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PANHANDLE (AP) – When a spate of wildfires tore across the Texas Panhandle in February and scorched 20,000 acres of Craig Cowden’s ranch near Skellytown, he decided he had had enough. Cowden took on a second unofficial job: looking for possible fire hazards on his family land, including checking on the electric lines that power oil and gas equipment.

Unlike the utility companies that run power lines across a region under state oversight, oil and gas companies typically string their own power lines from utility poles to their work sites.

Texas relies on the operators to maintain those lines. Not all of them do. And the state agencies that regulate the energy industry and the power industry said they’re powerless to regulate power lines in the oil patch.

Cowden, 38, spots problems such as a pump jack with faulty wiring or a power line lying on dead grass. He’s filed complaints with the Railroad Commission of Texas, which oversees oil and gas operations. The agency inspected some of the issues he reported, Cowden said. That made him lucky — a lawyer said others have had to file lawsuits against oil lease owners to get dangerous electric equipment fixed.

“I have enough to do on my plate,” Cowden said. “I don’t need to do their job too, but that’s basically what I’m having to do in order to get change.”

The series of devastating February fires burned more than 1.2 million acres. Electric lines for oilfield equipment were blamed for at least two of them, state records show. The disaster revealed the danger of what are effectively unregulated power lines built by oil and gas operators — a problem Texas lawmakers tried and failed to fix 15 years ago.

State Rep. Ken King, a Republican from the Panhandle who led the investigation into the recent fires, said he would prefer not to push a new law next year to address that regulatory gap. Instead, he wants the Railroad Commission to write a rule defining its role in investigating energy operators for electrical problems and notifying the state Public Utility Commission if the electricity needs to be turned off.

But in a statement to The Texas Tribune, the Railroad Commission said it doesn’t have any formal role in regulating power lines. And the Public Utility Commission of Texas, which oversees electricity in the state, told the Tribune it lacked legal authority to inspect oilfield power lines too.

King and other legislators said the result is “a regulatory ‘no man’s land’” that leaves the Panhandle residents vulnerable to more wildfires — as they have been for years.

“I would never do anything to damage the oil and gas industry in our state; it’s too important,” King said. “But that being said, one tiny part of the industry does not have the right to burn millions of acres and destroy all these other industries every couple years because they won’t clean up their own mess.”

In 2006, eight fires merged to become the East Amarillo Complex Fire and blazed for nine days, setting a record for the biggest fire in the state’s history that stood until this year’s fires. Attorney Joe Lovell said improperly constructed power lines owned by an oil and gas operator caused the North Fire, which became part of that 2006 complex that burned part of Cowden’s property. Lovell sued the operator on behalf of landowners and families of two people who died.

Three years later, Texas legislators passed a law that required oilfield operators to build and maintain their power lines according to the National Electrical Code. But the law did not specify a penalty or an agency to enforce it, so there were no consequences for violating it.

Power lines have caused 14,236 fires that burned roughly 2.7 million acres since 2005, said Jake Donellan, the Texas A&M Forest Service’s field operations department head. The agency historically did not track how many of those were caused by oilfield electric lines in particular. It’s now working on adding a subcategory to record that information.

Oil operators are responsible for their own lines

In the Texas Panhandle, where oilfields are spread across private ranches, oilfield operators often rely on a single power utility that serves the region. Each operator that needs electricity at a worksite is responsible for tying into the nearest power pole.

The process of requesting a connection and hiring electricians to do the work can take six to nine months and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, said Jason Herrick, president of Pantera Energy Company.

“It is up to the operator to get it to the location,” Herrick said.

Pantera owns 1,800 wells in the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles and southwest Kansas. The company checks the condition of its electric lines and poles twice a year, including inspecting the Johnny Balls that weigh the lines down and prevents them from clashing together and sparking, Herrick said. The operator also inspects its oilfield equipment daily.

Not all oil and gas operators take care of their wires, said King, who chaired the investigative committee created to investigate the February fires. Some wells produce small amounts of oil and operators watching costs might not spend money to maintain them, he said.

King’s committee, which includes two other House members and two members of the public, found the regulatory oversight of oil and gas operators “grossly deficient” especially for companies overseeing those low-producing or non-producing wells.

In February, lawyers say a rotten utility pole owned by the utility Xcel Energy, which serves more than 3.7 million customers in Texas and seven other states, snapped and crashed onto dry grass. That ignited the fast-spreading Smokehouse Creek Fire that burned for nearly three weeks, killed thousands of head of cattle and set a new record for the largest wildfire in Texas after torching more than 1 million acres. Xcel Energy acknowledged its equipment was involved in starting the blaze.

Additionally, evidence showed that private power line equipment on oilfields started at least one of the other fires at that time and is suspected of causing another, according to Texas A&M Forest Service investigator reports.

An investigator at the Grape Vine Creek Fire found that a metal conduit wasn’t attached with brackets to the electrical pole, so it blew around in the wind, causing sparks. Two sources told the investigator that an oil and gas operator owned the pole but the investigator could not determine who owned the pole or the electrical equipment, according to the investigators’ report.

At the spot where the Windy Deuce Fire started, three power lines around a pump jack were strung through the branches of a small tree, the state investigator found. The fire went on to burn more than 140,000 acres, incinerating homes around the city of Fritch and putting residents on edge in the city of Borger — where a prescribed burn months earlier created a firebreak that saved countless homes.

“Windy Deuce is the classic example of what happens when nobody enforces the law,” said John Lovell, an Amarillo attorney.

Lovell is representing a rancher who filed a claim to get money from the oilfield company that they believe owned the power lines, Polaris Operating. He said the power lines got close enough to each other for electricity to jump between them, melting aluminum in the wire and causing the fire.

Attorneys for Polaris, which was in bankruptcy proceedings when the fire happened, did not respond to a request for comment.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States and Russia completed their biggest prisoner swap in post-Soviet history on Thursday, with Moscow releasing journalist Evan Gershkovich and fellow American Paul Whelan, along with dissidents including Vladimir Kara-Murza, in a multinational deal that set two dozen people free.

Gershkovich, Whelan and Alsu Kurmasheva, a journalist with dual U.S.-Russia citizenship, arrived on American soil shortly before midnight for a joyful reunion with their families. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris also were at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland to greet them and dispense hugs all around.

The trade unfolded despite relations between Washington and Moscow being at their lowest point since the Cold War after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Negotiators in backchannel talks at one point explored an exchange involving Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, but after his death in February ultimately stitched together a 24-person deal that required significant concessions from European allies, including the release of a Russian assassin, and secured freedom for a cluster of journalists, suspected spies, political prisoners and others.

Biden trumpeted the exchange, by far the largest in a series of swaps with Russia, as a diplomatic feat while welcoming families of the returning Americans to the White House. But the deal, like others before it, reflected an innate imbalance: The U.S. and allies gave up Russians charged or convicted of serious crimes in exchange for Russia releasing journalists, dissidents and others imprisoned by the country’s highly politicized legal system on charges seen by the West as trumped-up.

“Deals like this one come with tough calls,” Biden said. He added, “There’s nothing that matters more to me than protecting Americans at home and abroad.”

Under the deal, Russia released Gershkovich, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal who was jailed in 2023 and convicted in July of espionage charges that he and the U.S. government vehemently denied. His family said in a statement released by the newspaper that “we can’t wait to give him the biggest hug and see his sweet and brave smile up close.” The paper’s editor-in-chief, Emma Tucker, called it a “joyous day.”

“While we waited for this momentous day, we were determined to be as loud as we could be on Evan’s behalf. We are so grateful for all the voices that were raised when his was silent. We can finally say, in unison, ‘Welcome home, Evan,’” she wrote in a letter posted online.

Also released was Whelan, a Michigan corporate security executive jailed since 2018, also on espionage charges he and Washington have denied, and Kurmasheva, a Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty journalist convicted in July of spreading false information about the Russian military, accusations her family and employer have rejected.

The three flew from Maryland to Texas and landed at Joint Base San Antonio early Friday to begin medical evaluations after spending some time with their family members. If they choose, they can receive treatment the military offers to wrongfully detained Americans.

The dissidents released included Kara-Murza, a Kremlin critic and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer serving 25 years on charges of treason widely seen as politically motivated, as well as multiple associates of Navalny. Freed Kremlin critics included Oleg Orlov, a veteran human rights campaigner convicted of discrediting the Russian military, and Ilya Yashin, imprisoned for criticizing the war in Ukraine.

The Russian side got Vadim Krasikov, who was convicted in Germany in 2021 and sentenced to life in prison for killing a former Chechen rebel in a Berlin park two years earlier, apparently on the orders of Moscow’s security services. Throughout the negotiations, Moscow had been persistent in pressing for his release, with Putin himself raising it.

At the time of Navalny’s death, officials were discussing a possible exchange involving Krasikov. But with that prospect erased, senior U.S. officials, including national security adviser Jake Sullivan, made a fresh push to encourage Germany to release Krasikov. In the end, a handful of the prisoners Russia released were either German nationals or dual German-Russian nationals.

Russia also received two alleged sleeper agents jailed in Slovenia, as well as three men charged by federal authorities in the U.S., including Roman Seleznev, a convicted computer hacker and the son of a Russian lawmaker, and Vadim Konoshchenok, a suspected Russian intelligence operative accused of providing American-made electronics and ammunition to the Russian military. Norway returned an academic arrested on suspicions of being a Russian spy; Poland sent back a man it detained on espionage charges.

“Today is a powerful example of why it’s vital to have friends in this world,” Biden said.

All told, six countries released at least one prisoner and a seventh, Turkey, participated by hosting the location for the swap, in Ankara.

Biden placed securing the release of Americans held wrongfully overseas at the top of his foreign policy agenda for the six months before he leaves office. In an Oval Office address discussing his decision to drop his bid for a second term, Biden said, “We’re also working around the clock to bring home Americans being unjustly detained all around the world.”

At one point Thursday, he grabbed the hand of Whelan’s sister, Elizabeth, and said she had practically been living at the White House as the administration tried to free Paul. He then motioned for Kurmasheva’s daughter, Miriam, to come closer and took her hand, telling the room it was her 13th birthday. He asked everyone to sing “Happy Birthday” with him. She wiped tears from her eyes.

The Biden administration has now brought home more than 70 Americans detained in other countries as part of deals that have required the U.S. to give up a broad array of convicted criminals, including for drug and weapons offenses. The swaps, though celebrated with fanfare, have spurred criticism that they incentivize future hostage-taking and give adversaries leverage over the U.S. and its allies.

The U.S. government’s top hostage negotiator, Roger Carstens, has sought to defend the deals by saying the number of wrongfully detained Americans has actually gone down even as swaps have increased.

Tucker, the Journal’s editor-in-chief, acknowledged the debate, writing, “We know the U.S. government is keenly aware, as are we, that the only way to prevent a quickening cycle of arresting innocent people as pawns in cynical geopolitical games is to remove the incentive for Russia and other nations that pursue the same detestable practice.”

Though she called for a change to the dynamic, “for now,” she wrote, “we are celebrating the return of Evan.”

Thursday’s swap of 24 prisoners surpassed a deal involving 14 people that was struck in 2010. In that exchange, Washington freed 10 Russians living in the U.S. as sleepers, while Moscow deported four Russians, including Sergei Skripal, a double agent working with British intelligence. He and his daughter in 2018 were nearly killed in Britain by nerve agent poisoning blamed on Russian agents.

Speculation had mounted for weeks that a swap was near because of a confluence of unusual developments, including a startlingly quick trial for Gershkovich, which Washington regarded as a sham. He was sentenced to 16 years in a maximum-security prison.

In a trial that concluded in two days in secrecy in the same week as Gershkovich’s, Kurmasheva was convicted on charges of spreading false information about the Russian military that her family, employer and U.S. officials rejected. Also in recent days, several other figures imprisoned in Russia for speaking out against the war in Ukraine or over their work with Navalny were moved from prison to unknown locations.

Gershkovich was arrested March 29, 2023, while on a reporting trip to the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg. Authorities claimed, without offering any evidence, that he was gathering secret information for the U.S. The son of Soviet emigres who settled in New Jersey, he moved to Russia in 2017 to work for The Moscow Times newspaper before being hired by the Journal in 2022.

Gershkovich was designated as wrongfully detained, as was Whelan, who was detained in December 2018 after traveling to Russia for a wedding.

Whelan, who was serving a 16-year prison sentence, had been excluded from prior high-profile deals involving Russia, including the April 2022 swap by Moscow of imprisoned Marine veteran Trevor Reed for Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot convicted in a drug trafficking conspiracy. That December, the U.S. released notorious arms trafficker Viktor Bout in exchange for WNBA star Brittney Griner, who had been jailed on drug charges.

“Paul Whelan is free. Our family is grateful to the United States government for making Paul’s freedom a reality,” his family said in a statement.

On a warm and steamy night, the freed Americans lingered on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, soaking up the moment of their return to the U.S. They took selfies with family members and friends, shared hugs with Biden and Harris, and patted loved ones on the back and smothered them with kisses.

At one point, Biden gave Whelan the flag pin off his own lapel.

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Youth lockups in Texas remain beset by sexual abuse, excessive use of pepper spray and other mistreatment including the prolonged isolation of children in their cells, the Justice Department said Thursday in a scathing report that accused the state of violating the constitutional rights of hundreds in custody.

The report comes three years after the department launched a federal investigation into alleged widespread abuse and harsh practices within the Texas Juvenile Justice Department, which takes in hundreds of young people every year.

Staff in the detention centers have engaged in sexual acts with children, kept some for stretches of 17 to 22 hours of isolation in their cells and pepper sprayed children in their faces, U.S. Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke said in releasing the report.

Clarke also noted that about 80% of Texas children in the lockups are Black or Hispanic.

“This is a racial justice issue,” she said. “Our children deserve to be protected from harm and access to essential services.”

In a statement, the state juvenile justice department said it has a “zero-tolerance” policy toward abuse and neglect and had worked closely with federal investigators during their site visit in 2022.

Spokespeople for Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s office did not immediately return emails seeking comment Thursday. The governor’s office said it would cooperate with the federal investigation when it launched.

Mental health concerns, such as suicidal ideation and self-harm, were ignored while children were routinely punished for their behavior, according to the federal report. The facilities’ inability to address or treat these issues were a violation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, officials said during the announcement.

The Justice Department said in the report that it looks forward to cooperating with the state to address the violations while also raising the potential of a federal lawsuit.

“This report makes clear that we are failing our youth, that we are not providing the care they need to be successful,” founder and chief executive officer of Lone Stare Justice Alliance, a youth justice advocacy group, Elizabeth Henneke said. “The Texas legislature has to respond with urgency. It’s not that they haven’t been responding, because they have. But it hasn’t been enough.”

In 2021, the Justice Department opened an investigation into Texas’ five juvenile facilities after advocates filed a complaint.

About 900 youth are detained in understaffed and outdated juvenile facilities across the state, Henneke said, adding that the problems they face in the lockups highlight structural challenges including a lack of resources at state and local levels.

She said judges and lawmakers should think creatively about other rehabilitation efforts because mistreatment at facilities only exacerbates trauma in young people.

Texas is not the only state facing federal investigations by the government, or lawsuits from former incarcerated children over harsh conditions in youth lockups. Clark announced in May a federal probe of conditions in Kentucky’s youth detention centers after a state report found problems with use of force and isolation techniques. Lawsuits have been filed this year in Illinois, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and New Jersey alleging harsh treatment of incarcerated children.

____ This story has been updated to correct the spelling of U.S. Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke.

EL PASO, Texas (AP) — A powerful Mexican drug cartel leader on Thursday made his second appearance in federal court in Texas after being taken into U.S. custody last week.

Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, 76, used a wheelchair for the hearing before U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone in El Paso. Zambada, the longtime leader of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, eluded authorities for decades until a plane carrying him and Joaquín Guzmán López, a son of notorious drug kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán,” landed at an airport near El Paso on July 25. Both men were arrested and remain jailed. They are charged in the U.S. with various drug crimes.

Discussions during the short hearing Thursday included whether Zambada would be tried with co-defendants or separately. He is being held without bond and pleaded not guilty during a short hearing last week, where he also used a wheelchair.

His next hearing date was set for Sept. 9. His attorneys declined to comment after Thursday’s hearing.

One of his attorneys, Frank Perez, previously has alleged his client was kidnapped by Guzmán López and brought to the U.S. aboard a private plane. Guzmán López, 38, pleaded not guilty Tuesday to drug trafficking and other charges in federal court in Chicago.

Zambada was thought to be more involved in day-to-day operations of the cartel than his better-known and flashier boss, “El Chapo,” who was sentenced to life in prison in the U.S. in 2019.

Zambada is charged in a number of U.S. cases, including in New York and California. Prosecutors brought a new indictment against him in New York in February, describing him as the “principal leader of the criminal enterprise responsible for importing enormous quantities of narcotics into the United States.”

The capture of Zambada and Guzmán López has fueled theories about how federal authorities pulled it off and prompted Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to take the unusual step of issuing a public appeal to drug cartels not to fight each other.

AUSTIN – The Austin American-Statesman reports that Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian said Wednesday there is “no choice” but to initiate a lawsuit against Austin-based cybersecurity company CrowdStrike after it caused widespread software outages in July that cost the airline $500 million. Having canceled more than 5,000 flights amid the July 19 outage and in its aftermath after a CrowdStrike software update that rendered Microsoft Windows inoperable, Bastian told CNBC on Wednesday that the incident is unacceptable and serves as a catalyst for more collaborative partnerships in the technology industry. “You can’t come into a mission critical 24/7 operation and tell us we have a bug. It doesn’t work,” Bastian said during an interview with CNBC in Paris.

While Delta had not formally filed a lawsuit against CrowdStrike as of Wednesday afternoon, Bastian said there is no other option for the company after its revenue losses and the millions in additional costs during the five days it took the airline to return to normal operations. “We have no choice,” Bastian said. “Between not just the loss of revenue, but the tens of millions of dollars per day in compensation and hotels. We did everything we could to take care of our customers over that time.” Coming from an “undetected error” in a software update to the CrowdStrike’s “Falcon Sensor” — an artificial intelligence and machine learning tool to identify and mitigate cybersecurity threats in real time — caused Microsoft Windows to crash and display a blue screen, known informally as the “Blue Screen of Death.” In the days after the outage, CrowdStrike published a preliminary post incident review, confirming that the software error was not hostile in nature and had since been identified and fixed.

DENTON – KERA reports that since May, Denton County has received about 17,000 challenges to local voter rolls, Elections Administrator Frank Phillips said. True the Vote, a Texas-based conservative election-monitoring organization, has been sending complaints nationwide about inaccurate voter rolls with the goal of preventing voter fraud. Founder Catherine Engelbrecht asks people to use a web-based app called IV3 that lets them research voter records and submit voter eligibility challenges to local election offices. Phillips said the Denton County election office has faced three categories of voter eligibility challenges.

“They’re basically following three categories,” he said. “The vast majority of them are people that they believe had moved and no longer live at that address, because they did a national change of address with the post office. That is, overwhelmingly, the majority. They sent a few … where they think a person is deceased [claiming] that we still have on the rolls. … The third category … they’re questioning is if it’s a commercial address versus a residential.” Wired magazine reported in 2022 that little is known about the IV3 app because it isn’t active in most states and requires users to submit personal information and images of the front and back of their identification. Wired analyzed the code and found the app “uses an ineffective and unreliable methodology to determine who should remain on the rolls.” According to a news release, True the Vote says nearly 7,000 people have used IV3 to complete nearly 650,000 voter challenges in 1,322 counties across the U.S. Phillips said the organization’s data is outdated, and he has disputed claims about voter roll inaccuracy. “It looks like they’ve probably got their database, wherever they got it — I’m guessing at the end of last year because we mail out a bunch of registration cards in January, when those start coming back as undeliverable,” Phillips said. “That’s when we put people in suspense.”

DALLAS – The Dallas Morning News says that Gateway Church this week parted ways with a founding elder who was on a leave of absence relating to an investigation into sexual abuse allegations against former pastor Robert Morris, a church spokesperson said Wednesday. Steve Dulin, 63, was the executive pastor leading Gateway Kingdom Business Leaders ministry, according to a statement from the church. Gateway elders met with Dulin this week and, following the meeting, decided to “go in a different direction” regarding his position as a staff member and elder. “Steve has served Gateway Church for many years in various roles. We love Steve, his wife Melody, and their family and sincerely thank them for investing their lives here at Gateway Church. They have faithfully served our congregation, our community and our church through the years,” the statement said. Voicemails seeking comment left at a number listed in public records as Dulin’s were not returned Wednesday evening.

Gateway did not cite a specific reason for Dulin being let go but said it was not related to the findings of the investigation into Morris by Haynes & Boone. Gateway hired the law firm to investigate sexual abuse allegations made against Morris by Oklahoma woman Cindy Clemishire, who said the megachurch pastor abused her from 1982 to 1987, beginning when she was 12 years old. Dulin’s departure comes as the Southlake-based megachurch continues to face what elders earlier called “the most challenging time in Gateway’s history.” He had been on a leave since late June, when Haynes & Boone suggested he and three other elders step down temporarily due to a potential conflict of interest relating to the investigation. At the time, all four elders remained on staff, Gateway said in a statement. Dulin and two other elders, Gayland Lawshe and Kevin Grove, had been elders between 2005 and 2007, when Clemishire said she contacted Morris to confront him about the abuse she said she suffered as a child. She said she believed elders knew of her accusation when Tom Lane, a former Gateway elder, responded to her email and tried to call her.

DALLAS – The Dallas Morning News reports that Dallas billionaire Mark Cuban is the top signature of a new group of 100-plus venture capitalist investors from prominent tech regions like Silicon Valley supporting Vice President Kamala Harris in her bid for the White House. The group, made up of names like Cuban, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, billionaire cowboy Chris Sacca and many more is calling itself VCs for Kamala and is pledging to vote for Harris in the upcoming 2024 election The news comes shortly after Harris’ opponent, former President Donald Trump, gained the support of other prominent Silicon Valley entrepreneurs like Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. X/Twitter owner and Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk has also publicly endorsed Trump. Cuban and Musk have clashed on Musk’s social media platform over diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in the past year. Though Cuban didn’t immediately respond to an interview request from The Dallas Morning News, VCs for Kamala’s statement said it’s supporting Harris because of how critical the 2024 election has been described by both candidates.

“We spend our days looking for, investing in and supporting entrepreneurs who are building the future. We are pro-business, pro-American dream, pro-entrepreneurship, and pro-technological progress,” the statement said. “We also believe in democracy as the backbone of our nation. We believe that strong, trustworthy institutions are a feature, not a bug, and that our industry – and every other industry — would collapse without them. That is what’s at stake in this election. Everything else, we can solve through constructive dialogue with political leaders and institutions willing to talk to us.” Cuban, who was at one point considered a longshot vice presidential candidate by gambling company BetOnline, has also reportedly been in talks with Harris’ camp in recent weeks. The former Dallas Mavericks owner told crypto news platform Decrypt that Harris’ camp reached out to him with “multiple questions” about cryptocurrency. Cuban said Harris appears receptive to hearing about new technologies, which could be a good sign for the tech entrepreneur as he’s previously said he believes cryptocurrency will be a determining factor for some voters in the upcoming presidential election.