Page 5 - Jeff Ormsby News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Credit: Jordan Vonderhaar for The Texas Tribune Sign up for The Brief, our daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news. A plan to overhaul the pension for Texas’ future state employees and shore up billions of dollars in unfunded obligations owed to retirees advanced out of the Texas Senate on Wednesday. Republican State Sen. Joan Huffman’s proposal to revamp the Texas Employees Retirement System moved forward by a 19-12 vote, despite fierce opposition from some state workers’ unions. Senate Bill 321 would enroll new state workers hired af...

Texas jails and prisons see brutal cold and overfilled toilets in winter storm Texas Tribune Updated:  Tags:  As subfreezing temperatures plunged Texas into a power crisis this week, inmates and officers at prisons and jails suffered through harsh and often unsanitary environments. Broken windows and holes in walls let frigid air into unheated cells, extra blankets were quickly taken away, food servings were meager and unflushable toilets overfilled in dorms stuffed with more than 60 men, inmates and their loved ones reported. Corrections officers were kept at the units for days without goi...

Texas prisons have doled out thousands of COVID-19 vaccines — but none have gone to prisoners who get the virus at high rates Texas Tribune Updated:  Tags:  The Texas prison system has administered more than 5,500 doses of the coronavirus vaccine, but none have been given to inmates who qualify for the shot under the state’s current phase of the rollout. And the Texas Department of Criminal Justice has repeatedly refused to provide information on when or how its older or medically vulnerable incarcerated population will be vaccinated. More than 240 state inmates have died after contract...

Jails and prisons were hit hard in the pandemic and experts say they need to be prioritized for the vaccines CNN 1/11/2021 By Christina Maxouris, CNN © Patrick T. Fallon/AFP/Getty Images Vials of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine are prepared to be administered to front-line health care workers under an emergency use authorization at a drive up vaccination site from Renown Health in Reno, Nevada on December 17, 2020. (Photo by Patrick T. Fallon / AFP) (Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images) Yesenia Lara spoke to her uncle on the phone nearly every day until M...

Jails and prisons were hit hard by Covid-19 and experts say they need to be prioritized for the vaccines Yesenia Lara spoke to her uncle on the phone nearly every day until May 1. Raul Rodriguez, 61, who was in a Texas county jail after a DUI conviction, had struggled with alcoholism but was a loving man who was “outgoing, always laughing,” she said. He told her there were about 15 to 20 other inmates in his cell and that they cut up shirts to use as face masks. He mentioned his throat hurt. And then she didn’t hear from him again. A little more than two weeks after their last conversat...