AUSTIN, Texas (AP) —
    A bill that would ban texting while driving across Texas is headed to the House floor — but again faces uncertain prospects.
    Former Gov. Rick Perry had vetoed statewide texting bans in past sessions, calling them a form of government micromanagement. Gov. Greg Abbott said during his campaign that he doesn't support a statewide ban but has publicly taken a more wait-and-see approach on the efforts since taking office.
    Texas is among only a handful of states without a texting while driving ban. Most cities in Texas, however, have adopted their own ordinances that make using handheld devices while driving illegal.
    A vote on the House floor has not yet been scheduled.

MICHAEL GRACZYK, Associated Press
HUNTSVILLE, Texas
    A Mexican Mafia hit man convicted of beating and strangling a San Antonio woman because she didn't pay the gang's 10 percent tax on her illegal drug sales was set to be executed Wednesday evening.
    The injection of Manuel Vasquez, 46, with a lethal dose of pentobarbital would leave Texas with enough of the powerful sedative to carry out only one more execution. At least six prisoners are scheduled to die in the coming weeks.
    Texas prison officials, like those in other death penalty states, have found it increasingly difficult to find suppliers to provide drugs intended for capital punishment use.
    Vasquez's lawyers filed no late appeals to delay his execution for the 1998 slaying of 51-year-old Juanita Ybarra. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to review his case in October 2013.
    Testimony at Vasquez's capital murder trial showed Ybarra had ignored the gang's "dime" tax on street drug sales in San Antonio, so Vasquez and two partners were ordered that she "had to go down."
    "Most drug dealers do know," said Mary Green, an assistant Bexar County district attorney who prosecuted Vasquez. "I'm sure she was told if you're selling, you've got to pay the tax.
    "I guess she didn't take it seriously."
    Fueled by a night of drinking and drugs, the hit men put on bandannas to cover their faces and socks on their hands to prevent fingerprints and barged into a room at a run-down San Antonio motel where Ybarra was staying with her boyfriend, Moses Bazan.

By KELLY CATALFAMO and MICHELLE L. PRICE 
Associated Press
    Utah, the only state in the past 40 years to carry out a death sentence by firing squad, is poised to bring back the Old West-style executions if the state cannot track down drugs used in lethal injections.   
    The Republican-controlled state Legislature gave final approval to the proposal Tuesday night, with lawmakers billing it as a backup plan as states struggle to find execution drugs amid a nationwide shortage.
    If the governor signs the measure, Utah would become the only state to allow executions by firing squad if there is a drug shortage. Republican Gov. Gary Herbert has declined to say if he will approve or veto the bill, a decision that's not expected for a week or so.
    The bill's sponsor, Republican Rep. Paul Ray of Clearfield, said it would give the state options.
    "We would love to get the lethal injection worked out so we can continue with that. But if not, now we have a backup plan," Ray told The Associated Press.
    Utah is one of several states to seek out new forms of capital punishment after a botched lethal injection in Oklahoma last year and one in Arizona that took nearly two hours for the condemned man to die.
    Legislation to allow firing squads has been introduced in Arkansas this year, while a Wyoming firing-squad measure failed. In Oklahoma, lawmakers are considering legislation that would allow the state to use nitrogen gas to execute inmates.
    Ray says a firing squad is a more humane form of execution. He argued that a team of trained marksmen is faster than the drawn-out deaths that have occurred in botched lethal injections.
    Opponents say firing squads are a cruel holdover from the state's wild West days and will earn Utah international condemnation.
    "I think Utah took a giant step backward," said Ralph Dellapiana, director of Utahns for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. He called firing squads "a relic of a more barbaric past."
    Dellapiana said the Legislature should be discussing whether, not how, to execute citizens.
    The state Senate did not debate the idea before passing the bill on an 18-10 vote, with four Republicans joining Democrats in opposition. The measure narrowly passed the House last month.
    States have struggled to keep up their drug inventories as European manufacturers refuse to sell the lethal concoctions to U.S. prisons and corrections departments over opposition to the death penalty. Texas' supply will be used up if the state goes forward with two lethal injections in the next two weeks. The Texas deadline is the most imminent, but other states are struggling, too.
    States that turn to alternative drugs have faced legal challenges from inmates.
    The head of Utah's prison system has said it does not have lethal injection drugs on hand and would have to obtain some if an execution were to be scheduled.
    The use of firing squads could be reinstated more than a decade after the conservative state abandoned the practice. Utah lawmakers stopped offering inmates the choice in 2004, saying the method created a media frenzy around murderers and took attention away from victims.
    A handful of inmates on death row were sentenced before the law changed and still have the option of going before a firing squad after their appeals are exhausted in a few years.
    Utah's last firing-squad execution was in 2010, when Ronnie Lee Gardner was put to death by five police officers with .30-caliber Winchester rifles. The state has carried out three executions by firing squad since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.
    The Washington, D.C.-based Death Penalty Information Center, which opposes capital punishment, says it's not a foolproof execution method because the inmate could move or shooters could miss the heart, causing a slower, more painful death.

By MELISSA NELSON-GABRIEL 
Associated Press
    Human remains washed ashore in heavy fog Wednesday after seven Marines and four soldiers were killed in an Army helicopter crash during a night-time training mission off a Florida beach.
    All 11 service members were presumed dead, according to a Pentagon official who spoke with The Associated Press on condition of anonymity for lack of authority to be identified in the media.
    Kim Urr, 62, who works at the Navarre Beach campground near where the helicopter went down, said she heard a strange sound followed by two explosions around 8:30 p.m. Tuesday.
    "It sounded like something metal either being hit or falling over, that's what it sounded like. And there were two booms afterward, similar to what you hear with ordnance booms, but more muffled," Urr said.
    "We knew immediately that something was not right. We listened for sirens, but there were no sirens. Then this morning, we heard a lot of sirens," she added.
    Despite the presumption of death and the discovery of human remains, the military still considers it a rescue mission, said Sara Vidoni, a military spokeswoman for Eglin Air Force Base, outside Pensacola.
    "Our thoughts and prayers are with them and their families as the search and rescue continues," Defense Secretary Ash Carter said on Capitol Hill.
    Fog in the area reduced visibility to two miles or less when the UH-60 Black Hawk from the Army National Guard was reported missing Tuesday night, said Katie Moore with the National Weather Service in Tallahassee.
    The fog remained heavy Wednesday morning, as about a dozen airmen wearing fatigues walked shoulder-to-shoulder down the beach, scanning the sand. Searchers with dogs joined them, along with area law enforcement and rescue crews.
    Meanwhile, somewhere just offshore in the narrow sound that separates Santa Rosa Island from the Florida Panhandle mainland, search boats could be heard but not seen, blasting horns as their crews peered into the water.
    The Marines were part of a special operations group based in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. The National Guard soldiers were from a unit based in Hammond, Louisiana. None were immediately identified so that families could be told first.
    The Army helicopter had taken off from an airport in nearby Destin to join other aircraft in the training area, which includes 20 miles of pristine beachfront under military control since before World War II.
    The military sometimes drops trainees into the water in the area, to make their way ashore from boats or helicopters.
    Test range manager Glenn Barndollar told The AP in August that the site is an ideal training area for special operations units from all branches of the military to practice over the water, on the beach and in the bay.