Category Archives: Texas

Sports CEO Timothy Leiweke charged in Texas arena bid-rigging scheme

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Leiweke, ex-president of Denver Nuggets and former CEO of MLSE, which owns Toronto’s major sports franchises, indicted over $388m arena

A prominent sports executive has been criminally charged with organising a conspiracy to ensure his own company won the bid to build a $388m sports arena in Texas.

Timothy Leiweke, the former president of the Denver Nuggets basketball team and former CEO of MLSE, which owns Toronto’s major sports franchises including the Leafs and Raptors was charged on Wednesday by a federal grand jury. He resigned as chief executive of the company at the center of the case, Oak View Group (OVG), after the announcement.

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Texas floods: more than 100 people dead and at least 161 still missing

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Texas governor Greg Abbott said many people staying in state’s Hill Country still unaccounted for as questions mount over official response to disaster

Rescue crews continued on Tuesday to comb through parts of the Texas Hill Country devastated by catastrophic flash flooding over the Fourth of July weekend, but with more than 100 dead and hope fading for survivors, efforts have increasingly turned to search and recovery.

As of Tuesday afternoon, the death toll across the six affected counties surpassed 100. Most of the deaths were in Kerr county, where officials said 87 bodies had so far been recovered, including 56 adults and 30 children. Identification was pending for 19 adults and seven children with one additional person still unidentified, county sheriff Larry Leitha told a news conference.

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Firefighters from Mexico aid Texas flood search and rescue: ‘There are no borders’

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Team of firefighters and first responders volunteer along Guadalupe River after mass flooding in show of solidarity

A contingent of firefighters and first responders from Mexico arrived in Texas over the weekend to aid in search and rescue efforts following the devastating flooding of the Guadalupe River in a show of solidarity with their northern neighbors.

“When it comes to firefighters, there’s no borders,” Ismael Aldaba, founder of Fundación 911, in Acuña, Mexico, told CNN on Tuesday. “There’s nothing that’ll avoid us from helping another firefighter, another family. It doesn’t matter where we’re at in the world. That’s the whole point of our discipline and what we do.”

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Texas flood: stories of survival and pleas for help finding missing loved ones

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More than 850 people had been rescued by Saturday, yet scores remain missing with families asking for information

Reports are beginning to emerge of extraordinary stories of survival from the Texas Hill Country floods, even as the official death toll continued mounting, reaching at least 27 on Saturday.

A young woman was dramatically rescued after she was carried 12 miles down the Guadalupe River by raging flood waters, and later pictured clinging to branches of a tree. The woman – who has not been identified publicly – was rescued, News 4 San Antonio reported.

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Texas begins grim flood recovery with at least 27 killed and dozens missing, including children

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Two dozen girls still unaccounted for after summer camps swept away as Guadalupe River rises 26ft in 45 minutes

Rescuers by Saturday had begun the grim task of recovering the bodies of children who were swept away in a deadly flash flood in Texas, caused by a powerful storm that killed dozens of people.

The exact number of missing people was not immediately known, but 24 of them were girls who had been attending Camp Mystic, a Christian summer camp along the Guadalupe River. Torrential rain caused the river to rise 26ft (8 meters) in just 45 minutes before dawn on Friday, washing away homes and vehicles.

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‘Catastrophic’ flood in Texas kills at least 24, including children, with more missing from summer camp

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Up to 10in of rain fell overnight, prompting flash flooding in region west of Austin hit by long drought

Torrential rains unleashed flash floods along the Guadalupe River in Texas on Friday, killing at least 24 people as rescue teams scrambled to save dozens of victims trapped by high water or reported missing in the disaster, local officials said.

Among the missing were 23 to 25 people listed as unaccounted for at an all-girls Christian summer camp located on the banks of the rain-engorged Guadalupe, authorities said.

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US to breed billions of flies and dump them out of aircraft in bid to fight flesh-eating maggot

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Program mirrors earlier successful mission to fight new world screwworm fly, whose larvae can infest living tissue

The US government is preparing to breed billions of flies and dump them out of airplanes over Mexico and southern Texas to fight a flesh-eating maggot.

That sounds like the plot of a horror movie, but it is part of the government’s plans for protecting the US from a bug that could devastate its beef industry, decimate wildlife and even kill household pets. This weird science has worked well before.

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Two men found guilty in deaths of 53 migrants in Texas sentenced to life in prison

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Felipe Orduna-Torres and Armando Gonzales-Garcia abandoned locked truckload of people in summer heat with no AC in 2022

Two men face spending the rest of their lives in prison after a federal judge sentenced them on Friday for their roles in the deaths of 53 people – including six children – who were found dead in an abandoned tractor-trailer in Texas in 2022.

A federal jury in Texas had found the two men, Felipe Orduna-Torres and Armando Gonzales-Garcia, guilty of various charges at the conclusion of a trial in March. Federal judge Orlando Garcia sentenced Torres to life in prison and Ortega to 83 years of incarceration, essentially a life sentence.

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New Texas law requires Ten Commandments to be displayed in classrooms

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Governor Greg Abott signs bill into law but challenge expected from critics who consider it unconstitutional

Texas will require all public school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments under a new law that will make the state the nation’s largest to attempt to impose such a mandate.

The bill, which was signed into law by Governor Greg Abbott, is expected to draw a legal challenge from critics who consider it an unconstitutional violation of the separation of church and state.

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As Texas’s measles outbreak slows, officials warn of rise in other states

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Cases in New Mexico and Kansas give experts reason to be ‘concerned’ in second-worst US measles year since 2000

The measles outbreak in Texas is showing signs of slowing, though other states are seeing more cases and health officials are warning against complacency as the US continues to experience high rates of measles amid falling vaccination rates.

It has been a handful of days since anyone in Lubbock, Texas, has tested positive, and there are no known measles hospitalizations at the children’s hospital in the city, which has also cared for children from nearby Gaines county.

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As Texas’s measles outbreak slows, officials warn of rise in other states

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Cases in New Mexico and Kansas give experts reason to be ‘concerned’ in second-worst US measles year since 2000

The measles outbreak in Texas is showing signs of slowing, though other states are seeing more cases and health officials are warning against complacency as the US continues to experience high rates of measles amid falling vaccination rates.

It has been a handful of days since anyone in Lubbock, Texas, has tested positive, and there are no known measles hospitalizations at the children’s hospital in the city, which has also cared for children from nearby Gaines county.

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At least 28 people dead after storms and tornadoes strike three US states

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At least 19 deaths were in Kentucky, seven in Missouri and two in Virginia after storms spawned two dozen tornadoes

Storm systems sweeping across the midwest to the south left at least 28 dead in Missouri, Kentucky and Virginia.

Kentucky’s governor, Andy Beshear, confirmed in a social media post that deaths in Kentucky had risen to 19 after the addition of a woman from Russell county. “Please join Britainy and me in praying for the families who are hurting right now,” the post read.

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Four people killed by St Louis storms as severe weather threatens millions in US

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Mayor confirms deaths after roofs torn off and trees downed, while multiple states brace for high winds and heat

At least four people died and others were hurt after severe storms including a possible tornado swept through St Louis on Friday, as tens of millions of Americans in multiple states braced for possible damage from expected high winds and severe weather this weekend.

St Louis mayor Cara Spencer confirmed the deaths after storms tore roofs off some buildings, ripped away brick facades and downed trees and power lines as residents were urged to take cover.

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Mexican woman charged in US with supplying arms to ‘terrorist’ drug cartel

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María Del Rosario Navarro, 39, accused of conspiring to provide material support to Jalisco New Generation cartel

A 39-year-old woman has become the first Mexican national to be indicted in the United States on charges of providing material support to a cartel designated as a foreign terrorist organization, according to the US Department of Justice.

María Del Rosario Navarro is accused of conspiring with others to provide grenades to the Jalisco New Generation cartel (CJNG), a powerful Mexican crime faction that the US in February designated as a terrorist organization alongside other criminal groups across Latin America.

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Google agrees to pay Texas $1.375bn over data-privacy claims

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State attorney general said company secretly tracked users’ movements, searches, voiceprints and facial geometry

Google has agreed to pay $1.375bn in a settlement in principle reached with the state of Texas over allegations the company violated users’ data privacy, the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, said on Friday.

The agreement settles two lawsuits that covered three products for allegedly violating Texas consumer protection laws.

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Immigrants set for Libya deportation sat on tarmac for hours, attorney says

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Any Trump administration efforts to send non-Libyans to the north African country would violate a prior court order

Immigrants in Texas who were told they would be deported to Libya sat on a military airfield tarmac for hours on Wednesday, unsure of what would happen next, an attorney for one of the men has said.

The attorney, Tin Thanh Nguyen, told the news agency Reuters that his client, a Vietnamese construction worker from Los Angeles, was among the immigrants woken in the early morning hours and bussed from an immigration detention center in Pearsall, Texas, to an airfield where a military aircraft awaited them.

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Elon Musk’s company town: SpaceX employees vote to create ‘Starbase’

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Residents – most of them SpaceX workers – in remote Texas community approve plan to create new city

Voters in a small patch of south Texas voted on Saturday to give Elon Musk a town to call his own, officially creating a new city called Starbase in the area where Musk’s SpaceX holds rocket launches.

A couple of hundred residents of what was previously known as Boca Chica decided to make their unincorporated neighborhoods into a town that will grant them the authority to pass city ordinances.

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Texas governor signs largest US school voucher law in win for conservatives

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State becomes 16th to allow public funds to be used for private schools, which opponents say will benefit mostly wealthier children

The Texas governor Greg Abbott on Saturday signed a law making more than 5 million students eligible to use state funds for private schools, a watershed moment in the conservative campaign to remake public education in the US.

Texas is allocating $1bn for the first two years of the program to offer parents vouchers to pay for school. It is the 16th state to make all students eligible to receive public funds for private education.

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Venezuelan detainees at Texas center spell out SOS with their bodies

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Men at Bluebonnet fear deportation to El Salvador under wartime law despite maintaining they do not have gang ties

Detainees at the Bluebonnet immigrant detention center in the small city of Anson, Texas, sent the outside world a message this week: SOS.

With a Reuters drone flying nearby, 31 men formed the letters in the dirt yard of the facility on Monday.

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Measles cases in Texas rise to 663 amid outbreaks in other US states

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Texas officials say 87 patients hospitalized as researchers say country at tipping point for return of endemic measles

Measles cases in Texas rose to 663 on Tuesday, according to the state’s health department, an increase of 17 cases since 25 April, as the US battles one of its worst outbreaks of the previously eradicated childhood disease.

Cases in Gaines county, the center of the outbreak, rose to 396, three more from its last update on Friday, the Texas department of state health services said.

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