Browsing: News

Retired Staff Sgt. Eric Alva was the first Purple Heart recipient in the Iraq War, but he told lawmakers Wednesday that Texas law does not protect his rights because it allows employers to discriminate against him because he is gay.

“I’ve shed blood for this country and there are rights that I don’t have,” Alva told the Senate Committee on Business and Economic Development. “It is time for this state to recognize people for who they are, on their merit, for their leadership, and their professionalism.”

A recent outbreak of rabies is putting local pets and their owners in danger.

So far, seven cases, two in Waco, one in Woodway and four in Gatesville, have been confirmed in the area since the year began. The most recent case was confirmed Monday in a skunk found in Woodway, and one bite was confirmed last week.

The U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly approved the first international treaty regulating the multibillion-dollar global arms trade Tuesday, after a more than decade-long campaign to keep weapons from falling into the hands of terrorists, warlords, organized crime figures and human rights violators.

Loud cheers erupted in the assembly chamber as the electronic board flashed the final vote: 154 in favor, 3 against and 23 abstentions.

Eric Metaxas, host of Breakpoint broadcasts, New York Times bestselling author and noted Christian speaker, will visit Baylor today.

The Baylor Institute of Religion is hosting “An Evening with Eric Metaxas” at 7 p.m. in the Powell Chapel, where Metaxas will discuss his career, work and best-selling biography, “Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy.”

In its second annual Changing Hope and Awareness Week, Kappa Delta Kappa sorority hopes to educate the community about child abuse and prevention.

CHILD, which stands for Changing Hope Into Lasting Difference, is a week dedicated to Kappa Delta’s main philanthropy: child abuse prevention.

The Baylor Lariat, Round Up yearbook and Focus magazine are accepting applications for all positions for the 2013-2014 school year.

Student Publications director Paul Carr said the hours a student will work will depend upon the position for which the applicant is hired.

The state’s top education official said Tuesday he plans to order Texas to begin rating schools based on letter grades A through F starting next year — without waiting for high-profile bills proposing to do the same thing to work their way through the Legislature.

Jim Riches pulled his son’s mangled body out of the rubble at the World Trade Center, but the phone calls still filtered in years afterward. The city kept finding more pieces of his son.

“They’ll call you and they’ll tell you, ‘We found a shin bone,'” Riches said. “Or: ‘We found an arm bone.’ We held them all together and then we put them in the cemetery.”

McLennan County Sheriff Parnell McNamara on Tuesday asked county leaders to approve the purchase of 19 AR-15-style rifles to better arm sheriff’s deputies, saying they face a “very grave” threat from heavily armed criminals.

Gov. Rick Perry is arranging for state funds to temporarily pay for air traffic controllers at 13 Texas airports, including TSTC Waco, which are set to lose funding related to federal automatic spending cuts.

The Federal Aviation Administration recently announced plans to close 149 airport towers at small and mid-sized airports around the country beginning April 7 as part of automatic budget cuts related to the sequester, a set of across-the-board government spending cuts enacted after lawmakers in Washington, D.C., couldn’t agree to a compromise solution.

Big business and labor have struck a deal on a new low-skilled worker program, removing the biggest hurdle to completion of sweeping immigration legislation allowing 11 million illegal immigrants eventual U.S. citizenship, a person with knowledge of the talks said Saturday.

A Baylor fraternity reached out to students and the Waco community to help raise money for one of its own. Delta Sigma Pi hosted a fundraiser Tuesday and Wednesday to help Baylor graduate, Kelsey Warren. Warren was involved in a bad car accident on March 14. The fundraiser was hosted for Warren and her family to help out with travel and accommodation expenses. Warren’s parents live and work in Hanford, Calif.

The annual Baylor Art Student Exhibition opens today in The Martin Museum of Art, galleries one and two. The showcase…

Baylor Law School students and faculty have teamed up with Veterans One Stop, a veterans support facility in Waco, to offer free legal aid.

Veterans One Stop is a coalition of various organizations and agencies that offers aid to veterans and their spouses, said Maggie McCarthy, the coordinator of Veterans Coalition for the Heart of Texas, who is in charge of finding and bringing such organizations together.

This year Delta Epsilon Psi raised $8,000 for diabetes research.

The fraternity presented a check to a Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation representative at a lecture, “Juvenile Diabetes: Its Impact and the Race for a Cure,” held Wednesday night in the Baines Room in the Bill Daniel Student Center.

Concealed handgun licenses may become more affordable thanks to a bill filed by Rep. Charles “Doc” Anderson.

Anderson filed House Bill 2759 on March 7 with the intent of capping the CHL application cost at $95. The proposed cost would be $45 less than the $140 Texas citizens currently pay. The bill would prevent the current renewal fee of $70 to increase.

In an overwhelming display of bipartisanship, the Texas House voted to create state water fund using money from the Rainy Day Fund to meet the needs of the rapidly growing state.

The State Water Development Board would use what is expected to be a $2 billion fund set up in House Bill 4 to leverage $27 billion over the next 50 years to build new reservoirs, improved pipelines and increase water conservation. The measure passed 146-2, with only two tea party members opposing the measure.

A former mayoral candidate in Tucson, Ariz., is launching a privately funded program to provide residents of crime-prone areas with free shotguns so they can defend themselves against criminals.

Shaun McClusky said the program modeled after one recently launched in Houston would provide training and enough money to buy a basic shotgun to residents who pass background checks, the Arizona Daily Star reported Wednesday.

Hunters across the country say they are boycotting Colorado because of recent legislation meant to curtail gun violence.

Colorado last week became the first Western state to ratchet back gun rights in response to mass shootings at a suburban Denver movie theater and an elementary school in Connecticut.

exas lawmakers continued Wednesday to question the actions of University of Texas System regents and their pressure on flagship campus President Bill Powers as the Senate considers a bill that would roll back some regents voting authority.

Powers, president of the University of Texas at Austin, is believed to be fighting for his job with regents appointed by Gov. Rick Perry in an academic showdown that has grabbed the attention of the Legislature.

Southern Methodist University has banned a fraternity for two years amid allegations a student from another fraternity was beaten.

Sigma Phi Epsilon was put on deferred suspension after three members were charged with misdemeanor assault following the Feb. 10 incident. A fourth was charged with unlawful restraint.

The Texas Senate isn’t going to debate the sweeping proposal to overhaul high school graduation requirements yet.

Sen. Dan Patrick, the head of the chamber’s Education Committee, had suggested that his Senate Bill 3 would be taken up Wednesday. But now it’s off at least until next week.

For nearly 30 years, the Berlin Wall was the hated symbol of the division of Europe, a gray, concrete mass that snaked through neighborhoods, separating families and friends. On Wednesday, it took hundreds of police to guarantee the safe removal of 15 feet (less than 5 meters) of what’s left of the wall.

Construction crews, protected by about 250 police, hauled down part of the three-quarter of a mile (1.3-kilometer) strip of the wall before dawn to provide access to a planned luxury apartment complex overlooking the Spree River.

Raising tensions with South Korea yet again, North Korea cut its last military hotline with Seoul on Wednesday, saying there was no need to continue military communications between the countries in a situation “where a war may break out at any moment.”

The hotline — a dedicated telephone link between the two militaries — was used mainly to arrange for South Koreans who work at an industrial complex in the North to cross the heavily armed border. When the connection was last severed in 2009, some workers were stranded in the North.

A record-breaking cyberattack targeting an anti-spam watchdog group has sent ripples of disruption coursing across the Web, experts said Wednesday.

Spamhaus, a site responsible for keeping ads for counterfeit Viagra and bogus weight-loss pills out of the world’s inboxes, said it had been buffeted by the monster denial-of-service attack since mid-March, apparently from groups angry at being blacklisted by the Swiss-British group.

Explore career options and network with people from a variety of industries. Gather valuable career advice from seasoned business professionals…

Steppin’ Out’s annual spring service day is tip-toeing closer.

Registration for both students and organizations to get involved in Steppin’ Out ends Friday.

The Supreme Court dove into a historic debate on gay rights Tuesday that could soon lead to resumption of same-sex marriage in California, but the justices signaled they may not be ready for a major national ruling on whether America’s gays and lesbians have a right to marry.

State leaders on Tuesday announced the construction of a $91 million vaccine manufacturing center at Texas A&M University that they said will create thousands of jobs while protecting the country against future biological threats and influenza pandemics.

Many students can relate to the race for classes at registration and the disappointment that can accompany not getting into a certain class or a section with a favorite professor.
If successful, a new waitlist feature for Bearweb could change the way students sign up for classes.