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Portrait Of A Young Immigrant

Claudia A. De La Garza
/
Flickr

Five stories that have North Texas talking: Year old immigration program in U.S. points to Texas as major source of young applicants, experts wonder if airline merger lawsuit is just a power play, Dallas Zoo welcomes rare ocelot kitten and more.

A study released today paints a picture of young immigrants in America who have applied for temporary reprieve from deportation. The year old program had applicants from all 50 states, but Texas had the second highest number of applicants in the U.S. To apply for the program, you must be between 15 and 30 years old, but the Brookings Institution’s study shows applicants are bunched up toward the younger end of the spectrum; more than a third are under 19.

Data shows most applicants were under the age of 11 when they were brought to America in the first place and have lived in the U.S. for at least a decade. More than 557,400 immigrants had applied for deferred action through the end of June and about 72 percent had been accepted. The majority of the remaining cases are still under review. [New York Times]

  • ‘Texas’ Performance Canceled After Deadly Crash: Yesterday’s performance of “Texas,” the annual outdoor musical in Palo Duro Canyon, was canceled due to an unexpected tragedy. Five members of the troupe including two North Texans were killed in a crash on a Panhandle highway Monday night. Eric Harrison was from Fort Worth and Julian Arredondo hailed from Haltom City. Arredondo attended Haltom High School and graduated from TCU in 2011. This was his third year with the musical. Harrison was a 21-year-old West Texas A&M student, who went to Fossil Ridge High School in the Keller ISD and worked the box office at “Texas.” [WFAA]

  • Airline Merger Lawsuit As Negotiating Tactic?: After the federal government, the Texas AG and several other states announced yesterday they’d move to block the proposed American Airlines, US Airways merger, industry experts have been wondering why. George Hobica with airfarewatchdog.com says it’s being done to leverage negotiation. "The DOJ challenge could be a power play designed to force the airlines to give up routes, gates, and slots.” The general belief is this will delay, not derail, the $11 billion deal. KERA’s Stella Chavez spoke to a Dallas aviation attorney about his take on the antitrust lawsuit. [NPR]

  • A Sister Act Is Coming To Texas: The Dominican Sisters of Mary , Mother of the Eucharist, is a community of nuns outside of Ann Arbor, Michigan. Usually a private group, the 110 women who live inside this nunnery released their debut album, Mater Eucharistiae, this week. While the general trend is that the number of religious sisters is dwindling, the Dominican Sisters of Mary are being asked for an encore, and then some. According to NPR, there are so many young women seeking to become novices, the community is planting a new convent in Central Texas. See the sisters react to news of the papal conclave below.

http://youtu.be/GScyqXchS6c

  • Rare Ocelot Kitten Welcomed By Dallas Zoo: Lindy, a not-quite-two-month-old ocelot kitten is now a resident of Cat Row at the Dallas Zoo. According to the Dallas Morning News, while not yet endangered, ocelots are becoming increasingly rare. And to have a kitten in a zoo is very unusual. “There’s only about three kittens born in the country in zoos every year, so for us to have one in this zoo is really exciting,” says Todd Bowsher, director of animal operations for the zoo. Fewer than 50 wild ocelots are estimated to live in Texas.
Courtney Collins has been working as a broadcast journalist since graduating from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in 2004. Before coming to KERA in 2011, Courtney worked as a reporter for NPR member station WAMU in Washington D.C. While there she covered daily news and reported for the station’s weekly news magazine, Metro Connection.