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Multiple explosions are being reported at a south Texas gas pipeline. Authorities say some people are injured. How the explosions happened isn't immediately clear. Authorities are working to cordon off the area and put out a fire. The explosions were reported near McCook, a town near the U.S. Mexico border.

Trucks hauling everything from cars to produce use Southeast Texas roads to deliver their goods, and when a proposed Interstate 69/Trans Texas Corridor is completed, local drivers could see even more of them, local transportation officials said. The proposed I-69 corridor stretches from Michigan down to Texas. Once in Texas, the corridor goes about 650 miles from Texarkana to Brownsville and Laredo and includes separate lanes for cars and semis and areas for trains and utilities. It doesn't cut through Beaumont, but local arteries like U.S. 69 and Interstate 10 would connect to it. Travelers and truckers just need to...

McALLEN — In other parts of the state, transportation officials try to allay property owners' fears that a superhighway from Laredo north to Texarkana will result in a massive land grab. But in the lower Rio Grande Valley, the state's road builders spend more time assuring local leaders that they have a shot at being included. People in the fast-growing border area between Brownsville and McAllen have developed something of an inferiority complex about being the state's largest metropolitan area without an interstate highway. One after another, Valley leaders stepped to a microphone at public meetings last week and made...

ROBSTOWN, Tex. — Leon Little’s farm here near Corpus Christi would not be seized for Texas’s proposed $184-billion-plus superhighway project for 5 or 10 years, if ever. But Mr. Little was alarmed enough to show up Wednesday night with hundreds of his South Texas coastal neighbors to do what the Texas Department of Transportation has been urging: “Go ahead, don’t hold back.” Don’t worry. Texans have gotten the message, swamping hearings and town meetings across the state to grill and often excoriate agency officials about a colossal traffic makeover known as the Trans-Texas Corridor, a public-private partnership unrivaled in the...

Not one of the 11 East Texans who approached the podium at Wednesday's hearing on Interstate 69 voiced support for the planned highway. "This is highway robbery, and we should not pursue this project," said David Simpson, a Longview resident and fifth-generation Texan. "This process has bypassed the Constitution. It has bypassed the U.S. Congress, and I'm opposed to it because of the unconstitutional way that it has been pushed through." The public hearing, held at Maude Cobb Convention and Activity Center, was a chance for residents to comment and ask questions about Interstate 69/Trans-Texas Corridor. The corridor would extend...

Local residents who want to add their two cents about the proposed Interstate 69 construction won't have to fill their tanks to do it. TxDOT is coming to Longview. The Texas Department of Transportation is holding 46 public hearings this month in East and South Texas along the planned corridor, including Tuesday's meeting in Longview. The hearings will give Texans a chance to comment and ask questions about the proposed Interstate 69/Trans-Texas Corridor, a collection of passenger and freight roadways, utility and rail lines from Texarkana to the Rio Grande Valley. A draft environmental impact statement released in November suggests...

WESLACO — Nearly 80 people filled a lecture hall here Thursday for a town hall forum with Texas Department of Transportation officials on a potential interstate highway designation in the region. The forum at South Texas College’s Mid-Valley Campus was the first of four planned public meetings in the Rio Grande Valley addressing the state’s Trans-Texas Corridor plan for an Interstate 69 extension linking South Texas to points north. TxDOT is developing plans for the first interstate in eastern Texas to connect Texarkana to one of three points in the south: U.S. Highway 281 in Hidalgo County, U.S. Highway 77...

Some Texans are afraid of losing their land to the Trans-Texas Corridor while others loathe the thought of a quarter-mile-wide swath of toll roads and railway lines transforming the countryside into a superhighway. People continue to turn out in droves at public meetings concerning the controversial Trans-Texas Corridor proposal, specifically the portion known as the TTC-69 proposed from Brownsville to Texarkana. A meeting Monday, Jan. 28, at the fairgrounds in Austin County was no exception, drawing more than 1,000 people. Opposition to the proposed corridor has come from people in all walks of life, said Chris Steinbach, chief of staff...

Gov. Rick Perry's ambitious Trans-Texas Corridor plan, and his advocacy of toll funding for future roads, hit the skids in a skeptical Legislature last spring. The road shows no signs of getting any smoother as state transportation officials try to sell the plan to Houston-area audiences. "This will wipe me out," Dee Bond told a panel of corridor advocates at a town hall meeting in Rosenberg last week. The panel, which included Texas Transportation Commissioner Ned Holmes of Houston and Steve Simmons, deputy executive director of the Texas Department of Transportation, was there to explain and gather comment on a...

State Sen. Glen Hegar says he opposes a route that would bring the mammoth Trans Texas Corridor through his district. The Texas Department of Transportation has kicked off a series of public meetings to discuss the project. Meetings are scheduled for Tuesday in Hempstead (6:30 p.m. at the Knights of Columbus Hall, 22892 Mack Washington St.) and Jan. 29 in Bellville (at the Austin County fairgrounds, also beginning at 6:30 p.m.). No meetings are scheduled in Washington County, which likely wouldn’t be impacted much by the highway project. Much of the discussion in public meetings already held centers on Interstate...

McALLEN — Authorities have seized 21 tons of narcotics and indicted almost 50 members of an international drug trafficking organization with ties to the Gulf Cartel, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration said Thursday. The arrests come after a two-and-a-half-year investigation involving U.S. and Mexican authorities, aimed at destroying an operation accused of smuggling more than 2 tons of cocaine and 33 tons of marijuana from Mexico through the Rio Grande Valley. Dubbed “Operation Puma,” the investigation targeted the organization’s command structure, money laundering components and street-level dealers operating in Mexico, McAllen, Laredo, San Antonio and Dallas. “Operation Puma represents …...

Ric Williamson and his fellow transportation commissioners will find themselves in a tight corner today as they meet in Austin to decide who will build the State Highway 121 toll road. On one level, the commission is simply fulfilling its duty as the Texas Department of Transportation's governing board by deciding whether to award a multibillion-dollar contract to Spanish construction firm Cintra or give it to the North Texas Tollway Authority. But a whole lot more is going on at another level. The Highway 121 decision also pits Mr. Williamson's desire to support Gov. Rick Perry's ambitious highway-building agenda against...

A South Texas hunting grounds caught 3 illegal aliens crossing from the deer feed cam.

If diseases like AIDS and bird flu scare you, wait until you hear what's next. Doctors are trying to find out what is causing a bizarre and mysterious infection that's surfaced in South Texas. Morgellons disease is not yet known to kill, but if you were to get it, you might wish you were dead, as the symptoms are horrible. "These people will have like beads of sweat but it's black, black and tarry," said Ginger Savely, a nurse practioner in Austin who treats a majority of these patients. Patients get lesions that never heal. "Sometimes little black specks that...

Can't post the text for this one, since contents of the Monitor's website can't be reproduced without written permission. Here is the link: Lobbyists, local biz: I-69 still alive

The 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border is a pure disconnect, at least in terms of transportation. Both countries have highway routes designed long before the possibility that the economies of the two nations would someday integrate under a North American Free Trade Agreement. The result is that NAFTA land trade must zigzag through obstacle courses as raw materials and components go to factories and final products are shipped to markets. The best-positioned border-crossing ports, such as Laredo, are overcrowded. The others are underused. The governments of both nations understand the competitive necessity to build better highway connections. The cost is prohibitive, however,...

WTUS84 KBRO 200859 AAA HLSBRO TXZ248>257-201200- Hurricane local statement...updated to extend Tornado Watch National Weather Service Brownsville TX 400 AM CDT Wed July 20 2005 ...Eye of major Hurricane Emily nearing the coast of NorthEastern Mexico... ...A hurricane warning is in effect for the lower Texas coast from Port Mansfield to Brownsville... ...A tropical storm warning is in effect for the Texas Gulf Coast from Baffin Bay to Port Mansfield... ...Inland tropical storm warning is in effect for Brooks...Hidalgo and Star counties in deep South Texas... ...A Tornado Watch is in effect for all deep South Texas through 10 AM...

"Does anybody want to do that in the United States?" he asked, pointing to a horizon full of onion fields. "No insurance. No benefits. No A/C. You lose money by taking too many breaks. It's crazy, man. "Who is going to come do this when they can get (minimum wage) at McDonalds in the A/C?" [. . .] To many of them, used to heat and hard work, this was a pay raise. One man who jumped trains to get to the border from Honduras said the $200 he earned here in three full days would have taken a few...

May 23, 2005 ROBIN M. FOSTER Victoria Advocate SARCO - As residents in this rural ranching community struggle to stop the growing tide of illegal immigrants across their property, the U.S. Congress has recently received a comprehensive immigration reform act. Sarco area residents in south Goliad County met with Judy McAda of U.S. Rep. Ruben Hinojosa's district office at Beeville this week in their continued effort to stop the rising number of illegal immigrants passing through their property. McAda, front standing, said the Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act offers a comprehensive approach to immigration reform. Sarco, in south Goliad...

http://www.caller.com/ccct/editorials/article/0,1641,CCCT_840_3278146,00.htm John Kerry answers the need for change The course of the war in Iraq and the growing deficit raise questions about Bush's ability to correct past mistakes. October 24, 2004 On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, President George W. Bush faced a challenge unlike that any other president had ever faced before him. With the taking of 2,984 American lives in a coordinated terrorist attack on U.S. soil, the nation stood ready and united to follow its president. Members of Congress gathered on the steps of the Capitol to sing "God Bless America." There were no party labels...