Phil Cross

04/03/2019

This page will likely be going away soon. It was set up for me by Sinclair Broadcast Group, and as of 5:00 today I am no longer an employee of the company.

It's been a great 12 years and I thank you, sincerely thank you all, for inviting me into your homes and lives.

I'm leaving the station on my own terms and doing what's right for myself and my family. I will miss the news business terribly, but I understand there's life after TV news, so I'm off to find it.

04/02/2019

Packed house judiciary meeting this afternoon...two big topics on the table wine and bail.

04/02/2019

Interesting new map that I found out from a PR email. How close do you live to a m**h lab bust?

As the opioid epidemic continues across the county, authorities are also confronting the return of another scourge – one they thought they’d conquered years ago. Methamphetamine, or crystal m**h, prompted massive national concern in the early 2000s, an era in which small-scale manufacturers woul...

03/29/2019

My last Project Oklahoma report:

How much school is too much to miss? The Oklahoma Department of Education is trying to take on a problem facing many school districts across the state, chronic absenteeism. In the state’s new school report card system, chronic absenteeism is the one non-academic factor schools are rated on. To...

03/28/2019

This is super cool!

A Texas art teacher's inspirational project is warming the hearts of her community and the internet after she donned a dress with drawings created by hundreds of her students. The project went viral after her daughter posted it on Twitter, where it quickly garnered over 100,000 likes. "I got fabric....

03/27/2019

In the efforts this week to get the kids back into a school schedule and off of spring break time, I was trying to convince my 1st grader to go to bed with a little light still left outside.

Me: If you don't go to sleep now you'll be tired in the morning.
Her: I won't be tired in the morning, I'll be sleeping.

03/26/2019

I figured out our copper theft problem...rig every street light with this fart-glitter-bomb.

Mark Rober engineers his revenge

03/26/2019

Well...the Judicial center has been evacuated due to an odor of natural gas. But the conversation on school issues is continuing outside.

03/26/2019

State Superintendent Joy Hofmeister leading the Oklahoma Student Advisory Council. A few great topics on how to improve school from the students.

03/26/2019

The Attorney General has announced a news conference for later today to discuss the details of the settlement with Purdue Pharma over opioids, but according to the WSJ, the settlement is for $270 million.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/purdue-reaches-270-million-settlement-with-oklahoma-in-opioid-crisis-case-11553606534

Purdue Pharma and its owners, the Sackler family, have agreed to pay $270 million to resolve claims by the Oklahoma attorney general that the company helped fuel the opioid crisis.

03/25/2019

The Oklahoma County Jail in the news again tonight. Great reporting by my colleague Erika Stanish coming up.

But with all the finger pointing and attempts to play up or downplay the issues of people being locked up and forgotten....no one is really addressing the fact we need a new county jail.

The jail was poorly designed, poorly constructed and has a documented history of problems with management.

The county needs to figure this out. Why?

Well there's is the basic argument about the humanity of the conditions, but if that doesn't work for you there's also the fact that it is costing taxpayers too much money in lawsuits to keep this current facility open.

03/20/2019

Which came first the chicken or the wheelchair...

Animal rescuers in Oklahoma are helping an overweight chicken who can't stand anymore, they fitted her with a custom wheelchair. Though this story is a bit unusual, so are the stories of most of the animals at Oliver and Friends Farm Rescue and Sanctuary. You may remember Milo, the puppy born with u...

03/20/2019

This is the week where my early afternoons are spent desperately watching the clock for the exact second when it won't necessarily be "unsafe" to take more allergy medicine.

03/20/2019

Press release from the Dept. of Wildlife.

I love fishing, but have never been to Texoma. I think I prefer pond fishing to lake fishing anyway...now I am thinking I need to get out and go fishing.

Lake Texoma is one of only a handful of lakes in the United States with a naturally reproducing striped bass fishery. (Kelly Adams/ODWC)

03/19/2019

From birthdays to weddings to gender reveals, cakes marks all sorts of occasions - so why not a vasectomy? A local woman wanted to show her appreciation for her husband who was having a vasectomy. Signature Desserts in Nashville said the client wanted som**hing sweet and hilarious - so a cake it was...

03/19/2019

Theory: The Bradford Pear Tree is actually the tree Adam & Eve ate from in the Garden of Eden.

God not only cursed mankind, by kicking them out, but also made it so the tree never produced any fruit other than the most severe, allergy-inducing, pollen.

Just a theory...but you should cut down your Bradford Pear tree, like yesterday.

03/18/2019

The Nowata County sheriff, undersheriff and more than half of the deputies resigned Monday after refusing to open the jail due to safety issues. Sheriff Terry Sue Barnett refused to reopen the jail nearly three weeks after a carbon monoxide leak. RELATED INowata sheriff's deputies, county employees....

03/18/2019

Interesting.

Scientists claim it’s the best evidence to date, but critics are skeptical