

“Rimml likely fell on the steep traverse between Denali Pass at 18,200 feet and the 17,200-foot plateau, a notoriously treacherous stretch of the West Buttress route,” the NPS said in the news release.

Rimml, a professional mountain guide from Tirol, Austria, began his climb on April 27 from the 7,200-foot Kahiltna Basecamp.

“Already acclimatized to altitude due to recent climbs,” Rimmi planned the climb alpine-style, according to the NPS, which means traveling fast with light gear. He planned to complete the climb in five days, though he was prepared with food and fuel to last him for 10 days.

The last known phone call he made was on April 30, when he was at about 18,000 feet on the West Buttress of Denali, officials said. He said he was tired, “but he was not in distress,” officials noted in the news release.

“However, since his friend had been receiving periodic check-in calls from Rimml, he grew concerned after several days of silence and notified Denali mountaineering rangers the afternoon of May 3,” NPS officials said in a news release.

The temperatures on the upper slopes of Denali have been extremely cold over the past week, the park service said, hovering between daytime highs of -25 to -30 degrees Fahrenheit.

In total, 13 climbers have died in falls along that traverse, the NPS said. Most of those falls have occurred on the descent.

Denali is located in south-central Alaska.

Corrections & Clarifications: Archive

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The following USA TODAY corrections and clarifications were published between October 2012 and December 2014 :

December 2014

News: A Dec. 19 article on Fidel Castro misstated the year of the Cuban missile crisis. It was 1962.

Money: A retired couple over 65 is granted a total standard tax deduction of $14,800 for tax year 2014. This was incorrect in a story Dec. 31.

News:An official with the Centers for Disease Control and Protection says that, while the flu vaccine does not provide complete protection against the H3N2 virus, it does guard against some portion of the strain. An earlier version of the following story misstated level of protection for the flu vaccine.http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2014/12/30/sickest-cold-flu-areas-cities-webmd/21052697/

Money: An earlier version of this story misstated the type of six-cylinder engine in early Ford Mustangs and Chevrolet Camaros. http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2014/12/27/reliable-collector-cars/20920739/

News: A prior version of the following story misstated how long Antonio Garcia-Crews was a political prisoner in Cuba. He spent 16 years in prison. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/12/17/cuban-americans-react/20532429/

Life: An article Dec. 12 about Sony Pictures Entertainment was accompanied by a photograph of an Amy Pascal who is not the Sony executive involved in the company's email hack. A correct photo of Sony's co-chair, Amy Pascal, accompanied a correction in a Dec. 19 edition.

News: A prior version of the following story misspelled the name of Rep. Darrell Issa. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/12/16/chaffetz-oversight-hillary-clinton-benghazi/20497335/

News: The following story has been updated to include a paragraph that notes a challenge to the findings of the birth-defect study from Environmental Health Perspectives. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/12/16/fracking-air-pollution-health-nrdc/20451639/

Social Media: A Dec. 16 tweet from the USA TODAY Twitter account labeled Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a Nobel Peace Prize winner. Modi has never won a Nobel Peace Prize.

Money: A graphic Dec. 16 incorrectly said that Honeywell warned its 2015 earnings would be lower than expected. Honeywell said it expects to earn $5.95 to $6.15 a share in 2015, the midrange of which was below the $6.11 average estimate among analysts, according to Thomson Reuters.

Life: A previous version of the following story misidentified Kyle Sears. http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/music/ontheverge/2014/12/13/priory-weekend-on-the-verge/20095463/

Sports: The number of players from the Atlantic Coast and Big Ten listed on the USA TODAY Sports' All-American teams (first and second teams) was misstated in Dec. 12 editions. Each conference had 11 selections.

Money: A story Dec. 12 incorrectly stated the percentage change for Savita Subramanian's year-end 2015 price target for the broad Standard & Poors 500-stock index. Her target of 2200 will be roughly 8% higher from the Dec. 11 close of 2035.

Sports: An earlier version of the following story misstated what prosecutors can appeal against. http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/olympics/2014/12/10/oscar-pistorius-verdict-appeal/20182933/

News: A State-by-State item Dec. 3 about the ideological spectrum among speakers selected for commencement ceremonies at Michigan State University misstated the city location for the college. It's in East Lansing, Mich.

News: A State-by-State item on Dec. 8 about plans to build a 19-mile biking and walking trail listed the wrong state for Colfax. The city is in Washington.

USA TODAY College: An earlier version of the following story did not include quoted information from sophomore Bob Nettleton that made clear his position with regard to the Ku Klux Klan. That information has been added to provide better understanding of his comments. http://college.usatoday.com/2014/12/08/kkk-display-frightens-students-on-uiowa-campus/

Opinion: An earlier version of this story misstated the number of states that may lose subsidies under the King v Burwell Supreme Court case. The correct number is 36. http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/12/04/obamacare-king-burwell-supreme-court-repeal-alternative-republicans-column/19922353/

Opinion: An earlier version of the following column incorrectly stated the name and location of the hospital CHI Health St. Francis in Grand Island, Neb. http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/12/08/hospital-cost-saving-efforts-umbdenstock/20055713/

News: A story on Pearl Harbor veterans being honored incorrectly quoted President Franklin D. Roosevelt's comments on Pearl Harbor. He said "a date which will live in infamy."

Money: A previous version of the following story incorrectly punctuated B/E Aerospace's name and misspelled the location of its headquarters in Wellington, Fla. http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/12/03/more-people-quitting-jobs/19482847/

Money: A breaking-news headline alert and tweet about a controversial Rolling Stone story on gang rape at the University of Virginia mischaracterized the magazine's handling of the story. http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/12/05/rolling-stone-retracts-uva-story/19954293/

News: An earlier version of the following 5 Things to Know feature misstated the tree in the lighting ceremony tonight. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2014/12/04/five-things-to-know-thursday/19788349/

News: An earlier version of the following story misspelled The Charleston Gazette. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/12/02/west-virginia-shooting-victims/19773091/

News: A story Dec. 1 about repression in Egypt misidentified the president ousted 17 months ago. It was Mohamed Morsi.

News: An earlier version of the following 5 Things to Know feature misspelled Rosa Parks' first name. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2014/12/01/five-things-to-know-monday/19703739/

November 2014

Life: A USA Snapshots graphic published Nov. 27 about Fitbit users who run on Thanksgiving morning vs. other November mornings, misspelled the company's name.

Social: The following USA TODAY Facebook post of a Brooklyn protest photo, shared by a Your Take contributor, misstated the location of Anthony Sganga's dorm. It is in Manhattan. https://www.facebook.com/yourtake/photos/a.10150856383596788.479226.323213251787/10152866257081788/?type=1&comment_id=10152866448196788&offset=0&total_comments=1

News: A Nov. 23 information graphic on OPEC members misidentified the country of Niger.

Opinion: A cartoon by Gary Varvel on immigration, originally published by The Indianapolis Star, was removed from our website at the publication's request. Here is a link to the Indy Star's explanation to readers:http://www.indystar.com/story/opinion/columnists/2014/11/22/jeff-taylor-gary-varvel-thanksgiving-cartoon-immigration-opinion/19408509/

News: An earlier version of the following story overstated the length of time security guard robots could be seen on Microsoft's Silicon Valley campus.  http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/11/19/video-microsoft-robots/19267827/

News: A story on Bill Cosby, published Nov. 20 online and on the front page, misattributed to Melbourne's King Center forPerforming Arts the quote, "While we are aware of the allegations reported in the press, we are only in a position to judge him based on his career as an entertainer and humanitarian." The statement came from Cosby's management team.

Money: An earlier version of the following story misidentified Target's Chief Financial Officer. His name is John Mulligan. http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/11/19/target-third-quarter-earnings/19234337/

Sports: The USA TODAY Sports college men's basketball poll in Nov. 18 editions included an incorrect possible opponent for Duke. the Blue Devils could play either Stanford or UNLV in the Coaches vs. Cancer Classic.

Opinion: A Nov. 13 Opposing View on climate change by Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., should have said that much of China's natural gas is very difficult to extract, not that China has no known gas reserves.

News: A previous version of the following story misstated the place of worship that reopened following the attack. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/11/19/worshippers-synagogue-jerusalem/19260923/

News: An earlier version of the following story misstated the day of the week. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/11/18/jerusalem-synagogue-attack/19207589/

Sports: An earlier version of the headline accompanying the following story misspelled Kevin Harvick's last name. http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nascar/2014/11/17/kevin-harvick-stewart-haas-racing-sprint-cup-championship/19190633/

Money: The 10-year Treasury note closed Nov. 10 at 2.36%, up 0.05. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 2.70 points Nov. 12. The information was wrong in Moneyline markets charts in Nov. 11 and Nov. 13 editions.

Life: A story in Nov. 10 editions about the movie Foxcatcher inaccurately conveyed the timing of an interview then-college wrestler Tom Brands had with Team Foxcatcher. He interviewed about seven months after his career ended at Iowa.

News: An earlier version of the following timeline misstated the date of Michael Brown's funeral. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/08/14/michael-brown-ferguson-missouri-timeline/14051827/

Sports: An earlier version of the following story reported incorrectly the timing of Tom Brands' interview with Team Foxcatcher. He interviewed about seven months after graduating. http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/olympics/2014/11/09/foxcatcher-steve-carell-john-du-pont-dave-schultz-wrestling/18766319/

Money: An earlier version of the following column misstated the number of years the average U.S. 65-year-old man is now expected to live. http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/columnist/powell/2014/11/08/retirement-longevity-life-expectency/18600805

Sports : An earlier version of t he following story reported incorrectly the size of Federer's new larger racket. It is 98 inches. http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/tennis/2014/11/09/roger-federer-atp-finals-novak-djokovic/18775381/

Sports: This following story was revised to correctly identify the DEA as the Drug Enforcement Administration. http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/2014/11/05/alex-rodriguez-suspension-admits-peds/18561399/

Life: An earlier version of the following report misidentified the actor playing Legolas. He is played by Orlando Bloom. http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/movies/2014/11/04/the-hobbit-the-battle-of-the-five-armies-sneak-peek/18450651/

News: An earlier version of the following profile of Sen.-elect Shelley Moore Capito incorrectly described her father, Arch Moore, Jr., as deceased. http://www.usatoday.com/longform/news/politics/elections/2014/11/05/new-senators-2014-elections/17781205/?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=usatoday-newstopstories

News: A story on Pope Francis and U.S. Catholics published in some editions on Nov. 2 quoted Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput as saying that a recent Vatican conference on family issues produced "confusion." The story did not include that Chaput said he believed confusion stemmed from news reports on the conference, not the conference itself.

Money: Michael Wolff's media column and an accompanying photo caption Nov. 3 about the restaurant Michael's steady media clientele misstated the year the Manhattan establishment opened. It was 1989.

Sports: An earlier version of the following story inaccurately listed the father of Wheeler junior guard Cameron Jordan. http://usatodayhss.com/2014/super-25-preseason-boys-basketball-rankings-teams-11-25

News: An earlier version of the following story misspelled the name of spectator Sam Raysby. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/11/02/daredevil-chicago-skyscraper-wallenda/18388499/

Money: An earlier version of the headline accompanying this report did not make clear that lottery scams target Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes. http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2014/11/02/scam-lottery/18256655/

Opinion: An earlier version of the following column inaccurately described respondents in a Washington Post/ABC poll that found that more think the GOP is better suited than Democrats to tackle important issues. Those polled were likely voters. http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/11/02/gop-win-senate-congress-agenda-expectations-party-2016-column/18386349/

October 2014

Life: An actor playing a character in the film Top Five was incorrectly identified in a calendar listing on a photo gallery published Oct. 31. Chris Rock plays the comedian/movie star in the film.

News: A Voices column Oct. 31 about a new Victoria's Secret ad provided incorrect attribution for the quote, "You is kind, you is smart. You is important." The quote was delivered by Aibileen Clark in The Help.

Life: An earlier version of the following report incorrectly identified Candi Tandy. She is George Tandy Jr.'s stepmother. http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/music/2014/10/27/studioa-george-tandy-jr-performs/17986519/

Opinion: Richard Hahn's signature in a letter published with a Your Say package on Oct. 31 was incorrect. He lives in Sequim, Wash.

News: A Newsline item on the front page Oct. 28 mischaracterized the San Francisco Giants' situation. They were in position to win the World Series.

News: An earlier version of the following story incorrectly identified Robtel Neajai Pailey's citizenship status. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/10/30/berlin-immigrants-ebola-racism-africa/18187819/

Life: A story on HBO miniseries Olive Kitteridge, published Oct. 29, misstated the first name of Elizabeth Strout, the author of the book on which it's based. The story also misstated the starting time for a Nov. 2 episode, which begins at 9 p.m. ET/PT.

News: A story Oct. 27 about Republican efforts to retake the U.S. Senate should not have included North Carolina among the states President Obama carried in the 2012 election.

Travel: In an earlier version of the following article, Brian Roberts' last name was misidentified. His band, Prime Movers was also misidentified. http://www.usatoday.com/experience/beach/florida/best-places-for-destination-weddings-in-florida/9968627/

News: An earlier version of the following report misidentified the first name of National Intelligence Director Gen. James Clapper. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/10/27/airlines-security-threats-iata-icao-malaysia/18018391/

News: In some editions Oct. 24, an item in Newsline misidentified the position of Giants coach Tim Flannery. He is the third-base coach.

News: A previous version of the following report incorrectly stated in a graphic the number of square miles of the new state proposal. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2014/10/22/florida-51st-state-south-florida/17705687/

Sports: An early version of the following story incorrectly quoted North Carolina chancellor Carol Folt. She characterized the incident as "an inexcusable betrayal of our values and our mission and our students' trust." http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/college/2014/10/22/north-carolina-academic-fraud/17717243/

Sports: A story in some Oct. 23 editions mischaracterized the treatment for Giants pitcher Matt Cain. He had elbow surgery to remove bone chips.

News: The "5 things to know" online feature on Oct. 22 misidentified the first name of Ebola czar Ron Klain.

Money: A Reviewed.com story Oct. 22 about induction cooktops misattributed the credit for an accompanying photo. The photo was supplied by Electrolux.

Money: An earlier version of the following report about pro golfers crafting a new beer product line misstated the size of the U.S. beer market. http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/10/20/graeme-mcdowell-keegan-bradley-golf-beer/17498697/

News: A story about President Obama's intention to appoint Ron Klain as Ebola "czar" Oct. 17 mischaracterized his former firm. O'Melveny & Myers LLP is a Los Angeles law firm with an office in Washington, D.C.

Money: The subject line in an Oct. 20 Daily Briefing email newsletter misspelled the last name of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

News: A story Oct. 20 understated the amount of money the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee plans to spend on radio ads targeted to black voters. The committee is spending $1 million on ads in North Carolina alone and millions more nationwide.

Social Media: An earlier USA TODAY tweet on Oct. 17 misstated the planet when commenting on a comet's near-miss route to Mars set for Oct. 19. https://twitter.com/USATODAY/status/523115831329189888

Life: An earlier version of the following report gave the wrong start date for Cher's Dressed to Kill tour. http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/music/2014/10/14/five-to-see-live-bob-dylan-cher-stevie-wonder-usher-little-big-town/16644923/

USA TODAY College: An earlier version of the following report misattributed quotes and references to California State University student Quinn Western. They were provided by CSU senior Alyssa Banuelos. 15 Calif. community colleges to off bachelor degrees

Social Media: The following USA TODAY tweet misstated the first name of Walking Dead actress Melissa McBride:https://twitter.com/USATODAY/status/521671041014587393

News: An earlier version of the following article misstated the SPCA's role in removing the dog from the contaminated apartment. The SPCA was not involved. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/10/12/dallas-ebola-health-worker-dog/17159727/

Money: An earlier version of the following report misstated media attribution when sharing who first reported news of Netflix's rate change for Ultra HD content. http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/10/13/netflix-4k/17186909/

Sports: A preview of the Green Bay Packers-Miami Dolphins game in Oct. 10 editions included an incorrect reference to the Packers' schedule. They were coming off a break after an Oct. 9 night game.

Life: A photograph of country singer Sam Hunt that appeared in the Oct. 12 issue of USA TODAY was incorrectly credited. The photograph was taken by Chase Lauer.

News: An earlier version of the following story contained an incorrect date for when Thomas Eric Duncan first visited Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/10/12/examining-the-nations-ebola-response/17059283/

Opinion: An earlier version of the following column should have said that the gunman who fired at the White House in 2011 was captured and convicted, not that he was still at large. http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/10/06/jonah-goldberg-secret-services-weakness-image-deterrence-column/16823219/

Money: An earlier version of the following report misstated the amount of Microsoft's bid for Yahoo in 2008. http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/10/09/icahn-letter-apple-tim-cook/16961479/

News: An earlier version of the following story misstated the day of the Supreme Court gay marriage decision. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/10/06/supreme-court-gay-marriage/16546959/

Opinion: An earlier version of the following column should have said that the gunman who fired at the White House in 2011 was captured and convicted, not that he was still at large. http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/10/06/jonah-goldberg-secret-services-weakness-image-deterrence-column/16823219/

News: An earlier version of the following report misstated the month of the 2002 NASA image. http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2014/10/04/california-drought-nasa-satellite-images/16675981/

Sports: An earlier version of the following tweet about Ole Miss and MSU playing as ranked teams for the fifth time in their history was deleted and reposted to include the word "ranked." https://twitter.com/USATODAY/status/518142126157467649

News: Two tweets from @USATODAYhealth about Ebola were removed on Oct. 2 because they didn't meet USA TODAY's standards.

Money: The following image of the new Ford F-150 truck, used on USA TODAY branded social media accounts, misstated the part of the vehicle that's made of aluminum. It's the body of the truck. https://www.facebook.com/usatoday/photos/a.100797840666.101835.13652355666/10152294667020667/?type=1

Life: A photo caption on the Oct. 2 Web to Watch column, showing Philip DeFranco is holding his son, Trey, misidentified the child.

September 2014

Opinion: A Sept. 30 editorial on prescription opioids should have said that some narcotic painkillers, not most, have abuse-resistant properties.

Money: An earlier version of the following report misstated the location of IBM's headquarters. h ttp://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/10/01/ibm-new-york-startup-project/16477913/

Sports: A story in Sept. 29 editions about the Berlin Marathon incorrectly reported that second-place finisher Emmanuel Mutai had run the 2011 Boston Marathon in 2 hours, 3 minutes, 2 seconds. Geoffrey Mutai - no relation - had that time in Boston, and he did not run in Berlin.

Life: An earlier version of the following report mischaracterized Denzel Washington's Academy Award nominations. He has won two acting Oscars, for Glory and Training Day. http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/movies/2014/09/28/the-equalizer-box-office/16378261/

Life: The distributor of Jim: All Is By My Side is XLrator Media. A film listing Sept. 26 was incorrect.

News: An earlier version of the following post about National Coffee Day misstated the offer by Dunkin' Donuts. Guests there receive a free medium cup of hot Dark Roast coffee, with a limit of one per person. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2014/09/29/five-things-to-know-monday/16411837/

Sports: A story in Sept. 25 editions on Jordan Spieth playing in the Ryder Cup had an incorrect year for Horton Smith's debut. He made his debut in 1929.

Life: Due to an error in tabulating the Best-Selling Books List, the title Hemy, by Victoria Ashley, was omitted and should be listed as No. 42 on the list. Subsequently, titles ranked 43 through 150 drop one ranking. A corrected version of the list can be found online at http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/best-selling/

Sports: An article in Sept. 23 editions on East Carolina football included an incorrect location for the university. It is in Greenville, N.C.

News: An earlier version of the following report erroneously included Washington Police Chief Cathy Lanier among conference speakers. She did not attend. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/09/23/holder-after-ferguson-address/16068563/

Sports: An earlier version of the following report misidentified Chad Johnson. http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nhl/bruins/2014/09/20/boston-bruins-preview-capsule-atlantic-division/15247479/

Money: An earlier version of this story misidentified Medtronic's proposed merger partner as Shire instead of Covidien in one reference to that deal. http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/09/22/corporate-inversions-tax-hit/15330195/

News: A caption for an image that appeared in The Week in Pictures Gallery on Sept. 18 mischaracterized the type of NASA image shown of a black hole in the center of the galaxy M60-UCD1. The image was an illustration based on the combined observations from the Hubble Space Telescope and NASA's Gemini North telescope.

Money: A story Sept. 19 about powerful female CEOs misspelled the first name of IBM's Ginni Rometty.

News: A story Sept. 22 about the federal government's HealthCare.gov site provided incorrect attribution for the following pull-out quote: "It's not going to be that bad, (but) neither is it going to be smooth and seamless." The comment, as noted in the story, came from Matt Salo, executive director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors.

Life: An earlier version of the following post listed the wrong studio for ABC's upcoming show, Agent Carter. http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/tv/2014/09/19/supergirl-dc-comics-cbs/15882425/

News: A caption with a photo in a Sept. 18 Voices column on Scotland's independence referendum misidentified the flags displayed. They are the Union Jack.

Money: A story Sept. 18 on the new tablets and e-readers from Amazon incorrectly identified the size of the 6-inch Kindle Voyage.

Life: An earlier version of the following Entertain This! post implied that the Gaye family initiated a lawsuit against Robin Thicke, Pharrell Williams and T.I. The family's suit was a countersuit. http://entertainthis.usatoday.com/2014/09/15/robin-thicke-was-high-on-vicodin-and-alcohol-while-recording-blurred-lines/

Life: An earlier version of the following story misspelled the last name of Miss America 2014, Nina Davuluri. http://entertainthis.usatoday.com/2014/09/14/here-she-is-miss-america-2015/ ;http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/people/2014/09/14/miss-america-2015-crowns-winner-miss-new-york-kira/15650945/

Sports: An earlier version of the following USA TODAY Facebook post, published Sept. 12, included an incorrect image of Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson: https://www.facebook.com/usatoday/posts/10152254024170667

Money: A previous version of the following story and headline misstated the number of Hewlett-Packard subsidiaries that pleaded guilty in federal court to criminal violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Only HP Russia pleaded guilty in court. Two other HP subsidiaries in Poland and Mexico admitted to criminal FCPA violations in April in separate agreements with the Justice Department. http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/09/11/hp-russia-poland-mexico-bribery/15479533/

News: An earlier version of the following story, published in print and online, misstated what Hamas leaders said about the killing of three Israeli teenagers. The leaders said Hamas operatives kidnapped and murdered the trio but the leaders did not confess to ordering the killings. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/08/28/body-found-israel-matches-missing-american-hiker/14751197/

Opinion: A Sept. 9editorial on secret political donations misspelled the name of Craig Varoga, president of Patriot Majority USA.

News: An earlier version of the following report misidentified the title for Richard Falcone. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/09/10/child-restraint-use-and-minorities/15340173/?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=usatodaycomnation-topstories

Life: An earlier version of the following Entertain This! report listed the wrong date when sharing the death of Katie Couric's mom, Elinor Couric. She died on Sept. 4. http://usat.ly/Wmx6w6#sthash.w1WBxZ8g

Money: An earlier version of the following story misstated the duration of the passes, which is 49 days. http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/09/07/olive-garden-never-ending-pasta-casual-dining-restaurants/15139803/

Money: The Ask Matt column regarding El Pollo Loco that ran Sept. 5 misstated the company's second-quarter revenue. The company reported revenue of $86 million.

Opinion: A Sept. 2 column about military dogs incorrectly stated the mission of the group, K9s of the War on Terror, which awards a K9 medal for exceptional service.

News: Previous versions of the following story misstated the number of NATO countries bordering Russia. In addition to the three Baltic States —Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — Norway shares a 122-mile border with Russia above the Arctic Circle, and Poland neighbors the Kaliningrad Oblast enclave . Obama Visit to Estonia Sends Message to Russians

August 2014

Money: A story Aug. 28 about the cyber attacks on JPMorgan Chase and other financial institutions misstated the targets of a wave of similar attacks which has been ongoing since this spring. They include only numerous German and Swiss banks and the European Central Bank.

Money: An earlier version of this story wasn't clear on Mustang new engine option. http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2014/08/28/ford-mustang-building/14724219/

News: A previous version of the following story gave an incorrect date for the Medal of Honor ceremony for Lt. Cushing. No date had been set. The ceremony for two Vietnam veterans will be Sept.15. http://www.militarytimes.com/article/20140826/NEWS05/308260086/151-years-after-Gettysburg-Medal-Honor-recipient

News: An earlier version of the following online report incorrectly used a photo of an experimental aircraft. That image has since been removed. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/08/26/american-surveillance-flights-syria/14607355/

Sports: A USA TODAY Twitter post about USC cornerback John Shaw's claim he saved his nephew was removed because the story had been updated by new developments at the time the tweet was shared, making the tweet inaccurate.

Life: The character Mork, from the TV movie Behind the Camera: Mork & Mindy, was misidentified in an Aug. 12 photo as Robin Williams. The photo was of actor Chris Diamantopoulos in character as Robin Williams.

News: A USA NOW video about the beheading of U.S. journalist James Wright Foley was removed from the website because it contained the wrong location when referencing a three-year civil war. It should have said the war took place in Syria.

Sports: In an earlier version of the following report, a photo caption accompanying the story misstated the name of the stadium where Oregon Ducks quarterback Marcus Mariota runs a ball past Oregon State Beavers players. http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ncaaf/pac12/2014/08/20/oregon-ducks-quarterback-marcus-mariota/14325431/

News: An earlier version of the following report misstated Trader Joe's products that were affected by its recall. Only the store's raw almond butters were affected. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2014/08/20/almond-peanut-butter-recall-trader-joes-whole-foods/14330325/

Life: A previous version of the following story incorrectly identified which celebrities had signed a petition against the referendum. David Tennant and Susan Boyle did not sign the petition. http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/people/2014/08/17/scotland-independence-celebrities/14099825/

Opinion: An editorial debate Aug. 15 about corporate tax "inversions" incorrectly stated that Fruit of the Loom was among several U.S. companies that shifted their tax addresses to foreign countries in the last decade. Fruit of the Loom moved its tax address abroad in 1998, but the company filed for bankruptcy protection the following year, and the new owners have paid corporate income taxes in the USA since 2002.

Opinion: An editorial debate published Aug.15 should have noted that law enforcement on the scene in Ferguson, Mo., included not just the city police department but officers from numerous jurisdictions, chiefly the St. Louis County police.

News: A front-page story Aug. 15 about Iraqi Prime Minister Nourial-Maliki misstated his age. He is 64.

Money: A Reviewed.com story Aug. 12 about customized cellphone plans mischaracterized GPS navigation options offered by Virgin Mobile. Customers can purchase GPS navigation on a daily or weekly basis with data usage limits.

Money: A story in the Aug. 9 local edition about LG Electronics' new HDTV misstated what the acronym OLED stands for. It is organic light-emitting diode technology.

Money: A story in the Aug. 10 edition about retailers' credit cards incorrectly cited Home Depot's card as one of three with the highest rates. The three are Zales, Staples and Office Depot.

Money: An earlier version of the following tech report misstated Julia Lamaison's last name. http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/personal/2014/08/07/netflix-online-video-favorites/13722953/?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=usatoday-techtopstories

Sports: An earlier version the following golf report misidentified the company Schneider Electric. http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/golf/2014/08/06/willis-young-pga-championship-weather/13665373/

Travel: An earlier version of the following report misstated the title for Hunter Biden. http://www.usatoday.com/experience/food-and-wine/news-festivals-events/whats-cooking-with-chefs-barbecue-canning-and-duels/13717671/

News: A Voices column Aug. 6 on Republicans facing backlash over immigration misstated the year of the last midterm election. It was 2010.

Life: A tweet posted Aug. 6 on USA TODAY's branded Twitter account misspelled actor Peter Dinklage's last name. The photo used in the posting also was deleted because USA TODAY was not authorized to publish it on the social media platform.

News: A previous version of the following online article misconstrued the meaning of the police department's quote involving the penal code. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2014/08/03/tortoise-family-alhambra-california-police/13559867/

News: An earlier version of the following online story incorrectly stated the number of new Ebola cases and the survival rate for those infected. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/08/04/who-ebola-update/13578365/

July 2014

News: A previous online headline about a Palestinian hospital in east Jerusalem was changed to make clear that the al-Makassed hospital is run by Palestinians.

News: A story July 28 on Gazans treated by a Jerusalem hospital misstated Abdel Rahman Bakr's age. He was born July 4.

Money: An earlier version of the following online report misstated the location of Belize. http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/07/31/countries-near-bankruptcy/13435097/

News: An earlier version of the following online story misidentified the country's second tallest skyscraper. It is the Willis Tower. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/07/31/chicago-shooting-bank-america/13408617/

News: A USA TODAY tweet about a coaches poll misstated the Florida State school name and was deleted. The error also appeared on Facebook, which was explained in a comment in the following link:https://www.facebook.com/usatoday/photos/a.100797840666.101835.13652355666/10152162564140667/?type=1

Money: An earlier version of the following Honda earnings report misstated Honda's expected profit for the fiscal year. http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2014/07/29/honda-earnings/13307527/

Life: An interview July 30 with Eric Clapton contained an inaccurate quote about meeting the late JJ Cale. Clapton's correct quote: "He showed me a guitar he had rebuilt."

Life: A fashion story July 28 incorrectly included a 2014 Virgin Mobile FreeFest date. The festival is not taking place this year.

News: A story July 30 on Medicare's outlook included an incorrect number for the proposed annual cut to Medicare physician payments. The correct number is 20.9%.

News: An earlier version of the following report misstated the White House's 2015 funding request for the Central America Regional Security Initiative. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/07/17/immigration-border-crisis-funding-central-america/12782931/

News: An item from Little Rock about Pulaski County jail's reopening should have been listed under Arkansas in the July 25 State-by-State.

Money: An earlier version of the following online auto story reported that the F-35 is grounded. Lockheed Martin, maker of the plane, says the grounding order has been lifted. http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2014/07/24/ford-mustang-eaa-oshkosh/13131889/

News: An earlier version of the following online story and headline about an Algerian plane disappearance misstated the status of an American ticketholder. The American was on the flight manifest but did not board the plane. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/07/24/algerian-plane-disappears/13084329/

Money: An earlier version of the following report about AT&T earnings misattributed the quote from AT&T chief finance officer John Stephens about how the wireless company is transforming its business. http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/07/23/att-q2-earnings/13053415/

News: A previous version of the following article misidentified the location of Auschwitz concentration camp. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2014/07/23/selfie-auschwitz-concentration-camp-germany/13038281/

News: In a July 23 Newsline item on the front page, hedge fund manager Bill Ackman's name was misspelled.

News: A photo accompanying a story July 18 on the Israeli-Gaza conflict misidentified an Israeli weapon. It is a 155mm artillery.

Money: An earlier version of the following online story mischaracterized a deal Corinthian Colleges struck with the Department of Education. http://americasmarkets.usatoday.com/2014/07/18/doe-decides-corinthians-auditors-in-investigation/

News: In a story July 21 on Malaysia Flight 17, a quote about "the sanctity of the crash site" should have been attributed to Liow Tiong Lai, minister of transport for Malaysia.

News: A story about crash victim Shuba Jaya misidentified her father, Jeyaratnam Karuppiah, and a brother, Sugandran, in some editions.

News: The following online graphic, accompanying a story about venture capitalist Tim Draper's proposal to divide California into six states, was updated to correct geographic locations for Los Angeles and Anaheim, Calif:http://www.usatoday.com/interactive/5689917. The incorrect interactive map also appeared on USA TODAY branded social media accounts for Tumblr, Facebook and Twitter.

News: A story July 17 about new vials of biological materials found at the National Institutes of Health incorrectly stated the status of testing on some of those vials. The testing is continuing on four of the six vials labeled as containing smallpox virus.

Opinion: Israel has identified two suspects in the June slaying of three Israeli teenagers, but it has not arrested them as stated in a July 15 editorial.

Opinion: The following Instagram post misspelled Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's name. http://instagram.com/p/qUmfS-FTgd/?modal=true

Opinion: An earlier version of the following column misstated the city Jose Antonio Vargas was en route to as he was detained by immigration officials. http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/07/15/raul-reyes-jose-antonio-vargas-immigration/12687251/

Life: Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick, co-directors of The Blair Witch Project, co-wrote and executive-produced the 2000 sequel Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2. A story July 14 mischaracterized their involvement in the sequel. It was directed by Joe Berlinger.

News: An earlier version of this report misspelled the name of venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2014/07/15/six-californias-tim-draper/12661161 /

Opinion: In a July 11 editorial debate on congressional ethics, the byline of Opposing View writer Tom Spulak was misspelled.

Money: An earlier version of the following story misstated that the Lexus NX has Toyota's first turbocharged engine. http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2014/07/15/toyota-engines/12661961/

News: The aircraft in a photo accompanying a story July 10 on an island dispute in the East China Sea was misidentified. It is a propeller plane.

News: In a July 3 story on TheStar Spangled Banner, Prof. Don Hickey's workplace was misstated. He works at Wayne State College.

News: A July 11 column on veteran suicides misstated the rate of these deaths. In 2005, there were an average of 17 veterans suicides a day; now that figure has risen to 22 per day.

Money: The Test Drive column July 11 and some July 12 editions mistakenly characterized the sizes of the Volkswagen Golf GTI and much longer Honda Civic.

Opinion: Due to an editing error, a July 11 Your Say misrepresented a Facebook comment by reader Bryant Steury. He intended to say that grassroots efforts to stop gun violence take back the streets of Chicago should get much more attention from the media, not that the gun violence should.

Money: An earlier version of the following report misspelled Simeon Siegel's last name. http://americasmarkets.usatoday.com/2014/07/11/old-navy-wins-at-summer/

News: A story July 7 about controversy efforts to protect the lesser prairie chicken incorrectly attributed a statement to Jay Lininger, a senior scientist at Center for Biological Diversity. The quotation is from Jason Rylander, a staff attorney for Defenders of Wildlife.

Life: A July 8 Playlist misspelled the name of Boston rapper Cousin Stizz.

News: An earlier version of the following online story misstated the number of great white sharks in the Atlantic Ocean:http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2014/07/07/california-shark-attacks-great-white/12283761/

Money: A story published in July 5 and July 8 editions about the 2015 Acura TLX overstated the highway fuel-economy rating of models with V-6 engine and all-wheel drive. The correct highway mileage rating is 31 mpg.

Money: A story July 7 misstated the change in the number of part-time workers who preferred full-time jobs in June. The total increased by 275,000 to 7.5 million.

News: A headline July 7 misstated the increase in teen use of hookahs. It should have said hookah smoking among high school seniors rose to 21% in 2013, according to a University of Michigan survey.

June 2014

Opinion: A column June 29 by DeWayne Wickham inaccurately asserted that Chris Chocola, president of the Club for Growth, had accused Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran of promising blacks the protections of a big government in order to beat back a primary challenge from a Tea Party opponent backed by the conservative advocacy organization. Cochran won the open primary by attracting black Democratic voters alienated by his opponent.

Life: The premiere episode of HBO's The Leftovers is available to stream free on Yahoo Screen until July 6. An item June 30 listed the wrong date.

Money: An item in a June 30 Moneyline column misreported a stock holding of investor Carl Icahn. He holds a 9.4% stake in Family dollar.

News: In some print editions June 26, the front page misstated the location of the NBA draft. The draft took place in Brooklyn, NY.

News: A previous version of the following video misstated the number of beaches. There are 35. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/06/25/beaches-polluted-pollution-water-runoff-sewage-bacteria/11349409/

Sports: In some editions June 23, a photo caption with a story about the new NHL schedule misstated Dan Boyle's team affiliation. He recently had his rights traded and won't be with the San Jose Sharks when they open the season.

Money: A story June 19 incorrectly characterized the significance of the federal government's credit card settlement with GE Capital Retail Bank. It is the government's largest credit card discrimination settlement.

Sports: A player was omitted from the American Family Insurance All-USA high school boys golf team in June 18 editions. Sam Horsefield, a junior at Ridge Community (Davenport, Fla.), made the first team.

Life: A story June 16 about TV shows featuring viruses misstated the location of a research center on the Syfy series,Helix. It's located in the Arctic Circle.

Sports: The following story was amended to delete a reference to World Cup viewer Lindsay Augustine's occupation. http://worldcup.usatoday.com/2014/06/16/united-states-usa-us-soccer-usmnt-fans-dc-jurgen-klinsmann/

News: An earlier version of the following story about Vice President Biden's trip to Latin America misspelled Colombia. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2014/06/15/biden-guatemala-child-migration/10556985/

Life: An Entertain This! June 16 story item about reports that Beyonce was expecting a second child was based on old information. The story has since been removed from our website. http://entertainthis.usatoday.com/2014/06/16/beyonce-reports-pregnant-baby/

News: A story about storm chasers published June 9 misidentified a man from California who has been chasing storms since 2009. His name is Tim Dolan.

Your Take:An earlier version of the following story misstated the name of the contributor of the alligator wrestling photo. The photo was submitted, not taken by Jessica Fazende. A photo taken by Jessica Fazende has since been posted. http://www.usatoday.com/story/your-take/2014/06/13/take-5-alligator-honey-moon/10416257/

News: An earlier version of the following interactive slide incorrectly identified the shooter. The gunman's name hadn't been released. http://www.usatoday.com/interactive/7833833

USA TODAY College: An earlier version of the following online story mischaracterized the disciplinary charges Brown University student Lena Sclove brought against a fellow student. The accused student was found responsible for "sexual misconduct" under the university's Standards of Student Conduct. He has not been charged with, or convicted of, rape or any other crime resulting from Sclove's complaint. The accused student voluntarily withdrew his petition to return to Brown and has issued this public statement rebutting Sclove's allegations. http://college.usatoday.com/2014/06/02/brown-university-allows-rapist-back-on-campus-faces-federal-complaint/

Sports: A caption with a photo in June 9 editions incorrectly identified military personnel attending the National-Padres baseball game. They are in the Marine Corps.

Money: A caption to a photo that ran with a story June 6 about the cattle industry in Kazakhstan misidentified the animal in the photo. It was a Hereford.

Travel: An earlier version of the following online report misidentified the name and location of The Ritz-Carlton, Lake Tahoe: http://www.usatoday.com/story/experience/beach/california/2014/06/06/california-destination-weddings/10054819/

News: The original version of the following online story stated a Chinese man was stuck in South Korea because his son had made drawings on his passport. A story update included speculation that the photo was fake, which later was confirmed by The Wall Street Journal , citing an official from the Chinese embassy in Seoul. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2014/06/02/chinese-passport-doodle-korea/9862473/

Your Take: An earlier version of this story misstated the role of contributor Wayne Cragg. He was a passenger in the aircraft that landed on the glacier in Denali National Park. http://www.usatoday.com/story/your-take/2014/06/04/take-5-glacier-rivers-flags/9952301/?sf26938170=1

News: An earlier version of this online report mischaracterized how the AMA will issue recommendations. This story also misstated the title for Phillip Rodgers. http://ux-origin.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/06/02/stateline-end-of-life/9867615/

May 2014

Money: The State of Colorado, working with Kaiser Permanente and UnitedHealth Plans, used social gaming to boost participation rates in programs that promote exercise and healthier diets by 650% last year. One such program is called Reach for the Peaks. A story on May 15 in how "big data" can improve healthcare misidentified the name of the program and a specific social tool.

Life: An earlier version of the following online report misstated the location where Maya Angelou lived. It was Winston-Salem, N.C. http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/books/2014/05/28/maya-angelou-dies-at-age-86/9663497/

Money: A story May 23 about General Motors recalls should have said the U.S. total for 2014 through May 21 was 13.79 million. The story used an incorrect total initially provided by GM.

Opinion: A May 23 Your Say package incorrectly stated the number of vehicles General Motors has recalled this year. It is 13.79 million.

Travel: An earlier version of the video caption on the following online report misspelled Ben Schlappig's last name. http://www.usatoday.com/videos/travel/flights/2014/05/20/9341313/

News: An earlier version of the graphic with the following online report misstated the date of the Bunbury Festival. It takes place on July 12. http://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/nation-now/2014/05/15/music-festival-survival-guide-summer/9132553/

Sports: A news alert, based on an AP news report, was updated to correct Pittsburgh Penguins coach Dan Bylsma's employment status. The AP corrected its story, and the updated alert read as follows:Penguins fire GM; coach Dan Bylsma to be evaluated.

News: An earlier version of the following report on net neutrality, which appeared online and in print, misstated Netflix's deals with Comcast and Verizon. It paid to connect directly with the two Internet service providers. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/usanow/2014/05/15/fcc-net-neutrality-rules/9116157/

Life: An earlier version of the following online report misstated American Idol contestant Caleb Johnson's last name. http://www.usatoday.com/story/idolchatter/2014/05/14/american-idol-500th-episode/9105407/

Money: A photo accompanying a markets analysis May 14 about companies cutting research and development mistakenly depicted biopharmaceutical company Merck KGaA, which is based in Germany and is not the same Merck & Co. referenced in the story.

Life: An earlier version of the following online report misspelled Manhattan character Glen Babbit's last name. http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/tv/2014/05/15/wgn-american-manhattan-photo-and-premiere-announcement/9103783/

News: The caption on a photo of a TOW missile that accompanied a story about Syria on Monday misstated where the missile was photographed. It was in Kuwait.

News: A May 12 story on passage of a referendum in eastern Ukraine mischaracterized it. The referendum called for secession from Ukraine, according to pro-Russian insurgents.

News: An earlier version of the following online report, which also appeared in some print editions, contained an incorrect figure for the number of soldiers depicted in the Marine Corps Memorial showing the U.S. flag being raised on Iwo Jima in World War II. The correct number is six. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/05/11/arlington-cemetery-150th-anniversary-things-didnt-know/8410721/

Life: Band leader Kay Kyser performed the song Alexander the Swoose. His name was misspelled in a story about actress Swoosie Kurtz in the May 6 newspaper.

News: An Associated Press world brief May 3 about Toronto Mayor Rob Ford misstated Toronto's rank in population. It is Canada's largest city.

Money: Satellite TV provider DirecTV has 20 million subscribers. A story May 2 was incorrect.

April 2014

News: A chart that ran with a story on April 30 about air pollution incorrectly spelled the name of Harford County, Md.

Money: A story April 30 about the housing recovery misspelled the last name of Ed Brady, owner of Brady Homes in Bloomington, Ill.

Sports: A 1A story April 29 about the Los Angeles Clippers' sponsors misstated the status of Anheuser-Busch and Amtrak. A-B's Bud Light is the official beer of the NBA. Amtrak's sponsorship deal with the Clippers expired at the end of the regular season.

News: An earlier version of the following report should have said that the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission discussed, but did not formally recommend, changing Medicare policy on drug reimbursements to the "effective-but-cheaper" rate. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2014/04/24/drugmakers-lobbying-medicare-payments/8055901/

Money: An April 25 car review misstated the country where the Mercedes-Benz CLA45 AMG is built. It is built in Hungary.

Money: An earlier version of the following report misstated earnings results for General Motors. The company saw a net income gain. http://usat.ly/1ho4kmi

News: A photograph of Deandra Smith was incorrectly attributed in an earlier version of this story. The photo was provided by the Pulaski County Sheriff's Office. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/04/22/fugitives-gun-background-checks/7959529/

Money: Self-employment expenses and interest on student loans are not itemized deductions reported on Form 1040 Schedule A. A chart April 14 was incorrect.

Money: An earlier version of the following online report, which was also published in the paper on April 17, incorrectly stated the major with the highest average starting salary. http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2014/04/16/nace-job-outlook-class-of-2014/7771859/

News: An April 18 Voices column misstated Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott's first name.

News: An April 15 story on drug use by medical practitioners misidentified Art Zwerling. He is the former chief nurse anesthetist at Philadelphia's Fox Chase Cancer Center.

Sports: A caption with the following photo gallery about major league baseball player who have hit at least 500 home runs incorrectly identified the player in 17th place on the list. Jimmie Foxx is on the right side of the photo. http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/2014/04/16/albert-pujols-on-verge-of-500-home-run-club/7764967/

News: An earlier version of the following report and accompanying video misnamed the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center. http://usat.ly/1kuiPWC

Life: An earlier version of the following report misstated who among Alan Thicke's relatives was placed under house arrest after being accused of murder in Bolivia last year. It was his wife's mother, Ruth Miriam Callau. http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/people/2014/04/15/alan-thicke-robin-and-paula-patton-strong-since-split/7751345/

Sports: The winner of the women's singles title in the Katowice Open tennis tournament was incorrect in April 14 editions. Alize Cornet defeated Camila Giorgi.

News: In the State-by-State Montana brief for April 14, the Bitterroot Valley was misspelled.

News: An earlier version of the following Oval post misstated the timing of this year's Boston Marathon. http://www.usatoday.com/story/theoval/2014/04/15/obama-boston-marathon-bombing-statement/7734229/

News: A story April 15 on aging right-wing extremists misstated the year Cross testified against Ku Klux Klan associates and other white supremacists. The trial took place in 1988. Also, a sentence describing Klan associates aging and splintering was incorrectly attributed to Mark Pitcavage of the Anti-Defamation League.

News: An earlier version of the following story contained an incorrect figure for the number of passengers who ride annually on U.S. ferries and other public watercraft. The Passenger Vessel Association says the correct figure is more than 200 million. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/04/15/marine-safety-experts-say-house-dilutes-boat-safety/7737233/

Money: A previous version of the following story misidentified Sue Brennan. She is a spokesperson for the United States Postal Service and handles questions about operations. http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2014/04/13/tax-returns-filing-digital-era/7432833/

News: An earlier version of the following story contained a photo of Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra concertmaster Margaret Batjer from LACO's recent "Strad Fest LA" event. The photo was replaced to be clear that neither Batjer, LACO nor Strad Fest LA were associated with this report. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/04/07/old-violins-versus-new/7383707/

Money: A story April 9 about the Honda Fit should have made clear that the subcompact hasn't been significantly changed since 2008, two years after it was introduced in the U.S.

Money: The following online graphic was updated to correct the spelling of Charlottesville:http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/04/06/americas-thinnest-city/7306199/

Money: On the second Tuesday of every month, Microsoft issues new security patches for its operating systems. A story on April 8 listed the wrong date.

News: The dateline for the State-by-State item for Arizona on April 4 was incorrect. It is Eloy.

Life: An earlier version of the following report misstated the date David Letterman started Late Night:http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/tv/2014/04/03/david-letterman-cbs-retire/7266411/

News: The city of Benicia, Calif., was misspelled in April 3 State-by-State coverage, due to an error by The Associated Press.

Life: A story April 2 about Captain America: The Winter Soldier misidentified Anthony and Joe Russo's previous credits. The brothers directed the comedy You, Me and Dupree and episodes of Arrested Development.

Sports: A story in some editions April 1 incorrectly stated the position of former baseball player B.J. Wallace. He was a pitcher.

March 2014

Money: The 2013 compensation for Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan rose 77% from 2012 when calculated using Securities and Exchange Commission guidelines, which require stock awards be counted in the year they were granted. A March 25 story in the paper used a different calculation.

Money: An earlier version of the following online report misspelled the last name of Johnathan Davis, co-founder and chief content officer of IBT Media:www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/03/29/newsweek-ties-to-church-leader/7048895/

Money: The March 28 Test Drive column mistakenly identified a Mini Cooper model. The correct designation is Mini Cooper Countryman.

Sports: The salary for a Philadelphia Phillies player and the team payroll were misstated in some March 31 editions. Outfielder Tony Gwynn Jr. will make $900,000 this season, and the team's opening-day payroll is $179.5 million.

News: A video shared by Gannett broadcast partner KSDK, about Missouri resident Ronald White's account of meeting John F. Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis, was removed because it mischaracterized White's affiliation with the Navy SEALs. White has shared with KSDK that he was a part of a Navy SEAL mission, but he is not a former SEAL.

Money: A Moneyline item March 28 about new plane orders from ANA, Japan's largest air carrier, incorrectly included a picture of a Japan Airlines plane.

Life: Found in You and Forever With You by Laurelin Paige have appeared on USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list. That information was incorrect in the March 27 Book Buzz.

Sports: The year of the Tennessee men's basketball team's last appearance in the NCAA Sweet 16 was incorrect in a story and a photo caption in the March 26 editions. Tennessee last made the Sweet 16 in 2010.

News: The Washington state highway swamped by mudslide on March 22 was misidentified in a March 26 story on the disaster. It is Highway 530.

News: A map in print Tuesday, also featured online http://www.usatoday.com/interactive/6872571/embed , accompanying a story on the missing Malaysian airplane misstated how many miles above Earth a satellite is positioned. It is 22,236 miles.

News: A previous version of the following online article incorrectly listed Washington, D.C.'s minimum wage. The current minimum wage in D.C. is $8.25 per hour in 2014, according to the Department of Labor :http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2014/03/24/minimum-wage-rent-affordable-housing/6817639/

Life: The following USA WEEKEND report was updated to more accurately reflect examples of online trading sites to consider for eco loans. A site that is no longer in service was erroneously listed. http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/weekend/living/2014/03/21/10-best-tips-for-green-living/6387377 /

Life: An earlier version of the following online report misstated the last name of contestant Danica McKellar: http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/people/2014/03/24/dancing-sends-two-stars-home-elimination-recap/6847559/

Money: A U.S. map accompanying a story March 24 on marijuana vaporizers misstated which states have legalized the use of marijuana for medical purposes. The following map has the correct information:http://www.mpp.org/assets/pdfs/library/Map-of-State-Marijuana-Laws.jpg

Money: A Test Drive column March 21 listed incorrect curb weights for models of the Mitsubishi Mirage. The range is 1,973 lbs. to 2,051 lbs.

Money: A photo caption accompanying a media column March 24 mischaracterized Mary Barra's time with General Motors. It should have said she became CEO two months ago.

Opinion: A Forum column March 24 criticizing Malaysia's handling of the airliner crash referred incorrectly to the year that bloody rioting took place between Malays and the country's ethnic Chinese. It was 1969.

News: A story March 21 about medical exams administered to airline pilots misstated the frequency of tests for cargo pilots, who are tested as often as those at passenger airlines.

News: An article March 24 about military veterans succeeding in college misstated the last name of D. Wayne Robinson, president and CEO of Student Veterans of America.

News: USA TODAY writer James R. Healey's last name was misspelled in the March 21 Newsline item.

Money: A story on state pensions shortfalls in some editions March 21 contained two errors. It misidentified the location of the Mercatus Center. The Center is located at George Mason University. It also misstated the amount that net pension liability increased from 2011 to 2012. It went from $998 billion in 2011 to $1.2 trillion in 2012.

Money: In some March 20 editions, a 1B story on the basketball's March Madness misstated the ownership of Quicken Loans. The company is not a Berkshire Hathaway holding.

News: An earlier version of the following video misstated what happened to $6,637.94 in attorney's fees and costs granted to complainant Vanessa Willock. Willock and her attorneys waived the monetary award:http://www.usatoday.com/media/cinematic/video/6610981/

Life: The March 17 Critic's Corner column misidentified the character Peggy (Rondi Reed) in the CBC comedy Mike & Molly. She is the mother of Mike (Billy Gardell).

News: An earlier version of the following story misidentified Marc Mauer in a photo. The current photo is Marc Mauer: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2014/03/16/prison-population-cuts-democrats-republicans/6496675/

News: The following online post was updated to correct the names of authors of the RNC's "Growth and Opportunity Project" report: http://onpolitics.usatoday.com/2014/03/17/republicans-obama-diversity-ads-senate-priebus/

News: A March 11 SocialEyes video pointing to a Reddit question posed to fast-food workers was taken down because the story did not meet USA TODAY's standards.

Sports: A story in March 13 editions about Robinson Cano and the Seattle Mariners misstated utilityman Willie Bloomquist's contract status with the team. He signed a two-year, $5.8 million deal with the Mariners in the offseason.

Money: A March 11 Talking Tech with Jimmy Kimmel misidentified the sport of an athlete who was the source of an online prank. She was a member of the Olympic luge team.

Life: A story March 11 about the biographic film about Jimi Hendrix, Jimi: All is By My Side, misstated the month the movie is set to be released. It will be in theaters in June.

News: In March 10 editions, a story about Americans abroad relinquishing their citizenship over taxes misstated the name of the tax rule. It is the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, or FATCA.

Money: A story March 7 misstated the time frame for the bull market that was followed by the 2008 financial crisis and Great Recession. The correct period was 2002-2007.

News: A tweet about Toronto Mayor Rob Ford's gaffe regarding daylight saving time used an incorrect image of the politician. The tweet was removed to avoid confusion and tweeted again with a correct photo:https://twitter.com/USATODAY/status/442774277021249536

Life: A March 4 profile of singer/songwriter Jhene Aiko left out the photographer's credit. The image was taken by Justin Jackson.

Money: A technology story March 6 about online commenting misspelled YouTube communications manager Matt McLernon's last name.

News: Sportscaster Brent Musburger's last name was misspelled in a March 4 1A photo caption.

News: Sen. Richard Durbin's position was incorrect in an earlier version of the following online report. He is majority whip: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/03/05/debo-adegbile-senate-vote/6074443/

News: A March 4 story on traffic congestion gave the wrong time frame for hours wasted in traffic by motorists in the nation's 10 worst traffic cities. Motorists in those cities waste an average of 47 hours a year in traffic.

February 2014

News: A Feb. 27 Venezuela protest video and related photos of an attack on a woman by national guard officers were removed from a news story and social media posts. The Your Take content, submitted by a website user, violated USA TODAY's terms of service : http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/02/27/venezuela-violence-protests/5865025/

News: An earlier version of the following On Politics post misidentified Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn. Bachmann is a member of the U.S. House, but has announced she will not seek re-election:http://onpolitics.usatoday.com/2014/02/21/john-mccain-hillary-clinton-bachmann-2016/

Money: The video accompanying the following story about the interconnect agreement between Netflix and Comcast could have been clearer in explaining that while Netflix downloads would result in a faster streaming experience for Comcast customers than before, Netflix receives no preferential network treatment under the agreement: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/02/23/netflix-comcast-deal-streaming/5757631/

News: An earlier version of the following graphic showing "Road Salt in Demand this Season" mislabeled Grand Rapids, Mich. when showing snow totals: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/02/19/shipload-of-road-salt-set-to-dock-in-nj/5624281/

Sports: A list of Daytona 500 winners in Feb. 21 editions misspelled the surname of the 1969 winner. He was LeeRoy Yarbrough.

Sports: An earlier version of the photo caption accompanying the following online report misidentified Finland goalie Tuukka Rask: http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/olympics/sochi/2014/02/22/usa-finland-bronze-medal-olympic-hockey-game/5725465/

News: The following Feb. 22 online report on hacking into retailers' customer records in 2013 should not have included Walmart: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/02/22/retail-hacks-security-standards/5257919/

Money: University of Southern California professor Karen North was misidentified in a Feb. 20 report on the Whisper app.

News: The photo caption on the following Facebook post was updated Feb. 23 to make clear that the aunt pictured performed CPR on her 5-month-old nephew:https://www.facebook.com/usatoday/posts/10201651089662207?stream_ref=10

News: On the Feb. 20 front page, the caption for the photo of Russian hockey player Anton Belov misidentified him. He was to the left of the American players.

News: General Motors spokesman Alan Adler's first name was incorrect in a Feb. 19 story on the Chevrolet Cobalt recall.

News: An earlier version of the following report about a "kiss cam" video that went viral misstated the university state where the hockey game took place. It was Minnesota:. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2014/02/19/kiss-cam-university-minnesota/5602165/

Life: A photo accompanying an earlier version of the following report, and subsequent social media posts, misidentified Devo guitarist Bob Casale: http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/music/2014/02/18/devo-guitarist-bob-casale-dead-at-61/5581671/?csp=fblife

News: A 1A story Feb. 17 on the cost of IRS customer service to taxpayers mischaracterized the purpose of a Scheduled D form. It's used for reporting profits on a stock sale.

Sports: An earlier version of the graphic comparing differences between Olympic and pro hockey in the following picture gallery incorrectly explained the NHL and Olympic time periods. The NHL and Olympic clocks both count down from 20 minutes to 0 per period: http://www.usatoday.com/media/cinematic/gallery/5278935/olympic-sports-explainers-in-pictures/

Sports: An earlier version of the "Triple Lutz - triple loop" graphic in the following picture gallery mischaracterized the direction of the skater's rotation: http://www.usatoday.com/media/cinematic/gallery/5278935/olympic-sports-explainers-in-pictures/

Sports: A baseball column on Feb. 17 identified the wrong site for Philadelphia Eagles fans throwing snowballs at a man in a Santa Claus suit. The 1968 game was played at Franklin Field.

News: A storm photo on the front page of the Feb. 13 issue should have been credited to Travis Long of The News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C.

Money: A Feb. 14 profile of Comcast CEO Brian Roberts misstated Comcast's ownership of the Philadelphia 76ers. The company sold the team in 2011.

News: The source for a Feb. 12 1A Snapshot on the vehicles "attractive" men drive was incorrect. It is Insure.com.

News: A Feb. 12 news alert about January health care enrollments misstated the percentage growth in health-care enrollments through federal and state exchanges in January. The increase was about 50% over prior enrollments, bringing the current total to 3.3 million, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

Money: A Media column Feb. 10 incorrectly named the person noted for the theory of creative destruction, whereby capitalism is always making way for the new. It was economist and political scientist Joseph Schumpeter.

Sports: An earlier version of the following online report misstated the number of NBA championships won by the San Antonio Spurs in the past 17 years. The team has four wins:http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nba/spurs/2014/02/05/san-antonio-getting-healthy-danny-green-tiago-splitter-tony-parker-gregg-popovich/5235397/

News: An earlier version of the following online report misstated Catholics for Choice's position on premarital sex. The group has not issued a public opinion on the issue. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/02/05/vatican-united-nations-report-sex-abuse-abortion/5227903/

Life: A photo caption Feb.5 incorrectly listed the location for Nik Wallenda's "skywire" walk that aired on Discovery Channel last June. He crossed the Little Colorado River George outside Grand Canyon National Park.

News: A story Feb. 5 on Virginia's battle over same-sex marriage should not have included the state as part of the Deep South, which refers to Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina.

Money: A story Feb. 5 about watching the Olympics on your smartphone or tablet via NBC coverage misstated when you would be able to access certain event streams on demand. Most full-event replays and highlights will be available on demand immediately following their conclusion. However, full-event replays for some Olympic events will only be available around 3:30 p.m. ET, and highlights will not be available on demand until the event is shown to NBC's prime-time TV viewers.

Sports: Due to technical problems, the National Football League's Super Bowl ad "We" was not posted in the USA TODAY Ad Meter panel's voting hub and was not included in the ratings for the game ads. It can be viewed at admeter.usatoday.com.

Sports: A column on the Super Bowl in some Feb. 3 editions incorrectly categorized Malcolm Smith's interception return for a touchdown for the Seattle Seahawks. It was the fourth-longest pick-six in Super Bowl history.

News: An earlier version of the following online report should have made clear that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was joking when referencing Fox:http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2014/02/02/hillary-clinton-super-bowl-twitter/5171833/

January 2014

USA TODAY College: Due to a technical error, an incorrect byline appeared on an earlier version of the following story. http://college.usatoday.com/2014/01/27/how-to-write-a-professional-bio-for-linkedin-twitter-more/

News: A Massachusetts item in the Jan. 29 State-by-State reporter misstated the cost of a planned Foxwoods resort casino in Fall River. It would cost $750 million.

Money: The LG G Flex smartphone has 2GB of RAM and 32GB of onboard storage. A review in the Jan. 29 edition misstated the amount of RAM in the phone.

Opinion: A Jan. 22editorial on the Roe v. Wade anniversary should have made clear that a Texas law, which bans most abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, provides an exemption if the fetus has lethal abnormalities.

News: A Jan. 27 Online Today item about new stamp prices did not make clear that the increase in Forever Stamps is not forever. Any Forever Stamps you already have can still be used, whatever you paid for them. The cost of a new Forever Stamp has increased to 49cents for the next two years.

News: The following On Politics story about State of the Union seating misstated the title of Rep. Sander Levin. He is the ranking member on Ways & Means: http://onpolitics.usatoday.com/2014/01/27/the-state-of-the-union-is-contentious/

News: In a Jan. 24 State-by-State item for Colorado, the distance between Ouray and Silverton was incorrectly reported by the Associated Press. It's about 25 miles.

News: The following On Politics post was updated to correct Sen. McConnell's leadership title:http://www.usatoday.com/story/onpolitics/2014/01/26/mcconnell-senate-primary-kentucky-bevin-2014/4912629/

News: Two numbers were reversed in a Jan. 23 story about the USA TODAY/Pew Research Center Poll because of incorrect information provided by Pew. In the survey, 51% said people got rich more because they had more advantages than others; 38% said it was more because they worked harder than others.

News: An earlier version of the following On Politics post misspelled the last name of Democratic state Rep. John Bel Edwards: http://www.usatoday.com/story/onpolitics/2014/01/21/vitter-governor-lousiana/4717779/

News: The following online story was updated to clarify confusion between two sets of numbers in the report: http://ux-origin.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/01/20/davos-2014-oxfam-85-richest-people-half-world/4655337/

News: The dateline for the South Dakota State-by-State item Jan. 15 was incorrect. It should have been Sioux Falls.

News: Photo captions on the following online report have been updated to correct the spelling of Timothy Truong's name:http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/01/13/vocabulary-schools-online-competition-education-students-teachers/4455087/

News: The following online Texas oil information graphic was changed to more accurately illustrate the recovery stage of hydraulic fracturing: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/01/15/texas-oil-boom-fracking/4481977/

Life: An item in a Jan. 15 Lifeline column mischaracterized Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney's upcoming Grammy appearance. The singers will perform separately, the Recording Academy confirms.

News: The first name of James Hughes, a Rutgers University dean, was incorrect in a story Jan. 15 about the American Dream development near the site of the Super Bowl on Feb. 2.

News: A story Jan. 14 on the nuclear agreement with Iran misstated where the agreement was signed. It was Geneva.

News: A previous version of the video accompanying the following online story included a clip credited to TRUTH that is not a part of the TRUTH campaign, according to Legacy Foundation spokesperson Patricia McLaughlin. The Legacy Foundation is the national public health organization that funds and directs the TRUTH campaign:http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2014/01/12/surgeon-general-anniversary-smoking-television-commercials/4395273/

News: An earlier version of the following online report misidentified the campaign spokesman for Thom Tillis. He is Jordan Shaw. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/01/13/obama-hagan-tillis-north-carolina-emergency-unemployment/4458969/

Money: A headline Jan. 13 mischaracterized the testimony of Frank DiPascali, a former chief financial aide to Bernard Madoff. DiPascali, who is a prosecution witness in the trial of five former Madoff employees, has testified that he is remorseful about his part in Madoff's investment fraud.

Money: A Jan. 13 story about the 2015 Ford F-150 incorrectly identified the material from which the frame is constructed. It is made from steel, using significant amounts of high-strength steel to cut the weight of the frame.

News: An earlier version of the following online report about GOP reaction to the N.J. bridge-traffic scandal involving Gov. Chris Chris Christie misstated which federal prosecutor was looking into the case. The U.S. attorney's office in New Jersey is conducting the preliminary inquiry: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/01/12/christie-scandal-reax/4442019/

Tech: An article in a Jan. 10 special section on the Consumer Electronic Show incorrectly stated the type of technology used in a set of headphones. The correct technology in the HiFiMan HE-560 headphones is planar magnetic.

News: An earlier version of the following online graphic about Al-Qaeda growth in the Middle East incorrectly labeled Iraq:http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/01/07/al-qaeda-spread/4358845/

News: A story Jan. 8 about military pensions misstated how they are calculated. Years spent at military academies do not count toward time accumulated for pensions.

Money: A story Jan. 7 about community health centers starting for-profit insurance plans incorrectly described one Medicare plan operated by the nonprofit Care Oregon. That plan switched from for-profit to nonprofit status on Jan. 1. It was founded in part by community health centers, but has been independently owned since 1997.

News: Story highlights on an earlier version of the following online report misstated Rep. Gabrielle Giffords' status when a mentally ill man opened fire at a constituent forum in Tucson, Ariz. She survived the shooting:http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/01/08/giffords-shooting-anniversary-tucson/4371639/"

@USA TODAY: The following weather map, shown on USA TODAY's Jan. 7 Twitter page, failed to credit Scott Bateman, of Disalmanac.com, for inspiring the idea: https://twitter.com/USATODAY/status/420614581267206144

News: The online version of the following report misstated the title for Mark Goldstein, CEO and president of Entertainment Partners, a production management and payroll service company:http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/12/14/obamacare-hollywood-film-contractors-freelancers-healthcare/3883689/

Life: The following online report about new Saturday Night Live member Sasheer Zamata mischaracterized quotes made by Amy Poehler and Tina Fey to The Hollywood Reporter. The two made the comments when casting was going on, but before Zamata had landed the job: http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/people/2014/01/07/celebs-react-to-snl-casting-news-sasheer-zamata-tina-fey/4356833/

Money: Doctors and hospitals will see decreases in their Medicare reimbursements if they haven't joined the Meaningful Use program by 2015. A story Jan. 7 on electronic medical records misstated the type of reimbursements that would be reduced.

News: A story Jan. 6 on a cancer research gift misstated Harvard University's role. The gift from Ludwig Cancer Center will let Massachusetts Institute of Technology focus on the problem of cancer's spread, or metastases. Harvard University will focus on cancer drug effectiveness.

Life: A story Jan. 6 about the Palm Springs International Film Festival did not give the author's name. It was written by Bryan Alexander.

News: A story Jan. 2 on official residences for mayors misstated the first name of Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti.

Opinion: A Jan. 2 editorial on military pensions misstated the annual premium for a Tricare family health policy. It rose from $460 a year to $549 for 2014, the first increase since 1995.

Money: A chart on 2B Jan. 2 incorrectly said the Dow Jones industrial average's 26.5% gain last year was the best annual gain since 1996. it was the best since 1995.

Money: Liz Ann Sonders is chief investment strategist at Charles Schwab. A story Jan. 2 incorrectly stated her title.

Money: A quote-out on page 2B Jan. 2 ran the wrong picture for Ann Miletti of Wells Fargo Advantage Funds.

Money: A story Jan. 2 on automated portfolio services misstated the annual fee charged by management service, Betterment. The service charges 0.35% of portfolios valued below $10,000, 0.25% of portfolios valued between $10,000 and $100,000 and 0.15% of portfolios worth more than $100,000.

December 2013

News: The State-by-State item for Virginia on Dec. 31 misstated the name of the Harry F. Byrd Visitor Center at Shenandoah National Park. The erroneous information was provided by the Associated Press.

Money: A Dec. 24 Reviewed.com article incorrectly stated that Japan was the first country in the world to broadcast television in color. Japan was third in the world, but the first in Asia.

News: UPS spokeswoman Natalie Godwin's last name was misspelled in a 1A story Dec. 26 about delayed holiday shipments.

Life: A review Dec. 24 incorrectly reported the date when the movie Lone Survivor opens nationwide. It expands Jan. 10.

Life: A story Dec. 18 incorrectly identified the Fleetwood Mac album that singles Rhiannon and Say You Love Me appear on. The songs are from Fleetwood Mac; a live version of Rhiannon in included on the deluxe reissue of Rumours.

Money: An example in a story on minimum distributions for your IRA when you turn 70.5, years was incorrect. The story should have said: Here's a working example: You're single and just turned 70.5 years in 2013, with $500,000 in your IRA. IRS gives you a divisor of 27.4 for your next egg -- meaning you must withdraw $18,248 in the calendar year, or just shy of 3.7%.

Money: A Dec. 4 story about Akamai Technologies' acquisition of Prolexic names Danny Lewin and Tom Leighton as co-founders. It did not include others who played a role at the company's start. Among them: Jonathan Seelig and Randall Kaplan, who are listed as founders in a Jan. 14, 1999 press release announcing Akamai's establishment. Akamai says Lewin and Leighton founded the company and Seeling and Kaplan were part of its founding team.

News: A story Dec. 19 about Sen. Max Baucus to be named ambassador to China misstated future plans of House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich. His tenure as chairman expires next year, but he has not announced his retirement.

Life: A photo of Leonardo DiCaprio at work with the World Wildlife Fund was incorrectly credited in the Dec. 19 issue. The photo was taken by the fund's Jan Vertefeuille.

News: A headline on a story Dec. 17 about vitamin research incorrectly attributed a statement that vitamins are "a waste." The statement was from an editorial accompanying the new research.

News: The name of Paula Otto, director of Virginia Lottery, was misspelled in a story Dec. 17 about the Mega Millions drawing.

Life: An obituary for actress Joan Fontaine that appeared in some Dec. 16 issues mischaracterized her family's Academy Award wins. Fontaine and sister Olivia de Havilland are the only siblings to win lead-acting Oscars.

Life: A story on Dec. 10 about NBC's Community misstated the date John Oliver returns to the show. He will reappear in the new season's third episode, airing Jan. 9.

News: Owen Ullmann's byline was misspelled in a column Dec. 10 about a strategy for getting Social Security benefits. He is Managing Editor of the News section of USA TODAY.

Money: Best Buy and Sprint offer free phone service for 12 months to students who purchase certain phones, with no contract required. A story Dec. 6 incorrectly stated a contract requirement.

Sports: The number of points Florida State earned from the USA TODAY Sports Coaches Poll was listed incorrectly in the BCS standings in Dec. 9 editions. FSU earned 1,550 points.

Sports: The score of an NCAA women's tournament quarterfinal soccer match between Virginia and Michigan was incorrect in Dec. 2 editions. Virginia won 2-1.

Money: The last name of Mikael Thygesen, chief marketing officer for Simon Property Group, was misspelled in a front-page story Dec. 2 about holiday shopping.

November 2013

News: A story Nov. 6 about World War II veterans living in Texas misstated Elmer Hill's rank among living veterans. He is one of the oldest living WWII veterans.

News: A large photo of a bowl of ramen, which accompanied a story Nov. 29 on top Japanese restaurants serving lower-quality food, was included to illustrate Japanese cuisine but may have left a wrong impression on some readers. The food dish and ramen shop where the photo was taken had no connection to the scandal reported in the article.

News: The description of the Green Line between Israel and the West Bank was misstated in a story Nov. 29 about Israeli settler farms. It is the Israeli-Jordanian armistice line from the 1949 Arab-Israeli war.

News: A story Nov. 22 about California's health insurance exchange did not make clear that the rate of 10,000 people a day who had filled out applications referred only to the month of November. The rate was lower in October, when the exchange first opened.

Money: The Nov. 22 Investing column gave an incorrect example about deducting appreciated stock. You must hold your stock for at least a year before you can deduct its full market value.

Opinion: Because of an editing error, the Nov. 18 Opposing View on the Federal Reserve misstated the expansion of the Fed's balance sheet since the 2008 financial crisis. It is $3 trillion.

Sports: The TV ratings in Nov. 19 editions contained an incorrect comparison between the previous weekend's Georgia-Auburn football game and the Mississippi-LSU game in the same time slot on CBS last year. This year's ratings were up 46%.

Sports: A story in Nov. 18 editions about the Chicago Bears' overtime victory incorrectly identified their quarterback. He is Josh McCown.

Opinion: A Nov. 11 editorial on abuse of painkillers overstated the number of hydrocodone prescriptions. According to government estimates, 136.7 million prescriptions for hydrocodone were dispensed in 2011, making it the most prescribed drug in America.

Money: A Test Drive column Nov. 15 about the 2014 Chevrolet Malibu with the 2.5-liter engine misstated the vehicle's government highway mileage rating. It's 36 mpg.

News: An In Brief item Nov. 8 misstated the skills rated by the Nation's Report Card. They are math and reading.

Money: A Reviewed.com story Nov. 7 about LED light bulbs misstated the city where Cree, the company that makes the bulb, is based. It is in Durham, N.C.

News: In a Nov. 6 State-by-State item for New Mexico, news from Arizona was incorrectly included.

News: San Diego's election to replace former mayor Bob Filner will be Nov. 19. Some editions Nov. 6 gave the wrong date.

Opinion: A byline on a Nov. 6 column misspelled John D. Altenburg's surname.

Money: A story Oct. 5 misstated how much Johnson & Johnson agreed to pay in criminal fines and forfeitures as part of a $2.2 billion settlement with the federal government. The company will pay $484 million.

News: A story Nov. 1 about President Obama's judicial selections misstated Patricia Millett's rank among women who have appeared before the Supreme Court. She has argued the second-most cases.

October 2013

News: An Oct. 14 story about declining teen driving misstated the year when the share of high school seniors who had a driver's license fell to 73%. It was 2010.

News: In an Oct. 31 State-by-State item from Maryland, news from Delaware was incorrectly included.

Money: An Oct. 30 Personal Tech column review of the new iPad Air should have listed the starting price of the Wi-Fi + Cellular model at $629. The article incorrectly listed the price.

Life: The caption for a photograph with an Oct. 30 TV on the Web column misidentified a runway model as Alexa Chung.

Money: An Oct. 18 article should have said the 2014 Toyota Corolla is manufactured at Blue Springs, Miss., and in Canada. The article incorrectly identified the manufacturing site.

News: A story Oct. 28 about President Kennedy and West Virginia misstated the day of the week Lee Harvey Oswald was shot. It was a Sunday.

Life: A year-end music preview Oct. 25 incorrectly characterized how Lady Gaga arrived at Interscope Records. The label picked her up as a songwriter after she met Interscope chairman Jimmy Iovine.

Life: Worth Fighting For by Vi Keeland should have been ranked No. 23 on the Oct. 14 USA TODAY Best-Selling Books list. It was omitted due to a reporting error.

Life: A story Oct. 21 misreported the year that Fox's Bones premiered. It was 2005.

Life: A story Oct. 21 about bacteria in samples of breast milk bought online misstated the percentage of samples contaminated with streptococcus that were donated to a milk bank. Twenty percent were colonized with strep.

News: An Oct. 21 State-by-State item for New Mexico misstated the name of the Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper. The Associated Press provided the information.

Sports: The First World in some editions Oct. 10 incorrectly described the circumstance Cleveland Browns running back Willis McGahee commented about concerning a possible game against his former team, the Denver Broncos. It should have said in the AFC playoffs.

Money: A story Oct. 8 about places to retire incorrectly referred to the population of the town Pocatello, Idaho. The population cited was for the Pocatello metro area.

Sports: A photo caption Oct. 9 incorrectly described high school football coach Bob Ladouceur. He is not in the running for the usatodayhss.com top coach contest.

September 2013

Sports: An incorrect game summary from the Washington Redskins-Oakland Raiders game appeared in some Sept. 30 editions. The correct summary appears in the Oct. 1 issue, on page 9C.

Sports: A headline in some editions Sept. 25 misspelled the surname of Baltimore Orioles third baseman Manny Machado in a story about his leg injury.

Sports: A photo caption in the Sept. 17 issue misidentified the coach from the Jacksonville Jaguars talking to defensive end Andre Branch. It was defensive line coach Todd Wash.

News: A story Sept. 17 on women running for mayor in big cities misstated the name of former Baltimore mayor Sheila Dixon.

News: A Sept. 18 1A story about an IRS list of organizations screened for potential activity misstated the number of groups represented by the American Center for Law and Justice in a lawsuit against the IRS. The center represents 33 groups.

Life: A story Sept. 16 on improvements in child obesity mischaracterized numbers representing average percentile declines on body mass index growth charts. BMI percentile averages fell slightly between 2005 and 2009.

Life: The name of Malin Akerman, a star of upcoming ABC comedy Trophy Wife, was misspelled in a photo caption in the Sept. 13 fall TV preview.

Life: Cassandra Kulukundis is the producer of the film The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Him and Her. A story Sept. 11 about the Toronto International Film Festival was incorrect.

News: In a 1A Snapshot that ran Sept. 4, the bar chart should have reflected that as of August 2013 fewer U.S. cities use red-light cameras that did in 2012.

Money: The $38,000 Full-size Sedan Challenge in Sept. 9 editions misstated the model year the 2013 Hyundai Azera was redesigned. It was 2012.

Life: Feels Like Home, the album from Sheryl Crow to be released Sept. 10, was produced by Crow and Justin Niebank. Richard Bennett and Brad Paisley did not co-produce. Crow, who lives in Nashville, wrote many, but not all, of the songs, and she worked with a variety of collaborators. An item in the fall music preview Sept. 6 was incorrect.

News: An item from Sioux Falls in the Sept. 6 State-by-State roundup should have run under South Dakota.

August 2013

Money: WPX Energy is a oil and natural gas exploration and production company. It was misidentified in a table that ran Aug. 22.

Sports: A USA TODAY Sports Images photo that ran on page 4C in the Aug. 23 edition was misidentified as being New York Yankee Ichiro Suzuki's 4,000th hit. The photo was from a different time in the at-bat.

Opinion: An Aug 23 editorial about sexual harassment misidentified Chai Feldblum. She is a member of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission but is not its chairman.

News: A fatal crash-landing of an Asiana Airlines jet July 6 occurred at San Francisco International Airport. A story Aug. 23 about pilots and automated flight controls gave an incorrect name for the airport.

News: An item on the Aug. 22 front page incorrectly attributed a quote about Patriots quarterback Tim Tebow. The quote was from Hall of Fame coach Bill Parcells.

Money: An Aug. 21 story about new TiVo DVRs misstated the number of shows the Roamio Plus ($399.99) records simultaneously. It records six shows and stores 150 hours of HD programming.

News: A headline on an Aug. 20 1A story about state health insurance exchanges should have made clear that consumer sign-ups are projected and no one will use one until Oct. 1.

Life: An incorrect photo was published Aug. 19 with a preview of rapper Juicy J's album Stay Trippy (out Aug. 27).

News: A note accompanying an Aug. 16 front page Snapshot graphic misstated how many homes a megawatt of solar energy can power for a year. The correct number is 164.

Life: The first country-Western song nominated for an Academy Award was The Ballard of High Noon from 1952's High Noon. A story Aug. 13 about Glen Campbell was incorrect.

Money: A Moneyline item Aug. 14 about competing offers to buy Steinway Musical Instruments misstated the size of the higher offer from an investment firm now identified as Paulson & Co. Its bid was $38 a share, or $477 million. Steinway announced Aug. 14 that Paulson will pay $40 a share in a deal worth $512 million.

News: A story in the Aug. 2-4 weekend edition about the sentencing of Ariel Castro for kidnapping three women in Cleveland misstated who spoke for two of the women. Sylvia Colon spoke for her cousin, Gina DeJesus. Beth Serrano spoke for her sister, Amanda Berry.

News: The state-by-state news item for Oregon on Aug. 14 was mistakenly placed under Washington. The items for South Dakota on Aug. 12 were mistakenly placed under Iowa.

Opinion: An Aug. 12 editorial on ObamaCare should have said most companies that offer health insurance to their employees had to begin including contraception coverage after Aug. 1, 2012, not Aug. 1, 2013.

Life: A story Aug. 9 on AMC's Breaking Bad misattributed a comment about the show's protagonist. Kristine Weatherson, an assistant professor of media studies and production at Temple University, said: "Flaws are compelling, and Walter is flawed to perfection. Uniquely unassuming, cancer-stricken, family-driven, middle-class Walter White looks uncannily like our next-door neighbor."

Life: Andrea and Brian Pinkney, authors of Martin & Mahalia, are the parents of a teenage son and daughter. That information was incorrect in a story Aug. 8.

News: In a story Aug. 8 about insurance coverage for brain scans to help diagnose Alzheimer's disease, a quote was incomplete. Steven Pearson of the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review at the Massachusetts General Hospital said, "The evidence in favor of beneficial effects of this test is among the weakest I have ever seen come before the Medicare Coverage Advisory Committee."

News: A story Aug. 5 about shark sightings misstated when the movie Jaws was released. It was 1975.

News: The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers provided incorrect information for a story Aug. 2 on the state-by-state page about a swim beach closed because of geese. The swim beach at the corps park on Norfolk Lake in Arkansas was closed over safety concerns involving a nearby marina, although geese are also a problem there, according to the corps.

Video: An Aug. 7 USA NOW video incorrectly stated details about the Obamas' vacation in Martha's Vineyard, from Aug. 10-18. The Obamas will stay in a 5,000-square-foot, four-bedroom house valued at $7.6 million, just a short distance off South Road, in Martha's Vineyard.

Opinion: A national movement to raise the low wages of fast food workers to $15 an hour is not rooted solely in an effort to boost the federal minimum wage, contrary to an assertion in an Aug. 5 Forum column. Strikers are also pursuing state and local legislation and unionization.

Life: A story Aug. 5 about the Brian Wilson/Jeff Beck tour incorrectly characterized Don Was' involvement in Wilson's upcoming film. Was is a musician on the album; Wilson is producing.

July 2013

Sports: A 2C photo that accompanied a story about Los Angeles Dodgers head athletics trainer Sue Falsone in the July 30 edition misidentified the woman shown. The person was Nancy Patterson, a Dodgers assistant athletic trainer.

Life: A story July 29 on children who have multiple sclerosis gave the wrong name of the hospital where Victoria Esselman was treated. She was treated at MassGeneral Hospital for Children.

Money: A story July 29 about spray-on bedliner plastic for pickups incorrectly referred to the measure of thickness of paint. It is in mils.

Life: The Poisoned Pilgrim by Oliver Potzsch is No. 4 on USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list, and Inferno by Dan Brown is No. 5. The top five list was incorrect in a July 24 Life USA Snapshot.

News: A July 22 page 2A appreciation of Helen Thomas misstated her history-making role at the White House Correspondents Association. She was the first female president of the group, which has previously admitted women as members.

Money: A 1B story July 23 about home sales misspelled the last name of David Zugheri, executive vice president of Envoy Mortgage.

Video: A USA NOW video for July 18 misstated the source of a mobile dating survey. It was conducted by ChristianMingle.com and Jdate.com. The video has been taken down from our site.

News: A story July 12 about the discovery of a "blue planet" orbiting a distant start misstated its distance from Earth. It is 372 trillion miles away. (So you might want to rethink your travel plans.)

News: Due to an editing error, the news for Arkansas was listed under Oklahoma in the July 15 State-by-State report.

News: A story on the George Zimmerman trial in some July 12 editions gave the incorrect date for the shooting of Trayvon Martin. It happened Feb. 26, 2012. A July 15 column gave an incorrect height for Trayvon. The autopsy report lists him at 5-foot-11.

Life: A story July 12 on family camps had an incorrect name for syndicated newspaper columnist April Masini.

News: The headline on a health care law story on 2A July 11 misstated how much both sides are likely to spend on ads about the law by 2015. The correct amount is $1 billion.

Life: A July 10 Listen Up review of Preservation Hall Jazz Band's album That's It! was attributed to the incorrect critic. The review was written by Brian Mansfield.

Money: Test Drive on July 5 should have said that all 2014 Acura MDX models have a selectable driving mode feature, but adjustable suspension no longer is offered.

Opinion: A July 1 editorial on efforts to ban abortions starting 20 weeks after fertilization should have stated that the measure being considered in Texas would allow an exemption for "severe fetal abnormalities" that are "incompatible with life outside the womb." Laws in Georgia and Louisiana have similar exemptions. Laws in nine other states, and a bill passed by the U.S. House, do not.

June 2013

News: A June 17 story on Iranian President-elect Hasan Rawhani misstated his previous position. He was a negotiator over Iran's nuclear program.

Money: A story June 25 incorrectly cited the amount of money for mortgage relief programs in the Independent Foreclosure Review settlement. It is $5.7 billion.

Money: Men's Wearhouse's founder and former executive chairman was misidentified in Moneyline June 25. His name is George

News from around our 50 states

From USA TODAY Network and wire reports

Alabama

Athens: Investigators say a man kept a caged “attack squirrel” in his apartment and fed it methamphetamine to ensure it stayed aggressive. The News Courier reports authorities are seeking 35-year-old Mickey Paulk on multiple charges including possession of a controlled substance. Law enforcement was warned of the animal prior to executing a search warrant of the Athens home Monday. It’s illegal in Alabama to have a pet squirrel. Officials from the state’s Department of Conservation recommended releasing the animal, which deputies did successfully. A spokesman for the Limestone County Sherriff’s Office says there was no safe way to test the squirrel for meth.

Alaska

Anchorage: A major earthquake that rocked the state proved to be a trial run in its largest city for a new national wireless network dedicated to first responders. Anchorage Police Chief Justin Doll and other commanders had just signed on to test the FirstNet network on their personal cellphones when the 7.1 magnitude quake struck last year. After it caused widespread damage and knocked out phone lines, Doll says officials with FirstNet were the only ones who could communicate without problems. Public safety agencies nationwide are tapped into the network established by Congress in 2012 after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. It launched last year. The network is secure, encrypted and off limits to the public. It’s raised concerns among media advocates that the secrecy shields police from scrutiny.

Arizona

Phoenix: The city is the largest in the nation that hasn’t yet issued body cameras to its police officers. The City Council voted in February to fund 2,000 body-worn cameras for patrol officers, but the cameras haven’t yet been rolled out. The controversial May 27 arrest of a couple at whom police yelled, cursed and pointed guns in front of their young children prompted a public apology from Mayor Kate Gallego and an assurance that the city would take measures to prevent similar encounters from occurring again. It also led to incorrect comments by other politicians and media outlets that the officers had turned off their cameras. Gallego said the city will distribute the body-worn cameras by the end of the summer.

Arkansas

Vendor: A Newton County hog farm operating in the Buffalo River watershed has agreed to cease operations, Gov. Asa Hutchinson announced last week. C&H Hog Farms of Vendor will close its doors later this year under a $6.2 million buyout agreement that was negotiated by Hutchinson and Department of Arkansas Heritage Director Stacy Hurst. The farm’s owners will retain ownership of the property but will grant the state a conservation easement, which will limit its future usage. Money for the $6.2 million buyout will come from the state and from nonprofit conservation group The Nature Conservancy. Hutchinson said Thursday that The Nature Conservancy will not pay more than $1 million toward the buyout, likely just about $600,000.

California

San Diego: A century-old tree with a long trunk and bushy branches that some believe was the inspiration for fictional Truffula trees in Dr. Seuss’ “The Lorax” has fallen in a coastal park. Officials are investigating why the wind-swept Monterey cypress toppled in Ellen Browning Scripps Park last week, the San Diego Union-Tribune reports. According to local legend, the tree inspired the “The Lorax” by Theodor “Dr. Seuss” Geisel, who lived nearby and worked in an office with a sweeping view of the coastline. But there are no facts to back up the lore. His wife told the La Jolla Village News in 2012 that the idea for Truffula trees in the 1971 environmental fable came from an Africa trip. “He looked up at one of the (local) trees, and said, ‘That’s my tree. They’ve stolen my tree.’ So that’s where that came from,” Audrey Geisel said.

Colorado

Denver: The state Supreme Court says proponents of a ballot initiative to eliminate constitutional limits on taxation and spending can proceed. The court ruled 5-2 in an opinion released Monday that elections officials erred in rejecting the proposed 2020 ballot initiative. The liberal Colorado Fiscal Institute wants to ask voters whether the 1992 Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights should be eliminated. TABOR is a voter-approved constitutional amendment that strictly limits the ability of Colorado government to raise taxes, issue bonds and increase spending without a vote of the people. The court ordered elections officials to certify the proposed repeal question so proponents can begin collecting voter signatures to put the question on the ballot.

Connecticut

Hartford: An effort is underway to identify the remains of two unknown victims of a massive fire at a circus 75 years ago. The Hartford Courant reports that a judge hearing an exhumation request Monday asked for additional information and ordered public service announcements to be placed in two media outlets to make sure anyone with an interest in the exhumations has an opportunity to be heard. The July 6, 1944, fire in Hartford killed 168 and injured 682. Five victims remain unidentified and buried in a Windsor cemetery. State Chief Medical Examiner James Gill wants to compare the unknown victims’ DNA to that of Sandra Sumrow, the granddaughter of 47-year-old Grace Fifield, who was at the circus the day of the fire but was never seen again.

Delaware

Wilmington: The Clifford Brown Jazz Festival will fill Rodney Square with live music for its 31st year starting Wednesday. The festival, an annual tribute to the late Wilmington jazz artist Clifford Brown, kicks off at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday with performances by Philadelphia trombonist Jeff Bradshaw, jazz drummer Jamison Ross and trumpeter Etienne Charles. Thursday will see Cuban jazz pianist Alfredo Rodriguez’s trio headlining. Friday’s lineup features the Philadelphia/New York-based Jenkins Project and New Orleans-born trumpeter Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah. The concert will be followed by a downtown block party from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m. On Saturday, performances include a headlining set by Grammy Award-winner (and former “Tonight Show” bandleader) Branford Marsalis. The free music festival wraps up Sunday. Go to cliffordbrownjazzfest.org for complete details.

District of Columbia

Washington: The Metro is launching a two-year study of the transit system’s blue, orange and silver lines in order to meet the demands of a growing region, WUSA-TV reports. Metro is limited in terms of what it can do to meet ridership demands because of the lines’ configuration. All three lines merge onto one set of tracks at the Rosslyn tunnel, creating an hourglass design that limits the number of trains that can pass through at a given time. Any disruption in one line can create trouble for another, causing a cascade of delays and service issues across all BOS lines. Over the next two years, Metro is asking its riders, workers and community to get involved in the study and provide their feedback on its BOS lines.

Florida

New Port Richey: A stretch of road on the Gulf Coast that was adopted by the Ku Klux Klan 25 years ago is now being sponsored by a gay rights group. Pasco Pride recently adopted the stretch of Moon Lake Road in New Port Richey. WUSF in Tampa reports that the KKK adopted the 1-mile stretch of the road back in 1993. Pasco Pride President Nina Borders says she was unaware of the KKK’s previous sponsorship. As sponsors, Pasco Pride will clear trash from the stretch of road four times a year. Border says the change in sponsorship reflects how much the community located northwest of Tampa has changed in a quarter-century.

Georgia

Fort Valley: The idea behind The Peach Truck involved selling Georgia peaches from the farm directly to the consumer. The Telegraph reports that the truck now travels around the nation selling peaches in parking lots. Stephen Rose says he now sells about two semitrailer loads of peaches a day. All of the peaches come from Georgia growers. Rose says that social media marketing has been a key driver of the business. He says people go online to follow where the truck will be and line up by the hundreds to get 25-pound boxes of peaches. He says the peaches sold from The Peach Truck go from the orchard to the customer in two days or less.

Hawaii

Kailua: A local company hopes to build an underwater farm that can produce large quantities of edible seaweed. The Honolulu Star-Advertiser reports Kampachi Farms LLC is working to establish a farm to grow limu more than a mile off Kaiwi Point near Kailua on Hawaii Island. Limu is an ingredient in poke, a traditional Hawaiian dish of diced raw fish. Kampachi Farms is seeking state and federal permits to test growth of four native limu species on submerged lines by supplying the plants with nutrient-rich water from depths between 600 and 2,000 feet. An official says the operation 33 feet below the surface could potentially farm limu in quantities large enough for use as animal feed and biofuel.

Idaho

Boise: A federal wildfire forecaster says the state’s wet spring and below-average temperatures the past three months will likely mean a later start to forest fires, but rangeland fires could be a problem as grasses dry out. Bryan Henry of the National Interagency Fire Center said in a presentation before the Idaho Land Board on Tuesday that the state is mostly looking good at the moment. Idaho Gov. Brad Little and other Land Board members also received an update from state officials on how state firefighting equipment is being deployed, with much of it in the north to protect forests. The state also works collaboratively with Rangeland Fire Protection Associations that involve private ranchers. The state now has nine of them helping protect some 14,000 square miles.

Illinois

Urbana: An exhibit of unique typewriters, including one used by the founder of Playboy, has opened at the University of Illinois. The university’s Rare Book & Manuscript Library will feature typewriters used by Hugh Hefner and Roger Ebert. Both men were alumni of the university. Hefner’s Underwood Standard portable typewriter that he used in college and to write for Playboy is one of the main exhibits. It is on loan to the library after being sold at auction in December for $162,500. The typewriters used by poet Carl Sandburg and novelist James Jones are also featured. The exhibit “Writers & Their Tools: Parchment-Paper-Processors” opened Monday and ends in August.

Indiana

Indianapolis: A national report says opioid prescriptions in the state have decreased by 35.1% over five years. The American Medical Association Opioid Task Force 2019 Progress Report shows Indiana’s reduction in opioid prescriptions from 2013 to 2018 is 2 percentage points higher than the national average of 33%. Indiana Hospital Association President Brian Tabor said last week that the opioid epidemic has damaged “individuals, families and entire communities” in Indiana. “It’s encouraging to see tangible results of the collective efforts of the state, the Indiana General Assembly and the medical community” in encouraging responsible prescriptions of opioids, he said. A 2017 law passed by the General Assembly requires medical providers to write prescriptions for no more than a seven-day supply of an opioid when first prescribing to a patient.

Iowa

Des Moines: This year’s Iowa State Fair butter sculpture will likely be a hit with the kids. Elmo and his friends from “Sesame Street” will be visiting the 2019 fair. Butter versions of characters from the iconic children’s show will be appearing next to the butter cow, fair officials said in a news release Monday. The show is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. The butter sculptures will be on display in the John Deere Agriculture Building throughout the fair, which runs Aug. 8-18. The butter cow has been sculpted at the Iowa State Fair since 1911, according to the news release. Various companion sculptures have joined the butter cow since 1996, including the “American Gothic” couple, Elvis Presley, Harry Potter and other characters.

Kansas

Topeka: The city is gearing up for a major music festival that had to be moved here because of flooding. The Topeka Capital-Journal reports that the 24th annual Kicker Country Stampede will be held Thursday through Saturday at Heartland Motorsports Park in Topeka. It typically is held at Manhattan’s Tuttle Creek State Park, but water levels have been high this spring. Plans for one Topeka-area road project and one highway project have been revised to ensure they don’t conflict with the expected rush of visitors. The event typically draws more than 170,000 people. Meanwhile, Shawnee County Sheriff’s Sgt. Todd Stallbaumer says the sheriff’s office is working with event staff on personnel needed for staffing the event. This year’s performers include Old Dominion, Jason Aldean and Jake Owen.

Kentucky

Owensboro: Part of a bourbon warehouse in western Kentucky collapsed during a thunderstorm. The partial collapse of the O.Z. Tyler Distillery rickhouse was reported early Monday, according to news outlets. Master Distiller Jacob Call says about 20,000 barrels are stored at the location, and it appears that about 4,000 were affected. He says most barrels seemed intact. Call said engineers were heading out to try to determine what caused the collapse. It’s unclear if weather played a role. Officials say no one was hurt. A nearby road is closed while the cleanup continues. Another Kentucky bourbon barrel warehouse collapsed last year. Half of a warehouse collapsed at the Barton 1792 Distillery in Bardstown on June 22, 2018, and the other half came down two weeks later.

Louisiana

Baton Rouge: Some state archaeologists are spending three weeks with students at the Louisiana School for the Visually Impaired, including a mock dig for 26 students. Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser said in a news release Wednesday that the program runs through June 28. It also includes pottery making and a field trip to the Louisiana Museum of Natural Sciences. The students range from first through 12th grade. Archaeologists generally use stakes and string to mark off a grid for digging. The students’ grid was made of wood. They put dirt from inside the grid into buckets, then sieved the dirt to find whether they’d turned up anything. The three-week program is a partnership between the school and the Louisiana Office of Cultural Development’s Division of Archaeology.

Maine

Augusta: Single-use plastic bags will be banned in grocery stores statewide by 2020, according to legislation signed by the governor Monday. Democratic Gov. Janet Mills signed the bill with the goal of limiting plastic pollution, House Democrats said. The ban will come into effect by April 22, 2020, which is Earth Day. Maine’s bill comes as municipalities and legislatures in many states have considered such bans. Maine will allow stores to charge at least 5 cents for recyclable paper or reusable plastic bags. In order to be permitted, plastic bags would have to withstand 75 repeated uses and be made from heavier plastic. The fee wouldn’t apply to restaurants. Plastic bag manufacturers say such bans will only lead to thicker, reusable bags in landfills.

Maryland

Ocean City: This beach town’s favorite cat is continuing to grow in popularity with the release of a self-published book. Within the past year, Pip the Beach Cat has made a name for himself during his adventures in the resort town, garnering more than 15,000 followers on Facebook. When Pip wasn’t trekking the beaches, riding a paddle board or taking a dip in the ocean in recent months, he was working on a children’s book about things to do in Ocean City. “Pip’s Guide to Ocean City Vol. I,” narrated by none other than Pip himself, focuses on the favorite locations and activities of Pip’s owner Emily Meadows and her family. She says the book includes locations she wants the new generation of children to know about while still providing a nostalgia factor for adults who grew up in or visited Ocean City.

Massachusetts

Boston: The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing with a new app that helps users relive the 1969 launch of the Apollo 11 mission. The free app available now uses videos, images and audio recordings from the mission that on July 20, 1969, led to Neil Armstrong’s moonwalk. The JFK Moonshot app will take users from July 16 until July 20 on an augmented reality journey from the Earth to the moon, providing people anywhere in the world the opportunity to view 120 hours of real-time tracking simulation. The app also highlights Kennedy’s inspiration for the mission. In a landmark speech at Rice University in 1962, he challenged the nation to land a man on the moon within a decade.

Michigan

Hell: A comedian and rapper boasted on Twitter on Monday that he purchased the town and renamed it “Gay Hell.” Elijah Daniel, in a stint as Hell’s “mayor,” said the move was sparked by U.S. embassies not being allowed to fly pride flags during Pride Month, an annual celebration of the LGBTQ community. Daniel tweeted: “ahead of pride month Trump’s administration put a ban on embassy’s flying pride flags. so as of today, I am now the owner of Hell, Michigan. I bought the whole town. And my first act as owner, I have renamed my town to Gay Hell, MI. The only flags allowed to fly are pride.” Hell is an unincorporated hamlet whose devilish name has made it a popular tourist attraction. Daniel reportedly paid $100 a day to become temporary “mayor” for three days. He also became the temporary mayor in 2017 and promptly banned all straight people from entering Hell.

Minnesota

St. Paul: Eleven nursing homes in the state are on a list of facilities cited by federal officials for patterns of health and safety violations. The U.S. Senate Committee on Aging released a list of 400 nursing homes across the country that are in need of tighter oversight. The facilities were identified by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The St. Paul Pioneer Press says two nursing homes in Rochester and Red Wing already receive twice the normal amount of inspections and risk losing federal funding if problems are not addressed. The 11 facilities identified for stricter oversight are just 3% of Minnesota’s nursing homes. The state has about 375 nursing facilities that serve 40,000 residents.

Mississippi

Vicksburg: A grant will buy a tract of land to help preserve a Civil War battlefield. The Vicksburg Post reports that the Mississippi Department of Archives and History is receiving nearly $110,000 from the National Park Service. The money from the American Battlefield Trust will purchase 58 acres at the Champion Hill Battlefield, about halfway between Vicksburg and Jackson. Vicksburg National Military Park Superintendent Bill Justice says the land is along a section of road that connected the parts of the Confederate line and later two parts of the Union line. The Battle of Champion Hill was part of U.S. Gen. Ulysses Grant’s successful effort to take Vicksburg. About 32,000 Union soldiers fought 23,000 Confederates on May 16, 1863. Confederate forces were crushed and retreated to Vicksburg.

Missouri

Springfield: Dickerson Park Zoo is welcoming a new 8-year-old Asian elephant. The elephant, named Hugo, arrived Friday from the Endangered Ark Foundation, a private nonprofit and circus elephant retirement ranch in Hugo, Oklahoma. Hugo will be in quarantine for at least a month. He will then be introduced to Patience, a female elephant, and the zoo hopes they will someday be on exhibit together. Asian elephants are critically endangered. The zoo said in a news release that Hugo came to the zoo to increase the genetic diversity of the U.S. elephant population. Also this month, the zoo also welcomed a male baby giraffe and a black-and-white colobus monkey. A ring-tailed lemur was born April 10.

Montana

Billings: Federal data shows that ranchers in the state lost more than 37,000 cattle last winter when heavy snow piled up and lingered. The Billings Gazette reports the federal Livestock Indemnity Program paid out $11.1 million for the loss of 37,352 cattle in Montana in 2018. The U.S. Farm Service Agency says that’s more than four times the amount paid out for losses in the previous four years combined. Half of the deaths were in a swath of Montana across six counties blanketed by snow up to 30 inches deep. Ranchers and the Farm Service Agency acknowledge that there were more weather-related livestock deaths that didn’t qualify for compensation. The losses for this past winter, which included historically cold temperatures, haven’t been calculated yet.

Nebraska

Omaha: Schoolteacher Nancy Monen had an unusual guest come to her residence earlier this year hoping to see the “little room” off the upstairs master bedroom. The famous man and his adult children were enchanted by the small sunroom and the rest of the 101-year-old house where they’d lived six decades ago. And before he left, the dad scribbled something on the arched door of the little room: “The birthplace of Buffett Associates May 1956.” He signed his name, Warren E. Buffett. It paid off for Monen – who, for the first time a few months later, rented her residence to a trio attending the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting, often called the Woodstock of Capitalism. Monen reaped $3,000 and is considering hiking the fee next year to spread the wealth to a charity, the Omaha World-Herald reports. “I’m crazy not to capitalize on that,” Monen said. “Warren would want me to.”

Nevada

Las Vegas: The city is launching a reality show on streaming services that will tell behind-the-scenes stories about how the government navigates local issues. Las Vegas officials announced Monday that the show “Inside Vegas” will premiere Thursday and be available on Roku, Amazon Fire, Apple TV and the city’s GoVegas app. The show’s first season includes three episodes detailing a massage parlor suspected of prostitution, a nonprofit in trouble with police, and the city’s grappling with party houses and short-term rentals. The show will be produced by the city’s communications office.

New Hampshire

Concord: The state isn’t ready to legalize recreational marijuana use, but it is close to expanding options for those who use it for medical reasons. Several bills related to the therapeutic use of cannabis have been sent to Republican Gov. Chris Sununu. One would allow physician assistants to authorize the use of the drug for patients. Another would allow patients and designated caregivers to grow marijuana plants at home. The House passed a bill legalizing recreational use in April, but the Senate later voted to delay action on it. Other bills that would expand the qualifying conditions for medical use also were retained in committee.

New Jersey

Freehold: This borough’s council unanimously passed a resolution Monday stating that Freehold and Peralejos de las Truches, a town of about 175 in Spain, are now “twin” cities. The Spanish locale is heavy on fans of Bruce Springsteen, a native of Freehold. “His message is received across the globe, and we’re happy that this little town has reached out to Freehold Borough,” Mayor Nolan Higgins says. A representative for the Spanish town contacted Higgins via email in April requesting a “twinning” designation. It named Springsteen an “Adopted Son” of Peralejos in 2014 and gave the Boss a plaque stating the recognition at a 2016 E Street Band concert in Madrid, Jose Maria of Peralejos said in his communications with Freehold. The Spanish town hosts the annual “Greetings from Peralejos” Springsteen festival in August.

New Mexico

Los Alamos: Federal officials will be offering tours of portions of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park next month. The National Park Service has teamed up with Los Alamos National Laboratory and the National Nuclear Security Administration to organize tours during a weekend in July. Registration is on a first-come, first-served basis. Each day will consist of two tours of 25 people each, each lasting three hours. Not all sites that make up the park are open to the public. Visitors will see Pond Cabin, which served as an office for the scientists who were studying plutonium; a bunker used to protect equipment and staff during explosives testing; and the building where a deadly plutonium accident took place. Officials say more tours will be planned later this year.

New York

New York: Officials say they’re assigning an extra 500 police officers to the city’s transit system amid a jump in fare evasion and assaults on workers. Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Monday that officers will be deployed to high-ridership subway stations and bus routes, as well as locations with increased levels of staff assaults. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority says assaults reported by employees increased by 15.2% from 2013 to 2017. The agency says lost revenue from fare evasion jumped from $105 million in 2015 to $225 million in 2018. Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Jr., who stopped prosecuting most subway fare evasion cases last year, says his office will contribute $40 million to the policing effort. Under a revised policy, the NYPD now issues summonses to most fare evasion suspects instead of arresting them.

North Carolina

Statesville: The city has voted against the flying of really big flags, holding its ground against a reality TV star’s huge Stars and Stripes. News outlets report the Statesville City Council voted down changes to the flag ordinance Monday night. That means flags in Statesville must be no larger than 25 feet by 40 feet, roughly half the size of the American flag that Marcus Lemonis has unfurled outside his Gander RV company. Statesville has asked a court to order Gander RV to comply or pay a $50-per-day fine. Lemonis runs Camping World and stars on “The Profit” on CNBC. He says the flag is staying. He’s said he’ll go to jail for contempt of court to protect his constitutional rights.

North Dakota

Bismarck: Some north Bismarck residents are complaining about calcium deposits in water from their faucets at home. Bismarck’s director of utility operations, Michelle Klose, says the problem has been identified in at least 64 mainly newer homes on the outskirts of the city. The Bismarck Tribune reports that Klose says the residue does not present a health risk. Greg Wavra, administrator of the North Dakota Drinking Water Program, says that Bismarck’s water meets the requirements of the federal Safe Drinking Water Act and that calcium buildup should not be a cause for alarm. The city says magnesium heating rods may cause the deposits and suggests that homeowners switch to aluminum heating rods and lower the temperature of water heaters to mitigate the problem.

Ohio

Columbus: A state lawmaker has introduced legislation that would require school districts to name a valedictorian and a salutatorian. The House bill introduced by Republican state Rep. Niraj Antani, of Miamisburg, comes after Mason High School in southwestern Ohio decided it will stop awarding those academic honors. Many schools traditionally have bestowed the valedictorian title on the graduating student with the highest cumulative grade-point average. The salutatorian title has often gone to the student with the second-highest average. The Columbus Dispatch reports Antani says the gist of the legislation is that “academic competition is good.” The bill allows districts to set criteria for selecting valedictorians and salutatorians. Some Ohio education groups oppose any state bill mandating decisions they say should be made at the local level.

Oklahoma

Oklahoma City: The state Pardon and Parole Board says nearly 750 prisoners applied in the first four months of the year for their sentences to be commuted. Justin Wolf, the board’s general counsel, says this is about twice the number of applications submitted by the end of April last year. Wolf tells The Oklahoman that more than 560 inmates applied for commutations last month alone. Commutation is a form of clemency intended to correct an unjust or excessive sentence. A measure that took effect in 2017 made some drug and property crimes misdemeanors, not felonies. Agency officials say the bump in applications might be because Gov. Kevin Stitt last month signed legislation directing the board to speed up commutations for those whose crimes have been reclassified as misdemeanors.

Oregon

Salem: All seven of the state’s public universities will raise tuition for the 2019-2020 school year, with officials citing increased costs and less money than expected from legislators. The hikes range from 2.33% at Western Oregon University in Monmouth to 9.9% at Ashland’s Southern Oregon University. Gov. Kate Brown had made education a priority of this session, repeatedly saying that she wanted to create a “seamless system of education from cradle to career.” The Democrat expressed disappointment that higher education wasn’t involved in a $2 billion increase for K-12 schools that legislators approved earlier this year, and she has continued to push the Legislature to increase university budgets to avoid tuition increases higher than 5%. Legislators recommended a two-year higher education budget of $836.9 million. That is $100 million more than last biennium, though schools like the University of Oregon said they needed at least $120 million more to keep tuition increases below 5%. The University of Oregon, one of the state’s largest public universities, will raise tuition 6.91% next school year.

Pennsylvania

Harrisburg: Gov. Tom Wolf is vetoing budget-season legislation to substantially ramp up taxpayer support for private and religious schools. In Wolf’s veto message Tuesday, he questioned why Pennsylvania should expand a tax credit that subsidizes private institutions while the state’s public school system remains underfunded. The Democratic governor also criticized the tax credit program as lacking accountability, saying little is known about its educational quality or the middleman groups that can withhold 20% of the money. The Republican-controlled Legislature passed the bill over Wolf’s objections amid budget discussions. Just four Democrats voted for it. It would have nearly doubled the Educational Improvement Tax Credit to $210 million annually. The program effectively lets corporations and business people direct tens of millions in tax dollars to favored private and religious schools.

Rhode Island

Providence: The state has received a $2.8 million federal grant to boost efforts to bring an Amtrak stop to Rhode Island’s main airport. The Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements grant was announced by U.S. Sens. Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse and U.S. Reps. Jim Langevin and David Cicilline, all Democrats. The state Department of Transportation will use it to pay for further planning efforts between the state and Amtrak. Currently, T.F. Green Airport is connected to Providence and Boston by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority’s commuter rail line. Amtrak stops in Providence, Kingston and Westerly, Rhode Island. The delegation says adding Amtrak service to the airport in Warwick could position the state to attract new investment, create jobs, and enhance transportation options for residents and visitors.

South Carolina

Florence: Civil War cannons that sat on the bottom of the Pee Dee River for 150 years are now restored and on display at a veterans center in Florence. The cannons are from the Confederate ship Peedee, which was built to break the Union blockade of the South, but its cannons were tossed into the river in 1865 and the ship scuttled as Union troops approached. University of South Carolina archaeologists recovered the cannons in 2015, and scientists at the Warren Lasch Conservation Center in North Charleston have spent four years restoring the cannons. The cannons belong to the U.S. government. The Florence County Museum agreed to display them at the Florence County Veterans Center to honor how all veterans’ sacrifice to serve in wars.

South Dakota

Rapid City: The murder of a pharmacist who was raped and strangled in her home in a South Dakota city more than half a century ago has been solved with the use of DNA technology and genealogy databases, police said. Investigators believe Eugene Carroll Field killed 60-year-old Gwen Miller in 1968 when he was a 25-year-old living in Rapid City, Detective Wayne Keefe said at a news conference Monday. He said there was enough evidence to charge Field with first-degree murder, but he died in 2009. It is “a little surreal” to finally identify the killer after 51 years and up to 5,000 hours of work, Keefe said. The motive remains unknown. “Today, there’s a slight celebratory mood because the case has been solved,” Police Chief Karl Jegeris said. “But I assure you, the fact of how horrific this crime was wears heavy on each and every one of our hearts.”

Tennessee

Manchester: A group that partners with musicians on voter registration efforts says the 1,390 voters it signed up at Bonnaroo represent its all-time high for one festival. A news release from HeadCount says it has registered almost 600,000 voters at 7,500 concerts and music festivals since 2004. Bonnaroo ran from Thursday through Sunday. HeadCount says it wants to register more than 200,000 voters by the 2020 presidential election. A new Tennessee law set to take effect in October allows fines and potentially jail time for voter registration workers who don’t follow new rules. Tennessee will likely be the first state imposing fines for submitting too many incomplete registration forms. HeadCount Director of Engagement Tappan Vickery says she hopes the group can keep providing its services without risking fines or prosecution.

Texas

Corpus Christi: High school and college students can get their feet wet in marine animal care with a new career exploration program at the Texas State Aquarium. The Animal Science Exploration Program for high school students is set for June 27, from 5 to 7 p.m., and the college-oriented event will take place July 25, from 5 to 7 p.m. Each program is $120 per participant, or $60 for aquarium members. A parental escort is required for participants 17 and younger. Admission for an escort is $10 each, or free for one member. During both events, students will learn about potential aquarium jobs, including careers as a marine biologist, aquarist, animal nutritionist, water quality specialist, professional diver and enrichment specialist. The students will then move on to hands-on activities, including helping to feed sea turtles.

Utah

Salt Lake City: A government watchdog will investigate whether the U.S. Interior Department broke the law by making plans to open lands cut from a national monument in the state by President Donald Trump to leasing for oil, gas and coal development, a pair of Democratic congressmembers said Monday. The Government Accountability Office’s investigation into whether Interior violated the appropriations law by using funds to assess potential resource extraction in the lands cut from the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument is the latest chapter in a long-running saga over the sprawling monument created in 1996 on lands home to scenic cliffs, canyons, dinosaur fossils and coal reserves. Trump slashed the monument by nearly half in 2017 following a contentious review by former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke of monuments around the country.

Vermont

Johnson: A nonprofit group trying to fight opioid addiction plans to turn a former Catholic church into a recovery center. Vermont Public Radio reports that Greg and Dawn Tatro recently purchased the closed St. John the Apostle Church on behalf of Jenna’s Promise, an organization named for their daughter who died of an overdose in February. Greg Tatro said he plans to build a full-service health care center on the site and will host “sober parties” there to bring together people in recovery and families from the local community. He said the next steps are to talk with the neighbors, work on fundraising and start developing plans for a sober house.

Virginia

Richmond: A three-dimensional “LOVE” artwork will be traveling around the state this summer to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the “Virginia is for Lovers” slogan. The artwork unveiled Thursday in Richmond will travel to Virginia Welcome Centers for “50 Years of Love” events so travelers can take their photos with it. It was created by artist Melanie Stimmell Van Latum and unveiled by the Virginia Tourism Corporation. The slogan was created in 1969 by the Richmond-based advertising agency Martin & Woltz Inc., now known as The Martin Agency. Other events planned to mark the anniversary include a 50-mile bike ride on the Virginia Capital Trail on Sunday. Additional events will be held at breweries, wineries and parks throughout Virginia.

Washington

Seattle: Members of the Lummi Tribe, along with activists and scientists, launched the Salish Sea Campaign this weekend to save the southern resident orcas and restore their home. KCPQ-TV reports the campaign calls for an impact study on stressors to the Salish Sea caused by humans. It also wants to end new stressors like Navy underwater weapons tests until the Salish Sea is healthier. The tribe says it will measure the sea’s health by the number of salmon using 1985 levels as a baseline. Lummi Nation elder Raynell Morris says that “our relatives under the sea are telling us they need help.” The Lummi Nation’s plan to bring back Lolita the orca was also showcased. The killer whale was captured off Puget Sound in 1970 and taken into captivity.

West Virginia

Charleston: The West Virginia House of Delegates has pushed a sweeping Republican education proposal one step closer to passage. Lawmakers on Tuesday advanced the plan to allow the state’s first charter schools, setting it up for a full vote in the GOP-controlled chamber Wednesday. If approved, the bill would then head to the Senate for consideration. Education unions and Democrats oppose the measure. They argue that it’s similar to a wide-ranging Senate bill that has led to massive teacher protests at the Capitol. The House bill, among other things, would cap the number at charter schools at 10. The legislature is currently in a special session after failing to agree on education measures before the regular session ended in March. Teachers are packing the statehouse to rally against the House bill.

Wisconsin

Madison: A new group is forming to push for ending a University of Wisconsin System tuition freeze and more state funding for UW-Madison. Badgers United launched Monday. The board of directors includes former Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig, a UW-Madison alumnus. John and Tashia Morgridge, alumni who have donated millions of dollars to the campus, also sit on the board. Republican lawmakers have kept tuition rates for in-state students frozen since 2013. The GOP-controlled Joint Finance Committee in May approved a proposal in Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ budget that extends the freeze for another two years. Evers’ budget called for $127 million in additional state aid for the system, but the committee cut that back to $58 million. System President Ray Cross called the reduction a “kick in the shins.”

Wyoming

Riverton: The Wyoming Department of Health has released details on its plan for affordable air ambulance services in the state. The department’s Franz Fuchs says the proposal seeks to decrease the cost of air ambulance services and increase the availability of the service in Wyoming. Under the agency’s proposed plan, the state would determine the number and location of air ambulance bases with the goal of providing the best coverage and response time. Companies would bid to become the state’s Medicaid provider for the service. An attorney for one air ambulance company criticized the proposal, asking how many patients will be required to take ground ambulances. The plan met with mixed reactions from state lawmakers on the Interim Labor, Health and Social Services Committee last week.

From USA TODAY Network and wire reports

News from around our 50 states

From USA TODAY Network and wire reports

Alabama

Guntersville: People in a rural area are raising concerns about the use of “chicken sludge” as fertilizer on farm fields as the state considers new rules on how such products can be used. Julie Lay says the sludge from a poultry processing plant created an overpowering stench when it was applied to a neighbor’s farm fields. Lay says flies also invaded her property in Marshall County. Al.com reports she says the material had a “crust” and chicken feathers. Lay was among several residents who spoke out recently at an Alabama Department of Environmental Management public hearing. The agency is considering new rules on how biosolids – solid material left over from wastewater treatment operations and chicken processing plants – can be used as a fertilizer.

Alaska

Homer: Two young harbor seals are back where they belong after being rehabilitated through the Alaska SeaLife Center’s Wildlife Response Program and released into Kachemak Bay. Dozens of people gathered at Bishop’s Beach on Sept. 5 to watch as the two seals – Ugashik “Uggy” and Charley Fritz – were released into the waters of Kachemak Bay in Homer by SeaLife Center staff and volunteers, the Homer News reports. Uggy was found neglected by her mother May 29 on a beach near McNeil Canyon, and Fritz was found neglected by his mother on a beach near Homer on May 12, according to an information sheet provided by the SeaLife Center. At that time, both were estimated to be only a week to two weeks old, says Jane Belovarac, curator for the Wildlife Response Program.

Arizona

Phoenix: Residents with overdue library books might want to wait a bit before bringing back their borrowed copies of the current bestsellers. Starting in November, Phoenix’s public library system will join a growing number of libraries around the United States that have dropped overdue book fees, becoming the nation’s largest metropolis to dump the fines. Phoenix City Librarian Rita Hamilton said the unanimous City Council decision would allow the system comprised of 17 libraries to ensure “that access to our resources is as equitable as possible.” The Phoenix system has been charging 20 cents per item per day, which can add up quickly into dollars owed, an extra expense some families cannot afford. Phoenix’s move is part of a worldwide trend by libraries to eliminate fines the American Library Association considers “a form of social inequality.”

Arkansas

Little Rock: The state’s attorney general is seeking to move lawsuits challenging a measure giving the prison director authority to determine an inmate’s competency to be executed to federal court. Attorney General Leslie Rutledge on Thursday filed notice to move the lawsuits by death row inmates Bruce Ward and Jack Greene from Jefferson County Circuit Court. The state Supreme Court in November struck down an earlier version of the mental competency law. Legislators this year approved a reworked version of the law, and the inmates are seeking to have it overturned. Rutledge’s filing says federal courts have jurisdiction because the inmates argue the new law violates the U.S. Constitution. Arkansas has no executions scheduled and lacks the drugs needed for its lethal injection process.

California

Fresno: California authorities have captured an emu after the flightless fugitive led officers down a highway. The Fresno Bee reported Friday that the bird was apprehended following a brief pursuit by California Highway Patrol officers. Authorities say officers responded to a report that an ostrich was wandering along the right-hand shoulder of U.S. Highway 99 northwest of Fresno. Authorities say Madera County Animal Services took the bird into custody uninjured. Officers say they do not know whether the emu escaped a nearby farm or a moving vehicle. Animal experts say the flightless native Australian birds can sprint at up to 30 mph and trot quickly for longer distances. Emus are the second-largest birds in the world behind ostriches.

Colorado

Fort Collins: More than 40 boats gathered at Inlet Bay Marina on Friday and linked together to form a circle, planning on remaining in formation until Sunday. The event, known as the “Ships Wheel,” is a yearly tradition for the boaters of Horsetooth Reservoir to celebrate the end of summer together. The event was created by Inlet Bay Marina owners Glen and Nancy Werth. “It’s an end-of-year celebration. It’s definitely the highlight of the year,” says Anthony Robbins, a Ships Wheel participant. Robbins says those participating strive to create a safe, positive and family-friendly atmosphere in the reservoir, which he says hasn’t always had the best reputation. During the event, those in the wheel hang out on their boats all weekend, eating and sleeping.

Connecticut

Hartford: A group of prison inmates has asked a federal judge for bottled drinking water, alleging the tap water at the Osborn Correctional Institution is tainted with bacteria found in sewage. The inmates are seeking a temporary injunction as part of a larger lawsuit that accuses the state of exposing them to hazardous materials such as PCBs and asbestos. They allege numerous inmates have become ill with bacteria known as helicobacter pylori, which is typically water-borne and caused by sewage entering the water supply. Affidavits filed by 38 inmates and former inmates at Osborn described discolored water that smells of feces and contains floating particles. They also say prison staff routinely bring in bottled water to drink and provide to therapy dogs. The state denies the allegations.

Delaware

Wilmington: Three fatal shootings in less than 12 hours in the state’s largest city mean it has already surpassed its number of dead or injured shooting victims for all of 2018. Wilmington Police report two men ages 24 and 26 were shot Friday morning in a residential area and later died. Police say earlier Friday a 36-year-old woman also was shot and died. Their names haven’t been released, and the deaths are under investigation. The woman was the 78th shooting victim of the year, matching the number recorded in all of last year. The total was exceeded with the shootings later Friday. This year 16 people have been killed in Wilmington shootings, compared to 19 in all of 2018.

District of Columbia

Washington: Greta Thunberg, the Swedish teenager who helped spark a youth-driven push for climate change, has come to Washington. On Friday, Thunberg and about 1,500 protesters, many of them schoolchildren, marched and chanted near the White House. Thunberg, who is 16, gained international attention by inspiring protests and school strikes demanding immediate actions to avert environmental catastrophe. Her activism has drawn a passionate following of children essentially challenging their elders to take action. Last month, Thunberg crossed the Atlantic Ocean in a solar-powered boat, landing in New York City on Aug. 28. She is in Washington for several days of rallies and lobbying efforts in advance of a global climate strike declared for Sept. 20.

Florida

Wellington: It took 22 years, but a missing man’s remains were finally found thanks to someone who zoomed in on his former neighborhood with Google satellite images and noticed a car submerged in a lake. Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Teri Barbera says the skeletal remains were of William Moldt, who went missing in 1997. Barbera says a previous resident of Wellington was checking his former neighborhood on Google Earth when he saw what looked like a car in the lake. The former resident contacted a current homeowner, who used a drone to confirm it was a white car. Deputies then found the remains. The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System says Moldt went to a nightclub in November 1997 but didn’t appear intoxicated when he left alone.

Georgia

Decatur: U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson says he’s demanding answers from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs after a woman says her father was bitten more than 100 times by ants at a veterans’ home in Decatur. Isakson says he was horrified and “downright maddened” after Laquna Ross told WSB-TV she found her father, Joel Marrable, with swollen, red bumps all over his body when she visited him at the nursing home near Atlanta last week before his death. Marrable, an Air Force veteran, had cancer. The Atlanta Veterans Affairs Health Care System said in a statement that it was told the ants were affecting patients. It said all of the bedrooms at the Eagle’s Nest Community Living Center have been cleaned, and a pest control company is monitoring conditions.

Hawaii

Honolulu: Gov. David Ige says he and other state employees received death threats amid the heated debate over building a giant telescope on the state’s highest peak. Ige disclosed the threats as he and his Cabinet members held a news conference Friday asking people on all sides of the issue to be careful with their language. Attorney General Clare Connors played a voicemail recording in which an unidentified man told a state employee, “I hope you die.” She showed reporters a social media post offering a $5,000 reward for the identity of a law enforcement officer involved in last week’s demolition and removal of a small wooden house built by demonstrators near the camp where they are blocking the telescope’s construction. “I hope that we can all agree that putting a bounty on the head of law enforcement officer is disturbing and deeply concerning,” Connors said.

Idaho

Boise: A panel of lawmakers formed to monitor how federal laws affect the state’s sovereignty and report back to the Legislature has created three subcommittees to examine federal lands, education, and health and welfare. Republican Rep. Jason Monks, co-chair of the Committee on Federalism, says the federal lands subcommittee is not a repeat of an interim committee from several years ago that ran up big attorney fees while trying to find a way for the state to take control of federal lands. He says the purpose of the Committee on Federalism created by the Legislature earlier this year is to find ways for the state to work more effectively with the federal government, and the breadth of that challenge is better met by forming subcommittees.

Illinois

Oregon: The first steps in repairing a century-old landmark known as the Black Hawk statue are finally underway. Workers began erecting scaffolding last Monday around the 48-foot-tall statue in Lowden State Park in northern Illinois’ Ogle County. Sauk Valley Media reports Quality Restorations Inc. of Wood Dale was scheduled to begin the repair work last spring, but cold, wet weather thwarted that work. The 108-year-old monument has spent most of the past five years beneath a plastic covering to protect it from harsh weather. State budget troubles delayed a promised $350,000 matching state grant for the repairs, but that funding was finally secured over a year ago. The Black Restoration team obtained the remaining $225,000 needed for the project. The cost of repairs will approach $1 million.

Indiana

Indianapolis: The state is getting a $2.1 million federal grant to explore ways of reducing its high rate of pregnancy-related deaths. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will provide the State Department of Health with more than $420,000 a year for five years to improve Indiana’s ability to collect data about pregnancy-related deaths and devise ways to combat them. The Indianapolis Business Journal reports the state has the nation’s third-highest rate of deaths of women while pregnant or within one year of their pregnancy’s end. The national maternal-mortality rate is 20.7 deaths per 100,000 births, but Indiana’s rate is 41.4 deaths per 100,000 births, according to the United Health Foundation. Only two other states scored worse: Georgia and Louisiana.

Iowa

Red Oak: The Coyote Johnson Muscle Car Auction at the Montgomery County Fairgrounds on Saturday marked the event of the summer in southwestern Iowa, the big reveal of a storied collection of cars the public had long awaited. The massive event saw an entire community come out to witness a newly minted legend and see up close the treasure trove of classic American machines that Bill “Coyote” Johnson had kept hidden away for decades. The existence of Johnson’s hoard, more than a hundred in total, was revealed in April. Its existence was a revelation, a previously unknown monument to mid-century auto engineering. VanDerBrink Auctions sold off nearly 100 vehicles in about three hours.

Kansas

Hutchinson: The Kansas State Fair will reevaluate its gun policy this fall because concert security concerns could conflict with state law that allows gun owners to carry their weapons openly. The Wichita Eagle reports that the fair had to screen concertgoers at the Sept. 7 Billy Currington performance because he required it in his contract, and the show was delayed while everyone and their bags were checked. Fair Manager Robin Jennison says the fair will likely have to employ that kind of security more often if it wants to continue booking top acts because such requirements are becoming common.

Kentucky

Frankfort: The state’s chief justice says the drug court program has failed to keep up with surging demand for its treatment services while the state struggles with addiction woes. Chief Justice John D. Minton Jr. told lawmakers Friday that he’ll seek funding to expand drug courts. He told a legislative panel that drug courts and similar specialty courts are serving fewer than 2,500 people at a time when Kentucky faces its worst drug epidemic in history. Minton says that’s not even “scratching the surface of the need.” Drug courts provide court-supervised treatment so people can stay out of jail. Participants take part in counseling and education programs and must undergo drug tests.

Louisiana

New Orleans: Two Swiss women have recreated Homer Simpson’s gourmandizing tour of the Big Easy, snarf for snarf, finger-wiggle for finger-wiggle. Biz New Orleans reports it took Janine Wiget, of Zurich, and Katrin von Niederhausern, who now lives in Stockholm, a week to duplicate the segment, which covers 54 restaurants in 1 minute, 27 seconds. The side-by-side video created by the 30-year-old illustrators and graphic designers has attracted more than 1 million views since it was uploaded Aug. 23. The women duplicate every action and camera angle in the sequence from “Lisa Gets the Blues,” which first aired April 22, 2018. Tourism officials are delighted. New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corp. president and CEO Mark Romig says it’s priceless publicity.

Maine

Bangor: A man who caused a standoff that ended with him being shot three times and his home destroyed by a police explosive has sued law enforcement officials. Dixmont resident Michael Grendell argued police didn’t wait for a negotiator trained to handle mental health crises and failed to obtain a proper warrant to use a bomb. The Bangor Daily News reports 62-year-old Grendell sued Wednesday in federal court in Bangor. Eighteen state police members and one member of the attorney general’s office are defendants. A spokesman for the attorney general’s office declined to comment on the lawsuit. Grendell filed a notice in December saying he would seek $120 million in damages. Last year, he was sentenced to probation and a suspended jail term on charges including criminal threatening with a dangerous weapon.

Maryland

Annapolis: A state panel on school construction has approved more than $13 million for portable air conditioning systems in Baltimore County schools. The money approved by the Interagency Committee on School Construction on Thursday will bring portable air conditioning systems to four of the county’s seven schools that still don’t have air conditioning: Dulaney High School, Lansdowne High School, Bedford Elementary School and Catonsville Center for Alternative Studies. Comptroller Peter Franchot, who has pushed for years as a member of the Board of Public Works to bring air conditioning to schools that don’t have it, says there’s finally some good news, on a day when some schools were closed in the Baltimore area due to excessive heat.

Massachusetts

Plymouth: The state has received more than half a million dollars in federal grant money to help workers at the now-shuttered Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station find new jobs. U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Edward Markey and U.S. Rep. William Keating, all Democrats, said the grant will help the state provide services like career planning, comprehensive assessments, resume writing and job placement to workers who were laid off earlier this year. The Plymouth plant, which produced electricity for 46 years, employed about 580 people in May. That number is expected to be about 270 by March 2020, according to plant operators. Last month the plant was sold to a private company for decommissioning. It was the state’s last nuclear power plant.

Michigan

Detroit: The Tidal streaming service has selected five Motor City-based artists as the first winners of a million-dollar grant program to boost music careers. The platform announced Friday that Tidal Unplugged’s inaugural group consists of Emma Guzman, Laurie Love, Olivia Millerschin, Raye Williams and Sam Austins. They were chosen among thousands of applicants. The winners will get, among other things, a monthly stipend, professional training, access to recording and creative resources, and promotional support. They also will produce three songs each that will premiere on the streaming service and perform at a showcase later this year. Tidal officials say they aim to expand the program to other areas of the country.

Minnesota

Duluth: Authorities say a fire that destroyed a historic synagogue doesn’t appear to have been a hate crime. Duluth Police Chief Mike Tusken said Sunday that 36-year-old Matthew James Amiot, of Duluth, was arrested Friday in the fire last week at the Adas Israel Congregation, in the city’s downtown. Tusken says he has no reason to believe the fire was a hate crime, although the investigation is ongoing. Police are recommending that prosecutors charge Amiot with first-degree arson. Duluth fire Chief Shawn Krizaj says the blaze started outside the synagogue and spread into the building. No accelerants were found. According to its website, the Adas Israel Congregation is an Orthodox/High Conservative Jewish congregation with 75 members. Eight of 14 Torah scrolls, the holy books of Judaism, that were in the synagogue were saved.

Mississippi

Hattiesburg: The wood-frame home where a washerwoman lived as she scrimped to create a scholarship fund has been moved to a museum district honoring African American accomplishments. The Hattiesburg home of the late Oseola McCarty was placed in a tax sale in 2017. The Hattiesburg American reports the local convention commission bought it. Late last month, the home was moved a few blocks from its original site. It will be restored and turned into a museum. McCarty attended school until the sixth grade and washed clothes for a living, saving money to help students needing financial assistance. She was 91 when she died in 1999. She left about $150,000 to the University of Southern Mississippi, and the Oseola McCarty Endowed Scholarship was created.

Missouri

Independence: A worker has found what’s believed to be a Civil War cannonball lodged in a Kansas City area tree that he was hired to take down. KMBC-TV reports the small cannonball fell out as the worker was chopping the diseased tree on the grounds of the Overfelt-Johnston house. The house was used as a hospital during the First Battle of Independence, which was fought across the street in 1862. Fourteen people were killed and 18 wounded as nearly 800 mounted Confederates overpowered the 350 men of the town’s federal garrison. Property owner Randall Pratt says a cannonball also was found when the property was restored in 1980. That cannonball, which had been shot into a wall, is in a county museum. Pratt plans to keep the latest find at the home.

Montana

Billings: The state’s greater sage grouse population has fallen more than 40% over the past three years, mirroring recent declines across the U.S. West for the bird species for which federal officials rejected protections in 2015. State wildlife officials estimate there were about 44,000 ground-dwelling sage grouse in Montana this spring. Sage grouse once numbered in the millions but have seen their range that stretches across portions of 11 states diminished by oil and gas drilling, wildfires, grazing and other pressures. Weather can affect populations from year to year, and wildlife officials say those short-term cycles are most directly responsible for the recent declines. Montana’s drop from almost 78,000 grouse in 2016 was traced to an extreme drought in eastern parts of the state in 2017, says Catherine Wightman with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks.

Nebraska

Lincoln: The state government collected more tax revenue than expected in August. The Department of Revenue announced Friday that the state received a net total of $462 million last month, which is nearly 5% higher than its official forecast of $441 million. The department says net sales-and-use and miscellaneous taxes came in higher than expected, as did net corporate and individual income taxes. Net tax collections are also higher than expected in the current fiscal year that began July 1. The forecast was set in April by the Nebraska Economic Forecasting Advisory Board. The board’s projections help lawmakers and the governor determine how much money they have available for the state budget.

Nevada

Las Vegas: An innkeeper selling tickets for campers this week in a tiny desert town is being threatened with legal action by the originator of the “Storm Area 51” internet hoax over the “Alienstock” name. A Las Vegas attorney representing 20-year-old Matty Roberts sent a cease-and-desist letter Thursday telling Little A’Le’Inn owner Connie West to pull the plug on events West says she’s still planning for Thursday through Sunday. West didn’t immediately respond Friday to telephone and email messages. She told the Las Vegas Review-Journal she’s still “full steam ahead” with vendors, merchandise and musical acts. Roberts broke with West last week and says he’ll appear at a party venue in downtown Las Vegas on Thursday – the night before the Life is Beautiful music and art festival begins a few blocks away.

New Hampshire

Concord: State education officials are moving ahead with Gov. Chris Sununu’s plan to help students earn high school diplomas and college degrees at the same time, at no cost to their families. Sununu, a Republican, first announced his goal for the New Hampshire Career Academy program in January. Modeled after a privately funded partnership between Great Bay Community College and Spaulding High School in Rochester, the new statewide program also provides participants with guaranteed job interviews. Sununu signed an agreement Friday with the state’s education commissioner and chancellor of the community college system to set up the program. Commissioner Frank Edelblut said the program creates a new pathway for students, who will get career-ready educations and a head start in the job market.

New Jersey

Atlantic City: The governor has signed a bill allowing the Golden Nugget casino to accept bets on most National Basketball Association games. Texas billionaire Tilman Fertitta owns the casino – and also owns the NBA’s Houston Rockets. When New Jersey lawmakers legalized sports betting last year, a provision in the law banned team owners from placing or accepting bets on any games involving their sport. It was directly aimed at the Golden Nugget and enacted over protests that Nevada regulators allow Fertitta’s casinos to take bets on pro basketball games as long as they don’t involve the Rockets. The bill Murphy signed Friday brings New Jersey in line with regulations in Nevada and Mississippi, which also allow Fertitta’s casinos to handle NBA bets that don’t involve the Rockets.

New Mexico

Albuquerque: Health officials say the state had more suicides in 2018 than any other year in at least two decades. According to data provided by the state’s Department of Health, 535 people died by suicide last year. That a rate of 24.8 per 100,000 residents and represents a 6.7% increase over the state’s 2017 suicide rate. Mental health experts told the Albuquerque Journal the 2018 numbers represent the highest suicide rate on record in New Mexico since the state began consistently keeping track in 1999. According to an analysis released by the Violence Policy Center, New Mexico had the fourth-highest suicide rate in the nation in 2017 at 23.51 per 100,000 people. Authorities say there’s an association with firearm ownership and firearms use and deaths connected to suicide.

New York

New York: Gov. Andrew Cuomo says a multimillion-dollar initiative will restore aquatic habitats around the state. Cuomo announced the program Saturday as officials released thousands of juvenile shellfish at New York City’s Hudson River Park. The governor says the “Revive Mother Nature” initiative is the most aggressive in the country and will reintroduce millions of oysters to New York waterways. Cuomo also announced $2.8 million to restore marine habitat in New York Harbor and to expand the Soundview Park oyster reef in the Bronx River. Saturday’s event was part of an effort to create 4 acres of enhanced habitat off the Hudson River Park for 5 million to 10 million oysters. Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul says the program is designed to combat climate change and advance the state as a world-class fishing destination.

North Carolina

Pittsboro: Police officers and barricades were in place as people for and against the removal of a Confederate monument stood on opposite sides of the street Saturday. Media outlets reported demonstrations were helds near the Chatham County Courthouse, where the monument has stood for more than a century. Chatham’s commissioners voted 4-1 in August to ask a United Daughters of the Confederacy chapter to have a plan by Oct. 1 to remove the statute. The county let the UDC install the statute in 1907. Without a plan, the county will declare it a public trespass by Nov. 1, making it eligible for removal. Monument supporter Barry Isenhour said the statue respects American veterans, but opponent Robert Finch said it was installed to intimidate the black community.

North Dakota

Fargo: A highly publicized North Dakota Air National Guard flight to bring an infant’s heart to a waiting transplant patient in California more than 30 years ago is set to be showcased. The flight of the F-4 Phantom, a supersonic fighter, took place in December 1986 after a Lear jet flown from California to Fargo to pick up the heart broke down in cold weather. The flight took place on emergency orders from North Dakota Gov. George Sinner, who died last year. The pilot, current North Dakota Air National Guard Brig. Gen. Bob Becklund, flew the golf ball-sized organ to Stanford Medical Center. KFGO radio reports that the heart recipient, now 33, lives in the San Francisco area. The “Heart Flight” display will be unveiled this month at the Fargo Air Museum.

Ohio

Sandusky: The state’s U.S. senators want Congress to rename a NASA research facility after astronaut Neil Armstrong. Republican Rob Portman and Democrat Sherrod Brown introduced legislation Thursday to honor the Ohio native by renaming the NASA Plum Brook Station in Sandusky. Portman says he raised the idea with Armstrong in 2012, a year before the astronaut’s death. The senator says Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, wasn’t comfortable with the attention it would bring. Portman says he has since spoken with NASA and Armstrong’s family, and they support renaming the facility. Brown says it would be a fitting tribute given Armstrong’s contributions as a test pilot and astronaut.

Oklahoma

Stillwater: A public memorial is planned at Oklahoma State University to honor the late T. Boone Pickens, who donated hundreds of millions of dollars to his alma mater during his lifetime. Pickens died Wednesday in Dallas at age 91. OSU says the university will honor Pickens on Sept. 25 at Gallagher-Iba Arena in Stillwater. Pickens said last month in his annual letter to Oklahoma State fans that he checked with the school and learned he had donated $652 million over the years, with much of it going to athletic facilities. The school’s football stadium was named for Pickens in 2003 after he made a $70 million donation, which included $20 million set aside for a stadium expansion. A funeral service is also planned for Thursday in Dallas, where Pickens lived.

Oregon

Salem: The 2020 election season is officially underway in the state. Thursday marked the first day for major party or nonpartisan candidates to file declarations of candidacy with the secretary of state’s office. One of the top state races is for that role, secretary of state, the second-highest statewide office after the governor and currently held by a Republican. Filing their papers as Democratic candidates were Jamie McLeod-Skinner, who in 2018 unsuccessfully tried to unseat Rep. Greg Walden, who is from a U.S. congressional district that voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump in 2016; and state Sen. Mark Hass. Secretary of State Bev Clarno urged Oregonians to run for an office. Her office said there have been few candidates in recent elections, which means voters have not had many options.

Pennsylvania

Philadelphia: A new rule has gone into effect in the city requiring chain restaurants to post warning labels next to menu items that are high in salt. Warnings will be shown for any menu item that has more than 2,300 milligrams, which is the recommended sodium total for an entire day. Restaurants with 15 or more locations were required to post the warnings under the new regulation by Saturday. The legislation was signed by Mayor Jim Kenney last fall after City Council passed the requirement in 2018. Philadelphia Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley says the labels can help customers make healthier food choices. Officials say Philadelphia has one of the highest rates of hypertension and premature deaths due to heart disease. Eating too much sodium plays a big factor.

Rhode Island

Providence: The state’s congressional delegation says a federal infrastructure grant will help replace and upgrade 11 bridges on a busy stretch of Interstate 95. The delegation visited the Northbound Providence Viaduct on Friday to celebrate the $60.3 million from the Infrastructure for Rebuilding America Grant Program. U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee member, helped design the program to meet Rhode Island’s need for funding for large infrastructure investments. The Rhode Island Democrat says a 55-year-old viaduct will be transformed into modern throughway. It carries about 220,000 vehicles daily. Construction is scheduled for late next year. Financing will come from several federal and state sources.

South Carolina

Columbia: This little piggy should have stayed home. The State reports that for the fourth time, Leroy – a Vietnamese pot-bellied pig – wandered over to Brennan Elementary School in Columbia, leading officials to slap McGregor Wallace with citations for owning a pig within city limits and having a fugitive pet. Wallace is scheduled for a court appearance in October. Wallace says Leroy is his emotional support animal meant to help him deal with PTSD from domestic trauma. Wallace says he got Leroy several months ago to replace a standard pig that grew too big. He says Leroy is clever and knows how to open the home’s gate when Wallace isn’t home. The pig also can open the refrigerator. The 7-month-old swine is now at Columbia’s animal shelter.

South Dakota

Sioux Falls: An organization promoting the separation of church and state is putting up billboards in three cities to protest the state’s new law that requires all public schools to post the motto “In God We Trust” in a prominent location. The billboards from the Freedom From Religion Foundation show “In God We Trust” carved into Mount Rushmore and the four presidents saying, “There goes the neighborhood.” The drawing is from Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Steve Benson. The billboards will be up for a month in Sioux Falls, Rapid City and Pierre. The foundation’s president, Annie Gaylor, says its members are concerned about the law, which she says is misguided. Gaylor says the motto, adopted during the Cold War, is outdated and divisive.

Tennessee

Knoxville: The University of Tennessee’s marching band is jumping on the anti-bullying bandwagon. The band briefly wore a T-shirt based on a design by a boy who was teased at school over the design and then offered a scholarship at the university. On Thursday, Tennessee officials offered the fourth grader a four-year scholarship beginning in the fall of 2028 if he chooses to attend Tennessee and meets admission requirements. The boy’s story went viral last week after his teacher posted on Facebook that the student’s peers mocked a T-shirt he designed for his school’s “college colors” day. After the post gained attention, the University of Tennessee’s VolShop website created its own Tennessee shirt featuring the boy’s design. School officials say over 50,000 shirts have been presold. Proceeds benefit STOMP Out Bullying.

Texas

Dallas: A federal judge has approved an agreement that will require the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to make a recommendation by May 2021 on whether the lesser prairie chicken should be federally protected as a threatened or endangered species. The agreement was reached Thursday between the federal agency and three conservations groups: the Defenders of Wildlife, the Center for Biological Diversity and WildEarth Guardians. The groups sued the federal government in June to force it to make a designation for the lesser prairie chicken and its habitats. Once a designation is proposed, there will then be a public comment period followed by a final determination made later by Fish and Wildlife. The agency also could decide that no federal protections should be provided for the bird, which listed as threatened in 2014, but a federal court overturned the designation.

Utah

Layton: State Republican leaders refused Saturday to erase a bylaw to deny ballot spots for candidates who collect voter signatures instead of winning approval from the party’s caucus-convention system. The State Central Committee voted 68-40 to erase the bylaw, short of the two-thirds majority required for a bylaw change. The Salt Lake Tribune reports the bylaw threatened to keep Republican candidates off the 2018 ballot because of a state law allowing both paths. Then-Party Chairman Rob Anderson responded by declaring the bylaw illegal and refusing to oust any candidate, and Republican Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox had said then he’d certify candidates who used either qualifying method. Current party Chairman said Saturday that he won’t ignore the bylaw but that the party will do what’s necessary to get on the 2020 ballot.

Vermont

Burlington: Proverbs have been developed for centuries around the world, from “Strike while the iron is hot” to “Been there, done that.” They’re spread by writings, word of mouth and, nowadays, social media. The vast amount of them is evident in a new, unique library at the University of Vermont. It’s the collection of UVM Professor Wolfgang Mieder, thought to be the world’s premiere paroemiologist. The extensive library of nearly 9,000 volumes ranges from proverb collections including German, Chinese, Turkish and Hungarian to thousands of books and dissertations and includes Mieder’s own writings. Among his favorite proverbs is “Different strokes for different folks” because he says that “it tells you to realize that people have different priorities, different thoughts, different ideas.”

Virginia

Richmond: Virginia’s attorney general says couples planning to get married in the state will not have to disclose their race on their marriage application. The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports clerks were notified of the change in an email late Friday, about a week after three couples filed a federal lawsuit challenging the state requirement. Democratic Attorney General Mark Herring wrote that circuit court clerks must ask people seeking a marriage license their race, but couples can decline to answer the question. Herring says clerks should issue a marriage license regardless of whether an applicant answers the question. The lawsuit says one county provided a list of more than 200 potential races to a couple who questioned the requirement. It included “American,” “Aryan,” “Moor” and “Mulatto.”

Washington

Spokane: The state may seem ultraliberal, but voters in one of its deeply conservative areas have re-elected a Republican six times who thinks communists and atheists will destroy the U.S. Now Matt Shea faces a legislative investigation and calls for his resignation following media reports he was in a chat group discussing surveillance on progressives. Shea is also a major proponent of splitting Washington into two states, with Eastern Washington becoming the state of Liberty. The Army veteran hosts a weekly “Patriot Radio” show on the American Christian Network and on Facebook Live in 2017 complimented members of Team Rugged, a group that one member said provides special forces-type gun training for young men so they can “be effective in Christian warfare.” Shea didn’t respond to interview requests.

West Virginia

Charleston: Education officials say they’ve found a problem with the state’s school system – many students aren’t showing up to class. The West Virginia Department of Education released a report Thursday saying that more than 38% of schools did not meet attendance standards in the 2018-2019 school year. In a statement, schools superintendent Steven Paine didn’t give a reason for the high level of absences but said he looks forward to working with counties and local school boards to address the problem. The report also says a fifth of students statewide are considered chronically absent, meaning they missed 18 or more days of the school year.

Wisconsin

Madison: A media company that owns television stations in the state is partnering with a longtime farm charity on a live 18-hour telethon to raise money for struggling farmers. Quincy Media and Farm Aid have scheduled the event for Friday. It will include anchors and reporters from WKOW in Madison, WAOW in Wausau, WXOW in La Crosse, WQOW in Eau Claire and KBJR in Superior. A news release says volunteers will be answering phones throughout the day collecting donations to provide support, emergency relief and other resources for family farmers in the region. Farm Aid’s annual music festival is scheduled for Saturday at Alpine Valley Theatre in East Troy. The lineup includes Willie Nelson & Family, Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds, Neil Young, John Mellencamp and Bonnie Raitt, among others.

Wyoming

Laramie: Fifty years after 14 black football players were kicked off the University of Wyoming football team for considering a protest, eight of them returned to campus to commemorate the anniversary as the school takes another step toward reconciliation. University officials unveiled a plaque Friday at War Memorial Stadium commemorating the so-called Black 14. The event capped five days of ceremonies and discussions about the infamous dismissal of all the university’s black players in 1969. The players wanted to protest racism, but head coach Lloyd Eaton would have none of the idea – and was backed up by the university’s board of trustees and Gov. Stan Hathaway. He lit into them about coming from fatherless families and said they would only be accepted by traditionally black colleges if they weren’t at Wyoming, they said. The healing and reconciliation is not complete for some of the men who came back to campus this week. Some say they struggled for years after they were labeled as members of the Black 14.

From USA TODAY Network and wire reports

Feral hog hunting, coral restoration: News from around our 50 states

From USA TODAY Network and wire reports

Alabama

Florence: A college is asking people to quit using plastic confetti as a photo prop on campus. The scenic University of North Alabama is a popular spot for photo shoots in Florence, but school officials say some of those sessions are leaving behind plastic confetti that’s shot into the air. Birds and other animals can mistake the little pieces for food, and biology professor Jake Dittel told the TimesDaily the confetti can kill wildlife. “We’re trying to encourage our staff, students, faculty, and our university community and guests to think about how to help us maintain this beautiful campus and keep it environmentally friendly,” said Brenda Webb, who chairs the Department of Physics and Earth Science. Confetti also is winding up in a large fountain that’s sometimes used as a photo backdrop. That forces workers to turn off the water to clean out a filter.

Alaska

Anchorage: A federal agency awarded the state a $35.8 million federal grant to support earthquake disaster recovery efforts, officials said. The Department of Housing and Urban Development awarded the funds in response to the damaging quake that struck parts of south-central Alaska on Nov. 30, 2018, KTVA-TV reports. The HUD Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery Program helps communities rebuild after natural disasters and prepare for future ones, officials said. This is the first time Alaska has received funds through the program, officials said. Alaskans affected by the 7.1 magnitude quake have received nearly $130 million in assistance through the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Small Business Association, officials said.

Arizona

Flagstaff: Researchers at Northern Arizona University’s Pathogen and Microbiome Institute lab are studying mosquitoes from Maricopa County as part of a DNA-mapping effort that could help finds ways to target the West Nile virus. Leading the research, NAU evolutionary biologist Crystal Hepp is trying to trace the virus back to its source. Her team pulverizes hundreds of frozen mosquitoes into a clear liquid soup from which they can extract DNA, then strings together the DNA information. This is vital information for the state’s fight against West Nile virus, which infected over 170 residents in 2019 and was responsible for the deaths of 17 people. Most of those cases came from Maricopa County. Using genetic analysis, Hepp is zeroing in on West Nile hot spots that can potentially be fogged with pesticides.

Arkansas

Conway: A Canada-based mass timber manufacturer in which Walmart has invested says it’s spending $90 million to open a plant in Arkansas, the company’s first in the United States. Structurlam Mass Timber Corporation announced it will purchase, retrofit and equip a former steel plant in Conway and create 130 new jobs at the facility. The plant, set to open in mid-2021, will source softwood lumber from Arkansas-grown southern pine trees. Walmart will be the first customer of the facility and plans to use more than 1.1 million cubic feet of Arkansas-grown and Arkansas-produced mass timber in its new home office campus in Bentonville. The company says the new location will meet the demand in the U.S. for mass timber. The Arkansas Economic Development Commission says the project is receiving $1.5 million from an incentive fund, as well as tax refunds and rebates.

California

Sacramento: The state is fining the nation’s largest pharmacy health care provider a record $3.6 million for failing to redeem deposits on bottles and cans at some of its locations, regulators said Monday. The California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery, better known as CalRecycle, said its investigation found that 81 of CVS Pharmacy’s 848 retail stores in California refused to redeem the recyclables or pay a required $100 daily fee as an alternative. CalRecycle filed the enforcement action last week, and CVS can seek a hearing if it wants to contest the fine. Department spokesman Lance Klug said it’s the largest enforcement action ever against a retailer for failing to redeem recyclables. One of CalRecycle’s most vocal critics praised the department’s action as a good first step to helping prop up the recycling industry.

Colorado

Denver: The University of Colorado Boulder’s media college announced Monday that it will stop funding its student-run news outlet. The Denver Post reports the university plans to end funding for the CU Independent at the end of the school year. The university says the student news website will become fully independent from the College of Media, Communication and Information. The school says it plans to launch a student multimedia enterprise with more faculty leadership next fall. CU Independent Editor-in-Chief Rob Tann says the student-led publication plans to continue with an independent news site despite the challenges of a competing new venture and the loss of university funding. CU Independent is currently funded by the media college and gift funds and is assisted by a staff student-media manager.

Connecticut

Hartford: The state has a new online portal that will allow notaries to handle their licensing needs with a few keyboard strokes. Democratic Secretary of the State Denise Merrill unveiled the portal that allows notaries to apply for new state licenses, renew active licenses and reinstate expired licenses. All licenses will then be delivered by email to the notary within three business days. “Allowing notaries public to apply for new licenses and renew old licenses online makes the process simpler, easier and faster,” said Merrill, who likened the change to online voter registration. “Allowing notaries to apply online removes barriers and makes becoming and remaining a notary more convenient.” Notaries serve as an official, impartial witness and are used to sign off on various documents.

Delaware

Dover: A small, struggling private college is seeking money from the state for the third time this year. Wesley College submitted a request Friday for $3.2 million, news outlets report. Lawmakers and officials approved $2 million from a state fund earlier this year. The school also received permission to use more than $1 million in renovation funding for the former Dover Public Library for operational purposes. The money had been granted to ensure the federal government would continue to provide students with financial aid. Delaware’s Office of Management and Budget has said it wouldn’t give the institution any more money without a long-term financial plan from the college. In June, the U.S. Department of Education placed the school on a monitoring list over concerns about its “financial responsibility.” The institution has seen declining enrollment and revenue in recent years, according to news outlets.

District of Columbia

Washington: Public housing residents and advocates took their demands to the doorstep of the D.C. Housing Authority on Monday, demanding that no residents are evicted as part of the agency’s 20-year transformation plan. “Living every day in public housing, there’s a threat of homelessness in everybody’s heart,” Karen Settles of Stoddart Terrace in Southeast told WUSA-TV. Public documents said her building will be demolished and redeveloped as part of DCHA’s Transformation Plan, rehabilitating 14 properties across the city. During Monday’s rally, public housing advocates said some residents withholding rent in protest of moldy living conditions could be evicted. But public housing officials have insisted nobody will be evicted. Even still, public housing advocates said residents are at risk. “They are absolutely evicting people,” said Aja Taylor of Bread for the City, which organized Monday’s rally.

Florida

Key Largo: Federal officials announced plans Monday to raise $100 million to fund projects to restore seven significant coral reef sites in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. “Mission: Iconic Reefs” calls for restoring nearly 70 acres of the Florida Reef Tract, one of the largest strategies ever proposed for coral restoration, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. NOAA officials said the organization will work with partners to secure public and private funds. “We have identified some iconic reefs here in the Keys that we want to help restore,” sanctuary superintendent Sarah Fangman said. Since the 1970s, tropical cyclones, heat-induced coral bleaching, cold snaps and disease events have reduced coral coverage in the Keys. Outbreaks of stony coral tissue loss disease, first noticed off Miami in 2014, have spread as far as Cozumel, the Caribbean region, and have baffled marine biologists.

Georgia

Savannah: A 160-year-old church believed to be the oldest black church in the United States and built by enslaved Africans has been restored to a version of its former glory. A fresh coat of paint covers the freshly carpeted First African Baptist Church, which also had its bell tower fixed, water-damaged ceilings repaired and stucco replaced, the Savannah Morning News reports. It cost nearly $600,000 to repair numerous issues, the Rev. Thrumond Tillman says. The church, a National Historic Landmark, was organized in 1773, according to its website. The sanctuary was completed in 1859. Some historic pieces were left untouched during the restoration, such as pews the church says are carved with West African Arabic script, one of the earliest forms of writing. The original sanctuary still is dotted with holes that allowed runaway slaves to breathe as they traveled along the Underground Railroad and stopped at the church, according to the newspaper.

Hawaii

Honolulu: The City Council has passed a single-use plastics ban that will be the first in the state to include all plastic containers used for food sales and service. The council voted Wednesday in favor of the measure that is expected to be signed by Mayor Kirk Caldwell and fully enacted by 2022. Food vendors would be prohibited from providing plastic utensils and plastic foam plates, cups and other containers beginning Jan. 1, 2021, officials said. The ban would add other plastic food ware and begin applying to non-food-purveying businesses starting Jan. 1, 2022, officials said. Businesses that do not adhere to the law face fines of up to $1,000 a day, although exemptions could be issued if they cannot find reasonable, non-plastic replacements. Environmentalists have highlighted the food-industry plastics that can be found littering Oahu’s streets and waterways.

Idaho

Boise: A biennial state survey of youth shows fewer teens say they are being bullied, smoking cigarettes or having sex, but the number of kids who have seriously considered suicide remains at a 10-year high. The State Department of Education released the 2019 Idaho Youth Risk Behavior Survey last week. It included more than 1,200 high school students in 45 schools across the state. Nearly 40% of students reported they feel sad or hopeless. About 22% of students reported they had seriously considered suicide – the same rate as reported in 2017 and the highest in the past decade. Reports of bullying, smoking and sexual activity all dropped to the lowest levels recorded in the past decade. Nearly half of the students surveyed said they had emailed or texted while driving a car in the past 30 days.

Illinois

Chicago: Federal officials are investigating whether the Chicago Cubs’ ongoing $1 billion renovation of Wrigley Field provides adequate wheelchair access. The Cubs have filed a notice of the review in Chicago federal court, where the team is defending itself against a lawsuit filed by a wheelchair user who alleges the stadium’s seating doesn’t meet Americans with Disabilities Act standards and is actually worse than before the renovation. The Chicago Tribune reports that a team attorney wrote in a letter to the judge that the Cubs believe the renovation has “significantly increased” accessibility in the 105-year-old stadium, but the team is halting plans to install more accessible seating before the 2020 season, calling it prudent to wait for federal officials to conduct the review.

Indiana

Terre Haute: Starting in January, Indiana State University will offer a new teacher licensure program to train educators to work with students who are deaf or hard of hearing. The Indiana State Board of Education approved the Deaf/Hard of Hearing program last week, the Tribune-Star reports, and it will be offered through the university’s Blumberg Center, part of the Bayh College of Education. According to the Council for Education of the Deaf, there is a national crisis in deaf education due to a significant shortage of qualified teachers. “The shortage of teachers available to meet the needs of the deaf/hard of hearing is critical,” said Carol Wetherell, director of the Blumberg Center. “We’re anxious to get more people on board.” The program will be a seven-course program to be completed over the course of two years. It’ll be offered through distance education, with some face-to-face instruction.

Iowa

Cedar Rapids: A judge on Monday sentenced a local man to 14 years in prison after he was convicted of having his cousin try to hijack an internet domain from another man at gunpoint. U.S. District Court Judge C.J. Williams sentenced Rossi Lorathio Adams II, 27, to the federal prison term following his conviction April 18 of one count of conspiracy to interfere with commerce by force, threats and violence. Adams was the founder of social media company State Snaps, whose followers often used the slogan “Do It For State!” He repeatedly tried to buy the domain doitforstate.com from another Cedar Rapids man, but the owner refused to sell. In 2017, Adams convinced his cousin, Sherman Hopkins Jr., to break into the domain owner’s house. During a struggle, Hopkins and the domain owner were shot, but both survived. Hopkins was sentenced last year to 20 years in prison.

Kansas

Wichita: A former police officer who wounded a 9-year-old girl when he fired at her family’s dog is immune from criminal prosecution and can’t be sued, a judge ruled. Judge Kevin O’Connor issued his ruling last month in Dexter Betts’s case, although it wasn’t available in public court records until Friday. The Sedgwick County district attorney’s office filed a notice of appeal, The Wichita Eagle reports. Betts had been charged with aggravated battery in the Dec. 30, 2017, shooting in which a bullet fragment ricocheted off the floor and hit the girl. Officers went to the family’s home when the girl’s mother reported her husband was threatening to hurt himself. The family’s attorney says the dog only went up to the officer and barked. The girl and dog were not seriously injured. Betts’s lawyer asked the judge to dismiss the case, arguing he had legally fired his weapon in self-defense and was entitled to immunity.

Kentucky

Frankfort: Democrat Andy Beshear was sworn in as governor early Tuesday during a private ceremony just after midnight in the Governor’s Mansion. Beshear, 42, follows in the footsteps of his father, Steve Beshear, whose two terms as governor preceded the single four-year term of Republican Gov. Matt Bevin. They are the first father-son duo to serve as governors in Kentucky history. The middle-of-the-night swearing is customary in Kentucky, to ensure continuity at the head of state government. Andy Beshear showed he was his own man during this year’s campaign, even while embracing some of the same proposals – including increased access to health care and legalization of casinos – that his father had championed. The official transfer of power preceded a full day of inaugural events Tuesday, including a worship service, a parade and a public swearing-in ceremony on the Capitol steps.

Louisiana

New Orleans: The Louisiana Supreme Court building, a sprawling landmark in the French Quarter, was formally named in memory of late Chief Justice Pascal Calogero Jr. in a Tuesday ceremony. The Legislature voted in June to name the building that houses the high court after Calogero, the court’s longest-serving justice, who died last year. The building now named for Calogero is four-story marble behemoth that fills a block of the French Quarter near the Mississippi River. It was completed in 1910, according to Tulane University’s School of Architecture. The high court moved to a more modern building in 1958, and the Quarter building fell into disrepair. A move to restore the building and return the court there ended in 2004. Calogero considered the restoration among his administration’s most important achievements, according to a 2018 obituary by the court.

Maine

Waterville: An independent state authority that deals with housing issues says it has been awarded nearly $4 million in federal low-income housing tax credits for several projects. MaineHousing director Daniel Brennan says the tax credits are an important way to spur development of affordable housing in the state. The projects are in Portland, South Portland, Bangor and Waterville. MaineHousing says the tax credits will generate more than $37 million from private investors. That money, along with $3 million more from MaineHousing, is expected to create or preserve 317 housing units. One of the projects is the first phase of the redevelopment of a historic textile mill in Waterville. Another is the preservation of public housing units in Portland.

Maryland

Baltimore: Six former inmates claim in a federal lawsuit that the state’s prison system fails to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act. The Baltimore Sun cited allegations in the lawsuit Tuesday that included prison guards making a one-legged man walk into the showers with no support. The case was filed in U.S. District Court in Baltimore. The inmates allege a culture of noncompliance with the ADA and indifference by prison guards. The inmates are suing the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services and a number of prison officials. The Attorney General’s Office is defending the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services along with its employees. A spokeswoman declined to comment to The Sun, citing the ongoing nature of the case.

Massachusetts

Boston: The plan to modernize the area public transit system’s fare collection technology is expected to cost more and take years longer to implement than originally thought, agency officials say. Plans to have the technology installed by 2021 have now been pushed back to 2024, and the cost is expected to jump from $700 million to perhaps $1 billion, officials at the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority told The Boston Globe on Monday. “It’s going to be much more of a gradual transition than was originally envisioned,” said Laurel Paget-Seekins, the MBTA’s assistant general manager for policy. The new system would allow riders to pay using a smartphone or contactless credit card, to speed up the boarding process and improve fare collection.

Michigan

Detroit: When the U.S. Census Bureau starts counting people in Motor City next year, obstacles are bound to arise. The city has tens of thousands of vacant houses, sparse internet access and high poverty – factors that will make it the toughest community to tally. Other Rust Belt towns that have lost population and cities in the Sun Belt with large numbers of immigrants and transplants will pose similar challenges in the coast-to-coast headcount, an Associated Press analysis of government data found. Detroit’s recent resurgence has led to refurbished downtown buildings, new boutique hotels and an invigorated arts community. But the renaissance has done little for some residents who live in persistent poverty and harbor lingering mistrust after decades of racial upheaval. About 86% of Detroit’s population lives in hard-to-count neighborhoods, by far the largest proportion of any major U.S. city, the AP analysis found.

Minnesota

St. Paul: The state is on track to meet the project implementation deadlines for replacing the state’s troubled driver and vehicle registration system known as MNLARS, the Office of the Legislative Auditor reported Tuesday. However, the auditor’s report found some minor risks to completing the project on time and on budget, and it said managers should address them soon. The most serious involved requirements added by the 2019 Legislature for researching alternate ways of determining vehicle licensing fees and for exploring self-service licensing, title and registration capabilities. Moving ahead on those ideas could mean delays and higher costs, the report said. The review said another risk is that moving and converting data from the old Minnesota Licensing and Registration System system to the new Vehicle Title and Registration System could prove challenging.

Mississippi

Oxford: Lafayette County is shifting back to voting on paper ballots. The Oxford Eagle reports county supervisors are seeking bids for new voting machines. Since 2007, the county has used touchscreen machines, but the bids call for machines that would electronically count paper ballots. Supervisor Kevin Frye said that if there’s ever a question about the outcome of an election, workers could retrieve paper ballots and count them by hand. Of Mississippi’s 82 counties, 12 are now using paper ballots, said Bill Lowe of voting-machine company Election Systems & Software. Those include Hinds, Harrison, Madison and DeSoto counties, four of the six most populous counties in Mississippi. Lowe said machines sold by his company will scan ballots once they have been filled out, letting voters know if they didn’t vote in any races or voted too many times in a race.

Missouri

Springfield: Feral hog hunting in the Mark Twain National Forest has been curtailed, but limited opportunities to kill the damaging animals are emerging on state land. After weighing a change for more than a year and receiving more than 1,000 public comments, the U.S. Forest Service announced Saturday that it will only allow hunters to kill wild hogs if they come across them while hunting turkey and deer. Hunters must have proper deer and turkey permits to qualify for the exception to the new ban. In response, the Missouri Department of Conservation announced Monday that it was writing new rules that will mirror those adopted by the Forest Service. The department currently bans all hog hunting practice on its lands, saying it is more effective to trap and kill large groups of the animals than allow hunters to try to shoot them. The department says shooting scatters the hogs.

Montana

Great Falls: The National Defense Authorization Act, which contains an amendment giving federal recognition for the Little Shell Chippewa Tribe, cleared a congressional conference committee Monday, bringing optimism from the state’s federal delegation that the bill will finally pass. Reuters reports the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate Armed Services Committees said they reached an agreement on the $738 billion spending bill for the Department of Defense, considered a must-pass piece of legislation, after months of negotiations. “I am almost without words – the magnitude of this moment,” Little Shell Chair Gerald Gray said Monday night. “Maybe our ancestors are smiling because now our future generations will not have to take up this same battle we have fought for decades.”

Nebraska

Lincoln: Dozens of bronze headstone flower vases have been stolen from a cemetery. Police said the theft of 40 vases was reported Saturday at Lincoln Memorial Park. Each vase was valued at $50, so the loss is estimated at $2,000, police said. In October, about a dozen vases were also stolen from the cemetery. Police said the thief might try to sell the vases at pawn shops or scrap yards. They asked that anyone with information call police.

Nevada

Reno: Police are expanding the use of technology to automatically read license plates in an effort to reduce gun violence. The City Council approved the expanded use of devices and associated software to track license plates despite critics’ concerns it could be used to secretly monitor the movement of law-abiding citizens. “We want our dangerous criminals off the streets, and that is what this grant is focused on,” Police Chief Jason Soto told the council. A visiting professor at the University of Nevada, Reno who specializes in mass surveillance technology was among those raising concerns about the potential for abuse. “Your neighbors would find that really creepy if you were sitting down writing down everyone’s comings and goings,” said David Maass, who recently joined UNR’s Reynolds School of Journalism through a partnership with the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

New Hampshire

Concord: The state released a set of guidelines Tuesday to help law enforcement agencies better handle hate crimes in the wake of recent debate about racism in the mostly white state. The protocols from the attorney general’s office call on departments to designate one staffer responsible for coordinating the handling of an alleged bias or hate crime. That person will also work with the attorney general’s civil rights unit and the relevant county attorney to determine how to respond to such crimes. Hate crimes are also supposed to be reported to the FBI each year. The protocols come almost two years after the attorney general’s office created a civil rights unit, which among other things investigates violence or discrimination based on race, religion, sexual orientation or disability. The unit was created in the wake of the near-hanging in 2017 of an 8-year-old biracial child.

New Jersey

New Brunswick: NJ Transit and Amtrak have started working on a new railyard to provide a safe place to store trains along the Northeast Corridor during severe weather. The expansion of County Yard and the Delco Lead Storage and Inspection Facility Project along the New Brunswick and North Brunswick border will provide storage capacity for 444 vehicles. The project comes after Hurricane Irene in 2011 and Superstorm Sandy in 2012 flooded the Hoboken Yard and Terminal and the Meadows Maintenance Complex, damaging equipment. The project also includes an inspection facility for light maintenance of cars and equipment and to aid the inspection of trains prior to their return to service following severe weather.

New Mexico

Santa Fe: A contractor overseeing operations at a national laboratory lost track of 250 barrels of waste in the past year, an annual report on hazardous waste violations says. Triad National Security LLC had 19 violations of its permit from the New Mexico Environment Department after the contractor mislabeled and improperly stored waste containers at Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Santa Fe New Mexican reports. Newport News Nuclear BWXT Los Alamos, which is managing a 10-year cleanup of waste generated at the lab, was cited 29 times. The barrels filled with low-level radioactive waste and other hazardous materials were shipped to a waste plant in Carlsbad without tracking, regulators said. The records still listed the waste at the lab, inspectors said.

New York

Albany: The state is planning to allow more local health centers and clinics to offer needle exchanges in hopes of reducing the number of opioid overdoses and deaths. The state Health Department approved the emergency regulations last month. New York has two dozen sites that trade dirty syringes for clean ones, and Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration wants to expand that number. The new rules will allow LBGTQ centers, local health departments and other facilities to apply to offer such a service. New York’s health department plans to spend $250,000 for syringes, disposal containers, gloves and alcohol pads. State health officials say 3,224 New Yorkers died from overdoses in 2017, up from 1,074 in 2010. Experts also point to spiking HIV rates linked to dirty syringes.

North Carolina

Hatteras: The power line that provides electricity to an Outer Banks island will be replaced with an underground cable next year. The Cape Hatteras National Seashore issued a permit to Tideland Electric Membership Corp. to replace an overhead pole line that’s the only source of electricity for the 1,385 electrical customers on Ocracoke Island, officials said in a news release Monday. The underground cable will connect to the existing underwater power line between the two islands. The 1.75-mile power line is being replaced because of erosion at the south end of Hatteras island and washouts on the road that have increased in recent years, officials said. Construction is expected to take about two months.

North Dakota

Dickinson: The state’s final medical marijuana dispensary is set to open this week. The eighth dispensary is expected to open in Dickinson on Friday. Jason Wahl, director of the Division of Medical Marijuana, says opening the final dispensary is a milestone for the program. The state has issued more than 1,850 identification cards to qualifying patients, Wahl said. North Dakota is the first in the nation to add an electronic card option for patients, caregivers, and agents of dispensaries and manufacturing facilities. Other dispensaries are located in Bismarck, Devils Lake, Fargo, Jamestown, Grand Forks, Minot and Williston. For a qualifying patient or designated caregiver to enter the display area of a dispensary, they must have their registry identification card.

Ohio

Columbus: The official portrait of former Gov. John Kasich was unveiled Monday at a packed Statehouse event. The Republican governor held office from 2011 through 2018. The Capital Square Review and Advisory Board presented the portrait in the atrium of the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus. Senate President Larry Obhof and Gov. Mike DeWine praised Kasich for his service and, in particular, for overseeing the state’s recovery from the Great Recession. Kasich was the state’s 69th governor and a longtime former congressman. Kasich’s portrait was painted by John Seibels Walker, known for portraiture in the style known as the “Grand Manner.” The painting depicts the down-to-earth Kasich in an open suit jacket and tie in front of the Ohio Holocaust and Liberators Memorial on the Statehouse’s South Plaza. Kasich championed the memorial, finished in 2014.

Oklahoma

Oklahoma City: Attorneys for Johnson & Johnson have appealed an Oklahoma judge’s order for the company to pay $465 million to address the state’s opioid crisis. The company argues in an appeal filed Monday that the judge misapplied the state’s public nuisance laws in reaching his decision. The company also maintains that the award should be reduced by $355 million to offset pretrial settlements between the state and two other drugmakers. “Without explanation, the court found Janssen liable for the entirety of a complex crisis implicating a multitude of criminal, governmental and medical actors,” attorneys wrote in a summary of the case. Janssen is the company’s pharmaceutical subsidiary. The state of Oklahoma also plans to appeal the judge’s order, arguing that the $465 million it was awarded would only cover one year of its cleanup plan.

Oregon

Newport: State shellfish managers say the opening of the commercial Dungeness crab season will be further delayed until at least Dec. 31 along the entire Oregon coast, as testing shows crab are still too low in meat yield in half the areas along the coast. The World reports the ocean commercial Dungeness crab season in Oregon generally opens Dec. 1 but can be delayed to ensure a high-quality product and to avoid wastage of the resource. The Oregon Dungeness Crab Commission said crab quality testing in late November and early December showed many areas within the tri-state region still did not meet the criteria for an opening. The delayed opening will allow for crab to fill with more meat. Commercial Dungeness crabbing is Oregon’s most valuable fishery.

Pennsylvania

Nazareth: A man whose home was destroyed in a September fire has raised $18,000 to thank the firefighters who extinguished the flames and tried to save his dog. John Pequeno started an online fundraising campaign for nine departments that responded to the fire at his home in Upper Nazareth Township, outside Easton. The campaign exceeded his initial goal by $3,000. Firefighters repeatedly ran into Pequeno’s burning home to try to save his Yorkshire terrier, Marshall, who died while hiding under a couch, according to The (Allentown) Morning Call. Firefighters returned to help him salvage whatever he could from the wreckage. Each fire department that responded will receive $2,000.

Rhode Island

Providence: Rhode Island’s secretary of state has announced the launch of a free online resource to explore and compare centuries of data from state and federal census records. Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea said the “Count Me In!” data tool was launched to supplement an exhibit about the history of the census at the Rhode Island State Archives. The exhibit runs through March at the archives on Westminster Street in downtown Providence. The online tool provides customizable, real-time visualizations of census data from 1708 through 2010 for every Rhode Island municipality, Gorbea said. She said it’s a way to see how communities have grown and changed over time, as well as a reminder that the upcoming 2020 census will shape the state’s future. A gallery reception for the exhibit is planned for 6 p.m. Thursday. It’s free and open to the public.

South Carolina

Cayce: Gov. Henry McMaster says he wants to give a $3,000 raise to all the state’s nearly 53,000 teachers in next year’s budget. The raise will cost $211 million and should propel the average South Carolina teacher’s salary into the top 25 in U.S. states and about $2,500 over the Southeast average, McMaster said Tuesday as he announced his proposal. The raise is one of several bold steps the state can continue to take to improve its education system and keep it a strong place to do business, he said. The $3,000 raise, if approved, would boost the minimum teacher salary in the state to $38,000 – a 9% increase over this year. The average teacher in the state currently makes about $53,000 and would see a nearly 6% raise. The highest-paid teacher in the state’s biggest school district in Greenville County would see about a 3.5% raise on their roughly $85,000 salary.

South Dakota

Sioux Falls: Crews will use sound cannons to scare away geese in the city starting this week. Sioux Falls Animal Control is trying to scare off thousands of geese migrating into the area, agency Supervisor Julie DeJong says. Thousands of birds start searching for new open-water areas as ponds and lakes in rural South Dakota freeze over. Geese flock to the Big Sioux River in Sioux Falls during the winter. Crews will use sound cannons to scare geese from areas near the Sioux Falls Regional Airport, the Sioux Empire Fairgrounds and at a golf course. Flying geese can cause damage to airplanes by striking windshields or being sucked into engines. This year, people around the fairgrounds will hear sounds similar to fireworks or shotguns, DeJong says. The sounds come from “crackle shells” and screamer pistols that officers will be using this year. The cannons will go off several times a day.

Tennessee

Kingston: The Tennessee Valley Authority started removing asbestos-contaminated material last week that was unearthed during construction near its Kingston Fossil Plant. Officials at the utility have said they do not know where the material came from, but it could be part of an old burn pit. It was discovered in September while digging to create a new landfill for coal ash disposal. The asbestos requires a special permit for disposal. TVA got the permit from the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation on Dec. 3, TVA spokesman Scott Brooks says. The permit says up to 22,000 cubic yards of material will be removed, including up to 40 cubic yards of asbestos-containing material. The Kingston plant was the site of a massive coal ash spill in 2008. TVA is the nation’s largest public utility, serving 10 million people in parts of seven Southeastern states.

Texas

Austin: The city school district’s school closure plan perpetuates long-standing policies of racial and economic segregation, targeting vulnerable and historically underserved communities, according to a report by the district’s chief equity officer released Monday. Stephanie Hawley, the chief equity officer, completed the 20-page report in advance of the 6-3 board vote three weeks ago to shutter four elementary campuses, but district officials did not share it with board members until last week. Hawley told board members before the vote that the plan was what “21st-century racism looks like.” Hawley describes in the report a plan that was flawed early on, excluding affected teachers, principals and communities and that has led to deep mistrust of the school district.

Utah

Salt Lake City: The state is set to become the latest to allow immigrant “Dreamers” to practice law under a proposed rule issued Monday by the Utah Supreme Court. The rule came after a request last year by two women who earned law degrees from Utah universities but couldn’t practice law because they aren’t legal residents of the United States. They are part of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, an initiative implemented during former President Barack Obama’s administration that allows young people brought to the U.S. illegally as children to remain in this country. The rule in Utah won’t take effect until a monthlong public comment period closes. The Utah Supreme Court said in a statement that it found it has the authority to create the rule after consulting with the state bar, law professors, the state attorney general and the state legislative research counsel.

Vermont

Montpelier: The state plans to hold a new round of weekends, beginning this Friday, aimed at helping tourists who enjoy visiting Vermont move to the state full time. The four “Stay-to-Stay Weekends” will be held Dec. 13-16 in Newport and at Jay Peak; Feb. 21-24, 2020 in Brattleboro, and at Mount Snow; Feb. 21-24, 2020, in Bennington and at Bromley Mountain; and March 13-15 in Rutland and at Killington. It’s part of an effort to expand the state’s workforce. The weekends include a reception hosted by a local chamber of commerce or community group. Visitors get to explore the region and meet with local employers, realters, professionals and community leaders. The program, which was launched last year, has hosted more than 200 people this year, and to date, 15 have moved to Vermont.

Virginia

Richmond: The state has nearly 500 sites available for factories or distribution centers to be built, but only 30 of them are marketable as Virginia competes with other states for big economic development deals, according to a new study presented by the Virginia Growth and Opportunity Board on Monday. The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports many sites lack the necessary land-use approvals or environmental reviews and other work necessary for construction within 18 months. Stephen Moret, the Virginia Economic Development Partnership president and CEO, says that “another state has a better shot” than Virginia at landing big economic development projects without those kind of sites. Moret says the study is the first of its kind in the country to catalog every potential development site of 25 acres or larger.

Washington

Seattle: New research from the University of Washington indicates communities beneath flight paths at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport are exposed to a special type of pollution caused by aircraft emissions. The university, in a release, described the study as the first to identify the unique signature of aircraft emissions in the state. KING-TV reports the study did not look at potential health effects associated with exposure. But Michael Yost, professor and chair of the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, says in the release that the findings create opportunities for follow-up research. The study was produced in partnership with the Legislature and the Port of Seattle as part of an effort to better understand the pollution footprint in industrial zones.

West Virginia

Charleston: Food producers who want to be listed in a state directory have until the end of the week to join the program and be included. The directory will feature the stories of West Virginia Grown members and the things they produce, the state Department of Agriculture said in a news release. It is planned for publication in March. Companies may apply for West Virginia Grown status anytime but must apply by Friday to be included in the printed directory, the state Department of Agriculture said in the release. Members can use the West Virginia Grown logo and are included in Agriculture Department marketing and business reference activities. There is no cost to join, but products must be made in West Virginia or have at least 50% of their value added within the state.

Wisconsin

Madison: Pay raises for state employees are scheduled for a vote next week by a special legislative committee. The panel of legislative leaders is set to meet Dec. 18 to act on the pay plans, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos’s office said Tuesday. The Legislature’s budget committee approved the pay plans, but they must also win approval by another committee comprised of Vos and other legislative leaders. Democrats had been calling on Republicans to set the meeting so the raises can go into effect in January as planned. State workers are slated to receive a 2% general wage increase in each of the next two years. Employees at the University of Wisconsin System and on the Madison campus are also to receive the same increase. Democratic Gov. Tony Evers is also proposing that state employees’ minimum wage be set to $15 an hour starting June 7.

Wyoming

Laramie: The state on Tuesday marked the 150th anniversary of becoming the first government in the U.S. to give women the unrestricted right to vote. Wyoming, whose motto is the Equality State, was still a territory when Gov. John Campbell signed legislation granting women’s suffrage Dec. 10, 1869. The U.S. Constitution had left the issue of suffrage to the states, and Wyoming’s bill passed five decades before the 19th Amendment instituted the right across the U.S. Laramie’s Louisa Gardner Swain became the first woman to vote in a Wyoming election the following year.

From USA TODAY Network and wire reports