Headlines

There's no City Council meeting this week – next is Oct. 16, and the draft agenda boasts a meager 68 Items. Get cracking, Council Members! See "Council: Rehab and Reuse," Oct. 10.

Campaign coffers for next month's election are updated here, with the mayoral race churning major bucks and other races separating the serious from the not-so.

ACL Music Festival continues this weekend at Zilker Park, with many millions of fans and musical acts (we're exaggerating just a little) in direct conflict with the OU game in Dallas, on ABC at 11am Saturday. You can watch it in the TV tent and pretend you're listening to the music, too.

AISD scores continue to beat the average: In his first State of the District address, Interim Superintendent Paul Cruz announced that AISD students scored an average of 1507 on their SATs, compared to 1497 nationally and 1432 across Texas. (See more on this in Public Notice.)

The SXSW Eco conference wrapped up Wed­nes­day, with a surprise pre-election boost for Coun­­cil Members Chris Riley and Mike Martinez, who were honored for their leadership on clean energy.

The first U.S. Ebola patient died in Dallas Wednesday, reinforcing the paroxysms of hysteria emanating from cable and network television, and the burgeoning right-wing political hysteria about immigrants and airplanes. Meanwhile, neither health insurance coverage nor health care budgets in Texas and elsewhere show any signs of recovery.

Death row inmate Manuel Velez, 49, was released from Huntsville prison Wednesday after a retrial on a murder charge allowed him to walk free. Velez was arrested in 2005 and charged with the murder of his girlfriend's one-year-old baby. Last Octo­ber, an appeals court found that the death was likely caused by abuse from the victim's mother.

Even Dan Patrick's hometown despises him: The GOP lite guv candidate lost the Houston Chronicle endorsement to Democrat Leticia Van de Putte, with its editorial board calling him "dangerous... divisive, disruptive, and self-aggrandizing."

WilCo weed laws nab another user: 28-year-old John Fleming was arrested in Cedar Park Friday after police pulled him over for speeding and found 23 pounds of marijuana-related products in his car. Busted for pot possession twice before, Lumpkin now faces 5-99 years. He told police that all the marijuana's strictly medical.

The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals is expediting Texas' same-sex marriage case after Austin-based Cleopatra de Leon and Nicole Dimetman, one of the two couples who filed the suit, requested to fast track the hearing because they're expecting their second child in March.