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AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - A group of Texas business leaders urged state lawmakers on Monday to abandon plans to pass a bill to restrict bathroom access for transgender people, calling such a measure bad for the economy.

The Republican-dominated legislature begins a 30-day special session on Tuesday with 20 items on the agenda, including one of the "bathroom bills" that have been a flashpoint in U.S. culture wars.

Supporter of the legislation have said it is a common-sense measure that protects public safety. Critics call it discriminatory.

Texas, the most powerful Republican-controlled state, could lose about $5.6 billion through 2026 and businesses could find it difficult to recruit top talent if such a measure is enacted, according to the state's leading employer organization.

"The distraction of a bathroom bill pulls us away from being competitive as a state," Jeff Moseley, chief executive of the Texas Association of Business, told a rally outside the Capitol.

"On this discussion, conservatives can disagree with conservatives," said Moseley, whose group has typically aligned itself with the state's Republican leaders.

The legislation restricts access to places like bathrooms and locker rooms based on the gender listed on people's birth certificates and not the gender with which they identify.

A similar law in North Carolina, partially repealed in March, prompted the relocation of sporting events and economic boycotts that was estimated to have cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars.

The stakes are higher in Texas, which has an economy larger than Russia's.

A bill similar to North Carolina's passed the Texas Senate in the regular session and was killed by pro-business Republican leaders in the House, who ran out the clock on the measure.

The bathroom bill's main backer, Republican Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, a social conservative who sets the state Senate's legislative agenda, has said economic losses would be inconsequential.

"(The Texas Republican majority) want to maintain separate restrooms, locker rooms and shower facilities for men and women and boys and girls, and they dont care if the media thinks it is politically incorrect," his political campaign said in a statement on Monday.

Republican House of Representatives Speaker Joe Straus and companies including IBM, American Airlines, Apple and Southwest Airlines have spoken out against the bill.

"On the bathroom bill, there is no real compromise because even the most mild bill is going to be interpreted as discriminatory," said Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University in Houston.

Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Peter Cooney

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Texas business leaders call on lawmakers to drop 'bathroom bill' - Reuters

MONTREAL More than 1,000 people are expected to attend the annual conference of Wikimania, which is being held in Montreal this year, from Aug. 9 to 11.

One of those taking part will be Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, who took part in a question-and-answer session with The Canadian Press ahead of the event. Here are excerpts from the exchange:

CP: Why was Montreal selected this year?

JW: We hold Wikimania every year. It's our flagship event where we bring together volunteers from all around the world. We have a process whereby we have bids from various local communities as to why we should have Wikimania in the city. Montreal was chosen because they had the strongest bid and that was very good. Obviously, there's a lot of excitement around the first time we've had Wikimania in a francophone region.

CP: Given the phenomenon of fake news and the fact Wikipedia's content comes from members, administrators and contributors, how do you ensure quality control?

JW: Fake news has been primarily a problem of Facebook in that people see something that looks like a real news site and it's something alarming or it's exciting to them and they share it with their friends, and they share it and share it and share it and it passes from person to person to person amongst people who aren't particularly sophisticated consumers of news. Whereas the Wikipedia community is incredibly sophisticated, very media savvy...We've had very little impact of that kind of fake news.

CP: More and more people and public figures are being harassed online and are seeing their reputations attacked. What is Wikipedia doing to withdraw such pages?

JW: This is something that we're really very focused on. One of the things that I've always prided myself on is that Wikipedia is a community about knowledge, it's about a positive experience, it's about charity work. People give of their time. We take a very hard line on trolling and harassment...Like every website that's open to the public, you always have a few people who come on who are problematic."

CP: Wikipedia saw the light of day in 2001. Back then, not everyone was convinced of the reliability of the information being provided. How has the public's perception changed over the years?

JW: A very strong core value of Wikipedia is to be of quality. We've always said we wanted to be like a traditional encyclopedia quality or better. And obviously in the early days we weren't that...Over the years, people added more and more information and better sources. And of course, we learned a lot as a community. We've written huge policy guidelines and gotten a lot of experience about what kind of thing is useful to the reader, what kind of thing is a good source versus a weak source. So we've just matured over the years. Obviously, we're always careful to point out that Wikipedia is far from perfect. There are still mistakes in Wikipedia and that's something we're very diligent about. We don't want to get complacent.

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Question-and-answer session with Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales - Times Colonist

NewsBusters (press release) (blog)

MSNBC's Sharpton Slams Steve King's 'Racially Tinged Cruelty,' Suggests 'Evil' NewsBusters (press release) (blog) On Sunday's PoliticsNation on MSNBC, during the show's regular "Gotcha" segment, host Al Sharpton was imagining racist dog whistles as he complained about "unmitigated, racially-tinged cruelty" from Congressman Steve King, and suggested that those ...

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MSNBC's Sharpton Slams Steve King's 'Racially Tinged Cruelty,' Suggests 'Evil' - NewsBusters (press release) (blog)

The Ellis County Sheriffs Office received a call around 4:30 p.m. Saturday, from a resident who believed that they had discovered human remains while hunting near Section House Road, north of Alma. They are investigating it as a homicide.

Ellis County Sheriffs deputies responded to the location, which is a non-addressed parcel of agricultural land planted with crops and a small wooded area.

The responding deputies confirmed the remains to be human shortly after arrival. The deputies then contacted the Ellis County Sheriffs Office Criminal Investigative Division who came along with a crime scene investigator to the location.

The investigators determined that the remains had been scattered over a large area. The Ellis County Sheriffs Office requested the assistance of the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification.

The crime scene investigation began at around 6:30 a.m. on Sunday, which consisted of Sheriffs Office Investigators, Texas DPS aircraft and staff from the UNT Center for Human Identification.

The unidentified human remains will be transferred to the UNT Center for Human Identification.

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Hunter finds human remains in Alma | News | corsicanadailysun.com - Corsicana Daily Sun

She added, @Delta sucks.

Ms. Coulter went on to complain that Delta spends all this $$$ on beautiful aircraft & then hire Nurse Ratchets as flight attendants & gate agents, a reference to Nurse Ratched, the character known to be an overly strict enforcer of the rules in One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest.

She even posted on Twitter a photo of the passenger she said had taken her seat.

In a statement, repeated on Twitter, the airline criticized Ms. Coulter for posting derogatory and slanderous comments and photos in social media about its employees and customers. Delta said it was disappointed in Ms. Coulter and called her actions unnecessary and unacceptable.

The airline said it would refund her $30 for the preferred seat she bought, adding, Delta expects mutual civility throughout the entire travel experience.

She ridiculed the $30 refund, saying on Twitter that it cost her $10,000 of her time to select the seat she wanted, investigate the type of plane and periodically review seat options.

In an email on Monday, she wrote: I spent time reserving that term has a flexible meaning at Delta a specific seat, and thats my hourly rate. I looked up the aircraft, considered my options and booked the seat I wanted. I checked back to see how the flight was filling up to review my options again. I had reasons for choosing 15D, not 15A, or any other seat.

The airlines statement appeared only to incense Ms. Coulter, who continued the fight late into Sunday night and early Monday morning.

She wrote on Twitter: I have been the picture of politeness. If I treated customers they way @Delta does, Id deem facts impolite, too.

In her email, she complained that it was not enough for Delta to boss customers around when were in their control.

Now theyre policing our behavior after were off the plane, she wrote. Perhaps they should spend less time sneering at their customers post-flight commentary and more time investigating why they invite customers to prebook their seats online, only for their gate agents to go into the computer, cancel a reserved seat, print new tickets, and give a prebooked seat to another customer, who apparently wanted the same seat but not quite enough to bother booking it in advance.

In its statement, the airline said that Ms. Coulter had originally booked seat 15F, which was by the window in an exit row, but that within 24 hours of the flights departure, she changed to seat 15D, which is by the aisle.

At the time of boarding, Delta inadvertently moved Coulter to 15A, a window seat, when working to accommodate several passengers with seating requests, the statement said. When there was some confusion with seating assignments during boarding, a flight attendant stepped in and asked that all of the passengers move to the seats noted on their respective tickets. All customers complied and the flight departed without incident.

Ms. Coulter complained that the airline did not communicate the seat change before boarding.

I was in the boarding area 90 minutes before the flight took off, but I was never called to the counter and asked to switch seats, she wrote in the email.

The airline said that what started out as a complaint had turned into a public attack on its employees and customers.

Delta said it had learned about her complaint only after she began tweeting after the flight landed. The company said its social media and customer service workers tried several times to contact her to apologize but did not hear from her until Sunday night.

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Delta Air Lines Fires Back at Ann Coulter on Twitter, but Refunds Her $30 - New York Times