Texas

A moderate earthquake rattled an area in east Texas near the Louisiana border. National Earthquake Information Center geophysicist Amy Vaughan says the quake happened at 3:12 a.m. Thursday and had a magnitude of 4.3. It was centered near Timpson, Texas. Shelby County Sheriff's dispatcher Jacob Allen says the only injury reported they've received is an elderly woman who fell out of her bed and cut her arm. Allen says the quake caused broken windows and fallen dishes, but no major damage has been reported.

WASHINGTON - A first-time contender from Texas won the annual National Geographic Bee Thursday in a contest that started with local competitions among about 4 million students around the country. Rahul Nagvekar, 14, of Sugar Land, Texas, will receive a $25,000 college scholarship, along with a trip to the Galapagos Islands. He beat Vansh Jain, 13, of Minocqua, Wis., on the fourth tie-breaking question. Much of the bee tested the 10 finalists' knowledge of history, world cultures, and landmarks.

ARLINGTON, Texas -- Slender Michael Young, the 2005 American League batting champion, hoped he'd checked his swing on one of those devastating 95-mile-per-hour Josh Beckett fastballs. The Rangers' shortstop, with two outs in the Texas seventh, did his best sell, holding his bat where he'd like to think he'd finished his swing. But Beckett, who had told pitching coach Al Nipper earlier in the night that he was good for 110 pitches, wasn't buying it. So he appealed to the masked man behind the plate, Bruce Dreckman, who obliged, checking with first base umpire Ed Hickox.

The story line on the Republican Senate race in Texas is a now familiar one: A veteran politician supported by the GOP establishment is challenged by a young insurgent backed by national conservative groups. In this distinctly Texas episode in the saga for control of the Senate, David Dewhurst is the reserved, self-made millionaire and lieutenant governor facing off against Ted Cruz, the feisty son of a Cuban exile who calls himself "a proven fighter for liberty because his family knows what it means to lose it. " The underdog is former Dallas mayor and businessman Tom Leppert,...

HUNTSVILLE, Texas - A member of the infamous "Texas 7" gang of escaped fugitives was executed yesterday for killing a Dallas-area police officer during its weeks on the run. Michael Rodriguez, who had dropped all appeals and volunteered for lethal injection, apologized profusely to the officer's widow and his own former sister-in-law before the lethal injection. He had been serving a life sentence for killing his wife at the time of the 2000 escape.

The Aug. 24 game at Texas will be at 7:05 p.m. (ET) instead of 8:05 p.m. (ET) after being picked up by ESPN2. NESN also has the game.

SOUTH WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. -- Texas is two steps away from a world championship. Chance Murski hit a grand slam and Randal Grichuk hit a three-run homer to lead Richmond, Texas, to the United States final with an 8-2 win over Morganton, N.C., last night at the Little League World Series. Texas plays the winner of the Thousand Oaks, Calif., vs. Preston, Md., game Saturday for the championship. The world championship is Sunday. Curacao 9, Taiwan 8 -- Jonathan Schoop had the game-tying hit in the sixth and the winning hit in the seventh to lead Willem Willemstad,...

WASHINGTON - The nation's top geography whiz breezed through questions about mountain ranges, rivers, and world capitals yesterday, but he was stumped when National Geographic Bee host Alex Trebek asked him to name one of his weaknesses. "Um . . . " said Eric Yang, 13, pausing. The Texas teen had just revealed to the "Jeopardy!" host how he crafts his own chess strategies and plays the piano. "That's OK," Trebek replied. "You remind me of a former president, but we won't get into that.

AUSTIN, Texas — The president of the University of Texas will ask the school’s regents to remove the name of a former professor and Ku Klux Klan member from a campus dormitory. Simkins Hall, a two-story brick dorm built in the 1950s, is named after William Simkins, who was a popular law school professor in the early part of the 20th century but one with a dubious past. He served as a Confederate fighter and early organizer of the Ku Klux Klan in Florida, promoting the Klan and bragging about efforts to terrorize and harass “darkey’’ in campus speeches and publications.

The Nationwide Tour Championship will be played at the TPC Craig Ranch course in Texas next fall. The course in McKinney, Texas, hosted the 2008 tournament. Tour officials said a formal announcement would come Monday. The Tour had said last month it would not return to the Daniel Island club after three seasons hosting its year-ending tournament because the area is also holding the PGA Championship at The Ocean Course on Kiawah Island. The tour and Daniel Island are discussing a return to the Ralston Creek Course here in 2013.

Linda Galayda hauled water and flagged down truck drivers to ask about their hay. She sold calves and young cows and made her son leave their East Texas family ranch for a job in San Antonio. About 200 miles southeast of her, Bob and Darlene Stryk heeded lessons from a dry spell 16 years ago and kept their 130-year-old farm afloat by selling higher-priced, specialty products like raw milk and cheddar cheese before the drought forced them to make their most difficult decision yet. The drought that parched the vast Texas landscape, sucking dry ponds, lakes and reservoirs and...

Ongoing financial woes, including three missed payrolls, prompted a small private East Texas junior college to furlough its workforce Wednesday while officials try to reorganize and save the 158-year-old school. The furloughs were the decision of consultants in charge of restructuring the college and not the board of trustees, Jack Nelson, vice president of the Lon Morris College board of trustees, told the Jacksonville Daily Progress. Miles McCall also tendered his resignation as college president after he was told negotiating with creditors...

In Ron Washington's view, Texas pitcher Scott Feldman did an adequate job making a fill-in start after Neftali Feliz ended up on the disabled list and the Rangers were left with limited options. Except for one poorly placed pitch from Feldman that led to four runs. "We wanted a sinker so we can keep it on the ground," Washington said. "It didn't go on the ground; the ball left the park. " Seattle's Alex Liddi hit the first major league grand slam by an Italian-born player in half-century, Kevin Millwood threw six shutout innings and the Mariners took two of three from AL...

Elvis Andrus lined a two-strike pitch into the left-center field gap for a two-run triple, Josh Hamilton made two tremendous catches in center field and added an RBI double, and the Texas Rangers snapped Seattle's win streak at four with a 3-1 win over the Mariners on Tuesday night. While Hamilton continues to scuffle at the plate, his defense in the outfield remains suburb. His biggest play came in the first inning when he chased down Casper Wells' two-out bases loaded drive to deep left-center and contorted his body to make the catch on the warning track.

Ichiro Suzuki and the Seattle Mariners chased Texas' Yu Darvish after just four innings in his shortest start of the season, and the Mariners rolled to their fourth straight win in a 6-1 victory over the Rangers on Monday night. Felix Hernandez (4-3) rebounded from consecutive poor starts to hold the top offense in baseball to one run in eight innings. Seattle became the first team that Darvish had to face for a second time and for a second time he struggled to solve the Mariners.

When the game was over, Yu Darvish felt the need to apologize. The latest challenge in his season-long education of pitching in the majors did not go well. "I wasn't able to go deep in the game as a starter should," Darvish said through a translator. Ichiro Suzuki and the Seattle Mariners chased Darvish after just four innings in his shortest start of the season, and the Mariners rolled to their fourth straight win in a 6-1 victory over the Rangers on Monday night.

WASHINGTON - A first-time contender from Texas won the annual National Geographic Bee Thursday in a contest that started with local competitions among about 4 million students around the country. Rahul Nagvekar, 14, of Sugar Land, Texas, will receive a $25,000 college scholarship, along with a trip to the Galapagos Islands. He beat Vansh Jain, 13, of Minocqua, Wis., on the fourth tie-breaking question. Much of the bee tested the 10 finalists' knowledge of history, world cultures, and landmarks.

The former governor of a Mexican state bordering Texas accepted millions of dollars in bribes from drug cartels and invested the money in Texas real estate, federal prosecutors alleged in two forfeiture cases filed Tuesday. No criminal charges have been filed against Tomas Yarrington, who served as governor of Tamaulipas state from 1999 to 2004. But the civil actions allege that Yarrington "acquired millions of dollars in payments" while in public office from drug cartels "and from various extortion or bribery schemes.