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HOUSTON — BP says the rig drilling the relief well that's the best hope of stopping the Gulf oil spill has made it within about 20 feet horizontally of the blown-out well that's gushing crude. BP Senior Vice President Kent Wells said Monday that the rig is going to drill an additional 900 feet down before crews cut in sideways and start pumping in heavy mud to try to stop the flow from the damaged well. It's currently about 16,770 feet down. Wells says BP is moving extremely cautiously to make sure everything is lined up correctly and the...

Aaron Taylor of Vidor is earning his degree from Lamar University from a rather unconventional classroom: a U.S. military base in Afghanistan.The husband, father and corporal in the U.S. Marine Corps is earning his degree via the school's online Bachelor of Applied Arts and Sciences program, according to a news release from Lamar University.When Taylor enlisted with the Marines, he had earned 120 credits and was a few courses short of earning his biology degree."I wanted to start at the bottom and work my way up," Taylor told Lamar. "I felt that if I understood the enlisted side, then...

May 13, 2010, 9:35AM CARACAS, Venezuela — An offshore natural-gas platform sank off Venezuela on Thursday, and 95 workers were rescued safely, the government said. All of the workers on the Aban Pearl platform off eastern Sucre state were safely evacuated, and the sinking poses no threat to the environment, Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez told state television. The navy rescued the workers using a frigate and boats after the gas platform disappeared into the Caribbean Sea at 1:50 a.m. Houston time, Ramirez said. President Hugo Chavez announced the sinking on Twitter early Thursday, saying: “To my sorrow, I inform...

ON THE GULF OF MEXICO — With success uncertain, a boat carrying a 100-ton concrete-and-steel contraption designed to siphon off the oil fouling the Gulf of Mexico arrived at the scene Thursday in an unprecedented attempt to cap a blown-out well spewing hundreds of thousands of gallons a day. Another boat with a crane would start lowering the box to the seafloor later in the day. Engineers hope it will be the best short-term solution to controlling the leak that has only worsened since it began two weeks ago. The waters at the spill site Thursday morning were calm...

A federal official said Thursday afternoon that the leading edge of the Gulf oil slick could reach the Mississippi River delta sometime Thursday night, and an executive said BP has asked the Department of Defense for technical help. In Washington, lawmakers raised the heat on the offshore energy industry, although the Obama administration stopped short on Thursday of backing off its commitment to expanded drilling. The White House dispatched top officials from the Homeland Security Department, Environmental Protection Agency and Interior Department to the Gulf Coast, and President Barack Obama on Thursday called the five Gulf Coast state governors...

As the Deepwater Horizon's well continued to gush 42,000 gallons of oil a day into the Gulf of Mexico, response teams that were unable on Sunday to seal off the wellhead about a mile underwater turned their attention to containing the spill at its source. Officials at BP, responsible for the environmental clean-up efforts as the rig's lease operator, said they were engineering a system to lower a dome-like structure over the well to capture the oil and funnel it to a collection tank on the surface..... Efforts to staunch the flow were being complicated by the sheer depths...

SAN ANGELO, Texas — Two members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints pleaded no contest Thursday morning in San Angelo to charges that included sexual assault of a child. Lehi Barlow Jeffs, 31, took a plea deal for eight years in prison for sexual assault of a child who was bound to him in a nonlegal marriage when the girl was 15 years old. The assault itself, based on the birth of her child, was alleged to have occurred on Sept. 18, 2006. Jeffs also plead no contest to bigamy, having had three wives,...

Somewhere, somehow, Texas will have to find some new money. It is too soon to say how much extra will be needed to help close the projected shortfall in the state's 2012-13 budget. Estimates of the budget hole range from a very conservative figure of $11 billion to more than $15 billion. Budget cuts are already in the offing. State leaders are expected to pull the trigger soon on about $1 billion in spending trims, which could include prison guard layoffs and reduced payments to doctors and other Medicaid providers. But budget watchers say it is unlikely that legislators...

LAREDO, Texas — A Border Patrol agent shot and killed an unarmed man on the banks of the Rio Grande following a foot chase and a struggle, authorities said Friday. Border Patrol agents found several men carrying five bundles of marijuana, weighing about 260 pounds, onto the river bank in Laredo near a residential neighborhood late Wednesday night, said Laredo police spokesman Joe Baeza Jr. The men scattered when the agents approached. An agent caught up with one of the alleged smugglers, and the pair struggled in the brush before the agent shot the man once in the chest,...

E.O. “Coots” Matthews, the famed oil well firefighter and founding partner of Houston-based Boots & Coots — a company legendary for putting out some of the world’s most spectacular fires — died at an advanced age on Wednesday of natural causes. Matthews, whose age was not immediately available, [86 by another article] was raised in Porter. He began his oil field career with Halliburton in 1947, after serving as a tail gunner on a B-17 during World War II in Europe. Later that year, he joined M.M. Kinley Co., where he met Asger “Boots” Hansen and Red Adair to...

WASHINGTON – At any point in the yearlong odyssey that yielded the health care law that passed this week, physicians could have overwhelmed the effort with opposition. The traditionally conservative American Medical Association helped kill President Bill Clinton's health care effort in the 1990s. Three decades earlier, it opposed Medicare as "the beginning of socialized medicine." But this time, the nation's largest physicians' organization was loyal to the overhaul, helping to keep nervous Democrats behind the historic and controversial legislation. At the helm of the opinionated doctors' group: J. James Rohack, a Texas cardiologist who decided long ago that...

WASHINGTON — Texas is counting on the 2010 Census to deliver four new congressional districts, four new Electoral College votes in presidential elections, and millions of dollars in additional federal aid. But, as some elected officials are starting to worry, Uncle Sam can't deliver anything to the rapidly growing Sun Belt state unless Texas residents deliver their forms back to the government. As of Friday afternoon, only 27 percent of Texas households had filled in and returned their census forms — well below the national average of 34 percent — according to computer data from the U.S. Census Bureau....

Gov. Rick Perry took a measured approach to the federal health care overhaul Thursday, saying the law is not all bad and condemning opponents who have crossed the line into inappropriate or threatening behavior. Speaking to reporters at the Capitol, Perry reiterated his firm opposition to the law signed by President Barack Obama this week. Fixes to the legislation still are working through Congress. But Perry also said he was troubled that members of Congress who supported the Democratic initiative had been subjected to threats of violence and obscenity-laced tirades. "Once you cross the line of passionate to threatening,...

Next Month you can buy a Texas Town. He's tried. For two years, Moody Anderson has attempted to sell the Texas "ghost town," The Groves. Even had it up on eBay. There were no takers. Fickle bunch, those eBay folks. The Groves is a made up of five buildings, each containing hundreds of collector's items. We'll let Texas Escapes give a proper description: "This is a very well preserved 1860’s museum town full of authentic, articles and artifacts from that era. There is also written documentation of The Grove’s birth to its desertion in the 40’s when TxDOT re-routed...

Texas Republicans in House all oppose the measure. U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett has not committed his vote on the Senate's version of the health care bill, which the House of Representatives is expected to take up Sunday. Doggett, D-Austin, has been a holdout in the days leading up to the vote. He said Friday that he hopes to get his concerns addressed so he can vote for the measure. "I think it's been clear from the outset that I want to vote for a health care bill," Doggett said........ Rep. Solomon Ortiz, D-Corpus Christi, and Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo,...

SAN ANGELO, Texas — In the harshest sentence yet for members of a Texas polygamist group, a Tom Green County jury has sentenced Merril Leroy Jessop, 35, to 75 years in prison and imposed a $10,000 fine on one count of sexual assault of a child. The jury deliberated on the sentence from 10:30 a.m. today until 2:35 p.m. Jessop was convicted Wednesday on allegations that he illegally married and fathered a child with a 15-year-old girl while living at the Yearning for Zion Ranch in Schleicher County in 2006. He is a member of the polygamous Fundamentalist Church...

The number of illegal immigrant college students paying in-state tuition and receiving financial aid at Texas' public colleges and universities continues to climb, according to state higher education records. During the fall semester, 12,138 students – about 1 percent of all Texas college students – benefited from the state law granting in-state tuition, according to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. Most of the immigrants among those students are illegal, and some others are not legal permanent residents or U.S. citizens. Texas awarded about $33.6 million in state and institutional financial aid to those students between fall 2004 and...

The goat's tail wagged vigorously, shaking a white pompom of fur at its tip, while the 80-pound Boer circled the judging ring. It wagged as the goat followed its forlorn-looking 12-year-old owner, Ashlyn Holder, out back. And it wagged all the way onto a trailer headed for the slaughterhouse. Ashlyn's mid-weight goat didn't take a ribbon in the junior market goat show, but win or lose, all 949 goats shown at the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo last week met the same end. They represent a tiny fraction of the more than a million meat goats produced yearly in...

...Today the city's Asian population perhaps more than any other symbolizes what Robinson calls a stunning evolution of diversity in Austin. The city counts among its fold growing numbers of Indians, Pakistanis, Koreans, Vietnamese, Bangladeshis, Chinese and others spanning the Asian continent. Robinson projects that the 2010 census will show the Asian population grew by 62 percent since the last head count of Austin residents 10 years ago — faster than any other group and triple the rate of Austin's growth overall. Immigrants also figure heavily in the explosion of the city's Latino population, the largest ethnic group in...

WASHINGTON — They share a name, a profession (medicine), a belief in small government, an outsider's mentality and a thing for tea parties. It makes sense that Rand and Rep. Ron Paul, R-Lake Jackson, share these things — they are father and son. Rand Paul, who is running for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in Kentucky, in many ways is an heir to the libertarian Ron Paul Revolution of 2008. He's a master of the Internet and social networking tools. He counts among his donors and volunteers many of his father's supporters. Despite their many similarities, Rand Paul...