TX New Home Financing in Texas

Washington -- The Republican Party that strode confidently into New York City to nominate President Bush for a second term in 2004 would hardly recognize the one that opens its national convention Sept.

Texas high schools are not required to offer elective high school Bible courses under a new law adopted by the state last year, Attorney General Greg Abbott said Thursday.

Hillary Rodham Clinton isn't the only also-ran on the loose in Denver. Three officials who were mentioned as possible running mates for Barack Obama but didn't make it onto the ticket got a chance to address ...

AUSTIN, Texas-Because of a federal appeals court ruling, child welfare workers will be required to obtain court orders in most cases before removing allegedly abused children from their homes, officials said.

U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison said Thursday she hasn't been asked to be John McCain's running mate, despite some speculation that she's a possible choice for the No.

Gov. Rick Perry has issued a disaster declaration for 61 counties as Texas prepares for a possible brush with Tropical Storm Gustav.

When deep-fried s'mores become a plausibly obtainable snack option, the State Fair of Texas must be approaching.

Los Angeles prosecutors dropped 30 of 59 sexual abuse charges against Indian-born celebrity fashion designer Anand Jon Alexander, as jury selection got underway for his trial in California.

A Texas motorcoach operator forced out of service by federal authorities last week was involved in at least two deadly accidents in Mexico before being shut down, court records show.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration on Friday ordered Autobuses Rio Verde of Irving to cease interstate operations because of its links to Green River Buses LLC of Dallas, which had received a similar order in April.

Court records examined by The Associated Press show a bus operated by Autobuses Rio Verde was involved in a fatal crash in Mexico on July 3, less than two years after a bus operated by Green River Buses was involved in a similar one.

In the last 24 months, 201 Texas motorcoach operators were told their authorizations were revoked but an unknown number continued operating under new names, an official with the Texas Department of ...

Gustav swirled toward Cuba on Wednesday after triggering flooding and landslides that killed at least 11 people in the Caribbean.

President Bush appealed to Russia's president Monday to ignore the advice of lawmakers and refrain from recognizing Georgia's breakaway regions as independent.

The move came as the White House announced Vice President Dick Cheney would visit Georgia, a blast of support for an ally still reeling from its brief war with Russia.

Bush's intervention reflected the deep stakes for Georgia, which is a former Soviet republic, and the broader U.S.-Russia relationship, as the fate of separatist Abkhazia and South Ossetia remained in flux.

Along with normal first-day jitters and excitement, students in this tiny district started school Monday wondering which teachers might be toting firearms.

Texas once again led the nation with the highest percentage of residents without health insurance, a U.S. Census Bureau report showed Tuesday, although the same study also reports a slight dip last year in the percentage without coverage across the nation.

A North Texas family is mourning the loss of two of their pets. The nine-month-old pit bulls were shot and killed by a neighbor who says it was self defense.

The shooting happened in a neighborhood off Ten Mile Bridge Road in northwest Fort Worth.

The neighbors never had any problems before. But that all changed over the weekend.

The man who pulled the trigger says he didn't have any choice. But the dogs' owners disagree.

Kristopher Harrison has a six-year-old daughter. He says that's why he was upset when two pit bulls wandered into his backyard Saturday afternoon.

Harrison says he told his next door neighbors, if it happened again, he would shoot the dogs. And that's exactly what he did around 4 a.m. Sunday morning.

Harrison says he and a friend were taking a break from watching the Olympics when the nine-month-old dog named 'Scarface' crawled under the fence. Harrison had his shotgun with him, so he says he shot the dog and the dog's sister, 'Lady'.

"I wish he just would have went in the house and would have came and told me instead of retaliating that way," dog owner Shaylen Ross said.

One of the animals was found dead in Harrison's backyard. The other was found dead in its own backyard.

"He was showing his teeth, growling and he was coming at me," Harrison explained. "The second dog, I didn't know. I didn't think I was going to have to shoot him, because he seemed a little hesitant. But then he looked at the hole in the fence. I thought he was going to go back under, then he turned around and started coming at me and that's when I shot him."

Fort Worth Police are reviewing the case, but they say if the dogs were in the neighbor's yard when they were shot it's unlikely that any charges will be filed.

A 13-year-old boy who admitted stabbing a teenage friend to death this summer received a 15-year sentence Monday in a plea agreement.

State District Judge Alan Mayfield accepted the plea agreement after rejecting a 10-year proposal earlier this month.

The youth pleaded "true" to the first-degree murder charge. County officials have said the former Provident Heights Elementary School student is the youngest person in McLennan County ever charged in a murder.

Attorneys met at the Bill Logue Juvenile Justice Center, where the boy, who was 12 at the time of the June 6 stabbing, has been held since his arrest.

Authorities said the boy, whose name is not being released because of his age, stabbed 14-year-old Keith Dancer in the heart with a steak knife during a dispute.

Mayfield told the youth that if he continues to show good behavior, he could be released on parole in three years, the Waco Tribune-Herald reported Monday in its online edition.

His sentence will be carried out at a Texas Youth Commission facility.

The boy's mother, Babette Wilkerson, has said her son was attracted to the older boy and was upset that his feelings were not reciprocated.

Wilkerson said at the time of the murder that her son's father died in May and that the boy has been in and out of counseling all his life.

Houston City Council members embarked on a spending spree in May and June, snapping up flat-screen televisions and new office furniture with taxpayer money. Two council members took their staff members on overnight retreats to Galveston.

The buying splurges came in the weeks leading up to June 30, the end of the city's fiscal year. Each council member had until then to spend his or her $362,042 office budget. Leftover funds would revert to the city's general revenue fund.

Six council members bought new TVs with their budget funds. Some mounted large-screen TVs in common staff areas, while others bought each staffer TV sets for their desks.

Two new councilwomen, Wanda Adams and Melissa Noriega, bought five televisions each. Noriega got one TV for her office, one for her chief of staff's office, and three for the staff common area. Sullivan bought all his staffers TV sets but paid the $800 bill himself.

Other council members who bought televisions with public funds include Ron Green, Jolanda Jones, M.J. Khan and James Rodriguez. In all, 22 new TVs were purchased for the council floor, at a cost of $8,705.

Surplus funds also were spent on office furniture, a leadership-skills book and training.

In May, Adams and her five staffers had an overnight training retreat in Galveston. The bill was $3,911, which included five rooms at the Hotel Galvez at $125 a night, meals and the trainer's fee of $2,300.

Councilman Jarvis Johnson's staff retreat on June 27 cost about $6,800. His training consultant cost $3,500, and the office paid for seven $189-a-night rooms at the Moody Gardens Hotel, plus one $550 suite.

Other end-of-year purchases included $1,400 for shirts for Noriega's staff members. The T-shirts, golf shirts and button-downs sport the city logo and her name.

Three council members purchased new furniture at the end of the fiscal year. Green, who is serving his last term because of term limits, spent $14,304 on new furniture.

Green has a 42-inch, wall-mounted plasma television hanging over his new walnut credenza. The $1,000 TV was bought through a city vendor on June 10. Green repaid the city with a personal check on Aug. 6, two weeks after the Chronicle asked council offices for spending records.

Noriega spent $3,658 on a new desk and credenza.

Jones spent $1,607 to get six chairs re-upholstered in her favorite color, pink.

A San Antonio couple accused of trying to sell the woman's 5-year-old daughter for sex also planned to include her 10-month-old daughter in the deal and then blackmail the person interested in the children, court testimony revealed this week.

The person with whom Jennifer Richards, 25, and her married boyfriend, Sean Michael Block, 40, had been in contact with turned out to be an FBI informant.

Richards is now charged with using interstate facilities to transmit information about a minor. Block is charged with distributing child pornography.

Both appeared Friday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Nancy Stein Nowak, who ordered Block held. Richards' detention hearing was delayed until Tuesday, the San Antonio Express-News reported Sunday.

Richards wanted an apartment and a used car in exchange for providing her daughter for sex, according to the affidavit. The deal also included child care for the 10-month-old, who "eventually" would be raped herself, testified Rex Miller, the FBI's lead agent on the case.

The couple also had hoped to then blackmail the person involved in the deal, Miller said.

Authorities said both children are no longer in Richards' custody and that neither child was sold for sex.

The FBI agent said Block made incriminating statements during an interview. Based on the interview, a review of the computers the couple used and surreptitiously taped conversations, Miller said he discovered the two were making further plans to abduct, rape and "carve up" a teenage runaway.

A northern Mexican town's police chief was killed Friday just 24 hours after replacing a predecessor whose slaying had prompted the rest of the force to quit out of fear of drug gangs.

Jesus Blanco Cano's bullet-ridden body was found at a ranch near the town of Villa Ahumada in Chihuahua state, about 80 miles (130 kilometers) south of El Paso, Texas, said Alejandro Pariente, a spokesman for the regional deputy attorney general's office.

He had been beaten, blindfolded and his hands were tied behind his back. Twelve bullet casings were found at the scene.

Cano, 40, had been on the job for just a day. The previous police chief, two other officers and three residents were killed in May when 70 gunmen barged into Villa Ahumada, a town virtually taken over by drug gangs.

The rest of its 20-member police force quit in fear, forcing the Mexican military to take over. The town had slowly been recruiting new police and was without a police chief until Blanco took the job. The troops eventually left.

Mayor Fidel Chavez met Friday with state police, but nobody at this office could be reached for comment. Chavez had fled after the May attack, taking refuge in the state capital of Chihuahua City, but he returned after soldiers recovered the town.

Mexico's powerful drug cartels have stepped up attacks against police in response to a military and police crackdown, beheading some officers and killing others outside their homes. Several towns and cities, particularly in the north, have struggled to hold together their police forces.

The mayor of Ciudad Juarez, a town just north of Villa Ahumada, announced a plan this week to recruit soldiers to replenish its depleting police force. Many police in Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, have been killed after their names appeared on hit lists left in public. Others whose names appeared on the lists have quit.

Veteran Dick Agnew knows all eight other Dallas-area members of the Legion of Valor, and he knows their cars - each with a special marking on the license plate to recognize the honor. So when he heard about the maroon 2001 Chevy parked at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, he had to go see for himself.

"I went out there and took pictures of the car, and said, 'That son of a ...' " said Mr. Agnew, commander of the North Texas Legion of Valor chapter and a recipient of the Army Distinguished Service Cross. "No one in our chapter has a maroon 2001 Chevy."

Mr. Agnew and another real war hero, Don Mason, commander of the San Antonio chapter of the Legion of Valor, checked their records and called the Texas Department of Transportation to turn in the phony, who also had a Navy Cross in the back window. Service crosses, which give you Legion of Valor eligibility, are second only to the Medal of Honor.

"They came to us and we were like, 'Holy cow. What can we do to make this better?' " said Kim Sue Lia Perkes, a TxDOT spokeswoman.

A subsequent investigation has found 14 of the 67 Legion of Merit license plates that were on the road in Texas may have been obtained through fraudulent means. So far, 11 have been either returned by the holder or canceled by TxDOT.

The department has revamped the application process for military license plates signifying the highest honors to ensure that those who are requesting them did, in fact, earn the recognition.

First-time applications for seven meritorious service license plates - including the Medal of Honor - are being routed through Austin headquarters, where they undergo a much more stringent review than they had in the past.

Sometimes almost half a dozen people will examine the required documents, said John Poole, manager for special registrations. If any red flags pop up, letters go out notifying the applicant and giving them a chance to respond. If there's no response, a second letter is sent out.

"As a final warning we send out a letter saying we don't want to cancel the plates or notify the FBI," said Mike Craig, deputy director of vehicle titles and registration.

Ms. Perkes added: "It's a very delicate balancing act." While the agency wants to catch people posing as military honorees, "we don't want to make so many hoops to jump through that people who deserve it can't get a license plate."