Texas

Residents clean up from hurricane damage

Storm-battered residents cleaned up debris and surveyed damage Wednesday after Hurricane Claudette hit the Gulf Coast of Texas.

Claudette arrived Tuesday as a Category 1 hurricane with maximum sustained wind of 85 mph before being downgraded. The storm was just over the Rio Grande in west Texas by Wednesday evening and was expected to move toward Tuscon, Ariz.

Above, residents of Surfside, Texas, clear out a water logged truck left stranded by high tides from Hurricane Claudette.

The storm caused serious damage along more than 250 miles of Texas coastline, tearing off roofs, flattening trailers and toppling trees. Several low-lying areas were flooded, and two people died by falling trees or limbs, officials said.

Sandra Ray of the Southwestern Insurance Information Service, a trade association for insurers, said a preliminary damage estimate likely wouldn’t be known until today.

Virginia

Sniper trial moved to neighboring city

A judge moved the murder trial of sniper suspect John Allen Muhammad out of the Washington suburbs Wednesday, sending the case to Virginia City, 200 miles away.

The decision by Prince William County Circuit Judge LeRoy Millette Jr. means that the murder trials of Muhammad and fellow suspect Lee Boyd Malvo will be in neighboring towns this fall.

In moving the trial to Virginia Beach, Millette said “good cause has been clearly shown that such change of venue is necessary to ensure a fair and impartial trial.”

Millette also noted that prosecutors had withdrawn their objection to the defense request for a change of venue away from the Washington suburbs that were so terrorized by the shootings last year.

Muhammad and Malvo have been linked to 20 shootings, including 13 killings, in Virginia, Maryland, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana and Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C.

House panel seeks block of media merger rules

A Republican-run House committee defied a White House veto threat Wednesday and voted to bar federal regulators from expanding the number of television stations that individual companies can own.

The 40-25 vote by the House Appropriations Committee was a defeat for the major commercial TV networks and a triumph for smaller broadcasters and an unusual coalition of groups ranging from the Christian Coalition to Common Cause.

The approved language would block a June 2 Federal Communications Commission decision that would limit companies to owning TV stations that reach no more than 45 percent of U.S. households. The vote by the Republican-controlled commission was 3-2. The current cap of 35 percent has been in effect since 1996.

The measure would not affect other parts of the FCC ruling that eased restrictions against a single company owning newspapers, TV and radio stations in the same community.