Texas News

[embedded content] Throughout the western U.S., water conservation is in the toilet. And that’s a good thing. Since the 1990s, a strange phenomenon has played out in arid western urban areas. Populations are booming while overall water use is staying the same or going down. The trend is clear in Denver, Albuquerque, N.M., Las Vegas, San Diego and Phoenix: Cities are growing and using less water in the process. It’s impossible to give credit to…

Heavy, in some cases record-breaking rains have unleashed flash floods across parts of central and southern Oklahoma and northern Texas. So far, as much as 12.5 inches of rain had fallen Friday in southern Oklahoma. The 12.44 inches of rain registered between 6 a.m. and 5:15 p.m. Friday in Fittstown, Oklahoma, about 75 miles southeast of Oklahoma City, was the most recorded in the 25 years since Oklahoma Climatological Survey’s Mesonet was established. The total…

Carmen Lugo has lived in Puerto Rico her whole life, and her whole life she has feared the water that comes out of her tap. “When I was a child, we used filters,” she says, leaning on the doorjamb with her 11-year-old in front of her and two teenage sons sleepy-eyed behind her on a morning in July. “The water here,” she says, pausing as she purses her lips in a tight smile. She chooses…

A-J Media Wednesday Sep 19, 2018 at 3:47 PM Sep 19, 2018 at 3:47 PM Volunteers are needed for a community-wide storm damage clean-up event Saturday morning in Crosbyton. Community members, church congregations, and a South Plains disaster relief organization already are planning to work together at the event organized by the non-profit, non-denominational service organization South Plains Regional Volunteer Organizations Active in Disaster, better known as VOAD, according to a news release from the organization. VOAD brings organizations and people together to provide community…

Updated 2:36 pm CDT, Tuesday, September 18, 2018 BALTIMORE (AP) — A Maryland man is accused of stealing hurricane victim’s identities as part what the Secret Service describes as an $8 million effort to scam a Federal Emergency Management Agency program. News outlets reported Tuesday that 30-year-old Tare Stanley Okirika is accused of registering unique pre-paid debit cards under stolen identities. A Secret Service affidavit says Okirika used stolen Social Security and personal identifying information from…

As Hurricane Florence neared landfall late last week, the storm was periodically downgraded –  first to a Category 4 and then to a Category 3. But meteorologists continuously warned that the storm, which eventually caused mandatory evacuations for more than 1 million people, injured more than 170 and claimed the lives of nearly two dozen, could become increasingly dangerous. Greg Carbin, chief of forecast operations at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s predictions center, explains…

Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/. MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: There’s a small island between California and Hawaii, but it’s hardly an island you’d want to visit. It’s being called the Great Pacific garbage patch. It’s made up of an estimated 1.8 trillion pieces of trash, including an estimated 87,000 tons of plastic. Back in February 2016, I spoke with a young inventor and entrepreneur who’s trying to come up with a way to…