Baylor News

An alumna hopes to bring awareness to sexual assault by telling her own story of being assaulted when she was a Baylor student. The event will be at 8 p.m. Thursday in the lobby of Brooks Flats.

This event, which is happening during Sexual Assault Awareness Month, will focus on the current attitudes toward rape and try to encourage students who may have experienced sexual assault to report it.

Authorities say a Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus elephant was hit by a bullet in a drive-by shooting in Tupelo, Miss.

Circus spokeswoman Melinda Hartline says the elephant was not seriously hurt Tuesday. She says no other animals were harmed.

A Texas convict with a lengthy criminal history was executed Tuesday evening for fatally shooting a man and raping the slain man’s fiancee during a home break-in more than 22 years ago.

Rickey Lynn Lewis already had been in and out of prison five times in less than seven years when he was arrested three days after the killing of 45-year-old George Newman and attack on Newman’s fiancee in 1990 at their home in a rural area of Smith County, about 90 miles east of Dallas.

Google Inc. picked tech-savvy Austin on Tuesday as the next city where the search giant will wire homes with ultra-fast Internet connections, but did not say how much customers will pay or when the fiber-optic experiment might expand elsewhere in the U.S.

Austin and Kansas City are the only places to get Google Fiber — a broadband service 100 times faster than the competition and an alternative to cable or satellite TV providers.

Waco News

State News

Texas voters turned out in historic numbers Tuesday, delivering victories for State Rep. James Talarico and forcing a runoff between Attorney General Ken Paxton and incumbent Sen. John Cornyn in the state’s U.S. Senate contest that claimed national attention. The total early-voting turnout of more than 2.5 million marks the highest ever for a midterm primary election. The results also kicked off the 2026 midterm cycle.

INTERNATIONAL

The Iran war is now in its 46th day. Iran responded by restricting access to Hormuz, which carries about a fifth of the world’s seaborne oil, and moving to toll vessels transiting the strait. Waco drivers are already feeling it. The local average hit $3.38 a gallon last week, up 21 cents in seven days and 75 cents year-over-year, according to AAA data.

Gas prices in Texas have surged more than 70 cents per gallon since the U.S. went to war with Iran three weeks ago. The near-total shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz has driven oil prices up more than 40%, pushing the national average to its highest point since 2023 and sending diesel past $5 for the first time in three years.

The largest U.S. military operation in the Middle East in decades unfolded as American and Israeli forces struck Iran Saturday, killing its supreme leader and triggering retaliatory strikes from the Gulf to Israel. The White House said the campaign is aimed at dismantling Iran’s military and toppling its government.