Austin aiming for zero landfill waste. Our fair city ranks #23 on the list of America's Most Literate Cities, beating out New York but not Portland. Brush fires in Hays County lead to home evacuations. ...

Photo by dground on flickr City Council considering the gathering of information about Austin's homeless and the expansion of services that help them. The council may also merge Park Police, Austin Aviation Police and City Marshals with APD. Travis County officials aiding Hays County officials in the search for a woman who may have witnessed the murder of her son. Williamson County man on the run from child sexual assault charges captured in Costa Rica.......

Photo by Miss Barbara on flickr After all that this morning, no one was found inside McBride's after the police got in. Over the weekend, a Hays County deputy found 730 pounds of marijuana when he pulled over a Suburban in Buda. LaBare trying to get permits to set up shop off of Braker and IH35; the neighbors aren't too excited about it. Cops on the lookout for woman (and two accomplices) who robbed a......

Late night fire at police commander's house in Northwest Austin leaves over half a million dollars worth of damage. Firefighters from various regions of the country attend Central Texas wildfire training school. Hays County Area Food Bank starts their Thanksgiving food drive. Hannah Hawley, announced missing yesterday, is back with her family. Notice a different taste to our tap water? Sen. Cornyn votes against bill that would grant citizenship to young illegal immigrants who......

Pflugerville band students participate in contest with loaned instruments after bus carrying students and instruments was hit by drunk driver over the weekend. Construction slowing down at some downtown condo projects? We admit to driving a little fast on Chestnut; neighborhood residents ask drivers to take it slow. City leaders are hoping that local retailers will phase out plastic bags in a year. Will this lead to an official city ban on plastic bags?......

As of this writing, 911 in Hays County is out. How much does that suck? A backup system (of sorts) is being used. The reason the fiberoptic line was cut and 911 is out? Bees. The fire at ACL was the result of a propane leak, AFD says. Austin is the most congested medium-sized city in the nation. Um, yay? Woman dies in North Austin house fire this morning. Remember the Houston office building......

The Cabela's hunting/fishing/outdoors outfitter superstore located in Buda, Texas, is apparently not doing so well. For the second year in a row, the store has missed mandatory employment targets set as a condition of subsidies given to the store by the City of Buda, Hays County and the State of Texas (via Governor Perry's Texas Enterprise Fund). In a nutshell: To date, Cabela's has received over $61 million in government subsidies (read: taxpayer money) as......

Earlier this month, Hays County voters rejected a $172 million bond proposal for road expansion. Voters probably aren't concerned about the cost - TXDOT had promised to reimburse the county for $133 million of the $172 million. Instead, Hays County voters appear to be rightfully concerned about induced traffic and a bunch of giant roads mucking up their countryside (both directly and through the strip malls, tract-home suburbs and office parks that are attracted to......

We hate that we're not making this up: yesterday morning, a student at Hays High School reported to school officials that a few students had equipment to create bombs at home. Monday afternoon, bombs (that we assume were in the midst of being made) were found in three Hays County residences. Charges will be filed sometime today against the suspected students. [Statesman] Two such attempts this year against schools in our neck of the......

From the Statesman: Hays County authorities are investigating a report that State House District 45 Rep. Patrick Rose, D-Dripping Springs was assaulted today while standing outside a polling place at Sunset Canyon Baptist Church east of Dripping Springs. Rose, an attorney with the Ratliff Law Firm and a licensed Realtor, said he was punched by Rick Green, his 2002 Republican opponent. "Rick lost his temper," he said. "It's unfortunate that something like this happened on......

An anti-tax group called Citizens Lowering Our Unfair Taxes ("CLOUT") has filed suit against state lawmakers alleging illegal spending of our tax dollars over the last 28 years. According to CLOUT, lawmakers use inflated budget numbers to overspend and this leads to Texans being overtaxed. Democratic goober nominee Chris Bell has reported that his campaign received a donation of $100,000 from Houston oilman A. Earl Swift. According to the Texas Ethics Commission for the......

The Travis County courthouse was evacuated earlier this morning, after emergency dispatchers received an anonymous call warning that the site contained a bomb. From 9:45am until people were finally allowed back in at 10:50am, deputies and bomb-sniffing dogs scoured the area, eventually turning up nothing. The call was later discovered to have originated from a pay phone next to a Hays County high school. Conveniently, today also happened to be the concluding day in......

Ah the amazing things technology has ushered into our lives over the past five years: The increase in medical technologies leading to early treatment of disease; mobile technology that allows people to work from home while raising families; ten different ESPNs; the ability to have child pornography on a handheld MP3 player that you can take to other degenerates houses and watch said smut on their computer. Um, nix that last one. Here's where......