AUSTIN (AP) - The state budget is hurting and House Speaker Tom Craddick believes he's got an idea to make it better.

The new leader plans to create a special committee to study skyrocketing health care costs in state government. It will examine every Texas program -- from Medicaid to teachers' retirement benefits -- to try to get a handle on the rising cost of medicine.

The result will determine "what are they going to cost us today? What are they going to cost us in the future, and how can we get the budget under control?" Craddick said Tuesday.

The current $114 billion, two-year budget is expected to be $1.8 billion short when the fiscal year ends Aug. 31, partly because of higher-than-expected costs in areas such as Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program.

"I do think it's a good idea," said Rep. Dianne White Delisi, a Republican from Temple who has been pushing for such a move.

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Chambers of Commerce groups unveils legislative agenda

AUSTIN (AP) -- The chambers of commerce for some of Texas' largest cities laid out a slew of legislative priorities Tuesday but did not say how to pay for one of the programs that would cost the most.

The Metro 8 Chambers of Commerce said it supports fully funding an $188 million annual program designed to improve air quality.

Without the funding, the Environmental Protection Agency will not approve plans to clean the air over the Dallas and Houston regions and the state will face losing hundreds of millions in federal highway money. Also, the EPA could come in and write its own plan on how to clean up the areas.

"Without clean air, Texans may expect outcomes that negatively affect a gambit of quality of life issues from health and wellness to clearly economic development," said Deborah Cannon, chairwoman of the Greater Houston Partnership.

She would not say how the plan could be funded.

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Session slowly picking up steam

AUSTIN (AP) -- Like a train pulling away from a station, the Texas Legislature is inching along in the early days of its 2003 session.

Eventually it will barrel down the tracks at full speed. But for now, it's laboring to get started.

Despite constant clamoring about budget and insurance "crises," lawmakers are spending little time making law. Two weeks after lawmakers were sworn into office, the Senate will hold its first Finance Committee meeting on Wednesday.

House Speaker Tom Craddick is expected to appoint House committees on Thursday. That's when "the whole bloody process can begin," said Craddick spokesman Bob Richter.

Texas legislative sessions traditionally start slow. The body meets in regular session only once every two years. The first few weeks are usually more pomp and circumstance than substance.

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As investigation continues, park crash site of copters to reopen

FALCON HEIGHTS, Texas (AP) -- As the investigation continues into the collision of two military helicopters along the Texas-Mexico border, the blanket of tight security around the crash site loosened somewhat.

The remote Falcon State Park, which has been off limits since the Jan. 22 crash that killed four Marine reservists, was scheduled to reopen Wednesday.

Wreckage from one of the two AH-1W Super Cobra helicopters was on the main road just inside the entrance to a recreational vehicle park, and burn marks from that crash stretched for about 40 yards. The other copter fell into a dry lake bed.

The helicopter crews were providing nighttime surveillance over Falcon Lake for the U.S. Border Patrol's Laredo sector as part of the Pentagon's Joint Task Force Six.

The state park overlooks the lake, a major reservoir that straddles the border, about 80 miles southeast of Laredo and about 200 miles south of San Antonio.

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Daughter of man run over with wife's luxury car to testify

HOUSTON (AP) -- Six months after she was a passenger in the car which struck and killed her father, 17-year-old Lindsey Harris will be asked by prosecutors to help send her stepmother to jail.

The teenager, who eyewitnesses have testified screamed and struggled to get out of the Mercedes-Benz her stepmother was driving, was expected to be called as a witness by prosecutors Wednesday in dentist Clara Harris' murder trial.

The 44-year-old woman is accused of intentionally and knowingly running over her husband, David Harris, in a hotel parking lot on July 24 after finding him with another woman.

"I don't want to put her through such a torturous ordeal and I won't, but I'm going to get the facts out," defense attorney George Parnham said Tuesday of the possibility of questioning Lindsey Harris, who has cooperated with prosecutors but refused to talk with defense attorneys since her father's death.

"I do not relish cross-examining Lindsey Harris," Parnham said.

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Star student upsets Hispanics with Web site comments

HOUSTON (AP) -- A top student at highly competitive Bellaire High School shouldn't be able to be valedictorian because of derogatory comments he made about Hispanics on a Web site, local Hispanic leaders said Tuesday.

Harry Huang, 18, was ordered to attend counseling by school officials last week after making the statements on an Internet profile that he set up at home. Huang later wrote an apology and had it distributed at the school last Wednesday.

But the League of United Latin American Citizens said the district and school should also disqualify Huang, a National Merit finalist, from consideration as valedictorian.

"The school board has not taken adequate steps to correct all the problems of insensitivity," said LULAC spokesman Johnny Mata. "We're not here to destroy leadership, but there's a fine line that he crossed. There needs to be a lesson learned."

Houston Independent School District spokeswoman Heather Browne said the district didn't want to punish Huang further because they wanted to protect his right to free speech.

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Family launches Web site to log medical malpractice complaints

DALLAS (AP) -- The family of a 62-year-old woman who died after routine gallbladder surgery has spent two years trying to get some answers and some justice from the Texas government. All they got was silence.

Craig Franklin, 41, said that not until he got a lawyer did he find out what caused his mother's sudden death. He believes his family is one of many left in the dark by state laws that keep secret complaints made to the Texas State Board of Medical Examiners.

On Tuesday, the family launched a Web site they hope will end the silence by allowing Texans who believe they have been the victims of medical malpractice to tell their stories and learn from the stories of others.

"There is no place to go, so the only thing left to do is to share information," said 45-year-old Kim Marth, a fifth-grade teacher in Colleyville who will serve as executive director of the Texas Patient Safety Foundation.

Marth, Craig Franklin and other family members hope their fledgling, privately funded Web site, www.texaspatientsafetyfoundation.org, will function eventually as a clearinghouse, similar to the Better Business Bureau or Consumer Reports, for evaluating Texas doctors and hospitals.

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Americans reflect on Iraq, economy after watching Bush address

Bob Soper saw the devastation of war firsthand, and it turned him against it. But after listening to President Bush outline the threat posed by Iraq in his State of the Union address, the 90-year-old World War II veteran felt differently.

"I was 100 percent against going to war," said Soper, a Republican who now lives in a Minneapolis retirement home. "He has changed my mind."

Martha Nohe and John Seamens also were impressed after listening to Bush detail the case against Saddam Hussein.

"I didn't realize that he had so many biological weapons," said Nohe, 72, who watched Tuesday night's speech at her home in Zelienople, Pa., about 30 miles north of Pittsburgh. "We need to do something."

Seamens, 45, a Delta Air Lines pilot from Vancouver, Wash., who watched the president at a Dallas bar, seemed surprised at some of Bush's comments on Iraq.

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Lethal injection Wednesday set for killer of two nurses

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) -- It was a smoke alarm that brought emergency workers to a Beaumont massage therapy clinic, but when they arrived they discovered no evidence of a fire.

Instead, they found two women, both fatally shot.

A former clinic patient, Richard Dinkins, faced execution Wednesday night for their deaths. His appeals were exhausted and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles this week refused to spare him from becoming the fifth Texas inmate to receive lethal injection this year and the second of three on consecutive evenings this week.

Dinkins, 40, contended the gun "just went off" during a struggle that left clinic owner and nurse Katherine Thompson, 44, dead.

Prosecutors say the shooting moments later of the second woman, Shelly Cutler, 32, convinced them and jurors almost 11 years ago that Dinkins should go to death row.

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Religion-based drug treatment plan opposed by civil libertarians

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush has long preached of the power of prayer to aid drug addicts. Now he's putting dollars behind the rhetoric, asking Congress for $600 million for a new, three-year drug treatment program that would welcome the participation of religious groups.

The proposal sparked conflict even before Bush touted it before Congress. Opponents fear government will pay for programs that replace professional counselors with prayer and Bible study.

"The president wants to fund untested, unproven programs that seek to pray away addiction," said the Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. "People with addiction problems need medical help, not Sunday school."

Bush and his supporters argue that faith can accomplish what secular programs cannot.

"Let us bring to all Americans who struggle with drug addiction this message of hope: The miracle of recovery is possible, and it could be you," Bush said in his State of the Union address.

Many federally funded programs combine medical models with religious faith, sometimes employing the 12-step program made famous by Alcoholics Anonymous. But others are permeated with religion and eschew licensed counselors altogether.

The drug treatment proposal is the latest round in a two-year battle over the role of religion in delivering social services.

Employing vouchers makes it easier to constitutionally justify paying for a program that is infused with religion.

Still, civil libertarians who oppose the overall "faith-based initiative" and people who work in traditional drug treatment programs worry about who might get money. They cite Victory Fellowship, a San Antonio-based program. Under then-Gov. Bush, Victory Fellowship and other religious drug programs won permission to skirt all state health and safety laws, including rules requiring licensed counselors. There is one hitch: Programs exempted from state laws can't get state money.