Results tagged “airforce”

Today’s Photo of the Day comes from flickr user and Houstonist photo contributor renegadebuddha. The P-51 Mustang was a long range fighter aircraft that served the bulk of its duty over the European skies in World War II. It's last missions flown for the U.S. were in 1968 as helicopter escorts. The P-51 was still operational as late as the 1980's in the Dominican Republic Air Force. If you have a passion for Houston...

Good morning, Houston. Yeah, we remember how (relatively) mild the first part of the summer was, and we're grateful for that. But now, after weeks of oppressive heat, we're sick of the weather — so you can imagine how excited we were when we checked out the long-range forecast and saw highs in the low 80s and lows in the low 60s coming in early September. But it might not come as early as...

If you didn't get a chance to vote in Saturday's election, don't worry. You'll get another one on June 16 - that's when Roy Morales and Melissa Noriega will go head-to-head in a runoff. That's also Mayor White's birthday, so let's make him proud, although he was coy about who he voted for himself. The special election was held on Saturday to fill the vacant at-large seat formerly held by Shelley Sekula-Gibbs. The S. S....

Good morning, Houston. Score one for Sugar Land's fake downtown: This summer, it will become the location of the Children's Museum of Houston's first satellite location. The Children's Museum of Houston Discovery Center at Sugar Land Town Square — that's CMHDCSLTS for short — will occupy 9,000 square feet of space in the Town Square development for six weeks beginning June 1. Though it's just a temporary deal, museum brass say the Discovery Center...

If your classic car collection is missing that certain something, may we suggest that you head down to Seabrook this weekend for the Worldwide Group Houston Classic Auction? A bunch of classic autos will be on the auction block, including a sweet '53 Corvette roadster, an elegant '52 Jaguar, a '70 American Motors AMX Fastback — oh, and what will undoubtedly be one of the stars of the show: the hearse that carried JFK's body...

The emergency meeting of the remaining Texas Southern University regents Monday morning ended up not panning out after all when only three of nine voting regents attended, meaning the group didn't make quorum — perhaps because Board of Regents Chairwoman Belinda Griffin had submitted the regents' resignations to Gov. Rick Perry on Friday. But if the regents have already resigned, why were they planning to meet yesterday? Add that to the ever-growing list of questions...

Jack Valenti, the long-time head of the Motion Picture Association of America and Houston native passed away today at his home in Washington. He was 85 and still suffering the effects of a stroke he had in March. Valenti was born in Houston to Sicilian immigrants in 1921, growing up on the still unpaved streets of the 1st Ward. He traced his love of movies to a string of jobs working in downtown Houston movie...

More on Gov. Rick Perry's proposal to oust the Texas Southern University regents and appoint a state conservator to run the troubled university: Perry has agreed to consider an alternate proposal from the Texas Legislative Black Caucus if the group can come up with a plan that would get the school back on track as quickly as conservatorship. "If members of the black caucus can bring us a tool ... that gets us there, that they can get passed in the Legislature, then we're willing to consider that," Perry spokesman Robert Black said. "If not, then the governor is committed to turning this around and the only tool left is conservatorship."

The Chronicle's update on fund-raising among candidates for Shelley Sekula-Gibbs' former at-large City Council seat probably has Melissa Noriega feeling pretty good: Noriega, it seems, has raised about four times as much as her two closest competitors in the race. Noriega — the wife of state Rep. Rick Noriega (D-Houston), has raised more than $100,000 in total and still has more than half that in the bank headed toward the May 12 election. That's 10...

Recently, Houstonist had been thinking about how it seems a long time since we had any Lisa Nowak-related news. And then, voila! — a Florida judge agreed to unseal certain documents related to the case of the lovelorn astronaut, and now we know some of the stuff she was carrying in her car when she made her infamous cross-country trip to intercept a romantic rival at the Orlando airport. Among the items in her possession:...

So the question of what would happen to astronaut Lisa Nowak when her 30-day leave from NASA was over is answered: Nowak is now a former astronaut. Nowak, who is a Navy captain, will return to the military; NASA said the dismissal has nothing to do with her guilt or innocence on charges of trying to kidnap her romantic rival, but rather with the fact that the agency doesn't have the administrative system needed to...

More on Lisa Nowak, everyone's favorite lovelorn astronaut: According to the AP, a series of steamy e-mails another woman sent to her boyfriend might have triggered her bizarre cross-country trip in early February. It seems Nowak had intercepted more that a dozen messages Air Force Capt. Colleen Shipman had sent to astronaut Bill Oefelein, including one sent to him while he was aboard the space shuttle Discovery in December: "First urge will be to rip...

Astronaut Lisa Marie Nowak, who's a household name today after news broke about her plan to confront — or, police say, to kill — another woman, is back in Houston this morning as details emerge about what might have driven her to make a cross-country trip armed with a knife, rubber tubing and a BB gun.

Sure, the space shuttle is going to be retired soon, but that doesn't mean NASA's astronauts won't keep us entertained — assuming, that is, that they keep giving us news like Lisa Marie Nowak. Nowak, you might know, is the Johnson Space Center-based astronaut who was arrested yesterday in Orlando, accused of attacking an Air Force captain in one of those bizarre love triangles we've heard about.

Happy Martin Luther King Day, Houston. Whether you decide to attend one of the dueling parades or just stay in, we're sure you're keeping an eye on the weather — which seems to be this morning's big story. Hello, winter! >> Enter winter: We started to wonder last night if the cold weather would ever get here — but in case you haven't noticed, it did. It's rainy and around 40 degrees downtown now,...

More on the possibility of the city having to hold a costly special election to fill Shelley Sekula-Gibbs' vacant City Council seat for a few months: According to the Chronicle, Mayor Bill White plans to ask the state Legislature for some leeway in the election law that would require a special election. The issue: A special election couldn't be held before May, meaning that whoever won it would have to run again in a general election in November — and a special election plus runoff, if one were needed, would cost the city $3 million. That's a lot of money to put someone on council for six months, White said:

Former TSU President Priscilla Slade's grand jury testimony won't be unsealed so Slade's ex-assistant can search it for inconsistencies, State District Judge Brock Thomas ruled Wednesday — though a grand jury will be able to review the testimony to see if Slade committed perjury. It's not clear just what inconsistencies prosecutors believe might be in the testimony, but prosecutor Donna Goode said last week that "there's enough concern on my part to go through the gyrations of filing the motion." Slade, of course, is accused of spending nearly $2 million in university funds on unauthorized personal expenses during her term as president.

If it's true that celebrity deaths happen in threes, look for another local political figure to keel over at any moment: The first two, Harris County Treasurer Jack Cato and former U.S. Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, have paved the way. Cato, a former newsman and HPD spokesman, died yesterday of heart failure while undergoing tests on his heart at St. Luke's Hospital. Cato was born in Chicago in 1935 and came to Houston in the 1950s....

Houstonist doesn't know if you realized it, but Houston is trying to put itself on the cutting edge of water meter technology with meters that read themselves, sorta. Problem is, it doesn't seem to be working. As KPRC reports, the automated metering system is years behind schedule and millions over budget — and the new meter reading system has a 47 percent failure rate.