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Judge reduces bail for mother of Sherin Mathews
A judge reduced the bail Monday for Sini Mathews, the mother of a 3-year-old girl who was found dead in a culvert last month.
The judge reduced her bail to $100,000. If she posts bond, she will be free pending her trial on a charge of child endangerment or abandonment. But she would remain under house arrest and wear an ankle monitor. She surrendered her passport. Her bail was originally set at $250,000.
At Monday's hearing, a detective testified he thinks Sini Mathews is a flight risk because she asked a pediatrician for immunization records for her biological daughter so she could "go to India," KXAS-TV (Channel 5) reported.
And: A wrong-way driver crashed into 2 cars early Monday on LBJ Freeway near the Dallas-Garland border.
Graduate students fear House's tax-reform plan would cost them their shots at advanced degrees
The laboratory. Class. More lab time. Homework. Mentoring several freshman students. More lab work. More homework. Helping run a student government group. More time in the lab.
That’s a typical week for University of Texas at Austin graduate student Samantha Fuchs, whose pursuit of a Ph.D. in engineering earns her a $20,000-plus stipend and a waiver of tuition.
But the House GOP tax bill could upset that balancing act by starting to tax the tuition break that Fuchs and tens of thousands of other graduate students receive in exchange for teaching or doing research. Suddenly, money that those students never see would be treated as taxable income.
And for some graduate students — often already struggling to make ends meet — the potential tax hit could be the difference between pursuing an advanced degree or not.
Editorial: Rep. Joe Barton's future should be in voters' hands following cringe-worthy photo.
Keller warehouse that supplies D-FW Kroger stores hit with major layoffs
About 690 people who work at a warehouse which supplies groceries to Kroger stores in North Texas have been laid off, effective Dec. 10.
SouthStar LLC said that Kroger is the only customer of the facility located at 5801 Kroger Drive in Keller. The supermarket chain has terminated its contract with SouthStar and has found a new contractor, according to a letter released Monday from SouthStar to the Texas Employment Commission notifying the state of the job losses.
About 615 of the employees are represented by Teamsters Local 745 and UFCW Local 540.
And: D-FW homebuilders say hurricanes haven't made the labor shortage worse — yet.
Photo of the day
Best friends and future roommates Chris Wheeler (left) and Michael Poston hug each other at the future site of Daymark Living in Waxahachie, where they will be the first residents.
Daymark, the brainchild John Poston, Michael's father and founder of The Rise School of Dallas, will allow adults with developmental and intellectual differences to live independently.
When John Poston dropped off Michael's twin sister, Margot, at the airport for her first year of college, he returned home to find Michael in the same spot he'd been in when they left, sitting on the sofa, watching videos on his smartphone. John knew his youngest son deserved to experience life as a great adventure, just like his other children.
Around the site
Hot stove league: What signing Doug Fister means to the Rangers' offseason pitching plans.
Minor crash: Southwest Airlines suffered a Cyber Monday website outage.
Lace 'em up: Dallas Running Club has opened registration for spring training groups.
Holiday playlist: Unwrap these 4 great albums from rock and country bands in Dallas.
Finally,
The Dallas Morning News requested a full list of the books Texas' nearly 150,000 inmates can and cannot read in the state's dozens of prisons. A total of 248,281 titles are on the approved list; another 10,073 are banned.
But they might not be the ones you think.
Alice Walker's The Color Purple, which won the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award for fiction, is not allowed. Neither is Freakonomics, the 2005 bestseller that explained concepts such as cheating at school and parenting techniques using economic theory.
But Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf, as well as his On National Socialism and World Relations, are both on the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's list of approved books. Also allowed are two books by former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke as well as James Battersby's The Holy Book of Adolf Hitler, described on Amazon.com as "the Bible of neo-Nazism and of esoteric Hitlerism."
According to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's policies, a book, magazine or other publication can be banned because of its content. But books can also be banned for how they’re manufactured. If the binding, cover or other parts can be used to hide contraband, it won't be allowed.
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