musiclover

Calmer winds on Monday allowed an airborne assault on West Texas wildfires that destroyed dozens of homes and a dog kennel and forced hundreds of residents to evacuate.

The 50-mile-per-hour winds whipping up the blazes that scorched 120,000 acres of bone-dry grasslands subsided and helicopters and tanker planes supported firefighters on the ground employing trucks and bulldozers. But it may take days to gain control of the several separate fires, authorities said.

Timothy Wayne Adams, 42, faces execution Tuesday evening in Houston for the shooting death of his 19-month-old son during a standoff in 2002 in Houston.

Evidence showed Adams shot the toddler twice in the chest at short range in retaliation for his wife’s decision to leave him.

He has never denied pulling the trigger.

A 31-year-old North Texas man is headed to the Texas death chamber for the torture and slaying of a mentally challenged woman 13 years ago.

Michael Wayne Hall is to die Tuesday in Huntsville for the killing of Amy Robinson.

Authorities say Hall and Robert Neville abducted 19-year-old Robinson as she rode her bike to work at an Arlington supermarket. Neville was put to death five years ago for Robinson’s killing.

Hall’s lawyers contend that he, too, is mentally impaired and ineligible for lethal injection. On Monday, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected that argument. The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles rejected a clemency request last week.

Teens younger than age 18 could face a misdemeanor charge, not a felony, for “sexting” under a bill filed in the Texas Legislature.

Sexting is cell phones are used, typically by teenagers, to send each other sexually explicit messages or images.

The measure by state Sen. Kirk Watson of Austin was endorsed Monday by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott.

The bill would reclassify a sexting offense as a Class C misdemeanor for underage first-time violators.

Current Texas law says anyone who transmits an explicit image of a teen can face felony charges of possessing or trafficking child pornography.

The faithful have started to arrive in this drab, featureless city a little closer to Fort Worth than to Dallas. They have come sweat-panted and reverent to stand along Collins Street to photograph Cowboys Stadium, to walk the sidewalk surrounding its $1.2 billion form.

The building rises up out of the immense rolling prairie as if raised by supplicants to the higher power of football, capitalism and Texas, a silver biscuit large enough that were the Statue of Liberty to be erected inside it, the torch would barely blacken the retractable roof. On Sunday it will be the stage for the Super Bowl between the Green Bay Packers and the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Two weeks after getting shot in the head, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords is settling into her new home in Houston.

While the transport from University Medical Center may have been a little rough, all signs since indicate improvement.

After the transport, comes the treatment.

“She’s making progress each day,” said Giffords’ Communications Director C.J. Karamargin.

The spokesman for Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords says she’s doing fine after her first weekend in Houston.

Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts Susan Combs announced Jan. 10 state lawmakers will automatically see $4.3 billion taken out of its general revenue funding in order to balance a deficit from 2010.

Combs attributed the larger-than-expected gap to decreased sales tax revenue, which accounts for 64 percent of state general revenue funds. The revenue gap includes a depressed housing market, lower costs for oil and gas and decreased consumer spending.

“This was unexpected and severe,” Combs said at a Jan. 10 press conference. “These [sales tax] revenues dipped sharply.”

Texas is projected to have $72.2 billion in general revenue for the 2012–13 biennium.

The conviction of Cornelius Dupree, Jr., 51, who spent 30 years in prison in Texas, will likely be set aside after DNA testing proved his innocence.

An exoneration hearing for Dupree is scheduled Tuesday in Dallas.
Click here to find out more!

If Dupree’s conviction is overturned, he would become the longest-serving prison inmate in the state to be exonerated by DNA evidence.

The Dallas County District Attorney’s Office said Monday it supports Dupree’s innocence claim.

Three members of a Texas family died on Christmas Eve in a plane crash in Wyoming’s Wind River Mountains, authorities said.

Allen Kenitzer, spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration in Renton, Wash., said the single-engine 1998 Commander AC 11 crashed at about 4:30 p.m., about 15 to 20 miles southwest of Lander.

The Fremont County sheriff’s office told Casper’s KCWY-TV that three people were found dead in the wreckage. The office confirmed the crash, the deaths and the victims’ home state to The Associated Press but declined to provide any other details.

Texas offensive coordinator Greg Davis is out after 13 seasons of calling plays for the Longhorns.

Davis resigned today in a three-coach shakeup that marks the first step taken by coach Mack Brown in rebuilding his staff in the wake of a 5-7 season that ended a streak of 12 consecutive bowl appearances.

In addition to the departure of Davis, who also coached the Longhorns’ quarterbacks, school officials announced offensive line coach Mac McWhorter and defensive tackles/special teams coach Mike Tolleson have retired.