Update: Yesterday's news of Pimp C's dead shot across the city of Houston via blogs, message boards, and shocked emails. Rumors of foul play, even a mention of fellow rapper Spice 1 also being involved in a shooting, buzzed around town. The two incidents are not thought to be related. Capt. Ed Winter of the Los Angeles County coroner's office said Butler had apparently died in bed. "At this time there's no signs of foul...
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Results tagged “newsnational”
Houston rapper Pimp C was found dead this morning in his hotel room on LA's Sunset Strip. Pimp C had performed with Too Short on Saturday evening at the House of Blues. Pitchfork reports "L.A. firefighters responded to a 911 call at the Sunset Strip's Mondrian Hotel, where they found the rapper dead in his bed. No information on cause of death has been given at this time." Pimp C, born Chad Butler, was one...
Attention Lance Lovers! Texas' most famous cancer survivor will be visiting Houston tomorrow to lobby in support of Proposition 15. You can click here to read it in its entirety, but it's not any kind of Engrish that we recognize. The short story is that Prop 15, if passed, would result in a constitutional ammendment allowing for obligation bonds to raise money and establishing the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas. Lance explained...
Houstonist took it on the chin with another late night out on the town. Don't ask. What happens out there stays out there. We missed our alarm. We showed up late for work. The office coffee pot was broken so we headed to Starbucks to get a jump start. Our caffeinated bliss was tainted after we learned about the nine cent price increase that is now in effect. While we agree with Lewis Black...
Milk. It's one of those things we rarely give much thought to — but then we read about how rising milk prices are driving the cost of all dairy-based products up. In fact, according to an expert at the Department of Agriculture, the price of milk-based ingredients used in cheese, ice cream and pizza has gone up by as much as 60 percent in the past year, which means those products end up costing consumers...
So it's been nearly two years since Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans — and, according to the AP, about 5,500 heads of evacuee households in Houston are still unemployed. It's not that there aren't jobs available (city officials say there are 2 million job openings, 59,000 of which don't require a college education) or that the government isn't helping (the city has spent $1.9 million since the fall offering free résumé help, business clothing, job...
KHOU reports today on something that isn't exactly new, but is certainly new to us: In March, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange began offering contracts on hurricane futures — meaning individuals and companies can now bet on the probability of where and when a hurricane will hit. And it's not necessarily as bizarre as it sounds (assuming, of course, you have a pretty good idea of a hurricane's path). The CME started offering the hurricane futures...
As we watched the ultra-classy Larry Birkhead celebrating his little bundle of cash solemnly announcing that he was the father of Anna Nicole Smith's baby last week, we foolishly breathed a sigh of relief. "Finally," we thought, "the media can turn its attention to something else. Bring on the Imus!" We should have known better. Over the weekend, the AP reported that Howard K. Stern, Smith's former attorney (and ex-baby daddy contender), has filed suit...
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:...
Three local women were arrested this week on charges that they scammed 13 people out of as much as $20,000 by falsely promising them telephone counseling with Dr. Phil McGraw, his wife Robin and television psychic Sylvia Browne. According to the indictment, the women — Ann Theresa Stevens, Serena Stevens and Cher Evans — set up fake toll-free phone numbers for the Dr. Phil show and Browne last fall; when people would call, they would...
KTRK has an odd story this morning: According to the station, an investigation into NASA Inspector General Robert Cobb has found that Cobb quashed the release of a Crime Stoppers report on a ring allegedly taken from the finger of one of the astronauts killed in the space shuttle Columbia disaster. Cobb has been under fire for other findings in the report from the President's Council on Integrity and Efficiency, which has been investigating complaints against him dating back to 2005, but the ring incident is by far one of the strangest.
In one of the strangest stories to come along in a while, a Humble man is accused of having beaten a Russian traveler to death at a New Jersey Turnpike service plaza yesterday — apparently a random attack that police say might have been motivated by religion. The basics are these: Shortly before 12:45 a.m. Thursday, Michail J. Makarenko, a 75-year-old Russian who emigrated to the U.S. 25 years ago, pulled over with his interpreter...
Heads up, campers. The new Daylight Saving Time rules go into effect tonight/tomorrow at 2 AM. Ain't no thang if you only have an alarm clock and a wrist watch. Roll the hands of your Rolex forward when you stumble out of the pub tonight. Things get tricky if you have a software powered clock, like the one on the laptop you're using to read this or your CrackBerry, because DST starts a couple...
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...
Houstonist loves good music, and has often complained about the mediocrity found on local radio. According to the Associated Press, there may be break in crappy local radio, due to two new deals that the major radio conglomerates have reached with the government and independent record labels.
Houston law firm Fulbright & Jaworski is still in damage-control mode over a recruiter's use of language during a recent visit to Duke University. If you haven't heard about the incident, here's what happened: In the course of speaking with some Duke law students, an unnamed Fulbright attorney told a story about Leon Jaworski's defense of a black man on trial for murder in Waco in the 1920s (which we assume was the 1929 case...
An update in the court battle over custody of Anna Nicole Smith's remains: Judge Larry Seidlin ruled today that Richard Milstein, the guardian of Smith's infant daughter, should get the body. It's now up to Milstein what to do with the body — Smith's mother, Virgie Arthur, wanted her buried in Texas, but her boyfriend, Howard K. Stern, said she should be buried with her son in the Bahamas. (Smith apparently told Arthur several years ago that she wanted to be buried near Marilyn Monroe, who is entombed in Los Angeles.) No one's sure yet what Milstein will do with Smith's body, but Seidlin gave his opinion of what should happen: "I want her to be buried with her son in the Bahamas," he said. "I want them to be together."
Well, not exactly, but it made for a damn good headline. So, after months of speculation, XM and Sirius satellite radio have merged. You can throw out all of those quarrels with your friends on which service is better, because soon it won’t matter anymore – all satellite owners will have Howard Stern, Oprah, NFL, and Major League Baseball, etc.
Houston attorney John O'Quinn is in Florida this morning to help Anna Nicole Smith's mom fight for custody of Smith's body, which is being held pending the outcome of a custody hearing. Smith's mother, Virgie Arthur, wants Smith's body to be buried in Houston, but she's up against Howard K. Stern, who claims he's the father of Smith's infant daughter, Danielynn. Stern says he wants to take the body to the Bahamas so Smith can be buried next to her son, Daniel. But Arthur says she wants to bury Smith's body in Houston and wants Daniel's body exhumed and brought here as well. And at this point, it looks like who will end up with the body is anyone's guess.
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...
If you haven't already made lunch plans, why not go ahead and have that triple cheeseburger, large order of fries and milkshake? And why not wash it down with a giant dessert? A celebration is in order, you see: Houston has slipped to No. 6 in the Men's Fitness annual ranking of America's fattest cities. Looks like Mayor White's Jazzercise really paid off. In this year's MF rankings, Las Vegas takes the coveted title of...
So let's be honest: All weekend, you were sitting around thinking, "Sure, I'd like to know who the father of Anna Nicole's daughter is, but what I really wonder is: What's going on with Lisa Nowak?" Fortunately, the media provided a heathy dose of astronaut-related updates over the weekend. Here's what you might have missed: On Thursday, some friends had dropped by Nowak's Clear Lake home for a visit, according to an AP report carried...
No lines were memorized, no one yelled "ACTION" but her final film, video really, has been aired and sold. Reported to have fetched $500,000 as Splash News & Picture Agency (read: paparazzi outfit) peddled a video showing paramedics administering CPR to Anna Nicole Smith, as she is being wheeled out of the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel. Apparently, the video is somewhat non-descript, as you cannot view her face, or even her hair - much less...
Here's another of those things that'll make us all proud to be Houstonians: According to an environmental research group, three of the five most-polluting U.S. refineries are in the Houston area. We guess our old line to cover for our pollution problem — "That's the smell of money!" — won't quite cut it anymore. According to the Enrivonmental Integrity Project, BP's Texas City refinery, Exxon Mobil's refinery in Baytown and the Lyondell-Citgo plant in Houston...
Selling memorabilia related to people in the news, especially if they've done something completely off the wall, has always been a way for some people to cash in on news — but these days, thanks to eBay, it's almost become part of the American way. Take, for example, Joachim Horvitz, a Jersey City, N.J., man whose autographed picture of lovelorn astronaut Lisa Marie Nowak is fetching more than $1,800 on eBay with four days left...
So here we are in the first full day of a World Without Anna Nicole — and though she's gone, the news isn't likely to stop anytime soon. Today, the medical examiner's office in Broward County, Fla., will conduct an autopsy on Smith to see if it can determine how she died, and closer to home, experts say her legal battles will probably stay in the courts for quite some time. First, what we know...
FoxNews has confirmed that one of Houston's own, Anna Nicole Smith has passed away. Born Vickie Lynn Hogan on November 28, 1967 in Houston, Texas the "Reality TV Star" and former TrimSpa spokeswoman (who was just included in a class-action suit against the company) has passed away in Hollywood, Florida. She was found unresponsive in her hotel room at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel - where she had been photographed at a boxing match earlier...
Little by little, a picture is beginning to emerge of Lisa Marie Nowak, the astronaut arrested in Florida on Monday for — well, you know the story. The results of NASA's psychiatric evaluation of Nowak haven't been released, but people who knew here are talking to reporters and telling them how Nowak was likely under an unbelievable amount of pressure between her personal and professional lives.
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.