Oil prices fell in early Friday trading, influenced by a recent interest rate cut from the U.S. Federal Reserve and potential supply risks from Hurricane Rafael.
Chinese crude oil imports remained low despite Beijing’s economic stimulus efforts, and OPEC+ opted to maintain current output levels.
Brent crude dropped to $74.76 per barrel, while the U.S. benchmark, West Texas Intermediate (WTI), decreased to $71.27.
In Cuba, Hurricane Rafael, the fifth major Atlantic storm of the year, made landfall with heavy rains and strong winds, severely impacting the electricity grid and leading to widespread power outages.
Now downgraded to a Category 2, the storm is expected to move westward across the Gulf of Mexico over the weekend, posing a reduced threat to U.S. coastal oil facilities. Initial concerns about disruptions to U.S. production facilities have eased as the storm’s projected path shifted away from the coast.
Meanwhile, political uncertainty in the U.S. ended with Republican candidate Donald Trump’s victory. Following the election, investors turned their focus to the Fed’s decision to lower interest rates by 25 basis points, bringing the range to 4.5%-4.75%.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell assured that the election outcome would not impact the Fed’s immediate policy decisions.
The storms caused a lot of damage in an area from north of Dallas to the northwest corner of Arkansas. There may be more bad weather in other parts of the Midwest later today. Forecasters said that by Monday, the biggest danger would move to the east, covering a large area from Alabama to near New York City.
Seven people died in Cooke County, Texas, close to the Oklahoma border, when a tornado hit a rural area near a mobile home park on Saturday night. Texas Governor also confirmed this. Greg Abbott spoke at a press conference on Sunday. Two children, aged two and five, were among the dead. The sheriff found three family members dead in their house.
Storms caused deaths, destroyed homes, and injured people in Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Kentucky. Many people in the area had no electricity.
In Texas, Governor Abbott said that about 100 people got hurt and over 200 homes and buildings were destroyed. He was sitting in front of a damaged truck stop near a small farming town called Valley View. The place was one of the most affected, with strong winds reaching about 135 mph (217 km/h), according to officials.
Hugo Parra, who lives in Farmers Branch, north of Dallas, said he stayed in the bathroom of a truck stop near Valley View with 40 to 50 other people during the storm. The storm ripped off the roof and walls of the building, twisted metal beams, and damaged cars in the parking lot.
“A firefighter checked on us and said, ‘You’re very lucky,’” Parra said. “The wind was so strong it felt like it was trying to pull us out of the bathroom. ”
Several people were taken to hospitals by ambulance and helicopter in Denton County, Texas, which is north of Dallas. But the officials didn’t know how bad the injuries were right away.
At least five people died in Arkansas. A 26-year-old woman was found dead outside a destroyed home in Olvey, a small area in Boone County. Daniel Bolen from the county’s emergency management office said this. 1 person died in Benton County, and 2 more bodies were found in Marion County, officials reported.
Two people died in Mayes County, which is located to the east of Tulsa, Oklahoma, according to officials.
A man in Kentucky died on Sunday in Louisville when a tree fell on him, according to the police. Louisville Mayor Craig Greenburg said on social media that someone died because of the storm.
A very dangerous set of storms
The bad storms kept causing a lot of damage in the middle of the country for another month.
Tornadoes in Iowa this week killed at least five people and hurt many others. The dangerous tornadoes have formed during a really bad tornado season, while climate change makes storms worse worldwide. April had the second-highest amount of tornadoes ever in the country.
Weather experts and officials warned people to find shelter as the storms moved through the area on Saturday night and Sunday morning. “If you are in the path of this storm, find a safe place to stay now. ” The National Weather Service office in Norman, Oklahoma, posted on X.
Abbott said Daniel Perry will be pardoned and allowed to have his guns back. This came after the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles recommended it unanimously.
Perry was in prison for 25 years after being convicted of killing Garrett Foster in 2023. He was let out of prison shortly after receiving a pardon.
Perry, who is white, was driving for a ride-share company when his car came near a protest in Austin. The lawyers said he could have left the argument with Foster, who was a white Air Force veteran and didn’t use his gun according to witnesses.
A group of people found Perry guilty of killing someone, but Abbott said Perry was just protecting himself.
“Texas has a very strong law that allows people to defend themselves called ‘Stand Your Ground. ‘ It can’t be canceled by a jury or district attorney who has progressive beliefs,” Abbott mentioned.
Abbott, who is a Republican in his third term, usually only forgives small crimes. He chose not to forgive George Floyd for a drug arrest in 2004 after Floyd’s death. The killing of Floyd by a white police officer in Minneapolis in 2020 led to protests across the country.
Abbott told the board to look over Perry’s case after the trial. He said he would pardon Perry if the board recommended it. Under Texas law, the governor can’t forgive someone for a crime unless the board, who the governor chooses, suggests it.
“Garza said that the board and the governor are more focused on politics than justice. ” “They should feel bad about what they did. ” They are breaking the law and showing that in this state, some people are treated better than others.
Abbott asked for a new look at Perry’s case because Tucker Carlson asked him to on TV. Carlson wanted the governor to help after the sergeant was found guilty in April 2023. Perry was given a punishment because prosecutors said he was racist and might hurt someone again, based on what he posted on social media and sent in text messages.
The sergeant’s lawyers said that Foster did lift the rifle and Perry had to shoot him. Perry didn’t speak in court and the jury took two days to decide that he was guilty.
Perry’s lawyer, Clint Broden, said Perry was only protecting himself when he was facing a group of angry people and someone with a dangerous gun.
Broden said that the events in the case were very sad and unfortunately, Garrett Foster died. “Mister Perry and his family are thankful to the Board of Pardons and Parole for looking at their case carefully. They are also grateful that the State of Texas has laws to let people defend themselves. ”
Foster’s girlfriend, Whitney Mitchell, was with him when he was killed. She called the pardon a “lawless” act.
The governor has disrespected the life of a murdered Texan and US Air Force veteran and questioned the jury’s fair decision by granting a pardon. Mitchell said that he declared that people in Texas who have different political views from him and those in power can be killed without any consequences.
The shooting caused a lot of arguing in 2020 during the protests after Floyd’s death. Three years later, Perry’s conviction made a lot of conservative people very angry.
Before the judge made a decision in the case, Carlson talked on TV about the shooting. He said it was self-defence and he also said some bad things about Abbott for not going on his show. The day after, Abbott said he thought Perry should not be punished and asked Texas’ parole board to quickly review the conviction.
Before Perry was punished by the court, it revealed many text messages and social media posts showing his unfriendly views towards Black Lives Matter protests. Perry made a comment on Facebook a month before the shooting. He said, “I am a racist because I do not agree with people acting like animals at the zoo. ”
Perry was in the Army for over ten years. During the trial, a psychologist said he thinks Perry has post-traumatic stress disorder because of his time in Afghanistan and being bullied as a kid. During the shooting, Perry was working at Fort Cavazos, which later became Fort Hood. It is about 70 miles north of Austin.
At the University of Texas at Austin, many police officers from the area and the state fought with protesters, making them leave the campus and even pushing some into the street. Some police officers were on horses and carrying batons. University officials and the Texas Governor asked for at least 20 demonstrators to be arrested and held in custody. Greg Abbott, as per the state Department of Public Safety.
A photographer for Fox 7 Austin was arrested at a protest after getting caught in a struggle between police and students. A well-known journalist from Texas was pushed down in the chaos and was bleeding. Police had to help him to get to the hospital where his head was bandaged up.
Harvard University in Massachusetts wanted to avoid protests this week by making it harder for people to go into Harvard Yard and needing permission for tents and tables. Protesters set up a camp with 14 tents after a rally against the university’s suspension of the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee.
Students are asking schools to stop doing business with Israel and companies that are involved in the war between Israel and Hamas. Many people have been arrested for going into places they weren’t supposed to or for causing problems in public. Some Jewish students feel that the protests have turned into hating Jewish people and are scared to go to campus.
During a visit to the campus, US House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, asked Columbia University President Minouche Shafik to step down if she can’t bring order to the chaos.
“He said that if the threats and intimidation are not stopped soon, the National Guard might need to step in. ”
Shafik wanted to reach an agreement by midnight on Tuesday to clear a camp, but the school kept talking and making progress, so they didn’t make a decision yet.
On Wednesday night, a Columbia spokesperson said that the rumors about the university threatening to bring in the National Guard were not true. Ben Chang, who is the vice president for communications at Columbia, said that our main goal is to bring back peace and if we can achieve that by talking, we will try.
Columbia student Omer Lubaton Granot put up pictures of Israeli hostages near the camp because he wanted to remind people that over 100 hostages are still being held by Hamas.
“I see everyone behind me supporting human rights,” he said. “I don’t think they have anything to say about the fact that people their age, who were kidnapped from their homes or from a music festival in Israel, are being held by a terror group. ”
Tala Alfoqaha, a student at Harvard Law, and other protestors want the university to be more open about their actions.
“I hope that the people in charge at Harvard University pay attention to what the students have been asking for all year, which is to stop investing in certain things, to be more open about their finances, and to not punish students for anything. ” said a student.
Last week, the police tried to remove the camp at Columbia. They arrested over 100 protesters. The plan didn’t work and instead it inspired other students to do the same thing. It also motivated protesters at Columbia to come together again.
On Wednesday, there were about 60 tents left at the Columbia camp, and everything seemed peaceful. There were a lot of security measures in place at the campus, like needing to show ID and police putting up metal fences.
Columbia agreed with the protest leaders that only students can stay at the camp. They also agreed to make it a friendly place and not allow mean or hurtful words.
A group of students gathered on the University of Minnesota campus to protest, after police arrested nine protesters who were camping outside the library. The United States Rep. Rewrite this text in simple words: Representative. Ilhan Omar, whose daughter was one of the people taken away by the police at Columbia last week, went to a protest later on the same day.
More than 80 professors and assistant professors wrote a letter on Wednesday asking the university’s president and other leaders to not punish anyone and to let people camp without being bothered by the police.
They said they were shocked that the school would allow students to speak out against genocide and the occupation of Palestine.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu criticized the protests supporting Palestine on American college campuses. He released a video statement on Wednesday, saying that the university presidents’ reactions were shameful. He called on state, local, and federal officials to get involved.
Some students at the protests were hiding their faces and didn’t want to tell reporters who they were, because they were afraid of facing consequences. At a camp with about 40 tents on the University of Michigan’s campus in Ann Arbor, almost every student had a mask that was given to them when they arrived.
The many protests have made it hard for universities to keep students safe while also respecting their right to speak freely. Many people allowed the protests to continue for a long time, but now they are giving out stricter punishments because they are worried about safety.
This week at New York University, police arrested 133 protestors for causing trouble. They have all been released but have to go to court for their charges. Police took more than 40 protesters into custody on Monday at a camp at Yale University.
Lizelle Gonzalez was arrested and accused of murder in Starr County, Texas in 2022 for using abortion medicine to end her pregnancy 19 weeks in. She was 26 years old at the time and spent two nights in jail. Her name, photo, and private medical information were shown on national news. The charges were dropped a few days after.
Wade, the court case that made abortion legal in the United States. The US Supreme Court overturned Wade’s decision at a time when abortions after six weeks were not allowed in Texas. Pregnant people cannot be charged with a crime for getting an abortion according to state law, both now and at the time of Gonzalez’s 2022 arrest.
“Gonzalez is taking legal action against the prosecutors. She says they lied and didn’t respect her rights when they had her arrested and charged. This drastically changed her life. ”
Last week, someone made a complaint against Gocha Allen Ramirez, the district attorney of Starr County, and Alexandria Lynn Barrera, the assistant district attorney, and the county.
“We are sure that the Starr County District Attorney knew that Texas law says a woman who gets an abortion cannot be charged with murder. But they still decided to unfairly charge Gonzalez. ” Gonzalez’s lawyers, Cecilia Garza and Veronica S. Martinez said to CNN in a message. MsAn action that clearly breaks the rules. Gonzalez’s rights cannot be seen as just a small error.
Ramirez is facing trouble with his job because of the lawsuit.
Lawyers in Ramirez’s office tried to bring charges of criminal homicide against someone for actions that are not considered criminal under the Texas Penal Code. Ramirez did not stop the prosecution of a charge even though it was clear that there was not enough evidence to support it, according to a report from the state bar’s investigative panel that Ramirez acknowledged and signed.
The panel found that Ramirez said he didn’t know about the case before it was prosecuted. But investigators found out that he was actually asked about it by a prosecutor in his office, and he said it was okay to go ahead with it.
Barrera became a lawyer in Texas five years ago and has not been publicly disciplined for her part in prosecuting Herrera, according to state bar records.
The complaint says that Gonzalez had an abortion in January 2022 by taking a pill called misoprostol. This pill can be used alone or with another pill called mifepristone to have an abortion.
After the hospital checked Gonzalez, the staff told the Starr County District Attorney’s Office about the abortion, which is against the privacy laws. CNN has asked the hospital for a comment, even though they are not being sued.
The complaint says Ramirez and Barrera lied to the grand jury and didn’t care about the plaintiff’s rights, which led to a harmful legal case against her.
Some time after Gonzalez was accused, Ramirez said she would not continue the case because she believed Gonzalez didn’t do anything wrong.
“When we looked at this case, it was obvious that the Starr County Sheriff’s Department did the job of looking into the incident that the hospital reported to them. ” He wrote in a news release on April 10, 2022 that it would have been a failure of their duty to ignore the incident.
However, the complaint claims that neither the Starr County Sheriff’s Office nor the Rio Grande City Police Department looked into the case. Instead, the district attorney’s office started and carried out its own investigation using information from hospital staff.
After Gonzalez was forced into the public spotlight against his will, the attention on him increased even more when the charges were dropped, according to the complaint.
Supporters of women and their rights to make decisions about their bodies say this is an obvious try to limit women’s access to healthcare.
Rachel O’Leary Carmona, the executive director of Women’s March, said that the Starr County District Attorney and Assistant District Attorney did not have the right to charge someone with murder because it was a personal decision about abortion. She said that most Americans support access to abortion pills.
Months after Gonzalez was arrested, Texas made a law that almost completely stops abortion, with unclear rules for when it’s allowed for medical emergencies. State law says that patients who get an abortion cannot be charged with a crime, but doctors who do the procedure can be prosecuted.
“In Texas, we are seeing extreme abortion laws that punish and control women who really need to have an abortion. It’s unfair and radical. ” Carmona explained
Legal problems with the law are still being worked out in a higher court, but for now Texas has won a big victory in its fight against the Biden administration’s immigration policy.
The court had stopped the law from starting, but on Tuesday it allowed the law to move forward.
The Senate Bill 4 was signed into law by the Republican Governor. In December, Greg Abbott made it a state crime to enter Texas illegally and allows state judges to order immigrants to be sent back to their home countries. The government is mainly in charge of making sure that immigration laws are followed.
The new law makes immigration advocates worry that more Latinos in Texas will be unfairly targeted and could be held in detention or deported by the state.
A judge in Austin stopped the state from following the law. The 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals stopped the lower court’s decision for a short time and said the law would start on March 10 if the Supreme Court didn’t do anything. The Biden administration and others quickly made urgent requests for help.
Abbott said the court’s decision is good, but the case will still go to a higher court for review.
Karine Jean-Pierre, who speaks for the White House, said on Tuesday that “we strongly disagree” with the decision.
Please simplify this text. “SB” She said that the law will not only make Texas communities less safe, but it will also make things harder for the police and cause problems at the southern border. “SB 4 shows how Republican leaders are using the border issue for their own political gain and not focusing on real solutions. ”
The court did not give a reason for its decision.
As usual in emergency situations, the Supreme Court did not give reasons for its decision.
However, Justice Amy Coney Barrett and Justice Brett Kavanaugh said that the appeals court had only made a temporary “administrative” order. Barrett wanted to stop the Supreme Court from looking at these orders.
“To my knowledge, this court has never looked at a court of appeals’ decision to put a temporary hold on a case from a government agency. “I would not start a business. “When put in place, an administrative stay is meant to be a temporary pause before a decision is made about the request to delay the appeal. ”
Barrett said she thought it was not a good idea to bring a dispute to this court about whether a lower court made a mistake at an early stage.
Sonia Sotomayor, a judge, disagreed with the decision and said it will cause more problems with enforcing immigration laws.
Sotomayor wrote that the law changes the balance of power between the federal and state governments. For over 100 years, the national government has been in charge of allowing noncitizens into the country and making them leave.
Texas can immediately start punishing many people from other countries and sending them back to Mexico, Sotomayor wrote. “This law will create problems with other countries, make it harder to help people escaping danger, make it difficult for federal enforcement to work, make it harder for federal agencies to find and watch for security threats, and make noncitizens afraid to report abuse or trafficking. ”
Justice Elena Kagan said in her short disagreement that her thoughts on the case are just the beginning.
The judge said that the government handles immigration, and deciding who can come into the country and who has to leave, is its job.
The court in New Orleans will listen to arguments in the case on April 3.
It’s possible that the case will be heard again by the top court.
Barrett and Kavanaugh, who are important judges on the high court, said that the judges should not interfere with appeals courts when they use short delays to review documents.
Barrett said that if the 5th Circuit doesn’t make a decision soon, the Biden administration and the other people involved in the case might go back to the Supreme Court.
“The court might have to decide that a temporary stop has turned into a longer stop and act accordingly,” she wrote. “At this point in the case, it’s too early to make that decision. ”
Tami Goodlette, a lawyer for some of the people fighting against the law, said the court’s decision is “unfortunate” and puts people’s lives in danger for no reason.
“We are dedicated to continuing the fight to get rid of SB 4 for good, to prove that no state can take over federal immigration authority,” she said.
There has been a decrease in the number of migrants crossing the border following a surge in December.
Homeland Security officials told the media that not a lot of migrants are crossing the US-Mexico border right now, after a lot of people crossed in December.
On Monday, the US Border Patrol caught about 4,300 migrants at the southern border, according to a department official. The number of people coming to the border each day has decreased. In December, there were a lot of people coming but now there are fewer.
Migrant arrests fell by half in January compared to December, as reported by US Customs and Border Protection. In January, border officials met over 176,200 people at the US southern border, which is less than December when almost 302,000 people crossed. The CBP has not yet shared the total numbers for February.
Homeland Security officials say less people are crossing the border because the US and Mexico are talking and being stricter with the rules. But they also warn that the number of people trying to cross could go up again because there are a lot of people moving to the Western Hemisphere.
Argument about a law that many people disagree with.
The Biden government, two groups that support immigrants, and El Paso County are fighting against the law.
Lawyers for the government asked the high court to consider that the new law would seriously change the way the US and states have handled immigration for a long time.
“People may have different opinions about immigration. ” They always do. And legal representatives for the immigration groups and El Paso County expressed worry about recent immigration issues in Texas. “But California in the 1870s, Pennsylvania and Michigan in the 1930s, and Arizona in 2012 had the same thing happen. ” However, for 150 years, this Court has said that states cannot control who can enter and leave the country.
Texas Lawyer Ken Paxton, a member of the Republican party, and other state leaders told the Supreme Court that the Constitution allows Texas to protect itself from dangerous criminal groups that bring illegal drugs, weapons, and violence into the state.
Officials said that Texas is the first line of defense against violence coming from other countries. They also said that the state has to handle the deadly results of the federal government not being able or willing to protect the border.
Three people died in a car crash near Rio Grande City on Friday. They were Chief Warrant Officer 2 Casey Frankoski, who was 28 years old, and Chief Warrant Officer 2 John Grassia, who was 30, both from the New York National Guard, and Border Patrol Agent Chris Luna, who was 49 years old. The reason for the crash is still being looked into.
The UH-72 Lakota helicopter crashed while doing border security for the government, according to a statement from Joint Task Force North. This unit helps Customs and Border Protection.
The hurt soldier was in the New York National Guard, says the National Guard Bureau. The soldier, whose name we don’t know, was in charge of the aircraft crew. The soldier is still in the hospital, as said in a statement by the New York State Division of Military and Naval Affairs.
US Customs and Border Patrol Commissioner Troy Miller said that they were very sad about the death of Luna. Luna leaves behind a wife, two children, parents, and a brother.
Alejandro Mayorkas, the person in charge of protecting the country, said he hopes the injured national guardsman gets better quickly. He also said that the department feels very sorry for the families of the people who were killed.
Grassia was a trooper from New York. He joined the New York Army National Guard in 2013 as a helicopter maintenance specialist. The statement explained that Frankoski, from Rensselaer, New York, joined the New York Army National Guard in 2016. She learned how to fly UH-60 Black Hawk and UH-72 Lakota helicopters.
The Governor of New York. Kathy Hochul said she was very sad about Grassia and Frankoski’s deaths.
“There is no more important job than serving and protecting your country,” she said.
Frankoski and Grassia were put in a group called Detachment 2, in a company called Company A, in the 1st Battalion of the 244th Aviation Regiment. Luna got a job at the Border Patrol station in Rio Grande City.
The helicopter that crashed belonged to the District of Columbia Army National Guard, as reported by the New York State Division of Military & Naval Affairs.
In January, a helicopter from the Texas Department of Public Safety was flying along the border with Mexico when it suddenly lost power and crashed, according to officials. The second pilot got a small injury on his hand and the helicopter was badly damaged. The helicopter was flying as a part of a mission called Operation Lone Star, by the Governor of Texas. Greg Abbott has spent almost $10 billion on a mission at the border, which has challenged the federal government’s power over immigration.
The UH-72 Lakota helicopter was doled out to the government government’s border security mission when it went down close Rio Grande City, concurring to a articulation discharged by Joint Errand Drive North. The cause was beneath examination.
The crash happened mid-afternoon Friday whereas the helicopter was conducting flying operations, concurring to the articulation. No other points of interest were given.
Starr Province Judge Eloy Vera, the countyâs beat official, said those on board included one lady and three men. He said the individual who was harmed was in basic condition.
The names of those slaughtered were not promptly discharged.
Gen. Daniel Hokanson, head of the National Protect Bureau, in a post on X, sent his condolences to the families, cherished ones, companions and colleagues of the three individuals murdered, and supplications for the harmed soldier’s expedient recuperation.
âWe grieve these appalling deaths,â Hokanson’s post said. âThey are a appalling misfortune past words. All of these individuals speak to magnanimous benefit & the most excellent of America.”
Border Watch spokespersons did not promptly return messages looking for comment.
The location of the crash is in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley. The Starr District Sheriff’s Office posted on Facebook on Friday that it was helping with a âdowned helicopter incidentâ on the east side of the province.
Vera said the scene had been secured by the sheriff’s office which government authorities were on the way.
The border locale is intensely watched by both state and government specialists, counting schedule ethereal reconnaissance.
In January, a Texas Office of Open Security helicopter watching the state’s border with Mexico misplaced control and slammed, authorities said at the time. The co-pilot endured a minor hand harm and the helicopter was essentially harmed.
Mr George expressed his feelings of “being mad, sad, and let down” outside the courthouse after the ruling.
The school district has a rule about how long students can wear their hair. It says hair must not go past the top of a T-shirt collar, eyebrows, or ear lobes when it’s down.
However, George did not want to cut his braided dreadlocks. His family said the dreadlocks are important in the black community.
Darresha George, the mother of the student, complained that the school district broke the new law.
In September, the school district took legal action to solve a problem, and Thursday’s decision was the result of that.
But the superintendent of Barbers Hill High School, Dr Greg Poole, supported the school’s decision. He said that the Crown Act does not specifically mention the length of hair.
Since last August, Mr. George has been getting in trouble at Barbers Hill High School for not cutting his hair.
He got kicked out of class and had to stay in a special school area at school, and then had to go to a different program outside of school.
“His mother told the Associated Press in August that he has to sit on a small chair for eight hours in a small office space. ”
“That feels really bad. ” Every day when he came home, he would say that his back hurts because he has to sit on a stool.
Barbers Hill ISD has been in the news because of problems with its dress code for black students.
De’Andre Arnold and Kaden Bradford had to cut their long, twisted hair in 2020, so their families decided to take legal action.
In that situation, a judge decided that the district’s hair rules were unfair.
A law called the Crown Act was approved by the House of Representatives in 2023, but it was not approved by the Senate.
A lady wearing a long coat and holding a child started shooting in a busy Texas megachurch. Security shot her to stop the attack.
Police identified a woman named Genesse Ivonne Moreno, 36, as the suspect. She was with her seven-year-old son, who was badly hurt in the shootout in Houston.
Investigators said the person who attacked had the word “Palestine” on their rifle and they also found writings that were against Jewish people.
But they don’t know why it happened.
A 57-year-old man got shot in the hip, but he’s out of the hospital now.
The shooter’s son was shot in the head during the gun fight, and he is now in critical condition. It is not known who shot the boy.
“He said he was afraid that other people would also become scared because of his fear. ”
The police said the person used a specific type of gun for the attack. She had a small rifle, but she didn’t use it.
At the news conference on Monday, officials said that the person who attacked has had mental health problems in the past and was ordered to get help in 2016.
Official documents show that Moreno has been arrested many times and has been found guilty of hurting people, doing illegal drugs, and having weapons.
She used different names before, like Jeffery Escalante, and in official records, she is sometimes listed as a man and sometimes as a woman. Police said in a news conference that she is a Hispanic woman.
Police think she had an argument with her ex-husband’s family, who are Jewish.
The shooting happened at Lakewood Church, which is a big church led by famous TV preacher Joel Osteen.
Moreno’s relationship with the church is still being looked into, but the local TV station KHOU says her mother went to Lakewood.
The store also mentioned that people who work at the church might have been asked questions during Moreno’s difficult divorce and child custody case, according to records from Montgomery County court.
The police said the person they think did it drove up to the west side of the building in a white car at 1:53 PM and a Spanish-speaking event was about to start.
A 28-year-old Houston police officer and a 38-year-old agent with the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission (TABC) were not working and were hired to protect a church, they shot back at someone.
The attacker was shot and killed after firing many rounds in a gun battle, officials said. They were pronounced dead at 2:07 PM.
Houston Police Chief Troy Finner said that Moreno was seen putting some kind of liquid on the ground, but after checking, they found out it wouldn’t harm anyone.
She got shot, and then she told the police there was a bomb. But when the police looked in her bag and car, they didn’t find any bombs.
Kevin Lilly, the head of TABC, named his agency’s officer as Adrian Herrera.
He praised the two people for staying strong when there was shooting. He said, “What they did yesterday showed great bravery and courage. ”
“They were like a barrier between the worshippers and terror. ” The choice between being able to practice your religion and committing murder.
In a high-stakes operation, police in Texas utilized an armoured vehicle to forcefully open the cabin of a lorry on a motorway.
The driver, who had refused to stop and exit the cab despite officers deploying spike strips, prompted this dramatic intervention.
Following unsuccessful attempts to halt the vehicle using spike strips, the Swat team employed an armoured vehicle to tear open a window.
Subsequently, a gas canister was thrown inside, and officers entered the lorry to extract the non-compliant driver.
The reason for the chase remains unclear, with police highlighting the driver’s erratic behavior, including multiple lane changes and swerving.
Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez stated that the driver exhibited signs of “heavy impairment,” although the motive behind the individual’s actions remains unknown.
Women in Texas with serious pregnancy complications will be temporarily exempted from the southern US state’s abortion ban, a judge has ruled.
Judge Jessica Mangrum said there was a lack of clarity in the legislation, siding with women and doctors who had sued Texas over the ban in March.
Doctors would not be prosecuted when exercising their “good faith judgement” for provision of abortions, she added.
The temporary injunction will be in force until the lawsuit is decided.
Friday’s ruling is expected to be appealed by the state.
The Texas law that bans all abortions except in dire medical circumstances is seen as one of the strictest in the US.
Breaking the ban can carry a $100,000 (£78,000) fine and up to life in prison.
The legislation was introduced in 2022 – shortly after the Supreme Court overturned its 50-year-old Roe v Wade decision, meaning that millions of women across the country lost the constitutional right to abortion.
This case is the first brought on behalf of women who have been denied abortions since then.
The group of women and doctors are suing the state of Texas in the hope of changing the ban, to give doctors more leeway in determining when an abortion is necessary.
Top US court ends constitutional right to abortion
In her ruling in the city of Austin, Judge Mangrum wrote that women were “delayed or denied access to abortion care because of the widespread uncertainty regarding physicians’ level of discretion under the medical exception to Texas’s abortion bans”.
She also said that doctors must be allowed to determine what constituted medical emergencies that would risk a woman’s health or even life.
The temporary injunction is intended to last until the lawsuit is decided. But under Texas law, a ruling is automatically stayed as soon as it is appealed, so it could be blocked once the state appeals.
The Center for Reproductive Rights, which is suing Texas, hailed the ruling.
“Today’s ruling alleviates months of confusion around what conditions qualify as medical emergencies under Texas’ abortion bans, giving doctors permission to use their own medical judgment in determining when abortion care is needed,” the group said.
Lead plaintiff Amanda Zurawski said that “for the first time in a long time, I cried for joy when I heard the news”.
Ms Zurawski says her life was put at risk last year when she was denied an abortion.
She was denied an abortion – then she almost died
A binding interpretation of the current law’s definition of medical emergency is demanded in the case brought against Texas in March of last year.
The Texas attorney general’s office contends that the plaintiffs’ proposed exceptions would essentially make it possible to avoid the ban.
“It would, for example, permit abortions for pregnant females with medical conditions ranging from a headache to feelings of depression,” office lawyers say.
This horrific scene occurred when a father in Texas broke his car’s front window to get his infant out of the heat.
As the temperature approached 40°C, the man is seen breaking the glass in video that was shot in a parking lot in Arlington.
When the parents learned they had locked their keys inside the hot car with the baby, panic broke out, according to KRGV.
As people gathered around the car, the father repeatedly swung at the window in a frantic attempt to break it before another man with a longer pole arrived.
Eventually the two created a hole big enough for a woman to climb through and retrieve the child.
Harlingen Police confirmed the parents will not face any charges after the incident on Wednesday last week.
Director Rene Perez said the parents did the right thing in calling 911 right away.
‘When you have a child, particularly a child in a vehicle like that, 10 minutes is too long,’ Perez said.
‘So you really want to make sure that the baby is doing well, and it’s best to have observations on the child just to make sure that they’re compensating properly for the stress that they just went through.’
It was unclear how long the child had remained in the car before being pulled out.
Temperatures in Texas have remained high for weeks, with a summer average for some parts at 39.9°C.
People have been trapped under a ‘heat dome’ that is expected to bring more record highs in the coming days.
In May, three children died after being found unattended in vehicles in Texas, Florida and Washington State.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in the US has warned that a child’s body temperature rises three to five times faster than an adult’s.
So, when a child is left in a car, the situation can quickly become dangerous.
Following the collision of their truck with an alligator that was crossing a highway, a pregnant woman and her unborn child perished.
Authorities informed STexasNews that on Sunday morning, 33-year-old Gabrielle Breaux was travelling on State Highway 35 in Refugio County, Texas, when she struck a sizable alligator.
According to the Refugio County Sheriff’s Office, deputies were called to a vehicle that was travelling on a highway close to Farm-to-Market Road 775 when it “hit an alligator and then rolled over.”
The truck was carrying two adults and three children. All of them were rushed to nearby hospitals.
The accident happened on State Highway 35 in Refugio County, Texas (Picture: Refugio County Sheriff’s Office)
‘We pray that these people are all okay,’ wrote the sheriff’s office.
Deputies were dispatched to the scene shortly after 5am.
Breaux, of New Iberia, Louisiana, was taken to DeTar Hospital in Victoria. She was pronounced dead around 5.45am, according to Texas Department of Public Safety spokesman Sgt Harold Mallory.
Attempts to save Breaux’s unborn baby were not successful.
The four other people in the truck are expected to recover, Mallory said. Their identities have not been disclosed.
Their relationship to Breaux was not immediately known.
Images from the scene shared by the sheriff’s office showed a dark-colored pickup truck tilted on its right side in a grassy area near bushy trees. Several sheriff’s and fire vehicles were stationed nearby with their lights flashing.
Another photo showed a dead alligator lying on its back on a road.
The accident happened north of Corpus Christi, which is at the east end of Texas on the Gulf of Mexico.
American alligators are ‘common in swamps, rivers, bayous and marshes of the southern US, including the eastern third of Texas’, according to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.
The incident happened more than eight years after a man allegedly hunted down a crocodile that he believed ate his wife who was two months pregnant. Mubalak Batambuze spent almost two months looking for the 24-foot crocodile and speared it, according to officials at Lake Kyogain in Indonesia.
The Ghana Nurses Association of Dallas-Fort Worth in Texas, USA, has initiated the construction of a maternity ward in the Pantang community of the La Nkwantanang Municipality, located in the Greater Accra Region.
This decision was prompted by the community’s elders, who appealed to the association for a maternity facility to support women during pregnancy and the post-delivery phase. In 2021, some members of the association visited the area and witnessed the need for such a facility.
The President of the association, Aba Amprofi-Halm, expressed that both the nurses and the entire Ghanaian community in Dallas-Fort Worth were motivated to contribute to their home country by undertaking this project.
In addition to this endeavor, the association aims to carry out various initiatives throughout the country every two years. Previously, they focused on making donations and providing assistance to clinics and communities during the last two-year cycle.
“Our project is not only in Pantang, we are going to the Ho Teaching Hospital and to Cape Coast to work alongside the nurses there.
“We want to educate while also learn from them. We have obtained an evidence-based journal that we will donate to schools,” the president added.
Based on reports, a tourist in Texas shot her Uber driver because she believed he was trying to kidnap her and take her to Mexico. She then snapped a photo of the wounded driver before phoning the police.
On US 54 in El Paso last Friday, Phoebe Copas, 48, is charged with shooting Uber driver Daniel Piedra Garcia, 52, in the head.
According to court records obtained by KTSM, Copas, of Tompkinsville, Kentucky, requested an Uber to transport her to the Speaking Rock Casino where she intended to meet her boyfriend after he finished work.
While in the Uber, Copas saw traffic signs that read ‘Juarez, Mexico’, and wrongly thought that Piedra Garcia was trying to abduct and take her there, the documents state.
Copas then pulled a ‘silver and brown handgun from her purse’ and shot the driver, according to the documents.
The vehicle struck road barriers and came to a halt near Loop 375.
Copas did not call police or emergency responders to report that she was in danger before allegedly opening fire on Piedra Garcia, the documents say. She also allegedly took a picture of him after she shot him and texted it to her boyfriend before proceeding to call 911.
Police officers who responded to the scene said Copas’ boyfriend assisted her out of the crashed vehicle. They observed her ‘drop everything she was holding in her hands on the ground’ including the handgun’, documents state.
Investigators said they did not find evidence that Copas was being kidnapped or that Piedra Garcia went off track from her desired destination.
Copas has been charged with felony aggravated assault causing serious bodily injury.
Meanwhile, Piedra Garcia remained in the ICU. A family member told KTSM on Wednesday that he was taken off life support.
His wife Ana Piedra wrote in a GoFundMe page that he ‘was working for Uber when his passenger shot him in the head because she believed he was kidnapping her and taking her to Juarez, which was not the case. Daniel was simply following the route from the Uber app’.
She added that he just recovered from knee surgery and ‘was so excited to finally be able to provide some income for his family just for this tragedy to occur’.
Uber stated that it was ‘horrified by the rider’s actions’.
‘Violence is not tolerated on the Uber platform and we banned the rider as soon as we were made aware of what occurred,’ the company stated to KFOX 14. ‘Our thoughts are with Mr. Garcia and his loved ones, and have been in touch with his family.’
The GoFundMe page had garnered more than $16,000 as of Wednesday evening.
After a car slammed into a bus stop in front of a homeless shelter in Texas, seven migrants perished.
According to Victor Maldonado, the Bishop Enrique San Pedro Ozanam Center’s director, a group of people can be seen sitting on a nearby curb at around 8.30am local time on Sunday on the shelter’s surveillance camera.
“This SUV, a Range Rover, just ran the light that was about 100 feet away and just went through the people who were sitting there in the bus stop,” he explained.
The majority of the victims, Mr. Maldonado continued, were guys from Venezuela.
He said that the car had flipped over after mounting the pavement and continued for another 200ft before coming to a stop.
The New York Times quoted Judge Eddie Trevino Jr of Cameron County, who said it was currently unclear whether the driver had intentionally hit the group, or whether they had simply lost control of the vehicle.
He added the driver, along with 11 others, was taken to hospital.
Brownsville Police Department say the driver was detained at the scene by witnesses, and tested for intoxication.
The condition of those receiving care is not presently known.
Judge Trevino described the scene as ‘very graphic’.
He said the injuries looked ‘very serious’ and added: ‘It’s a tragedy either way, but if it was intentional, it’s worse.’
Police have confirmed investigators are on the scene of a major incident and that roads in the area have been cordoned off.
The Texas border city is a key transit point for migrants crossing the US-Mexico border, with the Ozanam centre its only overnight shelter, managing the release of thousands of migrants from federal custody.
Director Mr Maldonado said the centre had not received any threats prior to the incident, but that intimidating statements had been made in the hours since.
He said: ‘I’ve had a couple of people come by the gate and tell the security guard that the reason this happened was because of us.’
A dispute about the man practicing shooting with a semi-automatic weapon nearby led to the death of five of the man’s neighbors according to the police in Texas.
The victims were all from Honduras, and included an eight-year-old child.
The shooting happened on Friday night in the small town of Cleveland, San Jacinto County, north of Houston.
Among those killed were two women who were found lying on top of two surviving children, according to local Sheriff Greg Capers.
“In my opinion, they were actually trying to take care of the babies and keep them alive,” Sheriff Capers told a local station KTRK. He added that all the victims had been shot “from the neck up, almost execution style, basically in the head”.
The suspect, believed to be Mexican, has been named as Francisco Oropez, 38. He is still on the run and thought to be armed. He has been charged with five counts of murder.
Police are using dogs and a drone in the hunt for the suspect, who is believed to be hiding in a nearby forest.
The sheriff’s office said it received a call about “harassment” at about 23:30 local time on Friday (04:30 GMT Saturday).
Investigators believe that the victims had asked Mr Oropez, who it is thought had been drinking, to stop shooting as they were trying to put a baby to sleep.
According to Sheriff Capers, the man replied: “I’ll shoot out in my front yard, do what I want to in my own residence.”
After both parties returned to their houses, the gunman “topped off his magazine, and walked down his driveway… into the people’s house and started shooting,” Sheriff Capers said.
A total of 10 people were at the property at the time. The adults were declared dead at the scene, and the eight-year-old died at a hospital.
The gunman is believed to have used an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle.
Neighbour Veronica Pineda said she heard the shooting, but that the sound of gunfire was a regular occurrence: “It’s normal, in this neighbourhood they’re always shooting. They’re always calling the cops and there’s nothing done for that.
“So yesterday I heard the shooting but I thought it was, like, a normal day. I never thought this was happening.”
The incident came days after nine people were injured at a shooting during a teenagers’ party in western Texas.
Two weeks ago four young people were shot dead during a 16th birthday party in Alabama.
Firearm incidents are the top cause of death for US children and teenagers, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Approximately 18,000 cattle have died in an explosion and subsequent fire at the South Fork Dairy Farm in Dimmit, Texas, per The New York Times.
Emergency responders arrived at the facility on Monday at around 7 p.m. local time and found the fire engulfed in flames that left a big plume of smoke rising to the sky. One employee of the farm was trapped inside the milking parlor and was recovered by firefighters who took her to a hospital in critical condition. She is still being treated for her injuries as of Thursday.
“The Southfork Dairy Farms in Castro County had one female agricultural worker trapped inside a building after the explosion and fire on Monday,” said Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller in a statement. “She is being treated at UMC hospital in Lubbock. Our prayers and our best hopes go out to her and her loved ones. While devastating, I’m grateful that there were no further injuries to Ag workers or any loss of human life.”
It is estimated that 18,000 or so cattle died in the incident, which would make it the deadliest barn fire for cattle in the history of Texas. “The cause of the fire remains under investigation, and we all want to know what the facts are. There are lessons to be learned and the impact of this fire may influence the immediate area and the industry itself,” said Miller, who noted the cleanup and investigation could take a while. “Once we know the cause and the facts surrounding this tragedy, we will make sure the public is fully informed – so tragedies like this can be avoided in the future.”
While the exact number of dead cattle hasn’t been released, it’s still the largest loss of cattle life across the United States in at least two decades, per the Animal Welfare Institute. The most recent mass death of cattle in Texas was in 2016 when a blizzard took the lives of over 35,000 cows.
A man in San Antonio, Texas is under investigation after he allegedly utilized his Apple AirTag to track down the person who stole his truck and kill him, The New York Post reports.
As confirmed by the San Antonio police department, the incident went down on Wednesday, March 29 after the man was able to track the thief down to a shopping center 20 miles from where the truck was stolen.
Officials first got reports of a stolen vehicle earlier in the day. “Our suspect today stole the white truck you see back there,” officer Nick Soliz told reporters. “They stole it. Little did they know, it was tagged with an Apple AirTag. … They tried to confront the suspect, who they saw in their vehicle… I don’t know if an argument happened, but we know during this time he believes that a firearm may have been pulled by the suspect.”
At the scene of the shooting, there were several bullet casings and two cars with windows that had been shot out. The suspect was shot and killed, but police are unsure if they had a gun or not. “If you are to get your vehicle stolen, I know that it is frustrating but please do not take matters into your own hands like this,” said Soliz. “It’s never safe as you can see by this incident.”
“AirTag was designed to help people locate their personal belongings, not to track people or another person’s property, and we condemn in the strongest possible terms any malicious use of our products,” said an Apple spokesperson in a previously released statement regarding the use of AirTags for criminal purposes.
“Unwanted tracking has long been a societal problem, and we took this concern seriously in the design of AirTag. It’s why the Find My network is built with privacy in mind, uses end-to-end encryption, and why we innovated with the first-ever proactive system to alert you of unwanted tracking. We hope this starts an industry trend for others to also provide these sorts of proactive warnings in their products.”
The WNBA star, who was serving nine years, in Russia for was transported by air to San Antonio, Texas.
After being released in a prisoner swap with convicted Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, also known as the “Merchant of Death,” US basketball star Brittney Griner has returned to the United States.
The WNBA star, 32, was transported by air to San Antonio, Texas.
Roger D. Carstens, a special presidential envoy for the US, exclaimed: “So happy to have Brittney back on American soil. Welcome home, BG!”
Ms Griner was detained in February when customs agents said they found vape canisters containing cannabis oil in her luggage at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport.
She had pleaded guilty at her trial saying she used the cartridges to relieve pain from sports injuries and had made an “honest mistake”.
Ms Griner “represents the best of America”, he added.
President Biden insisted the US has not forgotten about Paul Whelan, a former US marine who remains in Russian custody.
A senior US official said the administration tried everything they could to get Mr Whelan out, but “they are treating him differently. They say he is an espionage case. They said the choice was either one [Griner] or none”.
He did not refer to the price the US paid for Ms Griner’s liberty – the release of convicted arms dealer Bout.
A FedEx driver who confessed to kidnapping and killing a seven-year-old Texas girl who had disappeared earlier this week has been arrested.
NBC News reports Tanner Lynn Horner, 31, was arrested Friday on charges of capital murder and aggravated kidnapping. The victim, Athena Strand, disappeared on Wednesday evening from her father’s home in Paradise, Texas.
Horner is currently being held at Wise County Jail on a $1.5 million bond.
According to Wise County Sheriff Lane Akin, Horner was delivering a package at Strand’s father’s home at the time she disappeared.
Though a cause of death has not yet been revealed, police believe she “died by his hand,” with Strand’s death coming within an hour of her abduction.
“We knew early on in the investigation that there had been a FedEx driver, made a delivery in front of the house, about the same time that little Athena, 7-year-old Athena, came up missing,” Akin told reporters in a news conference Friday. “The driver abducted Athena, and from the investigative standpoint, digitally as well as interviews, we think Athena died within just the very hour or so after her departure from her home.”
FedEx addressed the news in a statement on Twitter Saturday morning.
A FedEx driver has been arrested after confessing to the kidnapping and killing of a seven-year-old Texas girl who had disappeared earlier this week.
NBC News reports Tanner Lynn Horner, 31, was arrested Friday on charges of capital murder and aggravated kidnapping. The victim, Athena Strand, disappeared on Wednesday evening from her father’s home in Paradise, Texas.
Horner is currently being held at Wise County Jail on a $1.5 million bond.
According to Wise County Sheriff Lane Akin, Horner was delivering a package at Strand’s father’s home at the time she disappeared.
Though a cause of death has not yet been revealed, police believe she “died by his hand,” with Strand’s death coming within an hour of her abduction.
“We knew early on in the investigation that there had been a FedEx driver, made a delivery in front of the house, about the same time that little Athena, 7-year-old Athena, came up missing,” Akin told reporters in a news conference Friday. “The driver abducted Athena, and from the investigative standpoint, digitally as well as interviews, we think Athena died within just the very hour or so after her departure from her home.”
FedEx addressed the news in a statement on Twitter Saturday morning.
District officials in Pflugerville, Texas said Monday that a middle school teacher is no longer employed after videos of his comments surfaced on social media.
A middle school teacher in Pflugerville, Texas, has been fired after a video of their racist comments to students surfaced on social media.
“Last Friday, Nov. 11, Pflugerville ISD officials were made aware of an inappropriate conversation a teacher at Bohls Middle School had with students during an advisory class,” Pflugerville Independent School District (PfISD) Superintendent Dr. Douglas Killian wrote in a statement Monday.
“As of Monday morning, Nov. 14, the teacher in question is no longer employed by Pflugerville ISD and we are actively looking for a replacement,” the statement added.
In videos posted on social media, the White teacher is heard telling multi-racial students that his race is superior. “Deep down in my heart, I’m ethnocentric, which means I think my race is the superior one,” he said, as students can be heard reacting.
“So White is better than all?” one student can be heard asking.
“Let me finish,” the teacher is shown to respond. “I think everybody thinks that. They’re just not honest about it.”
“You said you are a racist, right?” questioned a second student.
“I did, yeah, I’m trying to be honest,” the teacher said.
In the school statement, superintendent Killian apologized for any “undue stress or concern” caused by the unnamed teacher’s comments, and to the parents of the children who were captured on camera without their knowledge.
“We want to reiterate that this conversation does not align with our core beliefs and is not a reflection of our district or our culture at Bohls Middle School,” Killian continued.
“The advisory discussion was inappropriate, inaccurate, and unacceptable; and this type of interaction will not be tolerated in any PfISD schools.”
Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist, has been ordered to pay an additional $473 million (£405 million) for falsely claiming the Sandy Hook school shooting was a hoax.
The Connecticut judge’s order brings Jones’ total obligation to pay after the defamation trial to $1.44 billion.
Plaintiffs sought additional compensation, citing Jones’ “utter lack of repentance” and “historic” wrongdoing.
Jones now admits that the 14 December 2012 attack that killed 20 children and six adults was “100% real.”
The case in Connecticut is one of three Jones is facing over the claims that the massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, was a “staged” government plot to take guns from Americans and that “no-one died”.
He had called the parents of victims “crisis actors” and argued that some of them never actually existed.
In the Connecticut defamation trial, families of eight victims, and an FBI agent who responded to the attack, had sought at least $550m. They alleged the right-wing radio host’s misinformation led to a decade of harassment and death threats.
The trial follows a similar case in Texas in August that saw Jones ordered to pay $49.3m in damages to other Sandy Hook parents.
Judge Barbara Bellis imposed the extra punitive damages on the Infowars host and his company on Thursday.
In a separate order, the judge temporarily blocked Jones from moving any personal assets out of the US after the plaintiffs claimed Jones was trying to hide some.
A lawyer for the families, Chris Mattei, said the ruling served “to reinforce the message of this case: Those who profit from lies targeting the innocent will face justice”.
It is unclear how much money the families will actually receive, with Jones saying on Wednesday there “ain’t no money”.
He and his company have filed for bankruptcy protection in Texas, where a forensic economist has testified that he and his company are worth around $270m. Jones has disputed that figure.
Jones broadcast himself watching last month’s verdict and scoffing at the court proceedings.
His lawyer Norm Pattis has argued for a new trial.
Jones still faces a third defamation trial over the Sandy Hookshooting that begins in Texas later this year.
A Texas inmatewith a history of mental illness, according to his lawyers, is scheduled to be executed on Wednesday for killing his mother and burying her body in her backyard nearly 20 years ago.
Tracy Beatty, 61, is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville on Wednesday evening. He was sentenced to death for strangling his mother, Carolyn Click, in her East Texas home in November 2003, after they argued.
Beatty is accused of burying his 62-year-old mother’s body beside her mobile home in Whitehouse, about 115 miles (180 kilometers) southeast of Dallas, and then spending her money on drugs and alcohol.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday morning declined an appeal from Beatty’s lawyers to halt the execution. On Monday, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles unanimously declined to commute Beatty’s death sentence to a lesser penalty or to grant a six-month reprieve. Beatty has had three prior execution dates.
His attorneys had argued he was being prevented from receiving a full examination to determine if he is intellectually disabled and possibly ineligible to be put to death. They had requested that state prison officials allow Beatty to be uncuffed during mental health evaluations by experts. The experts argue that having Beatty uncuffed during neurological and other tests is crucial to making an informed decision about intellectual disability and evaluating his mental health.
In their Supreme Court petition, Beatty’s lawyers said one expert who examined the inmate determined that he was “clearly psychotic and has a complex paranoid delusional belief system” and that he lives in a “complex delusional world” where he believes there is a “vast conspiracy of correctional officers who … ‘torture’ him via a device in his ear so he can hear their menacing voices.”
Citing security and liability concerns, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice put in place an informal policy last year that would require a court order to allow an inmate to be unshackled during an expert evaluation.
Federal judges in East Texas and Houston and the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans previously ruled against Beatty’s request for an evaluation without handcuffs. The federal appeals court called Beatty’s request a “delay tactic.”
U.S. District Judge Charles Eskridge in Houston last week questioned why Beatty’s lawyers had not raised any claim relating to his mental health during years of appeals, and said requiring handcuffs during such an evaluation is “quite simply, a rational security concern.”
While the U.S. Supreme Court has prohibited the death penalty for individuals who are intellectually disabled, it has not barred such punishment for those with serious mental illness, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that provides analysis and information on capital punishment.
The Texas Legislature considered but did not pass a bill in 2019 that would have prohibited the death penalty for someone with severe mental illness.
Beatty had a “volatile and combative relationship” with his mother, according to prosecutors. One neighbor, Lieanna Wilkerson, testified that Click told her Beatty had assaulted her several times before, including once when he had “beaten her so severely that he had left her for dead.” But Wilkerson said Click had still been excited to have Beatty move back in with her in October 2003 so they could mend their relationship.
Mother and son argued daily, however, and Click asked Beatty twice to move out, including just before she was killed, according to testimony from Beatty’s 2004 trial.
“Several times (Beatty) had said he just wanted to shut her up, that he just wanted to choke her and shut her up,” Wilkerson testified.
If Beatty is executed, he would be the fourth inmate put to death this year in Texas and the 13th in the U.S. Texas’ last execution for this year is scheduled to take place next week.
A Texas man has been charged with murder after fatally shooting a friend following a pick-up basketball game.
NBC News reports Cameron Hogg, 31, was arrested and charged Thursday for the murder of 21-year-old Asia Womack, who was killed Oct. 3 after she’d beaten Hogg in a basketball game at a Dallas park.
According to an arrest affidavit obtained by the news station, Hogg and Womack got into an argument after their pick-up game, at which point the latter walked to a nearby friend’s house to watch football. Later on, Womack and her friend were sitting outside when Hogg pulled up in his truck, got out and walked over to the pair. Police say Hogg then shot Womack twice in the chest “knocking her into a chair,” with the witness confirming Hogg shot Womack two more times before leaving.
The witness later identified Hogg in a police line-up.
“This is so senseless,” the family’s pastor, JohnDelley, told Fox 4 earlier this month. “You become embarrassed basically because a female beat you in basketball.”
Womack’s mother, Andrea, said the shooter was a friend of Andrea’s. “This was supposed to be a friend of Asia’s. She’s eaten with the man, she’s fed him, and he turned on her and killed her in a vicious way.”
Womack’s aunt said that the family is “taking it kind of hard because it was senseless,” adding, “I just don’t understand why you kill somebody over a basketball game.”
In the midst of an escalating political debate about immigration, two buses transporting migrants were sent from Texas to a location near Vice President Kamala Harris’ house in Washington, DC, on Thursday.
The Republican governor of the state claimed that the action was deliberate and called for stricter immigration regulations.
It happens the day after Florida transferred migrants to an island off the coast of Massachusetts.
As political tension over the number of people arriving at the US-Mexico border grows, states such as Texas and Arizona have sent thousands of migrants to cities such as Chicago, New York, and Washington DC, which they accuse of failing to fully enforce immigration laws.
While legal experts say the tactic will likely be challenged in court, it remains unclear what the legal basis for such a challenge would be.
Immigration groups in both Washington DC and the wealthy Massachusetts island of Martha’s Vineyard said they were not given an advance warning about the arrivals.
Footage shown on Fox News showed two buses – reportedly carrying between 75 and 100 people – arriving near the vice-president’s residence and migrants, who were mostly from Venezuela, gathering their belongings and standing nearby. A non-governmental organisation later came and reportedly transported them to a church.
“Harris claims our border is ‘secure’ [and] denies the crisis,” Texas Governor Greg Abbott later wrote on Twitter. “We’re sending migrants to her backyard to call on the Biden Administration to do its job and secure the border.”
‘We’re in limbo’
Among the migrants on the buses in Washington were Delinyer Mendoza and his partner Maybel, a young Venezuelan couple who arrived in the US five days ago after an arduous trek through Central America and Mexico.
While officials in Texas told the couple they were headed to Washington, the pair only learned that they were at the vice-president’s house when told by journalists.
“We didn’t know,” Maybel said. “We’re finding out about this from you all… we’re in limbo and were just going to walk around not knowing where we were.”
The pair said they planned to spend the day with a local humanitarian organisation before heading north to New York, where Mr Mendoza has family.
A local volunteer helping the migrants, Carla Bustillos, was quoted as saying that immigration organisations were only told about the arrivals at the last minute. “While we’re doing this political show, we have human beings feeling that their suffering is being exploited,” she said.
The migrants, including children, arrived in Martha’s Vineyard on Wednesday afternoon
In a similar move on Wednesday, two planes carrying migrants were flown to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. The resort is a traditional summer destination for Hollywood stars and former President Barack Obama is among those who have holiday homes in the area.
The migrants, including children, arrived at about 15:00 (11:00 GMT) on Wednesday without any warning, according to Massachusetts State Senator Julian Cyr.
Officials and volunteers then “moved heaven and earth” to set up the response like “we would do in the event of a hurricane”, he said. Migrants were given food and clothing as well as being tested for Covid.
Many did not know where they were, according to Massachusetts state Representative Dylan Fernandes. They had been told they would be given housing and jobs, he said.
On Twitter, Mr Fernandes described the move as an “evil and inhumane” plot to use “human lives – men, women and children – as political pawns”.
Places like “Massachusetts, New York, and California”will better care for migrants, Taryn Fenske, a spokesman for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said in a statement.
Christina Pushaw, a spokesperson for Mr DeSantis’ re-election campaign, said Martha’s Vineyard should be “thrilled”. “They vote for sanctuary cities – they get a sanctuary city of their own. And illegal aliens will increase the town’s diversity, which is strength. Right?”
So-called sanctuary cities are cities that have policies to aid undocumented immigrants.
Aleksander Cuic, an immigration lawyer and the director of the Immigration Clinic at Case Western Reserve University’s school of law, said that while he believes efforts to relocate migrants in this way will be legally challenged, it is still unclear what – if any – laws may have been broken.
“The big question is what they are being told, and if there is any sort of fraud or inducement,” he told the BBC. “But how would anyone know if there’s nothing in writing? It could be that they [the migrants] are willingly saying they’ll go if there are jobs and opportunities.”
Mr Cuic added that authorities in Texas and Florida are likely to argue they“are doing the same thing” as the government, which regularly moves detained migrants around the country.
Governor Ron DeSantis has previously cited Martha’s Vineyard as a possible destination for migrants being sent out of his state, telling reporters last year that if they were, the “border would be secure the next day”. This year, Florida representatives set aside $12m (£10.4m) for transporting migrants.
It is unclear how many migrants Florida plans to send to other states. The BBC has reached out to Governor DeSantis’ office for comment.
The department received 45 boxes of donated bananas from Ports of America in Freeport near the Gulf of Mexico. But it turns out the donation was a greater gift than either organization could have imagined, containing an additional 540 packages of cocaine, valued at nearly $18 million.
“Sometimes, life gives you lemons. Sometimes, it gives you bananas,” the TDCJ post joked.
According to the post, the discovery was made by two of its sergeants after they noticed “something not quite right” with the boxes after they were unloaded. Once they started pulling apart these suspicious boxes, they discovered a white powdery substance and notified port authorities.
Sure enough, when life handed them bananas, it was actually a shit ton ofcocaine.
Not many other details are known about this bizarre turn of events. But the TDCJ assured its followers that the Drug Enforcement Administration, U.S. Customs, and Border Protection were now investigating into the matter.
I guess we’ll have to wait for the Season 6 of Breaking Bad that’s never happening to fully understand the plot twist of sending a massive cache of illegal drugs to a literal prison.
At least 46 people have been found dead in an abandoned lorry on the outskirts of San Antonio, Texas.
A fire official said 16 people, including four children, had also been taken to hospital.
The survivors were “hot to the touch” and suffering from heat stroke and heat exhaustion.
San Antonio, which is 250km (150 miles) from the US-Mexican border, is a major transit route for people-smugglers.
Human traffickers often use lorries to transport undocumented migrants after meeting them in remote areas once they have managed to cross into the United States.
“They had families… and were likely trying to find a better life,” San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg said. “It’s nothing short of a horrific, human tragedy.”
Emergency services initially responded to reports of a dead body
Emergency responders initially arrived at the scene at about 18:00 local time (23:00 GMT) after responding to reports of a dead body, San Antonio fire chief Charles Hood told reporters.
“We’re not supposed to open up a truck and see stacks of bodies in there. None of us come to work imagining that,” he said.
He added that the vehicle, which had been abandoned by its driver, had no working air conditioning and there was no drinking water inside it.
San Antonio’s climate is blisteringly hot in the summer months, with temperatures there reaching 39.4C (103F) on Monday, and it is suspected that the victims likely died from heat exhaustion and dehydration.
Mexico’s Foreign Minister, Marcelo Ebrard, said that two Guatemalans were among those taken to hospital. The nationalities of the other victims was not immediately clear.
Three people are being held in custody and the investigation has been handed over to federal agents.
Edward Reyna, a security guard at a lumber yard just yards away, said he was not surprised to arrive for his night shift and hear the news. He said he had lost count of the times he had seen migrants jumping off the train that passes right next to where the lorry was found.
“I thought sooner or later, somebody was going to get hurt,” Mr Reyna said. “The cartels that bring them over don’t care about them.”
This story has played out in San Antonio before, but not to this magnitude. In 2017, 10 immigrants were found dead inside a similar tractor trailer outside a Walmart – also on the city’s south side.
San Antonio’s far south side is a corridor with two main highways connecting the city to Texas border towns.
Mostly rural communities, a few junkyards and a handful of developing neighbourhoods in this part of San Antonio make it easy for a lorry this size to go unnoticed – until it doesn’t.
Image caption, Security guard Edward Reyna wasn’t surprised to hear of the deaths
US Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, whose department has taken over the investigation, said: “Human smugglers are callous individuals who have no regard for the vulnerable people they exploit and endanger in order to make a profit.”
Texas‘s Republican Governor Greg Abbott blamed US President Joe Biden for the deaths, describing them as a “result of his deadly open border policies”.
Beto O’Rourke, the Democratic candidate running against Mr Abbott, said the reports were devastating and called for urgent action to “dismantle human smuggling rings and replace them with expanded avenues for legal migration”.
Immigration is a contentious political issue in the United States, where in May a record 239,000 undocumented migrants were detained crossing into the country from Mexico – many traveling along extremely risky and unsafe routes.
US law enforcement officials are on track to exceed the record 1.73 million border arrests made in 2021, with large numbers of people continuing to cross from Central American countries such as Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.
Fleeing poverty and violence in Central America, many of the undocumented migrants end up paying huge sums of cash to people-smugglers to get them across the US border.
Over recent years, there have been many similar examples of migrants perishing during their journey, but no single event as deadly as what was discovered on Monday.
After the tragedy was discovered, the Catholic Archbishop of San Antonio, Gustavo Garcia-Siller tweeted: “Lord have mercy on them. They hoped for a better life.”
“Once again, the lack of courage to deal with immigration reform is killing and destroying lives,” he added.
Speaking to the BBC from San Antonio, KENS5 local reporter Matt Houston said: “It is our understanding right now that if this is a human smuggling incident – as it appears – it would be the deadliest of its kind in American history.”
He said the risks faced by families crossing into the United States were formidable – and in recent days, the area had been struck by a heatwave.
Nineteen young children and two adults have died in a shooting at a primary school in south Texas.
The gunman opened fire at Robb Elementary School – which teaches children aged seven to 10 – in the city of Uvalde before he was killed by law enforcement, officials said.
The 18-year-old suspect had a handgun, an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle and high-capacity magazines, investigators say.
The teenager is suspected of shooting his grandmother before the rampage.
Local media report he may have been a high school student in the area.
Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Chief of Police Pete Arredondo said the shooting began at 11:32 local time on Tuesday, and that investigators believe the attacker “did act alone during this heinous crime”.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott said the shooter, whom he named as Salvador Ramos, abandoned a vehicle before entering the school to “horrifically, incomprehensibly” open fire.
One of the adults killed was a teacher, who has been named in US media as Eva Mireles. Her page on the school district’s website said she has a daughter in college and loved running and hiking.
Nearly 500 pupils are enrolled in the predominantly Hispanic school around 85 miles (135km) west of the city of San Antonio.
The Associated Press news agency reports that a US Border Patrol official who was nearby when the shooting began rushed into the school and shot and killed the gunman, who was behind a barricade.
Border Patrol is a federal agency that guards US ports of entry. Uvalde, which is fewer than 80 miles from the border with Mexico, is home to a Border Patrol station.
Two border agents were reportedly shot in an exchange with the gunman. One agent was shot in the head, officials say, adding that both were now in a stable condition in hospital.
According to CBS News, the attacker was wearing body armour as he carried out the attack. Another 18-year-old who is suspected of attacking a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, on 14 May was also wearing body armour and carrying a semi-automatic rifle – both of which are commercially available in the US.
The Uvalde Memorial Hospital posted on Facebook earlier that 13 children had been taken to hospital “via ambulances or buses”.
A 66-year-old woman and a 10-year-old girl were in a critical condition at a hospital in San Antonio, University Health hospital officials said.
Several boats have sunk on a lake in the US state of Texas during a parade to support President Donald Trump in November’s election, officials say.
Authorities say the choppy water was likely caused by the large number of vessels moving closely together on Lake Travis, near the state capital, Austin.
Images showed boats with Trump campaign flags manoeuvring at close quarters.
Media say people had to be rescued from the water, but there were no immediate reports of injuries.
The event, called Lake Travis Trump Boat Parade, was organised on Facebook, and more than 2,600 people marked themselves as having attended it.
An investigation has been launched and there is no evidence of any intentional act, Travis County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Kristen Dark said.
“We responded to multiple calls of boats in distress, several of them sank,” she said. “We had an exceptional number of boats on the lake today… When they all started moving at the same time, it generated significant waves.”
The incident happened around 12:00 (17:00 GMT) on Saturday, Labor Day weekend in the US. The event page said boats were asked to drive at 10mph (16km/h).
Paul Yura, from the National Weather Service in Austin/San Antonio, told the Associated Press that there were no storms in the area at the time of the parade.
Law enforcement officials in Texas say they will not enforce the newly enacted ruling requiring mask to be worn in public.
After the Texas governor ordered masks to be worn in public in any county with at least 20 Covid-19 cases on 2 July, multiple county sheriffs vowed not to enforce the rule.
The sheriff of Denton County, which encompasses part of the city of Dallas-Fort Worth, called the mandate an “executive order not a law” and said it is too difficult to enforce.
The office of the sheriff of Montgomery County, just north of Houston, said it will not enforce the order for fear it could be sued by the people who are stopped.
The governor’s order calls for warnings for people who do not wear masks, and a $250 (£200) fine for multiple offenders. But officers say they will not know who is a multiple offender, because they will not be documenting any individual incident.
The order also specifically says no citizen can be arrested or jailed for refusing to wear a mask. Critics in law enforcement say this makes the mandate legally impossible to enforce.
The #IDIDMYPART campaign, taking place this weekend, aims to bring awareness of the daily testing available at a local medical centre.
It will also provide free masks, gloves, household supplies and 1,000 free tests “administered under safe conditions,” according to a statement.
“The virus is wreaking havoc on the Black community so we need a movement to prioritize our health,” Ms Knowles Lawson said.
Data from the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention suggest that 33% of people who’ve been taken to hospital with the virus are African-American, yet only 13% of the US population is African-American.
“Testing is crucial because it helps find hot spots and saves lives,” local Congresswoman Sheila Jackson-Lee said in the statement. “Texas has a very low COVID-19 test rate, second lowest in the nation.”
