Category Archives: Texas

Southern US battles winter freeze as thousands suffer power outage in Texas

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Slick roads have caused at least 10 deaths with thousands of flights canceled since frigid weather set in on Monday

A mess of ice, sleet and snow lingered across much of the southern US on Thursday, as thousands in Texas endured freezing temperatures with no power, including many in the state capital, Austin.

Treacherous driving conditions had resulted in at least 10 deaths on slick roads since Monday, including seven in Texas, two in Oklahoma, and one in Arkansas. The Republican Texas governor, Greg Abbott, urged people not to drive.

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Six dead and more than 250,000 without power as storm hits southern US

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Watches and warnings stretch from Texas to Tennessee and Mississippi, causing traffic delays and flight cancellations

Dangerous road conditions from bands of sleet and snow were blamed for six deaths as a winter storm snarled traffic across parts of the US, forcing the cancelation of flights and leaving hundreds of thousands without power in several southern states.

Watches and warnings stretched from Texas to Tennessee and Mississippi. Several rounds of mixed precipitation, including freezing rain and sleet, were in store for many areas throughout Wednesday, meaning some regions could be hit multiple times, forecasters said.

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Texas national guard soldier shoots and wounds migrant at Mexico border

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Injuries not life-threatening after soldier fires at migrant in the shoulder as he was attempting to detain migrant

A Texas national guard soldier has shot and wounded a migrant in the shoulder along the US-Mexico border.

According to Texas military records reviewed by the Military Times and the Texas Tribune, the soldier fired at the migrant on 15 January as he was attempting to detain the migrant.

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Accused Texas Walmart shooter to plead guilty to federal charges

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Man who allegedly killed 23 people in El Paso in 2019 still faces state-level murder charges and could be sentenced to death

The man who allegedly shot nearly two dozen people to death in a Walmart in Texas in 2019 plans to plead guilty to federal charges after the US government indicated it would not seek the death penalty against him.

Patrick Crusius, nonetheless, still faces state-level murder charges and could be sentenced to death if convicted in the El Paso mass shooting that targeted Mexicans and killed 23 people.

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Elon Musk seeks to move trial out of San Francisco, claiming he can’t get fair trial

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Musk says negative local media coverage of shareholder lawsuit over 2018 Tesla tweet has biased jurors against him

Elon Musk has urged a federal judge to shift a trial in a shareholder lawsuit out of San Francisco because he says negative local media coverage has biased potential jurors against him.

Instead, in a filing submitted late Friday – less than two weeks before the trial was set to begin on 17 January – Musk’s lawyers argue it should be moved to the federal court in the western district of Texas. That district includes the state capital of Austin, which is where Musk relocated his electric car company, Tesla, in late 2021.

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‘It never stops’: killings by US police reach record high in 2022

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Law enforcement killed at least 1,176 people or about 100 people a month last year, making it the deadliest for police violence

US law enforcement killed at least 1,176 people in 2022, making it the deadliest year on record for police violence since experts first started tracking the killings, a new data analysis reveals.

Police across the country killed an average of more than three people a day, or nearly 100 people every month last year according to Mapping Police Violence. The non-profit research group maintains a database of reported deaths at the hands of law enforcement, including people fatally shot, beaten, restrained and Tasered.

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Texas minors need parental approval for federally funded birth control – court

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Trump-appointed judge rules that children must have parental consent for contraception, in state where most abortion is banned

Texans under the age of 18 are now legally required to seek approval from their parent or guardian in order to obtain birth control from federally funded clinics, a federal judge in the state has ruled.

Title X, the federal grant program which was created in 1970 in order to provide family planning and preventive health services, was ruled a violation of state law and parental rights by federal judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in December 2022.

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Texans brace for freezing weather in hopes storm won’t be repeat of 2021

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Experts say temperatures won’t get as cold as 2021 storm, with expected minimum around 10F

Nervous Texans are preparing for a freezing blast of Arctic air on Thursday but it is not predicted to be a repeat of the disastrous winter storm that struck the state in 2021, crippling large parts of the state’s power infrastructure and killing scores of people.

Residents have been warned to brace for extremely cold weather and to stock up on essentials like bottled water and non-perishable foods in case of power outages and food supply chain issues like those experienced during winter storm Uri in February 2021, when millions of Texans were left without power and 246 people died.

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Images of migrants on Texas streets in freezing temperatures spark concern

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One video shows dozens of migrants wrapped in thin blankets as they slept on El Paso streets amid surge of arrivals in city

Images of migrants wrapped in blankets and sleeping on the streets of El Paso in freezing temperatures have raised welfare concerns as they circulated online this week amid a surge of people arriving in the west Texan city.

Over the last few days, thousands of migrants, including many hailing from Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela, huddled along the waters of the Rio Grande, while others waded across the river from El Paso’s sister city on the Mexican side of the border, Ciudad Juarez, to cross into the US.

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‘Surreal spectacle’: US botched 35% of execution attempts this year

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Annual review reveals that seven of the 20 execution attempts carried out this year were visibly problematic

As 2022 draws to a close, a new grim distinction can be attached to it: in America it was the year of the botched execution.

In its annual review of US capital punishment, the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) reveals the astonishing statistic that 35% of the 20 execution attempts carried out this year were visibly problematic.

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Texas attorney general sought data on gender changes to state IDs

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Ken Paxton requested the public safety department for the numbers, but it was never given due to accuracy problems

The office of Republican Texas attorney general Ken Paxton this summer sought data on how many people had changed the gender information on their driver’s licenses, according to a newspaper report published on Wednesday that civil rights attorneys described as worrying.

The Washington Post reported that public records obtained by the newspaper do not indicate why Paxton’s office made the request to the Texas department of public safety (DPS). The head of the driver’s license division told colleagues in June to compile the “total number of changes from male to female and female to male for the last 24 months”.

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US National Weather Services warns of ‘widespread’ winter storm hazards

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More than 15 million people under winter advisory while several areas in midwest and Great Plains face intense snowstorms

More than 15 million people are under a winter advisory as of Tuesday, as several areas in the midwest and Great Plains face intense snowstorms, Axios reported.

Storm warnings are in effect across a dozen states, including parts of Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska, Montana and South Dakota.

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Man charged with threatening doctor for providing care to trans patients

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Matthew Jordan Lindner of Texas is alleged to have harassed and threatened to kill a doctor at Fenway Institute center in Boston

A Texas man has been charged with threatening a Boston doctor for providing medical care to transgender patients and gender-nonconforming children.

On Friday, the US attorney’s office in Massachusetts said Matthew Jordan Lindner, 38 and from Comfort, Texas, was arrested and charged with one count of transmitting interstate threats.

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Suspect arrested in killing of rapper Takeoff, say Houston police

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Authorities announce that member of Migos, who was shot at a bowling alley last month, was ‘an innocent bystander’

A suspect has been arrested and charged with murder in the killing of Takeoff, the rapper and member of Migos, at a bowling alley in Houston last month.

Announcing the news on Friday, Houston police said Takeoff, who was 28 and whose birth name was Kirshnik Khari Ball, was “an innocent bystander”.

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One dead, dozens injured after tornadoes rip through Texas, Arkansas and Oklahoma

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‘Total destruction’ and dozens of people still unaccounted for in Texas town while Arkansas and Oklahoma also hit by tornadoes

At least two people have died and dozens more are injured after tornadoes ravaged parts of Texas, Arkansas and Oklahoma.

Several twisters caused property damage and physical injury across the various states on Friday. Tornado warnings had still been in effect as of late Friday in parts of Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Missouri.

Ramon Antonio Vargas contributed reporting.

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Judge dismisses fraud case against Texas man who waited seven hours to vote

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Hervis Rogers, who drew national praise, was arrested by state attorney general Ken Paxton for voting illegally while on parole

A Texas judge has dismissed voter fraud charges against Hervis Rogers, the Houston man who drew national attention – and praise – for waiting seven hours in line to vote in the March 2020 presidential primary.

Rogers, who is Black, became a symbol of tenacity when news of the circumstances surrounding his voting experience surfaced. He stuck around – despite working two jobs, including one beginning at 6am – and was among the last, potentially the last, Texas resident to vote, according to KERA news.

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Texas sues Google for allegedly using people’s faces and voices without consent

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Google collected biometric data ‘from innumerable Texans’ and used faces and voices to serve commercial ends, complaint says

Texas is suing tech giant Google for allegedly collecting biometric data of millions of Texans without obtaining proper consent, the attorney general’s office said in a statement on Thursday.

In its complaint, Texas says that companies operating in the state have been barred for more than a decade from collecting people’s faces, voices or other biometric data without advanced, informed consent.

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‘I was too close’: Texas woman gored by bison shares video to warn hikers

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Video posted by Rebecca Clark shows her point of view as she tries to gingerly walk past bison during hike in Caprock Canyons park

A woman in Texas who recorded a cellphone video of herself surviving getting gored by a bison has admonished fellow hikers about the perils of too closely encountering such an immense animal.

Rebecca Clark was on a solo hike in Caprock Canyons park, home of Texas’s state bison herd, when she came across a group of the massive bovines grazing a few feet away from the trail.

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Fired Texas police officer charged over shooting of teen in fast-food parking lot

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James Brennand, 25, charged with aggravated assault after shooting of Erik Cantu, 17, at McDonald’s in San Antonio

A now-former San Antonio police officer was charged on Tuesday with two counts of aggravated assault by a peace officer for shooting and gravely wounding a teen eating a hamburger in his car in a McDonald’s parking lot. The teen had begun driving away when the officer opened fire.

James Brennand, 25, was charged in the 2 October shooting of Erik Cantu, 17, according to a police statement. He turned himself in to police on Tuesday night and remained in custody, said the police chief, William McManus.

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