Author: Olive Metuge

This article is co-published with The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan local newsroom that informs and engages with Texans. Sign up for The Brief Weekly to get up to speed on their essential coverage of Texas issues. Sixteen months had passed since Hurricane Harvey tore through the Texas coast in August 2017, killing more than 80 people and flattening entire neighborhoods. And when Texas lawmakers gathered in Austin for their biennial session, the scale of the storm’s destruction was hard to ignore. Legislators responded by greenlighting a yearslong statewide initiative to evaluate flood risks and improve preparedness for increasingly frequent…

Brandon DrenonBBC News, Washington DCGetty ImagesUS President Donald Trump’s administration has released a trove of records on the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr, including FBI surveillance files on the civil rights leader. A court-imposed order had kept the FBI documents, totalling 230,000 pages, blocked from public view since 1977. Many members of King’s family had opposed the release. A statement from his two living children condemned “any attempts to misuse these documents in ways intended to undermine our father’s legacy”.King, a Baptist minister, was shot in Memphis on 4 April 1968, at age 39. James Earl Ray, a career…

The father of the nine-year-old Montreal girl who was found dead after being reported missing in northeastern New York was arrested Monday morning and charged with second-degree murder and concealment of a human corpse.New York State Police said officers from the Warren County Sheriff’s Office received a call Saturday at around 10 p.m. ET from a man who said his daughter was missing from the area of Exit 22 of Highway I-87 in Lake George, possibly due to an abduction.They said the child was identified as Melina Frattolin and her father as 45-year-old Luciano Frattolin. Both were later confirmed to be Montreal residents. Robert McConnell, Bureau of Criminal…

During the 2024-25 term, the court was unanimous 42% of the time in its Opinions of the Court. In the remaining 58% of such cases, the justices’ dissents were typically restrained and mundane.   In a small number of cases, however, the dissents were somewhat more … critical. Now that the term is over, I thought it would be valuable, both from a historical and, well, human, perspective, to highlight some of the more eye-opening dissents of the term and share a few observations on the court’s most (and least) prolific dissenters. — So let’s begin with taxes. At least…

Home Daily News Davis Polk associate says he was fired after… Law Firms Davis Polk associate says he was fired after refusing to stop publishing columns on legal issues By Debra Cassens Weiss July 17, 2025, 11:56 am CDT Updated: A Davis Polk associate says he was fired four hours after presenting the law firm with a column he intended to publish on the Trump administration’s ability to track protesters. Ryan W. Powers says he wrote the column on June 12, the day after he was told his previous newspaper columns on legal issues violated an internal policy at the…

Stay safe out thereThe National Center of Meteorology (NCM) has issued an orange and yellow alert due to extreme weather in some parts of the UAE.According to the meteorology centre, rain was reported in Al Ain’s Al Faqa, Um Al Zumoul, and over Khatm Al Shiklah over the afternoon. Margham, Al Qudra, Saih Al Salem, and Al Lisailli in Dubai also experienced light to heavy rain.The NCM shared the below video of the heavy rainfall via their Instagram account.A warning was also issued to expect more rainfall throughout the day.Higher temperatures expectedThe NCM also announced an increase in temperatures, despite…

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published. The Internal Revenue Service is building a computer program that would give deportation officers unprecedented access to confidential tax data. ProPublica has obtained a blueprint of the system, which would create an “on demand” process allowing Immigration and Customs Enforcement to obtain the home addresses of people it’s seeking to deport. Last month, in a previously undisclosed dispute, the acting general counsel at the IRS, Andrew De Mello, refused to turn over the addresses of 7.3 million taxpayers…

At least 19 people have died and more than 100 were injured after a Bangladeshi air force training jet crashed into a school campus in the capital, Dhaka.Footage of the scene at Milestone School and College in the northern suburb of Uttara shows a huge fire and a thick plume of smoke. The military has confirmed that one of its aircraft was involved.More than 50 people, including children and adults, were taken to hospital with burns, a doctor at the National Institute of Burn and Plastic Surgery told reporters.The death toll may still rise, with official sources giving different numbers…

A man suspected of driving his car into a crowd waiting to get inside a nightclub in Los Angeles, injuring 36 people, has a criminal history that includes a conviction for felony battery, officials said Sunday.The driver, identified by police as Fernando Ramirez, 29, was attacked by bystanders after the crash early Saturday in east Hollywood and paramedics later found that he had been shot. Police were still searching for the suspected shooter, described as a man with a goatee in a blue Dodgers jacket.Ramirez, of San Clemente, Calif., is recovering and was expected to face a felony charge of assault…

Home Daily News Public-school students don’t have ‘supercharged… First Amendment Public-school students don’t have ‘supercharged right’ to be taught critical race theory, 8th Circuit says By Debra Cassens Weiss July 18, 2025, 7:30 am CDT Critical race theory protesters in Leesburg, Virginia (Getty Images). Students challenging a ban on the teaching of critical race theory in Arkansas public schools are unlikely to succeed in their First Amendment challenge to the law, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday. The St. Louis-based 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals allowed enforcement of the law in a July 16 opinion by Judge L. Steven…