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US CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION
New policy welcomed Use-of-force rules released, but critics say more should be done By JULIAN AGUILAR THE TEXAS TRIBUNE
EL PASO — Texas-based civil liberties and immigrant rights groups are welcoming the release of U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s use-of-force policy
and a new directive for U.S. Border Patrol agents as a signal of greater transparency, but those groups — along with some Texas congressmen — argue that more should be done. The advocates say that more directives should be made public
and that the agency should also address activity by CBP officers at the ports of entry, not just Border Patrol agents. On Friday, U.S. Border Patrol Chief Michael J. Fisher instructed field agents to avoid shooting at vehicles that are only fleeing
the scene and to consider all available alternatives to firing their weapons when “projectiles” are hurled at agents, including rocks, a common weapon for would-be crossers caught attempting to enter the country illegally.
“Agents shall not discharge firearms in response to thrown or hurled projectiles unless the agent has a reasonable belief based on the totality of the circumstances to include the size of
See RULES PAGE 11A
LAREDO POLICE
HISTORIC RELIC
Two facing theft charges
RARE GLIMPSE OF HISTORY Early map up for sale By JAMIE STENGLE ASSOCIATED PRESS
By CÉSAR G. RODRIGUEZ THE ZAPATA TIMES
LAREDO — Two Zapata County residents were arrested Thursday on shoplifting charges at a Walmart in South Laredo, according to police. Gabriela Ramirez, 18, and Francisco Javier Solis, 20, were charged with theft, a Class B misdemeanor punishable with SOLIS up to 180 days in jail and/or a $2,000 fine. They posted bond Friday, according to custody records. Laredo police officers responded RAMIREZ to a theft call at 7:11 p.m. Thursday at Walmart, 4401 U.S. 83 South. Loss prevention officers had allegedly recorded Ramirez, of the town of Zapata, and Solis, of San Ygnacio, stealing various items, Investigator Joe E. Baeza, police spokesman. Baeza added that the couple stole three cell phone cases, shoes and a Clearblue pregnancy test, among other items. The stolen merchandise totaled $180, according to police. (César G. Rodriguez may be reached at 728-2568 or cesar@lmtonline.com)
Photo by Heritage Auctions | AP
Shown is an 1849 first edition map of Texas, considered the first official map after Texas became a state in 1845. It is expected to sell for more than $150,000 when it goes up for auction today in Dallas by Heritage Auctions.
DALLAS — A rare 165year-old map of Texas that has been in the same family for generations is expected to sell for more than $150,000 at an auction today. The 1849 document, considered the first official map of Texas after it became a state in 1845, will be offered in Dallas by Heritage Auctions. “This is important because it shows Texas at that fledging point where it’s just becoming a new member of a fairly young nation,” said Joe Fay, Heritage’s manager of rare books. The map was one of several historical family items 66-year-old Patrick Martin, a retired architect, brought to an appraisal event Heritage held last spring in Birmingham, Ala., near his home. He had no idea of its value, but realized he had something special when he saw Fay’s face light up. “When the eyes fell on the signature, it was a ‘eureka’ moment,” Fay said. “It was that: ‘Wait a minute. This is brown ink. This would be black in any subsequent revision.’ So what we have here is the real thing.” Fay said the map, a lithograph, was hand-signed by
See OLD MAP PAGE 11A
U.S. BORDER PATROL
Embassy: Woman are from Honduras By JUAN CARLOS LLORCA ASSOCIATED PRESS
EL PASO — Three people kidnapped and assaulted in South Texas by a Border Patrol agent are a mother, her underage daughter and another girl not related to them who had all come from Honduras, a diplomatic official said Friday. Karol Escalante, a spokeswoman for the Honduran embassy in Washington, D.C., also said the three are recovering at a hospital in McAllen. She would not elaborate on their injuries. The FBI believes Border
Patrol agent Esteban Manzanares, who was later found dead in his home, is responsible for kidnapping and assaulting the three. Customs and Border Protection, the federal agency of which the Border Patrol is part, has said that during the course of their regular operations Wednesday night agents encountered a woman who said she had been attacked by a man. They started a search that led them to a second female. A search and recovery operation was organized with other law enforcement agencies, which took authorities early Thurs-
The agent was on duty when he encountered the females and that his shift had ended by the time authorities showed up. day to Manzanares’ home in Mission, a suburb of McAllen, which is close to the Texas-Mexico border about 350 miles from Houston. When local police approached the agent’s apartment, they heard gunshots. When authorities entered the home they found him dead and
rescued the third girl. The FBI has said the three were in the country illegally. The FBI said it is awaiting an autopsy report on Manzanares, who the Border Patrol said had been with the agency since 2008. A CBP official told The Associated Press that the
agent was on duty when he encountered the females and that his shift had ended by the time authorities showed up at his house and he shot himself. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because it is an ongoing investigation by the FBI. The number of apprehensions by the Border Patrol —a figure commonly used to gauge the ebb and flow of illegal border crossers — rose by 16 percent last year to 420,789 undocumented immigrants detained. More than half of those arrests were made in Texas. Border Patrol Chief Mi-
chael Fisher said last October that much of the increase was due to a rise in the number of people from Central American trying to enter the U.S. in South Texas. While apprehensions of Mexican nationals remained fairly steady, arrests of immigrants from other countries, including Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, rose 55 percent. Limited economic opportunities and widespread gang and drug cartel violence in Central America have driven tens of thousands north along a dangerous route through Mexico.
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Zin brief CALENDAR
SATURDAY, MARCH 15, 2014
AROUND TEXAS
TODAY IN HISTORY
Saturday, March 15
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Webb County Green Party Convention. 6 p.m. Registraton/check-in 6:30 p.m. Party convention 7:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. Caffe Dolce, 1708 Victoria St. Live music. If you voted in Democratic or Republican primaries, you can still participate but cannot vote. All welcome.
Monday, March 17 South Texas Food Bank and Texas A&M International University present national anti hunger expert Joel Berg. 3:30 p.m. TAMIU Student Center, Room 236. Call Salo Otero at 324-2432.
Tuesday, March 18 Diabetes Self-Management Education Series. 8 a.m. City of Laredo Health Department Auditorium, 2600 Cedar Ave. Free diabetes and cooking classes, physical activity classes and glucose screenings. Participants must be fasting for at least 12 hours on registration day; and bring Texas ID or Matricula Consular and utility bill. Call 721-4994.
Thursday, March 20 Los Amigos Duplicate Bridge Club. 1:15 p.m. to 5 p.m. Laredo Country Club. Call Beverly Cantu at 7270589.
Friday, March 21 Christian Life Seminar: What It Means To Be A Christian. 6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., every Friday until April 11. San Martin De Porres Catholic Church’s St. Elizabeth Room. Free. Light snacks served. Contact Leah Cayanan at 2860654 or leigh.cayanan@gmail.com.
Saturday, March 22 TAMIU Planetarium shows: “Earth, Moon and Sun” 3 p.m.; “Wonders of the Universe” 4 p.m.; “Two Small Pieces of Glass” 5 p.m.; “Pink Floyd’s The Wall” 6 p.m. General admission $4 children and $5 adults. Premium shows $1 more. Call 3263663.
Thursday, March 27 Orthopedic clinic. 8 a.m. Ruthe B. Cowl Rehabilitation Center, 1220 N. Malinche Ave. Clinic benefits children with cerebral palsy, club foot, scoliosis, spina bifida and more. $5 processing fee. Patients must register before day of clinic. Call 722-2431. Los Amigos Duplicate Bridge Club. 1:15 p.m. to 5 p.m. Laredo Country Club. Call Beverly Cantu at 7270589.
Friday, March 28 Christian Life Seminar: What It Means To Be A Christian. 6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., every Friday until April 11. San Martin De Porres Catholic Church’s St. Elizabeth Room. Free. Light snacks served. Contact Leah Cayanan at 2860654 or leigh.cayanan@gmail.com.
Saturday, March 29 65th Annual UMW Flowert & Art Show. 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. First United Methodist Church, 1220 McClelland Ave. Tickets available at door. Contact 722-1674 or fumc_office@sbcglobal.net. TAMIU Planetarium shows: “Zula Patrol: Under the Weather” 3 p.m.; “Black Holes” 4 p.m.; “The Great Space Race” 5 p.m.; “Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon” 6 p.m.. General admission $4 children and $5 adults. Premium shows $1 more. Call 3263663.
Sunday, March 30 65th Annual UMW Flowert & Art Show. 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. First United Methodist Church, 1220 McClelland Ave. Tickets available at door. Contact 722-1674 or fumc_office@sbcglobal.net.
Monday, March 31 Monthly meeting of Laredo Parkinson’s Disease Support Group. 6:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Laredo Medical Center, Tower B, First Floor Community Center. Patients, caregivers and family members invited. Free info available in Spanish and English. Call Richard Renner (English) at 645-8649 or Juan Gonzalez (Spanish) at 237-0666.
Friday, April 4 Christian Life Seminar: What It Means To Be A Christian. 6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., every Friday until April 11. San Martin De Porres Catholic Church’s St. Elizabeth Room. Free. Light snacks served. Contact Leah Cayanan at 2860654 or leigh.cayanan@gmail.com.
Photo by Earl Nottingham/Texas Parks and Wildlife | AP
Southern Plains bison herd members graze on restored native prairie at Caprock Canyons State Park, near Quitaque, on Sept. 7, 2011. The herd has added two new members. The calves were born Feb. 28 and March 7, adding to the herd of 85 genetically pure animals that make up the state’s official bison herd.
Herd has 2 new calves By KEVIN WELCH AMARILLO GLOBE-NEWS
QUITAQUE — The bison herd at Caprock Canyons State Park has added two new members. The calves were born Feb. 28 and March 7, adding to the herd of 85 genetically pure animals that make up the official bison herd of the state of Texas. Park Superintendent Donald Beard expects 24 more during the calving season that stretches to early summer. “We’re going to have a bunch of them pretty soon,” he said, adding that 80 or 90 percent of last year’s bison were born from April to May, maybe some in June. The herd, mostly descended from the historic Southern Plains herd preserved by pioneer Charles Goodnight, now roams in public areas of the park over 1,000 acres. The park, about 50 miles northeast of Plainview,
supplemented the herd to broaden its genetics with animals from one of media mogul Ted Turner’s herds. Work continues to open up more of the park’s 15,000 acres to the animals as well as cultivate other native species. “We were planning to open it around January, but we may have to move them sooner if we don’t get some rain,” Beard told the Amarillo Globe-News. About 2,500 acres will be without bison because they are separated from the bulk of the park by a county road. The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department has been raising funds for additional fencing, mesquite eradication and prairie restoration the past couple of years by sponsoring public events at the park and in nearby Quitaque, including a music festival headlined by Asleep at the Wheel.
Odessa police officer charged with abuse
Railroad mural finished in town of Krum
A&M researchers work to save the bobwhite quail
ODESSA — A police officer has been arrested on charges that he groped women during traffic stops. Officer Salvador Becerra was being held on two counts of violating the civil rights of and improper sexual activity with a person in custody. Becerra was arrested Thursday night and bond set at $20,000.
KRUM — A newly completed mural pays tribute to a North Texas town’s railroad history. Artist Justine Wollaston on Thursday put the finishing touches on the mural in Krum featuring a locomotive. Volunteers with Krum Bright and Beautiful helped raise more than $3,000 for the mural, 13 feet by 70 feet and located on the side of a downtown building.
BRYAN — A Texas A&M research team has mapped the genome of the bobwhite quail as part of an effort to save the fastdisappearing popular game bird. The group spent two years on a “first draft genome assembly” for the chubby, robin-sized quail. A 2007 Audubon Society study says the population has plummeted from 31 million to 5.5 million.
State appeals denial of winter disaster assistance
Couple allegedly stole $400K in sorority pins
AUSTIN — Texas has appealed the federal government’s denial of $48 million of disaster assistance for 15 counties slammed during a December winter ice storm. Gov. Rick Perry appealed on behalf of Collin, Cooke, Dallas, Delta, Denton, Fannin, Grayson, Hood, Hunt, Kaufman, Lamar, Palo Pinto, Parker, Red River and Tarrant counties.
ARLINGTON — A husband and wife have been charged with stealing about $400,000 worth of gold and jeweled sorority pins from where she works. Mark Jason Stroface and Carla Rae Seals were being held Friday on charges of theft over $200,000 from Delta Delta Delta. Bond was set at $100,000 apiece. — Compiled from AP reports
2-year-old boy taken after mother shot TEMPLE — Authorities have issued a statewide Amber Alert for a 2-year-old Central Texas boy who police say was taken after the child’s mother was shot by her estranged husband. Temple police say Vincent Corson Jr. is being sought for taking the child, Isaiah Corson. Police say the 29-year-old man is wanted after shooting his wife Friday morning at an apartment complex.
AROUND THE NATION Man faces death again for child killings MONTGOMERY, Ala. — An Alabama man is again facing execution for throwing four children off a bridge. Last year, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals reversed Lam Luong’s capital murder convictions for the children’s 2008 deaths, saying pretrial publicity was prejudicial and the court erred in denying defense attorneys funds to travel to Vietnam. The Alabama Supreme Court ruled 5-3 Friday that the lower court decision was wrong. Defense attorney Cassandra Stubbs said she will probably ask the court to reconsider.
MLK daughter’s lawyers want lawyer removed ATLANTA — Lawyers for Martin Luther King Jr.’s daughter want a lawyer for her father’s estate disqualified from partici-
Today is Saturday, March 15, the 74th day of 2014. There are 291 days left in the year. Today’s Highlight in History: On March 15, 44 B.C., Roman dictator Julius Caesar was assassinated by a group of nobles that included Brutus and Cassius. On this date: In 1493, Christopher Columbus returned to Spain, concluding his first voyage to the Western Hemisphere. In 1767, the seventh president of the United States, Andrew Jackson, was born in Waxhaw, S.C. In 1820, Maine became the 23rd state. In 1913, President Woodrow Wilson met with about 100 reporters for the first formal presidential press conference. In 1919, members of the American Expeditionary Force from World War I convened in Paris for a three-day meeting to found the American Legion. In 1944, during World War II, Allied bombers again raided German-held Monte Cassino. In 1956, the Lerner and Loewe musical play “My Fair Lady,” based on Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion,” opened on Broadway. In 1964, actress Elizabeth Taylor married actor Richard Burton in Montreal; it was her fifth marriage, his second. In 1970, Expo ’70, promoting “Progress and Harmony for Mankind,” opened in Osaka, Japan. In 1975, Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis died near Paris at age 69. In 1985, the first Internet domain name, symbolics.com, was registered by the Symbolics Computer Corp. of Massachusetts. In 1999, an Amtrak train slammed into a steel-filled truck at a crossing in Bourbonnais, Ill., killing 11 people. Ten years ago: Ten days after being convicted in a stock scandal, Martha Stewart resigned from the board of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. (Stewart rejoined the board in Sept. 2011.) Today’s Birthdays: Musician DJ Fontana is 83. Former astronaut Alan L. Bean is 82. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 81. Actor Judd Hirsch is 79. Rock musician Phil Lesh is 74. Singer Mike Love (The Beach Boys) is 73. Rock singer-musician Sly Stone is 71. Rock singer-musician Howard Scott (War; Lowrider Band) is 68. Rock singer Ry Cooder is 67. Actor Craig Wasson is 60. Rock singer Dee Snider (Twisted Sister) is 59. Actress Park Overall is 57. Movie director Renny Harlin is 55. Model Fabio is 53. Singer Terence Trent D’Arby (AKA Sananda Maitreya) is 52. Rock singer Bret Michaels (Poison) is 51. Rhythm-and-blues singer Rockwell is 50. Rock singer Mark McGrath (Sugar Ray) is 46. Actress Kim Raver is 45. Rock musician Mark Hoppus is 42. Actress Eva Longoria is 39. Rapper-musician will.i.am (Black Eyed Peas) is 39. Rock DJ Joseph Hahn (Linkin Park) is 37. Rapper Young Buck is 33. Actor Sean Biggerstaff is 31. Rock musician Ethan Mentzer is 31. Actor Kellan Lutz is 29. Actress Caitlin Wachs is 25. Thought for Today: “Life’s meaning has always eluded me and I guess it always will. But I love it just the same.” — E.B. White, American author and humorist (1899-1985).
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Rep. Mike Coffman, R-Colo., right, confers with Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., as they listen to top Air Force officials on FY 2015’s budget requests, in Washington, on Friday. pating in an ownership dispute over King’s Bible and Nobel Peace Prize. The civil rights icon’s estate, controlled by his sons, is locked in a dispute with his daughter, the Rev. Bernice King, over ownership of the items. The estate
wants to sell the items, while Bernice is opposed to the sale. Lawyers for Bernice say estate lawyer William Hill should not be involved in the case because he was appointed by a judge to help in similar 2008 dispute. — Compiled from AP reports
SUBSCRIPTIONS/DELIVERY (956) 728-2555 The Zapata Times is distributed on Saturdays to 4,000 households in Zapata County. For subscribers of the Laredo Morning Times and for those who buy the Laredo Morning Times at newsstands, the Zapata Times is inserted. The Zapata Times is free. The Zapata Times is published by the Laredo Morning Times, a division of The Hearst Corporation, P.O. Box 2129, Laredo, Texas 78044. Phone (956) 728-2500. The Zapata office is at 1309 N. U.S. Hwy. 83 at 14th Avenue, Suite 2, Zapata, TX 78076. Call (956) 765-5113 or e-mail thezapatatimes.net
SATURDAY, MARCH 15, 2014
Zlocal
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Advocate to speak on hunger at TAMIU SPECIAL TO THE TIMES
Joel Berg, a highly-regarded international hunger advocate and expert, will be in Laredo on Monday and Tuesday, addressing Texas A&M International University students on campus about hunger issues. Berg will come on an invitation from the South Texas Food Bank in cooperation with the TAMIU Office of Student Conduct and Community Engagement.
Berg is director of the AmeriCorps VISTA program called Anti-Hunger Opportunity BERG Corps managed by the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, which brought Sarah Lamm to the South Texas Food Bank for a year of service internship through July. “Joel will be here to bring awareness and
strengthen the grassroots anti-hunger movement through government programs like SNAP and WIC. To have a person of Joel’s expertise in Laredo is huge. He’s done countless interviews on hunger issues on Fox News, PBS, all the other networks and to have him come here to prioritize South Texas makes a huge statement,” Lamm said. Berg will speak Monday at 3:30 p.m. at the Student Center Room 236. It is open
to the public. Also, during the lunch hour on Monday at 12:30 p.m. at the TAMIU Student Center the American hunger awareness documentary, “A Place at the Table,” will be viewed. The documentary was presented in January at Laredo Community College. He will address students on Tuesday at 8:30 a.m. Berg, based in New York, is an expert media spokesman in domestic hunger, food insecurity, poverty, ec-
onomic development, national service and volunteerism. Berg is executive director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. He is the author of All You Can Eat: How Hungry is America?, the definitive and most well-reviewed book on American hunger is the last decade. A native of Rockland County, N.Y., and a 1986 graduate of Columbia University, Berg has led the
New York City Coalition Against Hunger since 2001, which represents more than 1,200 nonprofit soup kitchens and pantries and more than 1.4 million lowincome New Yorkers forced to use them. Berg served for eight years in the Clinton administration as senior executive at USDA. He has published widely on topics of hunger, national and community service and grassroots community partnerships.
3 said they pot paid for crossing river By CÉSAR G. RODRIGUEZ THE ZAPATA TIMES
Federal agents arrested three illegal immigrants who were crossing marijuana through Jim Hogg County as payment for their crossing fee, according to court records released Friday. On Tuesday, U.S. Border
Patrol agents working about 20 miles south of Hebbronville discovered a group of people carrying suspected narcotic bundles. Agents were able to detain Rodolfo ArreolaCardenas, 27, Alberto Pineda-Beltran, 25, and Salvador Pineda-Duarte, 29. Agents seized seven bundles of marijuana
weighing 498.24 pounds, according to a criminal complaint filed Thursday. In post-arrest interviews, Pineda-Beltran and Arreola-Cardenas told DEA special agents and task force officers they had agreed to transport the marijuana to avoid paying a transportation fee for being smuggled in-
to the United States, according to court documents. Pineda-Duarte was present when an unidentified man offered the PinedaBeltran and Arreola-Car-
denas to smuggle the pot instead of paying a smuggling fee, court documents allege. All men are being charged with possess with intent to distribute a con-
trolled substance, the complaint states. The contraband was valued at $398,592. (César G. Rodriguez may be reached at 728-2568 or cesar@lmtonline.com)
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Zopinion
SATURDAY, MARCH 15, 2014
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR SEND YOUR SIGNED LETTER TO EDITORIAL@LMTONLINE.COM
OTHER VIEWS
Solar power flexes its muscles By LLEWELLYN KING HEARST NEWSPAPERS
A warning light is flashing for the nation’s electric utilities — and it is getting more persistent. The utilities, big and small, for- and not-forprofit, are facing serious disruptive technology. The old business models are in danger. The unlikely disruptive technology that is causing the trouble is rooftop solar power. Back in the energy turbulent 1970s, solar was a gleam in the eye of environmentalists who dared to dream of renewable energy. It looked like a pipe dream. Very simple solar had been deployed to heat water in desert homes since indoor plumbing became the norm. Making electricity from the sun was many orders of magnitude more complex and it was, anyway, too expensive. The technology of photovoltaic cells, which make electricity directly from the sun, needed work; it needed research, and it needed mass manufacturing. Hundreds of millions of dollars later in research and subsidies, the cost of solar cells has fallen and continues to go down. Today, solar certainly is not a pipe dream: It is looking like a mature industry. It is also a big employer in the installation industry. It is a player, a force in the market. But solar has created a crisis for the utilities. In order to incubate solar, and to satisfy solar advocates, Congress said that these “qualifying facilities” should be able not only to generate electricity for homes when the sun is shining, but also to sell back the excess to the local utility. This is called “net metering” and it is at the center of the crisis today — particularly across the Southwest, where solar installations have multiplied and are being added at a feverish rate. Doyle Beneby, CEO of San Antonio, Texas-based CPS Energy, the largest municipal electric and gas utility in the nation, said, “The homes that are installing solar quickly are the more affluent ones.” The problem here, he explained, is that the utility has to maintain the entire infrastructure of wires and poles and buy back electricity generated by solar in these homes at the highest prevailing rate — often more than power could be bought on the market or generated by the utility. Steve Mitnik, a utility industry consultant, said that 47 percent of the nation’s electric market is
residential and the larger, affluent homes — which use a lot of electricity, and generally pay more as consumption rises — are a critically important part of it. Yet these are the ones that are turning to solar generation, and expect to make a profit selling excess production to the grid. But who pays for the grid? According to CPS Energy’s Beneby, and others in the industry, the burden of keeping the system up and running then falls on those who can least afford it. The self-generating homes still need the grid not only to sell back to but, more importantly, to buy from when the sun isn’t shining and at night. For some in the utility industry, net-metering is just the beginning of a series of emerging problems, including: Big investments needed in physical security after the sniper attack last October at PG&E Corp.’s Metcalf transmission substation, which took out 17 huge transformers that provide power to California’s Silicon Valley. New investment needed in cybersecurity. Improved response to bad weather, especially in some Mid-Atlantic states. Beneby believes the solar incursion into the traditional marketplace might be the beginning of more self-generation — such as home-based, micro-gas turbines — and utilities will and must adjust. He is something of a futurist and points out that in telephones, once a utility service, disruption has been hugely creative. Environmentalists are as disturbed as the utilities. Some are calling the imposition of a surcharge on rooftop generators, as in Arizona recently, an attempt by the greedy utilities to stamp out competition. But many are seeking alternative solutions without a war over generating, and without punishing those unable to afford their own generation. Brian Keane, president of SmartPower, a greenmarketing group with solar-purchase programs in Arizona and many other states, has looked for cool heads to prevail on both sides of the issue. “I don’t have an answer,” he said, calling for dialogue. Also the Edison Electric Institute, a trade group, has been talking with the National Resources Defense Council. It isn’t your father’s electric utility anymore, or your hippie’s solar power. (Llewellyn King’s e-mail is lking@kingpublishing.com.)
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR POLICY The Zapata Times does not publish anonymous letters. To be published, letters must include the writer’s first and last names as well as a phone number to verify identity. The phone number IS NOT published; it is used solely to verify identity and to clarify content, if necessary. Identity of the letter writer must be verified before publication. We want to assure our
readers that a letter is written by the person who signs the letter. The Zapata Times does not allow the use of pseudonyms. Letters are edited for style, grammar, length and civility. No name-calling or gratuitous abuse is allowed. Via e-mail, send letters to editorial@lmtonline.com or mail them to Letters to the Editor, 111 Esperanza Drive, Laredo, TX 78041.
YOUR OPINION Organization is working to eliminate tobacco use from college campuses To the editor: Tobacco use is one topic that’s sure to get passionate responses from both sides: Those who are for it and those are against it. Tobacco users argue their “right” to use cigarettes and other products, while nonsmokers say they deserve to live and work in healthy environments without the harmful effects of secondhand smoke. It doesn’t matter which side you fall on, it’s a fact that across the United States, universities and health systems are making the choice to create healthy living and working environments for students, faculty and staff. All of us, even those who choose to use it, know the harmful effects of tobacco use. Ninety percent of all lung cancers can be directly related to tobacco, and it also is a risk factor for eight other cancers, including head, neck, esophageal, stomach, kidney, bladder, cervical and blood cancers and not to mention cardiac disease and stroke. On Aug. 1, 2013, after 12 months from initial contact with Laredo Community College administrators
and board members learned about the benefits of becoming a smokefree campus, the board of trustees approved a 100 percent smoking ban on both Laredo Community College Campuses. LCC has an average of 10,000 students enrolled annually and 200 employees that will be impacted by this policy change. LCC was recently added to the official list of Tobacco-Free U.S. and Tribal Colleges and Universities published by the American Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation. There is a change in school policy for students, employees and visitors to the campus. There are “no smoking” signs prominently displayed at both LCC campuses and almost no cigarette butts littering the campus anymore. It took some key individuals and partners to help support this mission. Those persons were Webb County Community Coalition members, the Transforming Texas Program, WCCC Youth Coalition members, LCC parents, LCC students, dually enrolled students, LCC Nursing Department, media and other smoke-free colleges/universities with their information.
On Feb. 21, the University of Texas-El Paso, which is about five times the size of LCC, passed a ban on smoking and chewing tobacco that covers any university building and grounds, including parking lots and housing. The school is now one of at least five University of Texas system schools that ban tobacco. More than 20 Texas colleges and universities are smoke or tobacco-free. Our students are the leaders of our future and it is important to educate them on the benefits of living tobacco-free by providing a healthy learning environment. Studies have shown that smoking affects cognitive function, including memory, but that quitting can reverse many of these effects. It is our responsibility to educate and provide a cleaner, safer and healthier learning and working environment for all our students, faculty and staff and to help improve public health. Sincerely, Suzie Sanchez Transforming Texas Program Outreach Worker SCAN Inc.
COLUMN
Mentoring is good for kids By KEN HERMAN COX NEWSPAPERS
AUSTIN — A good friend of mine recently told me a story that serves as ripyour-heart-out reminder of how what seems like so little to an adult can mean so much to a kid. Like lots of folks, he’s a mentor. It’s not all that time consuming and, depending on the program, mentoring can be not much more than a once-a-week lunch to get to know a kid. In this case, it’s an elementary school student who, like some mentees, faces more challenges than any kid should have to. My friend had told me about the kid from time to time. The kid’s family life is, shall we say, less than optimal. He struggles in school, and his attendance and punctuality could be better. But my friend always has told me how he enjoyed seeing his mentee for lunch once a week.
They weren’t always the most uplifting of half-hours, but my friend developed a positive relation with the kid and enjoyed their lunches. Now mind you, we’re not talking about deep, meaningful conversations about the wonders and mysteries of life, but remember that this is an elementary school student for whom life seems like a series of daily struggles and challenges. As anybody who’s ever done any mentoring knows, you’re told that just showing up and showing interest goes a long way. For some mentees, anybody who shows up and shows interest — even just for once-aweek lunch — can be important. My friend told me recently that his mentee hit him with some difficult news. The family, which includes a mom and two other siblings, is moving. His new school is not in the Austin district. My friend is un-
sure whether the new district has a mentoring program. And if it does, it probably would mean about three hours of effort for a short lunch period. So my friend figured a recent mentoring session with the kid would be the last. That, however, might change. It might change because of something the kid said after my friend told the kid how much he had enjoyed getting to know him and how much he had looked forward to their weekly lunches. Suddenly, unexpectedly and jarringly, the kid said: ”You’re the only person in my life who’s like a dad to me.” One half-hour lunch, once a week. A year and a half of those lunches, minus summer break, and a mentor becomes the only person who’s like a dad to a kid. My friend was simultaneously touched and crushed. Now, because of
DOONESBURY | GARRY TRUDEAU
the last thing the kid said to him at what was to be their last lunch together, my friend is trying to figure out how and if the relationship can cross school district lines. It’s so sad that there are so many kids who have so many things working against them when they are so young. And it’s so great that Central Texas has so many mentoring programs that can hook you up with one of these kids. It’s hard to believe that one half-hour lunch a week can mean so much to a kid. What seems like so little to you can mean so much to a kid. A school near you probably has a mentoring program. Call and ask. Or check out seedlingfoundation.org for a really great local program. What are you doing for lunch? Ken Herman is a columnist for the Austin AmericanStatesman. E-mail: kherman@statesman.com.
SATURDAY, MARCH 15, 2014
THE ZAPATA TIMES 5A
PÁGINA 6A
Zfrontera
Agenda en Breve ZAPATA 03/15— Feria del Condado de Zapata que incluye el Desfile a partir de las 9:30 a.m., iniciando en 3rd Ave. Habrá diferentes actuaciones en los terrenos de la feria desde la 1 p.m. Presentación del ganador de la Batalla de las Bandas a las 4:15 p.m.; Grupo Lázaro Pérez y su Conjunto a las 6 p.m.; Grupo Visión, a las 7:45 p.m.; Grupo Duelo a las 9:30 p.m.; Los Huracanes del Norte, a las 11:30 p.m.
LAREDO 03/15— La Oficina de Administración de Tierras de EU (BLM por sus siglas en inglés) llevará a cabo un evento de adopción de caballos y burros en terrenos de Laredo International Fair and Expo, 8 a.m. a 12 p.m. Informes en el 866-468-7826. 03/15— El Mercado Agrícola ‘El Centro de Laredo’ de Laredo Main Street invita a su 3er Festival Anual del Cilantro, en Plaza Jarvis, de 9 a.m. a 1 p.m. Estacionamiento gratis en El Metro Transit Center. 03/15— Consulado General de México en Laredo invita a la Jornada Sabatina 2014 a fin de brindar atención extraordinaria a la demanda de servicios consulares, de 8 a.m. a 2 p.m. 03/15— El espectáculo de “WWE LIVE Road to Wrestlemania” se presenta en Laredo Energy Arena, a partir de las 7:30 p.m. Se presentarán CM Punk, Big Show, Kane, The Shield, las WWE Divas, entre otros. Boletos inician en 15 dólares. 03/17— Joel Berg, un reconocido experto y defensor de la lucha contra el hambre, ofrecerá conferencia a las 3:30 p.m. en el Aula 236 del Student Center de TAMIU. Evento gratuito abierto al público. 03/17— Banco de Alimentos del Sur de Texas (STFB) presenta el documental “A Place at the Table” a las 12:30 p.m. en el Student Center de TAMIU. 03/18— Joel Berg, un reconocido experto y defensor de la lucha contra el hambre, hablará ante estudiantes de TAMIU, a las 8:30 a.m. Berg estará en Laredo invitado por el Banco de Alimentos del Sur de Texas, en cooperación con el Office of Student Conduct and Community Engagement de TAMIU. 03/18— Taller Mensual de Apoyo ante el Duelo, de 6 p.m. a 7:30 p.m. en la Sala de Conferencias de la Biblioteca Pública de Laredo, 1120 E. Calton Road. Tema es: “Travesía de Duelo: Utilizando el Arte Creativo para Sanar y Recordar”.
NUEVO LAREDO, MÉXICO 03/15— Estación Palabra presenta un Festival Infantil con el tema “Primavera y duendes” a las 2 p.m. en el área infantil. Entrada libre. 03/15— Se presentará el Juventud Urban Fest dentro de Maquila Creativa a las 2 p.m. Entrada Libre. 03/15— Ceres, Danza Contemporánea, presenta “Vida”, bajo la dirección de Alicia Ledezma y coreografía de Vicente Silva Sanjinés, a las 5 p.m. en el Teatro Experimental del Centro Cultural Nuevo Laredo, Boulevard Colosio Km +2.5. 03/15— Se llevará acabo Concierto de Voz y Piano del Patronato Cultural de Nuevo Laredo A.C., a las 7 p.m. en la Sala Sergio Peña. 03/24— Se presentará el monólogo “La Madre Pasota” a las 6 p.m. en la Casa de la Cultura. 03/25— Cine Club presenta “Tercera Llamada”, a las 6 p.m. en la Casa de la Cultura.
SÁBADO 15 DE MARZO DE 2014
PATRULLA FRONTERIZA
Supuesto agresor POR JUAN CARLOS LLORCA ASSOCIATED PRESS
EL PASO— Las tres personas secuestradas y agredidas por un agente de la Patrulla Fronteriza son una madre, su hija menor y otra chica que no tenía relación con ellas, todos procedían de Honduras, dijo un oficial diplomático el viernes. Karol Escalante, una vocera de la Embajada de Honduras en Washington, D.C. también dijo que las tres se están recuperando en un hospital de McAllen. No dio detalles sobre las heridas que presen-
taban. El FBI cree que el agente de la Patrulla Fronteriza, Esteban Manzanares, quien más tarde fue encontrado sin vida en su casa, es responsable del secuestro y agresión de las tres. Aduanas y Protección Fronteriza, la agencia federal de la que la Patrulla Fronteriza es parte, ha dicho que durante el curso de sus operaciones regulares, el miércoles por la noche, agentes encontraron a la mujer que dijo había sido atacada por un hombre. Comenzaron la búsqueda que los llevó a encontrar una segunda mujer.
Una operación de recuperación y búsqueda fue organizada por los agentes, que llevó a las autoridades, durante las primeras horas del jueves, a la casa de Manzanares en Mission. Cuando la policía local se acercó al departamento del agente, escucharon disparos. Cuando las autoridades entraron a la casa lo encontraron sin vida y rescataron a una tercera chica. El FBI ha dicho que las tres estaban en el país sin documentos legales de ingreso. El FBI dijo que está a la espera de un informe de la autopsia de Manzanares, que, de acuerdo con
Patrulla Fronteriza, había permanecido en la agencia desde 2008. Un oficial de CBP dijo a Associated Press que el agente estaba en servicio cuando encontró a las mujeres y que su turno había terminado al momento en que las autoridades se presentaron en su casa y él se disparara. El oficial habló en condición de anonimato, debido a que se está llevando a cabo una investigación por parte del FBI. (La reportera de Associated Press, Alicia A. Caldwell de Washington, D.C., contribuyó en este reporte)
GOBIERNO
JIM HOGG
NUEVA ENCARGADA
Arrestan a tres por tráfico POR CÉSAR G. RODRIGUEZ TIEMPO DE ZAPATA
Foto de cortesía | Gobierno de Tamaulipas
Roelia Ramírez Garza, a la derecha, asumió el cargo de Oficial del Registro Civil en Ciudad Mier. El nombramiento le fue entregado por Rolando Guevara González, titular de la Secretara del Trabajo y Asuntos Jurídicos (STAJ).
TAMAULIPAS
Gobierno espera tener una buena temporada de cosecha 2014 TIEMPO DE ZAPATA
Una ‘excelente’ cosecha, a consecuencia de las condiciones de humedad en el campo, son las que prevé el Gobierno de Tamaulipas. Las lluvias atípicas que se presentaron a finales del año pasado, y las precipitaciones que van este año, han creado condiciones de humedad positivas en las tierras de cultivo, dijo Raúl Quiroga Álvarez, Director de Unidades y Distritos de Riego de la Comisión Estatal del Agua. La humedad en la tierra ha permitido que los productores agrícolas ahorren 180 millones de metros cúbicos de agua en el Distrito 025. Quiroga dijo que el agua que no ha sido utilizada sigue almacenada en las presas, misma que podrá ser
Las lluvias atípicas que se presentaron han creado condiciones de humedad positivas. utilizada a lo largo del ciclo de siembra en los riesgos de auxilio. En el Distrito de Riego 025, que comprende los municipios de Matamoros, Valle Hermoso, Río Bravo y Reynosa existe una superficie de riego de 6.784 hectáreas. Para sostener la productividad del distrito se aprovechan las aguas del Río Bravo almacenadas en las presas La Amistad y Falcón, además del líquido de las presas derivadoras Anzaldúas y Retamal. “Contrario a otros años en los cuales ha habido algunas restricciones en el uso de agua para riego,
en este año existe plena seguridad de que el agua que esta almacenada en las presas, no solo en este distrito si no en el resto de Tamaulipas, es suficiente para asegurar una buena producción agrícola en nuestro Estado”, sostuvo Quiroga. En los distritos de riego 050 Acuña Falcón, 026 del Bajo Río San Juan, el 086 Río Soto la Marina, 029039 de Xicoténcatl, 002 de Mante y 092 Río Pánuco-Las Animas al igual que en distrito de riego 025 del Bajo Río Bravo existe agua suficiente para garantizar el riego en ese año a los diferentes cultivos, reiteró.
Agentes federales arrestaron a tres inmigrantes sin documentos legales que intentaban cruzar marihuana a través del Condado de Jim Hogg, como pago de su tarifa de cruce, de acuerdo con documentos de la corte presentados el viernes. El martes, agentes de Patrulla Fronteriza de EU (BP, por sus siglas en inglés) estaban trabajando alrededor de la milla 20 al sur de Hebbronville y descubrieron un grupo de personas portando lo que sospecharon eran paquetes de narcóticos. Los agentes lograr detener a Rodolfo ArreolaCárdenas, de 27 años, Alberto Pineda-Beltran, de 25 años, y a Salvador Pineda-Duarte, de 29 años. Los agentes decomisaron siete paquetes de marihuana con un peso de 498.24 libras, de acuerdo con la querella criminal presentada el jueves. En interrogatorios después del arresto, Pineda-Beltrán y Arreola-Cárdenas dijeron a agentes especiales de DEA y oficiales de fuerzas especiales que habían acordado transportar la marihuana a cambio del pago de transporte para ser traficados a Estados Unidos, de acuerdo con documentos de la corte. Pineda-Duarte estuvo presente cuando un hombre no identificado le ofreció a Pineda-Beltrán y a Arreola-Cárdenas contrabandear la marihuana en lugar de pagar su tarifa de tráfico, alegan documentos de la corte. Todos los hombres son acusados de posesión con intento de distribución de una sustancia controlada, señala la querella. El contrabando presentaba un valor de 398.592 dólares. (Localice a César G. Rodriguez en 728-2568).
COLUMNA
Describen trabajo de artistas tamaulipecos (En el relato Raúl Sinecio nos habla del trabajo y obra de Jorge Yapur Sherife, así como del trabajo de su discípulo Ramón Cano Manilla. Primera de dos partes).
gando medalla de oro a la pintura del veracruzano Ramón Cano Manilla, otro maestro de Yapur Sherife.
Dilema
POR RAUL SINENCIO ESPECIAL PARA TIEMPO DE ZAPATA
Para conmemorar el V Centenario del Encuentro de Ambos Mundos, España monta la Expo Sevilla 1992. México se hace presente con varios cuadros del tamaulipeco Jorge Yapur Sherife, que arrancan enseguida comentarios elogiosos. El mismo puerto andaluz hospeda la Exposición Iberoamericana en 1929, otor-
El alumno despliega contrastes y similitudes frente al mentor. Intensivos aprendizajes fraguan los respectivos talentos. Socializadores del saber, por añadidura, los dos se alternan en la enseñanza artística. En 1950 Cano Manilla instruye en Ciudad Mante. Más tarde Jorge comienza carrera docente. Cano Manilla, reconocido en vida, del aventajado dis-
cípulo procede la escultura que se vuelve emblemática del Festival Internacional Tamaulipas. Aún correspondiéndoles épocas diferentes, cada quien remonta medianías con realizaciones acogidas por selectos recintos nacionales y foráneos. Jorge Yapur se forja en la segunda mitad del siglo XX mexicano, clímax y ocaso posrevolucionario por antonomasia. Mientras prosigue la brega plástica, ensancha horizontes formativos al cursar una carrera profesional de encuadre humanístico. Imparte luego cátedras universitarias de excelencia.
Raíces En búsqueda incesante, Yapur Sherife comenzó a cultivar el abstracto y el expresionismo figurativos. Dice mucho que la sala José María Velasco del Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes le reciba creaciones de tales periodos. Merced a la encomiable factura, cruzan incluso el océano Atlántico y llegan hasta Ginebra, Milán y Turín. Aparte de calidades intrínsecas, queda claro que lo suyo resulta audaz. Nada quizá lo defina mejor que las progresivas innovaciones de vanguardia. Combinan de manera invariable
temple, rigor e ingenio. Sirva de ejemplo ilustrativo la variante plástica del realismo mágico, aporte originalísimo que deslumbra a la Expo Sevilla 92. Aún de mayor aliento consideramos el huastequismo. Dicha propuesta recurre a las raíces prehispánicas del suelo circundante y retoma los principios estéticos de la antigua cultura huasteca, recreándolos en diversas producciones de caballete. Sin transigir con el colorido facilón, al margen de artificios folcloristas, Jorge Yapur logra escenas lúdicas, exultantes, de íntima belleza y composiciones luminosas.
State
SATURDAY, MARCH 15, 2014
THE ZAPATA TIMES 7A
Police: Barricades best for crowd control By ERIC DEXHEIMER AND TONY PLOHETSKI COX NEWSPAPERS
AUSTIN — Austin police insisted there was little more they could have done to prevent Thursday morning’s tragedy, when Rashad Charjuan Owens raced away from a police cruiser, smashed through a barrier and sped through downtown streets crowded with South OWENS by Southwest festival attendees. The system of separating crowds of pedestrians from motorists during festivals ”has worked for many years, and I don’t see any huge changes,” Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo said. Still, officials said balancing the safety of walkers against the need to keep traffic flowing will present a growing challenge as both the number of motorists and the number of large festivals in Austin climb. ”Obviously, any time you have a tragedy, we will take a comprehensive look at everything we do to see if there is any room for adjustments,” Acevedo said. Police announced Thursday they were closing two additional downtown streets to traffic, East Eighth and East Ninth streets between Interstate 35 and Neches Street. In recent years, Austin has added or expanded high-profile events that require street closures. The Formula One-linked Austin Fan Fest in 2012 and 2013 shut down several downtown streets. During the annual Austin
Photo by Chelsea Purgahn/The Daily Texan | AP
Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo takes a flower in memory of the victims of a suspected drunk driving accident during SXSW. A vigil was held at St. David’s Episcopal Church on Thursday, in Austin. City Limits Music Festival, Barton Springs Road through Zilker Park is closed, and last year that road was closed for an additional weekend as the festival expanded. This summer, police will block off parts of downtown for the X Games. At the same time, the city has seen a spike in auto-pedestrian fatalities in recent years. Between 2008 and 2010, an average of 15 Austin pedestrians died each year after being struck by a car. Between 2011 and 2013, the annual
average was 25. The calculation to close off streets to motorists must take into account the number of revelers as well as ”maintaining mobility” for drivers, said Gordon Derr, the city’s assistant director of transportation. The idea is to anticipate where crowds will gather and plan for that, rather than encounter situations such as happened several years ago when fans from a concert at Auditorium Shores ”took over the South First Street bridge,” he said.
Similarly, police said the decision on what type of barrier to use must strike a balance between pedestrian safety and urban efficiency. Concrete or waterfilled barriers such as those used in highway construction zones would no doubt provide pedestrians with a greater degree of protection from vehicles. Yet they also would limit the efficient access of emergency responders, delivery trucks and even those in wheelchairs. Typically, that means author-
Dad of slain Houston woman charged with evidence tampering By JUAN A. LOZANO ASSOCIATED PRESS
HOUSTON — The father of one of two women who were killed and their bodies dumped next to a trash bin on the Bolivar Peninsula near Galveston has been charged with evidence tampering in both deaths, officials said Thursday. James Larry Cosby, 46, from nearby Houston, remains jailed on $500,000 bond, said Galveston County Sheriff Henry Trochesset. Trochesset said the investigation is ongoing and charges against Cosby could be upgraded to capital murder.
“It appears that the young ladies may have been murdered in his home,” he said. Galveston County court records didn’t list an attorney for Cosby. He faces two counts of tampering with physical evidence related to a corpse. The bodies of Britney Cosby and Crystal Jackson, both 24, who investigators say were in a romantic relationship, were discovered March 7 next to a trash bin behind a store. Officials say Britney Cosby died from blows to the head and Jackson from a gunshot. Investigators believe the women, from Houston, were killed else-
where and their bodies were dumped on the peninsula. Investigators are still trying to determine a motive for the slayings, Trochesset said. Authorities are also still looking for the victims’ vehicle, a silver 2006 Kia Sorento SUV with grey trim. A few hours before his arrest, James Cosby had attended a vigil Wednesday evening in Houston for the women. Trochesset said that after the vigil, sheriff’s office investigators went to Cosby’s home and interviewed him. During the interview, investigators became suspicious of Cosby and things
they saw at the home. After obtaining a search warrant, officials found “blood and other evidence” at the home, Trochesset said. Cosby had been released from prison about five months ago, Trochesset said. Harris County court records show he had received a two-year prison term in 2011 for failing to register as a sex offender in connection with a 1994 aggravated assault conviction. Court records also show a prior conviction for failure to register as a sex offender and convictions for assault and unlawfully carrying a weapon.
South by Southwest could force tournament to move ASSOCIATED PRESS
AUSTIN — The rise in popularity of South by Southwest is forcing organizers of the state boys’ basketball tournament to consider either a change in venue or new dates for games that once drew more than 100,000 spectators. Attendance over the past 10 years for tournament games at the Frank Erwin Center has dropped to less than 70,000. A factor in the decline is the difficulty in finding affordable hotel rooms, according to Charles Breithaupt, executive director of the University Interscholastic League, the governing body for high school sports in Texas. South by Southwest, the festival concluding this weekend in Austin that’s risen to draw an international audience, is driving the price of rooms up to $250 to $450 a night. The
result is basketball teams forced to find lodging in surrounding towns, and in some case up to an hour away. Many fans decided to stay away; the Erwin center was about half full for some title games last weekend. The festival, meanwhile, has grown from a relatively sleepy event in 1987 to one that drew 85,000 registrants last year, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “We’re worried about it, because hotel space is at a premium,” Breithaupt told the Star-Telegram. “Our folks are not going to spend $300 to $400 a night on a hotel — if they can get them.” The UIL this year secured 15 rooms for players and coaches for each team at a reduced rate of about $200 per night, Breithaupt said. The UIL may move the three-day tournament to an earlier weekend,
but that would shorten the basketball season. If that doesn’t boost attendance then organizers may move it out of Austin by 2016. Ponder coach Jude Stanley told The Dallas Morning News his team stayed in Round Rock last weekend and had to be out of the hotel at 5:50 a.m. Friday for the 8:30 tipoff of its state semifinal. When Ponder earned a spot in the tournament in 2010, Stanley said, the team stayed less than 5 miles from the arena. DeSoto coach Chris Dyer said he’d prefer the tournament move to Dallas or rotate among locations that include Dallas, Houston and San Antonio. At least the hotels would be cheaper than Austin, he said. “Five hundred dollars a night for a hotel? Come on,” Dyer told the Morning News. “Most of them are high school teachers, high school coaches.”
ities erect what is known as a Type 3 barricade, a 5-foot-high, 4foot-wide barrier of three horizontal wood strips, which is recommended for temporary street closures by the Federal Highway Administration’s Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices. Austin city ordinance also requires that such barriers be staffed, either by a uniformed police officer or civilian who can move it if necessary or reposition the barricade if it is displaced, Derr said.
West Texas covered with wall of dust By BETSY BLANEY ASSOCIATED PRESS
LUBBOCK — A wall of dust as tall as 1,000 feet and 200 miles wide that roared across parts of West Texas and New Mexico is yet another sign of how rain-starved the region is. National Weather Service meteorologist Charles Aldrich in Lubbock said Wednesday that the dust that lifted into the air on Tuesday evening came ahead of a fast-moving cold front that reached the city, already more than 1.5 inches behind on precipitation this year as drought lingers. Most of the .17 inches of moisture that Lubbock’s gotten this year has been from snow and freezing precipitation. Wind gusts Tuesday evening reached 50 mph and it took about 30 minutes for the leading wall of dust to move from the north end of Lubbock County to its southern border. Dust hung in the air afterward for hours and the strong winds persisted. Visibility was reduced to about a mile in Lubbock. Northwest of Lubbock in Muleshoe and Friona the visibility was zero, Aldrich said. Aldrich says the dust storm began in Amarillo and the wall of fine soil particles extended west into New Mexico and east to near Post, about 40 miles southwest of Lubbock. The front began in Kansas,
and once it reached the parched Panhandle around Amarillo, the dust began to get kicked up. It worsened as it moved south toward Lubbock. “It’s drier up there, but it’s even drier down here,” Aldrich said. About 67 percent of Texas is in some stage of drought, and projections from weather service officials in Fort Worth show the state got about half the average amount of rainfall for January and February. But the driest areas are in West Texas. Dust storms like the one that hit the region Tuesday typically happen ahead of thunderstorms, Aldrich said. But cold fronts also can spawn the monster clouds of dust that barrel across the flat terrain. “If (the cold front) is as strong as the one we had yesterday, with the wind speed we had, it could definitely happen again,” Aldrich said. Dust storms aren’t unusual in the region and form when wind whips up loose soil, particularly during dry spells. In October 2011, during Texas’ driest year ever, a dust storm that reached 8,000-feet-tall moved across the region. Winds speeds reached 74 mph in some places and visibility was far less than a quarter of a mile. Those winds knocked down tree limbs, which fell on utility lines, knocking out power in parts of the city of about 210,000 people.
Man re-indicted for deadly 1986 fire ASSOCIATED PRESS
WACO — A Central Texas man whose conviction for setting a fire that killed his two sons was set aside faces capital murder charges as prosecutors seek to find him guilty a second time. A new indictment announced Wednesday charges Ed Graf with two counts of capital murder, two counts of murder and four counts of felony injury to a child, The Waco Tribune-Herald reported. Graf ’s previous murder conviction was set aside by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals,
which sided with arson experts who criticized the testimony used to persuade jurors that the fire that killed Graf ’s 8- and 9year-old boys was arson. His case has since been taken up by criminal justice advocates and a state panel that reviews arson investigations to see if they meet current fire science standards. The panel, convened by the state fire marshal’s office, also found faults with the fire investigation in Graf ’s case. Two fire investigators testified at Graf ’s 1988 trial that a burn pattern known as “alligator” charring and other signs suggest-
ed someone set the fire that engulfed a backyard shed at the family’s home in Hewitt, near Waco. They say deep charring near the shed’s entrance suggests someone may have set the fire from the outside with an accelerant like lighter fluid. But the investigators were never able to examine the remnants of the shed itself because it was torn down immediately after the fire. And experts now say the investigators at trial misinterpreted those signs, which could have occurred in an accidental fire. Prosecutors say they have enough to win another convic-
tion even without the fire evidence. Graf ’s ex-wife, Clare Bradburn, has maintained that she believes Graf is guilty and points to several signs that Graf was behaving suspiciously before and after the fire in the backyard shed of Graf ’s home in Hewitt, near Waco. Bradburn has said Graf took out life insurance policies on both boys months before the fire, a possible motive for their deaths. The indictment returned Wednesday accuses Graf of killing the boys for the insurance money under the two counts of
capital murder. The two murder counts do not repeat the allegation about the insurance proceeds, the TribuneHerald reported. The four injury to a child counts accuse Graf of causing serious injury to Joby and Jason Graf though a variety of ways, including preventing the boys from escaping the burning shed or stopping others from helping them. The district judge overseeing the case has issued a gag order for attorneys on both sides. Graf remains in the McLennan County jail pending a May 19 trial date.
State
8A THE ZAPATA TIMES
SATURDAY, MARCH 15, 2014
4 jailed in couple’s death 2 still critical after crash By NOMAAN MERCHANT AND DIANA HEIDGERD ASSOCIATED PRESS
DALLAS — An East Texas woman, her brother and her parents are charged with carrying out a scheme to kill the woman’s ex-husband and new wife as both sides were embroiled in a custody dispute over a 5year-old girl, authorities said last week. Sheriff ’s deputies in Tyler County arrested four people Tuesday night in the parking lot of the church where Nathan and Krystal Maddox were gunned down in January after visiting the girl. Nathan Maddox’s ex-wife Kristen Westfall, 29; her 17year-old brother, Cameron; and her parents, 54-year-old Letha and 56-year-old Paul Westfall, all were indicted on charges of engaging in organized criminal activity. They were held Wednesday on $1 million bond each. Christine R. Brown-Zeto, an attorney for Kristen Westfall, did not immedi-
ately return a phone message. Letha Westfall had custody of the girl, but the Westfall family was fighting Nathan Maddox in court. Phil Ryan, the chief deputy in Tyler County, said that the custody battle was the likely motive. “They were worried that Nathan was doing better in his life and might get custody of the little girl,” Ryan said. Authorities have not charged any of the four with murder, as investigators are still trying to determine who shot the couple, Ryan said. The couple died in the attack Jan. 18 outside Mount Carmel Baptist Church near Colmesneil, about 110 miles northeast of Houston. Their daughter was inside the church with Letha Westfall, who had brought her for a supervised visit with her father, said Shari Pulliam, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services.
After the shootings, state authorities placed the girl in a foster home in an undisclosed location, Pulliam said. The girl did not see the shooting, but is aware of the deaths of her father and stepmother, she said. “We did not know who the shooter was,” Pulliam said. “We were fearful for her life.” The court battle for custody has continued after the couple’s deaths, with three days of hearings so far. State authorities want the girl placed in foster care and said they found drug paraphernalia in Letha Westfall’s home, as well as a gun on a nightstand within easy reach of the girl, Pulliam said. Nathan Maddox’s father, Jim, has since petitioned to become his granddaughter’s primary caregiver. Jim Maddox’s attorney, Ryan Deaton of Lufkin, said Wednesday it had been a struggle to get Nathan Maddox time to visit his daughter.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
AUSTIN — Nine people remain hospitalized, including two in critical condition, after a suspected drunken driver plowed into a South By Southwest festival crowd in Austin, leaving two people dead. Police say most of the 23 injured people were treated and released fol-
lowing the crash early Thursday on a downtown Austin block filled with concertgoers Jail records show the driver, identified as 21year-old Rashad Charjuan Owens, remained in custody Friday pending formal charges. Police have said they believe Owens was driving drunk. Toxicology test results are pending.
A spokesman for University Medical Center Brackenridge on Friday said two patients were critical, another is serious, another is in fair condition and two patients are in good condition. St. David’s HealthCare had three victims in fair condition. Further details on the patients weren’t released.
International
SATURDAY, MARCH 15, 2014
THE ZAPATA TIMES 9A
Piracy theory gaining more credence By EILEEN NG AND JOAN LOWY ASSOCIATED PRESS
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — Piracy and pilot suicide are among the scenarios under study as investigators grow increasingly certain the missing Malaysian Airlines jet changed course and headed west after its last radio contact with air traffic controllers. The latest evidence suggests the plane didn’t experience a catastrophic incident over the South China Sea as was initially suspected. Some experts theorize that one of the pilots, or someone else with flying experience, hijacked the plane or committed suicide by plunging the jet into the sea. A U.S. official said Friday in Washington that investigators are examining the possibility of “human intervention” in the plane’s disappearance, adding it may have been “an act of piracy.” The official, who wasn’t authorized to talk to the media and
spoke on condition of anonymity, said it also was possible the plane may have landed somewhere. While other theories are still being examined, the official said key evidence suggesting human intervention is that contact with the Boeing 777’s transponder stopped about a dozen minutes before a messaging system on the jet quit. Such a gap would be unlikely in the case of an in-flight catastrophe. A Malaysian official, who also declined to be identified because he is not authorized to brief the media, said only a skilled aviator could navigate the plane the way it was flown after its last confirmed location over the South China Sea. The official said it had been established with a “more than 50 percent” degree of certainty that military radar had picked up the missing plane after it dropped off civilian radar. Malaysia’s acting transport minister, Hishammuddin Hussein, said the coun-
Associated Press photo
University students hold a candlelight vigil for passengers on the missing Malaysia Airlines flight in Yangzhou, China, on Thursday. try had yet to determine what happened to the plane after it ceased communicating with ground control around 40 minutes into the flight to Beijing on March 8 with 239 people aboard. He said investigators were still trying to establish with certainty that military radar records of a blip moving west across the Malay Peninsula into the Strait of Malacca
showed Flight MH370. “I will be the most happiest person if we can actually confirm that it is the MH370, then we can move all (search) assets from the South China Sea to the Strait of Malacca,” he told reporters. Until then, he said, the international search effort would continue expanding east and west from the plane’s last confirmed location. On Thursday, a U.S. offi-
cial said the plane remained airborne after losing contact with air traffic control, sending a signal to establish contact with a satellite. Boeing offers a satellite service that can receive a stream of data on how an aircraft is functioning in flight and relay the information to the plane’s home base. Malaysia Airlines didn’t subscribe to that service, but the plane still had the capability to connect with the satellite and was automatically sending signals, or pings, said the U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the situation by name. Scores of aircraft and ships from 12 countries are involved in the search, which reaches into the eastern stretches of the South China Sea and on the western side of the Malay Peninsula, northwest into the Andaman Sea and the Indian Ocean. India said it was using heat sensors on flights over
hundreds of Andaman Sea islands Friday and would expand the search for the missing jet farther west into the Bay of Bengal, about 1,000 miles to the west of the plane’s last known position. A team of five U.S. officials with air traffic control and radar expertise has been in Kuala Lumpur since Monday to assist with the investigation. White House spokesman Jay Carney sidestepped questions Friday about the possibility of human intervention in the plane disappearance, saying only that U.S. officials were assisting in the investigation. “I don’t have conclusive answers and I don’t think anyone does,” Carney said. Malaysia has faced accusations it isn’t sharing all its information or suspicions about the plane’s final movements. It insists it is being open, and says it would be irresponsible to narrow the focus of the search until there is undeniable evidence of the plane’s flight path.
3 shot dead during unrest in Venezuela By JORGE RUEDA AND FABIOLA SANCHEZ ASSOCIATED PRESS
CARACAS, Venezuela — A university student, a National Guard captain and a third man were shot to death in separate incidents Wednesday as anti-government protests roiled the central Venezuelan city of Valencia. Three National Guardsmen and several protesters were wounded. Two of the deaths came in the opposition-dominated Isabelica neighborhood, where residents unhappy with the scarcity of basic items and rising unemployment from the closure of some businesses in the area have protested for weeks by blocking streets and throwing rocks at police. Valencia Mayor Miguel Cocchiola said a man was killed and six people wounded in Isabelica. The newspaper Notitarde de Valencia said the dead man’s cousin, Luis Acosta, identified him as 22-year-old student Jesus Enrique Acosta and said he was killed near his home by men on motorcycles, but it was unclear if the victim was participating in a protest. The opposition has accused the govern-
Photo by Fernando Llano | AP
Demonstrators kick back a tear gas canister fired by Bolivarian National Police during clashes at an anti-government protest in Caracas, Venezuela, on Wednesday. ment of supporting armed civilian thugs who attack protests. The mayor later said through his Twitter account that another man, 42-year-old Guillermo Sanchez, also died from a gunshot wound in Isabelica. He said Sanchez was painting the front of his house when he was shot.
West eyes Crimea vote By LARA JAKES AND CASSANDRA VINOGRAD ASSOCIATED PRESS
LONDON — The West braced Friday for a vote by the Crimean Peninsula to secede from Ukraine — and likely be annexed by Russia — as the last attempt for diplomacy broke down despite threats of costly international sanctions and other imminent penalties against Moscow for forcibly challenging a pro-European government in Kiev. Russia’s top diplomat said Moscow will make no decisions about Crimea’s future, including whether to embrace it as a new territory, until after a local referendum Sunday to decide whether it should remain part of Ukraine. But U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said the vote’s results are all but a foregone conclusion, and urged Russia’s parliament against accepting any offer to claim Crimea as its own. “We believe that a decision to move forward by Russia to ratify that vote officially within the Duma would, in fact, be a backdoor annexation of Crimea,” Kerry told reporters in London after six hours of talks Friday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Kerry instead called on Moscow to support broad autonomy for Crimea — still as part of Ukraine — instead of a move by the strategic peninsula to secede. And he predicted the probability of “if the people of Crimea vote overwhelmingly, as one suspects they will, to affiliate or be associated with Russia.” Crimea, which is Ukraine’s strategic Black Sea peninsula of 2 million people, has a majority ethnic Russian population and hosts a large Russian naval base. The West and Ukraine’s upstart government in Kiev believes the re-
Photo by Andrei Udovichenko | AP
A patrolman in an unmarked uniform sits at a security check point near Chongar, Crimea, Ukraine, on Friday. gion’s vote to secede is unconstitutional. But Moscow doesn’t recognize leaders in Kiev as legitimate since they pushed Ukraine’s proRussian president from power last month. Lavrov, speaking separately to reporters, said Russia would respect the results of the Crimea vote but would not predict what would happen next. “We lack a common vision of the situation, and differences remain,” Lavrov said of his Ukraine negotiations with Kerry before heading back to Russia. However, he said Moscow has no plans to invade southeast regions in Ukraine. Thousands of Russian troops amassed on Ukraine’s eastern border this week, including large artillery exercises involving 8,500 soldiers in the Rostov region alone. U.S. officials have derided the exercises as an intimidation tactic and noted that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a similar buildup of troops in and around Crimea immediately before pro-Russian forces in the region overtook the local government and began policing streets with militias. The diplomatic stalemate marked a disappointing and last-ditch effort by
the West to avoid a new diplomatic chill from growing between Putin and Europe and the U.S. The showdown has been cast as a struggle for the future of Ukraine, a country with a size and population similar to France. Much of western Ukraine favors ties with the 28-nation European Union, while many in the eastern part of the country have closer economic and traditional ties to Russia. Putin has worked for months to press Ukraine back into Russia’s political and economic orbit. The West has resisted threatening the use of military force to keep Putin in check. Instead, officials have warned Moscow it will face a series of sanctions against Russian officials and businesses, as well as others in Ukraine, who undermined the new government in Kiev that took over after protests demanding economic opportunities offered in the West. The EU and U.S. will impose sanctions as early as Monday. “If the referendum takes place, there will be some sanctions,” Kerry said. “There’ll be some response.” British Prime Minister David Cameron echoed the sanctions threat.
Carabobo state Gov. Francisco Ameliach, who supports the socialist government of President Nicolas Maduro, announced via Twitter that National Guard Capt. Ramzor Ernesto Bracho also was killed in Valencia. The federal prosecutor’s office said another guardsman was wounded in that shooting. The office re-
ported earlier that a lieutenant colonel and two guardsmen were wounded. A month of student-led demonstrations in a number of Venezuelan cities has left at least 25 people dead, according to the government. Venezuelans fed up with inflation that reached 56 percent last year, long lines for buying some items at grocery stores and one of the highest homicide rates in the world have joined students in protesting against the government. Wednesday’s death toll matched the highest single day total exactly one month after that mark was set Feb. 12. Maduro’s governing bloc, which won municipal elections in December, shows no sign of collapse. The president accuses the opposition of trying to instigate his overthrow, but his party controls the legislature and judiciary, retains the support of the military and counts as members the governors of all but three states. After mentioning the Valencia violence to a group of students at a government rally, Maduro said he would convene a special meeting of his security cabinet Wednesday evening.
Entertainment
10A THE ZAPATA TIMES
SATURDAY, MARCH 15, 2014
Hollywood reporter Thomas dead at 92 By HILLEL ITALIE ASSOCIATED PRESS
He was the institutional memory for the movies at The Associated Press and a passage for the world to a Hollywood both longed for and long gone. Bob Thomas, who died Friday at his Encino, Calif., home at age 92, started reporting when Clark Gable was a middle-aged king, Bette Davis was in her big-eyed prime, and Kirk Douglas and Lauren Bacall were emerging stars. “Independent” movies were a rarity during the studio-controlled era and celebrity gossip was dispensed by rival columnists Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons. Younger reporters knew the names and the credits, but Thomas knew the people and lived the history. He could tell you what Jack Lemmon liked to drink at parties or recall Marilyn Monroe’s farcical inability to show up on time, or speak fondly of his times with “Greg” Peck. Around the country, and beyond, at least one generation of movie fans learned the latest
about Hollywood by reading Bob Thomas. He interviewed most of the great screen actors of the 20th century, among them Elizabeth Taylor, Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, Marlon Brando, James Dean, Humphrey Bogart, Jack Nicholson, Julia Roberts and Tom Cruise. When a story ran, Thomas often heard directly from the stars. Soon after her marriage to actor John Agar in 1945, Shirley Temple wrote: “John and I want you to know that we are very grateful to you for the manner in which you handled the story on our wedding.” A postcard from Rita Hayworth passed on regards from Orson Welles. Bing Crosby shared warm thoughts about Bob Hope. Groucho Marx noted that Thomas’ interview with him was syndicated in 400 newspapers. “But as faithful as I am to you in my fashion, I read them all,” Groucho wrote to him. Thomas worked well into his 80s, covering a record 66 consecutive Academy Awards shows, beginning in 1944. During his nearly seven decades writing for
Photo by Nick Ut/file | AP
Long-time AP entertainment reporter Bob Thomas has died. He was 92. the AP, Thomas reviewed hundreds of films and television shows and wrote numerous retrospective pieces on Hollywood and how it had changed. Thomas was also the author of nearly three dozen books, including biographies of Walt Disney, Brando and Joan Crawford, and an acclaimed portrait of studio mogul Harry Cohn, “King Cohn.” He wrote, produced and appeared
in a handful of television specials on the Academy Awards and was a guest on numerous TV news and talk shows, including “The Tonight Show,” “Good Morning America” and “Nightline.” His biographies of reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes and the comedy team of Abbott and Costello were made into television movies. He is listed twice in Guinness World Records: for most consecutive Academy Awards shows covered by an entertainment reporter and for longest career as an entertainment reporter (19442010). In 1988, he became the first reporter-author awarded a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame. Kathleen Carroll, executive editor of the AP, worked with Thomas in the Los Angeles bureau in the early 1980s. “Bob was an old-fashioned Hollywood reporter and he knew absolutely everyone,” she said. “He had an impish charm with the stars, but back at the office, he was the quiet guy who slipped into a desk at the back and poked at the keyboard for a while, then handed in a crisp and knowing
story soon delivered to movie fans around the world.” One of Thomas’ biggest stories had nothing to do with entertainment. Helping out during the 1968 presidential election, Thomas had been assigned to cover Sen. Robert F. Kennedy on the night the New York Democrat won the California primary. Minutes after declaring victory, Kennedy was shot to death in the kitchen of Los Angeles’ Ambassador Hotel. “I was waiting in the press room for Kennedy to arrive when I heard what sounded like the popping of balloons in the hotel kitchen,” Thomas would recount years later. “I rushed into the kitchen where men were screaming and women sobbing,” he recalled. “I jumped onto a pile of kitchen trays and saw Kennedy lying on the floor, his head bloody.” He ran to a phone and delivered the bulletin to The Associated Press. As the son of a Hollywood press agent, Robert Joseph Thomas seemed destined to become an entertainment writer from his earliest days.
SATURDAY, MARCH 15, 2014
THE ZAPATA TIMES 11A
THE BLOTTER Assault
controlled substance in a drug-free zone March 12 in the 1000 block Zapata Boulevard.
David Orta was arrested and charged with assault March 3 in the 5300 block of Cuellar Lane.
Public intoxication
Disorderly conduct Osvaldo Jasso was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct March 8 in the intersection of 20th Avenue and Laredo Street.
DWI Rene Roberto Zepeda was arrested and charged with driving while intoxicated March 8 in the intersection of Texas 16 and Second Street.
Failure to appear Odilon Valenzuela was arrested and charged with failure to appear in court on a possession of a controlled substance charge March 5 in the 100 block of Valle Verde, Lot 14.
Antonio Uvalle-Guzman was arrested and charged with public intoxication March 3 on Raven Street. Marco Antonio Martinez was arrested and charged with public intoxication March 9 in the 2900 block of Yucca Drive.
Reckless driving Erik Jasso was arrested and charged with reckless driving March 1 in the intersection of U.S. 83 and First Avenue.
Resisting arrest Hector Narciso Cruz was arrested and charged with resisting arrest March 1 in the 400 block of Lincoln Street.
Terroristic threat
Possession Daniel Delgado was arrested and charged with possession of a controlled substance March 11 in the 1000 block of Zapata Boulevard. Erik Jasso was arrested and charged with possession of marijuana March 11 in the intersection of U.S. 83 and 17th Avenue. Celica Yvette Delgado was arrested and charged with possession of a
Rigoberto Barrientos was arrested and charged with terroristic threat March 3 in the 5300 block of Peña Lane.
Theft Michael Guajardo Jr. was arrested and charged with theft Feb. 27 in the intersection of West 11th Avenue and Carla Street.
OLD MAP Continued from Page 1A Jacob De Cordova, a land agent who commissioned an employee of the Texas General Land Office to create the map. The map measures about 32 by 35 inches and features counties in various colors. Fay said subsequent editions are more plentiful, but the 1849 first edition is rare. He said only a handful exist today, with a couple privately owned and a couple others in institutions. Martin said when his grandfather died in the late 1950s and the Virginia farm that had been in the family since the 1750s was being sold, his father, almost as an afterthought, loaded up several boxes filled with historical items, including the map. As a kid, Martin loved reading through those documents and eventually, he came across the map. “After I knew the map was there, I would open the map occasionally and look at the things and show it to friends. My parents never had any problem with it. Of course, we didn’t have any idea of the value of the map,” he said. “I was fascinated by it for several reasons. It had Indian settlements and it had forts on it,” he said. And after inheriting it as an adult, he continued to show it to friends, including one recent Thanksgiving where he
laid it out on the table. “In retrospect, knowing what it is worth, that was a dangerous venture, with all that grease and wine around,” he said with a laugh. As far as he can tell, the map dates back to either his great-great grandfather, Nicholas Martin, or Martin’s son, Hudson. He said Nicholas Martin was a colonel in the Virginia militia that fought in Texas during the MexicanAmerican War and Hudson Martin, a Virginia attorney, helped settlers secure land grants in Texas. Mark Lambert, deputy commissioner for archives and records at the Texas General Land Office, said De Cordova’s map got the seal of approval from state officials and is considered the first official map after Texas became a state. “It’s certainly one of the most important Texas maps,” he said. He said the De Cordova’s 1849 map is the most popular reproduction sold as part of the land office’s Save Texas History program, which raises funds to preserve their collection of documents and maps by selling reproductions of their holdings. And for those who might not have the funds to buy one of the few originals, the land office’s reproduction costs only $20.
Deportation review has risks By JIM KUHNHENN ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama’s new promise to seek ways to ease his administration’s rate of deportations aims to mollify angry immigrant advocates but carries risks for a White House that has insisted it has little recourse. In asking Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to review enforcement practices, Obama could undo already fragile congressional efforts to overhaul immigration laws. And he still could fall short of satisfying the demands of pro-immigrant groups that have been increasing pressure on him to dramatically reverse the administration’s record of deportations. The White House announced Thursday that Obama had directed Johnson, who was sworn in three months ago, to see how the department “can conduct enforcement more humanely within the confines of the law.” Then the president summoned 17 labor and immigration leaders to the White House Friday afternoon for what some participants described as a spirited discussion of his deportations policies and the strategy for enacting a comprehensive congressional overhaul of immigration laws. “The president displayed a great deal of sympathy for the families affected by the deporta-
Photo by Pablo Martinez Monsivais/file | AP
President Barack Obama, left, speaks with individuals fasting on behalf of immigration reform on the National Mall in Washington, on Nov. 29, 2013. tion machinery,” Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, said after the nearly twohour session. “There was less agreement on when and what should be done about it by the president.” Participants emerged from the meeting unified in their call for House Republicans to act on immigration legislation. Privately, some said Obama voiced frustration during the meeting with the criticism some of them have directed at him. Republican House Speaker John Boehner’s office pointedly warned that fixes to the immigration system should be carried out by Congress, not by the president on his own. The Democratic-controlled Senate last year passed a
comprehensive bill that would enhance border security and provide a path to citizenship for many of the 11 million immigrants who entered the country illegally or overstayed their visas. But the Republican-held House has delayed action and favors a more piecemeal approach. “There’s no doubt we have an immigration system that is failing families and our economy, but until it is reformed through the democratic process, the president is obligated to enforce the laws we have,” Boehner spokesman Brendan Buck said Friday. “Failing to do so would damage — perhaps beyond repair — our ability to build the trust necessary to enact real immigration reform.”
RULES Continued from Page 1A nature of the projectiles that the subject of such force poses an imminent danger of death or serious injury,” Fisher wrote in his directive, which he said clarified “existing guidelines.” The agency also released its 2010 Use of Force Policy Handbook, a 100-page manual that was produced in 2010 under former CBP Commissioner Alan Bersin. Advocates and lawmakers, including U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke, D-El Paso, have tried repeatedly to have the federal agency make the handbook public. There have been more than 6,000 assaults on U.S. Border Patrol agents since 2007, Fisher said, which have resulted in the killing of three agents. Those include 1,713 rock-throwing incidents, which have resulted in 43 uses of deadly force and the deaths of 10 would-be border crossers. Among the fatalities in recent years are 15-year-old Sergio Adrián Hernández Güereca, who was shot in 2010 by a Border Patrol agent in Ciudad Juárez, and Guillermo Arévalo Pedroza, 36, who was shot and killed in 2012 by Border Patrol agents on the banks of the Rio Grande in Nuevo Laredo. The San Antonio Express-News has reported that Arévalo’s widow said her slain husband was not throwing rocks at the agents. Astrid Dominguez, the lower Rio Grande Valley’s advocacy coordinator for the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, said last week’s directive indicates progress. But CBP officers and the ports of entry should also be scrutinized, she said. In December, the ACLU filed suit against CBP officers in El Paso and a local hospital district after a U.S. citizen from New Mexico was sub-
jected to unwarranted searches, including vaginal probes and a CT scan. “This changes policy strictly for Border Patrol agents. There is still a need for the Office of Field Operations, the CBP officers that are at the ports to also be accountable for their actions,” she said. “There has to be transparency within the entire agency.” Dominguez said that CBP would go a long way toward accomplishing that goal if it released in its entirety the Police Executive Research Forum report the agency commissioned. That report is said to be a more comprehensive and critical assessment of CBP’s policies, but it has not been made public. Public affairs officers with CBP did not respond to a request for comment on the report or the suggestions of additional oversight. O’Rourke is working with U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce, R-N.M., to craft legislation that would mandate more oversight of CBP agents and that "paves a path to understand and mitigate border deaths," according to a statement. An aide to O’Rourke said they hope to file the bill this week. But aside from that legislation, he said the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees CBP, could make greater gains. “The Department’s release of their existing use of force policies is a good first step, but self-policing within DHS has not resulted in the administrative policy changes that would ensure everyone is treated with dignity and respect," he said. "That is why DHS should also release other reviews on its use of force policies such as the full PERF report and its internal responses to that report. Additional oversight
and accountability measures from Congress are needed.” U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, also congratulated the Department of Homeland Security on its efforts, but he said more transparency could be accomplished. "I am glad to see the Department of Homeland Security make available these documents outlining their use of force policy," he said in an email. "I have confidence in the men and women who protect our border, both those in green uniforms and the customs officers in blue, but it is important for DHS to remain accountable and transparent." The Border Network for Human Rights, an El Paso-based advocacy group, said last week’s directive should spur more action in the coming months. Jose Manuel Escobedo, the network’s deputy director of policy, said the group was hopeful that legislation would be enacted that mandates oversight, as opposed to a directive that might not be followed. “Congress has an appetite for accountability within" the Department of Homeland Security,” he said. “They scrutinized [former DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano] very closely.” Like Dominguez, he said the directive is a good start, but not the “end all” solution. “What we want to see are these guidelines permeated, actually applied, and so that’s the next step,” he said. “Making sure there is an administrative push, that they are applied properly sector by sector. But ultimately we need legislation that mandates more professionalism and better training and more oversight.” Email: jaguilar@texastribune.org
12A THE ZAPATA TIMES
SATURDAY, MARCH 15, 2014
SATURDAY, MARCH 15, 2014
ON THE WEB: THEZAPATATIMES.COM
Sports&Outdoors NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE
MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL: TEXAS RANGERS
Texas catchers Photo by Ed Zurga | AP
Washington officially announced the signing of former Cowboys defensive tackle Jason Hatcher on Friday.
Cowboys, Herring part ways Photo by Darron Cummings | AP
Jason Hatcher officially signs with Washington Redskins ASSOCIATED PRESS
The Texas Rangers will use a combination of J.P. Arencibia, right, and Geovany Soto to replace last year’s starter A.J. Pierzynski, who now plays for the Boston Red Sox.
LeBreton: Soto, J.P. have catching up to do By GIL LEBRETON FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM
SURPRISE, Ariz. - Last year’s catcher was not fleet of foot. Last year’s catcher, over time, also developed a prickly relationship with the team’s best pitcher. But don’t forget. A.J. Pierzynski, last year’s starting catcher for the Texas Rangers, did come to the plate 529 times and batted .272 with 17 home runs and 70 runs batted in. "I’ll take that," Rangers manager Ron Washington assessed Thursday. Add catcher Geovany Soto’s hitting totals this season to newcomer J.P. Arencibia’s, Washington assured, and the offensive production of Pier-
zynski, who’s now with the Red Sox, will have been adequately replaced. "I hope the two of them can match that," the manager said. "And if they rise to the occasion on the defensive side and help our pitchers get through a lot of innings, I’ll actually take whatever they’re giving me." Spring training, however, is rife with ifs. If Soto, who’s now the No. 1 catcher, had not undergone foot surgery three weeks ago, Washington’s expectations might seem more modest. And if Arencibia, signed to a free agent, one-year, $1.8 million contract in the off-season, wasn’t batting .136 in eight games this spring, Washington’s defense-first promise wouldn’t
MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL: HOUSTON ASTROS
ring quite so hollow. As the 2013 Rangers proved far too periodically, in the American League a team cannot easily get to the postseason by stacking the bottom of its lineup with easy outs. That’s not to say that Soto can’t hit. In 54 games last season, the Puerto Rico native batted .245 and actually has a higher career on-baseplus-slugging percentage (.774) than Pierzynski posted last year. Soto’s return to the lineup for Thursday night’s exhibition contest against the San Francisco Giants was roundly welcomed. "I love Geo’s energy," pitcher Tan-
IRVING, Texas — Free agent linebacker Will Herring isn’t joining the Dallas Cowboys after all. The team reported the signing on its website Thursday, but said Friday the deal was off in “a mutual parting of the ways that had to do with the language of the contract.” Herring figured to be a prominent part of special teams for the Cowboys after the eighthyear player excelled in that role for New Orleans. The 30-year-old Herring was with Seattle his first four years in the league before spending the past three seasons with the Saints. He’s made 10 starts in 97 career games.
Redskins announce signings WASHINGTON — The Washington Redskins have released center Will Montgomery after he failed a physical and signed free agent
See RANGERS PAGE 2B See NFL PAGE 2B
MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL: CARDINALS 6, ASTROS 4
Wacha, Cardinals beat Astros ASSOCIATED PRESS
Photo by Alex Brandon | AP
Carlos Correa is one of six prospects expected to make a significant impact this season for the Houston Astros.
Astros prospects begin contributing By KRISTIE RIEKEN ASSOCIATED PRESS
KISSIMMEE, Fla. — There’s an avid fisherman, a drummer and a saxophone player. A fourth loves board games, one enjoys bowling and another proudly says he admires Kanye West. Described are Carlos Correa, Mike Foltynewicz, Jon
Singleton, Mark Appel, Delino DeShields and George Springer. They’re top prospects of the Houston Astros, a group expected to turn around this once-proud franchise and get fans back to the ballpark after three straight 100-loss seasons. The Astros traded away all
See PROSPECTS PAGE 2B
KISSIMMEE, Fla. — Michael Wacha struck out five in 3 2-3 scoreless innings Friday and Matt Carpenter and Xavier Scruggs each drove in two runs for the St. Louis Cardinals in a 6-4 win over the Houston Astros. Wacha, the 22-year-old righthander who won four postseason games for St. Louis last fall, gave up three singles in his third start of the spring. He mixed in his cutter this time, saying he used six or seven. “I feel I needed something to go along with the curveball and changeup, just to put something in the back of their heads,” Wacha said. “Hopefully it’ll catch ‘em off guard.” He used “six or seven” against the Astros and says he has complete confidence in the new pitch. Manager Mike Matheny said Wacha “fooled around with it a little” last season, but he didn’t have much time to experiment down the stretch in September, when he filled in for the Cardinals. So far, Wacha isn’t even penciled into the rotation this year yet. “We’re just not in a big hurry to make that statement,” said Matheny, who is stretching out six pitchers halfway through
File photo by Alex Brandon | AP
Third baseman Matt Dominguez hit 2 for 4 with an RBI on Friday in Houston’s 6-4 loss against the St. Louis Cardinals. spring training. After striking out the side in the first inning, Houston starter Jarred Cosart gave up five hits and five earned runs in 3 1-3 innings. “He lost his fastball command today, got his pitch count up there,” said Astros manager Bo Porter. Scruggs and Carpenter had
RBI hits for the Cardinals in the second inning. Kolten Wong, Scruggs and Carpenter had extra-base hits in the fourth, and Astros center fielder Dexter Fowler prevented a fourth with a running catch of Randal Grichuk’s 400-foot drive to the warning track in center field.
See ASTROS PAGE 2B
PAGE 2B
Zscores
SATURDAY, MARCH 15, 2014
Nicklas Backstrom to get silver medal By STEPHEN WILSON ASSOCIATED PRESS
LONDON — Swedish hockey star Nicklas Backstrom will receive an Olympic silver medal even though he was suspended from the final in Sochi after a positive drug test. The International Olympic Committee ruled Friday that Backstrom hadn’t intended to enhance his
performance, laying the blame for his positive test for pseudoephedrine on the Swedish team doctor. The Washington Capitals center was suspended and pulled from the team just hours before the Feb. 23 gold-medal game, which Sweden lost 3-0 to Canada. “While I will always be disappointed that I wasn’t able to play in the gold medal game with my fellow
countrymen, I’m pleased that my name has been cleared by the IOC,” Backstrom said in a statement. “It is important to me that the IOC has acknowledged that I had asked for and received specific advice from my team doctor that taking this allergy medication would not be a violation. “In addition, I had disclosed my use of over-thecounter medication prior to
NFL Continued from Page 1B kicker Jake Rogers. The Redskins on Friday also announced the signings of defensive lineman Jason Hatcher and linebacker Darryl Sharpton. Both agreed to terms Thursday. Montgomery started every game over the last three seasons, but the Redskins allowed 43 sacks last year and were looking to upgrade the offensive line. His departure allows Kory Lichtensteiger to move to from left guard to center. Washington also signed free agent guard Shawn Lauvao this week. Rogers has yet to kick in an NFL game after leaving the University of Cincinnati as the school’s alltime leading scorer. He’s been signed by four NFL teams, including the New York Giants, who waived him last spring.
Smith signs with Ravens Free agent wide receiver Steve Smith has signed a three-year deal with the Baltimore Ravens. The Ravens announced the signing of the 34-yearold Smith on Friday. Smith was released by the Carolina Panters on Thursday after 13 seasons and headed to Baltimore to talk to the Ravens, who were eager to add provide quarterback Joe Flacco another target. Smith ranks 19th in the NFL in career receptions. He caught 64 passes for 746 yards and four touchdowns in 2013. Baltimore has had a void at wide receiver since trading Anquan Boldin to the San Francisco 49ers after winning the Super Bowl in February 2013. The Ravens went 8-8 last season and missed the playoffs for the first time in six years. Smith is Carolina’s alltime leader in receptions (836), yards receiving (12,197) and touchdowns (67).
Oher agrees with Tennessee NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The Tennessee Titans have agreed to a multiyear deal with offensive tackle Michael Oher, a former first-round draft pick who spent his first five seasons with the Baltimore Ravens. Titans general manager Ruston Webster called Oh-
er “a big, strong, durable player” in a statement announcing the move Friday. Oher’s contract reportedly is a four-year deal worth $20 million with $9.5 million guaranteed. Oher tweeted that he’s “extremely happy and excited to be a Titan (and) can’t wait to do big things!!!” Oher also tweeted, “Wanna thank the Ravens organization and their great fans!” The 27-year-old Oher should fill Tennessee’s vacancy at right tackle created by the Titans’ decision to waive David Stewart on Wednesday. Stewart had been Tennessee’s starting right tackle since 2006.
Buccaneers add a center TAMPA, Fla. — Free agent center Evan Dietrich-Smith has agreed to a contract with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Dietrich-Smith spent the past three seasons with the Packers and has started 25 of 61 games he’s appeared in at center and guard. He was one of two Green Bay offensive linemen to play in every game over the last two years. The sixth-year pro is the seventh player to join the Bucs through free agency this week. Terms of the deal Friday were not disclosed. In addition to DietrichSmith, the Bucs have added quarterback Josh McCown, tackle Anthony Collins and tight end Brandon Myers on offense. Defensive acquisitions include pass rusher Michael Johnson, tackle Clinton McDonald and cornerback Alterraun Verner.
Lions keep Pettigrew DETROIT — A person familiar with the negotiations says the Detroit Lions have re-signed tight end Brandon Pettigrew to a $16 million, four-year contract. The person, who says $8 million is guaranteed, spoke Friday to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the deal had not been announced. Detroit drafted Pettigrew with the 20th overall pick in 2009. He has 284 receptions for 2,828 yards and 16 touchdowns in five seasons.
Wainwright didn’t have a spot in this rotation,” Matheny said. “But after that, we show up here watching guys compete because that’s what they’re made to do, that what they’re paid to do. And I think making any bold statement too early discourages somebody, for sure, and could distract others.” Wacha won’t be discouraged or distracted. “I don’t really look at it as seeing guys in the clubhouse and thinking: I’m competing against him for their job,” Wacha said. “I’m just competing within myself, I guess, just continuing to work on stuff.” TRAINER’S ROOM Cardinals: Matheny is concerned that outfielder
the player should not be kicked out of the Sochi Games altogether, citing “mitigating circumstances.” “There was no indication of any intent of the athlete to improve his performance by taking a prohibited substance,” the IOC’s three-person disciplinary commission said. “As a consequence, the athlete is entitled to receive
the silver medal and diploma awarded in respect of the men’s ice hockey event.” Backstrom tested positive for excess levels of pseudoephedrine after Sweden’s win over Slovenia in the quarterfinals on Feb. 19. He said the stimulant was contained in “Zytec-D,” a medication he had been taking for allergies.
RANGERS Continued from Page 1B Packers resign Raji
GREEN BAY, Wis. — The Green Bay Packers have re-signed defensive tackle B.J. Raji. General manager Ted Thompson announced the deal Friday. Terms were not disclosed but multiple reports said it was a oneyear deal worth $4 million. The 27-year-old Raji was the ninth overall pick in the 2009 draft. He has played in 76 games with 63 starts and has 227 tackles, 10 1/2 sacks and seven passes defensed during his five seasons with Green Bay. He was named to the Pro Bowl in 2011. Raji saw his snap count and impact diminish last season, when he did not record a sack.
Dolphins add Finnegan, Smith MIAMI — Veteran cornerback and rookie negotiator Cortland Finnegan sealed a deal Friday with the Miami Dolphins. Representing himself in contract talks, the eightyear veteran found a new home after an injuryplagued 2013 with the St. Louis Rams. Finnegan, who has no agent, said he spoke with a lot of general managers and head coaches around the NFL, but his only free-agent visit was to Miami. The Dolphins also signed another ex-Ram, guard Shelley Smith. He agreed to a $5.5 million, two-year deal, with $1.5 million guaranteed, then left town headed for his wedding.
Titans release QB Fitzpatrick Quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick says he’s been released by the Tennessee Titans, who signed Charlie Whitehurst on Thursday to back up Jake Locker. Fitzpatrick told The Associated Press on Friday, “You can say I’ve been released, yes.” Fitzpatrick signed a twoyear contract with the Titans last March. He started nine games for the Titans last season and went 217 of 350 for 2,454 yards with 14 touchdown passes and 12 interceptions. The 31-year-old Fitzpatrick has thrown for 16,790 yards, 106 touchdowns and 93 interceptions in 85 career games.
ASTROS Continued from Page 1B Jon Singelton’s two-run triple off reliever Tim Cooney highlighted the Astros’ four-run seventh inning. Jose Altuve and Matt Dominguez had two hits each for Houston. STARTING TIME Astros: Cosart gave up five hits, two walks and five earned runs in 3 1/3 innings. “Out of the stretch my timing’s a little off. That’s what got me in trouble today,” said Cosart, who is trying out a new delivery. “It’s not a major fix, just something we can talk about and build on.” Cardinals: Matheny isn’t ready to name a starting five. “Now, we’d be lying if we didn’t say Adam
being tested.” The Swedes were outraged by the timing of the decision and said it affected the team’s performance. The IOC defended the suspension, saying it was “fully justified” because of the positive test and noting that Backstrom conceded also taking the allergy medication on the day of the final. But the IOC ruled that
Oscar Taveras, the team’s top prospect, might be taking Thursday’s optioning to Triple-A Memphis the wrong way. Taveras missed most of last season after ankle surgery and had hamstring trouble this spring. “A step back is not necessarily a bad thing if it’s handled the right way,” Matheny said. “The initial step back happened when he got hurt last year.” NICE IMPRESSION Marwin Gonzalez has played three infield positions with the Astros this spring and Porter said he can play all three outfield spots. “We’re going to move him around,” Porter said. “I told him I can’t hide him.”
ner Scheppers said. "He really cares out there. He wants you to succeed. "You can see his work ethic. He plays with his heart." Teammate Nick Tepesch said that Soto’s input was invaluable during the pitcher’s rookie season last year. "He’s right on the same page with me all the time," Tepesch said. "He’s smart. He knows the hitters. He knows how to approach different situations. He’s a partner out there." But Soto has a lot of catching up to do, all puns intended. In the meantime, the Rangers have turned to Arencibia, a 28-year-old Miami product who was the Blue Jays’ No. 1 draft choice in
2007. The clubhouse clearly has embraced Arencibia, who has an engaging personality. But he began play Thursday with only three hits to show for the spring. Does it matter at this stage? "Heck, no," Arencibia answered. "I’ll tell you why. Last year I hit .400 and had six home runs and probably had the best spring I’ve ever had in my career." After a brow-raising start - he hit eight home runs in April - Arencibia hit a rut that saw him bat only .145 in the second half of the season. "I also had one spring training," he noted, "where I hit maybe .070, and in the first game of
the year I had four hits with two home runs." Arencibia rolled his eyes. "Spring training is a time when you can work on things," he said. "And sometimes it takes a little while. In baseball nothing happens overnight. "I’ve had every kind of spring training, and I learned that it really didn’t matter." Washington admitted that his new catcher’s spring "hasn’t been as good as Arencibia would like to have it." "But we’re going to keep working, try to keep getting him at-bats, trying to help him work things out," Washington said. In the meantime, 17 home runs and 70 RBI seem a long way off.
PROSPECTS Continued from Page 1B of their recognizable players over the past few seasons as they went all-in on a plan to restock their farm system and build from within. Now after three dreadful seasons, the time is approaching for these prospects to begin contributing to the major league team. The top among them are 2012 top overall pick Correa, a 19-year-old shortstop, last year’s top pick right-hander Appel and Springer, an outfielder who hit 37 homers with 45 stolen bases between Double- and Triple-A last season. There’s no clever way to describe this trio like the fabled Killer B’s of Jeff Bagwell, Craig Biggio and Lance Berkman, the longtime former faces of the franchise who wowed fans for years. But general manager Jeff Luhnow, the architect of Houston’s rebuilding plan, believes they could become just as loved in Houston. “I think between Carlos and George and Mark, we’ve got three guys — hopefully they all three make it and fulfill their potential — but they could all three be the next version of Biggio, Bagwell, Berkman,” Luhnow said. Correa was just 17 when he was drafted out of high school in Puerto Rico. He spent last season in Low-A, where he hit .320 with 86 RBIs, and in big league games this spring he’s excelled and homered twice in a recent game. The 6foot-4, 205-pound Correa is probably a couple of years away from arriving in Houston, but he’s already drawn comparisons to Alex Rodriguez. Correa, who relaxes by fishing with his family, is ready to get to Houston and isn’t daunted by the pressure of being a top draft pick. “It’s my dream, it’s my goal to get to big leagues and help the Astros be a winning club,” he said. “I think about it every single day. When I wake up, when I go to sleep. I want to help them try to be the organization they used to be in the past.” Appel graduated from Stanford before he was drafted by the Astros last year. They think he could be a front of the rotation starter soon, but he’ll likely spend most of this season in Double-A. Appel is the fan of board games and if he weren’t playing baseball he’d probably be an architect. His uncle is the dean of the architecture school at Rice University. He’s very religious and said his faith helps him deal with the expectations of being a top prospect. “I’m not going to say I’m above it,” he said. “It is something that you think about. If baseball were to end tomorrow I know that I’d be secure and I know that I’d be able to keep living. Baseball isn’t everything to me but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to work as hard as I can.” Springer is expected to make his major league debut in 2014. Luhnow expects him to be a fan favorite thanks to his electric play and movie star good looks. “He has the inherent talent to be a star and yet I could see his face being on the cover of magazines and him being on talk shows and having a really warm personality that’s inviting that makes people feel like they really get to know him,” Luhnow said. Springer is shy in his personal life,
but has an outgoing persona on the diamond. He’s the Kanye West fan — and not just because of his musical talent. “I just think he’s true to himself and you don’t see that a lot,” he said. “I like that.” Singleton is Houston’s first baseman of the future and should also make it to Houston in 2014. The 22-year-old lefthanded slugger has struggled with an addiction to marijuana and spent time last season in a rehabilitation center, but says he’s on the right track now. Singleton, who played the saxophone growing up, got off to a tough start this spring, going 0 for 16 before homering on Thursday. “I really don’t put too much pressure on myself when it comes to hitting,” Singleton said. “Since I was little, baseball has been a game of fun. If you play hard and have fun, good things will happen.” Another pitcher is the flame-throwing Foltynewicz, who was a drummer in a high school band called Stuck in October. He recently chopped off his wild and flowing rock star locks in favor of a shorter haircut, but is still working on taming his emotions on the mound. “I kind of get a little out of control out there sometimes with a bad call or something like that,” he said. “I’ve grown up a lot since I’ve come into pro ball, but I’ve still got to work out some things.” His fastball has been clocked at over 100 mph and the Astros think he could pitch as a reliever in the majors now, but want to keep him in the minors for a while to mold him into a top starter. “He’s the hardest thrower in our organization and I think when you get a guy with that kind of arm strength, clearly there’s going to be a lot of excitement about the player,” Luhnow said. DeShields’ father and namesake played 13 years in the majors. The younger DeShields is the bowler of the group and rated as the best baserunner in the organization. It’s easy to see why — the 21-year-old can fly. He’s been in big league camp this spring and got fans buzzing when he scored from first on a single in a recent game. He stole 101 bases in 2012 and swiped 51 last season in Single-A. The eighth overall pick in the 2010 draft, DeShields has recently returned to the outfield after working at second base. Luhnow expects him to start 2014 at Double-A and advance to Triple-A before season’s end. “For me he’s a sleeper,” Luhnow said. “He’s a guy that doesn’t get mentioned with those other players, but he’s got all the potential in the world to be an impact player given his tool-set and his bloodlines and his work ethic and all the things he brings to the table.” Despite all this up-and-coming talent, Luhnow knows that fans are disenchanted and antsy to see if the rebuilding plan is going to work. He’s confident that it will. “I know we have some work to do to regain the credibility and trust of the fans because of the record at the major league level the last three years,” he said. “But that work starts now and the players and the staff know that and are motivated that we’re going to start to demonstrate the results at the big league level this year.”
SATURDAY, MARCH 15, 2014
THE ZAPATA TIMES 3B
HINTS | BY HELOISE POISON PREVENTION POINTERS Dear Readers: Next week, March 16-22, is NATIONALPOISONPREVENTIONWEEK. Here are some good hints from the Poison Prevention Week Council and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on how to prevent accidental poisonings: Store all household cleaning products out of reach of children and pets, preferably in a locked cabinet. When using chemicals or household cleaning products, do so in a wellventilated area, and wear protective clothing when necessary. Never combine cleaning products or chemicals. Toxic fumes may be released. Teach children not to eat, drink or touch anything before asking an adult. Do not call medicine “candy” when giving it to children. It can confuse them, and they might acci-
dentally take medicine, thinking it is “candy.” When taking or giving medicine, always turn on a light to make sure the right dosage is given. Clean up any chemical or cleaning-product spills immediately. Wash your hands after cleaning with or handling cleaning products, chemicals, pesticides, etc. If you are concerned about a possible poisoning, call Poison Help at 800-2221222, or dial 911. — Heloise P.S.: Post this number so it’s handy! PET PAL Dear Readers: Resa Webber in Cedar Point, Texas, sent a picture of her two schnauzers, Badger and Britches, posed for a beautiful portrait. Badger is the lighter of the two and is sitting up, while Britches, the darker, lies in front. To see Badger and Britches’ picture, go to my website, www.Heloise.com, and click on “Pets.” — Heloise CLEANING SPLATTERS
DENNIS THE MENACE
FAMILY CIRCUS
PEANUTS
GARFIELD
DAILY CRYPTOQUOTES — Here’s how to work it:
DILBERT
Sports
4B THE ZAPATA TIMES
SATURDAY, MARCH 15, 2014
Hamlin wins pole with track record By JENNA FRYER ASSOCIATED PRESS
BRISTOL, Tenn. — Denny Hamlin ended two weeks of Team Penske dominance by winning the pole at Bristol Motor Speedway. Hamlin set a track record Friday with a lap at 129.991 mph to earn the top starting spot. It broke the mark of 129.535 set by Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Kyle Busch a year ago, and ensured that neither Brad Keselowski or Joey Logano won the pole for the first time since NASCAR’s new knockout qualifying debuted three weeks ago. Hamlin ran only one lap in the first segment and it was good enough to lock him into the top 12 to advance into the second segment. He then ran one lap, took the pole for Sunday’s race, and got out of his car to see if anyone could beat him. “As a short track guy, I can feel when, ‘OK, this is all I’ve got.’ Or, ‘This is a really good lap,”’ Hamlin said. He aborted an attempt at a second lap in the first segment because, “If that wasn’t a top-12 lap, we were in big trouble. So I knew that was going to be good. Then ultimately strategy comes into play, wanting to conserve your car and keeping everything as cool as you can for the second segment “I was going to run two laps in the second segment, but I bob-
Photo by Wade Payne | AP
Denny Hamlin set a track record on Friday with a lap at 129.991 miles per hour to win the pole at Bristol Motor Speedway.
bled it pretty bad into Turn 3 and didn’t finish the lap. But I knew the first one was good.” So good that he wasn’t very worried when Keselowski and Logano both pulled back onto the track as the clock ticked down to attempt to bump Hamlin from the pole. The teammates swept the front row at Phoenix and Las Vegas, where the new
format was first used this season, and they made one last run at Hamlin. Keselowski came up just short, settling for second at 129.965. Logano was fourth, behind Hamlin’s teammate Matt Kenseth. “I feel like we did what we were supposed to do to be able to
go out there and give it a shot for the pole,” said Logano, the polewinner last week at Las Vegas. “Denny’s strategy was pretty good. Just not good enough for us.” The Penske drivers were only able to make those final attempts because of a new rule this week by NASCAR that permitted the use of cooling units on pit road
for teams to cool their engines following their runs. NASCAR decided Tuesday to allow the devices following a conference call with crew chiefs because of safety concerns raised by drivers. Because the engines had been getting so hot following the qualifying runs and the cooling units were not allowed, drivers were running laps on the bottom of the track at slow speeds to cool down. It was going on at the same time as other drivers were sailing by at full speed, and many drivers complained they had near collisions. “I think that rule change has made qualifying even better,” Keselowski said. “It’s removed danger and replaced with opportunity. I think that was for the betterment of the sport and certainly if for no other reason than safety, it was definitely worth it. But I also feel like being able to go out there and make multiple runs is now a lot more plausible.” The early season struggles continued for Stewart-Haas Racing and even hit Kevin Harvick, who had been the lone bright spot for the organization through the first three races. Kurt Busch was the highest SHR qualifier at 13th, but Harvick was 27th and Danica Patrick was the last driver to qualify on speed at 36th. Team coowner Tony Stewart had to use a provisional to make it in the field and will start 37th.
Photo by Chris O’Meara | AP
Robert Garrigus shot a 5-under 66 on Friday to take a 3-shot leading at the Valspar Championship at Innisbrook in Palm Harbor, Fla.
Garrigus takes lead and Daly struggles By DOUG FERGUSON ASSOCIATED PRESS
PALM HARBOR, Fla. — Robert Garrigus figured out Innisbrook on Friday for a 5-under 66 to build a threeshot lead going into the weekend at the Valspar Championship. Garrigus is among the longest hitters in golf, and he took advantage of his power on a pristine afternoon in the Tampa Bay area. He birdied all the par 5s for the second day in a row. Garrigus has made only two other birdies this week, on a par 3 and a par 4. Garrigus was at 7-under 135. He was three shots ahead of Kevin Na, who shot a 68. The group at 3-under 139 included Justin Rose, Matteo Manassero, Pat Perez and Matt Every.
John Daly shoots a 12 on his way to a 90 John Daly has gone 17 straight years on the PGA Tour with at least one round in the 80s. He didn’t even manage that Friday in the Valspar Championship. He missed a 4-foot putt on the last hole at Innisbrook and shot a careerhigh 90. “I didn’t give up,” Daly said. “I tried.” He used up 12 of those shots on the 16th hole — tied for his fourth-highest score on any one hole — but was more concerned with the putting yips. Daly said the yips began last Sunday in Puerto Rico and reached a low point at Innisbrook. He took 70 putts over two days, including a four-putt on the second hole of Friday’s round. “You’re going to have big scores on holes. That’s just
the way golf is,” Daly said. “But when you’ve got the yips, that’s no fun.” For Daly, there was nothing fun about Friday, especially the 16th hole. He started with a tee shot into the water. He had about 270 yards to cover the lake after his penalty drop and failed twice. From there, he hit a smotherhook well to the left of the water, only to hit what he described as a shank with his 7-iron well right of the green. He took three chips to reach the green and oneputted for a 12. Daly’s highest score ever was an 18 on the sixth hole of the 1998 Bay Hill Invitational. This wasn’t anything like that. For one thing, he hit only three balls in the water. “I got two good drops and hit a heel-cut 3-wood into the water,” he said. “Then I shanked a 7-iron, chili-dipped a chip, it was buried, didn’t get that out. ... It was a good 12. I got upand-down for 12.” It was the 16th time on the PGA Tour that Daly has made at least a 10 on a hole. Friday was the one-year anniversary of his most recent when he took a 10 on the third hole after twice hitting a tree while trying to get out of a forest. On the PGA Tour alone, he now has 62 rounds of 80 or higher. Daly said he needed to find help with the yips after what already has been a bad week. The 47-year-old with two majors said he was treated for plantar fasciitis in his left heel on Wednesday, and he was walking with a slight limp toward the parking lot. “I’m falling apart,” he said. The putting is what unnerved him. Daly had some of the softest hands in golf
when he won the 1991 PGA Championship and the 1995 British Open at St. Andrews. But his putting stroke, even more than elbow surgery last year, has hurt him. His last good chance to win a tournament was the 2005 American Express Championship at Harding Park, where he three-putted from 15 feet in a playoff against Tiger Woods. “It’s my head, my hands, and I can’t stop it,” Daly said. “On a short stroke, I get quick. On my normal, long stroke, I come up. Even my legs are moving. I should just go put myself in a straitjacket and try that. I’ve always been a quick putter, so I should never get the yips. But I got ‘em. I got ‘em bad. Daly, who has been playing on sponsor exemptions for the last eight years, was not sure where he would play next. He said he was supposed to play in Indonesia in a few weeks for the start of the OneAsia circuit, but the missing Malaysian Airlines flight shook him up. “I was going to Indonesia, but since they can’t find a 777,” he said, shaking his head as his voice trailed off. “I ain’t about to fly on a plane right now. It’s a sick feeling. I’d have to go right there. I canceled it. I said, ‘No way I’m getting on a plane to fly overseas.’ A 777? One of the nicest planes in existence? “It’s scary,” he said. “There are more important things in life than a round of golf. I’m scared to fly. Our world, it’s scary what’s going on. (Buildings) blowing up in New York. A guy running over people in Austin, Texas? What the hell is going on? It’s frightening.” In his eyes, a 90 didn’t seem so bad.
Photo by Chris Carlson | AP
The New York Knicks have agreed to a deal with Phil Jackson to have the 11-time NBA champion head the team’s front office.
Phil Jackson joins New York Knicks By TIM REYNOLDS ASSOCIATED PRESS
Phil Jackson is returning to the NBA. Jackson has agreed to run the New York Knicks’ front office and will be introduced at a news conference Tuesday morning, a person familiar with the negotiations between the 11-time champion coach and the team told The Associated Press on Friday. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the Knicks would only confirm that a “major announcement” involving team executives was scheduled. Jackson also did not make any immediate public comment. The move had been expected for several days, with Knicks star Carmelo Anthony saying earlier in the week that he was told Jackson would be “coming on board” with the team, which has not won an NBA championship since 1973. Jackson played for that team. He has been out of the league and largely out of the public eye since 2011, when he ended his coaching stint with the Los Angeles Lakers. His arrival in New York will likely usher in a new era for the Knicks, who may miss the playoffs this season after winning 54 games a year ago. Even NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said earli-
er this week that he wanted to see Jackson back in the game, saying “the league needs him.” Apparently, the Knicks felt they needed him as well. The 68-year-old Jackson has said in the past that teams have tried to lure him back to the NBA, and there has been speculation for several days that this offer from the Knicks would be good enough to get him to interrupt retirement. Other than announcing the Tuesday news conference, the Knicks declined further comment. Jackson won six championships as coach of the Chicago Bulls, then five more with the Lakers. Now comes a new challenge: Building a winner from the front office. And he’ll be facing a number of big questions right away, such as the fate of coach Mike Woodson, and what can the team do to try and keep Anthony, who will have the right to depart as a free agent this summer.
Kings recall Royce White SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The Sacramento Kings recalled forward Royce White on Thursday from the Reno Bighorns of the NBA Development League.
White signed a 10-day contract with the Kings on March 6 and immediately reported to the Bighorns. The former Iowa State player averaged 8.8 points, 4.3 rebounds, 2.8 assists and 24.8 minutes in four games for Reno.
Bucks sign forward Wright MILWAUKEE — The Milwaukee Bucks have signed free-agent forward Chris Wright to a 10-day contract. General Manager John Hammond announced the signing Friday. The six-foot-eight, 225 pound Wright has been with the D-League’s Maine Red Claws for the last two seasons. He played 38 games with the Red Claws this season, averaging 19.5 points and 8.1 rebounds per game. He’s had 16 double-doubles this year, including six in his last eight outings. Hammond was undrafted in 2011 and was selected by the Red Claws. He played in four games, then signed with the Golden State Warriors, appearing in 24 games that season. He earned a start in Golden State’s season finale at San Antonio, and tallied a career-best 25 points and eight rebounds while shooting 11-of-14 from the field.