The Standard’s news roundup gives you a quick hit of interesting, sometimes irreverent, and breaking news stories from all over the state.
Texas wants an answer from the feds about its proposed state plan for refugees. And if the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) doesn’t approve the plan by September 30th, the state says it’s out.
The head of the Texas Health and Human Services Commission sent a letter to ORR earlier this summer outlining an amended state plan for refugee resettlement.
It asked that the FBI ensure each refugee isn’t a security threat. Texas also refused to resettle any more refugees in the fiscal year 2017 than it did in the fiscal year 2016.
High school football teams across Texas are following in Colin Kaepernick’s footsteps. Like the San Francisco 49ers quarterback, student-athletes are kneeling during the national anthem to protest police violence and racial injustice. But it’s not just the older kids who are getting involved in the protest. The Beaumont Bulls is a youth league team made up of 11- and 12-year-olds.
They’ve gotten attention from national media and Kaepernick, himself – and they’ve even gotten death threats. Beaumont Enterprise reporter David Thompson explains what happened before the game started last weekend:
“As far as when the national anthem started, they lined up, they took a knee – there are 19 players on the team – 14 of them took a knee, 5 of them actually stood behind with their arms linked,” Thompson says. “One of their assistant coaches is a marine corps veteran who didn’t want to kneel so they stood with him kind of in solidarity. Ya know it was a very peaceful protest, and sort of the divisiveness of it all came more in the stands than on the field.”
Thompson says that one of the parents of a Beaumont Bulls player told him that the idea to protest came from the kids themselves.
“She said she’s extremely proud of what her kids are doing and she actually said contrary to what a lot of people believe that parents or coaches came up with this, that it was actually the kids who had started noticing things that made them want to be a part of the protest,” Thompson says.
The team plans to continue protesting through the end of the season.
A major energy company is moving its Houston headquarters. Eddie Robinson with Houston Public Media says Shell Oil will relocate west of the city in early 2017.
“Bob Eury is the president of central Houston which plans development in downtown – he said it’s part of a pattern of oil companies consolidating their offices,” Robinson says. “The company moved to 1 Shell Plaza on Louisiana Street back in 1971 when it moved its US headquarters to Houston from New York. About 3,400 employees will be affected by the relocation to the energy corridor.”
