By KERA News & Wire Services
Dallas, TX – The Dallas Police Department has awarded a certificate of merit to the man responsible for reporting the shooting of officer J.D. Tippit minutes after President John F. Kennedy's assassination 47 years ago.
Temple F. Bowley received the award from Dallas Police Chief David Brown in a ceremony on the anniversary of the assassination Monday.
The certificate recognizes the 82-year-old Dallas retiree for climbing into the slain officer's car and using the police radio to report the shooting on Nov. 22, 1963.
Tippit was shot by Lee Harvey Oswald, the man accused of killing Kennedy during a motorcade through Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas 45 minutes earlier.
Bowley's call summoned officers who later apprehended Oswald at the nearby Texas Theatre.
Perry won't say whether he'd end Social Security
Texas Gov. Rick Perry calls Social Security a Ponzi scheme, but he's stopping short of saying whether he would dismantle it.
Perry spoke on "Fox News Sunday." He has previously compared Social Security to an illegal Ponzi scheme. In such a scheme, early investors are paid with money put in by later investors, and no real investments are made.
Perry says Social Security qualifies because retirees are paid with money put in by people now working.
"Fox News Sunday" host Chris Wallace asked Perry whether he would end Social Security as a federal program.
Perry didn't directly answer the question. He says he wants to focus on Medicaid first and as part of that there can be talk of how to put Social Security on "better and more solid footing."
Jurors begin deliberations in trial of ex-lawmaker
The fate of former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay is now in the hands of a jury.
Jurors in DeLay's money laundering trial in Austin began deliberating Monday following more than three hours of closing arguments.
In their final pitch to jurors, prosecutors said the former Republican lawmaker gave his blessing to a scheme to use his political action committee to illegally channel $190,000 in corporate donations into 2002 Texas legislative races through a money swap.
DeLay's attorneys countered that he didn't commit a crime because no corporate money was sent to Texas candidates. His attorneys told jurors the money swap was legal.
The once powerful but polarizing Houston-area congressman faces up to life in prison if convicted.
Refuge officials hoping to find some new ocelots
Biologists at a far South Texas wildlife refuge are hoping to find some new ocelots as they begin putting out traps to catch the animals to look at their health. Jody Mays, a biologist in charge of the Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge's ocelot program, tells the Valley Morning Star in Harlingen that because of pictures from trip cameras, they believe they may have one to three female cats that have not previously been documented.
Mays says, "We want to see where they are living and if they have kittens."
There are only about 50 of the wild cats left in the United States, all of them in South Texas. About 25 ocelets live at the Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge or on nearby land. The remaining population lives in Willacy and Kenedy counties.