Category Archives: Texas

Texas police arrest suspect after six people killed in spree of violence

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Shane James, 34, charged with two counts of murder over series of shootings that also left three injured including two police officers

Police in Austin have arrested a man after a series of shootings that left six people dead and three people injured, including two police officers and a bicyclist, over the course of eight hours.

Austin’s interim police chief, Robin Henderson, said at a news conference early on Wednesday that the violence occurred in two separate incidents across two central Texas communities. He said police were not aware the incidents were connected until after they arrested the man, named as 34-year-old Shane James.

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Texas school again suspends Black student for refusing to change his hair

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Darryl George has already spent more than 80% of his junior year outside of his regular classroom, and was first cited in August

A Texas high school sent a Black student back to in-school suspension Tuesday for refusing to change his hairstyle, renewing a months-long standoff over a dress code policy the teen’s family calls discriminatory.

The student, Darryl George, was suspended for 13 days because his hair is out of compliance when let down, according to a disciplinary notice issued by Barbers Hill high school in Mont Belvieu, Texas. It was his first day back at the school after spending a month at an off-site disciplinary program.

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Eight workers at Texas chemical plant hospitalized after toxic gas leak

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Altivia Chemicals said personnel have contained leak of phosgene as city lifts shelter-in-place order that affected nearby plants

Eight people were taken to a hospital for treatment on Monday after a toxic gas leak at Altivia Chemicals’ plant in La Porte, Texas, local officials said.

An update on their condition was not immediately available. The city canceled a shelter-in-place order in the afternoon that had affected several nearby industrial plants, officials said.

Reuters contributed to this report

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Members of Texas Republican party free to associate with Nazi sympathizers

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Executive committee rejects banning members who ‘espouse or tolerate antisemitism’ and deny Holocaust, arguing clause is vague

Members of Texas’s Republican party are free to associate with Nazi sympathizers without worries of violating internal policy after they held a vote on Saturday.

In a 32-29 vote, the party’s executive committee decided against excluding from their organization those “known to espouse or tolerate antisemitism, pro-Nazi sympathies or Holocaust denial”. A proposal to ban such individuals was included in a resolution supporting Israel as it wars with Hamas in Gaza.

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Florida’s revival of death penalty fuels rise in US executions in 2023

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Governor Ron DeSantis scheduled six of the country’s 25 executions this year amid his presidential election bid

The US saw a rise in executions in 2023 as a result of Florida’s revival of the death penalty, amid Ron DeSantis’s “tough on crime” campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.

DeSantis scheduled six executions this year – the first time the state has judicially killed people since 2019 and the largest number in almost a decade. Florida also handed down five new death sentences this year, more than any other state.

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Texas governor endorses Trump for 2024 race at US-Mexico border event

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Greg Abbott said Biden’s border policies pose a danger to the US and credited Trump with lowering number of border crossings

Donald Trump won the endorsement of Texas governor Greg Abbott at an event near the US-Mexico border Sunday, a location meant to highlight the former Republican president’s plans to crack down on immigration if he wins the 2024 White House race.

Trump, the frontrunner for the GOP nomination to challenge Democratic president Joe Biden next year, traveled to Edinburg, Texas, with his fellow Republican Abbott to visit national guard soldiers, state public safety department troopers and other service members stationed there.

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Ex-NFL player and former college teammates killed in collision in Houston

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DJ Hayden, who played nine seasons with the Raiders, Lions, Jaguars and Commanders, was in SUV hit by speeding car

A former National Football League player was among six people who were killed in a collision that occurred when a speeding driver ran a red light in downtown Houston on Saturday.

Before his death in Houston during his collegiate alma mater’s homecoming weekend, 33-year-old DJ Hayden had played nine seasons in the NFL after the Raiders selected him in the first round of the college draft in 2013.

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Trans teen loses Texas high school’s lead theater role over gender policy

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Max Hightower stripped of role over policy that students must play characters aligning with gender identity assigned to them at birth

Weeks into his senior year of high school in Texas, Max Hightower earned the lead male role for his campus’s production of Oklahoma! the musical. But the trans teen’s principal has since stripped the teen of the part, citing a new policy requiring students to only portray characters who align with the gender identity assigned to them when they were born.

Hightower and his family are now appealing the administrator’s decision to the school board while the play is put on hold pending a review.

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Eight dead in Texas crash after police chase suspected migrant smuggler

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Officials say driver fled police and smashed into Chevrolet which then caught fire, with everyone in both vehicles killed

Eight people died on Wednesday when the driver of a car suspected of carrying smuggled migrants fled police and smashed into an oncoming vehicle on a south Texas highway.

The crash happened about 6.30am when the driver of a 2009 Honda Civic tried to outrun deputies from the Zavala county sheriff’s office and attempted to pass a semi-truck, the state department of public safety (DPS) said. The Civic collided with a 2015 Chevrolet Equinox, which caught fire.

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Weather tracker: UK and France brace for Storm Ciarán

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Torrential rain and 100mph gusts forecast in some areas when low-pressure system makes landfall

Storm Ciarán is expected to arrive in the UK and Ireland, France, and the Iberian peninsula on Wednesday night into Thursday. Gusts of up to 100mph (160km/h) could be possible off the western coast of France before the severe winds filter through the Channel. Brittany and the western French coast could experience wind speeds of more than 80mph, and it is likely to remain windy through the weekend.

Torrential rain is also expected, with a chance of flooding in parts of western France and the north-western Iberian peninsula. Coastal inundation is also likely to be a risk along the northern Spanish and Portuguese coasts, as well as along the French coastline, with sea swell caused by strong winds and the low-pressure displacement of seawater. The rest of France could also experience heavy rain.

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US appeals court tosses lawsuit over Texas migrant transportation restrictions

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A three-judge panel of the New Orleans-based court found that immigration advocates lacked the legal authority to sue Abbott

A US federal appeals court on Friday sided with Greg Abbott, the Texas governor, on technical grounds over a 2021 executive order that restricted transport of migrants through the state, saying a lower court should dismiss a related legal challenge.

In a 2-1 split, a three-judge panel of the New Orleans-based fifth US circuit court of appeals found that immigration advocates lacked the legal authority to sue Abbott over the transportation prohibition.

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Anti-abortion groups sue San Antonio over reproductive justice fund

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Plan includes $500,000 to organizations offering Texans care but it unclear if it will go to groups that help people get abortions

Several anti-abortion groups on Tuesday sued the city of San Antonio over the city’s plan to create a reproductive justice fund and provide $500,000 to organizations that offer Texans reproductive care.

The lawsuit seeks to put a halt to the reproductive justice fund, which, it alleges, would give taxpayers’ dollars to “criminal organizations that violate the state’s abortion laws” by helping people get abortions out of state. Because Texas law bans anybody from helping “procure” an abortion, the lawsuit argues, “if any part of the ‘procurement’ activity occurs within Texas, then the act is criminal even if the abortion that has been ‘procured’ takes place outside the state.”

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‘A gorgeous sight’: delight and wonder as US viewers watch annular solar eclipse

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Amid varying levels of cloud cover, Americans gathered and donned special glasses for rare celestial show

It was a moment that won’t happen again for 16 years – and Mother Nature obscured it in some places.

“It was supposed to be sunny in Corpus Christi today and now is clouds everywhere. Trying to see where we have to drive to,” one frustrated eclipse viewer in Texas posted on the Total Solar Eclipse 2024 Facebook page. (The title references next April’s total eclipse, which will be visible in some areas of the US.)

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‘Ring of fire’ visible in parts of US as crowds gathered to watch annular eclipse

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Annular solar eclipse passed over eight states from Oregon to Texas and partial eclipse was visible in other continental states

As the “moment of annularity” was reached, photos were snapped, crowds cheered and the sky darkened – in the areas that the annular solar eclipse could be seen, at least.

Annularity during a solar eclipse is the moment when the moon is fully in front of the sun, creating the ring of fire that is the visual highlight of today’s eclipse. It lasts for only a few minutes.

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US representative files resolution decrying rightwing calls for invasion of Mexico

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Joaquin Castro urged fellow House members to reject Republican calls for US military action to stem flow of fentanyl from Mexico

A progressive US congressman from Texas has asked his legislative colleagues to join him in condemning some American conservatives’ calls to invade Mexico – ostensibly to do battle with drug cartels there.

Joaquin Castro says he intends to file a resolution in the US House as soon as Friday reaffirming the federal government’s “commitment to respecting the sovereignty of Mexico and condemning calls for military action without Mexico’s consent and congressional authorization”.

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Family of Black high school student files federal lawsuit over hair discrimination

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Darryl George, 17, of Texas has been serving an in-school suspension since 31 August for refusing to cut his dreadlocks

The family of a Black high school student in Texas who was suspended over his dreadlocks filed a federal civil rights lawsuit Saturday against the state’s governor and attorney general, alleging they failed to enforce a new law outlawing discrimination based on hairstyles.

Darryl George, 17, a junior at Barbers Hill high school in Mont Belvieu, has been serving an in-school suspension since 31 August. Officials with the Houston-area school say his dreadlocks fall below his eyebrows and ear lobes and violate the district’s dress code.

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Texas’s impeached attorney general acquitted by fellow Republicans

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Ken Paxton, impeached in May, has been found not guilty of bribery and dereliction of duty and may resume office

After a dramatic impeachment trial that lasted more than a week, Ken Paxton, the ultraconservative Texas attorney general, has been acquitted and will be able to resume his work in elected office.

Paxton, who faced 16 articles of impeachment against him in this trial – involving bribery, dereliction of duty and disregard for official duty – and four more separately, avoided becoming Texas’s highest-ranking elected official to be removed from state office. He quickly issued a statement boasting that, in his case, “the truth prevailed”.

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Deadly humid heatwaves to spread rapidly as climate warms – study

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Small rise in global temperatures would affect hundreds of millions of people and could cause a sharp rise in deaths

Life-threatening periods of high heat and humidity will spread rapidly across the world with only a small increase in global temperatures, a study has found, which could cause a sharp acceleration in the number of deaths resulting from the climate crisis.

The extremes, which can be fatal to healthy people within six hours, could affect hundreds of millions of people unused to such conditions. As a result, heat deaths could rise quickly unless serious efforts to prepare populations were undertaken urgently, the researcher said.

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Texas ordered to remove buoys meant to block migrants from Rio Grande River

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Preliminary order issued by judge David Ezra requires the floaters to be relocated to an embankment on the state side of the river

A US judge ordered Texas to move a line of floating buoys that were placed in the middle of the Rio Grande to block migrants from crossing the US-Mexico border. The ruling is a tentative win for the Biden administration after the Department of Justice (DoJ) sued the state.

The federal judge David Ezra on Wednesday issued a preliminary injunction in the state capital of Austin that requires Texas to relocate the controversial buoys, currently near the city of Eagle Pass, to an embankment on the Texas side of the river.

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Impeachment trial of Texas attorney general Ken Paxton begins in Austin

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Historic trial in state senate centers on allegedly corrupt relationship with real estate developer Nate Paul

The impeachment trial of the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, began on Tuesday – a rare and historic event in the state.

The ultra-conservative Paxton has a history of ethically questionable conduct that dates back to his first term in 2014, when he was fined by the Texas state securities board for violating financial laws.

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