Results tagged “attorneygeneral”

Good morning, Houston. Been missing the Texas Cyclone since it was torn down last year? Then you'll be happy to know about the Boardwalk Bullet, a nearly 100-foot-tall wooden roller coaster set to open this summer at the Kemah Boardwalk. Tim Anderson, Kemah Boardwalk manager, said the Bullet will have more crossovers than any other wooden coaster in the world, and it'll be a bit taller and longer than the famed Cyclone. "It has...

Four convicted sex offenders in Houston are among seven statewide who have been arrested in the past two weeks for using MySpace in violation of their parole or probation — but it's still unclear exactly what they used the online networking service for. "That will be information that our ongoing investigation will determine," Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, whose office led the crackdown, said. "We wanted to arrest these people as quickly as possible. And...

Remember when a former identity thief found a bunch of personal documents in a Dumpster behind a closed CVS store in Liberty back in late March? So does Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, who filed suit against CVS yesterday, accusing the company of failing to protect its customers' personal information. About 1,000 records — with information including credit card and Social Security numbers — were found March 19, and though Abbott said his office hasn't...

KHOU is speculating about whether U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales could return to his hometown of Houston if he ends up getting the boot in Washington. Gonzales, a graduate of MacArthur High School in Aldine, was a partner with Vinson & Elkins from 1982 to 1997, when he became the Texas secretary of state (from there, he was appointed to the state Supreme Court and then became White House counsel to President George W. Bush;...

An interesting note on Metro's proposed downtown intermodal terminal: Yesterday, the transit authority's board apparently voted to buy land on which the terminal will sit, but Metro officials are refusing to tell anyone exactly where the land is.

Former Houstonian Daniel Joseph Maldonado has become the first American to be charged with joining terrorists in Somalia. Maldonado, 28, was arrested in Kenya last month and was ordered held without bond yesterday on charges that he trained with al-Qaeda to try to form an Islamic state in Somalia. According to the criminal complaint against Maldonado, he left Houston in November 2005 for Cairo; by December 2006, he was in Somalia, where he had been...

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott filed suit yesterday against Lyondell Chemical Co. and two of its subsidiaries, accusing the companies of releasing harmful pollutants into the air and not doing anything to try to stop the problem. The suit says Lyondell, Equistar Chemicals and Millennium Petrochemicals released volatile organic compounds, nitrogen oxides and carbon monoxide from plants in La Porte, Channelview and Chocolate Bayou. "Texas will vigorously enforce environmental laws that protect the health...

Today's helpful hint from Houstonist: If you owe tens of thousands of dollars in back child support, you might want to make sure you don't end up on TV. Jesus Silva found out the hard way — he was arrested yesterday for failing to pay child support less than 24 hours after being listed as one of the state's top child support evaders.

Three men, one from College Station (we're holding off on the Aggie joke, and you should too), one from The Woodlands, and one from Needville, were indicted yesterday by a Montgomery County grand jury on charges of soliciting sex from teenagers on the internet.

At least 80 Houston bars are scrambling to get their state licenses in order after the owners of the licensing service they used disappeared with their money and paperwork, the AP reports today. Bar owners found out this week that Butera License Service hadn't kept their licenses current; at least one bar, McElroy's Irish Pub, had to close for a day after owner Max McElroy found out his liquor license had been expired for two...

As fall settles in and another calendar page gets turned, thoughts turn from bbq's and vacations to holidays and the realization that '06 is coming to an end. With all that going on, with change in the air, we wonder what is it that made that makes the -ists ponder? Phillyist is concerned that the war on Trans fats could affect it's beloved cheese steak sandwiches, something for which we should all be concerned....

HPD Chief Harold Hurtt announced yesterday that 10 more red-light cameras are being installed around town, some of them on state-owned roads thanks to a ruling from Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott. Hurtt said the cameras will begin operating in about a month at the East Freeway at Uvalde on the east side, FM 1960 at Tomball Parkway in northwest Houston and eight locations on the southwest side: the West Loop at Westheimer, the Southwest...

If you're in the habit of sneaking through red lights, enjoy your lawless ways while you can: The installation of Houston's first 10 red-light cameras is almost finished, and the system is expected to go live Sept. 1. The cameras are located at Milam and Elgin, Brazos and Elgin, Pease at La Branch and Travis at Webster in Midtown; Richmond at Dunvale, Richmond at Hillcroft, Bellaire at Wilcrest and Harwin at Hillcroft on the southwest...

The two men involved in a Texas City apartment explosion yesterday may have been involved in an anarchist group, sources tell KHOU Michael Shelby, a former U.S. attorney who was found dead at his Houston home Tuesday, shot himself, his autopsy report said State Attorney General Greg Abbott will ask the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn a ruling that Tom DeLay must remain on the November ballot Two 12-year-old boys were killed overnight...

This has been a rough week for your -ist pals, though you wouldn't know it from the great posts all over the network. Plagued with server problems, our tech team (led by the great Neil Epstein) toiled around the clock to solve the glitches as they arose. Seriously, we've said, typed, and thought the phrase "server problems" more in the past week than we have for the last 35 years combined. Why not say it...

Texas doctors who provide abortions illegally could be subject to the death penalty because of the way the relevant legislation is put together, reports the Dallas Morning News. The state Attorney General's Office has been asked to clarify a probe that began when the Texas Legislature declared a fetus "an individual" back in 2003. Then, in 2005, it became a criminal act to perform certain abortions (for doctors without the required certification, for example). Therefore, legislators may have accidentally created a situation i which a doctor could be charged with the death of a child younger than age 6--a capital crime in which the death penalty is on the table as a punishment option, according to the Texas District and County Attorneys Association.

Houston's red-light camera system has gotten a boost thanks to a ruling by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott that clears the way for cities to install cameras at intersections controlled by the Texas Department of Transportation. The ruling means the city will probably toss the list of intersections it announced for the first 10 cameras earlier this month, since it will now be able to factor TxDOT intersections into its plans.

Attorney General Greg Abbott is jumping on the anti-MySpace.com bandwagon. He says Texas needs tougher laws to keep sexual predators from soliciting minors on the internet because the repeat offenders are “incorrigible”.

Things keep looking worse for the embattled Houston Police Department crime lab. A new report Wednesday from an independent investigator said analysts in two divisions of the lay didn't report evidence that might have helped criminal suspects and made errors in nearly one-third of cases reviewed in a test sample. According to the report, the problems led to a "near-total breakdown" in the lab's DNA and serology divisions between 1987 and 2002. Among the findings...

A U.S. district judge refuses to dismiss insider trading charges against former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling ExpressJet shares dropped after Continental announced it will pull 25 percent of its business from the carrier in 2007 City officials are working to catch up on a $7.2 million backlog in evacuee rent payment Detectives recovered a knife and car believed to have been used in the murder of 12-year-old Teketria Buggs Some Galveston County inmates have filed...

At the Port of Houston, a woman was run over and killed by a fork lift while she was taking notes Word on what eccentric millionaire Robert Durst was doing when he violated parole by visiting Galveston: seeing a doctor, a lawyer and stopping by his former home The sponsors of Houston's rival MLK Day parades may join forces to hold a single parade in 2006 An appeals court denied Tom DeLay's lawyers' request to...

Houstonist is again wondering if we're in the right line of work after reading about Harris County's disciplinary action against a sheriff's deputy and seven jailers involved in the escape of convicted killer Charles Victor Thompson earlier this month. The deputy resigned before he could be fired, but the seven jailers got "punishment ... [ranging] from a letter of reprimand to 10-day suspensions without pay."