Starting this Friday, Garland public libraries will no longer charge readers late fees on any materials returned after their due date. The library will still charge users for lost or damaged items, including the replacement cost and a $5 processing fee. This new policy comes after the library examined ways to reduce or eliminate barriers to public library access within …

Fort Worth’s upstart Cowtown Brewing Co. is headed to Southlake. The brewery, which opened in 2018 in downtown Fort Worth, is set to offer beer and barbecue in a new location at Southlake Town Square in late October, according to Liz Barth, marketing and business development director for Retail Properties of America, the owner and operator of the shopping center. …

Hospitalizations for COVID-19 are trending down across North Texas, health officials say. New admissions for coronavirus are declining in the four most populous North Texas counties, according to the latest forecast from UT Southwestern Medical Center. The number of hospitalizations in Dallas County is expected to fall steeply, to about 600 by mid-October. Currently, 765 people are hospitalized for COVID-19 in the …

A 17-year-old Carrollton teen taken into custody Tuesday is accused of murdering his infant son, Carrollton police say. Caleb Blake Brown and the mother of the 24-day-old baby had brought the child into Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Plano on Aug. 9 after the mother, who police also identified as 17, noticed that the infant was “pale and had significant bruising …

Had Tuesday’s celebration of the future Harwood Park been a traditional groundbreaking, the job would have required jackhammers, not shovels. Instead, Parks for Downtown Dallas invited about 100 guests to gaze down from the adjacent development onto an ugly 3.8 acres of concrete and consider its transformation into a tree-filled family-friendly oasis that stitches together the Main Street District, Farmers Market and …

HOUSTON, Texas — For almost two decades, the families of Laura Smither, Kelli Cox, Tiffany Johnston and Jessica Cain searched for answers in their daughter’s disappearances. All four girls vanished with no explanation in 1997. Laura, 12, was an aspiring ballerina. She went for a jog in her Friendswood neighborhood and never came back. Kelli, 20, was a student at …

HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — Our next wave of thunderstorms is building over Texas and should move through Southeast Texas Wednesday morning. It’s the first of two wet weather systems to impact us this week. Rain chances will rise for the Tuesday morning drive, but the rain chance goes up even more by Wednesday morning. This round of storms could impact …

Several North Texas parents filed a federal class action lawsuit against their children’s school districts Tuesday, a plea for administrators to implement a mask mandate and enact other COVID-19 safety protocols. The lawsuit filed in the Western District of Texas names four districts as defendants: Frisco, Grapevine-Colleyville, Hurst-Euless-Bedford and Lago Vista in Travis County. The News reached out to the North Texas …

HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — So far in 2021, there have been 346 homicides in Houston. That is a 28% increase over this time last year and a 74% increase from the same time in 2019. “What we’re trying to figure out now is why. Why is this happening? And that seems to be the million-dollar question,” said Elizabeth Gilmore, an …

HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — The inside of a south Houston American Legion post is destroyed after a fire tore through the building last week. Post 490 Commander John Cronin said it started late last Wednesday night from a spark in the electric panel in the kitchen. Seven members were inside at the time of the fire and they tried to …