Dallas Morning News

J.C. Penney executives made additional purchases of the company’s stock on the open market this week, including CEO Jill Soltau. The purchases come a week after chairman Ron Tysoe bought 1 million shares of Penney as the retailer faces the prospect of being delisted from the New York Stock Exchange unless it gets its stock price back up above...

Erykah Badu’s close connection with Dallas ISD’s performing art school continues to bear fruit for its students.On Wednesday, Badu’s friend — the Grammy-, Emmy- and Oscar-award winning rapper Common — stopped by to talk with students at DISD’s Booker T. Washington School for the Performing and Visual Arts.The son of a former teacher, pr...

The number of youngsters kicked out of the classroom has dropped by nearly a third since Texas implemented a law that banned such punishment except in the most extreme cases. Texas’ public schools had suspended more than 101,000 students in prekindergarten to second grade during the 2015-16 school year. That fell by 31 percent to 70,197 in th...

Forever 21 Inc. is preparing for a potential bankruptcy filing as the fashion retailer’s cash dwindles and turnaround options fade, according to people with knowledge of the plans.The company has been in talks for additional financing and working with a team of advisers to help it restructure its debt, but negotiations with possible lenders h...

Collin County lawmakers turned up the pressure Wednesday on the Department of Public Safety to use $200 million in new funding to fix problems at its driver license “mega centers,” following a call to action from the governor’s office to shorten wait times.”Our constituents are outraged,” the seven legislators said in ...

A federal civil jury is deliberating whether a Dallas police officer used excessive force when he fatally shot an unarmed man seven years ago in South Dallas.Officer Brian Rowden shot James Harper, 31, three times July 24, 2012. The incident nearly incited a riot.A Dallas County grand jury declined to indict Rowden on criminal charges in 2013. Harp...

A 22-year-old McKinney man was sentenced Wednesday to more than 20 months in prison after he attempted last year to meet a teenage boy for sex. Stephen Chase Clark had pleaded guilty in March to charges of attempted coercion and enticement of minors and distribution of child pornography. A judge sentenced him Wednesday to 250 months in federal pris...

A woman says she was groped and sexually harassed on an American Airlines flight to DFW Airport after flight attendants over-served alcohol to the man next to her, according to a lawsuit recently moved to U.S. District Court in the Northern District of Texas.The Texas woman was on a flight from Europe to the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport in November......

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico – A mother and her 3-year-old from Honduras grew so frustrated waiting in Mexico that they tried crossing the Rio Grande, in an area where migrants usually pass through to avoid waiting in Mexico. They drowned.Vilma Xiomara Mendoza, 20, a migrant from the indigenous region in Guatemala known as Baja Verapaz, crossed into...

AUSTIN — Academy Award winning actor Matthew McConaughey landed a new role: University of Texas professor.But it’s not for a movie. McConaughey, a 1993 alum with a film degree from UT, was appointed professor of practice at the Moody College of Communications starting in the fall semester which begins today.The university announced that...

AUSTIN — The North Texas man who confessed to carrying out the mass shooting at an El Paso Walmart earlier this month told law enforcement he purchased his gun from overseas, according to The Texas Tribune. In a Texas Department of Public Safety report obtained by The Tribune, Patrick Crusius said he bought the AK-47 he allegedly used in the…...

MEXICO CITY — An attack on a bar in Mexico’s Gulf coast city of Coatzacoalcos killed 23 people and injured 13 early Wednesday.The attackers started a fire that ripped through the bar, killing eight women and 15 men. There was no immediate information on the condition of the injured. Photos of the scene showed tables and chairs jumbled a...