Results tagged “texasdepartment”

::Houston NetSquared Meet Up::

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...

So a man named Willie Joe McAdams was arrested Thursday during a traffic stop at Main and Hillcroft — at first glance, not so unusual. But what makes this arrest different is that McAdams was picked up so he can return to jail: Two and a half months ago, McAdams was accidentally released from state prison 36 years early. Oops. McAdams was sentenced to 40 years in prison in 2004 for shooting Cedric Thomas in...

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...

Good morning, Houston. We're regular NPR listeners, and we enjoy it as much as the next guy when legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg gives us another thrilling reading of a Supreme Court transcript. Even so, we were a little surprised to hear an ad the other day for NPR's newest piece of merchandise, the limited-edition Nina Totin' Bag. Yes, it's what you'd think it is: a tote bag with Totenberg's mug on it (in,...

Three bodies have been found in the search of an East Loop office building damaged by fire yesterday afternoon, and a few firefighters and civilians — one of them in critical condition — are still recovering from injuries and smoke inhalation connected with the blaze. Details of the fire are still unclear, but we know that it began at about 5:15 p.m. on the fifth floor of the building at 9343 North Loop East. Smoke...

Houston is having one hell of an Arbor Day and you too can be a part of it (you just have to get your hands a little on the dirty side). Arbor Day was established in 1872 by J. Sterling Morton of Nebraska City, Nebraska. It seems that the Nebraska Territory was not readily settled, due to the lack of trees on the tallgrass prairie (the better to build and heat cabins - log cabins, not grass ones). Hey, if free land won't bring in the settlers, something is seriously amiss! Purportedly, over a million trees were planted in Nebraska on the first Arbor Day, then only a one-state event. Word of how cool planting trees really is spread pretty quickly - considering there were no cell phones "back in the day". The tree-planting holiday was celebrated in every state by 1894.

This is not a good week for daycares in the Houston area (or at least the kids in daycare). On Tuesday we told you about a pastor's wife that tied the kids to chairs. Today, we find out that a daycare we told you about last week is getting shut down. According to the Chronicle, Dear's Day Car Center, which is less dear after this week, was shut down by the Texas Department of Family...

So what is it with daycares these days? Last week we had 29 kids crammed into a van and left alone in a drugstore parking lot, and now there's news that the pastor's wife at a church daycare tied several kids to their chairs.

We've all heard about people using stolen identities to buy electronics, jewelry, whatever — but yesterday, a Houston man was arrested for appropriating another man's identity and using it to buy an entire beauty salon. William Cornell Robinson, 36, is accused of stealing the identity of a San Jacinto County man and using it to buy the Awesome Hair Salon this summer. According to the previous owner of the salon, who still works there, Robinson...

The Texas Department of Public Safety has plans to change the way Texans renew and change address information on their driver licenses. In fact, the licenses will have a complete makeover. According to KHOU, all changes will have to be made in person, which will cause an increase in the already-packed Motor Vehicle locations. Don't rush to make changes now, though - beginning in 2008, the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles will require everyone with...

A new visitation policy at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice is rankling some Europeans who make frequent visits to state prisons, the Chronicle reports. The policy, which limits people who travel more than 300 miles to visit a Texas prison to one "special visit" per trip — that's two four-hour sessions on consecutive days — prevents long-distance death penalty opponents from making connections with inmates, they claim, but prison officials say they're just trying to keep some people from taking advantage of the system.

If we have to evacuate from a hurricane again — and, for the record, we really hope we don't — things may be a little easier thanks to a contraflow plan now in place on some area freeways. The contraflow, meaning both sides of the freeway would be used to move traffic out of Houston, would begin at Brookshire along I-10, at FM 1960 on Highway 290, at Conroe along I-45 and near Kingwood on Highway 59. If you were around during the Rita evacuation last September, you probably remember how long it took officials to put contraflow lanes in effect because planning wasn't really done in advance. Not so from now on, apparently:

More than 20 area firefighters have been questioned about a series of arsons in east Harris County; officials say two Cloverleaf firefighters are suspected of setting, then responding to, fires in at least two buildings A Texas Department of Corrections employee was run over by a bus this morning while she was transporting prisoners downtown; the extent of her injuries isn't known If Galveston has to be evacuated ahead of a major hurricane, 100 air-conditioned...

You may have heard about the recent rash of executions that have taken place in Texas: Lamont Reese (June 20), Angel Maturino Resendiz (June 27), and Derrick O'Brien (July 11). O'Brien marked the fourteenth execution in Texas so far this year, which is getting near the 2005 grand total of nineteen. Rankings for all states can be found here - Texas is way ahead of the pack at fourteen, where Ohio and South Carolina are...

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.

Houston's getting some help from small towns in its hurricane evacuation plan by linking regional traffic cameras to the TranStar traffic management system. Feeds from the little towns will factor into the regional evacuation plan in case we have to leave town again — allowing evacuees to see where traffic backups are and letting officials keep an eye on contraflow lanes, recommended detours and other plans.

ahead — if you need to use the Bolivar Ferry: Starting tomorrow, motorists using the ferry will be subject to random searches.

One of the unexpected delights of living in a city that's crisscrossed by bayous: random alligators, like the one found wandering around a parking lot at UH last night. Someone who said they found the 2-foot-long baby gator at the university took it to HPD's South Central substation, where officers ... put it in the parking lot.

Have you ever suspected your local gas station was ripping you off, either by not giving you as much gas as the pump said or selling a lower-octane type of gas for a higher-octane price? Thanks to KTRK, there's a chance you could find out. The station's investigative team is offering several reports about problems with local gas stations: which pumps were put out of order in 2004-05 because of one problem or another; octane inspections and their results and all Houston-area gas station inspections between 2001 and 2005. That's a lot of reading, trust us.