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WINONA, Texas (AP) — Authorities say a 2-year-old East Texas boy who disappeared while playing hide-and-seek has been found dead in some nearby woods.

The Smith County Sheriff's Office says the body of Jake Kimbley was located Wednesday morning near Winona.

Investigators say Jake was playing with another youngster Tuesday afternoon when he turned up missing. Searchers on foot and using horses spent the night looking for the child, whose body was found about 12 hours after he disappeared.

Sheriff's officials did not immediately provide additional details Wednesday.

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas officials are vowing to cut off funding for Planned Parenthood after a federal court sided with the state in a challenge over a new law that bans clinics affiliated with abortion providers from getting money through a health program for low-income women.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans late Tuesday reversed a federal judge's temporary injunction that was allowing the funding to continue pending an October trial on Planned Parenthood's challenge to the law.

State officials are seeking to halt money to Planned Parenthood clinics that provide family planning and health services as part of the state's Women's Health Program because the Republican-led Texas Legislature passed a law banning funds to organizations linked to abortion providers.

Planned Parenthood provides services like cancer screenings — but not abortions — to about half of the 130,000 low-income Texas women enrolled in the program, which is designed to provide services to women who might not otherwise qualify for Medicaid.

The appeals court's decision means Texas is now free to impose the ban.

"We appreciate the court's ruling and will move to enforce state law banning abortion providers and affiliates from the Women's Health Program as quickly as possible," Stephanie Goodman, a spokeswoman for the state Health and Human Services Commission, said in a statement.

The ruling is the latest in the ongoing fight that has pitted Texas against the federal government. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services says that the new state rule violates federal law. Federal funds paid for 90 percent, or about $35 million, of the $40 million Women's Health Program until the new rule went into effect. Federal officials are now phasing out support for the program.

Gov. Rick Perry has promised that Texas will make up for the loss of federal funds to keep the program going without Planned Parenthood's involvement. In a statement, Perry called Tuesday's ruling "a win for Texas women, our rule of law and our state's priority to protect life."

"Texas will continue providing important health services for women through this program in spite of the Obama Administration's disregard for our state law and unilateral decision to defund this program," he said.

Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, said the case "has never been about Planned Parenthood — it's about the women who rely on Planned Parenthood for cancer screenings, birth control and well-woman exams."

"It is shocking that politics would get in the way of women receiving access to basic health care," Richards said in a statement.

The case began when Planned Parenthood sued, saying the new Texas law violated its rights to free speech. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott countered by arguing that lawmakers may decide which organizations receive state funds.

A federal judge in Austin ruled that the funding should continue pending the trial on Planned Parenthood's lawsuit, saying there's sufficient evidence the state's law is unconstitutional.

But the three-judge appellate panel disagreed, unanimously finding that Planned Parenthood was unlikely to prevail in future arguments that its free-speech rights were violated.

Abbott cheered the decision, noting that it "rightfully recognized that the taxpayer-funded Women's Health Program is not required to subsidize organizations that advocate for elective abortion."

It comes as conservative groups across the nation try to pass and enforce laws to put Planned Parenthood out of business and make getting an abortion more difficult. Earlier this year the same court upheld a new Texas law requiring doctors to perform a sonogram and provide women with a detailed description of the fetus before carrying out an abortion.

DALLAS (AP) — The father of an American journalist working in volatile regions of Syria said his son hasn't been in contact with his editors or his family in Texas in more than a week, but he's hopeful his son will turn up safe.

Austin Tice, a former Marine, has reported for The Washington Post, McClatchy Newspapers and other media outlets from the Middle Eastern country, where he recently spent time with rebel fighters. He was expected back in the U.S. in mid-August.

"It's not uncommon for various journalists moving in and about Syria to be out of communication. We're very hopeful that that is what is happening," his father, Marc Tice, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from his home in Houston late Thursday.

The Washington Post reported that the 31-year-old Tice spent time with rebel fighters in the north after entering Syria from Turkey in May. He then traveled to Damascus, where he was one of the few Western journalists reporting from the capital.

His father said he knows nothing more of the situation beyond what is being reported by the media outlets, but he believes his son's military training will help him. He said his last contact with his son was on Aug. 12.

"It was an ordinary email exchange. There wasn't anything unusual or concerning about the exchange. But we all know the level of risk he faces," he said. "He was conscious of the risk and willing to take that risk."

Austin Tice was living in Washington before heading overseas, and had been attending law school at Georgetown University between deployments and his latest reporting trip, his father said.

Washington Post and McClatchy executives said they were deeply concerned about Tice and hailed his reporting. Both organizations said they were working with the U.S. State Department and other news outlets to find him.

"We're focused intensively on trying to ascertain his whereabouts and ensure his safe return," Post executive editor Marcus Brauchli said in a statement. Anders Gyllenhaal, McClatchy vice president for news, added: "Journalists like Austin from all over the world risk their lives every day to cover the news."

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the agency was working to get more information on Tice's welfare and whereabouts thanks to the help of the Czech Embassy, which represents U.S. interests in Syria.

"We have long expressed concern about the safety for journalists in Syria," she said in a statement. "We strongly urge all sides to ensure the safety of journalists in Syria."

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Associated Press writers Erin Gartner in Chicago and Jay Arnold in Washington contributed to this report.

BISHOP, Texas (AP) — A South Texas man has been charged with killing two men and wounding another in an alleged dispute over child discipline.

Nueces County Jail records show 23-year-old Noe Salinas of Bishop was being held without bond Monday. Salinas is charged with capital murder of multiple persons and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

No attorney was listed for Salinas, who was arrested after Sunday's gunfire.

Bishop police Chief Larry Lawrence says Salinas and 22-year-old Juan Arnulfo Casso each apparently has a child with the same woman. Salinas allegedly disciplined the other man's daughter and Casso confronted him.

Casso and 32-year-old Mario Lee Briones were killed. A third man with them has non-life threatening injuries.

Investigators recovered a gun from a nearby roof.

Bishop is 30 miles southwest of Corpus Christi.

CUERO, Texas (AP) — A convicted rapist serving life in prison for attacking one Texas woman has pleaded guilty to another sexual assault.

DeWitt County District Attorney Mike Sheppard said Tuesday that Billy Joe Harris pleaded guilty to sexual assault in two attacks during 2009 on an elderly Yoakum woman.

Harris, known as the "Twilight Rapist" in attacks usually before dawn, was sentenced last Thursday to two 35-year prison terms. Those sentences will run concurrent with the life term Harris received last September for the 2009 sexual assault of a disabled woman in Edna.

Harris in April was convicted of a Leon County sexual assault and sentenced to 99 years, to be served consecutive to his life prison term. Sheppard says the Yoakum woman in last week's case testified in the first two trials.

McALLEN, Texas (AP) — Mexico's president-elect asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday to evaluate the murder case of a Mexican woman who was sentenced to 99 years in prison for the death of a Texas boy.

Enrique Pena Nieto filed a brief in his personal capacity supporting the appeal of Rosa Estela Olvera Jimenez. He argued that Jimenez was denied due process because she wasn't given funds to hire expert witnesses and had ineffective counsel.

Pena Nieto was governor of the state of Mexico when Jimenez, a native of that state, was sentenced in 2005 for the death of a nearly 2-year-old boy she had been babysitting in Austin. The boy died three months after choking on five paper towels lodged in his throat.

Jimenez said the boy ate the paper towels, but prosecutors argued that she stuffed the towels into the boy's mouth.

Pena Nieto, who was elected president in July and takes office in December, was joined in the brief by the current governor of the state of Mexico and a Mexican lawyer.

"Granting Rosa's petition could rescue an innocent woman from languishing in prison for the rest of her life, cut off from her daughter and the son born to her in jail as she awaited trial," the brief said.

It also could also impact other cases. The brief notes that more than two million Mexican nationals live in Texas, and many of them — like Jimenez — are there illegally. Without resources, the brief argues, they are at a disadvantage in the criminal justice system.

Jimenez was five months pregnant in 2003 when she was babysitting the boy and her own young daughter.

"The little boy loved her," said Chris Johns, an Austin attorney representing Pena Nieto in the case. There was no evidence of trauma anywhere on the boy's body, he said.

Jimenez argued at trial that the boy had eaten the paper towels himself and she had a neighbor dial 911 after seeing the boy turn blue. Prosecutors alleged Jimenez held the boy down and shoved paper towels down his throat, according to the brief.

The jury sided with prosecutors and handed down the sentence. Jimenez's children were later taken to live with her mother in Mexico, Johns said.

Jimenez is requesting that the Supreme Court consider her case on her claims of innocence and ineffective counsel. Her trial attorney had asked the judge for funds to hire expert witnesses but didn't do so on the record, jeopardizing her initial state appeal, which was denied.

She later went before a habeas court seeking a new trial. With the financial support of the state of Mexico, she hired expert witnesses, and the judge presiding over four days of testimony from Jimenez's experts recommended she receive a new trial.

In April, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals said it agreed with some but not all of that judge's findings and denied Jimenez's request for a new trial.

Ryan Bates, an attorney handling Jimenez's appeal, said that if the habeas judge had such strong doubts, due process requires she get a new trial.

"When an impartial judge can look at the case of a habeas petitioner like Rosa Jimenez and say that it's more likely than not that no rational juror would find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt in a retrial, everyone involved knows that there's severe constitutional doubts about the validity of the original trial and its verdict," he said.

The U.S. District Court in Washington wrote in a 154-page opinion that the maps don't comply with the federal Voting Rights Act because state prosecutors failed to show Texas lawmakers did not draw congressional and state Senate districts "without discriminatory purposes."

The ruling applies to the maps originally drawn by the Legislature in 2011, and not interim maps drawn by a San Antonio federal court that are to be used in the upcoming elections this November.

Luis Vera, an attorney for the League of United Latin American Citizens, called the ruling "better late than never" and a win for his and other minority rights groups that sued the state over the maps.

"The three-judge panel unanimously found intentional discrimination across the state. There's no ifs, ands, or buts about it," Vera said.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott immediately vowed to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

"Today's decision extends the Voting Rights Act beyond the limits intended by Congress and beyond the boundaries imposed by the Constitution," Abbott said in a statement.

How Texas redrew its political boundaries was closely watched after the state was awarded four additional U.S. House seats based on a booming population largely driven by minorities. Those congressional seats were carved equally into two safely Republican and two safely Democratic districts.

BAYTOWN, Texas (AP) — Police say a Houston-area man suspected of raping a delivery woman was caught after returning to a pizza place where he earlier allegedly stole food.

Baytown police say alert employees recognized the man.

Harris County Jail records show 20-year-old James Jackson of Baytown was being held Wednesday on charges of aggravated sexual assault and aggravated robbery. Online records did not list an attorney for Jackson, who's held on $60,000 bond.

Investigators say a Domino's Pizza delivery woman was robbed and raped May 28 by a man who jumped into her vehicle. She recognized him as a man who days earlier stole some wings.

Employees called police on Sunday when Jackson showed up and allegedly tried to order more wings.

Jackson is also suspected in a June convenience store robbery.

RIO GRANDE CITY, Texas (AP) — Officials from a U.S. agency that monitors the U.S.-Mexico border are to explain why they're allowing construction of border fence segments in the Rio Grande flood plain.

The explanation will come at a South Texas citizen forum Wednesday evening in Rio Grande City.

Earlier this year, the U.S. side of the International Boundary and Water Commission withdrew its objection to border fence construction in the flood plain, finding it wouldn't obstruct the flow of the Rio Grande significantly.

The decision potentially affects about seven miles of fencing planned in the flood plain. U.S. Customs and Border Protection says there are no immediate plans to build the segments because funding doesn't exist, but Mexico argues the fencing would violate a treaty and deflect floodwaters to its side of the river.

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The Texas attorney general has launched an Internet ad campaign inviting New Yorkers who feel their state's new gun laws are too restrictive to move to Texas.

Anyone accessing a variety of media sites from Manhattan or Albany starting Wednesday may be confronted with two pop-up ads.

One reads, "Is Gov. Cuomo looking to take your guns?" Another says, "Wanted: Law abiding New York gun owners looking for lower taxes and greater opportunity."

Paid for with Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott's campaign funds, the ads reference the nation's toughest gun control law. It was signed Tuesday by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

The ads link to a Facebook site proclaiming, "Keep your guns, move to Texas."

The site says Texas has no income tax and created more than 275,000 jobs in 12 months.