Families and doctors testified Tuesday on the grief and tough decisions surrounding Texas' advance directives law, which allows hospitals to cease treating terminally ill patients after a 10-day waiting period if an ethics panel agrees there is no hope for recovery. Full Story
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With more than 3,000 bills and only 140 days to pass them, somebody's got to set priorities and make a schedule. Those somebodies are on the calendars committees. Full Story
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State jail officials would get a clearer picture of potential problems in county lockups under a bill a Senate panel considered on Tuesday that would require counties to report the monthly turnover rate among jailers. Full Story
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Want to die comfortably? Move to Corpus Christi. A study of national hospice and hospitalization trends shows the percentage of Medicare patients dying in hospitals there, as opposed to at home or in hospice, is dropping fast. Full Story
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For the first time in decades, first-time drunken-driving offenders could get deferred adjudication under a bill the Senate Criminal Justice Committee considered Tuesday. Full Story
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Despite the dramatic tenor of the current debate, there appears to be near public unanimity in support of the broad concept of academic research. Drill down into specific types of research, however, and a deeper split is revealed. Full Story
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The regional fire coordinator for the Texas Forest Service, near the front lines of a 100,000-acre blaze that swept through Stonewall and King Counties last weekend, says more bad fire weather is on the way later this week. Full Story
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Your afternoon reading: Doggett amendment repealed; House approves space flight bill; data-breach call center flooded Full Story
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To avoid government shutdown, congressional Democrats agreed to repeal an amendment that would have prohibited Texas from using federal funds to replace, rather than supplement, state funding of schools. Full Story
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The state’s two leading anti-abortion groups — Texas Right to Life and Texas Alliance for Life — agree on where life begins, but not on a law governing how it may come to an end. A house committee will take up the issue today. Full Story
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In a turn of events, campus-carry legislation could provide Democrats with what's sure to be one of their few legislative victories this session. Full Story
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The Ciudad Juárez mayor on why his city isn’t the most violent in Mexico, why negotiating with cartels would be giving in to the criminals’ demands and why, despite a cartel presence, there aren’t shootouts in the streets of El Paso. Full Story
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Firefighters continue to battle massive wildfires that have scorched more than 300,000 acres across the state in the last week. As Crystal Chavez of KUT News reports, with the state still battling a drought, little relief is in sight. Full Story
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The state of Texas generates a fortune from taxes on mining for oil, gas and minerals. But as Ryland Barton of KUT News and ReportingTexas.com reports, the natural gas industry enjoys a special incentive that some legislators want to scrap. Full Story
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The House Ways & Means Committee is considering several bills that have the same mission: to make permanent the franchise tax exemption for businesses that report $1 million or less in gross revenue. Full Story
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A panel of senators today discussed an abortion sonogram carve-out that would allow women in remote communities to wait just two hours after a sonogram to have an abortion, instead of 24 hours. Full Story
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State Sen. Jeff Wentworth, R-San Antonio, hoped to bring up his campus carry bill today after a false start on Thursday. But the search for votes is proving more difficult than he anticipated. Full Story
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Tenet Healthcare Corp., a Dallas-based hospital company under siege by Community Health Systems, has sued its competitor and potential parent for allegedly overbilling Medicare. Full Story
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Since 2009, the Texas Forest Service has helped douse more than 2,600 wildfires like those scorching West Texas. We mapped the area most effected by the blazes, which burned nearly a half-million acres and destroyed 300 homes. Full Story
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Your afternoon reading: personal information of millions of Texans exposed; Michelle Obama to visit Texas this week; Dewhurst cooling on Senate run? Full Story
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