Topeka

• The Topeka City Council voted 10-0 to adopt the fiscal year 2027 operating budget, cutting over $10 million while keeping the mill levy flat. →
• Topeka City Manager Robert Perez proposed new sales tax measures for the March 2027 ballot to address a projected $13.3 million deficit. →
• The Topeka Affordable Housing Trust Fund Committee recommended a one-tenth-cent sales tax on the 2027 ballot for housing and homeless aid. →
• Advocacy groups pushed the Topeka City Council to remove market-rate housing incentives from a proposed city sales tax measure. →
• The Topeka City Council voted 8-2 to phase out municipal funding for the USD 501 School Resource Officer program after mid-2027. →
• A man has been charged with murder in connection with the fatal shooting of two men in Topeka's NOTO Arts District. →
• Expect plenty of sunshine across Topeka today with light winds and a warm high of 90°F.

🌾 Kansas

• More than 1,000 people registered to speak at a Sept. 16 hearing on the proposed Project Bluestem data center, prompting Leavenworth County officials to move the meeting to the county fairgrounds in Tonganoxie, where roughly 1,100 people attended. →

• Emporia City Manager Trey Cocking defended the city's High-Volume Drinking Water Policy at a Sept. 16 budget hearing, saying large users can be shut off during drought, as voters prepare to decide a data center ban Nov. 3. →

• A backup power failure at Wichita's main water treatment plant early Sept. 16 knocked out generators and cut system pressure, triggering a boil-water advisory for about 500,000 people and forcing Wichita Public Schools to cancel elementary classes and after-school activities. →

• Four in five respondents to a Kansas Board of Regents-commissioned employer survey released Sept. 16 said they would be confident in graduates earning bachelor's degrees with as few as 90 credit hours instead of 120. →

• Chinese state-owned firms bought about 1 million metric tons of U.S. soybeans over the past week, according to reporting published Sept. 17, pushing U.S. soybean futures to their highest level in nearly three years. →

🇺🇸 US

• The Air Force publicly acknowledged Sept. 14 that it possesses "on-orbit space control weapons" to defend U.S. forces, while space trackers reported that China's Yaogan-50 (02) satellite broke into 43 debris objects in a still-unexplained breakup. →

• The Federal Reserve voted unanimously Sept. 16 to raise its benchmark interest rate a quarter point to 3.75%-4%, its first hike since 2023, with 16 of 18 policymakers projecting at least one more increase this year. →

• House Speaker Mike Johnson canceled the chamber's Thursday session Sept. 16, sending lawmakers home early for a recess through the Nov. 3 midterms and delaying a vote on Rep. Thomas Massie's resolution to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth until November. →

• The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Sept. 16 that GitHub, Microsoft and OpenAI did not violate copyright law by having their AI coding tools generate code without original authors' credit and license notices. →

• The Justice Department announced Sept. 15 that five men face federal charges in Manhattan for allegedly running a Russian intelligence network that organized killings, surveillance and sabotage, including a plot to assassinate a Russian dissident in the U.S. →

Weather

September 17, 2011: Occupy Wall Street Begins

Hundreds of protesters converged on Zuccotti Park in New York City’s Financial District to denounce income inequality and corporate corruption. Their weeks-long encampment popularized the language of the “99 percent” and became a blueprint for decentralized, hashtag-driven activism.

This article was written using our proprietary AI system, Cronkite. The final decision to publish this article was made by a human. For more info, read our AI policy.