Tagged: sixth street

Although the crowd of clubs and concert halls on Austin’s famous Sixth Street is just a few blocks from the state Capitol, the worlds of live music and policymaking seldom meet.

But this session, lawmakers are considering subsidizing live music.

And now for something completely different: KUT News’ pals at StateImpact Texas point to reports that a Nacogdoches veterinarian claims to have sequenced Bigfoot’s DNA.

Melba Ketchum says she’s plotted the genetic makeup of the elusive cryptid via DNA from hair, blood and tissue samples. (Maybe not so surprisingly, many folks still have questions.)

StateImpact Texas also reminds us that, should you come across an ornery Yeti, yes, it is legal to kill it in Texas. “Bigfoot would be a non-protected wild animal,” Texas Parks and Wildlife’s L. David Sinclair told StateImpact Texas earlier this year.

Jury selection begins today in the trial of three former downtown Austin nightclub operators.

The Yassine brothers – Hussein, Hadi and Mohammed Yassine – were among ten people arrested in March on drug, weapon and money laundering charges.  The Yassines, who operated several nightclubs including Spill, the pirate-themed bar Treasure Island, Kiss and Fly and more, have entered not guilty pleas.

The sensational nature of the charges – and the media attention they have attracted – are already a point of contention. The Austin American-Statesman, which notes that over 120 citizens were summoned to U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks’ courtroom to form the jury pool , writes:

Early questions focused on pre-trial publicity in the case, with Sparks asking prospective jurors if they’d been following coverage of the investigation, including a story that ran on the front page of today’s American-Statesman.

Romney Leads Obama in Texas

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney would beat President Obama in Texas if an election were held today. At least that’s what a recent survey from Public Policy Polling has found.

The group surveyed nearly 600 Texans and 400 Republican primary voters and found that 50 percent would vote for Romney.  Forty-three percent said they would choose Obama.  The seven-point spread is a significant drop from the last presidential race in Texas when, in 2008, republican nominee John McCain captured the state by 13 points.

The local drug and money laundering bust of Yassine Enterprises has taken an international turn, as authorities allege proceeds from the organization’s nightclubs, drugs, and money laundering operations went overseas to fund militant Lebanese group Hezbollah, an organization designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S.

KEYE reports on the arraignment of the Yassine Enterprises defendants this morning:

During bond hearings in federal court in Austin Tuesday, an Internal Revenue Service investigator said Hussein "Mike" Ali Yassine and Mohammed "Steve Austin" Ali Yassine sent money in $2,500 increments to their uncle, Mohammed Ishmael in Lebanon.  Authorities say he is associated with Hezbollah, a militant group and political party in Lebanon. 

So this is the way we live now: a new mobile application is coming to Austin that rates bars. But instead of relying on user-submitted data like Yelp, it has a network of cameras in participating nightclubs feeding real time information on a club’s capacity and demographics.

That’s the idea behind SceneTap, launching across several Austin bars this Friday.