HOUSTON — An actor and spokesman for the discount hotel website Trivago.com has been arrested in Texas on a misdemeanor driving while intoxicated charge.

Court records show 52-year-old Timothy Williams was arrested Wednesday afternoon in Houston and freed on $100 bond.

Houston police spokeswoman Jodi Silva said Friday that Williams was stopped in traffic and passed out with his foot on the brake. Silva says Williams, who’s from Houston, failed a field sobriety test and agreed to having blood drawn for alcohol testing. Results weren’t immediately available.

A Trivago statement Friday says the company didn’t have full details on the situation but treats such incidents very seriously and strongly condemns drinking and driving as a risk to others and against the Trivago culture.

Court records didn’t list an attorney representing Williams.

 

High court keeps execution drug supplier secret

AUSTIN — A supplier of Texas’ execution drugs can remain secret under a court ruling Friday that upheld risks of “physical harm” to the pharmacy, ending what state officials called a threat to the entire U.S. death penalty system.

The decision by the Texas Supreme Court, where Republicans hold every seat on the bench, doesn’t change operations at the nation’s busiest death chamber because state lawmakers banned the disclosure of drug suppliers for executions starting in 2015.

A lawsuit filed a year earlier by condemned Texas inmates argued that the supplier’s identity was needed to verify the quality of the drugs and spare them from unconstitutional pain and suffering. Lower courts went on to reject Texas’ claims that releasing the name would physically endanger pharmacy employees at the hands of death-penalty opponents.

Now, however, the state’s highest court has found the risks valid and ordered the identity of the supplier to stay under wraps.

 

Marine whose book inspired ‘The Pacific’ dies

LANCASTER — A Marine whose book about grueling jungle combat during WWII became a basis for the HBO miniseries “The Pacific” has died at his home in Texas.

Services are being held Friday for R.V. Burgin . His daughter, Maggie Shepherd, says her father was 96 when he died in his sleep on April 6.

Burgin wrote the book, “Islands of the Damned: A Marine at War in the Pacific.” Shepherd says it was among several books that inspired the HBO miniseries that premiered in 2010. Burgin was portrayed in the miniseries by actor Martin McCann.

Shepherd says her father for about 35 years never talked about his service in the war. She says he was inspired to write a book after attending some military reunions.

Burgin lived in Lancaster, a Dallas suburb.