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You and your pup can enjoy a special happy hour at Austin Eastciders for International Dog Day. (Austin Eastciders)
If you've got a pup, you're in luck! This Thursday is International Dog Day, and Austin is the perfect city to be in to celebrate this special day.
Here are some businesses in Austin worth checking out with your furry friend on Thursday.
Hopsquad Brewing Co., 2307 Kramer Lane
This year, Hopsquad is going all out for International Dog Day! They've teamed up with Three Dogs One Bar to create the Good Boy Golden Ale, which is brewed with natural blueberry dog biscuits from Tomlinson's Feed. Pups will also have the chance to munch on some fresh treats made with spent grain. With each beer purchased, $1 will go toward supporting Divine Canines' work. Other featured events: a raffle for some goodies, local and dog-themed vendors, a pup portraits photo booth, and a dog-friendly space within the taproom and on the patio.
Austin Eastciders Barton Springs, 1530 Barton Springs Road
Get ready for a paw-some happy hour at Austin Eastciders! From 6-8 p.m., Austin Pets Alive! will provide a mobile adoption center, Paws on Chicon treats and doggie froyo. There will be a raffle with prizes including dog food and gift cards for Drooly and Barkin' Creek, and a local dog photographer will offer a photo booth for dogs and their owners. For every pint sold during this event, $1 will go toward APA.
Irene’s, 506 West Ave.
This Thursday, Irene's is hosting their Yappy Hour from 4-6 p.m. They are partnering with Austin Pets Alive! and providing on-site adoption (you could take home your new best friend that same day). Tito's drink specials will also be offered, with $1 from each cocktail going toward APA. There will also be a donation-based raffle with prizes that include dog-related swag and portraits as well as an Irene's gift card. Key free stuff: a dog photo booth, treats and food.
Z’Tejas, 1110 West 6th St.
Want to give back to the dog community? On Thursday from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., Z'Tejas will be offering custom dog bandanas to purchase at the bar, which will help raise funds for the Austin Humane Society. For each bandana purchased, 10% will go back to AHS.
Hearth & Soul, 2727 Exposition Blvd.
Think your dog is the cutest of them all? Come get your pup photographed and have them entered into the Dog Day photo contest on Instagram for a chance to win a grand prize bundle that's valued at over $200. To RSVP, you can call or message the store and reserve your spot.
Dogtopia of Austin, 2105 Ranch Road 620 South Suite 101
It's a great day to be a dog at Dogtopia, an open area doggy daycare, spa and boarding facility in Lakeway. All-day on Aug. 26, Dogtopia will offer frozen treats at lunch with a $3 donation.
Flat Creek Disc Golf Destination, 24912 Singleton Bend East Road (in Marble Falls)
Do you love the outdoors? Do you love discs? Do you love dogs? If you said yes to all of these, this is the perfect way to celebrate International Dog Day. From 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., Flat Creek Estates will be hosting Dogs & Discs, offering free disc golf day passes, giving you a chance to explore the 18-hole course and 80-acre estate with your pup. You can either bring your own disc or rent one for $5 each. If you want some booze, you get $10 off either the Wine & Disc or Dine & Disc experience if you reserve by Wednesday, Aug. 25, using the promo code DOGS.
Read more on dog-friendly places in Austin:
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(U.S. Marshals)
The Austin woman suspected of killing star cyclist visiting from out of town, Moriah "Mo" Wilson, has now been captured after evading arrest for more than a month.
Kaitlin Marie Armstrong, an Austin yoga instructor, is believed by officials to be the killer of Wilson, who was found with gunshot wounds in a friend's house on May 11. The murder is being investigated as a crime of passion after Wilson met up with Armstrong's ex-boyfriend.
According to the U.S. Marshals, Armstrong was located at a hostel on Santa Teresa Beach in Provincia de Puntarenas, Costa Rica. Officials said she may have been using her sister's name after fleeing Austin on May 14, the day after police questioned her. She was last identified at Newark Liberty International Airport on May 18.
Federal authorities say they plan on returning Armstrong to the U.S., where she'll face charges of murder and unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.
Here's a timeline of events since the night of Wilson's murder.
- The night of her death, Wilson met with Armstrong’s ex-boyfriend Colin Strickland, a fellow pro cyclist. According to an affidavit, the pair went swimming, then to dinner, before he dropped Wilson off at her friend's home where she was staying in East Austin at around 8:30 p.m.
- While Wilson and Stickland had previously had a romantic relationship, Stickland said the two were friends. The affidavit says Strickland lied to Armstrong about his whereabouts that evening.
- Video footage shows Armstrong’s Jeep pulled up nearby the home within a minute of Wilson arriving home.
- At around 10 p.m., Wilson's friend called Austin police after finding her in a pool of blood. Wilson had been staying with the friend ahead of the upcoming bike race in nearby Hico, Texas.
- Armstrong was brought in for questioning the day after the murder and released after appearing “very still and guarded” when confronted with video evidence.
- The Lone Star Fugitive Task Force said her black Jeep Cherokee was sold to a South Austin CarMax dealership on May 13 for $12,200.
- She leaves from the Austin airport on May 14.
- Shell casings found on the scene matched a gun belonging to Armstrong.
- Austin police obtained an arrest warrant for Armstrong on May 17.
- She took a flight from Newark Liberty International Airport to San Jose, Costa Rica on May 18 using a fraudulent passport, according to the Marshals.
- On May 25, another warrant was obtained for unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.
- On June 29, she was captured by the U.S. Marshals
As the EPA faces limits on greenhouse gas regulations, Texas researchers work on carbon capture tech
UT is developing technology targeted at power, steel, cement and other industrial plants to lower emissions. (UT Austin)
On Thursday, the Supreme Court limited the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority in regulating greenhouse gases, a move that comes at a time when experts have warned about the need to take action on climate change.
The ruling was brought after a challenge to a lower court opinion brought by Texas and more than a dozen other states.
Vaibhav Bahadur, an associate professor in the Cockrell School of Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin called the SCOTUS decision significant, noting that Texas is the biggest energy producer in the U.S., and produces more energy than the United Kingdom.
“Power generation accounts for a significant fraction of U.S. carbon emissions, and the EPA loses its ability to control what's happening in about half of that sector,” Bahadur said. “And it's not just the U.S., I think people and environmentalists on pretty much anywhere on the planet will be disappointed because this is going in the wrong direction. We know we want to be decarbonizing, and this is essentially putting a roadblock on progress toward decarbonization.”
So, we’re going to need some insurance, Bahadur says. He’s carrying out work that’ll act as such through his research on carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), the process of sucking carbon from the air and burying it.
For the past five years, he’s been working on a novel approach to storing carbon. It involves supercharging the formation of carbon dioxide-based crystal structures and storing billions of tons of carbon under the ocean floor.
“If all of this is successful, then we will have another option for safely and responsibly storing carbon at the bottom of the seabed for essentially eternity,” Bahadur said.
Still, Bahadur talked about a different approach to responsibly cutting down emissions in the next decade, and doing so in a meaningful and substantial way, then the environment will eventually heal itself and we might not need CCS.
But that’s not the path we’re headed down.
“We're already starting to see temperature records being shattered this year, and we're still to hit peak summer,” Bahadur said. “All of this just makes me think that we need CCS to a larger extent, and possibly sooner than what a lot of scientists anticipate, especially if we can't keep our emissions in check.”
Gary Rochelle, a professor in the department of chemical engineering at UT, thinks CCS was ready to be deployed in 2010 and those 12 years have made a difference.
“But now we've emitted all that CO2,” Rochelle said. “And unfortunately, unlike other pollutants, when you emit CO2, it's there. It's not going away.”
Gary Rochelle and Vaibhav Bahadur are both researching technology to address carbon emissions. (UT)
Still, the delay is good in that now researchers like him have had time to learn about and improve the technology, allowing for fewer problems once it's deployed.
In December, UT announced a licensing agreement with advanced technology company Honeywell. The technology from that is targeted at power, steel, cement and other industrial plants to lower emissions.
Rochelle has been working on the technology since 2000 as part of an international collaborative effort. When he talked to Austonia on Thursday, he had just had calls with collaborators in Germany and Norway. Currently, he’s working with some Ph.D. students on addressing a chemical reaction that can happen with the technology known as oxidation that could lead to ammonia emissions and cause problems for a large-scale commercial unit.
Rochelle says he’s driven to this work because he wants to make a contribution.
“We're trying to develop this technology so that we can make a difference,” Rochelle said. “It's a nice problem to work on. The students are motivated and those are the primary things which drive us.”
Meanwhile, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott celebrated the high court’s decision which acted as a blow to President Joe Biden’s plan to reduce emissions.
“Today’s landmark victory against an out-of-control administration is also a big win for Americans who worry about skyrocketing energy costs due to expensive federal regulations that threaten our energy industry,” Abbott said. “President Biden cannot keep attacking the energy industry and the hardworking men and women who power our nation.”
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