Nolan Ryan, Astros franchise icon and co-owner of two of the team's minor league franchises, today exited his personal services contract a year early to assume the team president position offered by the Texas Rangers. Ryan will oversee the daily operations of the floundering Arlington-based team, working with mercurial owner Tom Hicks. The fate of his owner's stake in the minor league affiliates is up for debate, but the assumption is that they will remain......

Texas Rangers are investigating the possibility that a Taser ignited a fire leading to the burning death of a San Angelo man. Given the propensity for Taser use in our fair city, Houstonist thought it best to give you a heads up. Police first attempted to disable Juan Lopez with pepper spray and turned to the trusty Taser when the spray proved ineffective. Oh, yeah, it should be noted that Lopez, who had previously......

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......

KTRK has an odd story this morning: According to the station, an investigation into NASA Inspector General Robert Cobb has found that Cobb quashed the release of a Crime Stoppers report on a ring allegedly taken from the finger of one of the astronauts killed in the space shuttle Columbia disaster. Cobb has been under fire for other findings in the report from the President's Council on Integrity and Efficiency, which has been investigating complaints......

Good morning, Houston. In these days of strange diseases, air and water pollution, global warming and assorted health warnings, we sometimes begin to wonder if anything's safe anymore. And the answer? No, nothing. Example: Today, nearly a million Easy-Bake Ovens are being recalled because one can get one's fingers or hand stuck inside — and slowly nuked. Of course, Houstonist understands the need for safety, but now we're afraid to make dessert tonight. Life......

Longtime San Diego Padres second baseman Mark Loretta, who spent last year hitting up a storm with the Boston Red Sox, will sign a deal with the Astros today, his agent told ESPN.com. The deal is a one year, 2.5 million dollar contract that could be worth an extra million in incentives if Loretta continues the kind of break-out hitting and defense he showed off last year as part of the league-leading defense of the......

So, admittedly this holiday is secular, and this news is Jewish. And the sport it concerns? Not the usually turkeyday classic. But we thought you would want to know anyway, all about Jews in baseball. (OK, we might be a little starved for off-season news. But the article has our favorite Astro, Brad Ausmus in it! Turns out there's a Jewish MVP award (the Hank and Sandy, after famous Jewish baseballers Greenberg and Koufax). This......

Your favorite home team and ours, the Astros, is finally making the most of the offseason. Reports yesterday say that GM Tim Purpura has made offers to outfielders (and power hitters, more importantly) Carlos Lee and Alfonso Soriano. Last year our 'Stros were last in the NL with a team batting average of .255, just one indicator of the trouble they've had offensively over the last several years. Lee played for the Brewers and the......

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 usual Hamilton crew begs your indulgence for going AWOL last week--we assume that you found lots of fun to do on your own, since we didn't get any emails (angry or otherwise). We're back now, though. We promise. Friday, August 18 Teatro Multimedia is the product of the second of three workshops held by Talento Billingue de Houston and led by Maria Angeles Romero, one of the most notable performance artists who makes use......

The Chronicle ran a report this morning on Google’s semi-new search engine “Google Trends,” which allows you to type in multiple words and phrases and see the Top 10 cities and regions that have googled those terms in the past two years. We think it’s a fun feature, too, so we thought we would share someof our findings. Since we’re so competitive with other Texas sports franchises, we thought we’d take a look at......

The search for the Houston-area couple who went missing after being carjacked this week has reached a new level of intensity as more and more people (civillian voulenteers, Houston cops, and Texas Rangers) join the search for Maria Chrisalee (Salee) Aparace, 23,and her 17 year old boyfriend, Huy Ngo. The two were carjacked, but the perpatrators, one of whom has been apprehended, swear they left them unharmed on the side of the road. Nevertheless, neither......

Newsday is reporting this afternoon that Roger Clemens has signed a one-year deal with the Astros that could be worth about $10.5 million depending on when he returns to the field. The 'Stros will reportedly pay the 43-year-old pitcher $3.5 million a month under the deal. If it works out, the contract will end months of speculation about whether Clemens would stay with the Astros, go to another team — the Yankees, Red Sox and......

The four baseball teams waiting to find out whether Roger Clemens is going to come back to baseball will have to wait a little longer: It looks like Clemens won't be back on the mound until June, if he comes back at all. The Red Sox, the Yankees and the Rangers are all trying to lure Clemens, and the Astros can't talk to him until May 1 because they didn't offer him arbitration. "I've listened......

So it's happened: The Astros decided yesterday not to offer Roger Clemens salary arbitration, meaning Clemens cannot re-sign with the team before May 1. But it doesn't mean Clemens won't be back. And it doesn't mean he will, either. As Houstonist noted Tuesday, nobody knows exactly what Clemens is going to do. That's exactly why the Astros couldn't wait for Clemens to announce whether he plans to rejoin the team next season. If they had,......