1. Glenn Hegar is the Comptroller for oil prices, he was asked if the falling oil prices meant trouble for Texas's economy. He said no. Texas has been about half as dependent on its fossil fuel industry since 2013, and with huge increases in the hospital and healthcare industries making up for the losses in the fossil fuel industry. Severance taxes are the taxes on oil and fuel sales, and the lower the cost, the lower these taxes are.
2. Trump isn't participating the Republican debate because he wants to spite and avoid Fox, citing them as using his popularity and controversy to garner ratings. This is risky because it is the last one before the important Iowa caucus. He is instead hosting a charity for wounded warriors and veterans. I don't think it'll have a negative effect on his campaign, he gets media coverage wherever he goes. The democratic candidates are wondering whether to go to a non party approved debate. Martin O'malley said he would go, Bernie said no, Hillary said she would if her competitors would. It looks like noone will be going, so the event wont take place. This is 5 days before New Hampshire primary.
3. They are fighting a virus that causes birth defects from mosquitos. They said they would distribute mosquito repellent to pregnant women in exchange for cash benefits. Zika, Dengue, and Microcephaly are all diseases transmitted by the mosquitos in earlier years, and they have all been catastrophic. Castro said that it would be useless to try and fight back against this, due to it already have been too late. This is controversial because this is a very fatalistic and not good enough response to the outbreak. BRazil will host the olympics although.
4. Steven Weinberg is attempting to have a no guns in the classroom rule. McRaven is going to have a talk with the teachers to make sure that they are upholding the law. It goes into effect August 1st, another open carry law went into effect January 1st. Justin said that most of the people concealed carrying continued to conceal carry, it just didn't have much effect.
5. Ken Paxton is a texas attorney who objects to the allegedly inadequate notice of the 7 resettled syrian refugees. Last Friday, the government resettled some refugees in Texas without telling them who and where they are. Paxton asked a judge to stop the flow of refugees, to which the judge said no, and that the concerns were frivolous and blown out of proportion.
6. If the girls win their game against Arkansas, it would be the 1000th game won in Texas school history. The problem is that Texas is tied for 12th place, and the season has not been very good thus far. Their weakness is sloppy offensive positions.
7. I prefered the New York Times article, the leads hit mostly the same notes,but the NYT article was more thorough and I thought it looked better.
Excellent job answering the questions. 100
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