Texas

Cats love attention, but a feline at the Richardson Animal Shelter outside of Dallas is positively gobbling it up.

Skinny the Cat is a five year-old tabby. So far, so normal. But there’s more to this cat – a lot more. Skinny weighs in at 41 pounds.

Skinny’s size attracted the notice of the Associated Press, which reported on the North Texas tabby.  And thankfully, now the animal center is deluged with calls from folk looking to care for the cat.

“We have fielded a lot of calls,” says Dennis Wooten, manager of the Richardson Animal Center.  “The challenge now is sorting throw all those calls to find out what’s best for Skinny.”

While food trucks have been embraced in Austin and can be found clustered throughout the city, Houston food truck owners are struggling to change city ordinances that impose limits on their operations. 

Yesterday, dozens of food truck operators and enthusiasts came before the Houston City Council to petition for changes in mobile food unit ordinance, which bans food trucks that use propane stoves and grills from operating in the busy downtown area.

The Houston Mobile Food Unit Collective has proposed that the mobile food unit ordinances be amended to allow trucks with propane tanks under 40 pounds to operate downtown, eliminate the required 60 feet of space between trucks and permit food trucks to provide up to three tables and six chairs for patrons.

Fish is routinely held up as a healthy alternative to other meats. But some experts might urge you to rethink the catch-of-the-day,  because of what else might be lurking on the plate. 

The Texas Senate Committee on Agriculture and Rural Affairs heard testimony this morning about the condition of the state’s seafood industry. The Catfish Institute's Jeff McCord testified that he was concerned about importing fish to Texas.

Most of the catfish found in restaurants is imported from China. McCord says China doesn’t have the same kind of regulations the U.S. does, so banned substances can easily enter the food supply. A group of chemicals called nitrofurans is on this list. Fish farmers use them to rid the water of certain microbes, but they’re mostly banned by the FDA. “It’s been shown to cause cancer,” McCord says, “and it also disrupts human cell reproduction.”

Longtime Texas politician Bob Gammage has died. He was 74. A family member told the Associated Press that he died of an apparent heart attack.

Gammage was a Houston native and represented the area in both the Texas House and Senate before being elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1976.

Gammage fought corruption as part of a group of Texas legislators known as the “Dirty 30,” which led a rebellion against scandal-ensnared Texas House speaker Gus Mutscher in 1971. 

What looked like another increasingly routine hearing of Maj. Nidal Hasan – the accused gunman behind the 2009 shooting spree at the Fort Hood Army base in Texas – now appears to be less so, as Hasan’s lawyers claim he offered to enter a guilty plea.

Hasan’s trial has been slow to start, as legal wrangling over whether or not the Army can shave Hasan’s beard has taken center stage. Hasan claims the beard is an expression of her Muslim faith, but Army codes dictate a soldier must be clean-shaven at his court martial. Today, Judge Col. Gregory Gross ordered that Hasan’s beard by shaved, reports The New York Times.

Overshadowed by the beard aspect was an announcement from Hasan’s attorneys that he had offered to enter a guilty plea, but as the Associated Press reports,  he’s prevented from doing so in the Fort Hood case:

Some Texas prisons will soon be equipped with technology that blocks most cell phone calls.

Inmates are not supposed to have cell phones. But officials at the Stiles Prison Unit in Beaumont and the McConnell Unit outside of Corpus Christi say it’s been a challenge to keep them out.

Brad Livingston is the Executive Director of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. He explains the technology limits which calls can be made.

“It allows cell phone signals to be sent successfully only to the extent that the number is pre-programmed in," Livingston says. "All other cell phones are defeated and the call is not connected.”