Sorted by date Results 26 - 46 of 46
WASHINGTON (AP) — Since the Taliban seized the Afghan capital on Aug. 14, more than 82,000 people have been evacuated from Afghanistan in one of the largest U.S. airlifts in history. While the pace has picked up in recent days, it's still a chaotic scramble as people seek to escape. Afghans trying to reach the Kabul airport face a gauntlet of danger, and there are far more who want to leave than will be able to do so. Those who do make it out will face the many challenges of resettlement, either in the U.S. or somewhere else. And time is r...
DALLAS (AP) — Searching for a way to honor Texas teacher Zelene Blancas after her death late last year from COVID-19, a fellow educator over 2,000 miles (3,200 kilometers) away relied on the kindness of others to get a painted, heart-shaped rock to her school. After almost five months on the road, being transported by a handful of people, the rock arrived as school started this month at El Paso's Dr. Sue A. Shook Elementary, where Blancas taught and was remembered by her principal as someone who "embodied kindness." "The legacy that she's l...
DALLAS (AP) — A winter storm dropping snow and ice also sent temperatures plunging across the southern Plains, prompting a power emergency in Texas a day after conditions canceled flights and impacted traffic across large swaths of the U.S. Rotating power outages were initiated by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, early Monday morning, meaning hundreds of thousands went without electricity for short periods as temperatures fell into the teens near Dallas and 20s (about minus 5 degrees Celsius) around Houston. "We urge T...
DALLAS (AP) — Snow and ice blanketed large swaths of the U.S. on Sunday, prompting canceled flights, making driving perilous and reaching into areas as far south as Texas’ Gulf Coast, where snow and sleet were expected overnight. "Typically, we just don’t have quite this much cold air in place that far south,” said Marc Chenard, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service's Weather Prediction Center. The storm has prompted officials in Houston, where temperatures were in the 70s (20s Celsius) earlier this week, to advise residen...
WHITE SETTLEMENT, Texas (AP) — Alarms went off in Jack Wilson's head the moment a man wearing a fake beard, a wig, a hat and a long coat walked into a Texas church for Sunday services. By the time the man approached a communion server and pulled out a shotgun, Wilson and another security volunteer were already reaching for their own guns. The attacker shot the other volunteer, Richard White, and then the server, Anton "Tony" Wallace, sending congregants scrambling for cover. The gunman was heading toward the front of the sanctuary as Wilson s...
WHITE SETTLEMENT, Texas (AP) — The man who opened fire inside a Texas church, killing two people before being shot to death, visited the church several other times this year and was given food but got angry when officials refused to give him money, the minister said. Keith Thomas Kinnunen, 43, brought a shotgun into the West Freeway Church of Christ in the Fort Worth-area town of White Settlement during Sunday services and opened fire, killing church members Richard White and Anton "Tony" Wallace, according to police. Witnesses said he was w...
DALLAS (AP) — The congregation at a Texas church where two people were fatally shot had repeatedly given food to the gunman, according to the pastor, but had declined to give money to him, angering a man who court records show was deemed mentally incompetent for trial in 2012. It's unclear whether Keith Thomas Kinnunen's extensive criminal record and psychological history would have barred him from legally buying the shotgun he used during Sunday's attack at the West Freeway Church of Christ in the Fort Worth-area town of White Settlement. K...
DALLAS (AP) — Cartoonist Jim Davis is offering up more than 11,000 "Garfield" comic strips hand-drawn on paper in an auction that will stretch into the coming years, with at least a couple of strips featuring the always-hungry orange cat with a sardonic sense of humor available weekly. "There are just so many, and it was such a daunting task to figure what to do with them so that they could be out there where people enjoy them too," said Davis, creator of the comic strip that appears in newspapers around the world and has spawned TV shows, movi...
DALLAS (AP) — A tornado tossed trees into homes, tore off storefronts and downed power lines but killed no one in a densely populated area of Dallas, leaving Mayor Eric Johnson to declare the city "very fortunate" to be assessing only property damage. A meteorologist said Monday that people took shelter thanks to early alerts, and that it was fortunate the tornado struck Sunday evening, when many people were home. "Anytime you have a tornado in a major metropolitan area, the potential for large loss of life is always there," said Patrick M...
Far more than the final score will be on the line as two grief-stricken cities shaken by mass shootings weeks apart turn to the proud Texas tradition of high school football as part of the healing process. Perhaps no team symbolizes this rite of fall in the state more than the Permian High School Panthers, which are hosting the game Thursday night in Odessa against the Franklin High School Cougars from El Paso. The Panthers' 1988 team was immortalized in H.G. Bissinger's book "Friday Night Lights," which inspired a movie and television show by...
DALLAS (AP) — When Allan Votaw stepped onto Cal Farley's Boys Ranch in Texas in 1957, the 5-year-old hoped he and his two brothers — ages 3½ and 6 — had found a home. Instead, the now-66-year-old says, they found a "horror house" where sadistic staff members whipped children until they were bruised and bloody and children were molested by older kids. "You lived in fear, you totally lived in fear," said Votaw, who said he still has nightmares from his 10 years on the sprawling ranch for at-risk youths outside of Amarillo. He railed agains...
DALLAS (AP) — Max Glauben was 17 and had already lost his mother, father and brother at the hands of the Nazis when U.S. troops rescued him while he was on a death march from one German concentration camp to another. The recollections of the Dallas resident who as a Jew in Poland survived the Warsaw Ghetto and Nazi concentration camps are now being preserved in a way that will allow generations to come to ask his image questions. Glauben, who turns 91 on Monday, is the latest Holocaust survivor recorded in such a way by the University of S...
DALLAS (AP) — A U.S. Border Patrol agent has been charged with capital murder after telling investigators he killed four sex workers whom he considered worthless and that he thought he was performing a service for his Texas border hometown, a prosecutor said Wednesday. Webb County District Attorney Isidro Alaniz said he will seek the death penalty if Juan David Ortiz is found guilty in the September slayings. "The scheme in this case, from Ortiz's own words, was to clean up the streets of Laredo by targeting this community of individuals who h...
DALLAS (AP) — More than 70,000 members of the National Rifle Association are expected in Dallas for the group's annual meeting, which featured an appearance Friday by President Donald Trump who lauded NRA members for "fighting for our beloved Constitution." The meeting is also drawing protests, including by those who have lost loved ones to gun violence. Those attending the meeting of the nation's most powerful gun lobby are listening to political speeches, checking out the latest firearms, attending gun training courses and socializing. The me...
DALLAS (AP) — A year ago, the nation's most powerful gun lobby was riding high: The millions the National Rifle Association had spent to help elect Donald Trump, one of the nation's most gun-friendly presidents, had paid off, and members were hopeful that more firearms restrictions would soon be eased. Oh, how things have changed. In the last 12 months, Americans have witnessed the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history, a gut-wrenching attack at a Florida high school and bitterly divided politics in Washington. Those factors gave f...
DALLAS (AP) — A Texas elementary school teacher who died almost a week after getting sick from the flu became a talking point online after her husband said she didn't immediately fill her prescription for an antiviral drug after deeming the $116 insurance co-pay too high. While her husband told the Wall Street Journal that he picked up the prescription the day after she refused it and she then started taking the medication, Heather Holland, 38, died three days later on Feb. 4. Doctors told The Associated Press that while it's ideal to start t...
DALLAS (AP) — Deb Eberhart couldn't sleep and was easily moved to tears as she worked to coordinate repairs to her Houston home in the months after flooding from Hurricane Harvey besieged it with 3 feet (0.91 meters) of water. She clenched her jaw so hard that it hurt. She couldn't eat. "I thought: 'Well, I'm not handling things as well as I should be,'" the 69-year-old retired teacher said. Eberhart realized she needed help that had nothing to do with construction crews and insurance adjustors. So she joined storm survivors seeking help from t...
With Harvey's floodwaters rapidly flowing into the Houston hotel where she worked, Jill Renick reportedly made a frantic cellphone call to a fellow employee: "I'm in an elevator. The water is rushing in. Please help me!" Those words were among the few clues Renick's family and friends had to go on for a week and a half, when repeated searches of the Omni Houston Hotel failed to turn up any sign of her and desperate calls to shelters and hospitals were similarly fruitless. Worst fears were confirmed with the discovery of a body in the ceiling...
DALLAS (AP) — A shivering 3-year-old girl found clinging to the body of her drowned mother in a rain-swollen canal in Southeast Texas was likely saved by her mom's effort to carry her child to safety from Harvey's floods, police said Wednesday. Beaumont police identified the mother as 41-year-old Colette Sulcer and said her daughter was being treated for hypothermia but doing well. When rescuers found the mother and daughter, the girl was on her mother's back, holding on, said Police Officer Haley Morrow. "I envision what I would do if that w...
DALLAS (AP) — Texas lawmakers agree on the need to improve the state's beleaguered child welfare system, but how to do it and to pay for it during a tight budget year are still very much up in the air. With troubles mounting at the state agency that investigates reports of child abuse and, if needed, places abused children in foster care, lawmakers have already been filing bills that they think will help fix the system ahead of the legislative session that starts Tuesday. "There's no bigger fight than the need to protect the lives of c...
DALLAS (AP) — Texas on Monday reported its first case of Zika virus that likely came from a mosquito bite within the state. Florida is the only other state in the U.S. with locally spread Zika. Health officials say that the woman who was infected in Texas is a resident of Brownsville, located on the border the state shares with Mexico. But health officials said she reported no recent travel to Mexico or any other country with ongoing Zika outbreaks. Until the Florida cases, all the cases in the U.S. were connected to travel to countries with o...
