From local Houston headlines, we bring you these weekend news bits... • Ashley Benton, the 17 year old accused of murdering a 15 year old, has agreed to a plea bargain and will avoid prison time. • Former President George Bush's favorite BBQ joint, Otto's on Memorial is going to be razed to make way for new construction. There is no current date for the demise of Otto's, so go grab a Bush plate...
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Results tagged “newstexas”
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...
Remember earlier this year, when the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration began a probe into dozens of dead dolphins that had washed up on Southeast Texas beaches? Well, several months into the investigation, the NOAA hasn't figured out what killed the dolphins — and officials say they're unlikely to find an answer. Nearly 70 dolphins washed ashore on beaches in Galveston and Jefferson counties, at least 60 of them in March — a sharp upturn...
Gas prices got you down? Well, maybe it’s not entirely the oil companies to blame. The Texas Department of Agriculture (TDA) just released its first report on fuel stations out of compliance. The state law requires the pumps at the fuel stations to be checked at minimum once every four years. With all of the gas stations in Texas (estimated to be close to 14,000), this must be a pretty hefty task, for the TDA’s...
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...
The results are in and Texas tops the charts in births to girls aged 15 - 19. The Anne E. Casey Foundation publishes KIDS COUNT study annually but these results are based on figures from 2004. State law requires that abstinence be emphasized during sex education classes in schools. However, local jurisdictions are able to plot their own course with delivery method (of the class, not the babies) and amount of information conveyed. The...
If you're one of those people who sits in the car for more than an hour every day on your way to and from work, we're sorry — and there's bad news: It may be getting worse. According to a transportation researcher, Texas' strong population growth over the next 20 years or so will mean that we'll see more and more "extreme commutes" of an hour or more. Better invest in some books on tape,...
So, you've heard the one about the condemned killer who decided he would tell a joke as his final statement? Turns out he wasn't as funny as promised: Just before his execution in Huntsville yesterday, Patrick Knight said death is the biggest joke of all. "I said I was going to tell a joke," he said. "Death has set me free. That's the biggest joke. I deserve this. And the other joke is that I...
If you've ever been refused a drink in a bar because you've, uh, overindulged, you may be in fairly distinguished company: A former bartender at a Capitol-area watering hole in Austin claims she refused state Sen. John Whitmire of Houston another drink — and got fired for doing it. Rebekah L. Lear claims she was working at the Cloak Room, a legislative hangout, on March 8 when Whitmire arrived "acting intoxicated" and with a "glazed...
Houstonist told you yesterday about the alleged "mob beating" that took place in East Austin on Tuesday, June 19th. Today, however, the Austin Police Department (APD) backed off of the troubling story, claiming that their initial press releases contained incorrect information, and that, according to Austin Mayor Will Wynn, "the city played a role in that." Additionally, as new details emerge about the murder, a new troubling element of the story seems to be replacing...
Here's a scary story: apparently a man was killed yesterday by a crowd in Austin. According to reports, a crowd of 2,000 to 3,000 people had gathered for the Juneteenth celebration in East Austin Tuesday night. Apparently the man killed was a passenger riding in a car that had struck a child. The child survived the incident, as did the driver. However, the passenger riding with the driver died at the scene. After the driver...
Even as the TAKS could be on its way out, state education officials announced Monday that measures will be put in place next year to curb cheating on the standardized test. The anti-cheating measures come after allegations of cheating and concerns over students not graduating because they failed the test — and we can't help but think that those problems go hand in hand. "As the stakes surrounding testing have become higher, some have questioned...
Finally! After sixteen straight weeks of increases, gasoline prices have finally dropped across Texas. That's not to stay it still won't cost you $60 or $70 to fill up your gas-guzzling SUV though, because they've only dropped to an average of $3.05 in 11 Texas cities. On the bright side, that's three cents down from last week and still 14 cents below the national average. Gas prices are still about a dollar higher than they...
John McCormack, CEO and founder of Visible Changes, the popular chain of hair salons, made a big promise to his employees fifteen years ago. He told them that if any of their children wanted to go to medical school, the company would pay for it. At the time, most of his employees did not even have high school diplomas and many were immigrants from developing nations. KHOU profiled two Visible Changes employees, one from Vietnam...
Senator Mario Gallegos, a Houston Democrat, can finally return home after jeopardizing his health to fight a controversial voter ID bill. Gallegos recently underwent a liver transplant and a follow-up procedure due to concerns that his body was rejecting the liver. He even had a hospital bed set up in the Senate sergeant's office, just a hop, skip, and a jump from the Senate floor. Doctors advised Gallegos to stay in Houston to recuperate, but...
The 80th Texas Legislature is proving to be one of the zaniest yet. This week, Senator Glenn Hegar, a Republican from Katy, amended a bill to allow for legalized horse slaughtering in Texas. The bill, SB 911 (ha ha), along with Hegar's amendment, would allow the sale of horsemeat for human consumption, if the animals are tested by the commission. But isn't that illegal in Texas? Well, Hegar has only the most humane interests. He...
Tomorrow's special election to fill the vacant at-large city council seat has been in the local news often enough lately. But there's something else on the ballot that hasn't been given as much long-term publicity: a proposed Constitutional amendment. In the state of Texas, amendments to the Constitution must be ratified by a majority of voters - even if those voters only make up about eight percent of the total voter pool, which is the...
Rep. Ellen Cohen is all grown up and getting her legislation passed. The freshman Democrat from Houston proposed a bill that would add a $5 tax to strip club entry fees, and it passed in the Texas House yesterday in a 110-28 vote. The "sin tax" is expected to generate $87 million in revenue, $18 million of which will be used to fund women's crisis centers and sexual assault education. Strip club managers opposed the...
Due to a number of problems that have already been reported with early voting, several counties are ready to get rid of the voting records system used in Texas because it is too flawed. The system, TEAM, began operating in January in order to comply with federal regulations on centralizing voting information across the state. Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector Paul Bettencourt said that the new database is "causing statewide voting problems" and that "it's a...
We've all been there. You're all set to leave for your $1500 masked ball, and you're about to get in your Mercedes, but your keys are missing. What to do? Well, maybe that's not quite how it goes, at least for us, but we have lost our car keys more than we'd care to discuss. Locksmith Rick Clayton says that he gets called out on more lost car key cases than he'd care to discuss...
A fire that began at a high school 25 miles south of Rosenberg at 3:15 this morning destroyed ungraded TAKS tests and led to all Needville ISD schools to be closed today. The fire was confined to the main area of the building, and there's no word yet on what caused it. We hope this had nothing to do with a student who was unsatisfied with his or her standardized test performance. We also hope...
Houstonist remembers the point when gas went over $2 a gallon and oilman T. Boone Pickens said that was no big deal — what we should really worry about is when a gallon gets up to $3. And guess what? We're getting there. This week's AAA Texas gas-price survey reports that the average price of a gallon of regular unleaded in Texas is now $2.79 — an increase of 6.8 cents over last week. So...
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...
The HISD board is expected to consider a resolution this week asking the state Legislature to scrap the TAKS test in favor of year-end exams in core subjects. Legislators have been discussing the testing change for weeks, and we're sure the support of the state's largest school district wouldn't exactly hurt the push for a TAKS-free state. Teachers and parents have criticized the TAKS for years, saying too much rides on the test and that...
State Sen. Dan Patrick (R-Houston) caused a bit of a stir at the Capitol yesterday when he walked out of the Senate chamber so he wouldn't have to be present as an Islamic spiritual leader delivered the opening prayer. Patrick said he didn't have a problem with Imam Yusuf Kavakci of Dallas giving the invocation, but that didn't mean that he had to stay in the room while it was going on: "It is important...
University of Houston basketball legend Guy V. Lewis was voted into the newly created National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame. Lewis, who will be inducted in November in Kansas City, Missouri, will be part of the second ever induction class that also includes ten other inductees and featuring UCLA all-time great Kareem Abul-Jabbar. . When it came to college basketball, Lewis' ideas were always Texas big. He was the first person to put a...
In another of the weekend's bizarre stories, a man and woman fell 50 to 60 feet off a cruise ship's balcony in the Gulf of Mexico early yesterday morning — fortunately, they're OK, but the incident is raising questions about exactly how they managed to fall in the first place. The man, 22, and the woman, 20, fell from the balcony of the woman's cabin aboard the Grand Princess when the ship was about 150...
The National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration has launched a special investigation into the unusually high number of dead dolphins that have washed up on Southeast Texas beaches this year, the AP reports. We talked last week about the dolphin problem: As of last Tuesday, 35 bottlenose dolphins had washed up on Galveston County beaches since January, 26 of them in March. Overall, at least 60 dolphins have been found beached in Galveston and Jefferson counties...
Houstonist has often seen the signs pointing the way to Fulshear and wondered what was going on out there — and now we know: Alleged carport theft! Seems Fulshear Mayor James W. Roberts has been indicted on charges of theft, official oppression and attempted official oppression related to a pair of carports that were removed from a resident's property. According to reports, the city was trying to get rid of the carports as part of...
Something we missed last week that should be of interest to those of us who don't really care for getting traffic tickets: Legislation on its way through the state Legislature would relax a state law that makes it illegal to cover any part of a license plate. The law, which the Legislature passed in 2003, outlawed covering any part of a license plate. It was a response to the problem of people breezing through automated...