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SAN ANTONIO (AP) —
A former Bexar (BEAR) County prosecutor has defeated a former San Antonio City Council member to win a runoff election to succeed state Rep. Jose Menendez.
The Democrat Menendez resigned the seat for the western San Antonio district in February to become a Texas senator.
Ex-prosecutor Ina Minjarez (mihn-HAHR'-ehz) took 58 percent of the vote Tuesday to defeat fellow Democrat and former council member Delicia Herrera.
Menendez left the House in February to become a Texas senator, succeeding Leticia Van de Putte (PYOOT). She left the Senate to run for San Antonio mayor.
Minjarez had been the biggest vote-getter on the four-candidate, all-Democratic ballot in the March 31 special primary election.
Tuesday's election finished a series of special elections begun by Van de Putte's departure.
EVA RUTH MORAVEC, Associated Press
Texas lawmakers are closer to gutting the anti-public corruption unit that was at the center of former Gov. Rick Perry's indictment last year.
The Republican-controlled Texas House gave preliminary approval Monday to letting the Texas Rangers investigate allegations of public corruption. Under Weatherford Republican Rep. Phil King's bill, the Public Integrity Unit would continue to investigate insurance fraud and motor vehicles tax fraud.
The Senate has already passed a similar measure.
House Democrats had stalled passage of the bill last week, but Republicans are bent on uprooting the unit out of the Travis County District Attorney's Office, which is run by an elected Democrat. The current configuration puts "too much power in one elected official," King said.
If his measure passes, complaints deemed credible by the Texas Rangers would be forwarded to the district attorney in the county where the official was elected.
"There is no perfect answer, but this is a lot better than what we have now in terms of removing politics from the equation," King said.
Perry vetoed funding for the unit in 2013 after District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg refused to resign following a drunken driving arrest. He was later indicted on abuse-of-power charges. The Public Integrity Unit was not involved in the Perry investigation, which was handled by a special prosecutor and remains pending.
"Is this just because of her?" asked Edinburg Rep. Terry Canales, apparently referencing Lehmberg. Canales was one of a half-dozen Democrats whose amendments, many of which attempted to change the venue of the trial to the county where the crime was committed, were defeated.
But 16 amendments to the bill — 10 carried by Democrats — passed, including one to withdraw prosecutors who have relationships with the officials they are meant to probe.
Recently, a district attorney in Collin County — home of state Attorney General Ken Paxton — turned a criminal complaint involving his admitted securities violations over to the Texas Rangers for investigation. He was fined $1,000 for being paid for investment advising without registering, but Texans for Public Justice, a left-leaning watchdog group, filed a criminal complaint.
Texans for Public Justice then criticized Collin County officials for foot-dragging and called for the prosecutor's recusal because he and Paxton are friends and business associates.
Craig McDonald, the group's director, said after the House vote, "Corruption prosecutions are now in the hands of hometown cronies."
Meanwhile, Public Integrity Unit head Gregg Cox on Monday rebuffed a request from the Texas Department of Public Safety to clear the agency's name over $20 million in border security contracts that have come under intense scrutiny. Cox told DPS that his thin staff can't handle any more cases. He said he hopes lawmakers notice that Texas currently has no other agency that can investigate allegations of political malfeasance.
According to a fiscal note attached to King's bill, there were 193 public corruption complaints filed in fiscal year 2013, eight of which amounted to criminal offenses.
SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer
With real-time monitors, scientists have linked a swarm of small earthquakes west of Fort Worth, Texas, to nearby natural gas wells and wastewater injection.
In 84 days from November 2013 to January 2014, the area around Azle, Texas, shook with 27 magnitude 2 or greater earthquakes, while scientists at Southern Methodist University and the U.S. Geological Survey monitored the shaking. It's an area that had no recorded quakes for 150 years on faults that "have been inactive for hundreds of millions of years," said SMU geophysicist Matthew Hornbach.
When the volume of injections decreased significantly, so did the shaking.
The scientists concluded that removing saltwater from the wells in the gas production process and then injecting that wastewater back underground "represent the most likely cause" for the swarm of quakes, according to a study published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.
The scientists determined this based on where and when the earthquakes happened; computer models that track pressure changes; and company data from nearby wells. Hornbach said the timing and location of the quakes correlates better to the drilling and injection than any other possible reason.
"There appears to be little doubt about the conclusion that the earthquakes were in fact induced," USGS seismologist Susan Hough, who wasn't part of the study team, said in an email. "There's almost an abundance of smoking guns in this case."
This adds to other studies that linked injecting wastewater from energy wells to a tremendous jump in earthquakes in Oklahoma and southern Kansas, where there have been more than 950 magnitude 2 or higher quakes so far this year, according to the USGS.
In the past, studies have linked quakes to the injection of wastewater after the drilling process This study is different because it also sees a secondary link in another part of the drilling process, when massive amounts of brine is taking out of the ground with the gas, said study co-author William Ellsworth of the USGS. Removing the saltwater changes the underground pressure, Hornbach said.
But the deep injection of the wastes still is the principle culprit, Ellsworth said. The controversial method of hydraulic fracturing or fracking, even though that may be used in the drilling, is not physically causing the shakes, he said.