Redistricting hearings come to Houston

..... State lawmakers will hold public hearings on congressional redistricting throughout the state, including a pair of sessions in Houston.
.....A House subcommittee will take public testimony at 9 a.m. Saturday at Jesse Jones School of Business Auditorium of Texas Southern University. The following week, the Senate Jurisprudence Committee will convene at 1 p.m., July 2 at Cesar Chavez High School.
.....On a related note, a San Antonio Republican has pre-filed a constitutional amendment and an accompanying bill designed to take redistricting out of the hands of lawmakers altogether after the 2010 Census. More.

In light of ruling, schools look at affirmative action

.....Institutions across Texas are again looking at affirmative action, in the wake of Monday's Supreme Court ruling that race can be used as a factor in the college admissions process.
.....The Court, in a 5-4 split, upheld the University of Michigan Law School's policy using race as one factor among many to distinguish between applicants.
.....In Austin, University of Texas president Larry Faulkner declared that changes would be made in the school's approach to application review by next year to reflect the court's decision. More.

FCC may approve Hispanic media merger

.....The FCC appears ready to approve the merger between Spanish-language media giants Univision and Hispanic Broadcasting Corporation. Univision, which reaches an estimated 97 percent of the Spanish-speaking market in the United States, is the number one television broadcasting company in the country. Dallas-based Hispanic Broadcasting, owning over 60 radio stations, is number one in the Hispanic radio audience.
.....This mega-merger was cleared by the Justice Department back in March. At the FCC, the vote to approve the merger between the two media corporations, was split along the same lines as the June 2 vote to relax media ownership regulations. Concerns were raised regarding the lack of diversity of viewpoints that a monolistic media structure would cause. More.

Near the end of the oil as we know it

.....Four panelists presented a lecture Monday evening at the Emerson Unitarian Church entitled "Cresting the Petroleum Peak." They're eager to spread the word about the demise of oil and gas, in what they see as a climate of deception and denial meant to keep Americans in the dark.
.....Primary speaker and ecologist Richard Heinburg, began the lecture with facts about the human population bloom. World population has increased by over 3 billion people in the last four decades. Heinburg explained that dependence on oil has increased dramatically since the Industrial Revolution. He says we've already used half of the planet's oil reserves:
....."How much oil is there? This is published estimates of oil ultimately recoverable. Ultimately recoverable means that's how much nature put there to begin with that we'll eventually be able to get out of the ground. And people have been estimating that quantity for several decades, starting in the 1940s. And the early estimates were pretty low, and then very quickly, by the mid-1960s, we're up to about the same level of estimates that we're getting today. This is 64 separate estimates by different scientists and teams of scientists in the database and my computer. Interesting to notice is that they all kind of converge on about two trillion barrels. The best estimate is that nature gave us about 2 trillion barrels of oil that we'll ultimately be able to get out of the ground, and of that 2 trillion barrels, we've already extracted about 950 billion barrels, and that's about half." More.

Gregory School could become preservation 'park'

.....This Friday, the board of the Rutherford B. Yates Museum will present plans for a Freedman's Town Cultural Park in the historic Fourth Ward.
.....Financed by private funds, the 20 million dollar project is aimed at restoring brick streets and streetcar railways laid by hand by early residents, but now threatened by development.
.....By purchasing historic houses near the Yates Museum around Wilson and Andrews Streets, board members say they want to create a preservation "park" that showcases local African-American history and offers green space in what is expected to be a densely developed area in the coming years.
.....Yates Museum Co-Founder Catherine Roberts explains the complicated ownership issues surrounding the abandoned Gregory School, which the board proposes to transform into a research and performance center.
....."This is a very critical time, because the decision will be made in July, There have been other proposals on the table for putting loft apartments, altering the building, which would endanger its National Registry designation. I feel like we're battling developers who are salivating over that real estate who have no sensitivity whatsoever toward the history and culture of this only remaining post civil war freed-slave national district in the U.S." More.

Groups sue to prevent Bayport container port

.....Several groups filed suit in federal court Tuesday against the Army Corp of Engineers. Their aim is to stop the agency from permitting the building of a $1.2 billion container port that the Houston Port Authority wants to build at Bayport.
.....For years, opponents have lobbied the Port of Houston Authority to construct its container at alternative sites. One complaint cited in the lawsuit suggested alternative sites had not even been adequately considered by the corp.
.....Attorney for Galveston Bay Conservation and Preservation Association Jim Blackburn:
....."We are absolutely dumbfounded as to why the Port of Houston continues to insist that the Bayport site is where they're going to have their future Port for container traffic." More.

Convention focuses on African-American reparations

.....The Dallas chapter of the National Coalition for Black Reparations in America hosted the group's national convention this past weekend on the campus of the historically black Paul Quinn College.
.....Dr. Ella Forbes, a professor of African American Studies at Temple University, spoke Saturday. She emphasized the awareness of history in the struggle for reparations:
....."I think Reconstruction was the period that we look to as a people for a redress for the period of enslavement. And I think we had high hopes at the beginning of Reconstruction, but as the period went on, and of course with our almost complete disenfranchisement in the South at least, we lost hope and it is that lost hope and the events that lead up to that lost hope that really allows us to show that reparations are legitimate." More.