24/7 NEWS
Mavs Extend Coach Jason Kidd’s Contract in Middle of Playoffs, a Year After Chaotic Ending
DALLAS (AP) — Dallas Mavericks coach Jason Kidd has signed a multi-year contract extension with the team. The Mavericks announced the move a day before opening their second-round playoff series at Oklahoma City. Dallas advanced last week by eliminating the Los Angeles Clippers in six games. The hall of fame point guard, who won an NBA title with the Mavericks in 2011, is in his third season coaching Dallas. He guided the Mavs to win the Southwest Division title with a 50-32 record — his second 50-win season with the team. The Mavs did not disclose the length of the contract extension.
(Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)
Governor Urges Residents to Report Damage from Ongoing Flooding
CONROE (WBAP/KLIF) – 91 East and Southeast Texas counties have been slammed with torrential rain and flooding leading to Disaster Declarations by Governor Greg Abbott.
The governor says five outside states have sent resources to Texas dealing with ongoing flooding.
“We all know that regardless of what type of event we are dealing with, whether it be a hurricane, a flooding event, whatever, the main thing we want to do is protect lives,” Governor Abbott said after touring an area near Conroe that was badly hit by flooding.
The governor is urging people who have had damage to report it so Texas can eventually get federal financial assistance. Victims can report damage through https://damage.tdem.texas.gov or to contact local emergency officials.
“In order for this region to receive federal financial assistance, it’s important that there is enough identified damages that qualify us for that assistance,” Abbott said.
The governor also warning residents to be on the look out for potential scammers taking advantage of victims.
(Copyright 2024, WBAP/KLIF. All Rights Reserved.)
Hamas Agrees to Cease-fire Proposal; Israel Moves Ahead with Rafah Assault
Update at 6:00pm:
JERUSALEM (AP) — Hamas announced its acceptance Monday of an Egyptian-Qatari cease-fire proposal, but Israel said the deal did not meet its “core demands” and that it was pushing ahead with an assault on the southern Gaza town of Rafah. Still, Israel said it would continue negotiations.
The high-stakes diplomatic moves and military brinkmanship left a glimmer of hope alive — but only barely — for an accord that could bring at least a pause in the 7-month-old war that has devastated the Gaza Strip. Hanging over the wrangling was the threat of an all-out Israeli assault on Rafah, a move the United States strongly opposes and that aid groups warn will be disastrous for some 1.4 million Palestinians taking refuge there.
Hamas’s abrupt acceptance of the cease-fire deal came hours after Israel ordered an evacuation of some 100,000 Palestinians from eastern neighborhoods of Rafah, signaling an invasion was imminent.
Israel’s War Cabinet decided to continue the Rafah operation, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said. At the same time, it said that while the proposal Hamas agreed to “is far from meeting Israel’s core demands,” it would send negotiators to Egypt to work on a deal.
The Israeli military said it was conducting “targeted strikes” against Hamas in eastern Rafah. Soon after, Israeli tanks entered Rafah, reaching as close as 200 meters (yards) from Rafah’s crossing with neighboring Egypt, a Palestinian security official and an Egyptian official said. Both spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the press.
Original Story:
JERUSALEM (AP) — Hamas announced Monday it has accepted an Egyptian-Qatari proposal for a cease-fire to halt the seven-month-long war with Israel in Gaza, hours after Israel ordered about 100,000 Palestinians to begin evacuating from the southern city of Rafah, signaling that a long-promised ground invasion there could be imminent.
There was no immediate comment from Israel on the deal, and details of the proposal have not yet been released. In recent days, Egyptian and Hamas officials have said the cease-fire would take place in a series of stages during which Hamas would release hostages it is holding in exchange for Israeli troop pullbacks from Gaza.
It is not clear whether the deal will meet Hamas’ key demand of bringing about an end to the war and complete Israeli withdrawal.
Hamas said in a statement its top leader, Ismail Haniyeh, had delivered the news in a phone call with Qatar’s prime minister and Egypt’s intelligence minister. After the release of the statement, Palestinians erupted in cheers in the sprawling tent camps around Rafah, hoping the deal meant an Israeli attack had been averted.
Israel’s closest allies, including the United States, have repeatedly said that Israel shouldn’t attack Rafah. The looming operation has raised global alarm over the fate of around 1.4 million Palestinians sheltering there.
Aid agencies have warned that an offensive will worsen Gaza’s humanitarian catastrophe and bring a surge of more civilian deaths in an Israeli campaign that in nearly seven months has killed 34,000 people and devastated the territory.
U.S. President Joe Biden spoke Monday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and reiterated U.S. concerns about an invasion of Rafah. Biden said that a cease-fire with Hamas is the best way to protect the lives of Israeli hostages held in Gaza, a National Security Council spokesperson said on condition of anonymity to discuss the call before an official White House statement was released.
Hamas and key mediator Qatar said that invading Rafah will derail efforts by international mediators to broker a cease-fire. Days earlier, Hamas had been discussing a U.S.-backed proposal that reportedly raised the possibility of an end to the war and a pullout of Israeli troops in return for the release of all hostages held by the group. Israeli officials have rejected that trade-off, vowing to continue their campaign until Hamas is destroyed.
Netanyahu said Monday that seizing Rafah, which Israel says is the last significant Hamas stronghold in Gaza, was vital to ensuring the militants can’t rebuild their military capabilities and repeat the Oct. 7 attack on Israel that triggered the war.
Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, an army spokesman, said about 100,000 people were being ordered to move from parts of Rafah to a nearby Israel-declared humanitarian zone called Muwasi, a makeshift camp on the coast. He said that Israel has expanded the size of the zone and that it included tents, food, water and field hospitals.
It wasn’t immediately clear, however, if that material was already in place to accommodate the new arrivals.
Around 450,000 displaced Palestinians already are sheltering in Muwasi. The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, said it has been providing them with aid. But conditions are squalid, with few bathrooms or sanitation facilities in the largely rural area, forcing families to dig private latrines.
After the evacuation order announcement Monday, Palestinians in Rafah wrestled with having to uproot their extended families once again for an unknown fate, exhausted after months living in sprawling tent camps or crammed into schools or other shelters in and around the city. Few who spoke to The Associated Press wanted to risk staying.
Mohammed Jindiyah said that at the beginning of the war, he had tried to hold out in his home in northern Gaza after Israel ordered an evacuation there in October. He ended up suffering through heavy bombardment before fleeing to Rafah.
He’s complying with the order this time, but was unsure now whether to move to Muwasi or another town in central Gaza.
“We are 12 families, and we don’t know where to go. There is no safe area in Gaza,” he said.
Sahar Abu Nahel, who fled to Rafah with 20 family members including her children and grandchildren, wiped tears from her cheeks, despairing at a new move.
“I have no money or anything. I am seriously tired, as are the children,” she said. “Maybe it’s more honorable for us to die. We are being humiliated.”
Israeli military leaflets were dropped with maps detailing a number of eastern neighborhoods of Rafah to evacuate, warning that an attack was imminent and anyone who stays “puts themselves and their family members in danger.” Text messages and radio broadcasts repeated the message.
UNRWA won’t evacuate from Rafah so it can continue to provide aid to those who stay behind, said Scott Anderson, the agency’s director in Gaza.
“We will provide aid to people wherever they choose to be,” he told the AP.
The U.N. says an attack on Rafah could disrupt the distribution of aid keeping Palestinians alive across Gaza. The Rafah crossing into Egypt, a main entry point for aid to Gaza, lies in the evacuation zone. The crossing remained open Monday after the Israeli order.
Jan Egeland, secretary-general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, condemned the “forced, unlawful” evacuation order and the idea that people should go to Muwasi.
“The area is already overstretched and devoid of vital services,” Egeland said. He said that an Israeli assault could lead to “the deadliest phase of this war.”
Israel’s bombardment and ground offensives in Gaza have killed more than 34,700 Palestinians, around two-thirds of them children and women, according to Gaza health officials. The tally doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants. More than 80% of the population of 2.3 million have been driven from their homes, and hundreds of thousands in the north are on the brink of famine, according to the U.N.
Tensions escalated Sunday when Hamas fired rockets at Israeli troops positioned on the border with Gaza near Israel’s main crossing for delivering humanitarian aid, killing four soldiers. Israel shuttered the crossing — but Shoshani said it wouldn’t affect how much aid enters Gaza as others are working.
Meanwhile, Israeli airstrikes on Rafah killed 22 people, including children and two infants, according to a hospital.
The war was sparked by the unprecedented Oct. 7 raid into southern Israel in which Hamas and other militants killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted around 250 hostages. After exchanges during a November cease-fire, Hamas is believed to still hold about 100 Israelis captive as well the bodies of around 30 others.
The mediators over the cease-fire — the United States, Egypt and Qatar — had appeared to scramble to salvage a cease-fire deal they had been trying to push through the past week. Egypt said it was in touch with all sides Monday to “prevent the situation from … getting out of control.”
CIA Director William Burns, who had been in Cairo for talks on the deal, headed to meet the prime minister of Qatar, an official familiar with the matter said. It wasn’t clear whether a subsequent trip to Israel that had been planned would happen. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door negotiations.
In a fiery speech Sunday evening marking Israel’s Holocaust memorial day, Netanyahu rejected international pressure to halt the war, saying that “if Israel is forced to stand alone, Israel will stand alone.”
On Monday, Netanyahu accused Hamas of “torpedoing” a deal by not budging from its demand for an end to the war and a complete Israeli troop withdrawal in return for the hostages’ release, which he called “extreme.”
(Copyright 2024, The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
Memorial On Display at Allen Premium Outlets on 1-Year Anniversary of Mass Shooting, Remembrance Events Planned
ALLEN (WBAP/KLIF News ) – One year to the day that a lone gunman killed eight people at the Allen Premium Outlets, a memorial in honor of their lives is on display.
The structure, which was unveiled Monday morning, sits at the northwest interior section of the mall and includes eight wind chimes to honor the victims: 27-year-old Aishwarya Thatikonda, The Cho Family: Kyu, Cindy and their 3-year-old son James, 11-year-old Daniela Mendoza and her sister 8-year-old Sofia Mendoza, 20-year-old Christian LaCour and 32-year-old Elio Cumana-Rivas.
An Allen police officer who was already at the mall fatally shot the lone gunman.
Leading up the May 6 anniversary, North Texans have been coming together to make sure the victims and the tragedy aren’t forgotten.
Dozens of citizens gathered at Green Park in Allen Sunday to remember the victims and to help citizens who are struggling with the shooting heal.
The group placed 408 red flags in the ground to represent someone who lost their lives to gun violence so far this year in Texas. The somber event was organized by Moms Demand Action and South Asian Voter Empowerment Texas.
As memorials are planned throughout the day Monday, some parents may be grappling with how to discuss the tragedy with their children.
It’s a tough subject Collin County’s mental health authority LifePath Systems has been giving advice on in the wake of the massacre.
LifePath CEO Tammy Mayhan said the conversation should be tailored to the child’s age.
“It should dictate how detailed you get…but ask them questions ‘What are they hearing?’ ‘What are they seeing?’ ‘What are their friends saying?’ ‘How does that make them feel?’,” she said.
The City of Allen will hold a moment of silence at 3:36 p.m., when the first shots rang out.
A remembrance event will be held at the Credit Union of Texas Event Center at 6:30 p.m.
In a Facebook post, city officials said the community program will include performances from the Allen High School choir and the Allen Philharmonic Orchestra & Symphony Chorus.
Click here for directions and free parking.
Click here for a live stream of the remembrance ceremony.
Copyright 2023. WBAP/KLIF News. All Rights Reserved.
Johnson County 4-Year-Old Dies in Flash Floods
JOHNSON COUNTY (WBAP/KLIF News ) – A North Texas community is mourning the death of a child who was killed in a flash flood that tore through rural Burleson on Sunday.
The Johnson County Sheriff’s Office said dispatch got a 911 call about a family of three seen in a car that was stuck in high water on County Road 529 just before 2 a.m.
The caller said the fast-moving waters swept the family away as they got out of their car to get to higher ground.
First responders found the parents about three hours later, but the child was discovered just after seven a.m., according to the Johnson County Office of Emergency Management.
The parents were treated and released from the hospital on Sunday.
Relatives created a GoFundMe to help the parents pay for funeral expenses.
The Tarrant County Medical Examiner has identified the child as Lucas Warren.
The heavy rains flooded Johnson County and other parts of North Texas Sunday.
“There were several high water rescues that took place across Johnson County. It was a busy overnight period with multiple, multiple water rescues. I know there were homes that were impacted as well,” said National Weather Service Meteorologist Juan Hernandez.
The National Weather Service of Fort Worth said both the Trinity River and White Rock Creek in Dallas flooded overnight on Saturday.
Copyright 2023. WBAP/KLIF News. All Rights Reserved.
Defending Stanley Cup Champion Knights and Top-Seed Stars Set for a Not-Unexpected Game 7
DALLAS (AP) — There is one more game to go between the defending Stanley Cup champion Vegas Golden Knights and the top-seeded Stars. A deciding Game 7 on Sunday night in Dallas. They have split wins at home since the visiting team won each of the first four games. Vegas extended the series to the limit with a 2-0 win in Game 6 on Friday night. This will be the fourth Game 7 in Knights franchise history, the first since 2021 when Pete DeBoer was their coach. DeBoer is 7-0 as a coach in Game 7s, with one for Dallas last year. The winner advances to the second round to play Colorado.
(Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)
Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving Carry Mavs Past Clippers 114-101 to Advance to Second Round
DALLAS (AP) — Luka Doncic had 28 points and 13 assists, Kyrie Irving scored 28 of 30 points in a second-half surge and the Dallas Mavericks advanced to the second round of the playoffs with a 114-101 victory over the Los Angeles Clippers. Doncic pushed through another rough shooting night with his ailing right knee to do what the Slovenian superstar couldn’t three years earlier — close out the Clippers in Dallas in Game 6 of a first-round series. The fifth-seeded Mavericks beat the Clippers for the the first time in three first-round tries over the past five seasons. Dallas will play top-seeded Oklahoma City in the Western Conference semifinals. Paul George had 18 points and 11 rebounds as the Clippers lost in the first round for the second consecutive season.
(Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)
Congressman Cuellar of Texas Indicted
WASHINGTON (AP) — Democratic U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas and his wife were indicted on conspiracy and bribery charges and taken into custody Friday in connection with a U.S. Department of Justice probe into the couple’s ties to the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan.
From 2014 to 2021, Cuellar, 68, and his wife accepted nearly $600,000 in bribes from an Azerbaijan-controlled energy company and a bank in Mexico, and in exchange, Cuellar agreed to advance the interests of the country and the bank in the U.S., according to the indictment.
Among other things, Cuellar agreed to influence legislation favorable to Azerbaijan and deliver a pro-Azerbaijan speech on the floor of the U.S. House, the indictment states.
The Department of Justice said the couple surrendered to authorities on Friday and were taken into custody. They made an initial appearance before a federal judge in Houston and were each released on $100,000 bond, the DOJ said.
The longtime congressman released a statement Friday saying he and his wife, Imelda Cuellar, 67, “are innocent of these allegations.”
“Everything I have done in Congress has been to serve the people of South Texas,” Cuellar said. “Before I took action, I proactively sought legal advice from the House Ethics Committee, who gave me more than one written opinion, along with an additional opinion from a national law firm.
“Furthermore, we requested a meeting with the Washington D.C. prosecutors to explain the facts and they refused to discuss the case with us or hear our side.”
Neither Cuellar nor his attorney immediately responded to calls seeking comment on the matter.
In addition to bribery and conspiracy, the couple face charges including wire fraud conspiracy, acting as agents of foreign principals and money laundering. If convicted, they face up to decades in prison and forfeiture of any property linked to proceeds from the alleged scheme.
The payments to the couple initially went through a Texas-based shell company owned by Imelda Cuellar and two of the couple’s children, according to the indictment. That company received payments from the Azerbaijan energy company of $25,000 per month under a “sham contract,” purportedly in exchange for unspecified strategic consulting and advising services.
“In reality, the contract was a sham used to disguise and legitimate the corrupt agreement between Henry Cuellar and the government of Azerbaijan,” the indictment states.
Imelda Cuellar sent a falsified invoice to the Azerbaijan energy company’s Washington, D.C., office under the agreement, stating her work was complete.
“In fact, Imelda Cuellar had performed little or no legitimate work under the contract,” the indictment says.
The indictment also alleges an Azerbaijani diplomat referred to Henry Cuellar in text messages as “el Jefe” or “boss,” and also that a member of Cuellar’s staff sent multiple emails to officials at the Department of State pressuring them to renew a U.S. passport for an Azerbaijani diplomat’s daughter.
Cuellar was at one time the co-chair of the Congressional Azerbaijan Caucus.
The FBI searched the congressman’s house in the border city of Laredo in 2022, and Cuellar’s attorney at that time said Cuellar was not the target of that investigation. That search was part of a broader investigation related to Azerbaijan that saw FBI agents serve a raft of subpoenas and conduct interviews in Washington, D.C., and Texas, a person with direct knowledge of the probe previously told The Associated Press. The person was not authorized to discuss it publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Cuellar, one of the last anti-abortion Democrats in Congress, narrowly defeated progressive challenger Jessica Cisneros by fewer than 300 votes in a primary race in 2022.
(Copyright 2024, The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
April Jobs Report Shows Employers Pulling Back on Hiring
(WBAP/KLIF) — WASHINGTON (AP) — The nation’s employers pulled back on their hiring in April, adding a modest 175,000 jobs in a sign that persistently high interest rates may be starting to take a bigger toll on the world’s largest economy.
Friday’s government report showed that last month’s hiring gain was down sharply from the blockbuster increase of 315,000 in March. And it was well below the 233,000 gain that economists had predicted for April, suggesting that the Federal Reserve’s aggressive streak of rate hikes may finally be cooling the pace of hiring.
Even with the slowdown, last month’s job growth amounted to a decent increase, though it was the lowest monthly job growth since October. With the nation’s households continuing their steady spending, many employers have had to keep hiring to meet their customer demand.
The unemployment rate ticked up 3.9% — the 27th straight month in which it has remained below 4%, the longest such streak since the 1960s.
The state of the economy is weighing on voters’ minds as the November presidential campaign intensifies. Despite the strength of the job market, Americans remain generally exasperated by high prices, and many of them assign blame to President Joe Biden.
America’s job market has repeatedly proved more robust than almost anyone had predicted. When the Fed began aggressively raising rates two years ago to fight a punishing inflation surge, most economists expected the resulting jump in borrowing costs to cause a recession and drive unemployment to painfully high levels.
The Fed raised its benchmark rate 11 times from March 2022 to July 2023, taking it to the highest level since 2001. Inflation did steadily cool as it was supposed to — from a year-over-year peak of 9.1% in June 2022 to 3.5% in March.
Yet the resilient strength of the job market and the overall economy, fueled by steady consumer spending, has kept inflation persistently above the Fed’s 2% target. As a result, the central bank is delaying any consideration of interest rate cuts until it gains more confidence that inflation is steadily slowing toward its target.
Fed rate cuts, which would, over time, reduce the cost of mortgages, auto loans and other consumer and business borrowing. Most economists envision no rate cuts before fall at the earliest.
The job market has been showing some signs of eventually slowing. This week, for example, the government reported that job openings fell in March to 8.5 million, the fewest in more than three years. Still, that is nevertheless a large number of vacancies: Before 2021, monthly job openings had never topped 8 million, a threshold they have now exceeded every month since March 2021.
On a month-over-month basis, consumer inflation hasn’t declined since October. The 3.5% year-over-year inflation rate for March was still running well above the Fed’s 2% target.
(Copyright 2024 WBAP/KLIF Newsroom News. All rights reserved. Contains material from the Associated Press.)
Opal Lee to Receive Presidential Medal of Freedom
(WBAP/KLIF) — In 2021 President Joe Biden designated Juneteenth as a national holiday, realizing the efforts of Fort Worth resident Opal Lee.
Now, the 97-year-old has been selected to be one of 19 recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, announced Friday by the White House. Lee is best known for her decades-long campaign to establish Juneteenth as a national holiday.
During an interview with our media partner WFAA, Lee says a single dream of everyone working together to make this country the greatest in the world has been a beacon to her life…and the movement doesn’t end with her as she believes the rising generation needs to carry the torch.
Others selected to receive the honor include Nancy Pelosi, Phil Donahue, Katie Ledecky, Jim Thorpe, Al Gore, and John Kerry.
Listen to WBAP/KLIF report:
(Copyright 2024 WBAP/KLIF Newsroom News. All rights reserved.)