Texas

FedEx shares have more than doubled in price since the pandemic forced government officials to shutter businesses and issue stay-at-home orders. The revenue for the quarter ended Feb. 28 grew 23% to $21.5 billion, boosted by a half-billion holiday package deliveries and COVID-19 vaccines shipments.

Average daily package volume for FedEx Ground, which counts Walmart among its top e-commerce shipping partners, jumped 25% to 13.2 million during the quarter.

The results came even as severe winter weather in February disrupted service at important facilities in Memphis, Indianapolis and North Texas and reduced quarterly operating income by about $350 million.

SpaceX dared another test flight with a Starship on Tuesday (Texas time). The launch and flight of the SN10 were successful. The landing also looked successful at first, but then the rocket exploded. The cause could be methane leaking from the tanks of the brake engines.

After the Republican Governors of Texas, Greg Abbott, and Mississippi, Tate Reeves, announced Tuesday they would allow businesses to reopen at 100% capacity and lift mask mandates, President Joe Biden slammed states that repealed Covid-19 restrictions on businesses and rescinded mask mandates for residents, calling the moves a "big mistake."

On Monday, before the two governors announced it, Dr Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, warned state officials against lifting public health restrictions too quickly.

"The last thing, the last thing we need is Neanderthal thinking, that, ‘In the meantime, everything’s fine. Take off your mask. Forget it.’ It still matters," Biden said.

Texas state leader Greg Abbott announced today that he was rolling back a previous mandate which required masks to be worn in all public businesses. This decision has been met with widespread criticism and controversy, as Texas is well below the target vaccinated percentage of its populace.

Abbott cited the damages to small businesses as the primary reason for the roll-back of the mask mandate. The mandate repeal will be removed next week, on Wednesday.

Following heavy criticism and public outrage over last week's mass power outage in Texas, six board members of ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas) will hand in their resignations after receiving relentless harassment and criticisms from victims of the outage.

The outrage was made worse when last week, it was reported that a portion of the board of directors for ERCOT lived outside of the state of Texas.

ERCOT officials have since removed personal information about the directors who did not live in Texas due to the growing harassment.

Cruz said in an earlier statement Thursday that he accompanied his family to Cancun a day earlier after his daughters asked to go on a trip with friends, given that school was cancelled for the week.

"Wanting to be a good dad, I flew down with them last night and am flying back this afternoon," Cruz wrote.

"My staff and I are in constant communication with state and local leaders to get to the bottom of what happened in Texas," he continued. "We want our power back, our water on, and our homes warm."

Cruz told reporters Thursday night that he returned to the U.S. because he realized he needed to be in Texas. He said he had originally been scheduled to stay in Mexico through the weekend.

Millions of people in Texas are facing water shortages as the unprecedented cold front caused pipes to burst and water pressure to fall. Those who have running water are advised to boil their tap water before consumption for safety.

Texan hospitals have seen an increase in patients, especially in their emergency rooms, while facing short water supply and some are forced to transfer patients to other facilities.

At least 37 people have died in the US state of Texas due to a severe winter onset, and hundreds of thousands of people are cut off from electricity after heavy storms. The information has now surfaced that Republican Senator Ted Cruz travelled to Cancún, Mexico, for a holiday. Cruz himself did not initially comment on the trip and did not respond to numerous media enquiries.

Axiom has begun bringing in revenue for its space stations already, with NASA awarding the company a contract to connect one habitable module to the ISS as early as 2024. The seven-year contract has a maximum award value of $140 million, which Suffredini said goes beyond development to include launching and operating the module once connected to the space station. Suffredini said that Axiom has procured the parts of its modules that take the longest to arrive from supplies, with "contracts in place with major providers" and "early design work" completed.

An unprecedented winter storm has left roughly 4.3 million Texans without electricity due to a surge in demand, with people not having electricity for over 24 hours. Other states, including Kentucky, Mississippi, Alabama, Oklahoma and Oregon, were also affected by the severe weather conditions.

Texas Governor Gregg Abbott has urged "all Texans to remain vigilant against the extremely harsh weather" and air travellers were warned that they should expect delays or cancellations.

A test of the Amber Alert system in Texas for missing child reporting caused 3 warnings to be sent publicly with Chucky the doll named the suspected kidnapper.

"We apologize for the confusion this may have caused and are diligently working to ensure this does not happen again," the Texas Department of Public Safety said in a statement to local news outlets.

The National Rifle Association is the most powerful gun lobby organization in the United States. But after financial and leadership scandals, the NRA has now filed for bankruptcy. The organization announced this on its website.

In the explanation it is further said, the NRA wants to leave the location New York. This was a "corrupt political and regulatory environment." It said the NRA wants to restructure itself as a nonprofit organization in Texas. The plan includes "utilizing the protections of the bankruptcy court," it said.

A group of armed men calling themselves "patriots" have begun talking to members of the press on the grounds in front of the Capitol in Austin, Texas. The group says they are not aligned with the insurrection riots that occurred last week in Washington, D.C., however they have shown up to talk to press to voice their concerns about the current state of US affairs.

Oracle Corporation has moved its headquarters to Austin, Texas. Oracle became the latest technology company to leave California in the face of the state's higher taxes, steeper cost of living and a broader shift to remote work.

"We believe these moves best position Oracle for growth and provide our personnel with more flexibility about where and how they work," spokesperson Deborah Hellinger told CNN Business.

The Republican-led Texas' Board of Education voted Friday that students will be taught about "the central role of the expansion of slavery in causing sectionalism, disagreements over states' rights and the Civil War." University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley historian David Fisher was part of a work group that gave the board suggested revisions. Lawrence Paska, executive director of the National Council for the Social Studies, says what those students learn in school has a big impact on how they understand history and current events.

A federal jury in Texas has decided that Apple needs to pay $506,2 million in damages and interest for using patented 4G technology in hardware made by the company.

Following the jury verdict, five patents were willfully infringed leading the District Judge Rodney Gilstrap to be able to increase the compensation amount by three times compared to what the jurors have set. Panoptis Patent Management had sued on behalf of one of its clients as they manage the intellectual property and patents for companies in order to enable them to focus on "innovation and new development".

According to local media Apple will appeal the decision made by the court.

The United States has surpassed 5 million Covid-19 cases early Sunday while experts warn that the estimated number of true cases might be many times higher.

"That's a huge number of cases and a very large number of hospitalizations and deaths -- and more to come. Because over much of this country, this virus is spreading unimpeded because so many folks are not getting with the program to contain it," so Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University.

40% of cases are attributed to only 5 states: Florida, Texas, New York, Georgia and California – the latter has reported the most cases in the country.

The Starr County Memorial Hospital in Starr County, Texas has set up a "death panel" and issued guidelines for the doctors containing criteria on which patients are sent home without treatment and will receive treatment due to a higher chance of recovery.

The hospital is the only one in the rural Texas county which has reported 1,769 confirmed Covid-19 cases and 64,000 total population.

On the Facebook page of the county, Judge Elroy Vera has stated that "Unfortunately, Starr County Memorial Hospital has limited resources and our doctors are going to have to decide who receives treatment, and who is sent home to die by their loved ones."

Hurricane Hanna has made landfall in South Texas and Northeastern Mexico and left over 280,000 without power in Texas on Sunday morning. Flash flood emergencies have been declared in Mission and Hidalgo County.

Meteorologist Chris Birchfield warns that the hurricane is far from over and that they were "still expecting catastrophic flooding."

"Any hurricane is an enormous challenge," Texas Governor Abbott said on Saturday. "This challenge is complicated and made even more severe, seeing that it is sweeping through an area that is the most challenged area in the state for Covid-19."

According to the Chinese Foreign Ministry, China has been ordered to "cease all operations and events" at its consulate in Houston, Texas. The police in Houston has reported smoke from the consulate courtyard as Chinese officials allegedly have burned documents.

Morgan Ortagus, a spokeswoman for the US State Department, has stated that the closure of the consulate has been ordered "to protect American intellectual property and Americans' private information".