Texas wildfires cause chaos as largest blaze in state history scorches 1.2m acres

Governor issues disaster declaration as emergency crews work to contain dozens of wildfires burning across Texas Panhandle

Dozens of wildfires are causing chaos across the Texas Panhandle as the Smokehouse Creek fire – now the largest blaze in state history – grew to more than 1mn acres on Thursday, even as a dusting of snow brought a measure of relief.

At least two people have died, according to officials. The second victim, confirmed by the Texas department of public safety Thursday afternoon, has been identified as Cindy Owens, a 40-year-old woman who was reportedly overtaken by the fire when she got out of her truck in the town of Canadian. The first, 83-year-old grandmother Joyce Blankenship, was killed in her neighborhood of Stinnett, north-east of Amarillo.

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Texas wildfires: nuclear weapons factory shuts down amid evacuations

Unseasonably warm temperatures, strong winds and dry grasses fuel Smokehouse Creek fire, the largest in the state

The main facility that assembles and disassembles America’s nuclear arsenal shut down its operations on Tuesday night as fires raged out of control in Texas.

Pantex issued a statement online saying it had paused operations until further notice. “The fire near Pantex is not contained,” the company said. “Response efforts have shifted to evacuations. There is a small number of non-essential personnel sheltered on-site.”

Since 1975, Pantex has been the US main assembly and disassembly site for its atomic bombs. It assembled the last new bomb in 1991. In the time since, it has dismantled thousands of weapons. Pantex is located 30 miles (48km) east of Amarillo.

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Texas’s San Antonio airport will get a 420lb autonomous security robot

City council approves year-long contract with Knightscope to rent a K5 robot to respond to door alarms at the airport

An autonomous robot is due to become the latest addition to San Antonio International Airport’s security apparatus.

Following a 7 to 3 vote on Thursday by the San Antonio city council, city officials approved a year-long contract with Knightscope, a California-based developer of autonomous security robots, to rent its K5 robot for $21,000.

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Texas earthquake of 4.7 magnitude largest of 30 in area in past three weeks

No immediate reports of major damage or injuries after quake struck at 12.32am about 45 miles south-east of San Antonio

An earthquake of 4.7 magnitude that struck early Saturday morning near a small Texas city – one of several earthquakes that have occurred in the area in recent days – could be felt dozens of miles away, including in San Antonio.

There were no immediate reports of major damage or injuries from the earthquake, which struck at 12.32am and was centered about 2 miles (3km) south-east of Falls City, according to the United States Geological Survey. Falls City, which has a population of about 500 people, is about 45 miles (72km) south-east of San Antonio.

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Boy injured in Osteen church shooting lost ‘portion of his frontal lobe’

Samuel Moreno-Carranza’s grandmother posted about boy’s condition, who was injured when police killed the shooter – his mother

A boy who was shot in the head at celebrity Joel Osteen’s Houston megachurch on 11 February has lost “a portion of his frontal lobe” while recovering at the hospital, according to his grandmother.

In a Facebook post three days after the shooting, Walli Carranza said her seven-year-old grandson – Samuel Moreno-Carranza – “has lost a major part of what makes us who we are” after “half of his right skull [had] to be surgically removed during two surgeries done in less than 24 hours”. Samuel had endured “cardiac arrest multiple times, and no one can determine whether he has significant brain activity because his scalp tissue is too friable” to let doctors attach electroencephalogram wires to him, Carranza added in a post that doubled as a criticism of the US’s lack of meaningful gun control.

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Houston: suspect killed and two injured in shooting at Joel Osteen megachurch

Police chief Troy Finner says unclear whether five-year-old boy wounded in incident was struck by officers who shot at attacker

A shooter with a rifle was killed by two off-duty police officers and a child was critically wounded at a Houston megachurch run by the prominent evangelical Christian pastor Joel Osteen, the city’s police chief said.

Troy Finner said it was not clear whether the boy, five, was struck by the officers who returned fire after the shooter, wearing a trenchcoat, entered Osteen’s Lakewood church with the boy shortly before 2pm and began shooting.

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Texas man who drugged wife with abortion drug given 180 days in jail

Houston attorney Mason Herring pleaded guilty to two charges for spiking then pregnant wife’s drinks to induce abortion

A Texas man who drugged his wife’s drinks in an attempt to induce an abortion was sentenced to 180 days in jail and 10 years on probation.

Mason Herring, a 39-year-old Houston attorney, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to injury to a child and assault of a pregnant person. He had initially been charged with felony assault to induce abortion.

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‘It’s scratching, dude’: US Coast Guard inspectors rescue stowaway dog from shipping container

During a routine day at the Port of Houston, four marine inspectors heard barking from amid 10,000 containers

It was just another routine day of inspecting shipping containers at the Port of Houston for US Coast Guard officer Ryan McMahon when he and his team thought they heard barking coming from inside one of the thousands of containers that surrounded them.

“Oh, it’s scratching, dude,” one of the inspectors said on a video they recorded Wednesday morning as the team looked up at the container, stacked about 25ft (8 metres) in the air.

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Fight over border intensifies as Texas governor pledges more razor wire

Greg Abbott says he will defy Biden and US supreme court and install more concertina wire to try to prevent migrant crossings

The fight between Texas and the federal government over the control of the US-Mexico border has further intensified after state governor Greg Abbott announced he will defy the Biden administration and US supreme court by ordering the installation of even more razor wire to deter migration.

On Monday, the supreme court voted 5-4 in favor of the federal government’s power to remove the controversial concertina wire installed along stretches of the border in Texas, at Abbott’s direction. Despite this, Abbott, a hard-right Republican, is intensifying his plans to try and fence off parts of the US border with Mexico.

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Families condemn Koch brothers over ploy to avoid asbestos compensation

Georgia-Pacific, owned by Koch Industries, employ controversial legal tactic to circumvent paying millions to sickened workers

Asbestos victims, their families and attorneys are claiming a Koch Industries-owned company and its lawyers are using a controversial bankruptcy maneuver to avoid paying millions in compensation to its former employees.

Workers at Georgia-Pacific, a paper and building products company, have been locked in a years-long battle with a company over claims asbestos in its products caused fatal cancers.

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New York mayor sues bus operators that brought migrants from Texas for $708m

Lawsuit announced by Eric Adams says 17 bus companies violated state law by transporting 33,000 people to the city

New York City has sued 17 charter bus companies that transported migrants from Texas, the mayor, Eric Adams, announced on Thursday.

The lawsuit, filed in New York state court in Manhattan, says the city is seeking $708m from the firms because that was the cost it incurred to house the migrants and provide services to them over the past two years.

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US Department of Justice sues Texas over new state immigration law

Suit is aimed at stopping a law allowing police to detain people suspected of crossing the US border without authorization

The US Department of Justice has sued Texas and its Republican governor, Greg Abbott, to block a new and controversial state immigration law from going into effect.

After threatening the state with legal action after last year’s passage of SB4, a new Texas law which allows state police to arrest any person they suspect has crossed the US-Mexico border without authorization, the justice department did so on Wednesday. Immigration and border control officially falls under the purview of the federal government – not individual states.

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Texas can ban emergency abortions despite federal guidance, court rules

The ruling by a unanimous panel of fifth US circuit court of appeals comes amid a wave of lawsuits focusing on abortion exceptions

The US government cannot enforce federal guidance in Texas requiring emergency room doctors to perform abortions if necessary to stabilize emergency room patients, a federal appeals court ruled on Tuesday, siding with the state in a lawsuit accusing Joe Biden’s administration of overstepping its authority.

The ruling by a unanimous panel of the fifth US circuit court of appeals comes amid a wave of lawsuits focusing on when abortions can be provided in states whose abortion bans have exceptions for medical emergencies.

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Texas police release surveillance video after pregnant teen and boyfriend killed

Police release footage in investigation of deaths of Savannah Soto, 18, and Matthew Guerra, 22, whose bodies were found on Tuesday

Texas police have released surveillance footage they hope will lead to answers in the killings of an 18-year-old pregnant woman and her boyfriend. The couple were found shot in the head in a car and may have been dead for days.

Police on Friday had not named a possible motive or suspects as family and friends mourned the deaths of Savanah Soto, 18, and Matthew Guerra, 22. Soto went missing before Christmas just before she had been scheduled to have an induced labor.

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States to award anti-abortion centers roughly $250m in post-Roe surge

At least 16 states will fund largely unregulated facilities that try to convince people to continue their pregnancies

In the months since the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, at least 16 states have agreed to funnel more than $250m in taxpayer dollars towards anti-abortion facilities and programs that try to convince people to continue their pregnancies.

Much of that money is set to go to anti-abortion counseling centers, or crisis pregnancy centers, according to data provided by the Guttmacher Institute and Equity Forward, organizations that support abortion rights. It has been paid out throughout 2023 and will stretch into 2025.

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Beyoncé’s childhood home catches fire on Christmas morning

Blaze reported about 2am but was quickly contained and family living at property escaped safely

Beyoncé’s childhood home in Houston caught fire early on Christmas morning, though the family living there escaped safely.

The fire was reported at about 2am on Monday. The local fire department arrived on the scene of the two-story brick house within three to five minutes, the Houston Chronicle reported.

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Houston Chronicle compares people crossing border to Mary and Joseph

Editorial board publishes opinion piece in response to hard-right Republican governor’s latest immigration crackdown

A stinging Christmas opinion issued by the editorial board of the Houston Chronicle newspaper asks Texas’s hard-right Republican leader: “How would governor Greg Abbott treat Mary and Joseph at the border?”

The leading media outlet in the Democratic-voting city published an editorial article on Christmas Eve and posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Christmas Day protesting at the red state’s latest crackdown on people seeking refuge by crossing the US-Mexico border without authorization.

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US band Dixie Chicks ‘shocked and saddened’ by death of co-founder Laura Lynch

Lynch, 65, who died following a car crash outside El Paso, played upright bass and sang on three albums in the early 1990s

The US country band the Chicks, formerly known as the Dixie Chicks, have said they are “shocked and saddened” by the death of founding member Laura Lynch following a car crash.

“Laura was a bright light … her infectious energy and humor gave a spark to the early days of our band,” the band said on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Laura had a gift for design, a love of all things Texas and was instrumental in the early success of the band.

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Texas sends plane to Chicago with over 100 people who crossed US-Mexico border

Spokesman for Greg Abbott says flights are result of criticism over his operation of bussing migrants to Democratic-led cities

Texas sent a plane with more than 120 people who crossed the US-Mexico border to Chicago in an escalation of Greg Abbott’s bussing operation, which has sent more than 80,000 people to Democratic-led cities across the country since last year.

The first flight, which the Republican governor’s office said left from El Paso and arrived Tuesday, was arranged a week after Chicago’s city council took new action over the busloads of migrants that have drawn sharp criticism from Brandon Johnson, the city’s mayor. The city has said bus operators began trying to drop off people in neighboring cities to avoid penalties that include fines, towing or impoundment.

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‘Texas, we’ll see you in court’: migrant law sparks outcry and opposition

Democrats call on attorney general to halt state law, while Mexican president and ACLU both say they will challenge it

As a group of Texas and Hispanic Democrats demanded the US attorney general block what they called “the most extreme anti-immigrant state bill in the United States”, signed by the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, on Monday, the president of Mexico and the American Civil Liberties Union also vowed to fight the law.

“Texas, we’ll see you in court,” the ACLU said.

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