Texas today

Associated Press

May 25, 2006 09:39 am

— Rural highways to get boost to 80 mph
AUSTIN (AP) — Texans who brag they do things bigger and better are about to go faster too.
State transportation officials are expected Thursday to boost speed limits on two stretches of rural highway from 75 mph to 80, leaving wandering armadillos and feral hogs a split-second less time to avoid becoming roadkill.
It would be the highest posted speed limit in the country.
And while state officials say the roads can accommodate it, safety and energy conservation advocates warn it will cost lives and hit drivers in the wallet at a time of spiking fuel prices.
“We studied it,” said Transportation Commission Chairman Ric Williamson. “These are parts of the state where higher speeds is a safe decision.”
DeLay’s final House bill approved
WASHINGTON (AP) — Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who is resigning from Congress June 9 amid legal problems, won House approval Wednesday of the final bill he introduced — a measure aimed at getting foster children into permanent homes faster.
The bill passed unanimously on a voice vote.
According to DeLay, children wait longer to be placed with a family outside of the state where they are in government foster care than they do if placed with a family within that state.
“Thousands of children, shuttled in and out of our broken, debasing foster care system, have foster or adoptive families out of state more than willing to provide them a permanent, safe, loving home,” DeLay, R-Sugar Land, said in a news release.
Lay-Skilling jury deliberations to continue a 6th day
HOUSTON (AP) — Jurors in the fraud and conspiracy trial of Enron Corp. founder Kenneth Lay and former CEO Jeffrey Skilling have deliberated for about 31 hours over five days without reaching a verdict in the premier criminal case to emerge from the company’s collapse.
The panel was slated to resume talks for a sixth day on Thursday.
On Wednesday, the jury sent a note to U.S. District Judge Sim Lake asking whether it was possible to see transcripts of testimony. The judge asked the panel to be more specific about what it wanted, and the issue didn’t come up again.
Both defendants awaited the outcome away from the federal courthouse in Houston — Lay at his office about two blocks away, and Skilling in his legal team’s so-called “war room” in an office building across the street.
The eight-woman, four-man panel is deliberating Monday through Thursday each week, the same schedule as the 16-week trial that started with jury selection Jan. 30.
mmigration debate evolves, again, on the Internet
EL PASO, Texas (AP) — Sandra Silva looks like an average Mexican woman with her mocha skin and long, dark hair.
With his milky complexion and strawberry-blond hair, Guy Antonioli has an all-American appeal.
Silva’s suburban twang hints at her Texas roots. For Antonioli, his flawless Spanish suggests his Mexico City birth and upbringing.
Their anti-stereotypical looks make the point in a pro-immigration television ad airing in San Antonio, Chicago and San Jose, Calif., by Mexicans and Americans Thinking Together, one of two Internet-based campaigns aimed at narrowing a growing fissure between people on both sides of the national immigration debate. Organizers said the pairing of 30-year-old Silva with Antonioli, 25, is also meant to dispel myths about what makes a person Mexican, or American.
Lionel Sosa, a longtime Republican who has helped garner the Latino vote for more than 20 years, said the campaign has one goal: create a rhetoric-free discussion about how to fix a broken immigration system.