HARLINGEN — Tejano band Grupo Siggno member Jacob Turner, 21, is listed in stable condition and resting after being injured earlier this week in a car accident.

Because of their fellow band member’s accident, the band has elected to postpone a couple of their upcoming shows.

“Once again, we would like to thank everyone for the continuous support and prayers during this difficult time,” the band stated on their Facebook page.

“Jacob is still stable and resting at this time. Our shows scheduled for Friday Feb. 12 in Dallas and Feb. 13 in Laredo have been postponed. Please continue to keep Jacob in your prayers; we will continue to keep you posted.”

At approximately 12:25 a.m. Monday, officers were dispatched to the 3500 block of West Expressway 83 near Charlie Clark Nissan to respond to a major accident.

According to witnesses, the white Dodge Challenger that Turner was driving was traveling east on the frontage road at a high rate of speed when it lost control at a curve and struck the guardrail.

The collision caused the vehicle to catch fire.

Turner was taken to Valley Baptist Medical Center and was listed in critical condition.

Grupo Siggno released a statement later that day.

“We would like to inform everyone that Jacob is stable and resting at this time. Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers.

“At this time we would like to ask everyone to respect the privacy of the family and accept that we are not accepting visitors at this time,” the band stated.

There were no other victims.

The Harlingen Police Department says it will continue to investigate the crash.

HARLINGEN — In Minghao Wang’s hometown of Shenzhen, China, anime is super big.

He compares it to the popularity of football in the United States.

It’s a style of Japanese hand-drawn or computer animation, typically for film or television. Until a couple years ago, it was only a hobby for Wang.

Then he met an anime enthusiast at a comic convention in China who would become his best friend and help teach him to draw anime.

“It was only a hobby. I met a guy doing some anime and he let me realize you can turn a hobby into a real job,” Wang said.

“It’s a good way to prove to my mom or anybody else to show them I can do something (like this) all my life.”

Today, he loves drawing anime and he always carries a pencil in his pocket.

He’s a 16-year-old ninth grader at Marine Military Academy. He came to the United States to study at the academy because his father believed it would help him focus on achieving his goals.

Now, he is very focused.

After he graduates from MMA, he plans to attend college in the United States. He will either attend an art school to learn how to draw better anime or attend UCLA and be a game designer and development major.

Either way, he ultimately intends to return to Asia to work in the Anime, Comics & Games industry, known as ACG, which Wang calls the ACG tradition. And he hopes to some day own his own ACG company.

He wants Americans to understand that anime is not an art form exclusively for children. It’s also for teens and adults.

“I think about 20 years ago, 30 years ago, people might think it is just for little children. People do not understand the difference between a cartoon and anime,” Wang said.

“I like to tell people the world is changing. Now people are realizing it has become a new way of life with themes that are becoming more for teens and adults.”

He says he mostly uses pencils or a computer to draw. But really, he can use any medium.

“I can use anything. Using the computer is just a way to draw. It doesn’t really matter what I am using to draw. It’s just that I’m drawing something,” he said.

Andi Atkinson, MMA director of marketing and public relations, said Wang is always drawing something.

“He draws different things all the time,” she said.

“One minute he’s sketching a girl, one minute he’s sketching a guy, one minute he’s sketching an animal.”

Most anime artists develop their own story lines, often with a superhero. Wang is working on his.

He has an outline for a superhero named Jun Lin, who is the guardian of a city. He defends the city of those who would want to try to get in and faces an adversary who has equal superpowers.

“They have exactly the same superpower. They can make themselves stronger and faster, just like Superman, in five minutes,” he said.

The theme of his story line is this: “How can people from different kinds of worlds learn to understand each other?”

An afternoon police chase in Harlingen lead to the arrests of several men and the seizure of hundreds of pounds of narcotics.

Officials say the pursuit began when U.S. Border Patrol agents attempted to stop a silver SUV on Landrum Road around 3 p.m. today.

Police say the driver fled and federal agents gave chase. The SUV was finally stopped at the intersection of the expressway frontage road and Taft Street.

They say the men ran from the vehicle. Agents arrested at least three men and discovered 500 pounds of marijuana in the vehicle.

The Harlingen school board Tuesday night honored Verna Young for her many years of service working for the education of the district’s students.

“I am one of the products of Mrs. Young,” said School Board Member Greg Powers. “I remember on the second floor, I remember in the classroom the time she spent with me, working with a me.” He laughed and added, “A lot of patience.”

Young, 84, officially stepped down from the school board Tuesday where she began serving in 2001. Previous to her tenure as a school board member, she had been an algebra teacher at Vernon Junior High School and Harlingen High School. She then became principal first at Bonham Elementary School for nine years and at Harlingen High School for 16 years.

Many school board members recalled having her as a teacher.

“Verna Young and I have known each other for 58 years,” said Board Member Gerry Fleuriet. “She and I have been close personal friends for more than 30 years.”

Young would spend long hours with students to ensure they learned algebra. She would even work with them one on one if necessary. She’s impacted generations of students who have passed through Harlingen schools.

Powers was friends with Young’s daughter and was often at her house working on algebra.

“She’s a phenomenal teacher,” he said.

Young sat at the front with her great granddaughter, Caydence Short, 4. Her granddaughter, Amanda, and son-in-law James Short also sat on the front row. She said she felt honored by all the accolades, although she was rather modest about it all.

“Anytime that you are told that you are wonderful, it’s always pleasant to hear it,” she said. She hesitated to get too drawn in by all the attention.

“If I go away believing all the things I heard tonight, I would be floating up here,” she said.

Over her 46-year career as an educator and administrator, she’s most proud of the positive impact she’s had on so many students. Her proudest achievements recently, she said, have been her work on the school board. She commended all the board members for the ability to work together for the students.

More and more of our Valley communities are in immediate danger from invasive oil and natural gas companies, companies that threaten our health, safety, and local economies.

Our best hope is the election of new Port of Brownsville Commissioners who take our valley wide health, safety, and local economies into consideration while growing the Port as a valley wide and state wide resource.

The filing deadline for three Port Commissioner positions is Feb 19. The vote is May 7. For information and the required forms, call Deborah Duke, (956) 831-4592.

Centurion Terminals has not been honest with Channels 4 and 5 about the number of trains it will be running through Raymondville, Harlingen, San Benito, and Olmito to the Port.

Centurion told them one train a week. But its website says 160,000 barrels of condensate per day, which will mean two trains a day, around 120 rail tanker cars each. Each full of highly flammable condensate.

Explosive oil trains could follow the highly flammable condensate trains to the port. Why? Because the Port has started expanding its oil export capacities.

In addition, the Port continues to ignore strong local opposition to Annova, Texas, and Rio Grande LNG. Laguna Vista, Port Isabel, South Padre Island, and Long Island Village have all passed resolutions against LNG. The condensate, oil, and LNG operations will also encourage the fracking of northern Mexico’s Burgos Basin area around Reynosa – threatening the health of all who live in the area (McAllen etc).

There is still time to stop or at least limit all the dangers the Port is bringing our way. Demand that the Port and Centurion hold public forums in Harlingen and Brownsville now, before the trains start rolling. Demand that the Port and LNG companies hold a public forum in Port Isabel now, before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission makes any decision about any of them. Run for Port Commissioner. Visit saveRGVfromLNG on Facebook. Join us and with each other. Now.

John Young San Benito

Go to http://www.usdebtclock. org/ and you’ll see that the national debt now exceeds $19 trillion. It was a bit over $10 trillion when Obama was elected and will be more than $20 trillion when he leaves office.

He will have doubled the debt in just eight years, overspending revenue by an amount equal in nominal dollars to all 43 administrations before him plus the Revolutionary War debt that began piling up in 1776 even before we had a constitution. George Washington’s administration assumed that debt when it was transferred from the colonies to the U.S. Treasury.

It took 232 years to pile $10 trillion in debt onto the American taxpayer, and under the Obama administration and the current Republican Congress, that figure will be doubled in a mere eight years, and none of the candidates from either party are offering a fix because any fix they can think of will call for enough citizen sacrifice to sink the candidate’s campaign.

Jack King Harlingen

SAN BENITO — Giving up selfies is a good way to start thinking of others during the 40 days of Lent.

Father Joe Villalon of Saint Theresa Catholic Church said sacrificing something and thinking more about others is symbolic, as when Jesus was in the desert fasting and fighting temptation to get closer to God for 40 days.

Ash Wednesday is today and marks the first day of Lent.

Lent, which means “spring,” is the 40-day period of fasting and prayer that Christians observe in preparation for the celebration of Easter.

Leftover palms from Palm Sunday are burned and blessed so the ashes can be used for Ash Wednesday. The mark on the forehead serves as an outward sign proclaiming their faith.

“It serves as a sign of our sinfulness and that we need forgiveness,” Villalon said. “The ashes also symbolize our mortality and one day we will die.”

Villalon will have a morning mass at 7 a.m., a noon service, 7 p.m. services for youth and 8:15 p.m. service at Saint Theresa Catholic Church.

The Most Reverend Daniel E. Flores, Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Brownsville, will celebrate the opening of Lent with a noon Mass in the Grand Ballroom at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley in Brownsville.

He also will celebrate Mass at 7 p.m. at the Immaculate Conception Cathedral.

Sandy Landrum, 51, a Harlingen resident, said, “To me it’s when we go back and reflect about what Jesus did for us.”

The long tradition started when Pope Urban II in 1095 ordered that laymen were prevented from eating meat after the imposition of ashes on Ash Wednesday until Easter.

Landrum said she is very passionate about adding prayer into her 40 days of Lent and going to daily Mass and praying the rosary more.

“I don’t focus on the giving up part, to me it’s more about service to people and to be more helpful,” Landrum said.

Landrum said Jesus knew what was going to happen and he’s asking us to connect with God if we put our faith in him.

“The 40 days is how he prepared and that’s how we prepare,” Landrum said.

Lent goes back to the early Church when the new Christians-to-be were preparing to be baptized on Easter. They were called catechumens and during the 40 days prior to Easter they repented, studied and sacrificed.

The 40-day period of Lent serves as a time for spiritual renewal in preparation for Easter. It is a time when Christians can grow in their faith.

The number of days represents the 40 days Jesus spent alone praying in the desert before he began his public ministry.

Ash Wednesday is the day Christians choose what they will do in preparation for Easter. These include prayer, fasting and almsgiving.

Ash Wednesday gets its name from the ancient Catholic custom of receiving a dab of blessed ashes on the forehead.

The blessed ashes, symbolic of penance, are used to mark the forehead with the sign of the cross, with the reminder: “Remember you are dust, and to dust you will return,” or “Turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel.”

BY Carol Lutsinger is a NASA/JPL Solar System educator and ambassador Texas Space Grant Consortium collaborator and American Astronomical Society resource agent [email protected] Newspaper in Education

Monday the 8th was the New Moon so as the week progresses it will be at First Quarter Moon phase next Monday, Full Moon on the 22nd, Last Quarter March 2, and New again on March 8th. The phases of the Moon determine when the Christian world commemorates Easter and the Jewish world commemorates the Feast of the Passover. Many ancient cultures based most of their ceremonies on the lunar phases which we continue to this day. The details as to why are too complicated to go into here but there are several sites online that will give you some great details regarding our historical celebrations. One is http://christianity.about.com/ or just use Google and explore other points of view.

The evening sky’s first star is Sirius, the Dog Star. It appears to be the brightest star in the night sky and is the one to which all other stars are compared. It has unique status in that it is the only star that can be seen with the naked eye from North America and Europe by most observers and the nearest star neighbor other than the sun. Sirius is almost 9 light years away (53 trillion miles). If the sun were the size of a Ping Pong ball, the earth would be a pinprick 13 feet away and Sirius would be a tennis ball 1400 miles away, or to put it in context another way the distance from the Valley to Costa Rica or Montana. If that doesn’t boggle your brain, I will try to accomplish that another way.

The exploring twin Voyager spacecrafts that were the first spacecraft to fly by the planets were launched in 1977. They have been travelling through space since then. Voyager 1 entered interstellar space three years ago. Travelling at 50,000 mph it would take it more than one hundred thousand years. Current plans are for Voyager 1 to fly by a star designated AC+793888, which is 17.6 lightyears from earth and will take 40,000 years traveling at its current rate.

Many ancient cultures assigned a wolf or dog figure to the stars in Canis Major where Sirius is to be found. I like to say the star is the rabies tag because the owner cared about ensuring good health for his pet, reminding audiences how important those are to us here in the Rio Grande Valley. Rabies is a constant menace.

Sirius also signified time for the Nile to flood. Farmers get ready to plow and plant so there is a bountiful harvest. Ancient Egyptians worshiped this star because it rose just before dawn on the first day of summer. Several Egyptian temples were oriented so that the light from that rising star shone into the dark interiors.

Other cultures also understood astronomy well enough to arrange this event with other stars, including our sun. An entirely new type of astronomy has developed over the past thirty years called archeoastronomy that has led to an abundance of theories about just how advanced those ancient cultures actually were. It is a fascinating topic, at least to me.

Wake up and go out before sunrise to be treated to the spectacular view of 5 planets in the eastern sky. In order of placement, Mercury near the eastern horizon until midmonth, Venus visible at dawn, Mars rises after midnight, Saturn rises in the early morning, and Jupiter rises after midnight.

Until next week, KLU.

HARLINGEN — After defeating Harlingen South 47-24 in an incredibly physical game on Tuesday, the Harlingen Lady Cardinals hoisted the District 32-6A championship trophy at the Lady Cardinals gymnasium.

It marked the second straight season the Lady Cards had gone undefeated in district play, finishing the 2015-16 regular season with an unblemished 14-0 league mark and a staggering 32-1 overall record. The Lady Cards closed out the regular season riding an unbelievable 22-game win streak as they begin the postseason next week.

But Tuesday’s contest was more than just a game between two crosstown rivals; it was a preparation for what’s ahead.

“I kept telling the team that it’s not about just about today’s opponent because each game that we play is preparation for the playoffs,” said Harlingen head coach Ashley Moncivaiz. “It’s to see what are the areas that we need to keep improving on.

“I told them they can’t be satisfied because once you get satisfied it very easy not to work hard.”

With the win, Harlingen will play District 31-6A fourth seed Edinburg North in the bi-district round. Harlingen South, meanwhile, despite the loss, has a date with PSJA North in the playoffs. South lost to PSJA North in the first round of the postseason last year, 63-54.

Full story at RGVSports.com

LA FERIA — It was a warm afternoon, somewhere in the mid 70s, and the sun was hitting Don Schwanke as he sat outside.

It didn’t bother Schwanke. He was excited because he was watching a small business called Solar Bond install panels on his roof.

His house is going to produce its own energy with the heat of the sun using the solar panels.

“Most people are in the dark about solar power,” he said.

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The La Feria resident purchased 48 solar panels and he plans on never paying for electricity ever again after they are all installed.

Schwanke said he will be putting more solar power than he’s using into the power grid.

“I’m putting free electricity back into the grid,” he said. “I expect not to be paying any energy by this week.”

Over the years, Schwanke said, he’s paid about $4,000 a year in electricity, amounting to about $40,000 over 10 years. He believes by installing these solar panels he eventually will save more than it cost him to pay for the panels.

In his case, all the electricity for his house is going to depend on the sun’s heat from here on out.

The energy he doesn’t use will be saved to meet his future electricity needs.

He said the cost of the project was $50,000 and over time he will be saving far more than he ever spent for energy.

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