GALVESTON – A 123-foot space shuttle is headed for Houston on Thursday from a dock at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a journey expected to take eight days.The detailed replica, known as the Explorer, is expected to arrive in Galveston Bay on June 1, said Jeff Carr, a spokesman for Griffin Communications Group, which is organizing events surrounding the arrival of the replica for the Space Center Houston.The Seabrook-Kemah Bridge will be closed for about 30 minutes beginning about noon until the barge and the 54-foot high replica pass into the Clear Lake Channel, Carr said. The barge will slowly make its way to the Space Center barge dock near the intersection of NASA Parkway and Space Center Boulevard, he said. "The barge ... Continue reading →
Two members of a state cancer review panel that gave an "enthusiastic" recommendation to fund a $20 million grant proposal from Rice University and the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center were participants in the project. A third member of the five-person panel also has ties to leaders at M.D. Anderson, whose piece of the proposal was grafted onto Rice's shortly before the submission deadline and approved in March. The result was the largest grant ever awarded by the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, or CPRIT, a $3 billion assault on cancer approved by voters in 2007. The revelation of conflicts of interest raises new questions about an approval process that internal advisers have complained was hasty and opaque and bypassed appropriate ... Continue reading →
Banned books A look at some of the books that have been banned over the years, according to the American Library Association. Hundreds are on the waiting list at some Houston-area libraries for the E.L. James’ Fifty Shades steamy trilogy, the romance series that tops the nation’s best seller lists and has been banned for its racy content in some libraries around the country. The novels contains graphic sex scenes, including bondage and submission, and has been dubbed “mommy porn” in some reviews. The first in the series, Fifty Shades of Grey and the other two in the series, Fifty Shades of Darker and Fifty Shades of Freed, have occupied the top three spots on national paperback and eBook fiction bestseller lists since their publication ... Continue reading →
BROWNSVILLE - A man is in federal custody after border officers in Brownsville found 49 bundles of cash totaling $610,050 duct-taped into a spare tire on his pickup truck.Domingo Quezada-Hernandez is facing cash smuggling charges when he's scheduled to appear at a court hearing Friday.A federal criminal complaint says he was arrested Monday trying to cross from Texas into Mexico over the Gateway International Bridge.He didn't declare any weapons, ammunition or cash in excess of $10,000 but officers say he and two companions looked nervous.When agents saw fresh marks on the spare tire, they had it sent for X-ray screening that showed the cash inside. Continue reading →
Nobody who doesn't wear a number on their back retires at 38. Laid off, maybe. Pushed out, certainly. But voluntary departure from an occupation that has brought both a fortune and a national profile simply is not done. Nothing along the path John Arnold had followed for almost two decades suggested he would reach this spot at this moment - this headline-grabbing decision to walk away from Centaurus Energy, the centerpiece of which was a successful hedge fund that he managed. Perhaps the country's most celebrated energy trader, Arnold was supposed to keep applying his skills, turn the several billion dollars he had earned into many more billions, use that mother lode for ever increasing access and power, become a figure of greater national prominence ... Continue reading →
