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Man arrested after fire burns vacant downtown Austin building

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:00:25 GMT

AUSTIN (KXAN) — A man was arrested one day after Austin Fire crews put out a fire at a vacant building on Congress Avenue between 9th and 10th streets. No one was hurt, but it caused an estimated $1 million in damages, AFD said.The Austin Fire Department told KXAN crews were called out around 11:40 p.m. Monday after a 911 caller reported seeing smoke. Fire crews saw flames in a second-floor window of the building at 907 Congress Avenue and called out more crews to help. AFD posted on social media at 1 a.m. that crews were working outside the building because of structural conditions. AFD said crews were putting out hotspots and you could no longer see flames from the outside of the building. The fire was out early Tuesday morning, and AFD tweeted at 9:21 a.m. Tuesday the building was under fire standby all night as crews were watching it and extinguishing small flare-ups.John Daniel Banks, 32, was arrested in connection with the fire and faces an arson charge, according to AFD. If c...

UT professor awarded 'Nobel Prize of Computing' for developing Ethernet 50 years ago

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:00:25 GMT

AUSTIN (KXAN) — University of Texas at Austin Professor Robert Metcalfe has been awarded the 2022 Association for Computing Machinery A.M. Turing Award – referred to as the “Nobel Prize of Computing” – for the invention, standardization and commercialization of Ethernet.Metcalfe is a professor emeritus in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UT Austin. The award is named after Alan M. Turing – famous for his role in developing the modern computer – and includes a $1 million prize with financial support provided by Google, according to a UT Austin release. “It is dangerous to accept an award for developing Ethernet, which turns 50 on May 22, 2023,” Metcalfe was quoted saying in the release. “Over Ethernet’s 50 years, hundreds of people have earned some claim of inventorship. Join me in saying to these folks, ‘Thank you.’”Metcalfe developed Ethernet in the 1970s while working as a computer scientist with the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). It was there...

When will Austin decide on its official light rail design?

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:00:25 GMT

AUSTIN (KXAN) -- Austinites have a little more than a month to weigh in on Project Connect's initial light rail options before work happens to finalize the official design.The Austin Transit Partnership debuted five scaled down options for the city's upcoming light rail system at an open house Tuesday evening. Greg Canally, ATP's executive director, referred to it as the program's initial investment in light rail, with options featuring between 6-mile and 10-mile-long routes that are projected to service up to nearly 40,000 people each day. ICYMI: Project Connect debuts five scaled down light rail options For community members who missed Tuesday's open house, ATP is offering a virtual version online, which residents can view and submit feedback on through May 2. A virtual light rail community update will also be held on April 6 from 5:30-7:30 p.m.Beyond that, officials said Project Connect leaders will host informational meetings with city and transit boards and commissions, neigh...

Texas committee to take up drag performance, story time restrictions

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:00:25 GMT

AUSTIN (KXAN) — A couple of bills that would restrict drag-related events and even criminalize performers in Texas will come up Thursday for discussion for the first time during this legislative session. This debate follows a statehouse rally earlier this week that brought out hundreds to defend drag and call for more LGBTQ protections. Members of the Texas Senate state affairs committee will start discussions on Senate Bill 12 and Senate Bill 1601, both filed by Republican State Sen. Bryan Hughes. The meeting begins at 9 a.m. in the Senate chamber. PREVIOUS COVERAGE: Drag story time puts state funding in jeopardy for Texas libraries Senate Bill 12SB 12, if ultimately passed by both chambers and signed by the governor into law, would levy a penalty up to $10,000 against any business owner who hosts a "sexually oriented performance" with anyone who's younger than 18 present. A city or county would also not be able to host these kinds of performances on public property, according t...

Windy, humid weather ahead of storm potential on Friday

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:00:25 GMT

AUSTIN (KXAN) -- Gusty south winds are bringing warm, humid air into the region as a western storm slowly approaches.Thursday will look and feel similar to Wednesday with morning clouds and a bit of drizzle, clearing into break of afternoon sun. Southerly wind gusts are expected to reach 25-35 mph, potentially affecting the Dell Match Play golf tournament on Lake Austin.The western storm drags a front through our area early Friday morning, bringing a broken line of strong to severe storms into the Hill Country before sunrise.Line of storms expected to move in early Friday morningThere is a marginal threat of wind or hail damage with these storms Friday, then sunshine returns Friday afternoon.Severe thunderstorm threat early FridaySevere thunderstorm threat daytime FridayOverall, rainfall totals look minimal with most of us not favored to see more than a quarter of an inch. Isolated higher rainfall amounts are possible in parts of the Hill Country where storms are stronger. BLOG: ...

Other voices: Law students shout down free speech

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:00:25 GMT

The disdain law students and their administrators show the First Amendment and differing viewpoints should be a major societal concern.Earlier this month, federal circuit court Judge Kyle Duncan appeared at Stanford Law School to give a speech. He came at the invitation of the Federalist Society. His talk was titled, “The Fifth Circuit in Conversation with the Supreme Court: Covid, Guns, and Twitter.” Such gatherings are one of the benefits of attending an elite law school.Instead, what took place would have gotten a preschooler sent home for the day. Many Standard law students were angry that Judge Duncan was coming, because he is — gasp! — a traditional conservative. Some held up profane signs in the room where he was speaking. As he began his lecture, many students shouted and heckled him with taunts such as “scumbag” and “you’re a liar.”This is wildly inappropriate, but it has become the norm from the “tolerant” l...

Theater review: ‘My Fair Lady’ returns with energy to Ordway

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:00:25 GMT

When the pandemic brought everything to a halt in March 2020, the last theater production I’d experienced was Lincoln Center Theater’s “My Fair Lady.” It had just completed a week at Minneapolis’ Orpheum Theatre, and I found the show curiously low on energy and heart. Yes, it was beautifully designed and choreographed, but the cast lacked much in the way of palpable enthusiasm for the material.In hindsight, I contemplate whether the performers were distracted by trepidation, for COVID-19 was starting to claim victims in much of the country, including the company’s home base of New York City. Surely, there were more important things on their minds.So I attended opening night of the production’s Twin Cities return – this time at St. Paul’s Ordway Music Theater – optimistic that a new cast would relish the return to live performance, and run gleefully into the arms of a musical theater masterpiece.And I’m happy to report that is indeed the case. This “My Fair Lady” is a high-energy del...

Thomas Friedman: Everything, everywhere is going to change all at once

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:00:25 GMT

I had a most remarkable but unsettling experience last week. Craig Mundie, the former chief research and strategy officer for Microsoft, was giving me a demonstration of GPT-4, the most advanced version of the artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI and launched in November. Craig was preparing to brief the board of my wife’s museum, Planet Word, of which he is a member, about the effect ChatGPT will have on words, language and innovation.“You need to understand,” Craig warned me before he started his demo, “this is going to change everything about how we do everything. I think that it represents mankind’s greatest invention to date. It is qualitatively different — and it will be transformational.”Large language modules like ChatGPT will steadily increase in their capabilities, Craig added, and take us “toward a form of artificial general intelligence,” delivering efficiencies in operations, ideas, discoveries and insights “that have never been attainable before...

Cory Franklin and Robert Weinstein: The health of Americans is a big reason for our high COVID-19 death rate

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:00:25 GMT

For the past three years, the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated, and will continue to demonstrate in the future, that America is one of the unhealthiest countries in the industrialized world. Critics on the right and left harp on how the pandemic was handled, but in fact the dismal outcomes in the U.S. do not reflect management of the crisis so much as our underlying health as a country.With the caveat that the actual figures from China are unknown, in the past three years, the U.S. is the only country in the world that has suffered more than 1 million deaths from COVID-19. The U.S. death total exceeds that of every other country, except Brazil, by more than half a million. Even when normalized for population, the U.S. per-capita death rate is just outside the top 10 in the world and rising steadily.This is not the result of the policies of President Donald Trump or President Joe Biden. Nor does the explanation for the high number of U.S. deaths lie in an abnormally high case total...

Letters: Building enduring relationships is what matters

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:00:25 GMT

Building relationshipsMayor Melvin Carter signed a proclamation making March 18 Vic Rosenthal Day. Vic led the Minnesota Senior Federation for many years before deftly guiding Jewish Community Action as its longest-serving executive director before retiring in 2017. Even in retirement, though, Vic kept active, leading many diverse elder talking circles while serving on the City of St. Paul’s Reparations Legislative Advisory Committee.He would still be doing this important work. However Vic entered hospice care on March 17.Vic is one of those ordinary people who did extraordinary things in his life.At a time when the societal leaders who too frequently garner our attention are those making the loudest noises, Vic’s leadership style was decidedly different. He preferred making the necessary connections behind the scenes, while encouraging and mentoring everyday people into public leadership roles. Vic has always been most interested in working with society’s underdogs. He had a chip o...