The top local stories this evening from KERA News:
The director of Dallas County Health and Human Services has been fired. Zachary Thompson was terminated Wednesday, according to Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins. The judge gave no explanation in a statement issued on Thursday afternoon. Thompson had been set to retire at the end of the month.
Other stories this evening:
- The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals is an executive order that protects around 800,000 so-called DREAMers across the country from deportation, and is set to expire in March. Brian Smith is a Political Science professor at St. Edwards University in Austin, and he talked with Texas Standard guest host Laura Rice about what could happen to DACA in Congress.
- There are more than 2,000 species of jellyfish swimming the world's waters. While jellyfish have been around for more than half a billion years, there's still much scientists don't know about them. Today on Think, guest host Lauren Silverman talked with Juli Berwald about why jellyfish have been tricky to understand.
- Houses have been popping up all over Oak Cliff, but these aren’t the luxury apartment complexes you might see in Bishop Arts. In fact, you won’t even see construction crews working on these, because they pop up so fast. In this week’s Art&Seek Artist Spotlight, Hady Mawajdeh follows artist Giovanni Valderas as he responds to Oak Cliff’s gentrification.
You can listen to North Texas stories weekdays at 8:22 a.m. and 6:20 p.m. on KERA 90.1 FM.