Good morning, Houston. There's a new weapon in the battle to make Houston the most beautiful city in America: Beginning next week, commercial property owners will have to hide their Dumpsters behind a building, wall, fence, berm or shrub. Officials said they hope the rule — which City Council approved six months ago — will help increase property values and make properties safer (and, of course, prettier). Anyone who violates the ordinance can be......

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. Are you registered to vote? Do you need to make changes to your registration? Better take care of it fast: Today is the last day to register or alter your registration if you want to vote in the Nov. 6 elections. Voters in 34 jurisdictions will elect candidates this year, and the state has 16 bond issues on the ballot — and, of course, there are big-ticket items like HISD's $805......

Good morning, Houston. If you've ever been to Rich's, the dance club in midtown, you probably won't be surprised to hear that the crowd there Saturday was sporting "feather boas, glittering hair accessories, sparkling dresses and tutus." But exactly who was in the crowd might take you by surprise: It was a bunch of kids there for Baby Loves Disco, part of a national series of dance events that benefit childhood cancer research. (In......

Good morning, Houston. If you've ever thought that Halloween needed a little more, uh, spice, you might want to check out HauntXXX, "Houston's most titillating haunted house." The titillating part apparently has to do with nearly naked women wearing neon body paint — and as for the haunted part, well, we're not so sure (maybe these are some super-scary sexpots we're talking about). The haunted house isn't sitting well with some of its neighbors,......

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. 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. At Houstonist world headquarters, our e-mail boxes are graced almost daily with offers from people who want to move millions of dollars to U.S. bank accounts and allow us to take a huge share of the money just for helping — eh, all in a day. But there's a new e-mail in the same vein floating around now: It comes from someone claiming to be Michelle Kristine Kraiser, the "the Confidential......

Good morning, Houston. Sure, you've heard a lot about Alamo defender Davy Crockett — but have you ever read his final letter? Soon you'll be able to see it in person: The Texas Historical Commission has bought the letter, which was discovered in a file folder last month, for $550,000. Crockett wrote the letter to his children Jan. 9, 1836, shortly after he arrived in Texas and less than two months before he died......

Good morning, Houston. Today's the last day of August, and you know what that means: Yes! Tomorrow, it'll be September! And why is that exciting, you ask? Well, as it happens, there are a few (relatively) interesting thing about the ninth month: For example, when the British Empire adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1752, Sept. 2 was immediately followed by Sept. 14 — which, legend has it, led to riots by people who thought......

Good morning, Houston. Are you feeling particularly crunk today? Maybe you should be: Crunk is among the words added to Merriam-Webster's collegiate dictionary this year. Also among the 100 new words are DVR, IED, gray literature and smackdown. But we think we'll get the most use out of crunk, which M-W defines as a style of Southern rap music but which has a variety of definitions in the Urban Dictionary. Which brings us to......

Former Texas Southern University President Priscilla Slade is set to stand trial Aug. 10 on charges of misspending millions of dollars in public funds — but the trial's location could be up in the air. According to the AP, Slazde'a attorneys are asking for her trial to be moved to Travis County, saying heavy media coverage in Houston has "created a climate within this community where (Slade) can no longer obtain an unbiased jury of......

After four hours of deliberation, a jury yesterday sentenced former Texas Southern financial chief Quintin Wiggins to 10 years in prison for misspending nearly $300,000 in university funds on personal expenses for former TSU President Priscilla Slade. That doesn't mean the Wiggins story is over — his lawyer said he plans to appeal — but for now, we can't help but wonder how Wiggins' sentence will affect the outcome of Slade's trial this summer. Slade,......

Jurors on Thursday found former Texas Southern University CFO Quintin Wiggins guilty of misspending nearly $300,000 in public funds on furniture, landscaping and a security system for the private home of former university President Priscilla Slade. The conviction means Wiggins could face life in prison — and it's probably not too good for Slade, who is scheduled to go on trial in August, either. During Wiggins' trial, prosecutors said he diverted $286,000 in TSU money......

The emergency meeting of the remaining Texas Southern University regents Monday morning ended up not panning out after all when only three of nine voting regents attended, meaning the group didn't make quorum — perhaps because Board of Regents Chairwoman Belinda Griffin had submitted the regents' resignations to Gov. Rick Perry on Friday. But if the regents have already resigned, why were they planning to meet yesterday? Add that to the ever-growing list of questions......

The Chronicle reports on the latest developments in the TSU saga today: Three of the school's regents are resisting Gov. Rick Perry's call for their resignations, and an accrediting agency says Perry's plan for state conservatorship could endanger TSU's accreditation. "I'm not going to resign because that would be an acknowledgment of doing something wrong," Regent David Diaz told the Chronicle. "I haven't done anything wrong." Diaz, the Rev. Robert Childress and Belinda Griffin had......

Another development in the story of Texas Southern University's ongoing problems: On Friday, Gov. Rick Perry asked all the university's regents to resign and called for the appointment of a state-appointed conservator who would have the sole power to run the school. It's a drastic step — especially in light of the fact that a commission Perry appointed to find a way for TSU to get back on its feet decided a conservator wasn't necessary......

Opening statements began Tuesday in the trial of Quintin Wiggins, the former Texas Southern University CFO who is among those indicted on charges of misspending state money at the university — and, not surprisingly, Wiggins' attorney claims that what appeared to be the mishandling of funds was really just Wiggins carrying out orders from his bosses. Wiggins is accused of misdirecting more than $200,000 in public funds toward furniture, landscaping and a home security system......

The governor's TSU advisory committee issued its recommendations for turning the troubled university around yesterday, and as expected, the report neither called for a state-appointed financial conservator or for putting TSU under a state university system, but it did recommend changes in the school's board of regents and that TSU be subject to regular financial investigation. Though the nonbinding report doesn't specify which, or how many, of TSU's regents should be replaced, it does call......

More news from TSU: The AP is reporting that the 11-member panel charged with finding a way to fix the university's finances won't recommend putting a state-appointed conservator in place to manage the university's finances, but will recommend that some members of the Board of Regents resign immediately. The information comes from a draft report the panel prepared; its final report was due Thursday, but the panel asked for and received a 10-day extension. Information......

Good morning, Houston. If you spend your days worried that an asteroid will slam into Earth, killing us all, this probably won't do much to ease your mind: NASA says it can identify all the asteroids that could hit the Earth, but it's not sure it has the money to do so. The agency estimates it would cost $1 billion to find at least 90 percent of the 20,000 potentially hazardous asteroids and comets......

Good morning, Houston. Has it been a crazy week for you? It kind of has for us — but really, we got nothing compared with what happened in the custody hearing for Anna Nicole Smith's body and daughter in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., yesterday. By all accounts, it was a circus (what else would you expect?), and Judge Larry Seidlin did his best to keep it all under control. Seidlin said Smith's body will remain......

Interim Texas Southern University president J. Timothy Boddie Jr. was in Austin yesterday asking lawmakers for emergency support to keep the university running — and it looks like that could take quite a bit of money, according to KTRK. "We've got some serious challenges at TSU," said [State Rep. Borris] Miles. "They're facing an immediate need of 26, 27 million dollars. They're coming up to address those issues with legislators who know the governor and......

Sure, most of the TSU-related news lately has been focused on former President Priscilla Slade, who's now awaiting trial on charges of spending $2 million in state funds on personal stuff — but that doesn't mean there aren't other, uh, irregular things going on at the university. Case in point: The NCAA is investigating TSU's tennis program based on accusations of "scholarship irregularities," and both the men's and women's teams have been suspended for the......

Well, it looks like we still have a few months before we get to hear why spending millions of dollars in public funds on personal expenses was OK: The trial of ex-Texas Southern University President Priscilla Slade, who seems like she'll prove herself the queen of justifying outrageous actions, has been set for Aug. 10. Slade, remember, got in trouble back in February after she blabbed to one of the school's regents that she spent......

Former TSU President Priscilla Slade's grand jury testimony won't be unsealed so Slade's ex-assistant can search it for inconsistencies, State District Judge Brock Thomas ruled Wednesday — though a grand jury will be able to review the testimony to see if Slade committed perjury. It's not clear just what inconsistencies prosecutors believe might be in the testimony, but prosecutor Donna Goode said last week that "there's enough concern on my part to go through the......

Harris County prosecutor Donna Goode asked yesterday to have ex-TSU President Priscilla Slade's grand jury testimony unsealed so Slade's former assistant can review it for inconsistencies — though it's not clear just what the DA's office thinks Slade might have lied about. "I think there's enough concern on my part to go through the gyrations of filing the motion," Goode said. Slade was indicted this summer on felony charges relating to her spending of university......

When we heard that former TSU President Priscilla Slade — who was fired and indicted for allegedly spending nearly $2 million in university funds on personal expenses — was back on campus this semester teaching accounting, we can't say we were really surprised. After all, very little about TSU surprises us anymore. But we did think it was an extremely bad PR move for the troubled university, and we apparently weren't alone: Fearing Slade could......

A new report from the Texas State Auditor's office focuses on TSU's endowments, claiming that the university spent at least $285,934 from the principal of some of its endowments, which are supposed to remain untouched. More might have been spent, too, but it was impossible for auditors to find out "because of the university's poor record keeping." The bad record keeping and spent principal on some of the university's 78 endowments, which total $23 million,......

Who says TSU has accounting problems? Everything with regard to the university's books is done on the up and up — just ask former President Priscilla Slade, who's learned a thing or two about finances. And if you don't believe her, talk to Treva Mott, an instructor who has tapped into a bit of creative accounting we haven't heard of: She worked for more than two months as TSU and never got a paycheck. That's......