NPR: According to U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer Bill Colclough, an offshore oil rig, Vermilion Oil Rig 380, owned by Mariner Energy, Inc., is on fire, some 90 miles south of Vermilion Bay, below Marsh Island, Louisiana.
In an interview with CNN, he said there were 13 people aboard the rig. All of them have been accounted for. Twelve of the employees have been placed in immersion suits. They will receive medical treatment at Terrebonne General Medical Center in Houma, Louisiana.
Eight Coast Guard rescue helicopters have been dispatched to the rig location. In addition, three Coast Guard cutters — Decisive, Manta and Skip Jack — are en route, with four civilian vessels.
As of last year, Mariner Energy, which is headquartered in Houston, “had interests approximately 240 blocks on the continental shelf and 100 blocks in deepwater,” and “net interests in more than 185,000 acres, primarily in the Permian Basin and Gulf Coast.”
NPR‘s Corey Flintoff: President Obama has drawn an official end to U.S. combat operations in Iraq, but challenges lie ahead in a country that faces persistent insurgent violence and political turmoil.
In a prime-time address Tuesday night, the president called on the American people to put the energies that were devoted to Iraq into the widening fight in Afghanistan and the need to rebuild the U.S. economy.
But Obama also foreshadowed what analysts say will be a difficult and dangerous job of training Iraqi forces to maintain their own country’s security. And he reminded Iraqi leaders that the U.S. commitment to Iraq will continue, but that they must stop factional bickering and form a government.
They came by the tens of thousands, forced from homes by a wall of water and rescued from the horrors of mass shelters only after days of suffering. Bus after bus deposited throngs of the poorest people from one of America’s poorest cities into Houston — perhaps the only nearby metropolis with the wherewithal to handle the influx. Others from Louisiana, those with more means, had fled to Texas even before the storm hit land.
The uneasy arrangement was a shotgun marriage from the beginning: Many New Orleanians had no choice in whether or where they went, and Houstonians had no choice, for humanity’s sake, but to take them in.
HOUSTON (KTRK) — Harris County election officials are scrambling to come up with plan for the midterm elections after a fire at a warehouse destroyed nearly all of the county’s voting machines.
Top 50 House Races For 2010; 46 Of Them Are Held By Democrats
Among those vulnerable Democrats is Rep. Chet Edwards who “represents a district in East Central Texas that went 67 percent for McCain” (Political Junkie)
Undocumented immigrants are more likely to be deported from the Travis County jail because of their immigration status than from any other jail in the country, according to federal data obtained by the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law. Mose Buchele of KUT News reports.
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The poll, conducted Aug. 22, shows Perry leading White, 49 percent to 41 percent. Three percent of the respondents said they prefer another candidate, and 7 percent were undecided.
The results are similar to Rasmussen polls in June and July, which showed the governor leading the former Houston mayor by 8 and 9 points, respectively.
White faces a tough race in a state that trends conservative Republican, especially given the national electoral mood.
Seventy-six percent (76%) of Texas voters consider Perry a conservative. Forty-two percent (42%) view White as a liberal, while another 29% describe him as a moderate.
Despite the perceived differences in ideology, 51% of voters in the state describe Perry’s political views as mainstream, and 52% say the same of White’s views. Thirty-three percent (33%) brand Perry’s views as extreme, and 29% think White’s are extreme.
Rasmussen polled 500 likely voters. The poll’s margin of error is +/- 4.5 percent.
Students are heading back to school this week, and some of them will begin learning about the birds and the bees. The Texas Education Code requires that abstinence be the focus of any sex education curriculum — but as Nathan Bernier of KUT News reports, there are some changes this year to how sex ed is being taught.
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Public Media Texas is based in Austin. We embrace our local presence in Austin with our hyper-local East Austin site 78702.org. We contribute to the discussion of the environment in the Southwest and the state of politics in Texas. We also seek to understand the dynamic between the U.S. and Mexico along our shared border. Along the way we search for artistic expressions that reflect and provide more perspective on the Lone Star state.
