From local Houston headlines, we bring you these weekend news bits... • A Fort Bend Co. teenager is dead after an argument led to his fatal shooting. The incident occurred on Orchard Mist near Westmoor. • An Alvin teenager is dead after portions of a carnival ride that was being dismantled fell on her. • A wrong way driver on West Bellfort near Dairy Ashford crashed into a fence after swerving into the wrong......

Houstonist has an active and amazing Flickr photo group. We receive many, many photos of Houston and the surrounding areas every day and unless you are an active visitor to our photo pool many of these photos go unnoticed. So in a weekly effort to bring you more amazing photos from Houstonist readers and photographers, we are going to feature a block of photos submitted to our Flickr photo group. The images will be dug......

Houstonist has an active and amazing Flickr photo group. We receive many, many photos of Houston and the surrounding areas every day and unless you are an active visitor to our photo pool many of these photos go unnoticed. So in a weekly effort to bring you more amazing photos from Houstonist readers and photographers, we are going to feature a block of photos submitted to our Flickr photo group. The images will be dug......

Good morning, Houston. If you've lived here a while, you probably know that the city is prone to livestock running amok — so it shouldn't be too surprising that Third Ward residents found a pair of ewes loose in their neighborhood yesterday. Some neighbors and a KTRK crew tried to catch the animals and eventually chased them to the TSU campus, where a Harris County sheriff's deputy and KTRK photographer Ben Lutman made a......

Movie buff? Military buff? Either way, today's Daily-ist has gotcha covered. Hey, we're here for YOU. Head dowtown tonight (yes, on a Tuesday) for The Heritage Society's a one hour special screening and discussion of the newest documentary to come from director and producer Ken Burns: The War. This seven-part series about the Second World War highlights the perspectives of a handful of ordinary American men and women who lived during this time. But, under......

Local tech news in a compact, digital format. Comcast Raises Your Rates In October Get ready to dig deeper to pay your cable bill because the amount you pay will be going up. Yes, that's right, Comcast will be raising your cable rates starting with your October bill. How much is this rate increase? Comcast says bills are going up 6.1% for all its subscribers. What are you getting for this 6.1% increase? Increased......

Good morning, Houston. Next time you happen to be walking along Northwood Drive in Baytown — and really, we can't imagine why you would be — be sure to use the sidewalk. If you don't, you could end up being slapped with a $150 citation. It happened to Clifton Stewart, a minister who said he moved to the neighborhood to save money; on Aug. 21, Stewart was cited for violating a state law that......

This wonderfully dark and brooding photo of the statue of Sam Houston in Hermann Park comes to us from flickr user and Houstonist photo contributor Notsuoh Photography. We love the moodiness of the clouds and colors. If you have a passion for Houston and photography, consider joining over 360 of Houston's best photographers in the Houstonist Flickr Photo Group. If Houstonist uses your photo for Photo Of The Day, submit it here. For more......

The Dimes may not have swept the Houston Press Music Awards last week, but they did leave with the most trophies – three, to be exact (Best New Act, Best Indie Rock, and Song of the Year). While puppies (in age, that is) compared to many on the Houston music scene, they’re making a big splash right out-of-the-box. We caught up with Carlos Sanchez, guitarist and lead vocalist for The Dimes, as he and the......

Bayou City Arts Festival: Call for Entries The Bayou City Art Festival Downtown (not to be confused with the Sping Festival in Memorial Park) has announced the call for entries for its third annual “Art on Water” floating art competition on the City Hall Reflection Pool at Hermann Square. This year’s theme is “Water in Motion.” "We’re asking local artists to express movement through artwork either stationary or through kinetic nature of sculpture or installation,”......

This week, don’t be looking for the big, A-list concerts, but that doesn’t mean that there’s a void of good live music choices. Last week’s big winner at the Houston Press Music Awards, The Dimes, will be playing at The Proletariat with several other bands Friday night. Sam Houston Race Park continues their summer concert series with Cory Morrow the same night. Saturday, you can take a step back into the 80’s with legendary......

We really wish Gomez was performing a headlining show here, but we have to settle with them just being an opening act for The Fray (along with Eisley) this Friday night in The Woodlands. However, Gomez is playing a stand-alone show Saturday night in Austin, if you're lucky enough to find tickets for it. Some veteran Houston acts play around town this week. Beaumont's Clay Walker will perform after the races at Sam Houston......

80's hair band Poison is coming to Houston tomorrow night. Believe it or not, they'll be playing at the Sam Houston Race Park tomorrow night after the horse races are over. (We want to call that a career low, but since the track hosted the great Merle Haggard recently, we can't justify that claim.) Poison had a good run of hits from '87 to '92 ("Talk Dirty to Me," "Every Rose Has It's Thorn,"......

It seems just yesterday that a falling concrete beam took a bite out of a concrete wall on the Sam Houston Tollway at its interchange with the Katy Freeway. And now the same thing has happened again, more or less — except this time it was a piece of construction debris, and it landed on a passing motorist's car. That motorist, Terry Burgess, told KHOU how he was driving along the eastbound Katy Freeway feeder......

Depending on the outcome of a vote by Harris County Commissioners Court tomorrow, rates on the county's toll road system could increase 25 cents by the end of the summer, the first step in a plan to double tolls over the next 20 years. That means that, by 2027, drivers would pay $2 per EZ Tag transaction and $2.50 per cash transaction on Harris County toll roads — though it's not clear just how......

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......

Sports in Houston Exhibit Opens at the Hertiage Society Whether fairweather or face-painter: we can't deny the presence of professional sports in Houston (even when we want to). It’s How You Play the Game: Professional Sports in Houston, is a new exhibit that chronicles the highs and lows Houstonians have experienced over the years as they supported their home teams. This city has been a part of many firsts in sports history, from the......

Well, here's something to be proud of: Houston's homicide rate is now the second-highest among large American cities, according to FBI figures released Monday. Keep in mind that this is the homicide rate we're talking about — Houston's was 18.2 per 100,000 residents last year, putting us second only to Philadelphia and ahead of Dallas (fifth place), which has had a higher homicide rate than Houston for each of the last 11 years. The numbers......

Good morning, Houston. It's Thursday — the last day of May — which means there's just a few more hours to enter the Houstonist photo exhibition. We're accepting entries until 11:59 p.m. tomorrow, so be sure to send your photos before then. As always, the details and entry form are at 600sqmi.com. Good luck! >> Aw, hail: We knew there was a chance of rain yesterday, but we didn't expect a long bout of......

There is no word from HISD yet on whether three schools, Kashmere High, Sam Houston High and McReynolds Middle School, will open again next fall. HISD officials wouldn't discuss the issue, saying only that they're they're waiting on the Texas Education Agency to analyze students' test scores and decide whether or not these three campuses are "academically acceptable." The high schools are both located in north Houston, while McReynolds is east of downtown, just off......

The Chronicle's Matt Stiles brings us the locations of the city's 10 newest red-light cameras, a couple of which we had already noticed — while lawfully stopping at red lights, we might add. And here they are: Northbound Wayside at Gulf Freeway Northbound Woodridge at Gulf Freeway Northbound West Bellfort at Southwest Freeway Northbound Fairbanks N. Houston at Northwest Freeway Northbound West Sam Houston Parkway South at Westpark Eastbound FM 2351 at Gulf Freeway Eastbound......

Ah, now Houstonist remembers why we're totally avoiding the Katy Freeway area these days: falling concrete beams. Or at least one falling concrete beam — one that took a chunk out of a Sam Houston Tollway guardrail yesterday afternoon, narrowly missing passing traffic and closing the tollway for a couple of hours. It happened around 3:30 p.m. as Williams Bros., one of the contractors building the new mega-Katy Freeway, was tearing down a column at......

When we saw that KTRK had done a Crime Tracker report on Houston movie theaters, our first thought was "Tinseltown Westchase." And it turns out we weren't too far off: the Tinseltown theater located at 3300 West Sam Houston Parkway saw the most violent crime last year, including one rape and five robberies. However, the AMC Studio 30 at 2949 Dunvale reported the most crime overall, but none of them were violent. Infractions included possession......

We first fell in love with the Old 97’s as soon as we heard “Time Bomb” on college radio more than 10 years ago. Half a dozen albums later, the band is celebrating and touring on the heels of their latest CD, Hit by a Train: The Best of the Old 97’s. Houstonist caught up with Rhett Miller, lead singer, songwriter and sometimes solo artist (Rhett released his second solo album The Believer last year)......

Good morning, Houston. If you live anywhere along the proposed University light rail line, here are a couple of chances to express your opinion on the choo-choo, pro or con: Metro will hold public meetings today and tomorrow. The first, from 6 to 8 p.m. tonight, will be at the Renaissance Hotel at Greenway for folks along the west end of the line (between West Alabama, Main Street/Wheeler Station, Bissonnet and the Hillcroft Transit......

After about a day and a half of deliberation, the jury in the Bart Whitaker trial sentenced Whitaker to death for planning the 2003 murders of his mother, Patricia, and brother, Kevin. There was no comment from Whitaker, who reportedly didn't change expression when the sentence was handed down; his father, who had said he opposed the death sentence for his son, called it God's will: "This was not the verdict that I would have......

Good morning, Houston. If you're wondering where your transit dollars are going, check the stolen laptop market: Police are looking for a man who they say stole two computers from Metro's downtown headquarters building in mid-February. Seems the guy walked into the building Feb. 16, followed an employee to an eighth-floor conference room and picked up two laptops — unfortunately, we don't know whether he got away using public transportation, but we can dream.......

In a somewhat surprising turn of events, Bart Whitaker took the stand in the punishment phase of his trial yesterday, saying that he was "100 percent guilty" of plotting to have his family killed so he could inherit their $1.5 million fortune. "I put the plan in motion," Whitaker testified. "If I had not done that, it wouldn't have happened." Jurors found the 27-year-old Whitaker guilty Monday of capital murder for masterminding the plan to......

To go along with Dr. Pepper's "23 flavors" campaign, the company started a campaign called "The Hunt for More", where they hid 23 gold coins in 23 different cities in North America. The coins were "valued" between $10,000 and $1 million, giving soft drinkers the opportunity to decode clues under bottle caps and drink labels online and find the coins. As coincidence would have it, the person who found the $1 million dollar coin just......

John and George, right there in front of downtown Houston. The last time these two and their buddies Paul and Ringo were in town together was on August 19, 1965. Admission was five bucks and they performed twice, a matinee and an evening show! They played the Sam Houston Coliseum which was located in the same area as the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts and that's not too far from David Addicke's studio,......