BG Reads | News You Need to Know (February 17, 2022)
[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]
Austin City Council credits 'rethinking' of police cadet academy with more change to come (Community Impact)
The training of new Austin Police Department officers will continue following the graduation of the city's "reimagined" 144th cadet class in January, a cohort city and police leaders said they hope will start to bring a shifted culture to the force.
City Council and those involved in the past year's training process gathered Feb. 15 to consider next steps for the police cadet academy that was rebooted last spring following an extended pause. Council's conditional vote to restart training last May came in the wake of broader commitments to public safety changes in Austin, an initiative described as on track but still with room for improvement.
"This process of rethinking our academy is one that we need to be continually engaged in, and there’s still very much work to be done. We have done a lot, and your staff and your cadets and your officers have made some significant changes, but I think there's still important work to be done," Mayor Pro Tem Alison Alter said… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Price tag, scope of Infineon's factory expansion plans revealed in incentives application (Austin Business Journal)
Infineon's proposed expansion comes as a wave of chip companies target the Austin metro for growth, driven by federal chipmaking initiatives and ongoing worldwide chip shortages. Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. plans to build a $17 billion next-generation semiconductor plant in Taylor, northeast of Austin. Other companies are circling the region — sources have told ABJ that Santa Clara, California-based Applied Materials Inc. and Boise, Idaho-based Micron Technology Inc. are considering major investments.
Infineon's Austin campus is located on 56 acres that it owns at 5204 E. Ben White Blvd., where it has 1.2 million square feet of building space and more than 850 employees, according to documents included in the application. The proposed project — representing $75 million in investment for buildings and $625 million in machinery and other personal property — would grow both the building space and staff by more than 10%… (LINK TO STORY)
Another robot restaurant delivery service comes to Austin (Eater Austin)
Los Angeles-based robot delivery service Coco made its way into Austin this month. Austin restaurants participating in the program include Vaquero Taquero, Arpeggio Grill, Bambo Bistro, Clay Pit, DeSano Pizzeria, Tuk Tuk Thai, and Aviator Pizza. The robots, which will be controlled remotely, will make deliveries in the South Lamar, South Congress, general South Austin, downtown, North, North Loop, and Domain areas. Last summer, food delivery service company Refraction AI debuted its robots with Southside Flying Pizza… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS NEWS]
Texas sues CDC to stop mask mandates on planes (Texas Tribune)
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and U.S. Rep. Beth Van Duyne, R-Irving, are suing the Biden administration to end mask mandates on planes.
The lawsuit, filed Wednesday, argues that the mandate imposes a “restriction on travelers’ liberty interests” and that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention does not have the authority to introduce such a blanket preventive measure.
First issued in January 2021, the federal mask mandate requires travelers to wear masks while using public transportation services or facilities, including airports and subway stations. Those who violate the mask mandate could be subject to fines… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Galveston sea level to rise more than two feet by 2060, report says (Houston Chronicle)
America’s coastline will see sea levels rise in the next 30 years by as much as they did in the entire 20th century, a government report warns, hitting the Texas coast especially hard. Between now and 2060, scientists predict almost 25 inches of sea level rise in Galveston — a dramatic scenario for a coastal city already vulnerable to hurricane storm surges and tidal flooding. Seas lapping against the U.S. shore will be 10 to 12 inches higher by 2050, with parts of Louisiana and Texas projected to see waters a foot and a half higher, according to a 111-page report issued Tuesday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and six other federal agencies. The western Gulf of Mexico coast, should get hit the most with the highest sea level rise — 16 to 18 inches — by 2050, the report said.
“Make no mistake: Sea level rise is upon us,“ said Nicole LeBoeuf, director of NOAA’s National Ocean Service. The projected increase is especially alarming given that in the 20th century, seas along the Atlantic coast rose at the fastest clip in 2,000 years. LeBoeuf warned that the cost will be high, pointing out that much of the American economy and 40 percent of the population are along the coast. However, the worst of the long-term sea level rise from the melting of ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland probably won’t kick in until after 2100, said ocean service oceanographer William Sweet, the report’s lead author. Warmer water expands, and the melting ice sheets and glaciers adds more water to the worlds oceans. The report “is the equivalent of NOAA sending a red flag up“ about accelerating the rise in sea levels, said University of Wisconsin-Madison geoscientist Andrea Dutton, a specialist in sea level rise who wasn’t part of the federal report. The coastal flooding the U.S. is seeing now “will get taken to a whole new level in just a couple of decades.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[NATIONAL NEWS]
Feds say Oath Keepers plot went beyond Jan. 6 attack on Capitol (NBC News)
A federal judge on Wednesday expressed skepticism about releasing the founder of the right-wing Oath Keepers organization ahead of his trial on seditious conspiracy charges in connection with the Jan. 6 riot, as prosecutors revealed new evidence about the plot and how it extended beyond the U.S. Capitol attack. Elmer Stewart Rhodes III was arrested in January, charged along with several other Oath Keepers in a seditious conspiracy case that alleges they "planned to stop the lawful transfer of presidential power" and keep former President Donald Trump in office. The feds said that Rhodes — who was on the grounds of the Capitol on Jan. 6 — had helped organize “quick reaction forces“ (QRFs), including at a hotel in nearby Virginia.
A federal magistrate judge in Texas ordered Rhodes held until trial last month, and his attorneys appealed. Since his first detention hearing, Rhodes testified before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack. Federal authorities argued before Judge Amit P. Mehta on Wednesday that there were no conditions of release that would reasonably assure the safety of the community and Rhodes’ future court appearances. Assistant U.S. Attorney Kathryn Rakoczy revealed that Rhodes wrote in a group chat with other co-conspirators that Jan. 6 could be "final nail" in the coffin of the United States. Trump "must know that if he fails to act, we will. He has to understand that we will have no choice," Rhodes wrote, according to the government. "With Trump (preferably) or without him, we have no choice." Rakoczy argued that the plot to oppose the transfer of power to President Joe Biden went beyond Jan. 6… (LINK TO FULL STORY)