The Standard’s news roundup gives you a quick hit of interesting, sometimes irreverent, and breaking news stories from all over the state.
A fast-growing North Texas city is going to be the first testing ground in the state for a self-driving car service.
California-based Drive.ai announced Monday it was rolling out the program in Frisco this July. It will serve about 10,000 people working in corporate offices near The Star, a retail and dining area, which is also the Dallas Cowboys’ headquarters.
Frisco Mayor Jeff Cheney explains the service will be located in a defined area, but will also run on public streets.
“That’s what makes it the first of it’s kind in the state of Texas, if not the country, and really what it’s designed to do is get people from different points and destinations,” Cheney says. “People are Hull park that are working there can get into one of these cars and go to lunch at The Star and vice versa.”
Mayor Cheney says this program is important for Frisco because the city is still in the process of developing its infrastructure.
“We’re building our roads, we’re figuring out light timings, and all those kinds of things,” Cheney says. “So if we’re able to build our roads and infrastructure to the technology that we know are coming over the next decade that’s going to put away way ahead in terms of being able to implement them.”
Cheney also points out that Frisco isn’t new to trying out the latest transportation technologies – it’s worked with Uber and directions-app Waze.
“As well as the Audi program where the cars talk to stoplights,” Cheney says. “And we’ve put out there that we want to be the first and test these technologies.”
The pilot program will run for six months. At first there will be a driver in the driver’s seat, then they’ll move to the passenger’s seat. By the end there will just be someone monitoring the car remotely.
A new study looks at immigration enforcement under President Trump, and finds Texas counties typically cooperate with federal authorities.
The report from the Migration Policy institute, finds that during the first months of the Trump administration, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement took 60 percent more people into custody from Harris County jails than during the same period the year before.
Randy Capps worked on the report for the Washington, D.C.-based think tank. He told Houston Public Media that ICE relies heavily on local law enforcement to make immigration arrests.
“Anybody who has been brought in for any crime – could be a traffic crime, could be shoplifting or it could be something much more serious like an assault,” Capps says, “they’ll have a much higher chance of getting taken into federal custody and being deported.”
The study also found that Harris, Hidalgo, Bexar, Webb, Travis, and Dallas County are among the top 25 counties in the country that get the most ICE detainer requests.
The Atlantic Hurricane Season officially starts in less than a month, and we’re getting a look at names for those storms to come. From KUT News in Austin Trey Shaar looks at the alphabetical list of storm names and more:
The latest forecast for the hurricane season ahead says it should busier than normal, with 14 named storms, but not as bad as last year. That hurricane season brought Harvey, Irma and Maria – names that are now retired. Names we’re likely to hear in the next few months include Alberto, Beryl, Chris and Debby. Names we can only hope we won’t be hearing are Sara, Tony, Valerie and William. The National Hurricane Center doesn’t use Q, X, Y or Z, but does recycle every six years names that don’t wind up getting attached to devastating storms. Hurricane season starts on June 1 and runs through November.
