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......

• A Fort Bend County student has been accused of bringing a 9mm gun to school. The student was immediately expelled. • Two teens have been arrested after carjacking a family from their Cadillac Escalade at First Colony Mall. • Authorities are looking for a man claiming to be a police officer who attacked a 15 year old girl at a park in the 6400 block of Rustling Elms Drive back on November 18th.......

From local Houston headlines, we bring you these weekend news bits... • A grisly discovery of human remains along I-45 have been identified as Traveon Jamel Jordan LeBlanc, a 12 year old, fifth-grader from Schneider Middle School. Police are investigating how Traveon's remains ended up on the Gulf Freeway. • LifeFlight now has a new helicopter in its fleet. It's the first of six that are slated for duty. • After more than a......

Good morning, Houston. One thing about the holiday season: You hear Christmas music everywhere you go (and if you haven't been hearing it, just tune in to Sunny 99.1 — you'll catch up quickly). With that in mind, we were interested to check out ASCAP's list of the most-played holiday songs this year. It was released on Dec. 4, but by that time, the group reported that 1,562 different holiday songs had already been......

Good morning, Houston. If you've been working on a list of things you can do with cow patties, we've got another item for you: You can make pens out of them. Just ask John Lopez of Poteet, who has gotten semi-famous in South Texas by making pens from ground-up cow patties. No, really — the ground poop is mixed with a plastic resin, milled into cylinders and fitted with pen parts; the finished product,......

From local Houston headlines, we bring you these weekend news bits... • There's an Amber Alert for a missing teenager from Fort Bend Co. • Houston Dynamo knock off FC Dallas to advance in MLS Western Conference Playoffs • Local authorities have released artist renderings of Baby Grace • An HPD office was hurt overnight in an accident on the Gulf Freeway. • The Museum of Fine Arts has raised over 3 million dollars......

Good morning, Houston. If you've walked — or driven — downtown or in Midtown lately, chances are you've noticed the fancy new "countdown signals," which flash the number of seconds pedestrians have to cross an intersection before traffic lights change. They'll soon be installed at more than 300 intersections in neighborhoods with high amounts of pedestrian traffic, including the Medical Center; though they cost $1.3 million to put up, officials say the efficient LED......

Good morning, Houston. Did you hear the one about the high school teacher who might have appeared in a bunch of gay sex videos? Well, now you have. He's a faculty member at Clements High in Sugar Land, and Fort Bend ISD officials got a tip last week that he has appeared in dozens of sexually explicit videos under an assumed name. The district has removed the teacher from the classroom while it investigates......

Good morning, Houston. Imagine that you're driving along one day when a traffic light falls from an overhead line and crashes through your car's windshield. You'd think the city would be responsible for the accident, right? Wrong! Just ask Lei Zheng, who was on a shopping trip with his wife and son last year when a traffic light fell on his Volkswagen. Zheng and his family weren't seriously hurt, but they did ask the......

Bad news for Houston schools: according to federal ratings, 737 schools across Texas (including 155 in the Houston area) fall short of national standards set by No Child Left Behind. Those numbers are up a whopping 36 percent of last year - but why? HISD's low graduation rate could be to blame. Last year, the district graduated just 67% of students, a little below the national requirement of 70% (which still seems remarkably low to......

Some people consider Sunday the beginning of their week, we usually like to look at it as a great lazy way to wrap up a hectic 7 days, and prepare for the next round. We've decided to pull together a list of events that are ending today, so now's your chance to catch these before they are gone for ever. Kinda like last week. Bwah-ha-ha. Thoroughly Modern Millie | Playhouse 1960 The Sound of Music......

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......

Houston has lost the 1929 Coca-Cola Bottling Plant (Pringle & Smith and Alfred C. Finn, architects), located on the east side of downtown at 2600 Capitol. The building was most recently occupied by Leggett's Fabrics, which relocated to Fort Bend County in 2005. The area is being redeveloped from industrial to residential, and there is a sign on the corner indicates that the new development will be called "Capitol Oaks Two," a supplement to......

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......

Good morning, Houston. The bad news: You've missed your chance to see the International Space Station this morning as it orbits above Texas. (We suppose it's only bad news if you're interested in seeing the space station — if you're not, hey, you won't be disappointed!) The good news: You'll have three more opportunities before the end of the week. The ISS will be visible at 4:08 a.m. Thursday (for nearly four minutes, beginning......

A 16-year-old student who has admitted to setting the fire that destroyed part of Needville High School on April 13 is expected to turn himself in to authorities today — and it looks like we're already getting a taste of what his defense will be. The teen, whose name has not been released, spent a couple of hours yesterday talking with Fort Bend County investigators about his role in the fire, which destroyed the school's......

Good morning, Houston. Score one for Sugar Land's fake downtown: This summer, it will become the location of the Children's Museum of Houston's first satellite location. The Children's Museum of Houston Discovery Center at Sugar Land Town Square — that's CMHDCSLTS for short — will occupy 9,000 square feet of space in the Town Square development for six weeks beginning June 1. Though it's just a temporary deal, museum brass say the Discovery Center......

Good morning, Houston. Are we the only ones who've had a really long week? Even though Thursday just reminds us that it's not yet Friday, we can still find some Thursday goodness. For example, did you know Thursday is named for Thor, the god of thunder? OK, then, how about what it meant if you wore green to high school on Thursday in the '60s? And did you know the universe was actually created......

A Fort Bend principal who allowed one of her teachers to miss 22 school days to appear on ABC's The Bachelor will be reassigned to another campus. Tammie Carpenter, former Colony Bend Elementary School principal, was well-liked by children and parents, according to the PTO president, who was angered by the district's decision. The teacher in question, Amber Alchalabi, has not been disciplined. Several parents complained when Alchalabi, who said she was gone due to......

Good morning, Houston. So here's something cool to look forward to for the next two years: In mid-2009, 20 of the famed terra cotta warriors of Xi'an will be on display at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. The exhibition will run from May 18 to Sept. 25; until then, you can visit the local knockoff, which is quite impressive in its own right. >> Early voting begins today: Harris County voters will be......

Fire investigators searched three Needville area homes yesterday in connection with the fire that damaged of Needville High School on Monday morning, but no arrests have been made yet. The fire, which destroyed the school's administrative building and science wing, was intentionally set, investigators said earlier this week: Someone entered the building early Monday by throwing a concrete block through a side door, and fires were set in two separate locations. The investigators — from......

Good morning, Houston. Or should we say happy National Zucchini Bread Day? Yep, April 25 is the day to celebrate the delicious Southern tradition — so why not hit the kitchen and whip up a batch based on Emeril's recipe? And don't forget to send your friends a National Zucchini Bread Day e-card. No, seriously. >> Appeals court: Bible fight moot: The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled yesterday that the legal battle......

The fire that destroyed part of Needville High School yesterday morning was deliberately set, investigators say — though it's still too early to say by whom. According to Fort Bend County fire officials, whoever started the blaze threw a concrete block through a side door at the school, then went inside and set fires in two different parts of the building: the principal's office and a science classroom. "Multiple points of origin led us to......

Police had to subdue two area men with Tasers overnight — and one of them died after being shocked, though it's not known yet whether the Taser actually had anything to do with the man's death. The incident after which the man died happened at the Charleston Court Apartments in the 7600 block of Gulfton. Authorities were called to the complex around 10:15 p.m. after the suspect walked into an apartment — it's not clear......

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......

Good morning, Houston. We don't know about you, but we at Houstonist have long been fans of Willie Nelson. And so, apparently, has local rapper/promoter/jeweler Paul Wall: Wall tells MTV News that he booked time at Nelson's studio to record his new album, Get Money, Stay True because he thought he would run into the Red-Headed Stranger while he was there — but alas, there was no Willie for Wall. "I didn't get a......

Good morning, Houston. Good news for anyone who loves to travel and have a spare $200,000 laying around: You can now buy tickets to space, with the journey set for 2009 on Richard Branson's space plane. More than 100 tickets have already been sold, and Houston travel agents Tara Hyland and Diane Vest are two of the only "Accredited Space Agents" offering them in the U.S. And yes, the tickets are $200K each. Anyone?......

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......

Jurors in the trial of Bart Whitaker, the Fort Bend County man accused of arranging the murders of his mother and brother so he could get the family inheritance for himself, found Whitaker guilty of capital murder yesterday — meaning that, beginning today, jurors will begin deciding whether Whitaker should die. Whitaker's mother, Patricia, and his brother, Kevin, were killed the evening of Dec. 10, 2003, at home as the family returned from dinner. Whitaker......

Good morning, Houston. Did you enjoy a big oyster dinner over the weekend? Might want to stay close to the toilet: The FDA is advising people to steer clear of oysters from San Antonio Bay, about 60 miles northeast of Corpus Christi, after more than two dozen people became ill from eating them last month. The people developed nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and other nasty symptoms; the oyster bed has been shut down pending an......