Today is
Sunday November 24, 2024
KILGORE — With a nationwide truck driver shortage, Kilgore college is working to bridge the gap by opening a new training institution, focusing on safety in training. According to our news partner KETK, Kilgore College has been training truck drivers on campus since 2010, now their program is expanding due to a rising need. At their ribbon cutting, the college shared some staggering statistics saying the shortage of drivers has now topped 60,000 nationally.
According to the American Journal of Transportation by 2030 there will be a shortage of 160,000 drivers. The journal said several factors are causing the shortage including a high demand for truck drivers, a retiring workforce and a lack of new drivers. Read the rest of this entry »
NEW YORK (AP) — The federal government wants to make it easier for employees to quit a job and work for a competitor. But some companies say a new rule created by the Federal Trade Commission will make it hard to protect trade secrets and investments they make in their employees.
At least three companies have sued the FTC after it voted to ban noncompete agreements, which prevent employees from working for competitors for a period of time after leaving a job. Their cases are now pending in Florida, Pennsylvania and Texas and the issue could end up in front of the U.S. Supreme Court.
SMITH COUNTY — A Tyler man was arrested for intoxicated manslaughter following a fatal crash on Highway 31 early Wednesday morning. According to an affidavit and our news partner KETK, Cesar Efrain Viramontes-Cocolan, 22, of Tyler, was driving a pickup truck traveling westbound on State Highway 31 near FM 2908. The document said that Viramontes swerved into oncoming traffic and struck another vehicle head on killing the driver. DPS confirmed that the identity of the deceased driver was Maria Hernandez, 58, of Tyler.
According to Sgt. Adam Albritton, DPS media and communications, the vehicle that was struck was an SUV that had an 18-wheeler driving behind it. Albritton said that the 18-wheeler attempted to avoid crashing into the other vehicles but was unable to.
According to the affidavit, it was observed that there were no “obstacles or anything that would necessitate that Viramontes veer onto the wrong side of the road.†The document said that when interviewed at the hospital, Viramontes told officials that the other driver was “swerving in and out of their lane†but was unable to explain why he swerved into traffic. Read the rest of this entry »
SMITH COUNTY — At their budget workshop for the 2025 fiscal year on Wednesday, the Smith County Commissioner’s Court verbally agreed to add 10 new detention officer jobs in the county. According to our news partner KETK, the move comes after years of the Smith County Sheriff’s Office having to go over budget on overtime because of a need for additional staffing at the Smith County Jail and elsewhere.
“Each year, knowing what we spent the year before, we’ve found less and less overtime,†Smith County Sheriff Larry Smith said. “The definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing and expecting a different result.â€
At the workshop, Smith presented data that showed how the sheriff’s office reportedly had $300,000 budgeted for overtime and ended up spending $1,019,020 in 2020. Similarly, in 2021, they had even more overtime budgeted with $450,000 and they ended up spending $1,525,436. Read the rest of this entry »
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexican drug cartel leader Ismael “El Mayo†Zambada said that he was ambushed and kidnapped when he thought he was going to meet the governor of the northern state of Sinaloa, and then taken against his will to the United States, according to a letter released Saturday by his lawyer.
In the two-page letter, Zambada said that fellow drug lord JoaquÃn Guzmán López asked him to attend a meeting on July 25 with local politicians, including Sinaloa Gov. Rubén Rocha Moya, from the ruling Morena party.
But before any meeting took place, he was led into a room where he was knocked down, a hood was placed over his head, he was handcuffed, and then taken in a pickup truck to a landing strip where he was forced into a private plane that finally took him and Guzmán López, one of the sons of imprisoned drug kingpin JoaquÃn “El Chapo†Guzmán, to U.S. soil, according to the letter.
Zambada’s comments were released a day after the U.S. ambassador to Mexico confirmed that the drug lord was brought to the United States against his will when he arrived in Texas in July on a plane along with Guzmán López.
After Zambada’s comments, which raised question about links between drug traffickers and some politicians in Sinaloa, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador asked reporters “to wait to get more information†and to hear the governor’s version.
The governor’s office didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment on Saturday. When the arrests of Zambada and Guzmán López were announced, Rocha told local media that he was in Los Angeles that day.
In early August, Zambada, 76, made his second appearance in U.S. federal court in Texas after being taken into U.S. custody the week before.
Guzmán López apparently had been in negotiations with U.S. authorities for a long time about possibly turning himself in. Guzmán López, 38, has pleaded not guilty to drug trafficking and other charges in federal court in Chicago.
But U.S. officials said they had almost no warning when Guzmán López’s plane landed at an airport near El Paso. Both men were arrested and remain jailed. They are charged in the U.S. with various drug crimes.
Ken Salazar, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, said that the plane had taken off from Sinaloa — the Pacific coast state where the cartel is headquartered — and had filed no flight plan. He stressed the pilot wasn’t American, nor was the plane.
The implication is that Guzmán López intended to turn himself in, and brought Zambada with him to procure more favorable treatment, but his motives remain unclear.
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.â€
RIO GRANDE VALLEY (AP) – When a group of state health officials and members of Texas’ maternal mortality committee gathered to review applications for new members, they easily agreed on who should fill five positions reserved for medical professionals.
But the two spots for community members were more difficult to fill, records show.
For the rural community member position, the committee did not choose a candidate, instead advancing the top two choices. The candidate who scored highest on the application rubric was an obstetrics nurse and nursing professor from the Rio Grande Valley; the next highest was Dr. Ingrid Skop, a prominent anti-abortion OB-GYN in San Antonio.
Department of State Health Services deputy commissioner Kirk Cole broke the stalemate, writing in a memo that “although the applicant did not have the highest score, I recommend selecting Dr. Ingrid Skop.â€
Cole wrote that Skop’s application “indicates previous practice in rural areas†and noted her involvement in community organizations that serve rural interests. Her resume, however, shows a career spent entirely in San Antonio, and volunteer work primarily at anti-abortion organizations based in cities.
For the other community member position, reserved for someone from one of the state’s urban centers, the application review committee recommended Queen Esther Egbe, a Black woman who had personally experienced maternal health complications. Egbe runs a nonprofit that helps Black women advocate for themselves during childbirth, and serves on the Tarrant County infant mortality review committee.
Cole nixed that recommendation, however, instead advancing Dr. Meenakshi Awasthi, a Houston pediatric emergency fellow who scored higher on the application rubric.
The two spots reserved for community members are now both filled by doctors, and more than 90% of the members have a doctoral degree. Committee chair Dr. Carla Ortique said at the June meeting this was “cause for concern.â€
“It is rarely possible for those who sit in positions of privilege to truly be the voice of at-risk communities,†she said. “We can and should at all times be voices that support and attempt to foster positive change. We can be trusted allies. However, we cannot truly be their voice.â€
State Rep. Shawn Thierry, an outgoing Houston Democrat who authored the legislation that increased the number of community members from one to two, said it was never the intention to have those spots filled by more doctors.
“The goal was quite simple, just to add an additional voice so that the existing community member would not be the sole voice for the community on the panel,†Thierry said. “Two voices was better than one.â€
Now, there are none.
DALLAS (AP) — A Serbian competitor in the CrossFit Games died while competing in a swimming event Thursday morning at a Texas lake, officials said.
CrossFit CEO Don Faul said during a news conference that they were “deeply saddened†and were working with authorities on the investigation into the death of one of their athletes at Marine Creek Lake in Fort Worth.
The Tarrant County medical examiner’s office identified the athlete as 28-year-old Lazar Dukic of Serbia. The medical examiner’s office had not yet listed his cause of death.
An official with the Fort Worth Fire Department said they were called out around 8 a.m. to assist police because there was “a participant in the water that was down and hadn’t been seen in some point in time.â€
Officers who were working the event were told a participant was unaccounted for after last being seen in the water and then not resurfacing, police said.
The Fort Worth fire official said they responded for search and rescue and were not on the scene when the initial call was made.
Faul said CrossFit had a safety plan and did have safety personnel on site at the event. CrossFit did not respond Thursday to an inquiry from The Associated Press seeking more details on that safety plan.
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported the event on Thursday included a 3.5-mile (5.6-kilometer) run followed by an 800-meter (0.5-mile) swim. The newspaper said an estimated 10,000 people were in the area for the games, which began Thursday and were set to run through Sunday.
Kaitlin Pritchard told the newspaper that she was standing by the finish line when she saw Dukic approach. She said he was among swimmers she noticed had changed up their swimming patterns, which she thought could have been because they were tired from the run.
Pritchard saw people she assumed were lifeguards on paddleboards on the lake but didn’t notice any of them jumped in to try to rescue anyone, she said.
“Gauging where the people on the paddleboards were and everything, it’s just that he should have been reachable,†Pritchard told the newspaper.
Dukic played water polo and was an athlete ambassador for FITAID, a sports drink brand, said Gijs Spaans, general manager for FITAID in Europe. Spaans, who knew Dukic for three years, described him as a driven athlete and a “guy who walks into a room and lights up the room.â€
“He had an incredible work ethic with his athletics career but, you know, always also made time to speak to people and make time for them,” Spaans said. “Just a really, really good dude.â€
Spaans was watching a livestream of the swim miles away at the main event site. He was looking for Dukic among the swimmers coming out of the water before realizing he was missing.
“I thought he had this. And then all of a sudden I was thinking, ‘Why is his name not showing up in the finishes?’†Spaans said. “All the race, he was in top five of the race. And all of a sudden I see all these other people coming in. I’m like, ‘What’s going on?’â€
“He was in it to win it,†Spaans added. “He was a great swimmer.â€
The mission of the CrossFit Games, first held in 2007, is to “find the fittest athletes in the world,†the CrossFit website said. It says the games change every year and often the details are not announced until just before the event.
The CrossFit community is like a family, Faul said.
“We’re doing everything in our power during this tragic time to support the family, to support our community,†Faul said.
Dukic’s biography on the CrossFit website says he was the third-ranked CrossFit athlete in Serbia and the 88th-ranked worldwide. Dukic finished ninth in his debut in the games in 2021, then eighth the next season and ninth in 2023.
TYLER — Painted Tree Boutiques is coming soon to the City of Tyler where the former Bed Bath & Beyond was located. According to our news partner KETK, the boutique offers a one-of-a-kind retail experience with home decor, fashion and gifts but with a twist. The boutique will reportedly have hundreds of shops all under the same roof, creating a big way to shop small. “From the shop owners to the staff, everyone at Painted Tree Boutiques fosters togetherness,†the boutique’s website said. “It’s about supporting local entrepreneurs and giving the local community a treasure trove of delightful things.â€
This will be the store’s first East Texas location with over 12 in the state. The boutique will be located at the Cumberland Mall on 8970 S Broadway Ave, Suite 144 but when it will open has not been released at this time. Small business owners and sellers can now open their own shop at Painted Tree Boutiques by visiting their website or calling 844-762-3342. Read the rest of this entry »
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.â€
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.â€
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.
SMITH COUNTY — Two people were arrested on Monday in connection to Dollar General thefts, the Smith County Sheriff’s Office said. According to our news partner KETK,  around 11:30 a.m. on Monday, Whitehouse police officers responded to a theft at a Dollar General on Highway 110, but the suspects had already fled in a black pickup truck, the sheriff’s office said.
Officials said about 20 minutes later, a theft was also reported at the Dollar General on FM 2493 in Flint.
“It was quickly determined that both thefts involved the same male and female suspect who entered the store and filled grocery carts full of merchandise and then exited,†Smith County official said. “Smith County Property Crimes Investigators had been monitoring the radio traffic of these two thefts due to the ongoing nature of similar thefts in the past few weeks. They quickly responded and developed a known suspect vehicle and license plate from surveillance video.†Read the rest of this entry »
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.â€
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.â€
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.