• A man who tried to run over his girlfriend after a Valentine's Day argument was killed on I-45 near Richey Road after he was struck by a vehicle while running away from sheriff's deputies. • Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top, married Patricia Calmers and Paul Burgess in the cafe of IKEA on I-10 after the couple won a contest sponsored by the Swedish furniture company. Billy Gibbons is an ordained minister of the......

• A cold front that will be preceded by a storm system is expected to drop temperatures this afternoon. Don't forget your coats and umbrellas. • Two suspected Conroe drug dealers were shot during a sting involving the Montgomery County sheriff's office. The sting occurred in a busy shopping center parking lot and an officer was nearly hit by the suspects vehicle. • Police in the Rice Village area are on the lookout for......

Good morning, Houston. Well, uh here's something you don't hear about every day — but it being Halloween and all, we couldn't resist: In Hunt County, police pulled over an 18-wheeler Sunday morning and found about two dozen human heads in the back. True story. But it's not what you think: Turns out the heads (which were embalmed) were specimens used in medical training in Fort Worth, and they were headed back to a......

After an extraordinarily embarrassing event wherein Houstonist unwittingly drove the wrong way down a portion of South Braeswood Boulevard, we decided to thoroughly investigate the nature, goals, and idiosyncrasies of the Braeswood Boulevards. Our results have been quite astonishing and maddening, as these braided hydra-like streets weave, change course, change names, and sometimes suddenly disappear for a portion of their overall path as though it were not no thang at all. Our ultimate aim......

Breaking news: it's raining. A lot. So if you were schedule to appear in court today, here's this tidbit from the good ol' CoH: The City of Houston Municipal Courts remain open today, Thursday, August 16, 2007, however, those individuals who are scheduled to appear in court and are unable to make their court appearance due to inclement weather, will be given the opportunity to reset their case (s). Resets will be given in......

Good morning, Houston. We thought that ding someone put in the door of our 1983 Diatribe in the Starbucks parking lot the other day was bad, but then we heard about the $150,000 Aston Martin damaged last week when a car went out of control and slammed into a southwest Houston car dealership. It happened when a pickup truck hit Leonard Ross' car while he was on the Southwest Freeway feeder road near Fountain......

Good morning, Houston. We don't mind telling you that we really have no love for cockroaches, but we do have a little bit more appreciation for the little critters after reading the Chronicle's interview with the Houston Museum of Natural Science's curator of entomology, Nancy Greig. "They're neat," Greig said. "Only 12 out of 4,000 are pests." Ah, well, good. But why are those 12 always in our apartment? >> Perry: We need more......

The Chronicle's Matt Stiles brings us the locations of the city's 10 newest red-light cameras, a couple of which we had already noticed — while lawfully stopping at red lights, we might add. And here they are: Northbound Wayside at Gulf Freeway Northbound Woodridge at Gulf Freeway Northbound West Bellfort at Southwest Freeway Northbound Fairbanks N. Houston at Northwest Freeway Northbound West Sam Houston Parkway South at Westpark Eastbound FM 2351 at Gulf Freeway Eastbound......

Good morning, Houston. If you loved the DeLorean DMC-12 — and who didn't? — you might be interested to know that what's left of the DeLorean Motor Co. (basically, the name and the logo) is now headquartered in Humble. And the company's vice president, James Espey, is hoping to collect former De Lorean employees' into a book, I Lived the Dream: Stories From Those Who Built the DeLorean Sports Car. This summer, the DeLorean......

More in the ongoing saga of MetroRail's stray electrical current: Looks like Metro is going to go after payment from contractor Siemens, despite a refusal letter. Last summer, Metro billed Siemens Transportation Systems $917,400 for monitoring related to the stray current between May 2005 and June 2006. No one's sure where the leaking current is coming from: Metro has tracked down and repaired points it thought were causing trouble, and it replaced metal anchors in......

Some news for those of you who commute to and from Brazoria County regularly: TxDOT is considering building 26 miles of toll lanes along Highway 288. The proposal is for two toll lanes in each direction from Highway 59 to the South Loop, three lanes each way from the Loop to the Beltway, and two lanes in each direction from there to County Road 60 near Iowa Colony. There's room: When the South Freeway......

More on Alfred Alaniz, the HPD officer caught in an undercover bribery sting last week: His brother in law doesn't believe that Alaniz actually took the bribe because he says Alaniz didn't need the money, and on the legal side, no one seems to be able to find the money in question. Alaniz, remember, allegedly took $200 from an undercover cop Friday during a traffic stop on the South Loop. The undercover officer, A. Moreira,......

Good morning, Houston. Did you feel particularly down in the dumps yesterday? There's a good reason for it, according to Dr. Cliff Arnal, a psychologist at Cardiff University: Arnal has named Jan. 22 the most depressing day of the year, what with the gloomy weather, post-holiday bills and failed new year's resolutions. But here's a reason to cheer back up: Today is National Pie Day! If anyone needs us, you know where we'll be......

You might have heard this weekend about Alfred Alaniz, the HPD officer arrested Friday in a bribery sting and charged with accepting cash from an undercover cop posing as a motorist during a traffic stop. Today, there's more news related to Alaniz: The Houston Police Patrolmen's Union might not defend him in court. The union provides legal representation for members who face internal or external disciplinary actions connected with their official duties, like officer-involved shootings......

On the South Loop this morning, a story out of a dime novel: A dead woman was found stuffed under a motel room bed, and police aren't sure why she was there. The woman was found at the South Loop Inn at the Loop and Telephone Road at about 1:30 this morning; police say she had checked into the motel earlier this week and was with a man at the time, but that's pretty much......

Instant karma can be rough sometimes: Take, for example, the man who was killed last night while trying to run away from a hit-and-run accident he reportedly caused. It happened at about 11:30 p.m. on Telephone Road in southeast Houston, where a pickup truck rear-ended an SUV stopped at a red light. The pickup drove off and a witness in another vehicle followed it to the South Loop, where the pickup driver and a passenger......

So the MetroRail line is leaking electricity. It's nothing new: Metro admitted to the problem last year, and since then it's come up more than once. But what's news is that the problem continues to be a problem, and according to community watchdog Tom Bazan, it could bring the Pierce Elevated down on our heads (assuming, of course, we were standing underneath it at the time). Bazan is worried that the electricity leaking from the......

So if you live south of Houston, you might want to consider using one of your sick days today — or maybe leaving for work really early: Traffic is still backed up for miles because of a 12-car pileup on northbound Highway 288. The good news is that the wrecked vehicles have been cleared; the bad news is that traffic watchers don't expect the congestion to clear up until after rush hour is over. The......

So, did you hear about the soccer doubleheader at Reliant Stadium last night? We'll bet you did if you were trying to drive anywhere near the stadium — according to reports, the 75,000 fans who packed Reliant to see the Houston Dynamo, Los Angeles Galaxy, FC Barcelona and Mexico's Club América caused a world-class traffic jam. The first game kicked off at 7 p.m., and though the Chronicle reported HPD spokesman Alvin Wright said traffic......

The possibility still exists that a string of murders in Acres Homes were committed by more than one person rather than a single serial killer, HPD says A Continental Airlines pilot has been fired for testing positive for alcohol use while on his way to a flight Sunday Curtis Jetton, the man who survived last week's explosion in a Texas City apartment, has a history of mental illness, his lawyer said today Yeah, it's wet......

Houstonist is starting to think we could write a how-to book for people who want to run from the police, based on what we've seen about car chases in the news over the last few months. Chapter 1: Don't Go the Wrong Way. Chapter 2: Make Sure Your Car's in Good Repair. Chapter 3: Watch Out For Trees. And Chapter 4, we think, will be Make Sure You Have Enough Gas. The subjects of Chapter......

Mayor Bill White and County Judge Robert Eckels held a noon press conference on the local flooding, stressing that things will be OK as long as we don't get more heavy rain later today. "The ground is saturated, the bayous are full," Eckels said. "If the rain stops, we're OK; if we get another 10 or 12 inches of rain tonight, it's going to be another problem." No state assistance has been requested, though Gov.......

So it's not news that the MetroRail line is leaking electricity — Houstonist has talked about it a couple of times already. But now it's been a year since Metro admitted to the problem, and the agency still hasn't been able to fix it. Remember that this electricity leak isn't going to kill you if you walk near the tracks, but there is concern that it might eventually corrode metal objects near the rail line,......

Judge Sim Lake dropped three charges against Jeff Skilling and one against Ken Lay moments after the prosecution rested its case in the trial of the former Enron executives today A judge assigned to oversee Carole Keeton Strayhorn's lawsuit challenging Texas' independent candidate rules recused himself from the case because he signed Strayhorn's petition to be placed on the ballot for governor The driver of an HISD school bus lost control on the South Loop......

If you drive to and from Midtown, Montrose and downtown along the Southwest Freeway on a regular basis, get ready to be happy: Monday morning, the northbound lanes of Spur 527 — which have been closed for more than two years — will reopen. But in the meantime, get ready to be upset: the northbound lanes of the Southwest Freeway will be closed between Shepherd and Main beginning tonight. The freeway will close at 9......

A grass fire that broke out this morning has affected traffic around the Gulf Freeway and the South Loop, the Chronicle reports. The fire apparently broke out beside the freeway near Woodridge, close to Gulfgate. About an acre was on fire, and some traffic lanes — including the exit to the Loop from the southbound Gulf Freeway — are closed while firefighters battle the blaze. The cause of the fire has not yet been reported.......

Two endangered whales were sighted in Corpus Christi Bay, far from their usual winter hangout High winds today caused flights to be delayed at Bush Intercontinental Airport Employees at a northwest Harris County dump-truck factory found a colleague dead inside a hydraulic winch early this morning The Astros signed shortstop Adam Everett to a one-year, $1.9 million deal TxDOT: Flooding on the South Loop during Monday's rains wasn't our fault!......

Several construction projects on the Loop that may cause traffic tie-ups: The connector ramp from the East Loop northbound to I-10 (East Freeway) east- and westbound will be closed from 9 a.m. tonight until 2 a.m. Wednesday. Alternate route: exit Wallisville and U-turn. Exit ramps from the East Loop northbound to the Port of Houston and Clinton Drive will also be closed from 9 p.m. tonight until 2 a.m. Wednesday. On the South Loop, the......