Morning Roundup: Three-day weekend edition

Good morning, Houston. It's Friday again — the Friday before Memorial Day, to be exact. And because we'll be taking a breather on Monday, we wanted to take a chance to direct you over to the history of Memorial Day, a holiday that traces its origin to Waterloo, N.Y., in 1866. Check it out, enjoy, and have an excellent holiday.

>> Microwaved baby's father drops opposition to foster care: Joshua Mauldin, the man accused of burning his infant daughter in a microwave in a Galveston motel, has ended his opposition to allowing the child to stay with foster parents, the Chronicle reports. An agreement between Mauldin's lawyer and CPS was reportedly reached just before a hearing on the issue was set to begin Thursday morning; Mauldin also agreed to drop all visitation rights to the child. "Our plan is to terminate his parental rights," Gwen Carter, a CPS spokeswoman, said. Mauldin's wife, Eva Marie, agreed Wednesday to allow the child to remain in foster care, where she has been since she was released from Shriners Burn Hospital on Monday.

>> More on the man in the box: There's new information in the case of a man who was found stabbed to death and stuffed in a box in a southwest Houston apartment on Wednesday: David Anthony Lawson, 21, claims he killed the man after he tried to rob Lawson at gunpoint. Lawson told police that the man — whose name has not been released — offered him a ride home from a bar, then attempted to rob him; he said he got away from the man and stabbed him in the neck, chest and stomach. He then put the body into a box and cleaned his apartment with bleach, discarding evidence in his apartment complex's Dumpster. Lawson is being held in the Harris County Jail on a $50,000 bond.

>> New Main Street CVS exposes planning problems: When Midtown planners heard that CVS intended to build a new store at Main and Elgin, they asked the drugstore chain to make some changes to the store's design, including orienting the building to face the corner of Main and Elgin and adding a second story above the store with several loft apartments. But CVS would have none of it, which means there'll be a suburban-style store on Main — it meets all city requirements, but it points out some shortcomings in Houston city planning. The big shortcoming: Though Midtown officials have definite ideas about the type of high-density urban development they'd like to see in the area, builders sometimes don't agree, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. "We have the Midtown Design Guidelines online or printed in our office. They basically spell out what we like, but they don't carry any rule of regulations at all," Dan Barnum, chairman of the Midtown Management District's planning committee, said. "There's no hammer behind them." So what's the answer? Public workshops that officials hope will lead to changes in city ordinances. "It will give us, we hope, a much stronger set of tools to work with. Getting a new code of ordinances for development would be very helpful," Barnum said.

>> This weekend's weather: Looks like we'll have another day with a chance of rain, then what promises to be a beautiful weekend. Expect a 40 percent chance of showers today, with an afternoon high of 84; tonight, the rain chance will decrease as temperatures fall to 69. Saturday and Sunday, look for lots of sun with temperatures hitting the mid-80s in the afternoons and the upper 60s overnight. Unfortunately, the rain could be back for Memorial Day — just get an umbrella big enough to cover your grill.

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