Federal environmental authorities have ordered a temporary halt in the shipment of contaminated waste from the site of a fiery train derailment earlier this month in eastern Ohio near the Pennsylvania state line. Region 5 administrator Debra Shore of the Environmental Protection Agency said Saturday the agency ordered Norfolk Southern to “pause” shipments from the site of the Feb. 3 derailment in East Palestine but vowed that removal of the material would resume “very soon.” “Everyone wants this contamination gone from the community. They don’t want the worry, and they don’t want the smell, and we owe it to the people of East Palestine to move it out of the community as quickly as possible,” Shore said. Until Friday, Shore said, the rail company had been solely responsible for the disposal of the waste and supplied Ohio environmental officials with a list of selected and utilized disposal sites. Going forward, disposal plans including locations and transportation routes for contaminated waste will be subject to EPA review and approval, she said. “EPA will ensure that all waste is disposed of in a safe and lawful manner at EPA-certified facilities to prevent further release of hazardous substances and impacts to communities,” Shore…

Attorney General Paxton has joined two Missouri-led multistate letters being sent to CVS and Walgreens concerning their decision to seek approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on using the mail to sell abortion pills. CVS and Walgreens recently announced their willingness to aid the Biden Administration’s radical abortion agenda by selling abortion pills via mail. The Biden Administration has attempted to twist statutes to allow the delivery, but the companies’ decision to send through the mail clashes with federal and many state laws that actually bans the distribution of abortion pill through the mail. A letter to CVS stated that “federal expressly prohibits using the mail to send or receive and drug that will be used or applied for producing production. “Although many people are unfamiliar with this statute because it has not been amended in a few decades, to text could not be clear… In December, the Biden Administration’s Office of Legal Counsel encouraged the U.S. Postal Service to disregard this plain text but the text, not the Biden Administration’s view, is what governs.” The letter also says that in addition to being illegal to send through the mail, abortion drugs are dangerous and they can be…

A powerful storm system took aim at the Gulf Coast on Tuesday, spawning a tornado that downed utility poles and power lines, overturned vehicles and ripped roofs off homes in communities east of Houston. There were no immediate reports of serious injuries. The National Weather Service had issued a tornado emergency for that area, warning that a “large, extremely dangerous and potentially deadly tornado” was on the ground Tuesday afternoon and was headed toward Baytown, about 25 miles east of Houston. The warning expired as the system moved to the east. The storm damaged commercial buildings, homes and power lines in nearby Pasadena, a city southeast of Houston. Utility poles and power lines were downed, and several vehicles, including a trailer, were damaged or flipped over in a parking lot. Footage from Houston TV stations showed several businesses suffered major damage, including the city’s animal shelter. Nearby, fences were laid over and shingles and sections of roofs were torn from homes, but there were no immediate reports of injuries. In Baytown, there were downed power lines and damage to homes and businesses, but no reports of serious injuries, said Baytown spokesperson Jason Calder. Shell Chemicals’ site in nearby Deer Park…

In the aftermath of the February 2021 winter storm that knocked out power to two-thirds of the state and killed more than 200 Texans, lawmakers and regulators vowed that the grid would not fail like that again. So, have they made good on their promise? “It depends on who you talk to, right? Gov. (Greg) Abbott said when the legislation was signed to improve grid reliability, that he felt everything that needed to be done has been done,” said senior investigative reporter Scott Friedman of KRLD’s media partner NBC 5. “However, there is still some skepticism among the experts who we talked to about whether we would have few problems or no problems if we saw a storm of the magnitude of what we had in 2021.” Following that storm, regulatory agencies like ERCOT and the Texas Public Utility Commission instituted new guidelines, including winterization standards, for power plants. Energy consultant and former advisor to the chair of the PUC Alison Silverstein said there are still elements of the grid that could be vulnerable to temperatures like the ones Texas experienced in the days before Christmas, a cold snap that was part of the much larger Winter Storm Elliott. “We don’t…

Mexican authorities on Monday raised the death toll from an attack on a state prison in Ciudad Juarez across the border from El Paso, Texas to 17, a brazen operation that appeared designed to free the leader of a local gang. Twenty-five inmates escaped in the attack. Security Secretary Rosa Icela Rodriguez said 10 of the dead were prison guards who were attacked by gunmen who arrived early Sunday in armored vehicles and fired on the entrance and inside dormitories. Rodriguez identified the inmates who escaped as being with the Mexicles gang, which she associated with the Caborca Cartel. She said the Mexicles’ leader was among the fugitives. The Mexicles have been one of Juarez’s main gangs for decades and for many years were known to work with the Sinaloa Cartel. The Caborca Cartel had been led by drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero who was recaptured in July. Defense Secretary Luis Cresencio Sandoval said the soldiers and state police who retook control of the prison found 10 “VIP” cells outfitted with televisions and other comforts. One even had a safe filled with cash. Authorities also found cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin, fentanyl and marijuana inside the prison. Sandoval said two other gunmen killed…

A Los Angeles jury on Friday found rapper Tory Lanez guilty of three felonies in the 2020 shooting of hip-hop star Megan Thee Stallion that left her wounded with bullet fragments in her feet. The jury of seven women and five men deliberated for one day before convicting the 30-year-old Canadian rapper, whose legal name is Daystar Peterson, of assault with a semiautomatic firearm, having a loaded, unregistered firearm in a vehicle and discharging a firearm with gross negligence. The counts could lead to up to 22 years in prison. Lanez showed no visible reaction as the verdict was read. He was handcuffed while in the courtroom. Megan Thee Stallion, whose legal name is Megan Pete, testified during the trial that Lanez fired a handgun at the back of her feet and shouted for her to dance as she walked away from an SUV in which they had been riding in the Hollywood Hills in the summer of 2020. She said the two had gotten into a dispute that got especially heated when she began insulting his music. She needed surgery to remove bullet fragments from her feet. The shooting set off a storm of cultural issues and arguments that peaked…