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Owner Phillip Helberg seasons citrus pork steaks at Helberg Barbecue, in Woodway.When a barbecue joint is destroyed by fire, many of us would assume the smoker is to blame. But at Helberg Barbecue, in Woodway, just west of Waco, the November 2023 fire originated inside the nearby food trailer the staff used as a kitchen. When owner-pitmaster Phillip Helberg looked at security footage, he saw the propane tanks attached to the trailer ignite. Then the fire traveled via an awning to the restaurant, where the intensity of the heat damaged the steel beams that supported the roof. (Thankfully no one was harmed.) Helberg and his wife and co-owner, Yvette, didn’t have long to mourn. Three days before Christmas, they began operating a drive-through from a new trailer next to the burned-out hulk that used to be…

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The Permian Will Pay You to Haul Its Natural Gas AwayImagine a sign by the egg case at your local H-E-B: “Take a dozen home. Please. We’ll pay you $4 per carton. No limit per customer.”Sound outlandish? Maybe, but this is essentially what has happened with natural gas in West Texas in recent days. Last weekend, the price for gas at the Waha Hub, a major pipeline junction near Fort Stockton, was -$3 per thousand cubic feet. That’s negative three dollars. If you sent gas to Waha, you had to pay someone to take it off your hands.You may now be saying to yourself, “I’d like some of that gas. I use natural gas to cook dinner every night. Can I get paid to burn gas?” The answer to your question is: Not unless you…

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Emilio Vargas wanted to play high school football in Texas. His father, Javier Vargas, wanted the best for his son. As a lawyer, Javier had the means to fulfill Emilio’s wish, so he arranged for the sixteen-year-old to leave Mexico City to stay with family in Georgetown and play at East View High School. Javier and the rest of the Vargas family soon joined him. Because Javier’s Mexican attorney license didn’t transfer to the U.S., he had to take other jobs to support his family. He worked in restaurants and construction. Emilio kept bringing up the traditional Central Mexican Hidalgo-style barbacoa de borrego (lamb) he pined for—he couldn’t find it anywhere nearby. Javier, whose father taught him how to make barbacoa when he was eight,…

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The sixth episode of Shane and Sally explores a long-examined suspect, Heath Davis, and the unsolved burglary of Shane Stewart’s house shortly after the teens went missing. At the center of the mystery: Shane’s stolen black cowboy hat, reports that Davis was wearing a black Stetson hat around the same time, and, most mysterious of all—a Stetson hat pin found with Shane’s body. Rob and Karen become determined to track Heath down, and they manage to locate him through a skillful act of investigative sleuthing.

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Shane and Sally: Episode 6Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Read the transcript below.Learn more about the case with original videos, archival photos, and documents from our reporting in our episode guide. Subscribe Apple Podcasts — Spotify “I want this case solved for their family. . . . And these other girls deserve it too. They deserve justice. These guys all need to go to jail, every one of ’em.”—Kristen McLaughlin-BillIn this episode, we explore the last of four suspects investigators have named in their investigation into Shane Stewart and Sally McNelly’s murders. In the eighties, Heath Davis was a violent drug dealer with a tough reputation around town who associated with other main suspects in this case. Davis says he’s turned his life around today and that he has been…

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Nicholas Suntzeff at the Physics and Astronomy Teaching Observatory at Texas A&M, on March 19, 2024.“Can we talk UFOs?” I asked Nicholas Suntzeff, the regents professor of physics and astronomy at Texas A&M University. “I’d be happy to,” he replied, letting out a chuckle. “But just so you know, the government now wants us to call them unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAP.”The wiry, good-natured Suntzeff, who’s 71, is one of the most respected astronomers in the world, a specialist in cosmology and supernovas. He majored in mathematics at Stanford University, earned his doctorate in astronomy and astrophysics from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and for two decades worked at the U.S. National Optical Astronomy Observatory facility in Chile, studying distant galaxies through giant mountaintop telescopes beneath some of the darkest skies in the world.In 1994 Suntzeff cofounded the High-Z Supernova…

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Race and medicineAs a shy undergraduate at Harvard University in the late sixties, Constance Hilliard butted heads with the stodgy chairman of the history department. Convinced that there were untold stories buried in her ancestry that could yield far-reaching insights, she told the prominent historian that she wanted to major in African history. “But Africa doesn’t have a history,” she remembers him responding.Hilliard knew that not only does Africa possess a rich and varied history, but it’s also the origin of all human history. Because the first Homo sapiens evolved there and migrated across the globe, our genome can be traced to the continent. The late sixties were a period of social upheaval, and Hilliard believed that a greater understanding of the interplay of African and American…

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Justice system lost in translationThe English expression “like a deer in the headlights” has no real equivalent in Spanish. Instead of its literal translation, “como un ciervo en los faros,” which would be lost on many Spanish speakers, you might instead use the phrasal verb “quedarse pasmado” (“to stay stunned”), which still fails to capture the momentary paralysis that accompanies the subject’s bewilderment. That’s how Fidel Gutierrez-Garcia looked when defense attorney Robert Garcia spoke to him in Spanish about his case, Garcia would later testify: “like a deer in the headlights.”  Gutierrez-Garcia, a pecan picker from a rural part of the Mexican state of Chihuahua, had been charged in Texas with possession with intent to distribute more than one hundred kilograms of marijuana—a felony, punishable by five to forty…

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Boban Marjanovic #51 of Houston Rockets laughs during warmups before their game.WHO: The great Boban Marjanović, and fans in attendance at Crypto.com Arena, in Los Angeles. WHAT: Two meaningless—but critical—missed free throws. WHY IT’S SO GREAT: This has been a somewhat forgettable season for casual fans of the Houston Rockets. The team, by virtue of its win over the playoff-bound Los Angeles Clippers on Sunday, managed to avoid posting a fourth consecutive losing season, but it didn’t achieve its first winning season since 2019–20, either. With a 41–41 record, the Rockets merely climbed back to .500 this season. And yet! Fans in attendance at the season finale in L.A. had plenty to cheer about in the fourth quarter, despite the home team’s impending loss. Although Houston already had the game well in hand after the third quarter, the most…

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100 Years of La India Spice Company + How Their Products Can Be Used for WellnessAmong the culinary mainstays that have made their marks on the palates of Laredoans, few have been more essential than La India Packing Company. This April, the family-owned spice-and-herb company hits a monumental milestone as it turns one hundred years old. An official bash celebrating the anniversary is on the books for April 27, and later this year, the Texas Historical Commission will officially designate the company and its headquarters, in old Laredo, with a historical marker. According to owner Elsa Rodriguez Arguindegui, the reason for the company’s success is simple: “People like the flavors and it doesn’t upset their stomachs.” It’s that second part, she says, that makes La India stand out. Her grandfather, Antonio Rodriguez, who founded the shop in April 1924, was insistent…

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