KELI From Inkwell, this is the Amarillo News Drop. I'm Keli, with Hast.
HAST Good morning. I-40 is going to be a mess this week.
KELI TxDOT has lane closures stacked across the corridor. Bolton, Eastern, and Nelson intersections — both directions — bridge work. That runs through Friday. Same week, the westbound service road from Pullman to Airport is down for concrete edge repairs. The right lane eastbound from Whitaker to Airport closes for patching. And westbound at Eastern, left and center lanes go down. If you're moving through Amarillo on the interstate, budget extra time and expect delays.
HAST Those are all happening at once?
KELI This week, yeah. The counter-read here is simple: TxDOT bunched the work. You're going to see some outlets frame this as routine maintenance. What's underneath is a compressed timeline — they're trying to finish before school starts and fall traffic picks up. The question to watch is whether any of these close early or slip into next week. Check TxDOT's website before you drive.
HAST Sticking with the region. West Texas A&M has formed a presidential search committee.
KELI Eleven members — A&M regents, WT faculty, staff, students, and business and civic leaders from the Panhandle. They're working with Parker Executive Search to find the next WT president. No timeline on the search yet. That's a significant hire for higher ed in the region.
HAST On a different front, TxDOT's enforcing a new safety rule for rail contractors, and it's causing friction.
KELI Late June, TxDOT sent a memo to rail transit agencies: all safety training exams must be administered in English exclusively. The policy is framed as safety. Contractors say it's creating a workforce problem — some crews lose workers who can't take the exams in Spanish, even if they understand the safety material. We'll keep tracking this one as contractors file grievances.
HAST Before we close, a history note. On this day in 1997, a massacre in Algeria killed 116 villagers in Oued El-Had and Mezouara.
KELI That's the Amarillo News Drop. Full script and sources at inkwell.wiki/news/amarillo.
KELI Before we close, a word from Inkwell. A principle from Gil's Intelligent Version worth borrowing: where a source genuinely leaves a question open, an honest translation preserves the ambiguity instead of quietly deciding for you.
HAST They call it The Refused Verdict. At inkwell dot wiki, slash giv.
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