If Dallas’ Office of Environmental Quality and Sustainability (OEQS) has its way, there will soon be vegetation growing along the walls of downtown’s underground pedestrian tunnels. That’s not the only unusual place food might be grown under the proposed Comprehensive Urban Agriculture Plan. Vacant strip malls, empty big box stores…
Dimple Jackson lived on Audrey Street in Dallas’ Dixon Circle neighborhood for more than 50 years. When she died in 2019 at the age of 93, the street lost its guiding light, the woman her son Robert Jackson calls “the neighborhood matriarch.” Soon the street she called home for five…
A North Texas man was sentenced on Monday to more than three years in federal prison for his role in a scam that victimized many people to the tune of thousands of dollars each, according to Leigha Simonton, the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Texas. Nigerian-born Emanuel…
With school shootings having become almost commonplace in the United States, school districts and law enforcement agencies have continued to search for ways to prevent them. A new technological program designed to assist faculty in the event of an active shooter takes the focus away from stopping the shooter by…
On Sunday, President Joe Biden is scheduled to make his first visit to survey the border crisis in El Paso since he became president in 2021. Biden’s opportunity to see firsthand the many thousands of migrants stationed along the southern border comes after U.S. officials say they encountered more than…
Last week, Dallas-based Southwest Airlines made the sort of national headlines no airline wants to make. It’s fair to think that goes double for the more than 1 million travelers affected by last week’s mass flight cancellations. A typical flight schedule for the airline resumed on Friday, Dec. 30, following…
A Dallas man was charged on Wednesday for selling Glock “switches,” devices that convert semiautomatic weapons into fully automatic ones, to undercover officers. According to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas, Jeremiah Dwyen Ashley, 22, allegedly conducted sales of illegal firearms both…
A lot of attention at the beginning of the new year is directed toward the bills that the Texas Legislature will consider in the upcoming legislative session. But what about the bills from past sessions that have finally become law? Jan. 1 welcomed several new laws in Texas, the bills…
With the 88th Legislative session set to begin in less than a week, one North Texas state representative continues to fill the docket with some rather eye-catching filings. Frisco Republican Jared Patterson, who has already filed bills to abolish the city of Austin and ban minors from social media usage,…
With each year, the news in Dallas seems to introduce as many questions as it does answers. Bills filed in the Texas legislature, elections, proposed ordinances, all-day city council committee hearings and things of that nature are all certainly notable in their own way, but for the most part, we…
There are many traditions associated with the Dallas Cowboys. Some are fun, such as the annual Thanksgiving Day game and halftime show, and some aren’t so great, like the consistent early-round playoff exits. During Saturday’s win against the Philadelphia Eagles at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, another tradition made its unwelcome…
On Tuesday morning, you didn’t have to look hard to see plenty of signs that things had not been going well for a certain segment of holiday travelers. Even if one had somehow missed seeing the headlines and social media posts generated by Southwest Airlines’ cancellation of over 2,800 flights…
The opiate crisis in America is still raging, and it has hit North Texas with a wallop. In Dallas, suspected opioid overdoses have seen a dramatic rise in number over the past three years. And with that number, the amount of Narcan administered by city EMS personnel has also skyrocketed…
We’ve taken a look at the most-read Observer news stories of 2022, which provided a peek into what the year’s most hotly debated topics were. We’ve also looked at the reports we thought were the weirdest and wildest of the year. But there’s more to Dallas than controversy and oddness,…
When it comes to reporting on what happens in and around Dallas, every year is weird in its own way. Perhaps weird is normal for Dallas? Even so, it seems as though each year since 2020 has only gotten weirder in Big D. Not surprisingly, in 2022 elected officials contributed…
Dozens of migrants arrived in Dallas on Tuesday and Wednesday after a three-hour bus ride from one of the several detention centers in Texas, where thousands of other migrants are still being processed for entry into the United States. For most, Oak Lawn United Methodist Church is but a brief…
With below-freezing temperatures approaching later this week just in time for Christmas, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas has issued a press release to let Texans know that it is “closely monitoring the weather situation.” It’s certainly good to know that the ERCOT is paying close attention to the upcoming…
A pair of North Texas residents pleaded not guilty on Dec. 16 to charges they defrauded insurers of more than $7 million via fake COVID-19 tests. A statement released by the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas, Leigha Simonton, claims that Terrance Barnard, 39, and Connie Jo Clampitt,…
Since 2007, school districts across Texas have been adopting the “guardian plan,” a rule that allows select faculty to carry guns on campus in the hopes that teachers can defend their students in the event of a school shooting. Many rural districts in Texas have adopted the plan over the…
If it wasn’t obvious before, we can say it’s official now: We like reading about polarizing public figures. They really move the needle. Perhaps it’s a schadenfreude thing, or perhaps we just want to keep tabs on the people who seek to have more power over others. Either way, the…
Last week a Texas court handed abortion-rights advocates a victory when it dismissed a lawsuit against a San Antonio doctor who provided an abortion in September to a woman who was more than six weeks pregnant. It’s a significant win for those who oppose Texas Senate Bill 8, also known…
While one recent report suggests that the City of Dallas is putting too much of its money into arresting, prosecuting and jailing its citizens, and not enough on providing what it calls Systems of Community Care, a different, new report says that Dallas is doing well in another area of…
