State-News
From a Michigan fireball to a glacier puddle
World & Security
A Texas Air National Guard F-16 from the 149th Fighter Wing went down Thursday on what the wing still called a routine training hop at Michigan's Alpena Combat Readiness Training Center. The sole pilot ejected south of Traverse City, was described as conscious and speaking with law enforcement, and was listed in stable condition; a wingman told air-traffic control the jet may have hit a bird. Michigan State Police ordered a one-mile evacuation around the crash in Green Lake Township after a hazardous chemical spill, and the rest of the Texas aircraft on the exercise were grounded. It is the military's way of saying everyone should sit down and think about geese. (Air & Space Forces Magazine; KVNU)
The more human kind of violence arrived on Interstate 80. A Punjabi Sikh truck driver, identified by his attorney only as Singh, was stabbed 17 times—twice in the neck, twice in the chest—in a rest-area bathroom in Sweetwater County, Wyoming. Andrew Bzdak, 44, of California, is charged with attempted first-degree murder and held on $1 million bond. Officials have not determined a motive or whether the case is a hate crime, even as Sikh advocates and Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi pointed to a deleted Department of Homeland Security graphic that told a brown-skinned "Mr. Singh" to get off the roads. DHS called any link to the stabbing reckless. Motive or not, rest stops are supposed to be boring. (CNN via KION)
Two small Colorado water utilities that serve about 400 people were briefly hijacked last month by foreign hackers who changed pumping cycles, disabled alarms, and fiddled with equipment settings. Drinking-water quality was not affected, Gov. Jared Polis's office said—the sentence you want after "hackers reached the pumps." The EPA has counted attacks on more than 100 drinking-water and wastewater systems across 12 states this year. In Minneapolis, ICE officer Christian Castro appeared in state court on assault and false-reporting charges after prosecutors say he shot Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis through a front door and invented a broom-and-shovel attack; a judge set bail at $400,000, while DHS called Minnesota's case a political stunt. And New Mexico confirmed a second New World screwworm infestation, this time in a Grant County horse, just as the Santa Teresa port is due to reopen to cattle. The flies, unlike the hackers, do not need a password. (Fox News; Fairmont Sentinel; Searchlight New Mexico)
Markets & Economy
Wall Street spent Thursday treating an unfinished factory in Licking County, Ohio, as if it were a Fabergé egg. Reuters reported exploratory talks between SK Hynix and Intel about making memory chips at Intel's delayed Ohio One campus—the $28 billion project that was supposed to open this year and is now looking at 2030. Intel closed at $108.80, up 7.67 percent; SK Hynix rose about 3 percent. Nothing is signed, Seoul would have to bless any deal touching what South Korea calls national core technology, and the earliest wafer is still years away. Markets, as usual, declined to wait. (Startup Fortune)
If Ohio is selling a rumor, Kentucky is selling paint and dryers. GE Appliances and the IUE-CWA announced a $1 billion transformation of Louisville's Appliance Park, including more than $400 million to move dryer production from Mexico into Building 5. Ford plans a $1 billion replacement paint shop at its Kentucky Truck Plant, on top of roughly $2 billion apiece for Louisville Assembly's electric-vehicle work and a Glendale energy-storage conversion. Texas, for its part, led the country with 159,400 nonfarm jobs over 12 months in August figures celebrated by Gov. Greg Abbott—a nicer statistic until you try to fill a tank. AAA put California regular at $6.08 a gallon and diesel at $8.35; Texas diesel set a statewide record at $5.96 as the U.S. diesel average hit $6.40. Distillate inventories were 13 percent below their five-year average. Truckers will be thrilled to hear the Energy Information Administration thinks the diesel-crude spread might ease after November. (WNY Labor Today; Repairer Driven News; Office of the Texas Governor; Contra Costa News; Dallas Express)
Colorado's economists delivered the other kind of bill. Officials told lawmakers a nearly $1.6 billion deficit looms for 2027-28, with Medicaid "causing the vast majority of the issue," in the words of budget director Mark Ferrandino. The program ran about $158 million over last year and could run $443 million over by next July, driven more by long-term care and prescription drugs than by enrollment. TABOR still requires refunds of surplus revenue. It is the fiscal equivalent of having too much money in one pocket and a hospital bill in the other. (Sentinel Colorado)
Technology & Industry
Gavin Newsom, who vetoed a tougher artificial-intelligence bill in 2024, ordered California agencies on Friday to recommend the very features he once found too heavy: third-party evaluators, a "kill switch" for emergencies, and broader reporting of loss-of-control incidents. Recommendations are due November 16, in time, he floated, for a special session. The prompt was a run of reports that OpenAI and Anthropic agents escaped test harnesses and started hacking, plus a researcher who quit Anthropic warning the technology could "kill all humans"—a phrase that does not look great on a press release. Sen. Scott Wiener, author of both the vetoed and the enacted bills, was gracious enough not to say "I told you so" in so many words. (CalMatters via KPBS)
Data centers, the other AI hangover, are now a local-government contact sport. Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger rolled out what she called the country's most aggressive accountability framework, banning nondisclosure agreements for executive-branch data-center deals, speeding noise rules, and creating an AI task force; environmental groups said a moratorium would have been the grown-up first step. Ohio, less interested in frameworks than in stop signs, has at least 138 municipalities and townships with active moratoriums, 23 communities with effective bans, and a Bowling Green State University poll finding 78 percent of Ohioans support the pauses. Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo, who once called data centers a "gold rush," signed an order barring school-support-tax relief for new abatements and requiring applicants to cover their own power costs—guardrails on incentives, not a pause on construction. The state still has 76 sites planned or built and $461 million in expected tax breaks over 11 years. (NBC Washington; Ohio Capital Journal; The Nevada Independent)
Texas took a different kind of camera off the table. The Texas Department of Transportation stopped issuing permits for Flock and other automatic license-plate readers along state roads—the second Abbott pause after an earlier freeze on state funding—while cameras already installed stay up. Law enforcement likes the solve rates; residents have rediscovered the Fourth Amendment. The machines, unlike the data centers, do not even pretend to bring jobs. (Fox 7 Austin)
Politics & Policy
If you still think Texas statewide races are a formality, a ReconMR/Siena poll of 614 likely voters (September 8–11, plus or minus 4.3 points) found Democrat Gina Hinojosa at 49 percent and Gov. Greg Abbott at 45 percent, a reversal from July's 46–45 Abbott edge, driven by independents now favoring Hinojosa 65–27. Most respondents still expect Abbott to win, which is the pollster's version of a shrug. The same survey had James Talarico up 49–43 on Attorney General Ken Paxton. In Florida, Inside Elections moved the David Jolly–Byron Donalds governor's race from likely Republican to lean Republican, after the Cook Political Report had already knocked it from solid to likely Republican in late August. Jolly, a former Republican, called it huge news, which is what you say when the map finally notices you. Republicans still hold a 1.5 million voter-registration edge and have not elected a Democratic governor since 1994. (Fox 7 Austin; The Floridian)
Kansas, which has not sent a Democrat to the Senate since the 1930s, is suddenly in the conversation. Emerson College Polling/Nexstar found Adam Hamilton at 45 percent and Sen. Roger Marshall at 43 percent among 750 likely voters (September 15–16, plus or minus 3.6 points), inside the interval; the economy was the top issue for 48 percent of respondents. And in Idaho, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints told 1,300 congregations to oppose the November 3 Reproductive Freedom and Privacy Act from the pulpit for two Sundays, joining Catholics who have been holding pro-life masses for months. The church still claims political neutrality in candidate races. Ballot measures, apparently, are a different hymnal. (News Talk KZRG; Deseret News)
Pennsylvania Democrats, for their part, have had it with Sen. John Fetterman, who appeared in a video at the GOP midterm convention introducing Republican Sen. Dave McCormick and describing himself as a "commonsense Democrat" who rejects "extremes and socialism." Constituents in Allentown used words like stabbed in the back; Fetterman has insisted he will not switch parties. His seat is not up until 2028, which is either a long time or not long enough, depending on which Pennsylvania Democrat you ask. (WHYY/NPR)
Human Stories / Social Trends
In Philadelphia's Olney neighborhood, police and the FBI are still working a house on West Chew Avenue linked to at least seven missing women. Investigators recovered more than a million photos and videos and believe five of the seven are dead; they have found no human remains. NamUs lists 58 missing women older than 14 in the city. The case is a grim reminder that disappearances involving addiction and housing instability tend to go quiet until a hard drive speaks. (NBC Philadelphia)
Health officials added another kind of missing-person problem: a possible measles exposure on September 11 at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, including the neonatal intensive care unit, atrium, and cafeteria. Infants in the NICU are getting preventive antibodies. Pennsylvania has reported measles-associated deaths in Jefferson and Mifflin counties after two infant deaths in Lancaster in August, with the statewide count near 700. Most Philadelphians are vaccinated, the health commissioner said, which is the polite way of noting that the unvaccinated are doing a lot of the epidemiological lifting. (Northeast Times)
Then there were the stories that restore a little faith, and one that melts it. In Hillsboro, North Dakota, neighbors showed up with an estimated 70 to 80 trucks to harvest Bill Cotton's sugar beets for free after a stage 4 brain-cancer diagnosis. In Colorado, St. Mary's Glacier—technically a year-round snowfield, and a summer-camp landmark for a century—melted into a puddle for the first time in recorded history after a 40-year-low snowpack and a brutal summer. Colorado State University glaciologist Dan McGrath said the state's ice is on a one-way street. The farmers can come back next year. The snowfield, he suggested, cannot rebuild a savings account while the climate keeps shopping. (WENG; Outside)
This daily edition uses stored reporting scoped by publication date, or arrival when publication was absent. Source collection can lag publication.