From local Houston headlines, we bring you these weekend news bits... • Metro complaints are up 28%. Rude bus operators, short schedules and unsafe driving tops the list of filed grievances. • Friends of 12 year old Traveon LeBlanc, who's mangled body was found on the Gulf Freeway, told a local news station that the boy and some friends would run across the freeway for fun. • A homeless man confessed to Conroe police......

Good morning, Houston. As we were sitting around Monday morning contemplating using a witch's extremity to keep warm, we started to wonder exactly how cold it's gotten in the city before — and, thanks to the Internet, we know! According to the National Weather Service, the record low temperature for Houston was 5 degrees Fahrenheit, which we hit on Jan. 23, 1940. Maybe more interesting, though, is the Houston snowfall record: Turns out we......

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. It's November now, and you know what that means: We're at the beginning of nearly two straight months of Christmas. Retailers put their holiday decorations up early in hopes that shoppers will see them and get in the buying mood — but will it work? Not necessarily, if most shoppers are like Sharon Baker, who the Chron found at Macy's downtown. "I do like Christmas, but I need time to celebrate......

Man, this is getting repetitive. While the Rockets will never be mistaken for the 06-07 Cincinnati Bengals, this certainly has been a productive off season for law enforcement personnel when Rockets players are around. The latest player to run into trouble with Johnny Law is recently-acquired forward Justin Reed, who was arrested last night in Jackson, Mississippi for misdemeanor marijuana possession. Reed played for the Minnesota Timberwolves last season, and was brought to Houston in......

Houston State Rep. Borris Miles of District 146, used a pistol to shoot one of two men whom he says were trying to steal materials from the house he is building. The man was wounded in the leg, but it was not life-threatening. The incident took place yesterday evening at the construction site for his new home at 3742 MacGregor Way. Rep. Miles was reportedly repairing a leak at the new home when he heard......

From the tallest skyscraper in the City of Brotherly Love to Canadian tourism copywriting brilliance, here's what you should know from our -ist cities: This week, Phillyist took a gleeful listen to the White Stripes' exciting new release, watched in awe as their new tallest skyscraper was finally completed, found a cheaper way to get to Gothamist, invented a tasty new dessert, and brought back their Craigslist Round-Up feature with a bang. Bostonist watches......

Just a couple of days after the Chronicle's Matt Stiles reported that HPD was still ticketing drivers for having license plate frames despite a new law meant to prevent them from doing so, Mayor Bill White said the police department should knock if off, calling the practice of writing tickets for obstructed license plates a "gotcha system." The 2003 law that technically allowed police to ticket drivers for having obscured plates was apparently intended to......

Holy smokes! Giant fish on the MTA, Paris Hilton in jail, then out, then in again, Al Gore, goatses, blumpkins, Matt Damon, and baby art critics! It's been a busy week across the Ist-A-Verse, and here's a smattering of what's been going on. In Gothamist's neck of the woods, they found out that many things are possible: A man caught a 40+ pound fish off the Rockaways and took it home on the subway. Graffiti......

In order to maintain a sense of order during the last week of school, HISD has banned the bringing of backpacks to school at the following campus'. Those miscreants trying to have fun will have to find some other means of smuggling silly string into class - or packing heat, whichever the case may be. Fortunately, duffel bags and gym bags were not mentioned in the article we read, just saying. Houstonist was particularly amused......

The Chronicle has a little more today on the woman who a police officer shot early Sunday when she lunged at him with a knife in the lobby of HPD headquarters: The day before she showed up at 1200 Travis, Marnell Villarreal left a rambling, cryptic voice mail message with an attorney who had represented her about 14 years ago. Attorney Clyde Miller said the message was mostly unintelligible, but he could make out Villarreal......

Remember the city's proposal last year to set a 10 p.m. curfew for kids under age 17? It never really went anywhere, and now City Council is trying again: Yesterday, councilmembers began discussing a proposal to set Houston's juvenile curfew at 11 p.m. HPD Assistant Executive Chief Mike Thaler told councilmembers that the earlier curfew — it's now set at midnight on weekdays — would not only help curb juvenile crime, but would also give......

A series of developments and twists over the weekend brought the case of murdered Texas A&M student Tynesha Stewart to a grisly point: Investigators said there would definitely be no search for her remains because there aren't any remains to be found. "There are no remaining body parts," Harris County Sheriff Tommy Thomas said in a news conference Saturday night. "We have determined through this investigation that the defendant dismembered the victim and burned her......

Good morning, Houston. Do you feel more metropolitan? Or bigger, maybe? According to estimates released by the Census Bureau yesterday, the influx of hurricane evacuees has made the Houston metro area the country's sixth largest. The Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown metropolitan area now has an estimated 5,483,857 residents, which puts it ahead of Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Miami Beach but still behind the New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth and Philadelphia metro areas. Another population fact: Harris County......

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......

Good morning, Houston. If you have an outstanding municipal warrant, it's time to start watching out: More than 150 law enforcement agencies, including HPD, are gearing up to arrest you next week. It's part of the Great Texas Warrant Roundup, which runs for a week beginning Friday; if you don't take care of your warrant, KHOU warns, you risk "being arrested and embarrassed in front of family, friends or even co-workers." No, not co-workers!......

In an interesting example of public-private partnership, Target Corp. has offered to help pay for security cameras to be installed around Houston to help the officer-short HPD out. It seems a little odd at first glance, but it turns out Target is no stranger to the law-enforcement game: Turns out Target has one of the most advanced crime labs in the country at its headquarters in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was initially set up to deal......

Jurors yesterday found Mayor Bill White's teenage daughter Elena not guilty of her DWI charge, saying video of White taking field sobriety tests when cops pulled her over July 31 didn't seem to show that she was intoxicated. During the trial, high-powered defense attorney Rusty Hardin focused on mistakes the officers made when they pulled White over; in his closing arguments, he referred to the cops as "the three stooges," KHOU reports. Harris County Deputy......

You know what's fun? When someone ditches you during a smoke break. You know what's more fun? When law enforcement officials are sent out looking for that person because he was supposed to go to prison. Conroe-area police are looking for Carl Batiste, a 34-year-old Houston man who ditched his trial Tuesday before the jury found him guilty on Wednesday for possession and intent to distribute cocaine. The Courier is reporting he left his......

Houston's 2006 crime statistics were announced yesterday, and there's some good news: The city's overall crime rate fell 5 percent last year, meaning you're less likely to be robbed, raped, assaulted or have your car stolen. But while we're patting ourselves on the back, we might want to be a little careful we don't get murdered: Houston's homicide rate increased by 5 percent last year. Around every silver lining, there's a dark cloud. According to......

OK, so if you're a former cop yourself, you'd think you would be slick enough to avoid being arrested for a crime spree, right? Well, maybe not: Police have made an arrest in a string of Montgomery County bank robberies, and the prime suspect is a former HPD officer. His name is Raymond Martinez, and he's been charged with the aggravated robbery of a Wachovia branch in April; Sgt. Bryan Carlisle of the Shenandoah Police......

Here's one of those things you don't hear about every day: KTRK's Marvin Zindler reports that Metro police arrested a woman for eating animal crackers aboard a Metro bus. Seriously — the citation she received said so. It happened a while back to Li Li Chao, a 68-year-old Chinese woman who recently became a U.S. citizen. Her son, Jimmy Zhou, said two plainclothes Metro cops busted Chao for eating the cookies: "They took her off......

The Homeland Security Department has put officials and NFL stadium owners in seven U.S. cities, including Houston, on alert after a warning was posted online claiming that the cities' stadiums would be destroyed by dirty bombs this weekend — but the government says it's looking at the threat "with strong skepticism." The threat was posted Oct. 12 as part of an ongoing online conversation. It warned of attacks on NFL stadiums in Houston, Atlanta, New......

Antonio WIlliams, a man police call "a new breed of killer," will appear in court today for his alleged role in at least seven murders in three months. Williams, 26, is charged or suspected in the string of killings that police say are rooted in a war between Houston drug dealers and rivals from New Orleans. Police say Williams' string of murders started June 16, 23 days after he got out of jail, where he......

A story from KHOU caught our eye yesterday morning — it was about a guy in Pearland who was asking people about a lost puppy, which totally freaked out at least one parent. It went like this: Sunday afternoon, a 7-year-old girl was playing in her driveway near Sumac and Old Oaks when a young black man pulled up in a gold Chevrolet Impala and asked if she had seen a lost puppy. The girl's......

During a campaign stop in Houston yesterday, Gov. Rick Perry announced his plan for fighting crime in Houston: a $10 million effort to coordinate law enforcement efforts among more than 100 agencies in Harris, Fort Bend, Brazoria and Galveston counties. The joint operations and intelligence center will put more police officers on the streets, improve local agencies' technology and better link state and local intelligence. "We will not stand idly by as our innocent citizens......

The recent spate of gang violence in Houston, much of it related to the violent gang MS-13, has convinced the Houston Police Department and the FBI to take action. The number of gang-related crimes in the first half of 2006 is up more than 5 percent from that number in 2005, reports KHOU, with an increase of over 92 percent in the number of murders. The new initiative will include 10 FBI agents, as well......

Details are starting to come out about HPD's new chase policy, which bars officers from chasing minor traffic offenders who refuse to stop and gives them the option of chasing major offenders, according to the Chronicle. If you didn't know there was a new policy, well, you're not alone: KHOU reports that it learned about the policy change when frustrated police officers began calling the station last night — there was apparently no official word......

If you've been anywhere around a news outlet this morning, we're sure you've heard about the foiled plot to blow up several U.S.-bound jets And if you haven't, go ahead and take a few minutes to check the story out — we have the feeling air travel is about to get more complicated again. In short, the national aviation threat level has jumped to red, meaning people traveling by plane anytime soon will need to......

HPD Chief Harold Hurtt avoided a crash yesterday, and a group of his supporters are trying to help him avoid another one — the one that could be headed his way when the results of a police union survey come down. The survey, you'll remember, found that 75 percent of respondents said they had little or no confidence in Hurtt's ability to lead HPD. About 2,300 officers responded to the Houston Police Officers' Union survey,......