KTBB News, Weather, Talk

HOUSTON – The Houston Chronicle reports that Texas Children’s Hospital said Tuesday it is laying off 5% of its workforce amid a series of financial challenges for the nation’s largest children’s hospital. The hospital declined to provide a specific number of employees being affected by layoffs, but Executive Vice President and Chief Human Resources officer Linda Aldred said in an interview that Texas Children’s has approximately 20,000 employees across 120 locations in Houston, across Texas and around the world. A 5% reduction in that workforce would cut roughly 1,000 jobs. Multiple factors, including lower patient volumes in Houston and a two-week delay in the opening of the new Austin campus, contributed to the hospital reporting an operating income loss of nearly $200 million through the first six months of its current fiscal year.

Aldred said the layoffs are the result of what she characterized as “historic financial challenges” within the health care industry. She said Texas Children’s took other measures before determining layoffs were necessary; for example, the hospital has reduced the size of its executive leadership team and plans to cut executives’ compensation this year. “This has been so challenging and so difficult for us to get here. We have been really thoughtful about it,” Aldred said. “We plan to communicate these changes (Tuesday), and we do not plan to have additional cuts or job eliminations.” Aldred said Texas Children’s does not anticipate the cuts will affect patient care. The layoffs come about one month after Fitch Ratings, one of the three major credit rating agencies, downgraded Texas Children’s bond rating to AA- from AA after the hospital reported operating income losses of $198.1 million through the first six months of fiscal year 2024. Texas Children’s issued bonds to fund its growth and facility renovation projects, including construction at the new $450 million Austin campus and an expansion in women’s services. The hospital previously announced a $245 million expansion of its Pavilion for Women in the Texas Medical Center.

HOUSTON (AP) — A Texas man described as intellectually disabled by his lawyers faced execution on Wednesday for strangling and trying to rape a woman who went jogging near her Houston home more than 27 years ago.

Arthur Lee Burton was condemned for the July 1997 killing of Nancy Adleman. The 48-year-old mother of three was beaten and strangled with her own shoelace in a heavily wooded area off a jogging trail along a bayou, police said. According to authorities, Burton confessed to killing Adleman, saying “she asked me why was I doing it and that I didn’t have to do it.” Burton recanted this confession at trial.

Burton, now 54, was scheduled to receive a lethal injection Wednesday evening at the state penitentiary in Huntsville.

Lower courts rejected his petition for a stay, so his lawyers asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stop his execution.

His lawyers argued that reports by two experts as well as a review of records show Burton “exhibited low scores on tests of learning, reasoning, comprehending complex ideas, problem solving, and suggestibility, all of which are examples of significant limitations in intellectual functioning.”

Records show Burton scored “significantly below” grade-level on standardized testing and had difficulty performing daily activities like cooking and cleaning, according to the petition.

“This court’s intervention is urgently needed to prevent the imminent execution of Mr. Burton, who the unrebutted evidence strongly indicates is intellectually disabled and therefore categorically exempt from the death penalty,” Burton’s lawyers wrote.

The Supreme Court in 2002 barred the execution of intellectually disabled people, but has given states some discretion to decide how to determine such disabilities. Justices have wrestled with how much discretion to allow.

Prosecutors say Burton has not previously raised claims he is intellectually disabled and waited until eight days before his scheduled execution to do so.

An expert for the Harris County District Attorney’s Office, which prosecuted Burton, said in an Aug. 1 report that Burton’s writing and reading abilities “fall generally at or higher than the average U.S. citizen, which is inconsistent with” intellectual disability.

“I have not seen any mental health or other notations that Mr. Burton suffers from a significant deficit in intellectual or mental capabilities,” according to the report by Thomas Guilmette, a psychology professor at Providence College in Rhode Island.

Burton was convicted in 1998 but his death sentence was overturned by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in 2000. He received another death sentence at a new punishment trial in 2002.

In their petition to the Supreme Court, Burton’s lawyers accused the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals of rejecting their claims of intellectual disability because of “hostility” toward prior Supreme Court rulings that criticized the state’s rules on determining intellectual disability.

In a February 2019 ruling regarding another death row inmate, the Supreme Court said the Texas appeals court was continuing to rely on factors that have no grounding in prevailing medical practice.

In a July concurring order denying an intellectual disability claim for another death row inmate, four justices from the Texas appeals court suggested that the standards now used by clinicians and researchers “could also be the result of bias against the death penalty on the part of those who dictate the standards for intellectual disability.”

In a filing to the Supreme Court, the Texas Attorney General’s Office denied that the state appeals court was refusing to adhere to current criteria for determining intellectual disability.

Burton would be the third inmate put to death this year in Texas, the nation’s busiest capital punishment state, and the 11th in the U.S.

On Thursday, Taberon Dave Honie was scheduled to be the first inmate executed in Utah since 2010. He was condemned for the 1998 killing of his girlfriend’s mother.

WASHINGTON (AP) — During the summer, Levena Lindahl closes off entire rooms, covers windows with blackout curtains and budgets to manage the monthly cost of electricity for air conditioning. But even then, the heat finds its way in.

“Going upstairs, it’s like walking into soup. It is so hot,” Lindahl said. “If I walk past my attic upstairs, you can feel the heat radiating through a closed door.”

Lindahl, 37, who lives in North Carolina, said her monthly electricity bills in the summer used to be around $100 years ago, but they’ve since doubled. She blames a gradual warming trend caused by climate change.

Around 7 in 10 Americans say in the last year extreme heat has had an impact on their electricity bills, ranging from minor to major, and most have seen at least a minor impact on their outdoor activities, according new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

As tens of millions of Americans swelter through another summer of historic heat waves, the survey’s findings reveal how extreme heat is changing people’s lives in big and small ways. The poll found that about 7 in 10 Americans have been personally affected by extremely hot weather or extreme heat waves over the past five years. That makes extreme heat a more common experience than other weather events or natural disasters like wildfires, major droughts and hurricanes, which up to one-third of U.S. adults said they’ve been personally affected by.

Sizable shares of Americans – around 4 in 10 – report that extreme heat has had at least a minor impact on their sleep, pets or exercise routine.

Jim Graham, 54, lives in Phoenix, Arizona, and worries about the safety of his dog’s paws when going on walks outside, especially when it gets above 105 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius). To protect her feet, they head out for walks at 5:30 a.m. “This year it seems hotter than usual,” said Graham. His single-level home has central air conditioning and even setting the thermostat to 80 degrees Fahrenheit (27 degrees Celsius) runs him over $350 a month in electricity bills, a big jump from what he used to pay about a decade ago.

He’s not the only one watching the dollars add up: About 4 in 10 Americans say they’ve had unexpectedly expensive utility bills in the past year because of storms, flood, heat, or wildfires, including nearly half of homeowners.

Like Lindahl, many see a link to climate change. About 7 in 10 U.S. adults who have experienced some type of severe weather events or weather disasters in the last five years say they believe climate change was a contributing factor. Three in 10 think climate change was not a cause.

Last year Earth was 2.66 degrees Fahrenheit (1.48 degrees Celsius) warmer than it was before pre-industrial times, according to the European climate agency Copernicus. Some might perceive that increase as insignificant, but temperatures are unevenly fluctuating across the planet and can be dangerous to human health. Several regions of the U.S. set all-time temperature records this summer, and Las Vegas reached a scorching 120 degrees Fahrenheit (48.9 degrees Celsius) on July 7.

According to the poll, about 1 in 10 Americans say that extreme heat has had a major impact on their sleep in the past year, while about 3 in 10 say it’s had a minor impact and 55% say it’s had no impact. Hispanic Americans are more likely than white Americans to say their sleep has been affected, and lower-income Americans are also more likely than higher-income Americans to report an effect on their sleep.

The effects of extreme heat are more widely reported in the West and South. About half of people living in the West say their sleep has been impacted at least in a minor way by extreme heat, while about 4 in 10 people living in the South say their sleep has been impacted, compared to about 3 in 10 people living in the Midwest and Northeast. People living in the West and South are also more likely than those in the Northeast to say their exercise routines have been affected.

Other aspects of daily life – like jobs and commutes, the timing of events like weddings and reunions, and travel and vacation plans – have been less broadly disrupted, but their impact is disproportionately felt among specific groups of Americans. About one-quarter of Americans say that their travel or vacation plans have been impacted by extreme heat, with Hispanic and Black Americans more likely than white Americans to say this.

Even simply enjoying time outside has become more difficult for some. The poll found that about 6 in 10 Americans say extreme heat has impacted outdoor activities for themselves or their family.

In general, people who don’t believe climate change is happening are less likely to report being affected by various aspects of extreme heat compared to people who do. For instance, about 8 in 10 Americans who believe that climate change is happening say extreme heat has had at least a minor impact on their electricity bills, compared to half of Americans who aren’t sure climate change is happening or don’t think it’s happening.

Mario Cianchetti, 70, is a retired engineer who now lives in Sedona, Arizona. His home has solar panels and heat pumps, which he installed because he was interested in lowering his electricity bills to save money. “When you retire, you’re on a single fixed income. I didn’t want to have to deal with rising energy costs,” said Cianchetti, who identified himself as a political independent.

Cianchetti noted that temperatures feel unusually warm but said installing sustainable technologies in his house was a matter of finance. “It’s not that I don’t believe in climate change, yeah I believe we’re going into a hot cycle here, but I don’t believe that it’s man-caused.”

When it comes to general views of climate change, 70% of U.S. adults say climate change is happening. About 6 in 10 of those who believe climate change is happening say that it’s caused entirely or mostly by human activities, while another 3 in 10 say it’s caused equally by human activities and natural changes to the environment and 12% believe it’s primarily caused by natural environmental change. Nine in 10 Democrats, 7 in 10 independents and about half of Republicans say climate change is happening.

Those numbers are essentially unchanged from when the question was last asked in April and have been steady in recent years, although about half of Americans say they have become more concerned about climate change over the past year.

WICHITA FALLS, Texas (AP) — Elon Musk’s social media platform X has sued a group of advertisers, alleging that a “massive advertiser boycott” deprived the company of billions of dollars in revenue and violated antitrust laws.

The company formerly known as Twitter filed the lawsuit Tuesday in a federal court in Texas against the World Federation of Advertisers and member companies Unilever, Mars, CVS Health and Orsted.

It accused the advertising group’s brand safety initiative, called the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, of helping to coordinate a pause in advertising after Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in late 2022 and overhauled its staff and policies.

Musk posted about the lawsuit on X on Tuesday, saying “now it is war” after two years of being nice and “getting nothing but empty words.”

X CEO Linda Yaccarino said in a video announcement that the lawsuit stemmed in part from evidence uncovered by the U.S. House Judiciary Committee which she said showed a “group of companies organized a systematic illegal boycott” against X.

The Republican-led committee had a hearing last month looking at whether current laws are “sufficient to deter anticompetitive collusion in online advertising.”

The lawsuit’s allegations center on the early days of Musk’s Twitter takeover and not a more recent dispute with advertisers that came a year later.

In November 2023, about a year after Musk bought the company, a number of advertisers began fleeing X over concerns about their ads showing up next to pro-Nazi content and hate speech on the site in general, with Musk inflaming tensions with his own posts endorsing an antisemitic conspiracy theory.

Musk later said those fleeing advertisers were engaging in “blackmail” and, using a profanity, essentially told them to go away.

The Belgium-based World Federation of Advertisers and representatives for CVS, Orsted, Mars and Unilever didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment Tuesday.

A top Unilever executive testified at last month’s congressional hearing, defending the British consumer goods company’s practice of choosing to put ads on platforms that won’t harm its brand.

“Unilever, and Unilever alone, controls our advertising spending,” said prepared written remarks by Herrish Patel, president of Unilever USA. “No platform has a right to our advertising dollar.”

HOUSTON (AP) — A federal judge on Tuesday dismissed most of the claims in a lawsuit filed by a Black high school student who alleged that school officials committed racial and gender discrimination when they punished him for refusing to change his hairstyle.

The ruling was another victory in the case for the Barbers Hill school district near Houston, which has said its policy restricting hair length for male students instills discipline while teaching grooming and respect for authority.

But in his order, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown questioned whether the school district’s rule causes more harm than good.

“Not everything that is undesirable, annoying, or even harmful amounts to a violation of the law, much less a constitutional problem,” Brown wrote.

The Associated Press left phone and email messages seeking comment with the school district and George’s attorney, Allie Booker, on Tuesday.

George, 18, was kept out of his regular high school classes for most of the 2023-24 school year, when he was a junior, because the school district said his hair length violated its dress code. George either served in-school suspension at Barbers Hill High School in Mont Belvieu or spent time at an off-site disciplinary program.

The district has argued that George’s long hair, which he wears to school in tied and twisted locs on top of his head, violates its policy because it would fall below his shirt collar, eyebrows or earlobes if let down. The district has said other students with locs comply with the length policy.

George and his mother, Darresha George, filed a federal civil rights lawsuit last year against the school district, the district superintendent, his principal and assistant principal as well as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton.

The suit also alleged that George’s punishment violates the CROWN Act, a new state law prohibiting race-based hair discrimination. The CROWN Act, which was being discussed before the dispute over George’s hair and which took effect in September, bars employers and schools from penalizing people because of hair texture or protective hairstyles including Afros, braids, locs, twists or Bantu knots.

The lawsuit alleged the school district’s policy was being enforced mainly on Black students. But Brown said George had not shown “a persistent, widespread practice of disparate, race-based enforcement of the policy.”

The lawsuit also alleged that George’s First Amendment rights to free speech were being violated. But Brown wrote that George’s lawyer could not cite any case law holding that hair length “is protected as expressive conduct under the First Amendment.”

Brown dismissed various claims that George’s due process rights under the 14th Amendment were being violated. He also dropped Abbott, Paxton, the district superintendent and other school employees from the case.

The only claim he let stand was an allegation of sex discrimination based on the school district’s lack of clearly defined policies on why girls could be allowed to have long hair but boys could not.

“Because the district does not provide any reason for the sex-based distinctions in its dress code, the claim survives this initial stage,” Brown said.

Brown’s order comes after a state judge in February ruled in a lawsuit filed by the school district that its punishment does not violate the CROWN Act.

At the end of his ruling, Brown highlighted a 1970 case in which a judge ruled against a school district in El Paso, Texas, that had tried to prevent a male student from enrolling because his hair length violated district policy. The El Paso judge’s ruling was later overturned by an appeals court.

The judge in the El Paso case had written that “the presence and enforcement of the hair-cut rule causes far more disruption of the classroom instructional process than the hair it seeks to prohibit.”

“Regrettably, so too here,” Brown said in reference to George’s case.

Barbers Hill’s hair policy was also challenged in a May 2020 federal lawsuit filed by two other students. Both withdrew from the high school, but one returned after a federal judge granted a temporary injunction, saying there was “a substantial likelihood” that his rights to free speech and to be free from racial discrimination would be violated if he was barred. That lawsuit is still pending.

___

Follow Juan A. Lozano: https://twitter.com/juanlozano70

WICHITA FALLS (AP) — Elon Musk’s social media platform X has sued a group of advertisers, alleging that a “massive advertiser boycott” deprived the company of billions of dollars in revenue and violated antitrust laws.

The company formerly known as Twitter filed the lawsuit Tuesday in a federal court in Texas against the World Federation of Advertisers and member companies Unilever, Mars, CVS Health and Orsted.

It accused the advertising group’s brand safety initiative, called the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, of helping to coordinate a pause in advertising after Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in late 2022 and overhauled its staff and policies.

Musk posted about the lawsuit on X on Tuesday, saying “now it is war” after two years of being nice and “getting nothing but empty words.”

X CEO Linda Yaccarino said in a video announcement that the lawsuit stemmed in part from evidence uncovered by the U.S. House Judiciary Committee which she said showed a “group of companies organized a systematic illegal boycott” against X.

The Republican-led committee had a hearing last month looking at whether current laws are “sufficient to deter anticompetitive collusion in online advertising.”

The lawsuit’s allegations center on the early days of Musk’s Twitter takeover and not a more recent dispute with advertisers that came a year later.

In November 2023, about a year after Musk bought the company, a number of advertisers began fleeing X over concerns about their ads showing up next to pro-Nazi content and hate speech on the site in general, with Musk inflaming tensions with his own posts endorsing an antisemitic conspiracy theory.

Musk later said those fleeing advertisers were engaging in “blackmail” and, using a profanity, essentially told them to go away.

The Belgium-based World Federation of Advertisers and representatives for CVS, Orsted, Mars and Unilever didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment Tuesday.

A top Unilever executive testified at last month’s congressional hearing, defending the British consumer goods company’s practice of choosing to put ads on platforms that won’t harm its brand.

“Unilever, and Unilever alone, controls our advertising spending,” said prepared written remarks by Herrish Patel, president of Unilever USA. “No platform has a right to our advertising dollar.”

HOUSTON – the Houston chronicle reports that the late U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee’s family endorsed former Mayor Sylvester Turner in the race to replace the congresswoman on the November ballot. A week ahead of the nomination meeting where Jackson Lee’s replacement will be selected, Jackson Lee’s children, Jason Lee and Erica Lee Carter, announced they are supporting Turner, a longtime friend and ally of their mother, in his bid to succeed her. “We have no doubt Mayor Turner will carry on our mother’s legacy of service because we’ve witnessed it almost our entire lives,” Lee and Lee Carter wrote in a Monday statement. “Our mother had no greater partner than Mayor Turner and he honors her with his willingness to dutifully and humbly serve as a sturdy bridge to the next generation of leadership for the historic 18th Congressional District of Texas.”

Turner, a native of Acres Homes, served as a member of the Texas House of Representatives from 1989 until he was elected Houston mayor in 2015. He left City Hall at the end of last year after two terms as Houston’s top official. Jackson Lee died from pancreatic cancer last month after representing the 18th Congressional District for three decades. Since her passing, a number of candidates have confirmed their intentions to run. Besides Turner, former council member Amanda Edwards, council member Letitia Plummer and state Rep. Jarvis Johnson, among others, have also entered the race. Turner recently said the passing of his friend and the unique circumstances of this race were the only factors that could pull him out of retirement, adding district constituents needed “stability and continuity in leadership” at this critical juncture. Jackson Lee secured a decisive primary victory in March against challenger Edwards. With no time to hold a new primary ahead of the November general election, the Harris County Democratic Party has tasked its 88 precinct chairs who live in the district to meet on August 13 to select a new nominee. Candidates are set to make their pitches to party leaders during a flurry of events in the coming days. Gov. Greg Abbott also called a separate special election for Nov. 5 to fill the rest of Jackson Lee’s current term, which ends in January.

DALLAS – The Dallas Morning News reports that more than 2.1 million Texas voters are on the state’s suspended list, three months before the presidential election between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. Voters should still be able to vote with a suspended status, but it will take an extra couple of steps. Here is what Texans should know about voter suspense ahead of the Nov. 5 general election. What is the voter suspense list? Suspense means your county does not know your address or thinks you moved, often because a voter registration card or jury summons sent through mail is returned as undeliverable. New voter registration cards are mailed every two years to the most recent address on record. If you do not receive a new yellow and white certification card this year, it could mean you moved without updating your address.

What percent of voters are suspended? Nearly 12% of Texas’ roughly 18 million voters are on the suspense list, according to the Texas Secretary of State’s Office. How do I check my voter status? Check your registration on the state’s portal or your county’s voter website. What should you do if you’re suspended? Update your address online by Oct. 7 — which is the deadline to register to vote — and be removed from the suspense list. To do so, you will need your current driver’s license or ID, Social Security number and Voter Unique Identifier Number, or VUID, on your registration card. You can also find your VUID number with your county registrar.

MCALLEN (AP) — Drought conditions in South Texas have brought increased pressure on Mexico to make good on its commitment to deliver water to the U.S. under a 1944 treaty. But an analysis by the agency that enforces that treaty shows that water from U.S. sources has significantly diminished over the years.

Research that will be shared publicly this week from the International Boundary and Water Commission, the federal agency tasked with overseeing the treaty with Mexico, shows that even without accounting for water deliveries owed by Mexico, the two international reservoirs that supply water to the Rio Grande, were receiving less water than they did during the 1980s.

During the decade from 2011 to 2020, total U.S. inflow into the Amistad International Reservoir was 33% less than the decade between 1981 and 1990, an overall decrease of 4.6 million acre feet, the IBWC research shows. Meanwhile, Falcon International Reservoir received 21.5% less than it did in the 1980s.

IBWC Commissioner Maria Elena Giner said the decline highlighted the need for the region to diversify its water supply, noting that 90% of the region’s water supply comes from the Rio Grande.

“This is something they really need to look at, as far as how they’re going to build drought resiliency in the region,” Giner said.

More local water supply corporations are looking to alternate sources of water as levels at the reservoirs continue to remain low. Currently, Amistad is at 19% of capacity while Falcon is at 12% of capacity.

In a statement, State Rep. Janie Lopez, R-San Benito, said the Texas Legislature needs to focus on “common sense and innovative solutions” to diversify the water resources available throughout the state and in the Rio Grande Valley.

Lopez also pointed out that during the last legislative session, lawmakers created the Texas Water Fund, a $1 billion resource to help cities upgrade their water systems and pay for conservation projects. The Texas Water Development Board detailed how those funds would be allocated last week.

While the analysis focused on how much water was lost from the U.S.’s own tributaries, Giner, the IBWC commissioner, said getting Mexico to comply with the 1944 treaty was still “front and center” for the agency.

Under the treaty, every five years, Mexico must deliver 1,750,000 acre-feet of water to the U.S. from six tributaries in Mexico, which averages to 350,000 acre-feet per year. In exchange, the U.S. delivers water from the Colorado River to Mexico.

But Mexico is behind on its deliveries by about 900,000 acre-feet in the current five-year cycle, which ends in October 2025.

Mexican officials have cited the country’s own drought conditions to explain the shortage. Nevertheless, U.S. officials have sought to pressure Mexico into complying by proposing restrictions on federal aid.

U.S. Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, D-McAllen, said the IBWC’s research supported what local farmers, ranchers and residents have known for years: The region faces an acute water crisis that has been exacerbated by Mexico’s water debt.

“We must use these findings to build up our water infrastructure and ensure timely water deliveries from Mexico,” Gonzalez said in a statement.

The IBWC is continuing talks with Mexican officials about a proposed amendment to the 1944 treaty, referred to as a “minute,” that would codify work groups to help build new sources of water and push Mexico to release water from its reservoirs instead of relying on water to spill over floodgates when rain is plentiful, and give Mexico incentives to deliver water on an annual basis.

TEXAS – The Dallas Morning News reports that a La Niña-influenced weather pattern that was forecast to develop this summer could be milder than expected — and that would be good news for people who live in Texas, especially those who depend on the weather for their livelihoods. Fifth-generation farmer Todd Kimbrell vividly remembers the last time a strong La Niña altered weather patterns in Texas, when an extended five-year dry spell between 2006 and 2011 wiped out crops. “That was really tough,” Kimbrell said. “It’s really hard to make a crop. It’s really hard to sustain a business when you don’t get rain … when everything you have depends on it.” That’s why farmers and ranchers were concerned this year when meteorologists forecast a strong La Niña. They expected it would fuel a strong hurricane season in the Atlantic Ocean and lead to drought conditions in parts of Texas.

Instead, this year’s La Niña has yet to develop. There’s still a 70% chance of a La Niña developing between August and October; and a 79% chance it will persist late into the winter, according to NOAA. But even if it does, it might not fuel the devastating storm season forecasters expected. Additionally, with a wetter spring and summer, the potential for drought could be less devastating. What does this mean for Texas? Even though this cycle happens in the Pacific Ocean, nearly 3,000 miles away, it can have a significant long-term impact on weather patterns for the state. Even though La Niña can increase the threat of hurricanes, the latest July forecasts suggest a less severe impact this year. In terms of droughts, farmers are still recovering. They’ve faced La Niña-fueled droughts before, and more hot, dry, weather could be a significant problem for them. Crop insurance is a potential safety net for farmers. While La Niña can exacerbate drought conditions, crop insurance can help protect farmers from losses. “Our farmers are having to deal with the recourse of past adverse weather losses and the amount of insurance that they can buy,” said Bree Nelson, a crop insurance agent for West Texas.