Wade Goodwyn

Today, it's almost hard to remember just how different the Texas government was back in the 1970s. That's when Molly Ivins scorched a trail through good-ol'-boy politics like a flamethrower through a cactus patch.

"The legislature was fairly corrupt in those days," she said to NPR in 2006. "And the fact that it was, and that everybody knew it, and that people laughed about it, struck me as worth reporting. And I thought: Why not put it in the way it is?"

Jury selection is set to begin Friday for the white former Dallas police officer who shot and killed her unarmed black neighbor in his apartment last year. Amber Guyger said she entered the apartment by mistake and thought 26-year-old Botham Shem Jean was a burglar.

At the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas, 19 maps, nearly 440 years old, are on display — and they look spectacular. "Works on paper are delicate so we're only allowed to put them on display for nine months out of 10 years," says Blanton Museum communications director Carlotta Stankiewicz.

It's been a bad summer so far for government information systems. Hackers have used ransomware to attack the data networks of Baltimore, the Georgia courts system and Lake City, Fla., to name a few. And the decision as to whether to pay the extortionists ransom is fraught. Pay them, get the decryption key and get your data and network back in fairly short order. Or refuse to cooperate with criminals and have it cost untold millions of dollars and create significant aggravation.

Enveloped in soft, blue, dim LED light, Southwest Airlines Network Operations Center in Dallas looks a little like a Hollywood set piece on a science-fiction film. It's the heart and mind of the largest domestic carrier in the country, with a 4,000-flight dance card every day. Bad weather, mechanical breakdowns, delayed flight crews — improvisational dispatch is performed here day and night.

That day in March when the Federal Aviation Administration said, "Park all your Maxes right now," demanded a whole lot of improv.

Updated May 22

As news about the faulty flight control system on Boeing's 737 Max jets has unfolded, people have expressed doubts on social media and elsewhere about flying on the aircraft again — even if the FAA approves its return to operation after a software fix.

We'd like to hear from you, whether you don't trust the plane or Boeing or the FAA and will refuse to fly on the Max, if you're not worried about it at all, or if you're somewhere in between.

The Boy Scouts of America's own records show that more than 12,000 children have been sexually assaulted while participating in the organization's programs. The documents came to light through court testimony given by a researcher whom the Scouts had hired to do an internal review. The records reveal allegations against thousands of Scout leaders — allegations that date from the 1940s.

With such a huge number of victims, the organization could be facing multiple lawsuits and, as a result, bankruptcy.

Updated at 9 p.m. ET

Twenty-one years ago, in the east Texas town of Jasper, 49-year-old James Byrd Jr. was walking home late on a Saturday night when three white men in a pickup truck pulled up beside him. The African American man was well-known and well-liked in the town of Jasper. And when the driver, Shawn Berry, offered to give Byrd a ride, Byrd hopped in — after all, he'd known the driver most of his life.

What happened next shocked the conscience of the town, the nation and the entire world.

In 2014, Paul Buckley and his wife, Cheryl Becker, fostered a baby boy named Mason. They had seen other members of their Phoenix church community foster children and were inspired.

"We both have a heart for helping children," Buckley explains. "And it seemed like a way that we could provide something to the community and specifically to children."

On Aug. 28, 1955, 14-year-old Emmett Till was gruesomely lynched in the small town of Money, Miss. He was a boy from Chicago, visiting his relatives. Although the case is now 63 years old, a recent book has spurred the Department of Justice to reopen the investigation into his death.

Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz's re-election campaign has not been shy about attacking his opponent, Democratic Rep. Beto O'Rourke, on television.

If you arrived at Beto O'Rourke's recent town hall meeting in San Antonio even 40 minutes ahead of time, you were out of luck. All 650 seats were already taken.

It was one sign that the El Paso Democratic congressman has set Texas Democrats on fire this year, as he takes on Republican Sen. Ted Cruz's re-election bid.

Texas Democrats have been wandering in the electoral wilderness for two decades — 1994 was the last time they won a statewide race — but at O'Rourke's events, they have been showing up in droves. Often, it's standing room only.

Planned Parenthood Federation of America told NPR on Thursday it will be joining officials in a growing number of states to oppose a Trump administration proposal to withhold federal funds from family planning clinics that provide information about or refer women seeking an abortion.

In hospitals across the country, anesthesiologists and other doctors are facing significant shortages of injectable opioids. Drugs such as morphine, Dilaudid and fentanyl are the mainstays of intravenous pain control and are regularly used in critical care settings like surgery, intensive care units and hospital emergency departments.