On Thursday, Odessans came together in honor of the survivors and victims of a 2019 mass shooting. The West Texas town commemorated the tragedy with a monument dedicated to the lives lost.   view article

An unusual invasive fish with chompers that bear an eerie resemblance to human teeth was reeled in from a Texas lake this week. Known as a pacu fish, the South American freshwater species are primarily herbivores and considered mostly harmless to people, although they are distantly related to piranhas. An angler caught the toothy fish at Lake Meredith in Sanford, Texas and it is currently being kept at the Lake Meredith Aquatic & Wildlife Museum. The museum shared video of the strange fish on Facebook, inviting visitors to come and see it for themselves.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced on Monday that the state has removed roughly a million people from its voter rolls since he signed a legislative overhaul of election laws in 2021. “Illegal voting in Texas will never be tolerated. We will continue to actively safeguard Texans’ sacred right to vote while also aggressively protecting our elections from illegal voting,” he said. However, election experts point out that both federal and state law already required voter roll maintenance, and the governor’s framing of this routine process as a protection against illegal voting could be used to undermine trust in elections. The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 already governs how states should keep their registration rolls accurate and up-to-date, and also includes protections to avoid the inadvertent removal of properly registered voters. “Year after year, people are taken off the voting rolls for all manner of innocuous reasons,” said Sarah Xiyi Chen, an attorney at the Texas Civil Rights Project. view article

In an open letter to school districts by Students Engaged in Advancing Texas, American Federation of Teachers union affiliate Texas AFT joined a coalition of student activists and more than 30 organizations urging superintendents to support the Biden administration’s radical changes to Title IX. According to the letter released on Wednesday, the groups claim Texas has “wasted taxpayer dollars on frivolous federal lawsuits.” view article

It was late into the night when the eruption of Mount Vesuvius nearly 2,000 years ago sent volcanic material over the beach at the ancient city of Herculaneum, where hundreds of men, women and children — and even a soldier — huddled in and around stone boat houses, awaiting rescuers who would never arrive. The A.D. 79 volcanic eruption had buried the seaside and left the beach out of reach to visitors, until now — when newly-completed restoration works mean visitors can set foot on the beach, as it appeared before the disaster, for the first time. The restoration of the beach allows people to see the site “from the same position” as “the ancient Roman people,” Francesco Sirano, the director of the Herculaneum archaeological park, said in an interview Thursday. “The visitors have to go down through a tunnel … and it’s like we go back two thousand years, and then suddenly you have the beach.” While Herculaneum is often overshadowed by its more famous neighbor, Pompeii, it was also destroyed by Mount Vesuvius — and the beach area is known for holding the remains of at least 330 people who died there, sheltering in the boat houses in hope of being rescued. Those remains, discovered in the 1980s, ’90s and 2000s, were mostly related women, children and babies, along with their dogs and sheep, while adults and young men were thought to have perished on the beach itself, according to researchers. view article

Flag Day 2024 is Friday, June 14. The date commemorates the adoption of the American flag's design, as well as the symbolism and history behind it. Many Americans are unfamiliar with the observation, especially compared to other patriotic days like the Fourth of July.  So, why do we celebrate Flag Day? What's the origin story behind it? Here's a brief rundown. view article

The library at Askew Elementary School is being transformed under Mike Miles "New Education System" into a "team center." A photo of the former library at Askew Elementary School, a Houston ISD school on the west side of town, that has transformed its library into a "New Education System" prototype with book shelves pushed to the side in favor of individual desks, has sparked outrage on social media as hundreds of parents and community members react to the shocking photo. It was posted on the Supporters of HISD Magnets and Budget Accountability Facebook group with the caption: "NES library is ready for next year." view article

   Talia Natterson is a sophomore at Crossroads School for Arts & Sciences, a private school in Los Angeles, California. She writes for her school publication, Crossfire.