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Editor's note: This story has been updated to reflect the state's withdrawal from the national refugee resettlement program. Texas' top elected officials have not exactly welcomed refugees over the past year. Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing the federal government — thus far unsuccessfully — to keep people fleeing war-ravaged Syria from settling here. Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller compared refugees to venomous rattlesnakes. And Friday, Gov. Greg Abbott followed through on his threat to end cooperation with the nation’s refugee resettlement program because federal officials refused to “unconditionally approve” a Texas plan requiring extra vetting of applicants. Such a move...

Local entities will get more than half a million dollars in outside money to cover costs associated with last year’s deadly Twin Peaks shootout in Waco, officials said. McLennan County has accepted a state grant of more than $268,000, and the city has gotten an almost $250,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Justice. County commissioners will meet Tuesday to officially accept the state money. County staff had applied for a grant from the state’s County Essential Services Program. It offers reimbursements of costs a county incurs for the investigation or prosecution of capital murder or crimes committed because of...

Apple loses patent infringement case against VirnetX on second retrial. . . link only due copyright issues: VirnetX Wins $302.4 Million Trial Against Apple in Texas

Attorney General Ken Paxton on Friday lost his last-minute bid for a court injunction to prevent the federal government from transferring its oversight of internet registrations to an international body. Hours before the transition was set to take effect, a federal judge in Galveston ruled against Paxton and three other state attorneys general who had asked him to temporarily halt the transfer while they pursue a lawsuit challenging it. The four sued the federal government late Wednesday after Republicans in Congress, led by U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, failed to halt the transfer. The ruling by Judge George C....

(Texas Tribune) -- Texas has officially withdrawn from the nation’s refugee resettlement program, Gov. Greg Abbott's office said Friday. But that won't stop the federal government from continuing to help refugees relocate here. Citing security concerns, Abbott's office said Texas will no longer participate in the federal program, which helps thousands of refugees from around the world resettle in the state. State officials threatened last week to withdraw from the resettlement program if the feds did not “unconditionally approve” its amended state plan to only accept refugees who “are fully vetted and do not present a security threat” — part...

My Daughter and Son in law, and two grandchildren were going to the Grapefest in Grapevine, Texas, between Dallas and Fort Worth. They graciously invited me to tag along.  Sunday afternoon, 19 September, 2016, was the time that fit with schedules and the kids naps.  The temperature was 97 in Dallas, and I could feel the humidity. I missed my Sun Helmet.  I am heat acclimated, but the kids were not.  We had to walk a couple of blocks to the festival, and the family stopped in some shade to consider options. I notice some sign-age that looked as...

Three conservative states are suing the Obama administration in an attempt to block the U.S. government from ceding oversight of some of the internet’s core systems. The attorneys general of Texas, Oklahoma and Arizona on Thursday asked a federal court in Galveston, Texas, to keep the Commerce Department from relinquishing oversight of ICANN, or the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. …

A Mexican national who has been previously deported at least three times was arrested in connection to a north Texas shooting and crime spree. Two people were murdered during the September 26 rampage. Silvestre Franco Luviano, 40, allegedly began his crime spree on Monday at about 10:30 PM. Police dispatchers in Dallas and neighboring Cedar Hill received calls about someone shooting a gun near Interstate 20 and Spur 408. 23-year-old Ruben Moreno was in a Hummer when he was shot and killed. Welton Betts, 44, was also killed while others sustained non-life threatening injuries, Fox4 in Dallas reported. Betts was...

The Dripping Springs Independent School District is standing by its decision to allow a transgender elementary student to use the girls restroom even though she was born biologically as a boy.

A Houston lawyer wearing a Nazi uniform— evidently facing issues with his firm — opened fire near a strip mall, wounding nine people before he was shot dead by police, authorities said. Shots rang out around 6:30 a.m. local time in southwest Houston near an intersection with a grocery store, Walgreens and Chuck E. Cheese. The attacker used a tree near his car for cover as he exchanged gunfire with several officers in a nearby neighborhood before he was killed, officials said at an afternoon press conference.

HPD says the scene is still active as a bomb squad is searching a vehicle believed to be owned by the late suspect. One source tells Eyewitness News that the vehicle was found filled with weapons.

HOUSTON (KTRK) -- Panicked eyewitnesses ducked for cover as a gun-wielding man opened fire at a strip center in southwest Houston, injuring several people before being shot himself by police. An active shooter situation is reported in southwest Houston Many questions remain as to a motive for the violent shooting at the Randalls supermarket strip center on Weslayan at Bissonnet. While officials said the shooter had been 'neutralized,' they would not elaborate on his injuries. Houston Fire Department says six people were taken to area hospitals after they were injured by the reported shooter.

It is unlikely that any of the Waco Twin Peaks criminal conspiracy cases will be resolved before Monday, July 31, 2017. That is the date when federal prosecutors now must present their witness lists to defense attorneys in a federal racketeering case titled United States v. Portillo et al. That indictment in that case never once mentions the Waco biker brawl of May 17, 2015 but charges former Bandidos vice president John Xavier Portillo, former club president Jeffrey Fay Pike, sergeant at arms Justin Cole Forster and club member Frederick Cortez with “various overt racketeering acts including…War with Cossacks Outlaw...

BROWNSVILLE, Texas — South Texas ranchers brought nilgai antelope from a California zoo decades ago, when it became fashionable to stock their sprawling acreage with exotic quarry. These days the species native to India and Pakistan are not so much a rarity in South Texas as a nuisance. For cattle ranchers they are a possible nemesis, threatening to spread a deadly tick to their herds. Federal wildlife officials say they are competing with native Rio Grande Valley species for food and trampling the brush they are trying so hard to preserve. The fast-running, 600-pound antelope have wandered all around the...

Five members of the Southern Methodist University band took a knee while playing the national anthem prior to their game against Texas Christian University. There were also a select number of students in the student section who joined in the protests. “I feel like coming from an African American background — I grew up in Detroit, Michigan, which is a predominantly black city — that I get tired of seeing my black brothers and sisters dying from injustices and unjustified reasons,” one student, Coda Boyce, told the Dallas Morning News. “I’m not against all police officers, I’m not saying all...

The Dallas Morning News is paying a steep price for endorsing Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, in the form of canceled subscriptions and loud protests. The endorsement broke a 75-year streak in the paper’s history of endorsing Republicans, and generated a lot of reader pushback in the form of angry comments and vows to unsubscribe from the paper. Although Dallas is relatively liberal, the state hasn’t gone Democrat in a presidential election in 40 years. “Certainly we’ve paid a price for our presidential recommendation,” Dallas Morning News editor Mike Wilson said in an email to Poynter. Wilson acknowledged some of...

EDINBURG, Texas — Teams of gunmen have been running rampant in various communities near the Texas border, storming into homes demanding drugs or robbing victims at gunpoint. In one night, a team of hooded gunmen carrying rifles stormed at least three homes, assaulting the victims inside while demanding cash or drugs. Just one day later, a team of gunmen shot a robbery victim and led authorities in a high speed chase and managed to flee. Information provided to Breitbart Texas by the Hidalgo County Sheriff’s Office revealed that the attacks began on Sunday late night and continued onto early Monday...

Texas, which has taken in more refugees than any state in the nation over the past year, is threatening to leave the federal refugee program if the Obama administration does not meet its security demands. The dispute comes as the Obama administration has announced a new goal of resettling 110,000 refugees in the United States in the coming year, including an unspecified increase in the number from Syria. In a letter Wednesday to Robert Carey, director of the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, the Texas Health and Human Services Commission said that unless Washington "unconditionally" approves the state's new plan...

Texas threatens to 'exit' the federal refugee program over terrorist concernsexas, which has taken in more refugees than any state in the nation over the past year, is threatening to leave the federal refugee program if the Obama administration does not meet its security demands. The dispute comes as the Obama administration has announced a new goal of resettling 110,000 refugees in the United States in the coming year, including an unspecified increase in the number from Syria. n a letter Wednesday to Robert Carey, director of the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, the Texas Health and Human Services...

The Dallas Morning News is paying a steep price for endorsing Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, in the form of canceled subscriptions and loud protests. The endorsement broke a 75-year streak in the paper’s history of endorsing Republicans, and generated a lot of reader pushback in the form of angry comments and vows to unsubscribe from the paper. Although Dallas is relatively liberal, the state hasn’t gone Democrat in a presidential election in 40 years.