US heads to court to build Trump border wall in Texas
HOUSTON — Three years into Donald Trump’s presidency, the U.S. government is ramping up its efforts to seize private land in Texas to build a border wall.
Trump’s signature campaign promise has consistently faced political, legal, and environmental obstacles in Texas, which has the largest section of the U.S.-Mexico border, most of it without fencing. And much of the land along the Rio Grande, the river that forms the border in Texas, is privately held and environmentally sensitive.
Almost no land has been taken so far. But Department of Justice lawyers have filed three lawsuits this month seeking to take property from landowners. On Tuesday, lawyers moved to seize land in one case immediately before a scheduled court hearing in February.
The agency says it’s ready to file many more petitions to take private land in the coming weeks. While progress has lagged, the process of taking land under eminent domain is weighted heavily in the government’s favor.
The U.S. government has built about 90 miles (145 kilometers) of walls since Trump took office, almost all of it replacing old fencing. Reaching Trump’s oft-stated goal of 500 miles (800 kilometers) by the end of 2020 will almost certainly require stepping up progress in Texas.
Second Amendment Sanctuary push aims to defy new gun laws
BUCKINGHAM, Va. — A standing-room only crowd of more than 400 packed the meeting room, filled the lobby and spilled into the parking lot recently in rural Buckingham County, Virginia. They had one thing on their minds: guns.
The vast majority favored a proposal to protect their right to carry firearms: declaring the county a Second Amendment Sanctuary.
Similar scenes have played out across Virginia over the last six weeks. Gun owners are descending on local offices to demand that their government leaders establish sanctuaries for gun rights.
The resolutions, promoted heavily by the gun rights group Virginia Citizens Defense League, vary from county to county, but most declare the intention of local officials to oppose any “unconstitutional restrictions” on the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. In the last two months, more than 100 counties, cities and towns in Virginia have approved such resolutions.
The current movement began last year in Illinois and quickly spread to numerous states, including California, Colorado, New Mexico and Florida.
6 die in Las Vegas apartment building fire; 13 injured
LAS VEGAS — A fire in a three-story apartment building in downtown Las Vegas where residents were apparently using their stoves for heat killed six people and forced some residents to jump from upper-floor windows to escape the heavy smoke before dawn Saturday, authorities said.
Investigators reported that the fire started around a first-floor unit’s stove and that residents had told them that there was no heat in the building, which sits a few blocks from downtown Las Vegas’ touristy Fremont Street District.
Residents reported awakening to pounding on doors around 4 a.m.
By the time Matthew Sykes got his clothes on to flee, one end of his second-floor hallway was choked with thick black smoke, as was a stairwell, making it impassable for he and his wife.
“The whole place was like one big black cloud of smoke — couldn’t get down the stairs,” Sykes told The Associated Press.
Guatemala bus crash kills at least 20 people
GUATEMALA CITY — A trailer truck collided with a passenger bus in eastern Guatemala early Saturday, killing at least 20 people and leaving a dozen wounded, according to the national disaster agency. It said nine of the dead were minors.
Volunteer firefighters told reporters the truck appeared to have collided with the bus from behind in the municipality of Gualan, roughly 150 kilometers (95 miles) east of Guatemala City.
Photos of the scene showed the truck toppled onto its side along a curve on the two-lane highway, with the bus a little further ahead, its rear section destroyed.
From wire sources
The national disaster agency said the bus had been headed from the northeastern Peten region to the capital.
It said the injured were taken to several hospitals in the region.
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Ambitious Texas law fails to make dent in jailhouse suicides
In a county jail in central Texas, an inmate on suicide watch begins strangling himself with a phone cord. The guard watching him does not rush in because of security rules that prohibit him from going into a cell alone, leading to an agonizing 10-minute wait before another staffer arrives to provide backup.
Derrek Monroe, who died the next day in a hospital, was among the first of 48 jail suicides since the 2017 launch of a sweeping Texas law aimed at reducing such deaths through better screening and monitoring. That law hasn’t made a dent in the number of suicides, and experts blame its failure to address one of the most significant factors: the lack of staff to watch troubled inmates.
“Jails are understaffed and often very understaffed,” said Diana Claitor, executive director of the Texas Jail Project, which advocates for inmates and their families. “You know you have to check a suicidal inmate, but at the same time, another crisis or fight occurs down the hall, and you have to go there. If you don’t have any extra personnel because someone is sick, you’re doing everything alone.”
In a joint reporting effort, The Associated Press and the University of Maryland’s Capital News Service compiled a database of more than 400 lawsuits in the last five years alleging mistreatment of inmates in U.S. prisons and jails. Close to 40 percent involved suicides in local jails — 135 deaths and 30 attempts. All but eight involved allegations of neglect by the staff.
“It’s not always maliciousness,” Claitor added. “We’re talking about people who are doing a very tough job.”
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Patriots, Texans clinch division titles with wins
FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — Tom Brady passed for 271 yards and a touchdown, sneaked for a third-down conversion to set up another score and threw a downfield block on another scoring drive to help the New England Patriots clinch their 11th AFC East title in a row by beating Buffalo 24-17 on Saturday.
With Bills visiting for a rare late-season matchup while the division was still at stake, Sony Michel ran for 96 yards and Rex Burkhead rebounded for an opening-drive fumble to catch four passes for 77 yards and run for 20 more. Both teams had already clinched playoff berths; the Patriots (12-3) remain in contention for a first-round bye or even the No. 1 seed in the AFC.
Josh Allen completed 13 of 26 passes for 208 yards and ran for 43 more, including a first down on fourth-and-1 from the Patriots 30 with about three minutes left. After driving to the New England 8, Allen over threw Dawson Knox in the end zone and then was sacked by Adam Butler. Facing fourth-and-goal from the 15 with just over one minute left, he was forced out of the pocket and had to throw the ball up for grabs in the end zone, where it was knocked down by J.C. Jackson.
Cole Beasley caught seven passes for 108 yards, and John Brown had a 53-yard touchdown reception for the Bills (10-5), who have qualified for the playoffs for the second time since 1999. They have not won a playoff game since 1995, following their last division title, when Marv Levy’s team beat Don Shula’s Miami Dolphins in the wild-card round.
Brady, who is 42 and nursing a right elbow injury, improved to 32-3 against the Bills, and Buffalo hasn’t beaten the Patriots in six games under coach Sean McDermott. This one was clinched when Burkhead ran it in from 1 yard with 5:11 left; Brady found Julian Edelman for the 2-point conversion to make it a seven-point game.
