• 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. 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,......

Good morning, Houston. We remember our days as student drivers — not bad overall, though we did have a pregnant in-car instructor who had a nasty habit of slamming on the brakes every time we passed a doughnut shop. Still, we didn't have it anywhere near as bad as the kid who passed his driver's test Monday, then crashed his car into the side of a Houston DPS office. The driver was parking his......

Good morning, Houston. Looks like our freewheeling land-use policies have gotten some national attention: The Wall Street Journal has a story focusing on the proposed residential tower at Bissonnet and Ashby. "The condo-tower dustup is just the latest in a string of odd situations allowed by Houston's lenient land-use rules," the article explains. "Rowdy cantinas, rock-crushing operations and commercial dumps sometimes pop up in residential neighborhoods. Condo towers sprout next to schools. A pay-by-the-hour......

Good morning, Houston. We've run into some, uh, active parents of student athletes in our day, but we can't remember remember hearing about one who was actually banned from his kid's sporting events — until now, that is. Meet Joe Dalton, who has been barred from his son's Stafford High home football games because school district officials allege he assaulted a student. It happened at the last home game Dalton attended, where he said......

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. In the mood for a really, really bad promotional video? It's your lucky day: May we introduce you to "The Metro Report", a quasi-Colbert Report-style production in which a host, Elliot Roberts, "interviews people on the street" about why they love riding public transportation. Which makes us wonder: Where'd Metro find all these people? Oh, right, they're actually actors — and, according to KTRK's Wayne Dolcefino, this bit of self-promotion cost......

Good morning, Dynamo fans. Ready to see the Orange in the MLS playoffs again? Well, playoff tickets will go on sale at 10 this morning. Depending on where the Dynamo finish in the standings, the team will play in the Western Conference semifinal match at Robertson Stadium either Oct. 27 or Nov. 3; pick your tickets up at Ticketmaster or the Dynamo's website. >> The scandal effect: TSU's enrollment has fallen to its lowest......

Good morning, Houston. We just don't understand the entertainment juggernaut (or is it "juggernette?") that is Hannah Montana: Tickets to her Nov. 11 Toyota Center show sold out in five minutes Saturday, and now they're going for as much as $1,275 on eBay — granted, that's for a set of four tickets, but still, wow. The markup through eBay and ticket brokers has left some parents shelling out big bucks to give their kids......

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......

Good morning, Houston. It's no secret that Texans like fried food — so it's no wonder that the Big Tex Choice Awards, the taste-test contest at the State Fair of Texas, focuses on fried concoctions. But this year's Big Tex winner for the best-tasting new food might surprise even the most jaded connoisseur of fried delicacies: It's fried cookie dough, created by Abel Gonzales Jr. The fried cookie dough is a cookie base with......

Good morning, Houston. Pardon us, but we seem to have lost our phone number. Can we borrow yours? Yeah, we know — it's lame. And apparently we're not the only one with a bad pickup line: Houston is the country's 14th best city for singles, according to Forbes magazine. We lag behind Dallas-Ft. Worth (No. 9) and Austin (No. 12), but we're far ahead of San Antonio (No. 28). On the bright side, Houston......

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......

Good morning, Houston. Did you happen to be in the West U. area last night? If so, maybe you noticed the train derailment in the area, which prompted the evacuation of a handful of houses and the closure of a section of Bissonnet Street. The derailment, which involved seven cars, happened on the Union Pacific line near the corner of Community and Judson; four of the cars were carrying wheat and lumber, and another......

Good morning, Houston. So what was the last bonus gift you got at work? A fruit basket? Maybe an engraved Space Pen? Well, if you worked for La Porte-based Texas Stress, you might have ended up with a Harley: Gary and Joni Hagar, the owners of the company, rewarded each of their top 10 employees with $21,000 and told them to pick out their own hogs. "I've never heard of a boss doing this......

Good morning, Houston. Interested in cheering on the University of St. Thomas sports teams? Now you know what to call them: the Lions, the mascot university officials settled on last week. Actually, the lion isn't the mascot — that would be the Celt — but the lion will represent the Celt. Get it? The lion was chosen over the Irish Wolfhound and the Celtic helmet. Good choice, we'd say — though we'd like to......

Good morning, Houston. 'Stros win! 'Stros win! Whooooooo! Ahem. Yes, well, as you probably know by now, the Astros beat the Cincinnati Reds 10-2 last night to end their 10-game losing streak. The game marked the highest run total for the 'Stros in three weeks, and the team's 16 hits matched their season high — not bad. "It was a fun night for everybody," Woody Williams told the AP. "I know it's one win,......

Good morning, Houston. We're sure thieves will think twice before trying to rob 85-year-old Lena Williamson: On Tuesday Williamson's crime-fighting friends had a man arrested after he stole her wallet. It happened after Williamson's car broke down as she was leaving a Woodforest Bank branch at Woodforest and Uvalde; she asked a man for help in fixing the car, but instead of giving her help, he took her wallet and ran off. Fortunately, Williamson......

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. 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......

Good morning, Houston. Are you registered to vote in the May 12 special election? If not, you'd better get on it: Harris County residents must deliver their registration applications to a county tax office by 4:45 p.m. today or have them postmarked before midnight tonight. Remember, if you don't vote, you give up your right to complain. And we will enforce that. >> New organs, a new life: Maria Mendez, a 14-year-old girl, is......

Good morning, Houston. In case you haven't heard, Channel 11 has a new anchor to replace Lisa Foronda: She's Lucy Noland, a native of Saigon who's leaving a job as co-anchor of the WNYW morning show in New York City for the job here. "It's time for me to put down roots, to have a house and home," Noland told the Chronicle. "This nomadic lifestyle has been fun. It's taken me far and wide,......

Good morning, Houston. If the thought of teeing off atop a downtown skyscraper gets you going, here's some excellent news: For the next week, you'll have the chance! It's part of The Glenlivet City Links, a 9-hole golf course and clubhouse that's touring seven U.S. cities. In Houston, the City Links — which includes a free course, a virtual driving range and a lounge — is set up on the 50th floor of Three......