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    Five Charged in Cheating Scandal That Helped Over 200 ‘Unqualified’ Texas Teachers

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    Prosecutors said that the “kingpin,” a high school basketball coach in Houston, had helped educators fraudulently pass more than 400 tests.More than 200 “unqualified teachers” in Texas were able to get jobs or promotions at schools across the state under a board scheme in which impersonators were paid to take more than 400 certification exams for them, prosecutors said this week.Five people have been charged in the scheme, under which they earned a total of at least $1 million, the Harris County District Attorney’s Office said at a news conference on Monday.One of those charged, Vincent Grayson, a basketball coach at Booker T. Washington High School in Houston, Texas, was accused of being the “kingpin of this scheme,” Kim Ogg, the district attorney in Harris County, said. Mr. Grayson, 57, of Houston, worked to help educators, who usually paid $2,500 to have their certification exams taken by an impersonator at testing centers, Ms. Ogg said.“The extent of the scheme will never be fully known,” Ms. Ogg said. “But we know that at least 400 tests were taken and at least 200 teachers falsely certified.”Mr. Grayson’s lawyer, Cheryl E. Irvin, declined to comment and said that she was waiting for more information to be provided by the state regarding her client. Mr. Grayson is scheduled to appear in court again on Friday.The other people charged were an assistant principal at Booker T. Washington High School, a testing center employee, a “corrupt proctor,” and an assistant principal at Jack Yates High School in Houston, Ms. Ogg said. All five have been charged with two counts of engaging in organized criminal activity, Ms. Ogg said. She said that the charges are either first- or third-degree felonies, depending on the level of culpability. The maximum possible sentences range from two years to life in prison.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Crack, a Shift, Then Screams: Witnesses Describe Georgia Dock Collapse That Killed 7

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      Investigators have begun looking for reasons behind the failure at a ferry dock on Sapelo Island, the site of a festival celebrating the heritage of descendants of enslaved people. They had come to Sapelo Island, just off the curve of the Georgia coast, for a celebration of resilience, of a people, of a culture that for generations had been so fragile but could not be broken.The smell of smoked mullet drifted. Vendors sold red peas and rice. Performers onstage presented poetry and sang African spirituals.By midafternoon on Saturday, dozens readied for the trip back to the mainland, a route beginning with a ferry known as the Annemarie waiting at the end of the floating dock in the marsh. But then, a strange cracking noise. The walkway to the dock suddenly shifted. Then it collapsed.“Everyone’s falling into the water, and you’re hearing screams,” said Michael Wood, 43, who had been waiting in line to board.On Sunday, members of the tight-knit Gullah Geechee community, descendants of formerly enslaved people in the Southeast, who had gathered for a festival celebrating their heritage, mourned four women and three men, all of them older than 70, who were killed. And officials began investigating how a short journey to the only way off the Georgia island could have led to such tragedy.“The initial findings of our investigation at this point showed a catastrophic failure of the gangway, causing it to collapse,” said Walter Rabon, the commissioner of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, adding that investigators and engineers will be gathering evidence and interviewing witnesses. Three people were also injured and remain hospitalized in critical condition. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Texas Man Drops Suit Against Women Who Helped Ex-Wife Get Abortion Pills

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      The suit had accused the three women of wrongful death. It was part of a heated battle over the use of such pills in states with abortion bans.A Texas man has dropped his lawsuit against three women who helped his ex-wife obtain abortion pills, a case widely seen as designed to discourage private citizens from aiding women in using the pills in states where abortion is all but banned.The move on Thursday by the plaintiff, Marcus Silva, was part of a settlement with the defendants, Jackie Noyola, Amy Carpenter and Aracely Garcia. The exact details of the settlement were not made public, but they did not involve any financial terms, according to lawyers for both sides. Ms. Noyola and Ms. Carpenter also dropped counterclaims they had filed.Mr. Silva filed his suit shortly after the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade and one year after Texas essentially banned most abortions with a law that also deputized private individuals to sue anyone who “aids or abets” a woman seeking an abortion.One of Mr. Silva’s lawyers is Jonathan Mitchell, a former solicitor general of Texas. The architect of the state abortion ban, he is considered a pioneer in using private lawsuits to deter the procedure. Abortion rights groups accuse him of filing the suits to attract publicity and intimidate people.Elizabeth Myers, a lawyer for Ms. Noyola and Ms. Carpenter, said the fact that Mr. Mitchell and Mr. Silva did not want to move forward with the case was “very telling.”“They live on the creation of fear,” she said. “They need the fear to ultimately lead to something real and it didn’t.” We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Tacita Dean Draws Her Way Into the Menil

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      In the artist’s first major U.S. museum survey, she bonds with Cy Twombly through works on paper, films and photographs.During a residency at the Menil Collection in Houston last February, the British artist and filmmaker Tacita Dean spent the night in the Cy Twombly Gallery.She wanted to be surrounded by Twombly’s work, having long felt connected to the so-called Blackboard artist, who died in 2011, and in particular to his collage-drawings and preoccupation with the passage of time.“He connects to the classical world in a way that is deeply emotive,” Dean said. “I’m interested in where your mind goes when you look at one of his works. It can go to memory, it can go to envy — you think, ‘God, that’s so perfect.’”Now Dean is bringing her own monumental blackboard drawings and her rarely shown drawings on paper, found postcards, and albumen photographs to the Menil, in a show that opens on Oct. 11. The exhibition, “Tacita Dean: Blind Folly,” is her first major museum survey in the United States.“The presence of Cy Twombly in Houston really ignited the show and the conversation,” said Michelle White, senior curator at the Menil, who organized the exhibition. “It just became such a lovely point of connection.”In a recent interview at her Los Angeles studio, Dean, 58, said a focus on her drawings “is quite unusual for me,” given that shows typically focus on her films. And the artist said it is meaningful to be presenting her work in a place where Twombly’s presence is felt.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Two Bodies Found in Rice University Dorm Room in Possible Murder-Suicide

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      A female student was fatally shot. A man who was not a student had a self-inflicted gunshot wound, the university president said.Two people were found shot dead in a dorm room at Rice University in Houston, the university president said on Monday, in what appeared to be a murder-suicide.One was a female student who had lived in the dorm room in the Jones College residential hall, Reginald DesRoches, the university president, said at a news conference. The other was a man who was not a university student and who had a self-inflicted gunshot wound, he said.The university identified the student as Andrea Rodriguez Avila, a junior.She appeared to have been in a romantic relationship with the man, Clemente Rodriguez, the university police chief, said.The two were discovered on Monday afternoon during a welfare check by the Rice University police, after a family member reported not being able to get in contact with Ms. Avila, Mr. Rodriguez said. Both were pronounced dead at the scene. It appeared that Ms. Avila let the man into the residential building, he added.The deaths occurred on the first day of classes. The university issued a shelter-in-place alert at about 5:40 p.m. urging all students to stay in their rooms as the police investigated.The alert was lifted before 7 p.m. All classes and activities were canceled for the rest of Monday, the university said on social media. More

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      Inquiry Finds No Politics Behind Ballot Paper Shortages in 2022 Houston Election

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      Republicans accused Democratic officials of trying to sway the results. But prosecutors found that the problem stemmed from an employee whose attention was diverted.During the 2022 general election, scores of polling places in Harris County, the most populous in Texas, reported shortages of ballot paper, resulting in voters’ being turned away.The failure to properly distribute ballot paper on Election Day prompted several lawsuits and challenges as Republicans accused Democratic county officials of shortchanging Republican polling places in an attempt to sway the results.But the actual reason for the problems with ballot paper was much more banal, a Texas Rangers investigation found: An employee with a key role in determining paper distribution neglected his duties because he had been working a second full-time job without approval.“The result is he didn’t do his job for Harris County,” the district attorney, Kim Ogg, said at a news conference on Tuesday.Ms. Ogg, a Democrat who lost her primary in the spring and recently crossed party lines to endorse Republican Senator Ted Cruz for re-election in November, said the investigation had found no political motivation behind the supply problems.Instead, investigators said, the employee had simply done his job without much care, distributing roughly the same amount of ballot paper to the vast majority of polling locations, instead of taking into account voting patterns and sending more paper to higher-turnout locations.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Akili McDowell, Star of ‘David Makes Man,’ Is Charged With Murder

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      Mr. McDowell, 21, was being held on bond for the July shooting death of a man in the parking lot of a Houston apartment complex, the authorities said.Akili McDowell, an actor who starred in the television series “David Makes Man,” has been charged with murder in the July shooting death of a man in the parking lot of a Houston apartment complex, authorities said.Mr. McDowell, 21, was arrested and charged on Thursday with the murder of Cesar Peralta, 20, according to a criminal complaint.Mr. McDowell is being held on $400,000 bond at the Harris County jail and is scheduled to be arraigned on Oct. 9. A lawyer for Mr. McDowell did not immediately respond to requests for comment.Jonell Whitt, Mr. McDowell’s manager, offered prayers to the victim’s family and to Mr. McDowell. She declined to comment further on Monday evening.Harris County sheriff deputies responded to reports of a shooting on July 20 in the parking lot of an apartment complex in Houston, according to the sheriff’s office.Deputies arrived to find an adult male, who has since been identified as Mr. Peralta, unresponsive from apparent gunshot wounds. Emergency medical workers pronounced him dead at the scene. The authorities said that deputies spoke with several witnesses who reported seeing the victim in a fight with an unidentified male, who fled on foot immediately after the shooting.“David Makes Man” follows David, played by Mr. McDowell, as he navigates life in a housing project in South Florida while trying to succeed as one of the few Black students at his magnet school. The show, which aired on the Oprah Winfrey Network, was tinged with magical realism and explored its characters’ inner lives. It was created and written by Tarell Alvin McCraney, known for his Tony-nominated play “Choir Boy” and as a writer of the Oscar-winning film “Moonlight.”According to the website IMDb, Mr. McDowell appeared this year in “The Waterboyz,” a film about two young men whose paths cross while trying to make it in Atlanta. He also appeared in the 2015 film “Criminal Activities,” a crime yarn starring John Travolta; and in the television shows “Billions” and “The Astronaut Wives Club.”Alain Delaquérière More

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      Harris Responds to Trump’s Comments About Her Identity: ‘Divisiveness and Disrespect’

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      Vice President Kamala Harris carefully hit back at former President Donald J. Trump after he questioned the legitimacy of her identity as a Black woman, saying on Wednesday that he had put on the “same old show” of “divisiveness and disrespect.”“The American people deserve better,” Ms. Harris said at a convention of Sigma Gamma Rho, one of the nation’s most prominent Black sororities. “The American people deserve a leader who tells the truth, a leader who does not respond with hostility and anger when confronted with the facts. We deserve a leader who understands that our differences do not divide us — they are an essential source of our strength.”But she did not directly quote or refer to Mr. Trump’s comments earlier on Wednesday in Chicago, where he had asked of Ms. Harris: “Is she Indian or is she Black?” He had also falsely claimed that Ms. Harris used to identify as Indian and then “all of a sudden, she made a turn, and she became a Black person.”The vice president is of Jamaican and Indian heritage, and attended Howard University, a historically Black university.Ms. Harris’s precisely calibrated rebuttal was perhaps an early indication of how she will respond to crude and racist attacks from Mr. Trump. Former President Barack Obama largely ignored Republicans, led by Mr. Trump, who falsely accused him of being born in Kenya.Her remarks on Wednesday came after she has sought to place her campaign on the continuum of racial progress in America, referring to it in the same breath as abolitionists and civil rights activists.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Beryl Rips Through Houston, Killing 4 and Knocking Out Power for Millions

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      Officials warned that it could take days to restore electricity. The storm has prompted tornado warnings in East Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas.Tropical Storm Beryl ripped a path of destruction through the heart of Houston on Monday, transforming roads into rivers, killing at least four people and knocking out power for more than two million customers across Texas.The storm, which made landfall early Monday as a Category 1 hurricane, weakened as it passed over the city and continued its swirling march north.But its relatively modest official strength undersold its power, local authorities said. As it churned through Houston, officials warned people to stay inside and away from windows, “as though there was a tornado coming your way,” Lina Hidalgo, the top official in Harris County, which includes Houston, cautioned residents.The center passed just to the west of the city, meaning Houston received some of the worst of the storm as it spun counterclockwise.By Monday afternoon, officials were beginning to assess the destruction as residents emerged to find a landscape of downed power lines, damaged homes, fallen trees and rippling water along the streets. The city’s airports remained closed into the afternoon because of lingering strong winds.Houstonians have long been accustomed to power outages and strong weather. But Beryl, which began as an unusually powerful storm in the Caribbean, offered an ill omen, striking early in a hurricane season that has been predicted to be unusually active.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More