Topeka

• The Topeka City Council unanimously approved a 12-month moratorium on new data centers and large battery energy storage systems. →
• The Topeka City Council voted to notify Shawnee County of its intent to exceed the revenue neutral rate for the 2027 budget. →
• Topeka City Manager Robert Perez proposed a 2027 budget freezing 19 vacant police officer and 10 firefighter positions to offset a deficit. →
• The Topeka City Council approved notifying Shawnee County of the Topeka Metro Transit Authority's intent to increase its mill levy rate. →
• The Topeka City Council approved housing action plans to secure $2.4 million in federal grants for residential rehab and homeless services. →
• The Topeka City Council voted 7-3 to allow affordable housing developers to stack local permit fee waivers with county or state incentives. →
• The City of Topeka finalized the $1 million sale of Hotel Topeka, placing the proceeds into the debt service fund to pay off bonds. →
• After some patchy morning fog clears out before 9 a.m., we're looking at a beautiful, sunny Wednesday with a high near 92°F and just a light breeze.

🌾 Kansas

• Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly denied clemency July 14 to Reginald and Jonathan Carr, keeping the death-row brothers eligible for execution over the 2000 Wichita massacre. →

• Panasonic Energy began mass production of lithium-ion battery cells July 14 at its roughly $4 billion De Soto, Kansas, plant, the largest economic development project in state history. →

• Kansas counties began mailing advance ballots and opening in-person early voting July 15 ahead of the Aug. 4 primary, which includes a wide-open governor's race. →

• Textron Aviation completed a 57,000-square-foot expansion of its flight-test hangar in east Wichita this summer to speed testing of the Cessna SkyCourier and Beechcraft Denali. →

• Former Kansas Jayhawks guard Lagerald Vick was charged with attempted first-degree murder after allegedly shooting a man in the back at a July 4 party in Memphis. →

🇺🇸 US

• ICE temporarily suspended most vehicle stops nationwide Tuesday for additional officer training after federal agents fatally shot two immigrants in separate vehicle stops within a week. →

• Consumer prices fell 0.4% in June, dropping the annual inflation rate to 3.5% from 4.2% in May as energy prices posted their steepest monthly decline since April 2020. →

• President Donald Trump said he will deliver a prime-time address at 9 p.m. Thursday focused in part on U.S. election security and voting machines. →

• New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed an executive order Tuesday establishing what the state calls the nation's first statewide moratorium on new hyperscale data centers, pausing discretionary permits for up to a year. →

• President Donald Trump threatened Tuesday to order U.S. strikes on Iran's power plants and bridges next week unless Tehran resumes negotiations, as the U.S. restarted its naval blockade of Iranian ports. →

Weather

JULY 15, 2006: TWITTER LAUNCHES AS A DIGITAL PRINTING PRESS FOR THE MASSES

Twitter’s launch turned any mobile phone into a pocket-sized publishing press, letting ordinary people broadcast short messages to the world in real time. Like the printing press shattered the monopoly of scribes and elites over written communication, Twitter weakened gatekeepers in media and politics by enabling direct, unfiltered speech. Its legacy is a new information ecosystem in which news, social movements and cultural moments can ignite and spread globally in seconds, for better and for worse. 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.