UPDATE: Found safe and unharmed, per the Smith County Sheriff’s Office Thursday morning.
TYLER – A Smith County teenager has not been seen since March 1, and her family believes she has run away. According to the Smith County Sheriff’s Office, Kalyiah Smith, 16, is 5 feet, 4 inches tall, weighs 130 pounds, and has brown hair and eyes. She has been diagnosed with ADHD and is supposed to take medications for that, they said, but other than that, she has no medical or mental issues.
Kalyiah has ties to the immediate Tyler area, and the Smith County Sheriff’s Office reminds residents that anyone who is harboring a minor and is criminally negligent about whether the child is younger than 18 years of age and has voluntarily left home without the consent of a parent or guardian, can be charged with Harboring a Runaway, a Class A Misdemeanor.
If you have any information as to the whereabouts of Kalyiah Smith, please call the Smith County Sheriff’s Office at (903) 566-6600.
TYLER – A new Texas House caucus created to stop Sharia Law is facing pushback. Over 30 state lawmakers have joined the Sharia Free Texas Caucus. In a statement posted on X (Formerly Twitter), one of the group’s founders, State Rep. Brent Money (R-Greenville), said the caucus is looking to address the teachings of Islam in part by advancing legislation to prohibit Sharia practices they say oppress women or incite violence against non-believers. The caucus also wants to reinforce what they view as the Biblical foundations of Texas.
“We’re just saying, hey, in Texas, we want to be welcoming to people, but you got to be a Texan when you get here,” said Money. He expressed concern over what he said is a growing Islamic influence in the state and wants to ensure there is no parallel legal system in Texas that treats people differently.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R-TX) has asked senators to look at ways to prevent Sharia Law in Texas before the next legislative session, which starts in 2027.
TYLER – Tyler Police Officers were called to Green Acres Baptist Church on Wednesday afternoon after a single-vehicle crash occurred outside of the building. Once officers arrived on the scene, they discovered the vehicle had struck a tree just outside the chapel. The driver was able to exit the vehicle and was uninjured. It remains unknown at this time how the crash occurred or whether the driver will face any charges.
HARRISON COUNTY – Multiple elk have been spotted in Harrison County. According to our news partner KETK, the Harrison County Sheriff’s Office said it has been made aware of elk roaming around Sue Belle Lake Road. County officals asks the public not to approach the animals or try to chase them into the woods. The owners are aware of the situation and are working with neighbors to return the elk to their enclosure.
AUSTIN (KETK)– Exxon Mobil announced on Tuesday that it is seeking shareholders’ approval to make Texas its new legal home.
If approved, Exxon will join SpaceX and a number of other companies that have relocated their headquarters to Texas over the past few years. Exxon’s headquarters have been located in Texas since 1989.
Gov. Greg Abbott released a statement on Tuesday approving Exxon’s decision to move their ‘legal home’ to Texas, claiming it will help the state’s economic growth.
“Freed from the stranglehold of over-regulation, Texas is where global brand leaders thrive and jobs for hardworking Texans grow,” Abbott said. “I thank Exxon Mobil for their decision to redomicile in Texas and for their long-standing partnership with our state. With this decision, Texas will further dominate the corporate landscape and ensure our economic growth reaches new heights.”
MARSHALL – The Marshall Police Department arrested a Center, Texas man Tuesday afternoon after he struck a Texas Department of Transportation truck while attempting to flee from officers.
At approximately 3:45 p.m. on March 10, Marshall Police received several calls reporting a reckless driver traveling northbound on East End Boulevard, U.S. Highway 59. Marshall Police patrol units located the vehicle and attempted to initiate a traffic stop. Near the intersection of Highway 59 and Loop 390, the vehicle pulled onto the shoulder and appeared to be stopping. Continue reading Man charged with DWI and possession
TYLER – On Wednesday, Tyler City Council approved a $167,868 contract with Kimley-Horn and Associates, Inc. for the Intelligent Transportation System Master Plan Year 6 – Traffic Signal Timing Improvements. According to a release obtained by KTBB, 26 highly-driven intersections in the city will be addressed. The areas being addressed include Southeast Loop 323, Beckham Avenue, Troup Highway, Shiloh Road, and East Grande Boulevard. The release quoted the improvement previous traffic light re-timings have done for city traffic flow, specifically the improvement of Broadway Avenue. Historical data from Texas Department of Transportation and Texas A&M Transportation Institute ranked Broadway as one of the most traffic-heavy roads in Texas, but since re timing plans began, the ranking has steadily improved. The project is set to be paid for with the Half Cent Sales Tax Fund.
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(NEW YORK) -- As many as 724,000 service members, their families and veterans may rely on health care at hospitals that face financial vulnerability, partly due to cuts in President Donald Trump's megabill, according to a new analysis.
The bill, known as HR.1, was signed into law in last summer and included sweeping changes to health care including Medicaid. Strict work requirements, reduced federal funding and tightening provider tax rules impacts hospitals that are dependent on Medicaid, increasing their risk of uncompensated care and reducing revenue.
Service members and their families -- many of whom are covered by the military health insurance program TRICARE -- rely heavily on civilian hospitals for health care, particularly in areas without military treatment facilities.
The analysis, conducted by researchers the Healthcare Quality and Outcomes Lab at Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health (HSPH) and first viewed by ABC News, looked at how many TRICARE beneficiaries may be reliant on hospitals considered at risk of financial distress under these new changes.
The researchers said many hospitals rely so heavily on Medicaid reimbursements that cuts to the program under HR.1 will affect care the hospitals provide to other patients, including those in the military community.
"We wanted to get a sense of how many hospitals are potentially at risk for becoming potentially financially unstable with the upcoming looming HR.1 Medicaid cuts," Dr. Jose Figueroa, co-author of the analysis and associate professor of Health Policy and Management at HPSH told ABC News. "There's a big focus on rural hospitals, but it is not just rural hospitals at risk, that we were finding that across the country, many urban hospitals are at risk."
Figueroa said medical services that many TRICARE beneficiaries need are often only offered in civilian hospitals or in civilian health care systems. These beneficiaries are then exposed to hospitals that are potentially at financial risk, he noted.
"Military active duty service members on TRICARE and their families also on TRICARE are increasingly relying on civilian hospitals for their care, even when they're living within a military base," Figueroa said. "If we're finding evidence that there are many hospitals across the country that are at risk, to what extent will that affect military personnel and their families?"
TRICARE is run by the U.S. Department of Defense for those connected to the military, including active duty members, National Guard and reserve members, military retirees and their families. It is not the same as Medicaid, although some may qualify for both.
For their analysis, the team used three different criteria to identify a hospital that might be at risk.
If more than one in four of patients being treated at the hospital are on Medicaid, given that the HR.1. cuts are disproportionally affecting those on the federal health insurance program. If the hospital is a safety net hospital, which serves a large number of patients with no insurance or with Medicaid, or a critical access hospital, which is a rural facility that provides essential health care services to underserved communities. The Altman Z-score, which is an aggregate measure of the financial health of a hospital, combining liquidity, profitability, financial efficiency and solvency measures to categorize a hospital as being at risk for bankruptcy. About 4% of hospitals were considered at higher risk of financial distress -- meeting three of the criteria and about 19% were at moderate risk of financial distress -- meeting two -- according to the analysis.
The team then used a dataset to help to identify 8.9 million TRICARE beneficiaries and their ZIP codes.
The analysis estimated that more than 117,000 TRICARE beneficiaries are currently living on or near military installations potentially exposed to a hospital at higher risk of financial distress. Additionally, more than 607,000 are living near a hospital with a moderate risk of financial distress.
This means that more than 724,000 TRICARE beneficiaries are living in military installation ZIP codes -- including bases, camps, posts, depots and stations -- where at least one hospital has multiple risk factors for financial distress.
Additionally, more than 3.5 million TRICARE beneficiaries living in ZIP codes without a military installation are potentially exposed to a higher-risk or moderate-risk hospital, the analysis found.
"As a country, we should do our best to take care of the people protecting us," Figueroa said. "Military personnel and their family members should be protected, and sometimes we have to remind ourselves that drastic cuts to our health care that affect our health delivery system also affects our active military personnel and their families as well."
Last month, during a Senate hearing, Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force David Wolfe said troops were struggling to get health care appointments and made reference to issues with TRICARE's reimbursement rate for providers.
"What we've all seen over the length of our careers is a gradual erosion in the availability of that health care for our service members and their families," Wolfe said, according to the Military Times.
Based on the results of the Harvard analysis, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D- Mass., is launching an investigation into how the Pentagon is guiding military families through health care cuts and whether Republicans and the Trump administration consulted the Pentagon before the cuts were made, her office told ABC News first.
Warren is also pressing the Pentagon to explain how these cuts are affecting military readiness.
"Donald Trump is putting troops' lives on the line in the Middle East while ripping away health care from their families at home," Warren said in a statement to ABC News. "Republicans swore the Medicaid cuts in their Big Beautiful Bill were about cutting waste, fraud, and abuse -- is that what they think of our military families' health care?"
In a statement sent to ABC News, the Pentagon didn't address Warren's comments.
"As with all congressional correspondences, the Department will respond directly to the authors as appropriate," a spokesperson said.
A Pentagon official also said it wouldn't be appropriate to comment on the methodology of studies not conducted by the department.
The White House didn't respond to ABC News' request for comment.
NEW YORK (AP) — A New York federal judge on Tuesday urged over two dozen states to settle their antitrust claims against Ticketmaster and its parent company this week after the U.S. Justice Department reached a deal and dropped out of an ongoing trial.
But Dan Wall, a lawyer for Ticketmaster’s parent, Live Nation Entertainment, told Judge Arun Subramanian at a hearing in Manhattan that the chance all states would settle their claims by Friday was “about zero.”
He said he based his assessment on the nature of discussions between the ticketing and entertainment giants and the states over the past week. The states don’t all want the same kinds of relief, he said.
“There are too many parties,” Wall said. “We want to stick the landing here. Get it down. And we won’t stick the landing by Friday.”
At another point, Wall said: “There is zero chance we get this done by Friday.”
Subramanian quipped: “Not with that attitude.”
Still, the judge persuaded lawyers for both sides to negotiate in Manhattan federal court this week to see if they make progress before he decides whether to grant a mistrial request by the states and schedule a fresh start for a trial or to resume a trial next Monday that started with the presentation of evidence last week.
“Right now you should be focused on can we make a deal,” the judge told them, saying he would find them conference rooms throughout the courthouse to do their work. He even offered his robing room for office space. “I want to see if we can get a deal done here.”
Michael Rapino, president and CEO of Live Nation, attended the courthouse talks Tuesday.
On Monday, the Justice Department revealed that it had settled its antitrust lawsuit against Ticketmaster, describing the terms of the deal as a victory for consumers that would end an illegal monopoly over live events in the U.S.
At the trial, lawyers for the federal government and 39 states and the District of Columbia said Live Nation and Ticketmaster were squelching competition and driving up prices for fans through threats, retaliation and other tactics to “suffocate the competition” by controlling virtually every aspect of the industry, from concert promotion to ticketing. The companies insisted that artists, sports teams and venues set prices and decide how tickets are sold.
The Justice Department announcement was immediately met with strong criticism from multiple states. North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson called it “a terrible deal.”
U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat and member of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law, said Monday that the new deal was like previous agreements with the Justice Department that ultimately failed to curtail monopoly activity by Live Nation.
Klobuchar praised states for opposing the deal and said it was “troubling” that the deal was announced a month after the head of the Justice Department’s antitrust division was ousted.
According to a court document, Live Nation agreed to let up to 50% of all tickets sold at amphitheaters it owns, operates or controls to be sold through any ticketing marketplace.
It also said it would cap its service fees at those amphitheaters at 15% and divest ownership or control of 13 amphitheaters, including venues in Milwaukee, Cincinnati, Syracuse, New York, and Austin, Texas. It said Live Nation will create a $280 million settlement fund to settle claims or pay civil penalties to states.
None of that money will be paid out if no states settle, though. A Justice Department official said Monday that at least 10 states had agreed to join the United States in settling the case.
That leaves over two dozen states that have not agreed to the deal, lawyers for the states say.
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FILE – The Ticketmaster logo is seen along the sideline of the field before an NFL football game, Sept. 15, 2024, in Jacksonville, Fla. (AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack, File)
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Date Mar 3, 2026 10:35 AM
Headline Justice Department Ticketmaster Lawsuit
Source FR121174 AP
Notes FILE PHOTO
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LONGVIEW — The City of Longview is proposing to allocate $250,000 in federal funding to resurface Park Street and expand its first-time homebuyer program. The city will have $100,000 to provide additional ‘First-Time Homebuyer Down Payment’ assistance grants. The first-time homebuyer program provides financial assistance to eligible low-income homebuyers on a one-time, grant-based basis. Qualified applicants may receive up to $5,500, depending on household income.
The amendment will also reallocate $150,000 for a resurfacing project and street overlay along Park Street.
The city of Longview will live-stream the meeting on Facebook on Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. for anyone interested in learning more about the proposal or providing feedback.
NACOGDOCHES, Texas (KETK)– Six people have recently been arrested in Nacogdoches County after a large number of illegal drugs were found across the county in three different cases, including methamphetamine and cocaine.
Feb. 24 arrests
According to the Nacogdoches County Sheriff’s Office, two residents in the 200 block of College Street were arrested on Feb. 24 after deputies conducted a search warrant of their home and found that 53-year-old Howard Clay Cooper and 36-year-old Jessica Marie Ady were distributing large amounts of methamphetamine.
2 vehicle crash delays traffic on US Highway 69 near Love’s Lookout
During the search of the home offficlas also stated they obtained 53 grams of methamphetamine and 29 grams of crack cocaine that were found in a secret compartment. After executing the search warrant, Cooper and Ady were taken to the Nacogdoches County Jail and charged with two counts of manufacturing or delivering a controlled substance. Both their bonds were set at $200,000, and they currently remain in jail.
Feb. 20 arrests
Earlier in the month, investigators for the sheriff’s office conducted a search warrant at a home in the Kingtown community. Following the search, 52-year-old Robert Williams and 80-year-old Franklin Rickenbacker were arrested after investigators found drug paraphernalia and other items used for distributing narcotics. It was also discovered that meth was being purchased from the residence provided by both suspects.
Following the arrest, Williams and Rickenbacker were both charged with delivery of a controlled substance and they both remain in the Nacogdoches County jail.
March 5 arrests
A third drug-related arrest was made in Nacogdoches County on March 5, following a traffic stop on FM 2782. During the traffic stop, deputies noticed suspicious behavior from the driver, 47-year-old Amber Leigh Kinkaid and the passenger, 33-year-old Matthew Bradley, prompting them to contact investigators.
Once investigators arrived on the scene, Kinkaid admitted to operating the vehicle without a driver’s license and confessed to having a large amount of methamphetamine in her possession. According to officials, investigations later found 140 grams of methamphetamine in Kinkaid’s possession.
Bradley and Kinkaid were both placed under arrest and taken to the Nacogdoches County Jail, where they were charged with delivery of a controlled substance and their bonds were set at $20,000. Kinkaid was released on bond on March 6, and Williams currently remains in jail.
UPDATE: Highway 31 East has been reopened following the crash, according to Smith County ESD 2.
SMITH COUNTY — A Texarkana ISD school bus carrying more than 20 students collided with a van on Tuesday afternoon near Tyler. Smith County personnel were dispatched at around 3:50 p.m. to the 14000 block of Highway 31 East near CR 2908 in response to the crash. Smith County ESD2 said 26 kids and two coaches were on the bus and no injuries were reported.
Both vehicles are out of the roadway and one lane of Highway 31 is shut down going eastbound.
UPDATE: Found safe and unharmed, per the Smith County Sheriff’s Office Thursday morning.
HARRISON COUNTY – Multiple elk have been spotted in Harrison County. According to our news partner KETK, the Harrison County Sheriff’s Office said it has been made aware of elk roaming around Sue Belle Lake Road. County officals asks the public not to approach the animals or try to chase them into the woods. The owners are aware of the situation and are working with neighbors to return the elk to their enclosure.
