Adam Zuvanich

The “Empty the Shelters” campaign, sponsored by the Bissell Pet Foundation, comes at a time when the City of Houston facility is near capacity with about 350 dogs and 80 cats.

The national passenger railroad company of the United States, which has taken the lead on a long-planned high-speed railway between Texas' two largest cities, continues to explore the initiative but also promoted the idea in a video released this week.

New Mayor John Whitmire's “Water Bill Improvement Plan,” in which single-family residential customers will temporarily be charged a fixed monthly amount, took effect April 1. The initiative eliminated Houston Public Works' previous practice of charging estimated amounts to customers with faulty electronic meter-reading devices, which in many cases led to residents being charged for much more water than they actually used.

There was a total of 215 incidents of road rage involving guns in Houston from 2014-23, with 207 people being shot during those incidents, according to a list compiled by The Trace, a nonprofit news outlet that used data from the Gun Violence Archive.

Mayor John Whitmire declined an invitation to be the keynote speaker at the summit, citing a scheduling conflict. He has raised eyebrows and drawn criticism from traffic safety advocates for revisiting and in one case reversing infrastructure initiatives designed to slow down cars and trucks, expand the realm for pedestrians and cyclists and improve safety in a city that saw 323 traffic fatalities in 2023.

The U.S. Department of Energy is giving Houston money to install solar panels and battery storage at a community-serving city facility in a disadvantaged part of town, among other initiatives tied to the city's Climate Action Plan adopted in 2020 under then-Mayor Sylvester Turner.

The region's public transit provider, which has six new board members, recently removed from its website the pages for three planned bus rapid transit lines, including a 25.3-mile route with stops at multiple colleges and universities in the city. Bus rapid transit was part of an initiative backed by Harris County voters in 2019.

Many of the dozen-plus speakers at a school board workshop Thursday night took shots at Texas state leaders for their role in the Houston-area district's impending financial crisis – calling on their locally elected trustees to demand more funding.

Apple's appeal last week to the Texas First Court of Appeals, over whether the company should remain as a defendant in hundreds of civil lawsuits filed in the wake of the deadly 2021 concert in Houston, has delayed the start of the first trial. It had been set to start this week.

Amidst budget constraints and an overhaul of how it provides non-academic services, HISD is cutting back on campus-level wraparound resource specialists, who essentially serve as school social workers to help students with unmet needs such as food, clothing and healthcare. Nearly 80% of the district's 183,000-plus students are considered economically disadvantaged.