Potter County | featured news

The Randall County Sheriff’s Office has made several arrests after searching a home in southwest Amarillo on Thursday, a sheriff’s office spokesman said.
The office’s Hard Entry and Tactical Team, in conjunction with the Panhandle Auto Burglary and Theft Unit, served a search warrant in the 5100 block of Oregon Trail, the spokesman said.
This story will be updated as more details become available.

Amarillo College Vice President for Academic Affairs Deborah Vess has resigned, the college announced in a Thursday news release.
The reason for Vess’ departure was not clear in the news release, which said she has “opted to pursue other opportunities that will further enhance her career.”
The college tapped Tamara Clunis, dean of academic success, to fill the vacancy on an interim basis.
Vess joined AC in 2014 after Russell Lowery-Hart, who was the head of academic affairs until August of that year, was named the college’s president.

Toot’n Totum has contributed $5,000 to a reward fund for anyone who can provide information that helps lead to the recovery or rescue of missing Canadian teenager Thomas Brown.
In addition to Toot’n Totum’s donation, the public can donate to the fund by check at three locations in Canadian: In person at the Hemphill County Sheriff’s Office, 401 E. Purcell; at The Canadian Record at 211 Main St.; or by mail to Happy State Bank, P.O. 97, Canadian, TX 79104. Checks should be made out to the “Hemphill County Sheriff Reward Fund.”

More than 220,000 Texans have signed up for insurance plans under the Affordable Care Act since open enrollment began Nov. 1, the second-most of the 39 states that use the Healthcare.gov online marketplace.
According to a Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services news release, 73 percent of Healthcare.gov enrollees in Texas found plans with premiums under $75 per month. State consumers save an average of $889 per year in premiums by revisiting their pre-existing plans.

For most people it may not seem like a big deal – but getting a free blanket can make a huge difference this time of year for people who are living on the streets.
Two local groups focused on community activism have joined forces to make blankets for Amarillo’s homeless.
Students from the West Texas A&M University social group Enactus, along with Yellow City Community Outreach, are asking for volunteers to join a no-sew blanket-making team with the goal of making 100 no-sew fleece blankets.

Textron’s TRU Simulation + Training has received an order to provide avionics bench training systems for the Bell 407GX and Bell 412EPI at Bell Helicopter’s Training Academy in Fort Worth.
The two training systems will be delivered to Bell, which is also a Textron subsidiary, in the summer.
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Milton Jones stood in a Kenyan slum. The year was 2003, and the Amarillo man was in the process of realizing a commitment he had made to personally meet AIDS orphans in sub-Saharan Africa and to dedicate the rest of his life to changing their plight.
“You don’t just go and see two or three AIDS orphans,” Jones said, the president and CEO of the Christian Relief Fund. “There’s thousands and thousands of them in this one place.”
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A federal judge’s injunction of President Barack Obama’s attempt to expand overtime pay for 4.2 million workers has left some employers unsure of how to allot future salaries while their employees wonder how they will be paid.
The regulation was scheduled to go into effect today, but U.S. District Court Judge Amos L. Mazzant III issued an injunction on Nov. 22, to the U.S. Department of Labor’s dismay. Mazzant, the judge for Texas’s East District Court whose office is in Sherman, was nominated by Obama in December 2014.

Walking through the kitchen of Dorothy Duvall’s house, cat kibble crunches underfoot.
Duvall is snuggled on a recliner in her Amarillo living room. Slick, an older calico with a broad, blackened nose and slick tail, sprawls on the chair’s arm.
The number of cats that make this house their home is almost impossible to calculate, Duvall said, but it might be close to 40 or 50.
Slick is the only cat who tends to hang close to Duvall.
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The Environmental Protection Agency has fined a Texas A&M University System veterinary laboratory in Amarillo for regulation violations related to the production and transportation of hazardous waste, the agency announced Monday.
In a months-long investigation that began in 2015, EPA discovered that Texas A&M Veterinary Medical Diagnostic Laboratory had generated hazardous waste without notifying authorities, failed to properly register as a waste generator, did not file a required biannual report and managed waste without a generator identification number.