Baylor News

“I really, really appreciated that the university took the initiative to allow us to have an official voice and an official presence,” Jortner said. “There’s a big difference between one professor in the theater program arguing for something and an organization of faculty saying, ‘We speak as one, and this is a concern.’”

Waco News

Brittney Griner watched the Olympics and wished she was there. Thanks to the WNBA draft lottery, she might know where she’s going.

Before Rio in 2016, or even getting started in the pros next summer, there is still the senior season with the Lady Bears for the fun-loving All-American who can dunk and broke her right wrist in a longboarding accident this summer. Baylor is coming off the NCAA’s first 40-win season and returns every starter from its undefeated national championship team.

As an artist swiftly moves her paintbrush along the rugged edges of the blank truck, she begins to see the Waco Tribune-Herald come to life and the small cup fill with coffee — only to be emptied again.

The drawings on the sketchbook appear, and the book “East of Eden” gazes back at her.

Two Waco crime scene technicians recently helped the FBI apprehend a serial bank robber suspect.

Crime scene technicians Joyce Marek and Laura Teamer assisted in apprehending Bradley Craig Kilmer, who has been charged with numerous bank robberies in Texas, Georgia, and South Carolina.

Sgt. W. Patrick Swanton said the technicians worked together to find and identify a partial palm print on a napkin used as a demand note in a bank robbery.

Donated blood in the Central Texas area has tested positive for the West Nile Virus since the recent outbreak this past summer.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, humans can contract West Nile through mosquito bites. It is most often spread to humans when a mosquito feeds on an infected bird, then bites a human. CDC statistics show approximately 80 percent, or four out of five people, infected with the virus will not show any symptoms at all.

State News

President Donald Trump has approved the execution by firing squad of Nidal Hasan, the former Army major convicted of killing 13 people in the 2009 Fort Hood mass shooting, with the execution scheduled for 1 p.m. Dec. 3 at the Central Texas military installation, roughly an hour from Baylor’s campus.

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.