News

Saturday is National Record Store Day, when special limited-edition releases appear on the shelves of music shops around the country – and quickly disappear. Mark Abuzzahab is program director for our sister station, KXT 91.7. He tells us his game plan for emerging with treasures from the greats -- and shares the best Record Store Day buys in his trove. 

Chronic homelessness can seem unsolvable. People bounce around from the street to jail to hospitals and back to the street. On Thursday, ground was broken on an $8 million dollar effort to stop that cycle in southern Dallas. It's called the Cottages at Hickory Crossing.

The agency charged with prosecuting state public corruption cases wrapped up an investigation into state Sen. Wendy Davis last year without finding any issues worth pursuing, its director said, and did not uncover anything it believed it should refer to the FBI.

The Public Integrity Unit closed an investigation into a complaint made against Davis’ law firm last year. The Dallas Morning News reported Friday that documents related to Davis’ legal work as a lawyer for the North Texas Tollway Authority are part of an FBI inquiry into the agency's board members, citing a letter from the Public Integrity Unit about its own closed investigation into Davis.

The two Republicans campaigning to replace state Sen. Wendy Davis, the Fort Worth Democrat who is running for governor, are locked in a tight primary runoff battle.

But it is not just conservatives who are watching the outcome. If the swing district changes hands in November, the Republican Party, which already controls the state Senate, will inch closer to meeting a crucial voting threshold in the upper chamber.

Five stories that have North Texas talking: A local barbecue guru competes on a national show; Glenn Beck expands his media empire; an earthquake hit Dallas Thursday; and more:

Update, Friday afternoon: Today, the morning after a citywide memorial, KERA’s Doualy Xaykaothao talked with Amber Adamson, author of an upcoming book called “The Last Alarm: First Responders’ Stories of the West Explosion.”

Update, Thursday afternoon: A year after a deadly explosion, West is rebuilding.

The small central Texas town paid tribute Thursday night to 15 people killed a year ago when a fertilizer plant exploded in a ball of fire. The blast injured hundreds of people, destroyed homes and schools and left a nearly 100 foot-wide crater.

D Magazine’s Zac Crain is Facebook friends with practically half the town of West. He grew up just 500 yards from the fertilizer plant that exploded a year ago. He talked with KERA about life after the explosion. “It worried me that it was a town that could die out," he said. Crain reflected on the town the morning after the explosion. (Here's an expanded version.) Crain also profiled the town for D in July.

Colleen Walker’s path to becoming the next CEO of Dallas’s Perot Museum of Science and Nature is a little unusual. She’s a former Miss Colorado, and she studied architectural engineering in college before getting her MBA from Harvard. Fresh off seven years of running the Girl Scouts of North Texas, she talks with KERA’s vice president of news, Rick Holter, about the Perot challenge, which she’ll take up in June.

In the past few years, North Texas has gone from a brewery desert to one of the country’s hubs for craft beer.

Credit new state laws and imaginative brewmeisters who are getting creative and creating tasty pints. A few North Texas beer scientists recently discussed the craft beer craze on “Think,” KERA’s midday talk show.

For the first time since 2008, Dallas is a basketball -- and hockey -- playoff town.

The Dallas Stars started their first postseason run in six years Wednesday night against the top-seeded Anaheim Ducks in California. (The Ducks defeated the Stars in the first game, 4-3. Game 2 is 9 p.m. Friday in California.)

Their basketball brethren, the Dallas Mavericks, are harboring some long-shot dreams, too: They start the NBA playoffs this weekend, their first postseason appearance since 2012.