Word: houston
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Wayne Krouse has a seductive idea: dam-free hydropower. In a year, his start-up, Hydro Green Energy of Houston, plans to have a pair of turbines pumping electricity from under the Mississippi River at Hastings, Minn.--a town willing to give a new idea a try. "Everybody likes a science experiment, and this is just a big science experiment," says Tom Montgomery, Hastings' public-works director. The barge-mounted turbines will be unconventional, but Krouse's design yields twice the energy of earlier versions--and doesn't require new dams, which take years to license...
...learned. The Nature Conservancy gives tracts of land spiffy names like the Mount Hamilton Wilderness--a better ring than "1,875 square miles of environmentally critical ecosystem"--and donations perk up. Chalk that up to the power of being concrete. The Texas department of transportation casts Dallas Cowboys and Houston Astros in testosterone-soaked ads telling drivers "Don't mess with Texas," and roadside litter drops 29% in a year. Consider it a score for an emotional appeal to identity--a way of getting litterbugs to believe that real men don't throw beer cans out the window...
...Hutchison--a Bush loyalist well ahead in her bid for re-election--is expressing regret for her vote to authorize the invasion and is advocating partitioning Iraq along ethnic lines. "We have to step back and stop trying to put our American ideas onto this problem," she told the Houston Chronicle...
SENTENCED. Jeffrey Skilling, 52, vilified former CEO of Enron who was convicted in May for his role in engineering one of the biggest frauds in corporate history; to 24 years and four months in prison, the longest term yet for an Enron defendant; in Houston. At his hearing Skilling, whose arrogance and lack of remorse fueled outrage over the scandal, told the judge, "I am innocent of every one of these charges...
...Even in death, Ken Lay's legal odyssey may not be over. Although a Houston judge last week vacated the former Enron chairman's conviction, some legal observers predict the government will appeal the ruling - possibly all the way to the Supreme Court. At issue is - what else - lots and lots of money: there is a flurry of unsettled civil suits brought by investors, employees and victims against Lay and many others involved with Enron. Even if prosecutors have no illusions of actually having the ruling overturned, they may figure that additional legal fees associated with a drawn-out appeals...