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A downtown Laredo street bearing the name for more than a century of a Mexican hero was changed by the Laredo City Council on Monday to remove offensive connotations it may have against Arabs or Muslims.Since moving to Laredo nearly 30 years ago, Kamel M. Shrek has studied the meaning of "Matamoros," which means Moor killer or Moor slayer. The phrase was used as a battle cry by the Spaniards during the battle of Clavijo in 844 AD, according to Shrek's research, meant to encourage killing of Muslims. After becoming a nickname in Spain related to killing Catholic Spain's Arabic...

As investigators review video footage they hope will reveal why a Denville police officer shot a 21-year-old motorist five times, the dead man's mother called the officer a murderer and said she has hired an attorney. Miles holds a photo of her son Ruben Martinez when he was a junior at Morris Knolls High School. Martinez now 21 and living in Texas, was shot and killed early Thusrdsay morning by a Denville police officer.  "Last night, I kept visualizing five gunshots pounding into a young man, 140 pounds," Maureen Miles, the mother of Ruben W. Martinez, said Friday. She...

Federal and local law enforcement have arrested seven alleged members and associates of the Hermanos Pistoleros Latinos prison gang over the last week.Prosecutors say the seven people from Laredo and 17 from the Houston area were involved in a conspiracy to transport large amounts of cocaine from Laredo to Houston and launder the proceeds in Laredo. Pedro Gil III, 37, also known as "Master P," "PG" and "Carwash," was arrested over the weekend and charged with five counts of conspiracy with intent to distribute more than 5 kilograms of cocaine and one count of money laundering. Police later arrested his...

A drug dealer named The Spider is wondering why his Jesus Christ still hasn't appeared in Dallas. Thanks to an unusual bust by federal agents in Laredo, they're not going to connect. Drug traffickers mixed as much as six pounds of the illicit white powder into a paste and used it to make a regal statue of the Christian savior, complete with painted-on flowing hair and a gold cape. Smugglers were likely hoping the statue, which could be worth as much as $30,000 on the streets, would be dismissed by border guards as just another of the hundreds of plaster...

McALLEN, Texas - During three years in the low minors, John Odom never really made a name for himself. That sure changed this week - he's the guy the Calgary Vipers traded for a bunch of bats. "I don't really care," he said Friday. "It'll make a better story if I make it to the big leagues." For now, Odom is headed to the Laredo Broncos of the United League. They got him Tuesday from Calgary of the Golden Baseball League for a most unlikely price: 10 Prairie Sticks Maple Bats, double-dipped black, 34-inch, C243 style "They just wanted some...

Texas Gov. Rick Perry wants to build a big highway through the Lone Star State. No, make that a really big highway, as in a monstrously big highway. The exact route hasn't been determined. The mega-highway would run roughly from Laredo on the Rio Grande River through the Hill Country and the Piney Woods and then through Texarkana in that tiny portion of the state that borders Arkansas. Imagine for a moment if that thoroughfare would be pointed in the other direction - from the Valley, through the South Plains and then through the heart of the Panhandle, right past...

Each day, I make the dreaded drive down Interstate 35 to go to work in Fort Worth. Each day, I slug through the snarl and sludge of ceaseless traffic, which intensifies my growing desire to commit hari-kari, or at least incites a vehement curse of the highway gods. Certainly, we in Texas need more lanes, more roads, more rails, more something to deal with the ever-expanding urban population and growing international commerce. Yet how do we solve our transportation needs without carving up the countryside like some congratulatory cake? Or should the construction of a superhighway-rail-utility corridor even concern us?...

Security was heavy Thursday as the nine defendants named so far in an indictment targeting the Gulf Cartel's enforcers, the Zetas, appeared in federal court for pre-trial proceedings.At least half a dozen stone-faced U.S. Marshals kept watch over the defendants in U.S. District Judge Micaela Alvarez's court, along with members of the Correction Corp. of America's special operations response team, who wore body armor. Prosecutors allege that the nine defendants named in the 47-count indictment are members or associates of the Zetas, a violent wing of the Gulf Cartel believed to control most of the narcotics trafficking in Nuevo Laredo....

Laredo has once again been included on a national top 10 list, although not for a distinction the city may necessarily want.According to the National Insurance Crime Bureau, Laredo ranked sixth nationally in cities with the highest per capita rate of vehicle theft in 2007. The ranking marks a significant increase from 2006, when the agency ranked Laredo 22nd nationally. The agency ranks different metropolitan areas based on the number of vehicle thefts per 100,000 inhabitants. According to the figures, Laredo had 1,914 vehicle thefts last year, a rate of about 821 cars stolen per 100,000 residents. That also puts...

Continuing a lifelong practice of helping rural East Texans, Nolan Alders attended a meeting in Austin Tuesday as a member of the citizens' advisory committee for the Trans-Texas Corridor highway project. Alders was among 18 representatives of communities that run along the route of the proposed highway, which runs from Laredo to Texarkana. The committee members prepared for their roles as community representatives, and heard comments from state transportation leaders, including Texas Department of Transportation Executive Director Amadeo Saenz and Commissioner Ted Houghton of the Texas Transportation Commission. TxDOT literature says the TTC-69 committee — and another committee to represent...

It has been roughly three months since residents of Huntsville and Walker County attended town hall meetings to voice their opinion on the Trans-Texas Corridor/I-69 project to the Texas Department of Transportation. There was no question then that there was strong opposition to the proposed 1,600-mile national highway, and it seems as though residents’ efforts to stop it has not lost any of its momentum. Several residents attended the Walker County Commissioners Court on Monday morning, expressing concerns about the project and encouraged the court to take another step of action. The five-member court agrees with the majority of the...

Investigators believe a 21-year-old Laredo man who died Tuesday at the Laredo Medical Center was a kidnapping victim who may have been tortured, a Webb County prosecutor said Thursday. It's the fifth homicide in Laredo this year.Roberto Oviedo died Tuesday after being found on the pavement in front of his brother's house with what an initial investigation shows were wounds from torture, said Assistant District Attorney Jesse Guillen. At least three men have been arrested and charged in connection with Oviedo's Sunday disappearance, Guillen said. Police on Thursday arrested Jason Fraga and Octavio Rodriguez Jr. on charges of aggravated kidnapping...

The two men who broke into the house of a maquinitas owner who was cooperating with the federal government and threatened him with a gun were likely doing so in an attempted kidnapping or murder for hire, a federal prosecutor said in court Tuesday.Jose Manuel "Whiskey" Nuñez Sanchez, 23, a Mexican citizen, and Sergio "Pelon" Oslan Rivera, 25, a Honduran citizen, were in federal court on Tuesday. They awaited sentencing on weapons charges that stemmed from their involvement in the home invasion of Linh "Larry" Tuan Do. At the time, Do was the owner of Entertainment World and an important...

Despite the uproar over the state's proposal to build Trans-Texas Corridor 69 through East Texas, Lufkin's mayor says he supports the highway — as long as it follows the path of the current U.S. Highway 59. The Trans Texas Corridor/I-69 project is a statewide network of transportation routes in Texas that will incorporate existing and new highways, railways and utility right-of-ways. Anyone wishing to comment on the proposed road can go online to www.keeptexasmoving.com. TxDOT has expanded its public comment period for TTC-69 to Friday, April 18. Gov. Rick Perry appointed Gorden, along with 17 other Texans, to an I-69...

The FBI is investigating the kidnapping of a 17-year-old former Alexander High School student that may have turned fatal, officials confirmed Thursday. German Antonio Villarreal Muñoz was forced into a sport utility vehicle at Juega Juega, a popular casino in Nuevo Laredo, the night of March 8. His father reported the kidnapping to Mexican authorities the following morning, but nothing was said in public until March 12, when the teen's mother issued a statement to Laredo media, pleading for information about her son. Nearly a month later, hopes for a happy ending are dimming. "Foul play is suspected," said Norm...

As the state's population continues to grow in its urban centers, expansion plans for the highway system continue to be the focus for transportation improvements. The Trans Texas Corridor proposal is aimed to alleviate traffic congestion, improve air quality and provide safer traveling for drivers, among other goals. In 2002, Texas Governor Rick Perry released the plan to create the passageway, which spans northeast from Laredo to Oklahoma and is set to total 4,000 miles in the next 50 years. The $140 billion project calls for the incorporation of new toll roads, commuter railways, power lines and gas pipelines, while...

LAREDO - With appearances on CNN and Nightline, Webb County Sheriff Rick Flores drew national attention to his role as top cop of a county on the front line against Mexican drug violence. But keeping that job comes down to a race that is decidedly local - full of harsh exchanges, nasty innuendo and Laredo's trademark tangle of conflicting loyalties. On Tuesday, Flores, 46, faces longtime state police official Martin Cuellar in a Democratic primary runoff, one of the area's hottest races in memory. His opponent's family name couldn't be more formidable - Cuellar, 49, is brother of U.S. Rep....

Federal authorities have their sights set on high-ranking members of the Zetas working in Nuevo Laredo, as indicated by a 50-page indictment partially unsealed earlier this week.The indictment alleges a wide-ranging, drug-smuggling conspiracy that involved several murders, including one in which a defendant is accused of collecting the blood of his victim and making a toast to Santa Muerte before killing the man and burning his body. Two of the 32 people listed in the 47-count indictment were in federal court Thursday. Only four names have been made public; the others are blacked out on the court records because they...

BELTON - There appears to be no easy way to address the challenges that inflation has brought to the Texas Department of Transportation. “We’ve seen 60 percent inflation over the last five years for transportation projects,” said Chris Lippincott, a TxDOT spokesman. To look to the federal government for assistance would appear foolhardy at this point as the Federal Highway Trust Fund is expected to become insolvent by 2009. The fund was created in 1956 to ensure a dependable source of financing for U.S. interstates and highways. “The Federal Highway Trust Fund is expected to go into the red very...

Members of rival El Salvadorian gangs were arrested by Border Patrol agents over the weekend just north of Laredo on Interstate 35, an indicator of the increasing through traffic by violent gang members the Laredo Police Department has noticed in recent months."Mostly they're transient," said Sgt. Armando Elizondo, supervisor of LPD's Juvenile Enforcement Team, which deals with local gang activity. "They use this area as a crossing point." Sunday, a 22-year-old gang member was arrested by agents at the Texas Travel Information Center at the 18-mile marker on the interstate at about 2 p.m. He had tattoos showing he's a...

They are believed to have smuggled hundreds of illegal immigrants into the United States but now, 41 truck drivers, guides, brokers, recruiters and smuggling leaders are facing criminal charges. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) special agents started the investigation in Laredo but made the arrests across several American cities over the last seven weeks. Investigators said the group used truck drivers to smuggle at least 376 illegal immigrants from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras into the United States. Most of the immigrants were discovered tractor trailers and attempting to pass through different checkpoints in and around Laredo. Most...

BROWNSVILLE - A 23-year-old man was arrested Wednesday on charges of being part of an auto-theft ring that was allegedly stealing tractors. Tirso Alamillo was charged with six counts of theft of a motor vehicle and one count of engaging in organized criminal activity, police Sgt. Jimmy Manrrique said. The auto-theft ring was stealing large machinery from construction sites, according to a police report. "The ring is accused of stealing six back-hoe tractors ... and a motor grader tractor," Manrrique said. "These vehicle are worth (a lot) of money on the black market and are believed to have been routed...

Border Patrol agents arrested a member of the Mexican Mafia on Tuesday and charged him with smuggling illegal immigrants, according to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection news release.Agents from the Laredo South station arrested the gang member after receiving reports of suspicious activity near Rio Bravo, as the Rio Grande is called in Mexico. The release states that the vehicle driven by the Mexican Mafia member matched the description of a car seen near the location of the suspicious activity. When agents stopped the vehicle, occupied by a driver and four passengers, they performed an immigration inspection. The agents...

Plots by Communists to infiltrate America. The disintegration of borders and rural areas. Citizens mobilizing and rising up against government agencies and big business. It all sounds like the plot for a summer blockbuster, but it's something that could be happening in your own backyard. These were just a few of the topics addressed in the "How to fight the TTC" workshop, held Monday at the Pitser Garrison Civic Center in Lufkin. The conference served as an informational meeting aimed at informing citizens and local government officials how they can unite in trying to stop the proposed Trans-Texas Corridor project....

There's been a lot of talk about the new Trans-Texas Corridor — the next-generation "super-highway" — and opinions are varying. Now the debate is coming to Lufkin's doorstep. On Monday, the American Land Foundation, Stewards of the Range and TURF will hold a workshop at Lufkin's Pitser Garrison Civic Center on how to stop the Trans-Texas Corridor 69. The event runs from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. A portion of Texas citizens have voiced their opposition to the TTC-69 in public meetings held by the Texas Department of Transportation, but believing they are not being heard, four cities and their...

Officials with the Spanish toll road operator Cintra have announced that the company has secured $430 million in loans from the U.S. government to build and operate two segments of a toll road in central Texas. Cintra officials announced the company’s financial plan for the $1.36 billion Highway 130 segments on Monday, March 10. OOIDA Senior Government Affairs Representative Mike Joyce told Land Line that the Association does raise red flags when federal dollars are used to subsidize private investors. Officials with the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association are not, however, categorically opposed to a state using future toll revenue to...

Webb County taxpayers paid approximately $5.17 million in 2006 to fund law enforcement and justice system services for undocumented immigrants, a 41-percent increase from the costs incurred in 1999, according to a border counties coalition study released this week.The price tag, an estimated $22.34 per Webb County taxpayer each year, is one that elected officials said should not be a local burden. "This has long been a problem and something that, frankly, I think this administration should have done better but didn't," said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. "But at least Congress is in a position to remedy it to some...

McALLEN -- A 28-year-old Mexican national pleaded guilty Monday to assaulting a U.S. Border Patrol agent last year during a failed arrest attempt. Juan Carlos Gonzalez Garcia, of Villa De Ramos, S.L.P., Mexico, faces up to 20 years in prison for the attack which left the agent with a fractured left shoulder. He told authorities he was one of three men in a pick-up truck stopped on Dec. 13 just outside of Roma, according to court documents. But when agents discovered he was in the country illegally and tried to arrest him, Gonzalez resisted, knocking himself and the arresting agent...

Heated comments flew around the room as more than 175 citizens gathered to voice their opinions at the TxDOT open house and public hearing on the I-69/Trans-Texas Corridor held at the Humble Civic Center on Feb. 28, 2008. Congress designated I-69 as a high priority corridor in 1991 and again in 1998. In 2002, TxDOT unveiled the Trans-Texas Corridor project to accommodate Texas' future transportation needs. The TTC is a part of a 4,000-mile system of rail lines, truck and car lanes and concentrated utility routes to improve international and intrastate movement of goods and people from Canada to the...

Providing public services within a municipality on the U.S.-Mexico border requires carrying out duties beyond those a typical city would provide, especially homeland security, which is why the City of Laredo believes it is important to keep federal legislators and agencies abreast of the challenges and needs of the Gateway City.A delegation of about 15 City of Laredo officials is in Washington, D.C., this week. There, the officials plan to attend more than three dozen meetings. Tops on the list of priority issues is homeland security - namely, funding for the river vega master plan, additional police officers and emergency...

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, flanked by Chuck Norris, Minutemen founder Jim Gilchrist and U.S. Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter of California, stood beneath Laredo's railroad bridge near the riverbank Saturday morning advocating stronger border security, including constructing a border fence, having more law enforcement and eliminating carrizo."I come away from this with a better understanding of this," Huckabee said after touring Border Patrol facilities and later hiking to the edge of the Rio Grande to get a personal view of the terrain. "But also a sense of urgency that as a country we need to put our resources on border...

A protest against the border wall begins at 8:45 a.m. today at San Agustin Plaza.Protesters will then hold a news conference at 10:30 a.m. in the City Hall rotunda. The City of Laredo, through the City Council, was one of the first cities to pass a resolution opposing the border fence in September 2006. The council also sent a letter to President Bush asking for fair immigration polices and saying realistic homeland security measures are the only solutions to the problem of illegal immigration. When approached by a grassroots group of citizens to maintain the pressure against the building of...

The debate in Texas over a proposed 4,000-mile network of toll roads that will parallel the state's existing highway system is heating up More than 10,000 people have attended public hearings across Texas to discuss the proposed Trans-Texas Corridor, which has also been dubbed the "NAFTA superhighway." It is a project that is expected to cost an estimated $183 billion over 50 years. (hear audio report) Terry Hall with the group Texans Uniting for Reform and Freedom warns the project will create widespread eminent domain abuse and involve foreign control of public infrastructure. "They're taking huge swaths of land, up...

HEMPSTEAD -- The Trans Texas Corridor may be the most controversial highway ever built in Texas. That is, if it ever gets built. All month, there have been public hearings throughout the area where people have been showing up in droves to oppose it. People don’t drive very fast on Odis Styers’ family ranch near Hempstead, but TxDOT wants that to change. “It’s quiet, it’s peaceful,” Styers said. “It’s a shame a road is gonna mess it up.” The road is the Trans Texas Corridor. The plans call for it to come through here, and with it: separate lanes for...

n what may have been the first hint of victory for opponents of the Trans Texas Corridor, a high-ranking Texas Department of Transportation official said Thursday he regretted his agency's communication failures and said one proposed version of the corridor, a 10-lane super highway with rail and utility pathways, will "probably not" be built in East Texas, based on the overwhelming resistance to the idea expressed at public hearings on the project this month. Phillip Russell, assistant executive director for innovative project development at TxDOT, was the keynote speaker at the Lone Star Legislative Summit at SFA Thursday, where he...

TYLER - Heated debates are cropping up in rural East Texas communities as the Texas Department of Transportation hold hearings on the proposed the Trans-Texas Corridor. It's the first construction project of it's kind in the country. The Texas Department of Transportation says they want it to make room for a growing state. "A thousand people a day move to texas," says spokesman Larry Krantz,"where are these people going to drive? The population in Texas is going to explode by 60% in the year 2030." Their plans involve moving commercial trucks off existing interstate highways and onto one of two...

AUSTIN - When it comes to road improvement and maintenance, by most accounts, the South Plains and Panhandle are fortunate. Despite a $1.1 billion accounting error, the Texas Department of Transportation recently reported no projects in the region have been canceled or delayed while cities like Dallas, Houston and Laredo had at least a half dozen highway projects delayed. But the $1.1 billion-error, which occurred because TxDOT inadvertently counted some bond money twice and consequently allocated more funding than it had, is just the latest problem plaguing the beleaguered agency. For months, TxDOT executive director Amadeo Saenz and other transportation...

Juan Manuel Marquez-Rodriguez was supposed to use a baggie of marijuana to lure Julio Adrian Serrano out of his home on Gallagher Avenue that cool December morning in 2006, as two other men lay in wait to kidnap him at gunpoint.But when Serrano went out to meet Marquez, he spotted Sergio "Pelon" Oslan Rivera jumping over a nearby fence. Serrano immediately turned around and ran back into his trailer. Marquez, 27, pulled out a .40 caliber pistol and fired at Serrano, then 19. One bullet hit Serrano in the back, killing him on the spot, according to information Laredo police...

TEXAS CITY — A massive superhighway that Texans have protested at public hearings statewide drew heated opposition among Galveston County residents, who said they feared the toll road would cripple the local shipping industry and do nothing to improve insufficient hurricane evacuation routes. The Trans-Texas Corridor would wind from Laredo to Corpus Christi, wrap around the western edge of Greater Houston, parallel Interstate 59 through East Texas and leave the state in Texarkana. But residents at a public hearing Thursday night in Texas City questioned the real purpose for the road, which would also be part of a national Interstate...

NACOGDOCHES — The rows of extra chairs brought into the The Fredonia's biggest meeting room Thursday night were not enough to accommodate more than 750 people who attended an open house and public hearing on the proposed TTC-69 highway. Texas Department of Transportation officials heard hours of public testimony that continued late into the night overwhelmingly opposed to the construction of new roadways through East Texas. Applause throughout the hours-long meeting never swelled as loudly as it did when the first speaker of the night, state Rep. Wayne Christian, told TxDOT representatives emphatically that "our answer is 'no' on the...

Trucks hauling everything from cars to produce use Southeast Texas roads to deliver their goods, and when a proposed Interstate 69/Trans Texas Corridor is completed, local drivers could see even more of them, local transportation officials said. The proposed I-69 corridor stretches from Michigan down to Texas. Once in Texas, the corridor goes about 650 miles from Texarkana to Brownsville and Laredo and includes separate lanes for cars and semis and areas for trains and utilities. It doesn't cut through Beaumont, but local arteries like U.S. 69 and Interstate 10 would connect to it. Travelers and truckers just need to...

McALLEN — In other parts of the state, transportation officials try to allay property owners' fears that a superhighway from Laredo north to Texarkana will result in a massive land grab. But in the lower Rio Grande Valley, the state's road builders spend more time assuring local leaders that they have a shot at being included. People in the fast-growing border area between Brownsville and McAllen have developed something of an inferiority complex about being the state's largest metropolitan area without an interstate highway. One after another, Valley leaders stepped to a microphone at public meetings last week and made...

ROBSTOWN, Tex. — Leon Little’s farm here near Corpus Christi would not be seized for Texas’s proposed $184-billion-plus superhighway project for 5 or 10 years, if ever. But Mr. Little was alarmed enough to show up Wednesday night with hundreds of his South Texas coastal neighbors to do what the Texas Department of Transportation has been urging: “Go ahead, don’t hold back.� Don’t worry. Texans have gotten the message, swamping hearings and town meetings across the state to grill and often excoriate agency officials about a colossal traffic makeover known as the Trans-Texas Corridor, a public-private partnership unrivaled in the...

Not one of the 11 East Texans who approached the podium at Wednesday's hearing on Interstate 69 voiced support for the planned highway. "This is highway robbery, and we should not pursue this project," said David Simpson, a Longview resident and fifth-generation Texan. "This process has bypassed the Constitution. It has bypassed the U.S. Congress, and I'm opposed to it because of the unconstitutional way that it has been pushed through." The public hearing, held at Maude Cobb Convention and Activity Center, was a chance for residents to comment and ask questions about Interstate 69/Trans-Texas Corridor. The corridor would extend...

Is the U.S. Failing in Afghanistan? It was malice in wonderland at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday as Bush Administration envoys insisted things are getting better in Afghanistan, while angry lawmakers from both parties cited facts and figures showing just the opposite. Even the senior Republican on the panel, Senator Richard Lugar, found the Administration's claims wanting. "I'm not sure that we have a plan for Afghanistan," he said. Long seen as the "forgotten war" eclipsed by Iraq in U.S. priorities, Afghanistan is in the Washington spotlight this week with the release of three independent reports concluding...

The majority of residents from Walker and area counties made it clear Wednesday night how they feel about the proposed I-69/Trans-Texas Corridor. They are strongly opposed to it. An estimated 800 people took action on the controversial issue. The second town hall meeting in Huntsville, offering a chance for open dialogue between residents and the Texas Department of Transportation, took on a different tone than the initial meeting Jan. 23 at the Walker Education Center. With the main building at the Walker County Fairgrounds able to accommodate the large crowd, property owners and other residents expressed their dissatisfaction with Gov....

Some Texans are afraid of losing their land to the Trans-Texas Corridor while others loathe the thought of a quarter-mile-wide swath of toll roads and railway lines transforming the countryside into a superhighway. People continue to turn out in droves at public meetings concerning the controversial Trans-Texas Corridor proposal, specifically the portion known as the TTC-69 proposed from Brownsville to Texarkana. A meeting Monday, Jan. 28, at the fairgrounds in Austin County was no exception, drawing more than 1,000 people. Opposition to the proposed corridor has come from people in all walks of life, said Chris Steinbach, chief of staff...

BELLVILLE — In what is becoming a regular occurrence in Southeast Texas, more than 1,000 Austin County residents and interested outsiders jammed a county fairgrounds exhibit hall Monday night to let a panel of state transportation officials know that the Trans-Texas Corridor was not welcome here. State Rep. Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham, opened the public remarks to thunderous applause when she told the panel, "You all thought I was crazy in Austin when I said my people don't want it and I don't want it." The panel, which included Texas Department of Transportation Executive Director Amadeo Saenz and Deputy Executive Director...

Carjackers stole a vehicle from a woman at gunpoint and led authorities on a short, high-speed chase Monday that ended with the suspects breaking through a barrier at International Bridge I and fleeing into Mexico, police said."Once they are in Mexico – we can't go in there to get them," said Laredo Police spokesman Jose E. Baeza, noting that in the heat of the moment police had no time to call bridge officials for assistance. Nevertheless, police are determined to find the suspects with the help of Mexican authorities. The chase began shortly after 6:30 a.m. after a woman told...

State Sen. Glen Hegar says he opposes a route that would bring the mammoth Trans Texas Corridor through his district. The Texas Department of Transportation has kicked off a series of public meetings to discuss the project. Meetings are scheduled for Tuesday in Hempstead (6:30 p.m. at the Knights of Columbus Hall, 22892 Mack Washington St.) and Jan. 29 in Bellville (at the Austin County fairgrounds, also beginning at 6:30 p.m.). No meetings are scheduled in Washington County, which likely wouldn’t be impacted much by the highway project. Much of the discussion in public meetings already held centers on Interstate...