Salina

• The Salina City Commission will vote on a $12.66 million bond sale and a $3.2 million contract for municipal landfill upgrades. →
• The Saline County Board of Commissioners approved $70,000 in fully grant-funded change orders for Senior Services facility improvements. →
• The Saline County Board of Commissioners is facilitating talks between Gypsum and Salina libraries to lower service costs for taxpayers. →
• Salina Police arrested Delfina Cerda Soto for child endangerment after her unsupervised 3-year-old was found walking in a street. →
• Salina Police arrested Jermarion Polk, 19, after he allegedly crashed a stolen car in Salina, fled the scene, and ran from officers. →
• Expect a mostly sunny and breezy Friday in Salina with a high near 92°F and south-southwest winds gusting up to 24 mph.

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🌾 Kansas

• Gov. Laura Kelly said finalizing a long-term water resources plan with dedicated funding remains a top priority before she leaves office in January 2027, as the Ogallala Aquifer's decline puts more than 100 Kansas communities at risk of running out of water within 25 years. →

• Bell Textron announced June 4 layoffs cutting 285 employees — roughly 3% of its workforce — across plants in Wichita, Fort Worth and Amarillo, citing federal budget uncertainty weeks after opening a new Wichita assembly center for the Army's MV-75 Cheyenne II. →

• Former Coldwater Mayor Joe Ceballos, who pleaded guilty to three counts of disorderly election conduct and surrendered to ICE, was released from Chase County jail June 4 after a $3,000 bond was approved, as his attorney fights separately to preserve his green card. →

• Pharmacy technicians at the University of Kansas Health System are demanding a review of 37 late-arriving mail-in ballots after losing their union election by two votes, with 31 workers filing sworn affidavits stating they mailed ballots before the deadline. →

• The Kansas Department of Agriculture is briefing ranchers after USDA confirmed the first U.S. New World screwworm case in decades in a South Texas calf June 4, with no Kansas cases confirmed but state officials monitoring the situation closely. →

🇺🇸 US

• The Senate passed a $70 billion immigration funding bill on a 52-47 vote, with Sen. Lisa Murkowski the only Republican to oppose the measure, which now heads to the House. →

• Anthropic called on AI labs to consider slowing development, warning that its models are approaching "recursive self-improvement" and disclosing that Claude authored more than 80% of the company's code as of May 2026. →

• Senior U.S. officials have held preliminary discussions with major AI companies about the federal government acquiring equity stakes in their firms, with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman described as an early proponent of the concept. →

• Columbia University scientists used base editing to replace individual genetic letters in human embryo DNA with what they describe as unprecedented accuracy, raising both medical promise and ethical concerns about embryo engineering. →

• Commercial satellite imagery from Colorado-based Vantor has cut the time needed to locate and strike Russian assets by as much as 90%, delivering near-real-time intelligence directly to Ukrainian soldiers' devices. →

Weather

JUNE 5, 2013: EDWARD SNOWDEN DISCLOSES U.S. GOVERNMENT SURVEILLANCE PROGRAMS

On this day, former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked documents revealing extensive U.S. government surveillance of phone and internet communications, including data from major tech companies under the Prism program. The disclosures sparked sharply polarized reactions, with some Americans hailing him as a whistleblower defending civil liberties and others condemning him as a traitor who endangered national security. Facing criminal charges, Snowden fled the United States and ultimately received asylum in Russia, where he has remained in effective exile.

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