Results tagged “laws”

Good morning, Houston. Did you know that we're now in a bold new Fluorescent Age thanks to Mayor Bill White and his colleagues in Dallas, San Antonio, Austin and El Paso? The collective His Honors gathered in San Antonio on Friday to name the compact fluorescent bulb the "state bulb of Texas." If that doesn't make you want to switch to CFLs, try this: December is Compact Fluorescent Light Month in Texas. What's so...

Good morning, Houston. As you might have noticed, we passed the night sans Humberto — but our friends in the Beaumont area weren't so lucky. The sudden hurricane made landfall early this morning and battered Beaumont with winds up to 62 mph and Orange with gusts of up to 85 mph, the Chron's Eric Berger reports. From across Southeast Texas came reports of knee-deep water, downed power lines and damaged buildings, including an apartment...

Happy first weekend of September - and happy Labor Day weekend, too, for our American cities! Let's take a look at what's been happening around the Ist-a-verse. The deaths of two firefighters shook Bostonist this week. Boston's firefighters bent over backwards all week long - first, they fought flames pouring from the Boston Tea Party museum, and then a restaurant fire killed two and injured many more. Their efforts make everything else - like Tom...

With unseasonable weather descending upon much of North America, schools getting ready to reconvene, and sports seasons getting exciting, it's a busy time of year for us here in the Ist-A-Verse. Luckily, even with all the things we have to do, we still managed to get together to let you know what we've all been up to. After cooling down from a hot weekend of many badass Sunset Junction Street Fair photo dispatches, LAist asked...

Victor Montano, a sixteen-year-old Houstonian, was hit and killed by a police vehicle in New Orleans. He had been visiting the city for about two weeks. Police caught Montano spray painting along the floodwall last Thursday afternoon. When he saw the police, he took off running and the officer followed in his SUV. The officer said it appeared as though Victor was going to jump over a fence, but when tripped and fell in front...

The latest in urban plight: copper theft. HPD Captain Caesar Moore, who oversees the burglary and theft division, told KUHF that they see about 250 metal-related thefts a month. Oftentimes, the copper is stolen from air conditioning units at churches, and Moore explained how this typically goes down: Usually it's drug related. They'll steal an air conditioning unit, the metal out of it and they may get $40 up to $80 for the copper parts...

Remember Dan Duncan, the founder of pipeline company Enterprise Products Partners and the richest man in Houston? He's in the news again today, but this time it isn't for his wealth. Instead, Duncan may face criminal charges connected with a 2002 hunting trip in Siberia; it seems Duncan shot and killed a moose and sheep from a helicopter during the trip, a practice that's illegal in Russia. And though no complaints or charges were filed...

Good morning, Houston. If you ever stop to think about all the ordinances in effect in the city — admit it, you do — you probably wonder just how much space all those laws would take up if they were written down. Well, now we know: around 5,000 pages. That tidbit comes from the Chronicle's Matt Stiles, who recently reported that the city approved a new three-year contract with the Municipal Code Corp. of...

Trees were cut down yesterday in order to make room for improvements in drainage and electrical systems for the replacement of part of the River Oaks Shopping Center, according to Weingarten Realty. After the property was recommended by the Houston Planning Commission to become a designated landmark (and don't forget the numerous letters, emails, and 25,000+ signature petition urging Weingarten not to demolish), Weingarten is still going forward with its big-box plans. While we hoped...

There are no new traffic laws and no new laws concerning cell phone use in cars according to the Texas DPS. A recent email hoax is being forwarded to inboxes across Texas as fast as those drivers in the left lane. That is, until they reach someone driving the speed limit, of course. The hoax email states that improper use of the HOV lane will result in a fine in excess of $1,000, doubling and...

As Spring teenager David Ritcheson's family heads to Mexico today to claim Ritcheson's body, a few details are emerging about when he jumped from a Carnival cruise ship in the Gulf of Mexico on Sunday morning. Witnesses said Rtcheson climbed up a tower near the bow of the Ecstasy about 6:15 a.m., and moments later, ship crew members showed up and began trying to negotiate with him. Friends joined in — "What the [expletive] are...

MFA Special Lecture: "Collecting the Past and Illuminating the Future" MET Director and CEO, Philippe de Montebello In this rare Houston appearance, esteemed art historian Philippe de Montebello traces the history of collecting antiquities over thousands of years. As he brings the discussion of collecting into the present age, he discusses the growth of independent states and patrimony laws in the 20th century, as well as present controversies, and offers an analysis of today´s situation...

There's so much going on across the Ist-a-Verse that it's almost impossible to keep track these days. Fortunately, we do it so you don't have to! Londonist took a walk through Oliver Twist's London, thanks to a gorgeous map layer for Google Earth. They also caught up with modern-day fictional London, with the Fantastic Four and 28 Weeks Later. It was a week of insanity over at DCist. They started the week off with...

It's been a busy weekend for Texas Southern University, where the regents are reportedly meeting this morning to fire interim President James Timothy Boddie, whom they had picked to lead the troubled school last fall. According to KTRK, the new president will be Morris Overstreet, a law professor who earned his law degree from TSU in 1975 and was elected to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in 1990. There aren't any more details on...

City officials have recently proposed a permanent ban on demolition of historic buildings in part of the Old Sixth Ward. In a recently released memo, details of the proposal were given: if support among neighborhood property owners is sufficient, demolition or inappropriate alteration of historical buildings within a "protected historic district" would be prohibited unless an economic hardship could be demonstrated. Now, residents of the community will have a chance to tell officials what they think about the plan.

Need to know just a little bit about something? Ask a dilettante. This was a rough week for the gun lobby. Federal “safeguards” didn't stop a very disturbed young man in Virginia from being able to purchase guns that he later used to kill lots of people. Though there has been no official statement from the NRA, many pundits, talk radio callers and a guy sitting at a bar in Houston who was overheard by...

Good morning, Houston. It's been a long week, but fortunately, there's not much of it left. So to get things moving on toward Friday — and because we're still smarting over not knowing Texas had two Clear Lakes — we're jumping right into the news this morning. Go! >> Enron lawyers in hot water?: Two former Enron lawyers have been charged with civil violations of securities laws for — hang on to your hat...

Looks like Houstonian Bobby Knight is going to have some 'splaining to do: Police say Knight, whose wife reported him missing March 14 after finding a ransom note in her mailbox demanding $50,000 for his return, staged his kidnapping in an attempt to get away from his spouse. According to KHOU, when Harris County sheriff's investigators began looking into the case, they traced one of Knight's credit card receipts to a Radio Shack store in...

Good morning, Houston. If you loved the DeLorean DMC-12 — and who didn't? — you might be interested to know that what's left of the DeLorean Motor Co. (basically, the name and the logo) is now headquartered in Humble. And the company's vice president, James Espey, is hoping to collect former De Lorean employees' into a book, I Lived the Dream: Stories From Those Who Built the DeLorean Sports Car. This summer, the DeLorean...

As expected, Halliburton's announcement Sunday that it'll establish a corporate headquarters in Dubai and move its CEO there sparked some criticism in Congress yesterday from legislators who claim the company is making the change so it can increase business with Iran and take tax benefits in the U.S. "I think Congress ought to hold hearings to try to determine why one of this country's major defense contractors has decided to move its principal offices offshore,"...

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...

This week, City Council will consider new rules for cab drivers and the companies that employ them, including requiring cabbies to pass a test covering Houston's layout and city laws that govern the taxi industry. There used to be such a test, the Chronicle reports, but councilmembers voted it out in the 1990s.

A group of downtown residents gathered last night to talk with city leaders about what development that they'd like to see in their 'hood — and, not surprisingly, at the top of their list were more retail markets and fewer nightclubs. "I'm sick of seeing [downtown] slide, going into a burlesque environment," Annette McBride, who has lived downtown for more than 10 years, said.

But it's better than Dallas and Fort Worth. So says Fit Pregnancy magazine in their new report "The Best Cities in America to Have a Baby 2007", where we're ranked 42 out of 50.

We all have certain words that offend us, right? So we go through life not using those words and hoping other people will extend us the same courtesy — but that's not enough for Ken Corley, the mayor of Brazoria, who is leading a charge to outlaw use of the word "nigger" in his city. If Corley's proposal becomes a city ordinance, certain uses of the word within Brazoria's city limits would be punishable by a fine of up to $500.

Good morning, Houston. If you haven't made up a personal budget for 2007 yet, we recommend that you don't run over and kill anyone this year — it can really blow your grand financial schemes, as Mercedes murderess Clara Harris found out last week. Jurors in her wrongful death civil trial decided the dentist should pay her in-laws $3.75 million for their pain and suffering after she ran over and killed their son, her...

We thought we might get some insight into convicted murderer Clara Harris's state of mind when she took the stand yesterday in the wrongful death trial brought by her in-laws — but it turns out we could have learned more form Oprah's jailhouse interview. Harris, who was convicted in 2003 of killing her husband, David, by running him down with her Mercedes, pleaded the Fifth, refusing to answer any of the 27 questions asked of...

The Dallas Morning News reports today that some state legislators are taking steps to make sure abortions become illegal in Texas if the U.S. Supreme Court ever overturns Roe v. Wade. State Sen. Dan Patrick, who was sworn in as a senator Tuesday, has filed a so-called "trigger bill" that would take effect if the Supreme Court should reverse its position on abortion. It's a change Patrick said is coming: "Many of us on the...

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...

It’s tough to make a microbrewery successful in the state of Texas. Brock Wagner, founder and owner of Houston’s St. Arnold’s microbrewery, is hoping to change that. Wagner has teamed up with other microbrewers in the state to form Friends of Texas Microbreweries, which will lobby the states legislature to enact laws that would help microbreweries flourish, like the micro-wineries have in the past decade.