Category Archives: Texas

US labor department condemns surge in child labor after teen dies on the job

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Duvan Tomas Perez killed at slaughterhouse while department found 4,474 children working illegally since start of fiscal year

The US Department of Labor has decried a national surge in child labor as the agency has found thousands of violations and is currently investigating the death of a 16-year-old boy from Guatemala, Duvan Tomas Perez, who was killed on the job at a slaughterhouse this month in Mississippi, reported the New York Times.

Two other 16-year-olds have died on the job in the US this year. Michael Schuls was killed on 29 June while working for a sawmill in Wisconsin. He was attempting to unjam a wood stacking machine when he was caught and pinned by the conveyor belt. Will Hampton was died in Missouri on 8 June while working at a landfill when he was pinned between a tractor trailer rig and its trailer.

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Texas professor suspended hours after criticizing lieutenant general in lecture

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Joy Alonzo accused by student of disparaging Dan Patrick in lecture on opioid crisis at Texas A&M University

The Texas A&M University professor Joy Alonzo criticized the Texas lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, during a visiting lecture in March 2023 on the opioid crisis at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas.

Just hours later, Alonzo learned a student accused her of disparaging Patrick during the lecture. The complaint reached her supervisors and the chancellor of Texas A&M, John Sharp, who was in communication directly with the lieutenant governor’s office.

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DoJ sues Texas governor over refusal to remove anti-migrant buoys from river

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Move is the latest in a growing political spat between Greg Abbott and Biden administration over immigration

The US Department of Justice has sued the Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, over his refusal to remove a floating barrier placed on the Rio Grande to stop migrants entering the US from Mexico.

The move is the latest in a growing political spat between Abbott and the Biden administration, heightened by Republican attempts to scaremonger over immigration as the 2024 presidential election looms.

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‘Not acceptable’: Texas lawmaker speaks on reports of inhumane border tactics

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Tony Gonzales said governor Greg Abbott is ‘doing everything he can’ at the US-Mexico border despite justice department backlash

A Texas Republican representative, Tony Gonzales, has called the current tactics used to deter migrants at the US-Mexico border “not acceptable” and urged the Biden administration and Congress to focus more heavily on legal immigration.

In an interview with CBS’s Face The Nation on Sunday, Gonzales, whose 23rd district in Texas includes 800 miles of the US-Mexico border, said that the border crisis “has been anything but humane” and called recent reports of Texas troopers allegedly pushing small children and nursing babies back into the Rio Grande “not acceptable”.

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Fifth bus of asylum seekers arrives in Los Angeles from Texas

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Bus was carrying 44 people hailing from Colombia, China, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela, including 14 children

A fifth bus of asylum seekers from Texas arrived in Los Angeles on Saturday as part of Texas governor Greg Abbott’s plans to transport migrants away from Texas.

On Saturday, Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass’s office announced that the bus – the fifth one to arrive in the city since 14 June – arrived at around 11.30am at Union Station.

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Hot streak: US heatwaves lasting longer as record temperatures bake south-west

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Phoenix and Californian town of Needles experiencing 70th day in which temperatures have reached 90F

A brutal heatwave is persisting throughout much of the US, with cities across the south-west reaching all-time records for hottest consecutive days. Intense heatwaves are becoming more frequent as a result of the climate crisis, but alarmingly, these streaks of hot days are also lasting longer.

People living in cities in Arizona, California and Texas are entering their second month of days in which the temperature reaches 90F (32.2C) and above. Cities such as Phoenix, and Needles in California, have had no relief from this extreme heat in the past 70 days, with Phoenix recently experiencing three consecutive weeks of temperatures reaching 110F (43.3C) and above.

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Texas trooper says they were told to push children into Rio Grande and deny migrants water

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Trooper employed by Greg Abbott’s initiative expressed concern over ‘inhumane’ actions, in email reviewed by the Guardian

Texas troopers employed by Greg Abbott’s border patrol initiative were instructed to push children into the Rio Grande and deny migrants water in extreme heat, according to emails sent by a state employee.

Nicholas Wingate, a trooper-medic from the state’s department of public safety expressed concern over “inhumane” actions towards migrants in a 3 July email to supervisors and reveals other unreported incidents involving migrants, the Houston Chronicle first reported.

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Severe US weather: California heat puts firefighters on high alert for wildfires; Canada wildfires cause air quality alerts in US midwest – as it happened

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Extreme dry conditions raising fire risk; air quality alert for Minnesota took effect at 8am on Friday

Vermont governor Phil Scott said his formal request to President Joe Biden for a major disaster declaration has been approved.

The major disaster declaration unlocks federal disaster funds to assist individuals and communities recover from the devastating floods earlier this week.

The disaster declaration provides federal support for recovery. It’s separate from, and in addition to, the federal emergency declaration the president already signed when he was overseas to help with the initial emergency phase.

It’s incredibly important to get flooded homes, businesses and public buildings as dry as possible to prevent other outcomes like mould. We’re working on resources to help with that.

I’m very grateful for the speed of Fema in the White House. It will open up significant federal resources for communities, individuals, businesses [...] In anticipation of these funds, we are working to develop a concrete list of resources to help impacted Vermonters and making sure it’s as easy as possible for Vermonters to access those.

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Severe thunderstorm warning for parts of Vermont, New York, Vermont and Ohio Valley – live

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Latest storm warning comes just days after areas of Vermont and New York were hit with flash flooding, raising concerns over more damage

Meterologist Ben Frechette from NBC5 reported that a tornado risk is going up slightly in north-eastern NewYork state:

As some parts of the US are sweltering, Vermont was bracing for more rain on Thursday.

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Elizabeth Holmes’ 11-year prison sentence shortened by two years

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Release date changed to 2032, records show, but reasons for change are unclear

Elizabeth Holmes’ prison sentence was quietly shortened by two years, new records show.

An update to Holmes’ profile on the website of the Bureau of Prisons now projects her release date as 12 December 2032, two years sooner than initially scheduled. A spokesman for the federal agency confirmed the update but said he could not comment further citing “privacy, safety, and security reasons” for inmates.

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Gunman who killed 23 in racist attack at Texas Walmart given 90 life sentences

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Police say the shooter drove more than 700 miles from his home to target Hispanic people with an AK-style assault rifle at the store

A white gunman who killed 23 people in a racist attack on Hispanic shoppers at a Walmart in a Texas border city was sentenced on Friday to 90 consecutive life sentences but could still face more punishment, including the death penalty.

Patrick Crusius, 24, pleaded guilty earlier this year to nearly 50 federal hate crime charges in the 2019 mass shooting in El Paso, making it one of the US government’s largest hate crime cases.

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Fourth of July overshadowed by 16 mass shootings across US

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Fifteen people were killed and 94 injured across 13 states as well as Washington DC

From the nation’s capital to Fort Worth, Texas, from Florin, California, in the west to the Bronx, New York, in the east, the Fourth of July long weekend in the US was overshadowed by 16 mass shootings in which 15 people were killed and nearly 100 injured.

The Gun Violence Archive, an authoritative database on gun violence in America, calculated the grim tally using its definition of a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people excluding the shooter are killed or injured by firearms.

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Biden decries gun violence as shootings across US mar Fourth of July festivities

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At least 15 people shot dead across the country in mass shootings so far on the holiday weekend celebrating the US’s independence

A long holiday weekend of bloodshed has intensified after a heavily armed gunman in a bulletproof vest opened fire on the streets of Philadelphia on the eve of Fourth of July celebrations, in yet another mass shooting in the US, killing five people and wounding two boys before surrendering to the police.

Across the country, Texas was entering the holiday to news that another shooting had killed three people, in Fort Worth, occurring just before midnight amid a gathering in a parking lot that also wounded eight.

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Houston teen who went missing in 2015 is found alive in city

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Rudy Farias was found lying on the ground in front of a church, with his whereabouts for the past eight years still unknown

A Texas man who went missing as a teenager in 2015 after last being seen walking his dogs in Houston has been found alive, his family and police said on Monday.

Police and firefighters found Rudolph “Rudy” Farias IV around 10pm on Thursday after getting a call about a person lying on the ground in front of a church in south-east Houston, a police spokesman, John Cannon, said.

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Millions swelter under extreme heat as climate crisis tightens grip on US – live

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Heat dome of high pressure hovers over Louisiana, Texas and Oklahoma as thousands remain without power in Chicago with heavy rains knocking down trees and power lines

The heating of the earth’s atmosphere and oceans by the burning of fossil fuels made the current extreme heatwave across the us at least five times more likely, according to a recent analysis by Climate Central, a climate science non-profit.

The rolling heatwave marks the latest in a series of recent extreme “heat dome” events that have scorched various parts of the world.

If you have this sort of high-pressure system sitting stationary over a region, you can have these really impressive heatwaves.

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Another bus with dozens of migrants from Texas arrives in Los Angeles

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Bus with 41 people, including 11 children who were with families, was welcomed by collective of faith and immigrants’ rights groups

Another bus carrying asylum seekers arrived in downtown Los Angeles from a Texas border city early on Saturday, the second such transport in less than three weeks.

The bus, which arrived at about 12.40pm at Los Angeles’s Union Station from Brownsville, Texas, held 41 people including 11 children who were with their families, according to a statement from the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights in Los Angeles (Chirla).

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US temperatures continue to rise as millions affected by extreme heat and wildfire smoke – as it happened

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East coast cities under air quality alerts while southern states grapple with record-breaking deadly heatwave

Here are some pictures coming across the newswires of the heatwave in Texas:

The National Weather Service has issued a fireworks warning as the country heads into next week and Independence Day with record-breaking temperatures across the country.

“In addition to the increasing temperatures, fire danger will also be increasing as we head into next week and Independence Day. Please be safe with fireworks and review any and all burn bans in your area,” it said.

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‘It’s become unbearable’: Texas workers toil through extreme heatwave

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Many employees in Texas have no heat protections and work in intense and prolonged sun exposure, which causes heat illness

Last week as the heat dome scorched Texas, Gloria Machuca arrived for work at a McDonald’s in Houston to find the air conditioning wasn’t working. The temperature inside the restaurant was similar to the temperature outside – at least 90F. It was 7.30am..

Temperatures would rise another 10 degrees that day but already, Machuca said, the intense heat was making her eyes burn. She and five of her co-workers walked out on their jobs.

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Texas grand jury declines to indict Travis Scott over deadly festival crush

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Rapper, promoter Live Nation and others had been investigated after 10 died and thousands were injured at Astroworld in 2021

A Texas grand jury has declined to indict the rapper Travis Scott in a criminal investigation into a massive crowd surge that killed 10 people at the 2021 Astroworld music festival in Houston, his attorney said on Thursday.

Lawyer Kent Schaffer confirmed that the grand jury had met and decided not to indict his client on any criminal charges stemming from the concert. Schaffer said he was not sure what charges the grand jury had considered.

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Solar helps Texas carry energy load as heatwave puts power grid to test

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State has managed to avoid rolling blackouts amid three-digit temperatures thanks to its supply of solar power, experts say

As a deadly, record-breaking heatwave puts Texas’ grid to the test, renewable power sources are helping the state maintain energy reliability, contrary to some of the state’s lawmakers claims that clean energy is less reliable.

Texas has for more than two weeks been blanketed by an oppressive heat dome, and federal forecasters say there is “no end in sight”. The sweltering temperatures have forced people to stay in their homes with their air conditioners cranked, causing energy demand to soar to record levels.

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