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SAFETY FIRST Robots could take on some offshore oil jobs. PAGE B1 DATA RECORDERS FOUND AT SITE Investigators look for cause of Nepal’s deadliest plane crash in 30 years. PAGE A4 ANTIQUE SEEKERS Round Top’s winter shows less crowded. PAGE D1 Business ......B1 Comics .......D4 Crossword.D3 Directory ....A2 Editorials ...A9 Horoscope D4 Nation.........A4 Obituaries .B6 Sports...........C1 Star................D1 TV..................D3 Weather......B8 TWITTER: @HoustonChron LINKEDIN: Houston-Chronicle INSTAGRAM: HoustonChron FACEBOOK: @HoustonChronicle HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM: VISIT NOW FOR BREAKING NEWS, CONSTANTLY UPDATED STORIES, SPORTS COVERAGE, PODCASTS AND A SEARCHABLE NEWS ARCHIVE. HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM • TUESDAY, JANUARY 17, 2023 • VOL. 122, NO. 96 • $2.00 The hit on Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin, sending him into cardiac arrest on the field, shocked millions who watched that game. For Scott Stephens of Crosby, it brought tears to his eyes and triggered yet another memory of his son’s death. Trainers immediately began assistance on Hamlin, including nine minutes of cardiopulmonary resuscitation procedures, ultimately saving his life. “It was horrible to watch,” Stephens said days after the Jan. 2 game, which would serve as another reminder of his son Cody’s death in May 2012 from sudden cardiac arrest. Cody, a Crosby High School senior who was planning to attend Tarleton State University on a football scholarship that fall, died at his dad’s home, in his dad’s chair. The family had no knowledge of a previous heart condition, they said. His death affected the CrosbyHuffman community, spotlighting a need to update requirements for physicals administered to student athletes. Texas lawmakers later enacted legislation related to heart safety during athletic events, spurred by Stephens’ advocacy. Next month, Stevens will continue that advocacy during Super Bowl week. He will join former NFL player and longtime friend Randy Grimes as they go from table to table at NFL Radio Row to each share their own stories. Grimes, a 10-year veteran of the Tampa Dad aims to prevent future tragedies He pushed for state law on heart screenings after son died, will speak at Super Bowl week By David Taylor STAFF WR ITER Courtesy Stephens family Cody Stephens, left, was a senior looking forward to a football Heart continues on A8 scholarship when he died in 2012 from sudden cardiac arrest. Charlotte Simpson bounced her granddaughter on her hip and danced to the beat of drums as the Jack Yates High School marching band rounded the corner. It was the little girl’s first time celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. Day, but her grandmother has been coming to the annual parade for as long as she can remember. Her mother instilled in her a sense of pride and civic engagement. Now, Simpson is doing the same for future generations. “This is our family tradition,” said Simpson, 65. “We’ll dedicate the whole day. And even sometimes, if we like it, we’ll just stay here and be the last ones to leave.” Houstonians gathered downtown on a balmy Monday morning for the 45th annual Original MLK Jr. Day Parade hosted by the Black Heritage Society. Nearby, others Houstonians unite to celebrate MLK Photos by Brett Coomer/Staff photographer Girl Scouts march together with signs and pictures during the 45th annual Original MLK Jr. Day Parade downtown Monday. Parades honor civil rights leader’s legacy on ‘day of remembrance’ By Anna Bauman STAFF WR ITER Spectators pack the parade route for the festivities downtown on Monday. Parades continues on A6 MORE INSIDE Volunteers spend the holiday helping clean up freedmen’s cemetery in Fort Bend County. A2 ATLANTA — America has honored Martin Luther King Jr. with a federal holiday for nearly four decades yet still hasn’t fully embraced and acted on the lessons from the slain civil rights leader, his youngest daughter said Monday. The Rev. Bernice King, who leads The King Center in Atlanta, said leaders — especially politicians — too often cheapen her father’s legacy into a “comfortable and convenient King” offering easy platitudes. “We love to quote King in and around the holiday. ... But then we refuse to live King 365 days of the year,” she declared at the commemorative service at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where her father once preached. The service, sponsored by the center and held at Ebenezer annually, headlined observances of the 38th federal King holiday. King, gunned down in Memphis, Tenn., in 1968 as he advocated for better pay and working conditions for the city’s sanitation workers, would have celebrated his 94th birthday Sunday. Her voice rising and falling in cadences similar to her father’s, Bernice King bemoaned institutional and individual racism, economic and health care inequities, police violence, a militarized international order, hard-line immiDaughter: U.S. not embracing King’s lessons By Bill Barrow ASSOC IATED PRE SS King continues on A6 The Texas Legislature recently reconvened with an eye toward property tax relief, and funding road and drainage improvements and other bipartisan issues, offering a dash of optimism to Democratic lawmakers who are eager to play a bigger role after getting steamrolled two years ago. Outnumbered again in both chambers, Democrats remain vulnerable to a repeat of 2021, when conservative priorities sailed through the Republicancontrolled Legislature seemingly at will. But this time, Democrats are hoping lawmakers will be preoccupied deciding what to do with Texas’ nearly $33 billion projected budget surplus — a “once-in-a-lifetime” sum, according to the state’s top accountant. Still, Republicans are widely expected to serve up at least some red meat policies this session, and Democrats in the state House — seen as the party’s last line of defense — are gearing up to fight behind a new caucus chair, state Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer. The veteran San Antonio legislator, known around the Capitol as a brawling but shrewd tactician, has used his knowledge of the Legislature’s rules and procedures to derail numerous GOP bills over the years — a reputation that played a key role in his selection as caucus chair, Democrats said. “The metric of success for this caucus, No. 1, is they have to respect us,” Martinez Fischer said. “And my second metric for success is to deal with the reality that we live in. We live in a Republican majority, but we happen to be in a circumstance where we have 33 billion reasons to be hopeful and optimistic that we’re going to have a bipartisan session.” In an interview from his Capitol office on the first day of the 140-day session, Martinez Fischer — once described by Texas Monthly as “a soldier preDems seeking larger role this session How to spend $33B surplus is top of list By Jasper Scherer AUST IN BUREAU Dems continues on A6

Benjamin Franklin Williams was born into slavery in 1819. In 1870, five years after his emancipation, Williams became the first Black member of the Texas House of Representatives, according to the Texas Legislator Archives. Williams is buried in Fort Bend County’s Bates Allen Park alongside countless other former slaves, but until recently his final resting place largely was forgotten. The freedmen’s cemetery had fallen into a state of disrepair, overrun by brush, caked in mud and covered in ant mounds. Williams’ grave might have disintegrated further had former Congressman Pete Olson not visited the park last year to pay his respects. Olson said Williams’ tombstone was facedown in the muck when he found it. “I was appalled when I came out here,” the former Republicanlawmaker said. “How could we let this happen? It took me 20 minutes to get his tombstone out from being embedded in the soil, and I knew we just had to do better.” Olson began a personal campaign on social media to get the cemetery cleaned up, and word of the decay began to spread, culminating in dozens of volunteers converging on the site Monday,Martin Luther King Jr. Day, armed with cleaning supplies for tombstones and chainsaws to clear the brush that had overrun the resting places of more than 30 people, most of whom were former slaves. Williams’ grave now has a wooden frame and is adorned with flowers and painted rocks. A small sign placed near the tombstone indicates the work was done by the Sugar Land Chapter of Jack and Jill of America, Inc., an organization of mothers dedicated to raising the next generation of African American leaders. Volunteer Bianca Scialabba was working at the Katy HeritageMuseum when she learned of the cemetery cleanup. “I’ve been aware for a while now about how a lot of historical cemeteries, particularly Black cemeteries in the south, are often neglected and fall to ruin and are forgotten,” she said. “I think that’s really sad, and when I saw this I decided to put my money where my mouth was and actually help out and try to improve things.” As she spoke, she gently scrubbed the tombstone of Hallie Humphrey, born in 1852. As she brushed away the dirt with clean water, an ornate carving became visible in the stone. Cleaning the stones gave Scialabba a sense of connection with the people interred there. “It’s kind of like you’re spending time with the person who’s buried there,” Scialabba said. “You can’t help but reflect on who they were and what significance they had.” Bates Allen Park is a public park located in the district of Dexter McCoy, the newly elected commissioner for Fort Bend County Precinct 4, who said he is working to secure funding to improve the park. “I have a vision for this area that really draws people out here to learn about the history of the folks who were critical the role that they played in helping to build the Fort Bend County that we love today,”McCoy said. [email protected] Freedmen’s graves spruced up By Claire Goodman STAFF WR ITER Jon Shapley/Staff photographer Bianca Scialabba and Chris Pino work Monday at a historic Black cemetery in Kendleton. 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Assistant Managing Editor, Local News Baird Helgeson: [email protected] • 713-362-6426 A2 TUESDAY, JANUARY 17, 2023 HOUSTON CHRONICLE | HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM ONLINE RODEO LINEUPS POLL In preparation for the Houston Rodeo’s return next month, we want to hear from readers: What was the best lineup in the past 10 years? HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM/RODEOLINEUPPOLL What started as a way to engage customers for Joseph Robles has turned into a sign war in Conroe that has social media buzzing. Following the rush of the holiday season, Robles, the general manager for Luby’s at 201 Longmire Road, said he wanted to find a way to connect with residents and other businesses and a fun message on the restaurant’s marquee was the answer. On Monday, Robles changed the restaurant’s outdoor sign to read “Come see our July 4th specials. Just wanna beat Walmart to the punch.” “We were just having fun,” Robles said of the homage to the big box store that typically promotes seasonal items months in advance. “We don’t want anything negative or too controversial, we want a positive light.” The message didn’t go unnoticed by Tim Schenk, owner of the Montgomery Bakehouse across the street at 240 Longmire Road, who responded with “Hey Luby’s, come in for Halloween treats.” Opened in 2008, the familyrun Montgomery Bakehouse offers a variety of pastries including cakes, cupcakes, cookies, kolaches and even the popular Mardi Gras king cake all based on family recipes dating back to 1938. “We are between seasons so we didn’t have a lot to (put on our sign),” Schenk said. “After the new year, Luby’s put the Walmart thing out there, so I thought, ‘What can we do?’ ” After some brainstorming with staff, Schenk said the Halloween treats message was suggested. He said he has been surprised by the attention the signs are getting with Facebook users tagging the businesses and asking for more. “It was just a neighborly thing back and forth but people are really enjoying it,” Schenk said. “(Luby’s) changed theirs yesterday, and I thought, ‘This is fun.’ ” Robles was happy to respond to Schenk’s Halloween offer with “Bakehouse has sugar & spice but we got everything nice!,” prompting Schenk’s response to highlight Luby’s small portion platter with “Hey Luby’s LuAnn said she’d be our valentine.” Robles, who has worked with Luby’s for 14 years, the last four in Conroe, said he welcomed the participation from the bakehouse that has continued throughout the week. “Not sure where it is going, we don’t have a plan or purpose,” Robles said. “I like getting local businesses on the same page, it’s just fun.” [email protected] ‘Sign war’ has Conroe social media abuzz By Catherine Dominguez STAFF WR ITER Jason Fochtman/Staff photographer The Conroe Luby’s marquee pokes fun at its neighbor. Jason Fochtman/Staff photographer Bakehouse replied with a riff on Luby’s LuAnn platter. By Ralph Green STAFF WR ITER A Klein ISD teacher was honored during the Jan. 10 school board meeting for saving the life of a student who was choking. On Oct. 28, 2022, Wunderlich Intermediate School teacher Sarah Ford noticed a student who was choking. Ford quickly performed the Heimlich maneuver, a first-aid procedure used to dislodge an obstruction from a person’s windpipe. The maneuver is performed by applying strong pressure on the abdomen, between the navel and the rib cage. Her knowledge and immediate response saved the student’s life. Ford sent another student to alert the school nurse about the situation. Upon the nurse’s arrival, the student’s airway had been cleared and he was breathing. “While all educators strive to positively impact the lives of their students to keep them safe, on that day Ms. Ford literally gave new life to one of our students. …We are so grateful for your selfless response,” Brian Greeney, chief of schools, said during the meeting. Trustees and community members in attendance stood to applaud Ford’s lifesaving actions. The board presented her with a plaque commemorating her heroic act. “Thank you again Ms. Ford, we are very grateful,” Klein ISD Superintendent Jenny McGown said. “I know as a mom who sends my most precious gifts into our schools every day. I’m thankful for the educators that are surrounding them that I know will do whatever is needed, whatever day and whatever time, to keep all of our kids safe.” Teacher honored for saving student A former Houston security guard was sentenced Friday to 40 years in federal prison for the armed robbery of Clé Nightclub, where he worked. The lengthy sentence comes after a federal jury convicted Hakeem Alexander Coles, 27, on June 6, 2022, for interference with commerce by robbery and discharging a firearm during a crime of violence. Coles, originally from Minneapolis, worked at the downtown Houston nightclub in 2019 under a false identity for about two weeks. Once the club closed Sept. 7, 2019, Coles robbed its employees at gunpoint and demanded $20,000 cash, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. The FBI, with assistance from the Harris County Sheriff’s Office and Gretna Police Department in Louisiana, arrested Coles in Louisiana. He was found with a loaded gun and the false ID he used to get hired at the Clé Nightclub. Jurors at Coles’ trial heard testimony from witnesses who attested to the security guard being hired under someone else’s identity. The jury also heard from employees at Clé Nightclub who said Cole robbed them at gunpoint and fired shots toward them as he fled away. The jury also learned of another robbery Coles committed in Minneapolis three weeks before the Clé Nightclub robbery. Coles was working as a security guard at Cowboy Jack’s Bar and Restaurant when he robbed the business’s employees during closed hours. He pleaded guilty in 2020 and was sentenced to 17 years in federal prison. Coles’ attorneys tried to convince jurors that their client did not commit the robbery at Clé Nightclub and that it was actually the man whose identity he had stolen. U.S. District Judge Ewing Werlein Jr. handed Coles a 20- year sentence for the robbery, and another 20-year sentence for the gun charge, which will be served consecutively. The total 40-year prison term will run consecutively to the 17-year sentence he received in Minnesota for robbery and assaulting a federal agent. Coles will be sent to a U.S. Bureau of Prisons facility to be determined in the near future. Ex-guard gets 40 years for club robbery By Jonathan Limehouse STAFF WR ITER A story on page A1 Monday misidentified the 1995 Miss Universe winner. Her name was Chelsi Smith. A story on page A3 Sunday should have said Senate Bill 8 outlawed most abortions in Texas. The bill number was incorrect in the story. CORRECTIONS

CITY/ STATE HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM • TUESDAY, JANUARY 17, 2023 • SECTION A Border officials tracked 2.3 million people crossing the southwest border in 2022 just as millions of migrants have before them, compelled by economic hardship, rising violence and oppression in their homelands. The Biden administration responded with an unpopular plan to manage this historic influx, promoting a pandemic-era policy that leans heavily on the speedy removal of border crossers as well as a sponsorship program with new legal immigration pathways. The scheme comes amid fervent partisan squabbling, raging humanitarian crises abroad, a risein domestic nativism and smuggling networks that are increasingly techsavvy and well-organized. The need for the country’s leaders to find a long-term solution and their inability to compromise are at a deadlock. Biden’s solution to this complex conundrum follows decades of White House efforts to manage the ebb and flow of migrants along the 2,000-mile southwest border. Like his predecessors, Biden has tried to balance humanitarian, security and economic needs with logistical realities. This review of how previous presidents tackled these same questions offers context for today’s crisis. During his tenure, President Ronald Reagan ushered in one most significant immigration reforms in modern history — the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. The bill created a path to citizenship for law-abiding undocumented immigrants already living in the U.S., a process commonly known as “amnesty.” It also mandated penalties for employers who knowingly hired undocumented immigrants, during a period where many people crossing the border without authorization were Mexicans looking for work. Reagan’s amnesty was successful in bringing millions of immigrants living in the U.S. illegally out of the shadows, but it failed to curb future illegal immigration, as it left in loopholes that gave employers the opportunity to hire people with fake documents. Toward the end of Reagan’s run, civil war in El Salvador and governmental repression in China triggered a spike in asylum seekers from those countries. By the time George H.W. Bush took office, Congress had created Temporary Protected Status to offer some of these migrants time-limited work permits so they could stay and work in the country legally, though it did not Biden’s is just latest in border plans For decades,White House administrations have struggled to manage immigration issues By Elizabeth Trovall STAFF WR ITER Border continues on A7 Dozens of people gathered outside the Harris County Jail on Sunday evening for a candlelight vigil honoring the 29 people who have died in the lockup since the start of 2022. Featuring a roster of speakers that included family members of recently deceased inmates and community activists, the vigil aimed to call attention to unsafe conditions at the jail, which has struggled with overcrowding, low staffing and allegations of abuse and neglect. Deborah Smith, the mother of Kristan Smith, who died at the jail in April, brandished two posters with photos of her daughter as she addressed the crowd. “This is what I gave them,” Smith said, holding up the first poster: a photo of Kristan, 38, flashing a broad smile as she posed next to a blue car. Then she held up the other poster, with a photo of her daughter in a hospital bed. Kristan was diabetic and did not receive the care she needed at the jail, her mother said. “This is what they gave me back,” she said. Sunday’s vigil was organized by the Jailhouse Justice Coalition, a new local activist group dedicated to “fight(ing) the inhumane treatment and racist abuse of those who are incarcerated at Harris County Jail,” according to its online petition. The petition demands District Attorney Kim Ogg conduct a special investigation into the deaths, jail staff be outfitted with body-worn cameras, charges be dropped in cases more than nine months old, and the jail stop outsourcing inmates to lockups in West Texas and Louisiana. “The trauma experienced by the people detained in jail ripAt vigil, activists demand probe into jail deaths Vigil continues on A7 By Sam González Kelly STAFF WR ITER SAN ANTONIO — Four-yearold Nicolas Villegas kept tugging on the string of his chrome starshaped balloon, restless in his seat while a room full of grownups celebrated his life-changing kidney transplant. His father, 32-year-old Sam Villegas, said he’s been “bouncing off the walls” ever since getting a kidney. Nicolas was one of seven recipients who benefited from a kidney transplant “chain” arranged by University Health. The chain’s seven donors had volunteered to give up one of their kidneys to help someone else. Butinstead of having the donors give a kidney directly to a person they knew, University Health rearranged the pool of donors and recipients to produce more compatible matches. Now the recipients were getting a chance to meet their donors at what University Health called a “reveal.” The donors and recipients who were able to attend Friday’s event sat at a long table in a conference room at the system’s hospital in San Antonio’s Medical Center. They were surrounded by dozens of loved ones, all waiting to know the stranger’s identity with which they’d be forever linked. In front of each person seated at the table lay a lidded blue box containing the identity of their match. After a few words from University Health officials and some of the recipients, the moment arrived. They removed the lids from the boxes to release star-shaped, colored helium balloons — chrome for recipients and blue for donors. Tied to the gently swaying balloon stringswere colored paper cutouts revealing the name of their match. JenniferMilton, chief administrative officer for the University Health Transplant Institute, jokingly compared the reveal to a gender reveal, “ (e)xcept we don’t shoot a gun with pink smoke.” “No one (at this event could have) gotten a transplant if any member of this chain wouldn’t have been able to participate,” Milton said. “If one person drops out of a chain, suddenly you can’t do six of the transplants because it’s so specific who can give to who and and lining it up.” It also meant University Health’s medical team performed seven kidney transplants S.A. event celebrates matches in kidney transplant chain Kidney continues on A7 By Ricardo Delgado STAFF WR ITER Josie Norris/Staff photographer Sarah Spencer hugs a family member of Nilda Solis, to whom she donated a kidney last May, during a reveal ceremony. Houston-area residents will get to see and use the much-anticipated land bridge atMemorial Park next month at what they’re calling “the Biggest Picnic in Texas.” The grand opening event Feb. 11 will showcase the new land bridge and native prairie, a project that kicked off in August of 2020. Beth Arlington, a native Houstonian who lives near Memorial Park, said she is excited about the land bridge’s opening and what it will mean for park visitors and wildlife. “The landscaping is going to be great, and the fact that people and animals can cross Memorial safely is awesome,” she said. “I’m all for it. It was a construction nightmare for a while, but everything is, you know?” H-E-B will provide picnic baskets full of goodies (free while supplies last) and other food and beverages will be available for purchase from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Feb. 11 for the event that will serve as the grand opening of the park’s land bridge and native prairie. Visitors can bring their own picnics but are asked to not bring glass containers. Photos by Jon Shapley/Staff photographer Work continues on the Memorial Park land bridge, which will open with an event billed as "the Biggest Picnic in Texas." The ‘Biggest Picnic in Texas’ opens next month Memorial Park land bridge will kick off with a community event By Diane Cowen STAFF WR ITER Land bridge continues on A7 Workers make their way to the top of the land bridge, which enables wildlife and people to cross safely.

A4 TUESDAY, JANUARY 17, 2023 HOUSTON CHRONICLE | HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM NATION & WORLD POKHARA, Nepal — Search teams retrieved the flight data and cockpit voice recorders Monday of a passenger plane that plummeted into a gorge on approach to a new airport in the foothills of the Himalayas, officials said, as investigators looked for the cause of Nepal’s deadliest plane crash in 30 years. At least 69 of the 72 people aboard were killed, and officials believe the three missing are also dead. Rescuers combed through the debris, scattered down a 984-foot-deep gorge, for them. Many of the passengers on Sunday’s flight were returning home to Pokhara, though the city is also popular with tourists since it’s the gateway to the Annapurna Circuit hiking trail. On Monday evening, relatives and friends were still gathered outside a local hospital, some shouting at officials to speed up the post mortems so they could hold funerals for their loved ones. It’s still not clear what caused the crash, which took place less than a minute’s flight from the airport on a mild day with little wind. In footage taken by a passenger out of a window as the plane came in for a landing, buildings, roads and greenery are visible below. The video, by Sonu Jaiswal and verified by the Associated Press, then shows a violent jolt and a series of jerky images accompanied by yelling before flames fill the screen. Nepal’s Civil Aviation Authority said the aircraft last made contact with the airport, which began operations only two weeks ago, from near Seti Gorge. A witness who recorded footage of the plane’s descent said it looked like a normal landing until the plane suddenly veered to the left. “I saw that, and I was shocked,” said Diwas Bohora. “I thought that today everything will be finished here after it crashes, I will also be dead.” After it crashed, red flames erupted and the ground shook violently, Bohora said. “Seeing that scene, I was scared,” he added. Amit Singh, an experienced pilot and founder of India’s Safety Matters Foundation, said Bohora’s video appears to show a stall, a situation in which a plane loses lift, especially likely at low airspeeds. The twin-engine ATR 72 aircraft, operated by Nepal’s Yeti Airlines, was completing the 27- minute flight from the capital, Kathmandu, to Pokhara, 125 miles west. It was carrying 68 passengers, including 15 foreign nationals, as well as four crew members, Nepal’s Civil Aviation Authority said in a statement. The foreigners included five Indians, four Russians, two South Koreans, and one each from Ireland, Australia, Argentina and France. Jagannath Niraula, a spokesman for the authority, said the flight recorders will be handed over to investigators. Pemba Sherpa, spokesperson for Yeti Airlines, confirmed that both the flight data and the cockpit voice recorders were found. Nepal is home to eight of the world’s 14 highest mountains including Mount Everest. A pilot who routinely flies an ATR 72- 500 plane from India to Nepal said the region’s topography, with its mountain peaks and narrow valleys, raises the risk of accidents and sometimes requires pilots to fly by sight rather than relying on instruments. The pilot, who works for a private Indian airline and insisted on anonymity due to company policy, called the ATR 72-500 an “unforgiving aircraft” if the pilot isn’t highly skilled and familiar with the region’s terrain and wind speeds. Hundreds of people have gathered outside the Pokhara Academy of Health and Science, Western Hospital, where the bodies are being kept. Bimala Bhenderi said was planning to meet her friend, Tribhuban Paudel, on Tuesday when she heard that his flight had crashed. “I’m so sad, I can’t believe it still,” she said in tears. Bikash Jaiswal said he could identify his wife’s brother only by the ring he wore, and that he had yet to tell his wife, who just gave birth to their daughter. Sanjay Jaiswal, who worked as a marketing agent for a private pharmaceutical company in Kathmandu, was flying to Pokhara for the birth. More than 24 hours after the crash, his body lay in the same hospital where his niece was born. “He was a hardworking person, and now there’s no one left in his family to earn,” Bikash said. Park Dae-seong, a minister and spokesperson of the Won Buddhist order, confirmed on Monday the deaths of Arun Paudel and his daughter, Prasiddi. Arun Paudel, 47, had worked as a police officer in Nepal before being introduced into the religion by his brother. He studied the religion for years at a South Korean university before becoming a minister in 2009. He then returned to Nepal and established a school in the Lumbini province in 2013 where children received English, Korean and information technology instruction. Park said Paudel was returning to Nepal for work related to the school, called the Vishow Ekata Academy. The Civil Aviation Authority said that 41 people have been identified. Gyan Khadka, a police spokesperson in the district, said the bodies would be handed over to family after officials finish post mortem reports. The type of plane involved, the ATR 72, has been used by airlines around the world for short regional flights since the late 1980s. In Taiwan, two accidents involving ATR 72-500 and ATR 72-600 aircrafts in 2014 and 2015 led to the planes being grounded for a period. ATR identified the plane involved in Sunday’s crash as an ATR 72-500 in a tweet. According to plane tracking data from flightradar24.com, the aircraft was 15 years old and “equipped with an old transponder with unreliable data.” It was previously flown by India’s Kingfisher Airlines and Thailand’s Nok Air before Yeti took it over in 2019, according to records on Airfleets.net. ATR has not responded to a request for comment. According to the Safety Matters Foundation’s data, there have been 42 fatal plane crashes in Nepal since 1946. Sunday’s crash is the country’s deadliest since 1992, when all 167 people aboard a Pakistan International Airlines plane were killed when it plowed into a hill as it tried to land in Kathmandu. The European Union has banned airlines from Nepal from flying into the 27-nation bloc since 2013, citing weak safety standards. In 2017, the International Civil Aviation Organization cited improvements in Nepal’s aviation sector, but the EU continues to demand administrative reforms. Data, voice recorders found at crash site By Anish Bhattarai, Krutika Pathi and Sheikh Saaliq ASSOC IATED PRE SS Yunish Gurung/Associated Press A portrait is displayed Monday on the coffin of a victim of Sunday’s plane crash in Pokhara, Nepal. At least 69 of the 72 people aboard were killed. Officials believe the three missing are also dead. VISALIA, Calif. — Six people — including a 17-yearold mother and her 6-monthold baby — were killed in a shooting early Monday at a home in central California, and authorities are searching for at least two suspects, sheriff’s officials said. Deputies responded around 3:30 a.m. to reports of multiple shots fired at the residence in unincorporated Goshen, just east of Visalia, the Tulare County Sheriff’s Office said. “Actually, the report was that an active shooter was in the area because of the number of shots that were being fired,” Sheriff Mike Boudreaux told reporters. Deputies found two victims dead in the street and a third person fatally shot in the doorway of the residence, Boudreaux said. Three more victims were found in the home, including a man who was still alive but later died at a hospital, he said. The sheriff said investigators are searching for at least two suspects. They believe there is a gang connection to the killings. The sheriff’s office conducted a narcoticsrelated search warrant at the residence last week, Boudreaux said. “We also believe this was not a random act of violence. We believe this was a targeted family,” he said. Two of the victims, the teen mother and her young child, were shot in the head, the sheriff said. Goshen is a community of about 3,000 residents southeast of Fresno in the agricultural San Joaquin Valley. California shooting kills baby, five others ASSOC IATED PRE SS ITALY Mafia boss captured after 30 years on run Italy’s No. 1 fugitive, a Mafia boss convicted of helping to mastermind some of the nation’s most heinous slayings, was arrested Monday when he sought treatment at a private clinic in Sicily after three decades on the run. Matteo Messina Denaro was tried in absentia and convicted of dozens of murders, including helping to mastermind, along with other Cosa Nostra bosses, a pair of 1992 bombings that killed top anti-Mafia prosecutors — and led the Italian state to stiffen its crackdown on the Sicilian crime syndicate. He faces multiple life sentences that he is expected to serve in a maximum security prison and under the particularly restrictive conditions reserved for top organized crime bosses. FRANCE Thousands march for Iran protesters Up to 12,000 people marched Monday to the European Parliament in the eastern French city of Strasbourg in support of Iran’s anti-government protesters while the Eiffel Tower lit the night with the slogan “Woman. Life. Freedom,” which embodies the protest movement spilling beyond Iran. The Eiffel Tower display also beamed the message, “Stop executions in Iran,” highlighting a demand of protesters. Both messages pay tribute to Mahsa Amini, whose death in September triggered demonstrations in Iran, along with arrests and executions. Paris posthumously declared Amani an honorary citizen in October, and Paris City Hall has said the Eiffel Tower displays Monday were a homage to Amini and to “those who are bravely fighting for their freedom as the (Iranian) regime is continuing executions of protesters.” The Strasbourg march was organized by Iranians in Europe on the 44th anniversary of the day when Iran’s last shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, ailing and under growing pressure, left the country forever. CHINA Chemical plant blast kills 5, injures dozens A massive explosion at a chemical plant in northeastern China killed at least five people and left eight missing, state broadcaster CCTV said Monday. More than 30 other people were injured in the explosion Sunday on the outskirts of the city of Panjin in Liaoning province east of the capital, Beijing. The cause of the accident remained under investigation, authorities said. WASHINGTON, D.C. White House: No logs for Biden’s residence White House officials said Monday that there are no visitor logs that keep track of who comes and goes from President Joe Biden’s personal residence in Wilmington, Del., where six classified documents were discovered in recent days. A top House Republican demanded Sunday that the White House turn over visitor logs for Biden’s home, citing what he called the “serious national security implications” of the fact the documents may have been accessible to people without security clearances. But a spokesperson for the White House Counsel’s Office said no such logs exist because Biden’s home is not an official government property. ENGLAND Officer pleads guilty to sex abuse charges A London police officer has pleaded guilty to charges of abuse, including rape and sexual assault, against 12 women over nearly two decades. The officer, David Carrick, 48, whose job had included parliamentary and diplomatic protection duties, admitted to 49 charges covering more than 70 instances of serious sexual offending, according to prosecutors and the police. He had already admitted most of the charges at an earlier hearing, but he pleaded guilty in a London court to several more charges Monday, involving rape and assault. From wire reports AROUND THE NATION AND WORLD Jean-Francois Badias/Associated Press Activists gather Monday in Strasbourg, France, to support Iran’s anti-government protesters. Paris’ Eiffel Tower also was lit to honor Mahsa Amini, whose death led to the protests. Armed assailants kidnapped about 50 women in northern Burkina Faso last week, the government said on Monday, the latest security incident in the landlocked West African country, which has been battling a jihadi insurgency since 2015. The women were abducted on Jan. 12 and 13 as they were foraging for fruit outside two villages near the city of Arbinda, the regional governor, Lt. Col. Rodolphe Sorgho, said in a statement. No group had claimed responsibility as of Monday, but extremist groups linked to alQaida and the Islamic State have for years carried out attacks and kidnappings in Burkina Faso. Until recently, however, women could move more easily in rural areas than men, often walking for days from displacement camps back to the villages they fled to check on their crops and houses. Burkina Faso’s leader, Captain Ibrahim Traoré, seized power in a coup in September and made the recovery of territories lost to armed groups his priority. But the government controls only about half of the country, according to estimates by research groups and regional leaders. Aziz Diallo, the mayor of Dori, a locality in northern Burkina Faso, said in a telephone interview on Monday that clashes between local branches of alQaida and the Islamic State group were frequent in the area, but that it was too early to tell who had abducted the women. Dozens of women abducted by Burkina Faso rebels By Elian Peltier NEW YORK T IME S

A6 TUESDAY, JANUARY 17, 2023 HOUSTON CHRONICLE | HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM pared to do battle but ready to make peace” — said House Democrats would essentially follow that same approach this session, depending on the direction Republicans go. “My hope and my preference is that we’re going to work on fixing things,” said Martinez Fischer, who served in the House from 2001 to 2017 and won back his seat in 2018. “Every session that I’ve come here, there’s been no shortage of good ideas. There’s always just been a shortage of resources. Hopefully we can have a perfect union of good ideas and resources to improve lives.” His comments came hours before House Speaker Dade Phelan, R-Beaumont, was resoundingly re-elected over a right-wing challenger who had sought to scale back Democrats’ power in the lower chamber. Phelan, in a speech following the vote, laid out a list of mostly bipartisan priorities and suggested he would preserve the long-standing tradition of appointing members of the minority party to chair committees. “For the newcomers here, words of caution — please do not confuse this body with the one in Washington, D.C.,” Phelan said. “After watching Congress attempt to function last week, I cannot imagine why some want Texas to be like D.C.” Phelan added that the state’s overflowing coffers should be spent on property tax relief aimed at “runaway appraisals,” expanding health care access, and addressing a scope of infrastructure needs, including roads, water access, flood control and broadband internet. Martinez Fischer said he has “read with interest Speaker Phelan’s desire to spend budget surpluses on infrastructure,” and plans to “take him up on that conversation.” But beyond the areas of agreement, dueling priorities have already begun to emerge for how to spend the surplus, with advocates on the left pushing for more permanent investments in education, low-income housing and other social services they argue have been underfunded for years — none of which have been mentioned by state Republican leaders so far. Not so ‘warm and fuzzy’ With only 64 members in the 150-seat House, Democrats seemingly hold little power to shape the legislative agenda, including how the state’s extra cash is spent. But Martinez Fischer said his party can find leverage in certain situations, like on GOP-backed constitutional amendments, which require two-thirds support — and thus some Democratic support — to clear the House. He said other opportunities could arise from Republican intra-party disputes. “The legislative process is a game of math, and how you can count to 76 votes in this House. Sometimes Republicans can do that all by themselves, and sometimes they need us,” Martinez Fischer said, adding that he views it as his responsibility to “identify those moments, and how we can leverage those opportunities, to say if we’re going to be partners in certain areas.” The full GOP agenda is still coming into focus this session, though Republicans have already filed bills that would restrict or ban gender-affirming health care for minors and “instruction regarding sexual orientation and gender identity” in schools, among other issues prioritized by social conservatives. Several Democrats said they backed Martinez Fischer’s bid for caucus chair — the position that drives the party’s political and legislative strategy in the lower chamber — because they viewed him as the best option to defeat the most divisive GOP priorities. “He knows how to fight if necessary,” said state Rep. Jolanda Jones, a freshman Democrat from Houston. “Things aren’t all warm and fuzzy here.” State Rep. Josey Garcia, a San Antonio Democrat and Air Force veteran serving her first term, said she backed Martinez Fischer in part because he “leads from the front,” a quality of successful military leaders. “Coming in, he’s been really supportive of me and has displayed the leadership that I’m looking for as a military woman,” Garcia said. “He has this institutional knowledge, akin to my 20 years in the military, 20 years in my duty station.” House Democrats tapped Martinez Fischer as their caucus leader last month, picking him over Austin state Reps. Gina Hinojosa and John Bucy. After Bucy withdrew, the race came down to Martinez Fischer and Hinojosa — both of whom played a central role in Democrats’ move to break quorum and flee to Washington, D.C., in 2021, in the hopes of thwarting a major GOP-backed voting bill. Martinez Fischer is taking the reins from state Rep. Chris Turner, a Grand Prairie Democrat who opted not to run for a fourth term leading the caucus. Turner, who narrowly fended off a challenge from Martinez Fischer in 2020, initially resisted the idea of breaking quorum. Martinez Fischer and other Democrats have not publicly criticized Turner’s leadership, though the caucus’ selection of Martinez Fischer is seen as a clear signal of support for a more sharp-elbowed approach. Asked if there is any lingering tension from the quorum break, which dissolved over the objections of some members, Martinez Fischer said House Democrats are “rowing in the same boat in the same direction.” “We’ve all been home in our districts. We’ve all been back with our families, back to our jobs and our normal way of life,” he said. “I think some of that water is under the bridge. Whatever isn’t, we should address it swiftly and decisively. We’ve now had leadership elections and the majority of those bodies decided to go in a new direction.” [email protected] DEMS From page A1 William Luther/Staff photographer State Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, D-San Antonio, center, presents freshman Rep. Mihaela Plesa with a ceremonial gavel. gration structures and the climate crisis. She said she’s “exhausted, exasperated and, frankly, disappointed” to hear her father’s words about justice quoted so extensively alongside “so little progress” addressing society’s gravest problems. “He was God’s prophet sent to this nation and even the world to guide us and forewarn us. ... A prophetic word calls for an inconvenience because it challenges us to change our hearts, our minds and our behavior,” Bernice King said. “Dr. King, the inconvenient King, puts some demands on us to change our ways.” President Joe Biden was scheduled Monday to address an MLK breakfast hosted in Washington by the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network. Sharpton got his start as a civil rights organizer in his teens as youth director of an anti-poverty project of King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference. “This is a time for choosing,” Biden said, repeating themes from a speech he delivered Sunday at Ebenezer at the invitation of Sen. Raphael Warnock, the senior pastor at Ebenezer who recently won re-election to a full term as Georgia’s first Black U.S. senator. “Will we choose democracy over autocracy, or community over chaos? Love over hate?” Biden asked Monday. “These are the questions of our time that I ran for president to try to help answer. ... Dr. King’s life and legacy — in my view — shows the way forward.” Other commemorations echoed Bernice King’s reminder and Biden’s allusions that the “Beloved Community” — Martin Luther King’s descriptor for a world in which all people are free from fear, discrimination, hunger and violence — remains elusive. In Selma, Ala., a seminal site in the civil rights movement, residents were commemorating King as they recover from a deadly storm system that moved across the South last week. King was not present at Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge for the initial march known as “Bloody Sunday,” when Alabama state troopers attacked and beat marchers in March 1965. But he joined a subsequent procession that successfully crossed the bridge toward the Capitol in Montgomery, punctuating efforts that pushed Congress to pass and President Lyndon Johnson to sign the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The Pettus Bridge was unscathed by Thursday’s storm. At Ebenezer, Warnock, who has led the congregation for 17 years, hailed his predecessor’s role in securing ballot access for Black Americans. But, like Bernice King, the senator warned against a reductive understanding of King. “Don’t just call him a civil rights leader. He was a faith leader,” Warnock said. “Faith was the foundation upon which he did everything he did. You don’t face down dogs and water hoses because you read Nietzsche or Niebuhr. You gotta tap into that thing, that God he said he met anew in Montgomery when someone threatened to bomb his house and kill his wife and his new child.” King “left the comfort of a filter that made the whole world his parish,” turning faith into “the creative weapon of love and nonviolence,” Warnock said. While echoing Bernice King’s call for bolder public policy, Warnock noted some progress in his lifetime. As he’s done through two Senate campaigns, Warnock noted that he was born a year after King’s assassination, when both of Georgia’s senators were staunch segregationists, including oneWarnock described as loving “the Negro” as long as he was “in his place at the back door.” But, Warnock said, “because of what Dr. King and because of what you did ... I now sit in his seat.” KING From page A1 Andrew Harnik/Associated Press Participants sing during a wreath-laying ceremony at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington, D.C., Monday. celebrated the occasion at the 29th annual MLK Grande Parade in Midtown, which began at the same time. For the Original MLK Jr. Day Parade, people lined up along the curb with strollers and folding chairs as floats, bands and dancing troupes marched down the street amid the tall buildings. Among the parade participants were the SWAGG Boiz, a youth step team from Channelview, a Conley Elementary School group with blue and gold pom-poms, and uniformed, energetic marching bands from the University of Houston and Texas Southern University that motivated the crowd alongside to stand and dance along to the music. Some parade-goers brought food or munched on tamales sold in foil packets from a cooler. Participants tossed candy into the crowd and children rushed into the streets for the treats. One boy stuffed his loot into a Spiderman backpack while other kids wasted no time eating their spoils. Mayor Sylvester Turner, grand marshal of this year’s parade, smiled and waved from a float decorated with the words from King’s mountaintop speech. Police Chief Troy Finner marched on foot. Other city leaders, faith leaders and politicians cruised by in cars and on floats. The celebration continued with live music, activities, vendors and food at Hermann Park Square following the downtown parade. Across the city, others recognized and celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. at events at the Children’s Museum and Rothko Chapel. As someone passed out toys to the spectators, Kerpatrick Adams caught a green bouncy ball for his 5-year-old daughter Bailey, who was perched atop his shoulders. It was the first time he had brought his kids to the parade, Adams said, and they were excited to be there. To him, the day marked a chance to reflect on history and progress. “We still got a long way to go to get there,” Adams said. “We slowly but surely getting there, but we still got a long fight to go.” Michelle Simpson, a Houston native who said she used to miss school for the parade, echoed the sentiment as she celebrated the day with her mother, friends and other relatives. “It’s just a day to really reflect on the accomplishments we have made as a nation, but then also to realize how much further we have to go,” she said. “Some of the things that we were talking about then, we’re still talking about.” Courtney Harmon and her 12-year-old son Bryce, meanwhile, were other first-time parade-goers. Although they live in The Woodlands, the pair stayed at a downtown hotel so they could walk to the parade in the morning, claiming a good spot near the start of the route. Harmon said she wants to teach her sixth-grade son that the federal holiday is more than just a day off from school. “This is a day of remembrance, a day of unity, a day of understanding where we’re trying to be in the world,” she said. Keith Cornelius saw the day as an opportunity for teaching, too. The executive director of the Urban Enrichment Institute brought nearly two dozen middle and high school boys to the parade. His organization serves boys from Fifth Ward schools, including Wheatley and Kashmere high schools, empowering them to become responsible young men in their communities and families by offering scholarships, college tours and other enrichment opportunities. The parade offers an opportunity to teach the teens about the civil rights leader’s work, Cornelius said. When one of the boys asked Cornelius about the garbage trucks in this year’s parade, he explained the significance. King was protesting for better working conditions for sanitation workers in Memphis in 1968 when he was assassinated. “What I want them to know and understand and appreciate is that sometimes, most of the time, success requires sacrifice,” Cornelius said. Donna Scott and Jackie Carroll stood with bicycles near the start of the parade route after biking from Hermann Park. The women are members of a cycling group for professional Black women that focuses on doing charity in the community. “We have to remember all that he put into existence, in life, through his movement, his marching, his sacrifices,” Carroll said about Dr. King. “I think it’s super important for us to be together today.” [email protected] PARADES From page A1 Brett Coomer/Staff photographer Members of the Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity dance along the parade route as they lead their group during the Original MLK Jr. Day Parade downtown on Monday.

HOUSTON CHRONICLE | HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM TUESDAY, JANUARY 17, 2023 A7 offer a permanent visa. Clinton: Deter, deport During the 1980s, southwest border officials went from processing relatively few asylum seekers to hundreds of thousands by the 1990s, according to Muzaffar Chishti, an analyst at theMigration Policy Institute. “Numbers explain everything,” said Chishti. He attributes stricter asylum policies to that uptick in Central American asylum seekers at the border. That increase, along with a newly Republicanmajority Congress in 1994, set a more authoritative tone towards migrants during the Clinton administration. The president deployed 400 border agents and fleets of new vehicles to patrol the border near El Paso. Additionally, the Republican-led Congress drafted a major immigration bill to hasten deportation for people crossing the border illegally, a process called “expedited removal.” Exemptions were made for people who passed a credible fear interview: If they told border agents they feared persecution at home, they would be allowed to enter and make their case before an immigration judge. By 1997, a total of 6,300 border agents were policing the southwest border, roughly twice the number employed in 1987, according to the Cato Institute. CBP born under Bush President George W. Bush campaigned on comprehensive immigration reform. Any hope of legislative change was dashed within the first year of his administration, after the 9/11 terrorist attacks reframed border and immigration policy with a new laser focus on homeland security. Early in the Bush administration, Congress created a Department of Homeland Security and within the new agency, Customs and Border Protection. The move consolidated the border, customs, safety and security arms of the U.S. government under one roof. In 2006, Congress authorized 850 miles of border fence and additional Border Patrol staff. But the influx of migrants only grew and, by 2007, the undocumented immigrant population reached a peak of 12.2 million people. ‘Deporter-in-chief’ Facing pressure over this record-breaking undocumented population, President Barack Obama focused, especially during his first term, on removing undocumented immigrants already living in the U.S., earning him themoniker “deporter-in-chief.” His administration also saw an uptick of migrants arriving for humanitarian reasons. When Obama took office, just 1percent of border crossers were either asylum seekers or migrant children traveling alone. By 2018, that share ballooned to roughly 33 percent, according to analysis by the Migration Policy Institute. In response, in 2012, Obama created the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which allowed undocumented young people brought to the U.S. as children to obtain work authorization and remain in the U.S. with temporary protection from deportation. By the end of his tenure, Obama had deported more than 1.2 million people, more than any other president, the undocumented population had declined to 10.7 million and Border Patrol had 17,000 agents patrolling as roughly 650 miles of fencing blocked entries along the southwest border, according to the Cato Institute. Trump slashes entries After campaigning on a stronganti-immigrant, nativist platform, President Donald Trump made historic moves to limit the legal avenues for asylum seekers seeking humanitarian relief in the U.S. and curb the number of unauthorized border crossers. In 2018, Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy prompted the separation of thousands of migrant children from their parents in an effort to deter migrants from arriving at the border. The Trump administration implemented three additional policies which effectively barred certain migrants from getting asylum: the transit ban, Remain in Mexico and Title 42. Efrén Olivares, deputy legal director at the Southern Poverty Law Center, and other attorneys, have said these policies violate international treaties, international human rights laws, and domestic laws. By the end of Trump’s term, with COVID-19 raging, border officials were denying immigrants access to asylum by quickly removing them from the country through Title 42, under a provision of the U.S. health code. Biden’s plans After a dip in border crossings in 2020, during the first year of pandemicera restrictions, the number of crossings spiked and reached record numbers when President Joe Biden took office — even though Title 42 remained intact. Political and economic turmoil in Latin America and the Caribbean during the pandemic spurred historic numbers along with the migrant misperceptions that Biden had more welcoming border policies. “Biden’s immigration rhetoric during his campaign may have been the biggest pull factor for people coming to the border,” said Chishti, the migration policy analyst. Now, Biden’s new proposal expands the use of Trump-era Title 42 expulsions, allowing border officials to quickly send away migrants at the border and stop them from seeking asylum, while also providing safe, legal opportunities for Haitians, Cubans and Nicaraguans to enter the country. BORDER From page A3 There also will be live music, face painting and self-guided tours of the newly finished 100- acre project. Educational components will teach visitors about native prairie, the area’s original ecosystem. The Gulf Coast native prairie once ran from Brownsville, Texas, north to Lafayette, La., but now is considered an endangered ecosystem with just 1 percent of that historical range left. There are ecological reasons for restoring native prairie, since the roots of its plantings can run 20 feet deep and absorb plenty of water during heavy rains, serving as natural flood mitigation. Seeding of the prairie, which can take several years to complete, was funded with a $10 million gift from the Cyvia and Melvyn Wolff Foundation. “All I know is that it’s supposed to be more conservationist, and that’s a good thing,” said Chase Jones, who called himself a regular visitor to Memorial Park. “I think it’ll bring better wildlife management to the park.” A collaborative effort of the Memorial Park Conservancy, City of Houston, Houston Parks and Recreation Department, Kinder Foundation and Uptown Houston, the project launched with a $70 million catalyst gift from the Kinder Foundation and is one component of the park’s 10-year master plan. The project included creating two sets of tunnels for cars — one eastbound and one westbound — to create a land bridge across Memorial Drive for pedestrians and wildlife. There also are new trails for walkers, joggers and bicyclers and a “wet prairie” where water can gather. Martin Lopez, 58, was hanging out at Memorial Park with his daughter on Monday when he realized there was going to be a grand opening for the land bridge thanks to signs around the park. He said he does not visit often, but the tunnels and the land bridge piqued his and his wife’s interest. “We were driving through the tunnels and my wife asked me if we could walk over those land bridges,,” he said. “I think it’s a really nice project. It looks good and it’ll serve a good purpose.” Parking will be limited for the picnic, so those planning to attend can park at Lot H, 1643 Memorial Dr., and take a free shuttle to the park. Bus lines that go to the park include bus 20 from the Magnolia Park Transit Center or 47 or 84 from the Northwest Transit Center. Bus stops near the park include those at Woodway and Memorial (an 8- minute walk), West Loop North and Woodway (a 12-minute walk) or North Post Oak and Woodway (a 16-minute walk.) Jhair Romero contributed to this report. [email protected] LAND BRIDGE From page A3 ples throughout our communities. It tears apart families, it keeps parents away from their children and it continually eats away at the wellbeing of our most vulnerable community members,” said Bethany Fabrygel, an organizer with the Jailhouse Justice Coalition. A spokesman for Ogg’s office said he would “make the district attorney aware of the allegations.” Two people already have died at the jail in 2023, continuing a spike that saw 27 people die there in 2022 — the most in nearly two decades. Last week, the jail’s top official submitted his resignation to the Harris County Sheriff’s Office, citing discomfort with a new direction in sheriff’s office leadership amid the confluence of issues facing the jail. Another vigil, organized by Restoring Justice, was planned for Monday afternoon in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The group said on its Instagram page that it would “walk to Harris County Jail to sing songs and pray from the street for the 9,000+ detainees to hear our collective love for them.” Critics have said punitive bail laws are at least partly to blame for overcrowding at the jail, which was operating beyond its 10,000-person capacity Sunday. The vast majority of inmates still are awaiting trial, and about 20 percent have been assigned bail of less than $10,000, according to county data. One man who died at the jail earlier this month was being held in lieu of $100 bail for misdemeanor trespassing, and was in the process of being released when he reportedly was involved in an altercation with guards. The sheriff’s office has acknowledged the issues at the jail but argued the problems extend beyond any one agency. A spokesman Sunday evening pointed to previous statements the office has made about the various factors that contribute to crowding issues at the jail. “All these different entities — various law enforcement agencies and prosecutors, health care providers, judges, the sheriff’s office — are all cogs in the criminal justice system, and when that system creates a backlog where we have more people coming in than leaving, you have a crowding situation like we have,” Jason Spencer, chief of staff for Sheriff Ed Gonzalez, said last week. Amaal Munei, a cofounder of the Jailhouse Justice Coalition, led the crowd in reciting the names of each person who has died at the jail since the start of 2022. They held electronic candles and faced a table laden with white flowers and photos of Kristan Smith and Evan Lee, whose families were in attendance. The seven-story jailhouse loomed large in the background. “This building is supposed to be for rehabilitation and housing, taking care of human beings,” said Jacilet Griffin, Lee’s mother. “If they’re not able to operate and take care of human beings … they need to shut this building down.” [email protected] VIGIL From page A3 back-to-back in a three-week period in May and early June instead of one at a time. After the names were revealed, the pairs and their familiesmingled to exchange embraces, filling the room with excited chatter and laughter. Nicolas and his mother, Daniela Rodriguez, met 45-year-old Randall “Blake” Baron, whose kidney gave Nicolas his newfound energy. Rodriguez, 30, also was one of the seven donors. Like Baron and several others, she had expected to be giving her kidney to a loved one. Baron had signed up to donate a kidney to his brother, Brad Hall. While Baron’s kidney went to her son, Rodriguez’s went to 46- year-old Maria Contreras. In a message she’d written to Contreras, Rodriguez said, “You allowed me to help my son, and I am grateful to you. … knowing I helped someone in a similar situationmeant somuch for our family. If I could, I would doit again.” Contreras and two of the living donor’s weren’t able to attend Friday’s reveal. Guadalupe Hughes met Mary Galindo, the 59-year-old woman who got Hughes’ kidney, originally intended for Hughes’ sister Nilda Solis. Both Hughes, 61, and Solis, 57, attended the event with 31 family members who’d traveled from Zapata and elsewhere to attend the reveal. They’d even gotten matching T-shirts to wear to the celebration. Solis met with 31-year-old Sarah Spencer, who initially intended to donate her kidney to her 62-year-old father, Glenn Spencer. When asked by University Health to donate her kidney to a complete stranger instead of her father to facilitate the chain, she accepted the request with no reservations. “It seems crazy to not do something like that when you can help more people,” Sarah Spencer said. “This also gives seven more spots to people on the kidney transplant list.” Glenn Spencer’s donor could not attend the event, but theymet through a video call beforehand. Glenn Spencer, despite his formerly dire situation, found humor in it all. Since they never removed his kidneys, he now has three. “I had never been around anybody that had a transplant,” Glenn Spencer said. “So (I was told), ‘Well, we’re gonna put your kidney right here,’ and I’m like, ‘You’re going to what?’ ‘You’re gonna have three kidneys,’ and I’m like, ‘OK!’ ” University Health’s Milton said a living kidney donation is the safest and most effective transplant method. “Patients receiving organs from living donors often get their transplants in months as opposed to an average five-year wait for a kidney,” a University health spokesperson said in a statement. Meanwhile, the life expectancy for dialysis patients is five years, Milton said. Milton capped off the event with more remarks, praising the hard work of the University Health staff and the selflessness of the donors. Donors and recipients alike then gathered for a “family photo.” “You have this distinct honor of being able to tell people your superpower is that with one surgery, one donated kidney, you saved seven lives,” Milton told the donors. [email protected] KIDNEY From page A3

A8 TUESDAY, JANUARY 17, 2023 HOUSTON CHRONICLE | HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM Bay Buccaneers and founder of Pro Athletes in Recovery, has finished his book “Off Center,” a memoir about his battle and recovery from painkillers. “Scott being one of my best friends and everything that he’s been through, what he’s doing now is such a timely topic, obviously, after what happened to Damar,” Grimes said. Nationwide statistics on sudden cardiac arrest deaths are difficult to determine, said Martha Lopez-Anderson, outgoing executive director for Parent Heart Watch, a national advocacy group for parents of athletes lost to sudden cardiac arrest. “Currently in our country, there is no national mandatory registry,” said Lopez-Anderson. “That’s kind of a handicap that we have so we track stories of death and survival in children, teens, and young adults up to college age.” The group depends on the Cardiac Arrest Registry to Enhance Survival at Emory University in Atlanta. Registration is voluntary and 30 states participate. According to the most recent data collected, in 2020, the organization reported 23,000 deaths that year, the highest number reported. Stephens, who attended the national convention of Parent Heart Watch in Houston this weekend, shares those kinds of statistics when he speaks to civic groups and during radio and television interviews when he talks about Cody, about heart safety and what he thinks school officials and families should do to help prevent another tragedy. His efforts have led to the passage of HB 76, Cody’s Law, in the Texas Legislature in 2019. The law gives parents the option to have their children undergo an echocardiogram as part of their physicals. The heart screening can detect underlying issues in 75 percent of cases, according to Dr. Kimberly Harmon, section head of the sports medicine department and professor at the University of Washington. The number 76, secured by State Representative Dan Huberty for the bill, was the jersey number worn by the towering 18-year-old who was 6-foot-9 and weighed in at 289 pounds. Following the passage of Cody’s Law, Stephens has traveled both to Pennsylvania and Indiana to testify on behalf of similar bills before their legislatures. The Pennsylvania bill passed while the Indiana bill fell short. Florida also has a similar bill that fell short, but Stephens feels confident more states will see the benefits and adopt the law. Stephens and his wife Melody also founded the Cody Stephens Foundation, through which they were able to screen thousands of students per year. The organization has also been able to install SaveStations with automated external defibrillators at Crosby ISD’s Cougar football stadium, the Crosby baseball stadium and his home church. The group plans to add another to the Crosby Rodeo and Fairgrounds this May before the rodeo. Stephens has a month before Super Bowl week to refine his message and prepare to share it in as powerful a way as he can. “It might seem monotonous because you tell the same story basically to every outlet whether they’re from Cincinnati, Orlando, New York, ESPN, or whoever,” he said, “but it’s a great way to get your message out.” One message is certain, though. Stephens preaches three steps if someone goes down with an apparent heart attack. “Every second is important. If they’re not administered CPR within six minutes, they’re not going to make it. The steps are start CPR, have someone call 911, find an AED and administer shock if necessary,” he quoted from the American Heart Association. Grimes and Stephens became good friends when they coached baseball in North Shore Little League when the facility was on Freeport Street in Cloverleaf. They have maintained that friendship over the last two decades. “We’ll start on Tuesday morning and probably finish up on Thursday afternoon,” Grimes said about the process of interviews. “Every big station from around the country is there set up in a big convention room and we just go from table to table.” Grimes is the founder of Pro Athletes In Recovery, a 501(C)(3) charity that assists pro athletes in crisis and addiction. With the release of his own book last year, he will spend his interview time on the book and the charity. Since his son’s death 11 years ago, Stephens has reflected on a choice his family made and the toll it would take on their lives. When he and his wife moved in 1996 from North Shore, they looked at homes in The Commons in Huffman and the grassy fields of Crosby. They chose Crosby as a better fit. “Huffman was doing heart screenings, and Crosby elected not to. I live with that decision every day. If we had moved to Huffman, my son might still be alive today,” he said. Crosby has been screening since the death of Cody. “Which side of the district line you live on shouldn’t decide whether your kid lives or dies.” For more information about the Cody Stephens Foundation, visit www.codystephensfoundation.org. To learn more about Pro AIR, visit www.proathletesinrecovery.org. [email protected] HEART From page A1 Randy Grimes Randy Grimes is a retired 10-year veteran of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers with ties to the Houston, North Shore and Kingwood areas. He also founded Pro Athletes in Recovery. Courtesy Scott Stephens Scott Stephens testifies before a state House of Representatives committee to support what became Cody’s Law in 2019. Randy Grimes Randy Grimes’ memoir was released last year.

HOUSTON CHRONICLE | HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM TUESDAY, JANUARY 17, 2023 A9 OPINION Nancy A. Meyer • PUBL ISHER & PRE S IDENT Jack Sweeney CHA IRMAN Jennifer Chang MANAG ING ED ITOR Maria Reeve EXECUT IVE ED ITOR Chris Fusco MANAG ING ED ITOR Lisa Falkenberg VP/ ED ITOR OF OP IN ION Raj Mankad DEPUTY OP IN ION ED ITOR F o u n d e d 1 9 0 1 • A H e a r s t N e w s p a p e r Sure sounds great on the stump: The benevolent governor doing his best Robin Hood impression and promising to send half of a projected $27 billion surplus back to the long-suffering property tax payers of Texas. “Because this is your money, I want to return at least half of that money to you with the largest property tax cut ever in the history of Texas,” Gov. Greg Abbott told supporters on the campaign trail last year. It’s certainly a good line, easily digestible for Texans who may have a limited understanding of state budget machinations, and so superlative, you’d half expect Abbott to show up at your doorstep, Ed McMahon-style, with a giant novelty check. Then Comptroller Glenn Hegar delivered even better news last week: That $27 billion surplus to end the 2022-2023 biennium in August is now actually $32.7 billion. Hegar framed this windfall as a “once-in-a-lifetime” opportunity, and surely many Texans who want a slice of that pie will see it that way. It’s easy to say no to interest groups and lobbyists when the cupboard is bare; less so when Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the leader of the state Senate, is waxing poetic about the state economy as a “sky full of rainbows.” Rainbows, though, are preceded by rain. We can’t forget that this windfall is largely the result of plenty of gloom and hardship for Texas families: inflation that led to higher prices and higher tax collections on purchases. First, it’s not quite the cash bonanza that the top-line number would lead you to think. Roughly one-third of the surplus is earmarked for highway funds and the state’s rainy day fund. The rest is available for general spending that must be spent before August. Hegar factored a shallow recession in his figures and expects inflation rates to cool significantly in the next several years, which would mean that sales tax receipts would not shoot up again by the next budget cycle. The potential for a deep economic recession that could send state revenues plummeting still looms, as the Federal Reserve continues to inch up interest rates to bring down inflation. As such, lawmakers shouldn’t focus solely on ephemeral tax cuts that could force the state to raise taxes in leaner years or massive new programs that could wind up on the chopping block if revenues tank. Using the money to patch holes in everything from public education to the foster care system would both be fiscally responsible and make a meaningful difference in people’s lives. Think of it as getting an unexpected 20 percent raise on your salary, but your boss says you won’t get another one for years. Replacing your broken-down water heater or fixing your leaky roof would be a far better use of that money than running up your credit card on new golf clubs. The state spending cap, which was put into place in 1978 as a check on the growth of government, is also a significant obstacle. In November, the Texas Legislative Budget Board forecast that lawmakers could spend about $12.5 billion more in the next budget than they did in the current biennium, which amounts to less than half of the $33 billion. The state also hasn’t factored in how much money it owes the federal government for Medicaid costs, which, some experts told the editorial board, could be as much as $4 billion. Those limits would certainly put Abbott’s concept of property tax relief in jeopardy, and perhaps for the better. It’s one thing to make such a grand promise in the heat of a charged reelection campaign, but the fanciful notion that a property tax cut is “returning” the surplus to taxpayers is misguided. After all, property owners alone didn’t create this windfall because it mostly didn’t come from property taxes. Every Texan who bought something at an inflated price and paid more sales tax did. Property taxes in this “low tax” state are brutal, yes. Members of this board know that from personal experience. But the reasons for that have more to do with Abbott, Patrick and lawmakers refusing to close gaping tax loopholes benefiting wealthy owners of skyscrapers and other big sites than they do inflation. So why should homeowners see anymore benefit from the surplus than other consumers? They shouldn’t. It’s also worth noting that many Texans — including residents of cities such as Houston and San Antonio — saw an average decrease on their tax bills ranging from $50 to $70. To be sure, lawmakers seem to be in agreement that tax cuts are a top priority, whether through a rebate check, increasing the homestead exemptions or even cutting the sales tax, which would help renters. But any sizable cut will require the Legislature to vote by a simple majority to bust the constitutional spending cap — which Patrick has already signaled he is reluctant to do. We believe the idea has merit — and even fiscal conservatives agree — particularly if busting the cap enables the Legislature to provide meaningful tax relief as well as spread out the surplus to fund a broader range of initiatives that would impact millions of Texans. Lawmakers could start with increasing the base amount of money that public schools get per student, which has remained stagnant at $6,160 since 2019. State employees haven't received a raise in seven years. Retired teachers could get another one-time check to offset cost-of-living increases, or better yet, an actual cost-of-living raise to their pension checks for the first time in 19 years. The surplus could be used to pay down the state Employees Retirement System's nearly $15 billion in unfunded pension liability. Public university systems are asking for $1 billion to stave off tuition increases. Big-city mayors in Texas, including Houston's Sylvester Turner, are making the case for increased funding for mental health services. While billions in federal funds will certainly help address our roads and bridges and other infrastructure, the state can supplement that by putting even more money toward speeding up implementation of rural broadband internet access and upgrading aging water pipelines. On the criminal justice side, pay raises for Texas Department of Criminal Justice staff are long overdue, as evidenced by Texas’ dangerously understaffed prisons, and the agency has repeatedly requested the Legislature to provide funds to install air-conditioning units in its prisons. The state’s broken foster care system is also in dire need of funding, particularly toward boosting rates for care providers in the legacy system Adding up all these needs shifts the sunny prognosis of plenty to one of not nearly enough to cover all the deferred maintenance, all the overdue bills. Suddenly, despite the billions in surplus, Texas doesn’t seem so wealthy. EDITORIAL Is tax relief Texas’ best use of $33B surplus? Lawmakers should spend those funds to impact as many people as possible. Marvin Pfeiffer/Staff file photo Gov. Greg Abbott, shown with Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and House Speaker Dade Phelan, vowed to send half of a state surplus back to Texans who pay property taxes. Budget surplus Regarding “$33 billion budget surplus marks a ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ opportunity for Texas lawmakers,” (Jan. 9): As a constant reader of the Chronicle, I am well aware of the social needs that are lagging in our state. Then I see on the front page of Tuesday’s edition the state’s projected surplus of $33 billion. In my dreams for a better Texas, I see funds going to Child Protective Services so that children in that agency’s care receive prompt, safe placements. I see funding put into improving mental health services, especially for young Texans who suffered most from the pandemic’s social isolation. I imagine money apportioned to improving maternal health care so that babies do not have to begin life without a healthy mother, or maybe no mother at all. I see funds going to the Texas Medical Board to improve their depth and timeliness of response to complaints so that there are no more movies like “Dr. Death” created from stories in Texas. I see carefully targeted funding made available to slow the closure of critical access hospitals that serve rural Texans. Is our Legislature awake? John T. James, Houston Disappointment Regarding “In some schools in Va., ‘equity’ seems to mean hiding success,” (Jan. 13): George Will’s article about not disclosing the merits of students struck a chord with me. When my children were little, a friend, who was a teacher, would keep her kids home on awards day because they would “feel bad” if they didn’t get one. Apparently the school bought into the idea, and on awards day, they would give every single student some kind of an award, even if it was just “good attitude.” I always thought this was ridiculous and didn’t prepare them for real life, where if you do excellent work you may get a raise and your co-workers who don’t work as hard or as well don’t get a raise. I think part of the problem with fired people returning to work to maim and kill their former co-workers, as well as rejected lovers killing their partners, has a direct relationship with not learning to live with disappointment earlier in life. Not everyone has equal skills or intelligence, and people need to learn to live with the fact that not everyone is going to be at the top and just because you want something doesn’t mean you will get or deserve it. Emily Murphy, Kingwood LETTERS BIBLE VERSE A generous person will prosper; whoever refreshes others will be refreshed. Proverbs 11:25 SEND LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Viewpoints c/o Houston Chronicle, P.O. Box 4260, Houston, Texas 77210 or [email protected]. We welcome and encourage letters and emails from readers. Letters must include name, address and telephone numbers for verification purposes only. All letters are subject to editing. Last week’s battle of the stovetop was seemingly over almost as soon as it began. Within days of a Consumer Product Safety Commission official raising the concept of banning gas stoves to address indoor pollution, the agency’s head and the White House itself scrambled to assure Americans their kitchens were safe from the feds. But in Washington, the natural gas industry may have its eyes trained on the wrong adversary. Roughly 40 percent of U.S. households cook with gas, a practice that amounts to less than 0.5 percent of U.S. consumption. As I wrote here, though, that belies the importance of cooking in fostering a personal affinity for what is an invisible fossil fuel. “This week’s episode of range rage underscores how personal energy policy decisions can be for end-users,” as Kevin Book of ClearView Energy Partners put it. Find a way to break that link, and gas demand writ large becomes more vulnerable in this era of climate change. Yet it is fanciful to believe that break will emanate from the federal government, especially one now incorporating this particular Republican-controlled House. The past year showed that, even with unified government, Democrats had to adopt a climate policy that was all carrots and no sticks and even then passed only via budget reconciliation. No, it is the states the gas industry needs to worry about. And that is mainly because of where the country’s gas stoves are installed. The states where gas ranges are relatively popular — as in, above the roughly 40 percent national average — tend to be in the Northeast or out West. Conversely, electric stoves dominate the South and large swaths of the Midwest. Older Northeastern and mid-Atlantic cities built early gas networks, including for street lamps, making stoves a natural market extension. California, which leads the nation in both percentage and absolute terms for household gas cooking, produced a quarter of the world’s oil supply a century ago — and oil producers are always looking for someone to take their gas. That regional dispersion means those little flames warming up the dinner tend to be blue in more ways than one. To quantify this, I sorted the states in terms of the degree of unified control of their legislature and governor’s mansion, along with whom they favored in the 2020 presidential election. Some 38 states have a Democratic or Republican trifecta, with virtually all of them selecting President Joe Biden or former President Donald Trump accordingly. Here is how that stacks up with regard to stoves. More than half of U.S. households using a gas stove are in states with unified Democratic control and where Biden won. Throw in states where Biden won but government is divided, and the blue-ish share rises to more than two-thirds. New York alone is home to almost 1 in 10 U.S. households with a gas stove. California hosts 1 in 5. Washington’s division makes the states even more important battlegrounds over energy and climate policy. We see this in the flurry of anti-ESG legislation in redder states and ever more ambitious green agendas in their bluer counterparts. It is the latter that pose the bigger threat to gas demand via regulation, not merely because of their ambition but also because they are where those home fires burn most. Liam Denning is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. White House isn’t coming for gas stoves; states are By Liam Denning

A10 TUESDAY, JANUARY 17, 2023 HOUSTON CHRONICLE | HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM

HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM BUSINESS • TUESDAY, JANUARY 17, 2023 • SECTION B The rapid growth of solar power in Texas continued in 2022 as it generated nearly three times the amount of electricity statewide it did just two years ago. In all, solar produced 6 percent of the power generated on the Texas grid last year — and the rapidly growing source of zero-carbon electricity is poised to play a bigger role in the state. As production from solar farms and natural gas-fired plants keeps increasing, coal is becoming an ever-smaller portion of the state’s energy mix, according to the year-end report from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the state’s grid operator. Coal-fired power stations produced 17 percent of the state’s electricity last year, down from 32 percent five years earlier. Gas remains the top power source in Texas, responsible for 43 percent of the state’s generation last year. Fifty-nine percent of the power generated in ERCOT last year came from fossil fuel-based sources, a slight decline from 2021. Spot market prices for natural gas shot up last year in part because European nations shifted from purchasing gas from Russia after its invasion of Ukraine in February. Texas gas producers were happy to fill the gap, and exports from the Gulf Coast skyrocketed. While that’s a boost for producers, it’s forcing U.S. consumers and utilities to compete with Europe for the commodity — and driving up rates for utility customers. By May, the average cost of 1 million British thermal units of natural gas reached $8.14, a 180 Solar power burns brighter in state Alternative energy source generates 3 times where it did just two years ago across Texas Staff file photo CPS Energy is considering quadrupling its solar capacity in the Solar continues on B7 next five years. It’s also looking at adding to its battery storage. By Diego Mendoza-Moyers STAFF WR ITER When the Swiss offshore drilling company Transocean learned of a worker’s death on a competitor’s drillship in the Gulf of Mexico in 2020, the company decided it was time to make something it had studied a reality: bringing robots onto an offshore drilling platform. Work in offshore oil and gas can be dangerous. The hours are long, the workplace is small and the tasks can be repetitive. Craig McCormick, senior manager of innovation and new technology at Transocean, said the crew on the rival company’s ship had been working on a riser, which connects the drilling platform to the wellhead. The death was one of six fatalities that happened offshore in 2020, according to the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement. “They got a riser wrench stuck on a bolt, and in the process of removing it, the wrench struck the guy, knocked him off of the spider (another part of the riser), and he fell over and was pronounced dead,” McCormick told the Houston chapter of the American Petroleum Institute at a January event about robots in the oil Photos by Brett Coomer/Staff photographer Jim Walker, robot programmer, runs a test at the Offshore Robotics facility in Houston. Robots slip into Big Oil Bringing them out of a controlled environment is relatively new Robot continues on B7 By Kyra Buckley STAFF WR ITER Dan Allford, one of three equal owners of Offshore Robotics, checks on a test run using a riser robot. SAN FRANCISCO — While still grappling with the fallout from a company he did take private, beleaguered billionaire Elon Musk is now facing a trial over a company he didn’t. Long before Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion in October, he had set his sights on Tesla, the electric automaker where he continues to serve as CEO and from which he derives most of his wealth and fame. Musk claimed in an Aug. 7, 2018, tweet that he had lined up the financing to pay for a $72 billion buyout of Tesla, which he then amplified with a follow-up statement that made a deal seem imminent. But the buyout never materialized, and now Musk will have to explain his actions under oath in a federal court in San Francisco. The trial, which begins on Tuesday with jury selection, was triggered by a class-action lawsuit on behalf of investors who owned Tesla stock for a 10- day period in August 2018. Musk’s tweets back then fueled a rally in Tesla’s stock price that abruptly ended a week later after it became apparent that he didn’t have the funding for a buyout after all. That resulted in him scrapping his plan to take the automaker private, culminating in a $40 million settlement with U.S. securities regulators that also required him to step down as the company’s chairman. Musk has since contended he entered that settlement under duress and maintained he believed he had locked up financial backing for a Tesla buyout during meetings with representatives from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. The trial’s outcome may hinge on the jury’s interpretation of Musk’s motive for tweets that U.S. District Judge Edward Trial starts on Musk’s tweets on Tesla By Michael Liedtke ASSOC IATED PRE SS Tesla continues on B7 Q: I am interested in transferring my car to my two daughters when I die. When I printed the form that I found online, it said my total estate needs to be less than $75,000 to use the form. What should I do if my estate will be more than $75,000? I don’t want my will to go through probate. Also, if I can use this form, can the transferee be both of my daughters, or do I need to list only one? A: You found the wrong form on the internet. The one you found is used after a person dies, and you are seeking to do a simplified form of probate. That form is called a “Small Estate Affidavit.” The form you were most likely trying to find is called Beneficiary Designation for a Motor Vehicle (Form VTR-121). This form allows you to name one beneficiary to receive your car upon your death. You can’t designate two people on this form. In order to have your car pass to your daughters, you would either need to have a will which leaves the car to them, or your daughters would need to use a different form called Affidavit of Heirship for a Motor Vehicle (Form VTR-262) after your death. Alternatively, if you die without a will, the Small Estate Affidavit mentioned above might still work because the $75,000 amount does not include your home, certain exempt properties and non-probate properties. If you die with a will though, your daughters would need to get the car transferred using this form before the probating of your will is started at the courthouse. Once probate is initiated, this form can no longer be used. You should meet with an estate planning attorney to properly plan your estate. Q: A recent column you wrote addressed the question of whether probate is needed if everything has a designated beneficiary. Our wills cover all our bank and investment accounts, and we plan to add transfer-ondeath designations for our cars and house. The only items not specifically covered in our wills are personal possessions and household items. Do we need to specify the beneficiaries for our personal and household items to eliminate the need for probate? A: Your wills should state who gets your personal and household items, but there is no need to probate a will simply to transfer these things. Couches, spoons and carpets don’t have legal title, so your benefiLipman continues on B4 How to make sure auto title passes cleanly to your heirs Ronald Lipman STATE YOUR CASE

B2 TUESDAY, JANUARY 17, 2023 HOUSTON CHRONICLE | HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM Business Editor Jonathan Diamond: [email protected] • 713-362-1513 Venezuela’s public sector workers are mounting the biggest anti-government protests in years as they fall behind in an economy that has embraced the U.S. dollar. Hundreds of public school teachers marched in downtown Caracas on Monday, joined by nurses, pensioners and others to demand higher salaries to compensate for the rapid depreciation of the local currency. Workers organized at least 50 protests Monday and more than 150 across the nation in the past week, according to preliminary estimates from the Venezuelan Observatory of Social Conflict, which tracks unrest. The average monthly wage for teachers of around 500 bolivars, or about $25, is barely enough to pay for public transportation costs, protesters said. “As well as being a teacher, I am a nail technician, a baker and graphic designer,” said Ines Gil, 43, a teacher at a Caracas public school who, like others, donned black to symbolize her mourning for decent pay. “I have to do whatever it takes to survive.” By allowing the dollar to freely circulate, the socialist government of President Nicolas Maduro helped orchestrate a rebound from the 2013-2020 economic crash — one of the deepest slumps in world history. But while many private sector employees now get paid in dollars, and are enjoying rising living standards, public sector workers paid in inflation-hit bolivars are being left out. Vice President Delcy Rodriguez dismissed the protests as being part of a “destabilization plan” organized from Washington. “They want to knock us off the path of growth,” she said in remarks broadcast on state TV. In Monday’s demonstration, protesters ripped up and stomped on bolivars while chanting that they need a “dignified” level of wages to stay in their country. More than 7 million Venezuelans have emigrated in recent years. Maduro may be reluctant to order a violent crackdown of the kind seen in the past. He is waiting for the release of more than $3 billion frozen abroad, and another wave of bloodshed could cause Washington to block his access to the funds. In a bid to calm the protests, the government gave Gil and other teachers a $30 bonus Sunday. The government has often appeased such protests with handouts and bonuses payments but is unable to be very generous, given its weak finances. Bloomberg’s Cafe con Leche index, which tracks the price of a cup of coffee, jumped 53 percent in December. Venezuela’s central bank hasn’t published official inflation figures since October. “I am sick and have no health insurance or money to pay for the scans I need,” said Heyra Vega, 49, who didn’t elaborate on her medical problems. “This time we’ve lost our fear. We’re tired of this situation.” Venezuela’s public sector workers protest for higher pay By Andreina Itriago Acosta and Patricia Laya BLOOMBERG Ariana Cubillos/Associated Press Teachers and others march for higher salaries and pensions Monday in Caracas, Venezuela. Workers organized at least 50 protests in Venezuela, according to one group’s early estimates. AUSTIN — The Texas Department of Public Safety is opening an application process to potentially add more medical cannabis dispensaries, the agency announced in a news release Monday. Only three dispensaries have been licensed in Texas in the past three years. The application process to add more dispensaries under the Compassionate Use Program opened Monday and will run until April 28, the agency said. A decision on how many licenses would be approved would be made “at a later date,” the release said. But it’s unlikely that DPS will make a decision before summer, in case the Legislature passes any laws that could change the number of dispensaries allowed. Texas passed a law in 2015 that legalized the use of cannabis-related substances for medical purposes. The law, however, was highly restrictive in the conditions it covered and how much THC, the element that gives marijuana users a high, was allowed. The Legislature expanded the list of conditions that could be treated under the Compassionate Use Program a few years later. But even then, some advocates believe the program is too selective of the conditions that are allowed and are hoping the Legislature will pass expansion legislation this year. Wayne Mueller, the chief of DPS’ regulatory services division, said at a December DPS Commission meeting that the agency would open the application process this month. But he said a decision on the timing for adding licenses would not be made until June or July. “This will help us gauge what the actual interest is,” Mueller said. The three dispensaries now open are all in central Texas, with two in Austin and one in Schulenberg, about 100 miles west of San Antonio. With only three dispensaries that can provide cannabidiol that is low in THC, some advocates are frustrated that there is not enough supply to meet demand. But Nico Richardson, the acting CEO Compassionate Cultivation, of one of the three companies licensed in Texas believes that the move by DPS is premature. Richardson said Florida and New York have a higher number of patients than Texas in a similar program. He also said that adding new licenses wouldn’t be helpful because licensed producers can only store the product in the facility where it is manufactured. “So if I want to serve a patient in El Paso, and my facility is in Austin, I have to send a driver to El Paso to deliver the product or give it to a patient at a pickup location in El Paso,” Richardson said. “And whatever is not picked up has to be driven back … as soon as humanly possible.” Since the program started in 2015, interest has grown. At first, physicians could only prescribe to patients who suffered from uncontrollable epileptic seizures. By the end of 2018 — the first full year the program was in place — more than 600 patients and 50 doctors were enrolled, according to DPS data. But in 2019, the Legislature passed a law that allowed thousands more people to benefit from the program, allowing patients who suffered from terminal cancer, autism and multiple sclerosis to receive prescriptions. But Richardson said he believes that only about 8,000 of those patients are “active patients,” or patients who haven’t signed up once or twice. “While the system has grown pretty dramatically since 2017, the patient base is incredibly small in Texas,” Richardson said. “We think it’s closer to 100,000 total patients before we need to initiate another process for bringing on new licenses.” One of the reasons why there are a smaller number of patients in Texas is because there is a limit on the number of conditions eligible for the Compassionate Use Program. The Legislature can pass laws that would expand what physical conditions can be treated under the program. But it’s unclear what support is for expansion. State Sen. José Menéndez, DSan Antonio, has filed a bill that would legalize medical marijuana. “We should leave the decision of cannabis therapies up to a medical professional and to their patients. We don’t regulate how doctors can dispense pain medication or opioids or narcotics,” Menéndez said. “It should be dispensaries that people can access, safely, legally and affordably. I don’t see the reason why you would limit the number of dispensaries any more than you would limit pharmacies.” Medical marijuana use has gained steam over recent years. According to the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, 37 states and District of Columbia, have laws permitting marijuana for medical use. And last summer, Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller announced he was in favor of legalizing the drug for medicinal purposes. Miller, who won reelection in November over Democratic challenger Susan Hays, is the highest-ranking Texas Republican to endorse fully legalizing medical marijuana. DPS opens applications for more medical cannabis By Aarón Torres DALLAS MORN ING NEWS If you spent a pretty penny on holiday-related shopping and activities in recent months, you’re not alone. Winter holiday sales for 2022 were expected to reach up to $960 billion, which would reflect an 8 percent increase over 2021, according to the National Retail Federation (NRF). If you’re entering the new year with increased debt and decreased savings, chances are you have goals of paying off credit cards and building up your bank account. These are common financial resolutions in 2023, as decades-high inflation looms and Americans look to strengthen their finances. Fortunately, some simple steps can help you get on the right financial track and sleep better at night. 1. Make a spending and saving plan The key to money management is knowing how much comes in and goes out every month. Using a spreadsheet, pen and paper, or a budgeting app, list your monthly income and expenses. Identify ways you can reduce spending, such as dining out less frequently, canceling subscriptions you don’t use or shopping around for more affordable car insurance. Dollars that can be removed from spending categories can be moved into buckets devoted to saving money or debt repayment. A budgeting app can help simplify the process of listing out your income and expenses. Apps like You Need a Budget, Mint and Goodbudget contain user-friendly features for tracking spending and increasing savings. 2. Find a savings account with the best rate A savings account provides easy access to cash when you need it, making it a good place for an emergency fund. Not all savings accounts are equal, however, since rates can vary a great deal among banks. Many big banks pay rock-bottom annual percentage yields (APYs), while some online banks and credit unions pay yields that are well above the national average. “Shopping around and putting your money in a high-yield savings account can put hundreds of dollars in additional interest earnings in your pocket,” says Greg McBride, CFA, Bankrate chief financial analyst. “Additional return without sacrificing access to the money when needed or the protection of federal deposit insurance — it is the only free lunch in finance.” 3. Separate your savings according to goals Some banks and credit unions can help you save money by allowing you to devote portions of your funds to different goals. To avoid going into debt when the next holiday season arrives, you might use this strategy to set up a dedicated holiday shopping fund. Alliant Credit Union allows its members to open supplemental savings accounts, each of which can be used to fund a specific goal. “One supplemental savings account could be for a vacation, while others can be for things like holiday spending or a down payment on a new car or a new house,” says Chris Moore, director of deposit and payments product strategy at Alliant. Up to 19 such accounts can be opened by a member, and recurring transfers can be set up from other accounts, Moore says. 4. Create a credit card repayment plan Whether due to holiday shopping or other expenses, you may have accumulated balances on multiple credit cards. The various strategies on how to pay off such debt include the avalanche method, which consists of paying off the credit card with the highest interest rate first and continuing with the strategy until all your debts are gone. A benefit of this strategy is you’re removing the debts that are costing you the most money in interest first. Another strategy is the snowballmethod,whichinvolves paying off your credit card balances in order from the smallest to the largest. “An example of this is if you have one with $500 and one with $5,000, you are best to start with the smallest card first no matter the interest,” says Keith Heritage, investment advisor representative and founder of Heritage Financial Services in Newberry, Florida. “This allows you to gain momentum and helps with the process.” 5. Do a credit card balance transfer Consumers can help pay down credit card debt through a balance transfer to a card with a low interest rate or a zero-percent rate, Heritage says. Transferring your balance to a card with a zero-percent introductory period allows you to pay down a balance without incurring additional interest. Such balance transfers can be useful for anyone with high-interest debt who needs more time to pay it off. Those with good or excellent credit scores often qualify for top-rated balance transfer credit cards with longer low-interest or interest-free introductory periods. 6. Curb your credit card spending Whether you’re paying down a credit card balance or determined to keep out of debt, reevaluate how you use your credit cards. You can avoid being hit with hefty interest fees by not charging more than you can pay off completely when the bill arrives. One way to reduce your credit card bill is by canceling subscriptions, memberships or other services you’re charged for every month that you don’t use. Reducing your monthly credit card charges frees up money in your budget that can be used to pay down the balance faster. 7. Put windfalls to work It can be tempting to book a vacation or go on a shopping spree when you receive a financial windfall such as a tax refund, work bonus or inheritance. Rather, consider putting some or all of the money toward savings or debt repayment. One way to use a financial windfall is to set it aside for holiday-related expenses you’ll have next winter. This can help you avoid generating credit card debt when you’re ready to start spending money on things like gifts, parties or trips during the holidays. You’ll thank yourself the following January when the big credit card bills don’t arrive. 7 tips to pay holiday debt, increase savings By Karen Bennett BANKRATE.COM Sarinya Pinngam/Tribune News Service If you’re entering 2023 with increased debt and decreased savings, chances are you have goals of paying off credit cards.

HOUSTON CHRONICLE | HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM TUESDAY, JANUARY 17, 2023 B3 102.03 AGRICULTURE Name C Date Last Price Pvs Close Day % Chg YTD % Chg Unit Live Cattle Apr 23 1.61 1.61 0.0 -0.6 usd/pd Coffee Mar 23 1.52 1.49 1.5 -9.3 usd/pd Corn Mar 23 6.75 6.71 0.6 -0.5 usd/bu Cotton Mar 23 0.82 0.82 0.3 -1.3 usd/pd Lumber Mar 23 431.80 420.20 2.8 12.8 usd/bd ft Orange Juice Mar 23 2.07 2.07 -0.1 1.5 usd/pd ENERGY Ticker Name $1K return 1mo $1K return 3mo $1K return 1yr XLE Energy Select Se 1,077 1,132 1,452 XES SPDR Oil & Gas E 1,171 1,391 1,423 USO US Oil Fund 1,079 998 1,168 Daily Losers Currency Last 1-Mo Ago 6-Mo Ago 1-Yr Ago Australian Dollar 1.44 1.50 1.47 1.39 Brazilian Real 5.15 5.31 5.44 5.52 British Pound 0.82 0.82 0.84 0.73 Canadian Dollar 1.34 1.37 1.30 1.25 Chilean Peso 822.35 886.93 946.57 822.80 Chinese Ren (yuan) 6.74 6.97 6.74 6.35 Colombian Peso 4,669.26 4,790.26 4,310.41 4,013.18 Euro 0.92 0.94 0.99 0.88 Indian Rupee 81.62 82.87 79.98 74.24 Japanese Yen 128.51 136.60 138.14 114.63 Mexican Peso 18.78 19.78 20.47 20.30 Norwegian Krone 9.91 9.90 10.10 8.74 S. African Rand 17.04 17.68 17.12 15.39 S. Korean Won 1,235.86 1,307.44 1,317.18 1,192.65 Singapore Dollar 1.32 1.36 1.40 1.35 Taiwan Dollar 30.28 30.72 29.91 27.55 Closing values for the most active contract of various commodities: COMMODITY PRICES INTERNATIONAL INDEXES Index Last Price Chg. % Chg YTD FTSE 100 7,860.07 16.00 0.2 5.5 Hang Seng 21,746.72 8.06 0.0 9.9 Mexico IPC 53,631.89 55.17 0.1 10.8 Nikkei 225 25,822.32 -297.20 -1.1 -1.0 S&P/Toronto SE 20,390.33 30.23 0.1 5.2 The median price of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg: Value of the U.S. dollar in selected currencies: Tick Name Last Price % Chg Volume RIG Transocean Ltd 5.66 3.9 24,911,018 FTK Flotek Industries Inc 1.24 3.3 342,675 AE Adams Resources & Energy 48.70 3.2 33,818 TTI TETRA Technologies Inc 3.94 2.3 634,359 LNG Cheniere Energy Inc 156.51 2.0 1,909,301 WTI W&T Offshore Inc 6.01 1.7 2,287,298 OIS Oil States International 8.30 1.7 625,670 HAL Halliburton Co 42.66 1.2 6,660,290 NBR Nabors Industries Ltd 168.95 1.2 17,845 COP ConocoPhillips 121.47 1.1 4,360,209 Tick Name Last Price % Chg Volume EPM Evolution Petroleum Corp 6.93 -5.2 213,643 DRQ Dril-Quip Inc 28.65 -2.4 228,111 CTRA Coterra Energy Inc 25.10 -1.1 6,763,663 MRO Marathon Oil Corp 27.08 -1.1 7,098,439 EOG EOG Resources Inc 129.46 -0.8 558,580 DVN Devon Energy Corp 63.59 -0.7 1,280,816 OXY Occidental Petroleum Corp 65.31 -0.7 1,152,014 CQP Cheniere Energy Partners 57.10 -0.6 50,794 WMB Williams Cos Inc/The 32.81 -0.5 4,659,656 SWN Southwestern Energy Co 5.97 -0.5 11,621,955 2022 Forecast Crude Oil 96.00 Natural Gas 6.62 METALS Name C Date Last Price Pvs Close Day % Chg YTD % Chg Unit Copper Mar 23 4.22 4.22 -1.8 8.6 usd/pd Gold Feb 23 1,921.70 1,921.70 -0.2 5.0 usd/oz Palladium Mar 23 1,787.30 1,787.30 -1.9 -2.5 usd/oz Platinum Apr 23 1,072.50 1,084.30 -1.1 -1.0 usd/oz Silver Mar 23 24.37 24.37 0.3 1.7 usd/oz 2023 Forecast 84.25 4.87 Name C Date Open High Low Settle Chg Unit Lt Sw Crude Feb 23 80.10 80.22 78.53 79.86 1.47 barrel Natural gas Feb 23 3.56 3.68 3.52 3.42 -0.28 MMBtu Gas blend Feb 23 2.54 2.54 2.49 2.53 0.06 gal Heating oil Feb 23 3.27 3.28 3.24 3.26 0.04 gal Ethanol Feb 23 - - - 2.16 0.00 gal *Trades on London Stock Exchange S&P 500 3,999.09 0.4% ENERGY PRICES BLOOMBERG HOUSTON CHRONICLE 150 MOVERS ENERGY FUTURES BLOOMBERG COMMODITY PRICE OUTLOOK ETFs - $1,000 INVESTED IN EACH J A S O N D J 3,500 3,600 3,700 3,800 3,900 4,400 U.S. AND INTERNATIONAL STOCK INDEXES Cash price in U.S. dollars paid at delivery for various commodities: DAILY GAINERS DAILY LOSERS Tick Name Last Price % Chg 1-month % Chg Volume ILMN Illumina Inc 201.11 3.8 0.8 439,131 WFC Wells Fargo & Co 44.22 3.2 7.4 8,344,980 SWK Stnly Blck & Dckr 88.91 3.1 16.5 519,091 TGT Target Corp 164.60 3.0 12.4 1,116,485 AMZN Amazon.com Inc 98.12 3.0 11.7 15,341,560 EXPE Expedia Group Inc 106.09 2.9 20.3 857,741 LVS Las Vegas Sands 54.97 2.7 15.8 1,147,999 JPM JPMorgan Chs & Co 143.01 2.5 10.6 2,890,868 CZR Caesars Ent 48.37 2.5 2.3 716,694 CLX Clorox Co/The 146.11 2.3 1.0 240,457 Tick Name Last Price % Chg 1-month % Chg Volume NOC Northrop Grumman 461.43 -5.4 -12.9 401,162 F Ford Motor Co 12.72 -5.3 5.0 11,004,620 GM General Motors Co 36.51 -4.7 1.0 5,339,902 DISH DISH Network Corp 14.49 -3.8 0.6 1,549,759 DAL Delta Air Lines 38.20 -3.5 15.4 4,875,608 GD General Dynamics 240.29 -3.0 -2.4 321,353 PNC PNC Fin Svcs Grp 164.00 -2.9 9.0 1,026,304 KMX CarMax Inc 65.00 -2.8 5.8 539,213 LMT Lockheed Martin 449.83 -2.6 -6.6 681,051 VICI VICI Properties 33.15 -2.6 -0.6 4,436,223 PRIME, FED FUNDS Rate 6-month change 1-year change Bloomberg Prime Rate 7.50 57.90 130.77 Fed Funds Target 4.50 157.14 1700.00 2024 Forecast 82.53 4.41 Daily Gainers TREASURIES Bill/Note Last Yld Yld Pvs Day Clo Yld 1Day Net Chg Yld Wk Ago Yld Mo Ago Yld 3-Mo Ago Yld Yr Ago 3-month t-bill 4.60 4.60 0.00 4.61 4.28 3.72 0.12 6 month t-bill 4.78 4.78 0.00 4.82 4.65 4.31 0.29 2-year t note 4.24 4.24 0.00 4.21 4.18 4.50 0.97 5-year t note 3.61 3.61 0.00 3.67 3.63 4.27 1.56 10-year t note 3.51 3.51 0.00 3.54 3.49 4.02 1.79 30-year t bond 3.61 3.61 0.00 3.66 3.55 4.00 2.12 WHAT A U.S. DOLLAR IS WORTH IN . . . J A S O N D J 10,200 11,200 12,200 13,200 SOFT/LIVESTOCK/GRAIN Ticker Name $1K return 1mo $1K return 3mo $1K return 1yr JO DJ-UBS Coffee 919 787 663 CORN Teucrium Corn 1,022 965 1,220 CANE Teucrium Sugar 986 1,032 1,041 CATL ETFS Live Cattle 1,023 1,067 1,041 COW iPath DJ-UBS Liv 981 1,017 1,038 Aug. 2007=100 Prices in U.S. dollars per unit for energy commodities for the contract closest to delivery: Yields for the most recently issued securities: MARKET INDEXES U.S. INDEXES Index Last Price Chg. % Chg YTD Dow Jones Ind. 34,302.61 112.64 0.3 3.5 Nasdaq Composite 11,079.16 78.06 0.7 5.9 S&P 500 3,999.09 15.92 0.4 4.2 BBG Houston 150 506.95 2.73 0.5 5.6 DJ US Total Stk 40,282.76 172.88 0.4 4.6 Russell 2000 1,887.03 10.97 0.6 7.1 Tick Name Last Price 1-day % Chg 1-month %Chg Volume SMLP Summit Midstream Partners 18.29 8.9 4.3 5,412 TALO Talos Energy Inc 20.96 5.4 8.4 877,160 CSTL Castle Biosciences Inc 27.21 4.5 13.0 132,997 NOVA Sunnova En International 21.25 3.9 -0.9 2,232,609 RIG Transocean Ltd 5.66 3.9 32.2 24,911,018 AAOI Applied Optoelectronics 2.43 3.4 13.0 163,564 FTK Flotek Industries Inc 1.24 3.3 2.5 342,675 Tick Name Last Price 1-day % Chg 1-month %Chg Volume TISI Team Inc 8.98 -5.6 28.3 40,534 TELL Tellurian Inc 2.01 -5.6 -16.9 13,486,423 GEOS Geospace Technologies 4.56 -3.8 12.0 14,209 CEQP Crestwood Equity Partners 26.65 -3.1 -3.2 774,738 PNC PNCFinancialServicesGroup 164.00 -2.9 9.0 4,379,375 DRQ Dril-Quip Inc 28.65 -2.4 23.3 228,111 NRG NRG Energy Inc 31.88 -2.3 2.7 3,723,999 BLOOMBERG/CHRONICLE ENERGY INDEX MARKET SUMMARY The Bloomberg Houston 150 includes major companies based in Houston and significant employers in the area. J F M A M J J A S O N D J 75 90 105 Performance of various index-based investment products: Top and bottom performers based on one-day percentage change in stock price: Performance of a basket of Houston-based and other major energy companies over the past 12 months: BLOOMBERG HOUSTON CHRONICLE 150 NASDAQ 11,079.16 0.7% Name Last Price Pvs Day Unit Unleaded Gasoline - NY 2.64 2.58 gallon North Sea Brent 83.11 84.38 barrel W. Texas-Int. - Cushing 79.86 78.39 barrel Nat Gas - Henry Hub 3.47 3.66 MMBtu S&P 500 MOVERS Name Ticker Last Price Chg Day % Chg YTD 52W Low 52W High Div Yld AcdmySprts ASO 55.68 0.30 6.0 25.10 57.85 0.54 AdmsRes & AE 48.70 1.53 25.1 27.40 51.50 1.97 Amazon.com AMZN 98.12 2.85 16.8 81.43 170.83 - Amplify En AMPY 8.86 0.09 0.8 3.10 10.38 - APA Corp APA 45.34 -0.01 -2.9 27.98 51.95 2.21 AppldOptlc AAOI 2.43 0.08 28.6 1.48 4.56 - Archrock AROC 9.53 -0.04 6.1 6.28 10.44 6.09 AT&T Inc T 19.55 0.14 6.2 14.46 21.53 5.68 Bk of Amer BAC 35.23 0.76 6.4 29.31 50.11 2.50 BkrHghsCo BKR 31.63 0.13 7.1 20.42 39.78 2.40 BlckStnMin BSM 16.76 0.22 -0.7 10.45 20.24 10.74 BnchmrkElc BHE 28.71 0.08 7.6 21.11 30.00 2.30 Boeing Co BA 214.13 -0.19 12.4 113.02 229.67 - BP PLC BP 35.56 0.25 1.8 25.37 36.11 4.05 BristowGrp VTOL 28.93 0.32 6.6 21.61 40.10 - Cactus Inc WHD 55.59 0.74 10.6 34.70 64.18 0.79 Cadence Bk CADE 25.82 -0.01 4.7 22.04 34.20 3.41 Carrg Svcs CSV 30.27 0.06 9.9 22.71 57.80 1.49 Castle Bsc CSTL 27.21 1.18 15.6 15.58 48.40 - CenterPtEn CNP 31.31 0.24 4.4 25.03 33.50 2.43 ChampionX CHX 31.98 0.13 10.3 16.64 33.13 0.94 CheniereEn LNG 156.51 3.04 4.4 100.13 182.35 1.01 Chevron CVX 177.56 0.48 -1.1 122.84 189.68 3.20 ChnrEnPrtn CQP 57.10 -0.32 0.4 39.97 62.08 7.50 Civeo Corp CVEO 33.10 0.48 6.4 19.24 33.75 - CllnPtrCo CPE 40.15 0.71 8.3 31.23 66.48 - CmdnPropTr CPT 117.95 -0.38 5.4 107.90 175.69 3.19 CmfrtSysUS FIX 124.23 3.44 8.0 74.14 128.68 0.48 Comcast CMCSA 38.93 0.24 11.3 28.39 51.62 2.77 ConcPhllps COP 121.47 1.31 2.9 78.30 138.49 0.58 Conn's Inc CONN 10.12 0.00 47.1 5.69 25.79 - Coterra En CTRA 25.10 -0.29 2.2 18.11 36.55 10.84 Crown Cstl CCI 150.86 -0.39 11.2 121.71 199.97 4.15 CrscntEnCo CRGY 12.84 -0.02 7.1 10.83 19.65 5.30 CrstwdEqyP CEQP 26.65 -0.85 1.8 22.88 32.96 9.83 CVR Energy CVI 31.92 0.33 1.9 15.12 41.26 5.01 CVS Health CVS 89.92 0.74 -3.5 86.28 111.25 2.69 Devon En DVN 63.59 -0.44 3.4 42.87 79.40 8.49 DPntdeNmrs DD 75.20 0.45 9.6 49.52 84.46 1.76 DR Horton DHI 94.96 -0.63 6.5 59.25 97.47 1.05 Dril-Quip DRQ 28.65 -0.70 5.4 19.10 41.23 - DXPEntrpr DXPE 30.23 0.12 9.7 22.09 34.74 - EntrprsPro EPD 25.75 0.09 6.8 22.75 28.65 7.61 EOG Res EOG 129.46 -0.99 0.0 89.96 149.10 2.55 Erthstn En ESTE 13.83 0.11 -2.8 10.65 22.25 - ExxonMobil XOM 113.15 -0.07 2.6 69.81 114.66 3.22 Fltk Indst FTK 1.24 0.04 10.7 0.68 1.97 - Fluor Corp FLR 36.37 1.05 4.9 19.80 36.50 - FrmEnTech FET 29.08 -0.03 -1.4 16.41 32.00 - Frprt-McMR FCX 45.05 -0.05 18.6 24.80 51.99 1.33 GenElctrCo GE 80.20 1.34 22.7 46.77 80.94 0.40 Genesis En GEL 10.97 -0.01 7.4 7.61 13.44 5.47 Gespc Tech GEOS 4.56 -0.18 8.1 3.76 8.88 - Grp 1 Auto GPI 192.44 -0.24 6.7 136.16 200.86 0.81 GrtLksDrdg GLDD 6.40 0.13 7.6 5.42 15.40 - Hess Corp HES 152.21 1.48 7.3 83.56 153.39 0.99 Hess Midst HESM 31.51 -0.55 5.3 24.33 35.71 7.14 Hllbrtn Co HAL 42.66 0.49 8.4 23.30 43.99 1.13 HlxEnSolGr HLX 7.93 0.03 7.5 2.47 8.00 - Howrd Hghs HHC 82.07 -0.26 7.4 50.90 105.51 - Huntsman HUN 31.12 -0.24 13.2 23.54 41.65 2.73 HwlttPckrd HPE 16.45 0.13 3.1 11.90 17.76 2.92 IES Inc IESC 39.49 0.43 11.0 24.94 50.50 - Insperity NSP 114.81 0.45 1.1 83.94 121.75 1.81 IONGeophys IOGPQ - - - 0.00 1.74 - JPMrgnChs JPM 143.01 3.52 6.6 101.28 159.03 2.80 KBR Inc KBR 51.21 -0.09 -3.0 41.77 56.94 0.94 Kindr Mrgn KMI 18.85 -0.04 4.3 15.78 20.20 5.89 Kirby Corp KEX 63.42 -0.67 -1.4 55.03 75.08 - KLXEnSvcs KLXE 16.09 -0.30 -7.0 3.64 18.63 - Kroger Co KR 45.22 -0.45 1.4 41.82 62.78 2.30 Lexcn Phrm LXRX 2.36 0.07 23.6 1.31 3.49 - LGI Homes LGIH 107.23 2.39 15.8 71.73 137.04 - LyndllBsll LYB 93.73 0.06 12.9 71.46 112.53 5.08 Macy's Inc M 23.01 0.26 11.4 15.10 28.21 2.74 Name Ticker Last Price Chg Day % Chg YTD 52W Low 52W High Div Yld MainStCap MAIN 38.51 -0.30 4.2 31.57 45.43 7.01 Marthn Oil MRO 27.08 -0.30 0.0 17.02 33.42 1.33 MgnlOil & MGY 23.80 0.05 1.5 18.01 30.31 1.68 MRC Global MRC 12.19 -0.15 5.3 7.03 13.45 - Murphy Oil MUR 42.27 0.37 -1.7 25.97 51.29 2.36 NatEnSvcsR NESR 7.64 0.03 10.1 5.64 10.92 - Nbrs Indst NBR 168.95 1.96 9.1 91.58 207.67 - NewparkRes NR 4.87 -0.02 17.3 2.39 4.91 - NineEnSvc NINE 16.35 0.16 12.5 0.91 16.81 - NOV Inc NOV 23.28 0.26 11.4 13.98 24.25 0.86 NOW Inc DNOW 13.24 0.00 4.3 8.44 13.51 - NRG Energy NRG 31.88 -0.74 0.2 30.64 47.82 4.39 NtrlResPrt NRP 48.90 -0.01 -10.0 32.57 54.93 6.13 NxTrOlfldS NEX 10.03 -0.03 8.5 4.82 12.50 - OccdntlPtr OXY 65.31 -0.43 3.7 31.37 77.13 0.80 Ocnrng Int OII 19.08 -0.05 9.1 7.25 19.56 - OilSttsInt OIS 8.30 0.14 11.3 3.51 9.02 - OrionGroup ORN 2.89 -0.03 21.4 2.10 3.77 - ParPacific PARR 23.57 0.66 1.4 11.66 25.38 - Phillips66 PSX 103.03 0.17 -1.0 73.85 113.53 3.77 Plains GP PAGP 12.88 -0.01 3.5 9.04 13.42 8.31 PlnsAllAme PAA 12.07 -0.04 2.6 9.10 12.75 8.86 PNCFinSvcs PNC 164.00 -4.82 3.8 143.52 224.08 3.66 PROS Inc PRO 23.82 -0.48 -1.8 18.09 35.12 - PrsprtyBnc PB 75.02 0.07 3.2 64.69 80.46 2.93 Pttrsn-UTI PTEN 17.37 -0.07 3.1 8.77 20.53 1.84 Pwll Indst POWL 39.01 0.31 10.9 18.81 39.21 2.67 QnxBldngPr NX 24.96 0.46 5.4 18.00 25.94 1.28 QuantaSvcs PWR 148.50 0.69 4.2 93.91 155.00 0.22 Ranger Oil ROCC 42.49 0.99 5.1 27.06 53.59 0.71 RngrEnSvcs RNGR 11.50 0.18 4.5 8.40 11.87 - Schlumbrgr SLB 58.28 0.28 9.0 30.65 58.61 1.20 Shell PLC SHEL 59.61 -0.01 4.7 44.90 61.68 3.36 SlctEnSvcs WTTR 9.17 -0.16 -0.8 6.02 10.43 2.18 SlrsOlfldI SOI 10.72 -0.11 8.0 7.04 14.61 3.92 SlvrBw Res SBOW 27.37 -0.17 -3.2 19.00 49.91 - SmmtMdstPr SMLP 18.29 1.50 9.7 11.52 25.39 - SnnvEnInt NOVA 21.25 0.80 18.0 12.47 31.47 - StellarBcp STEL 30.30 0.11 2.9 26.11 36.09 1.72 SthwstrnEn SWN 5.97 -0.03 2.1 3.81 9.87 - StrlngInfr STRL 33.87 0.70 3.3 20.46 34.86 - StwrtInfoS STC 46.49 -0.54 8.8 35.96 77.29 3.87 Sunoco LP SUN 45.44 0.66 5.4 34.26 46.95 7.27 Svc Int/U SCI 71.15 -0.08 2.9 56.85 75.12 1.52 SWArlnsCo LUV 36.99 0.02 9.9 30.20 50.10 1.95 Sysco Corp SYY 80.33 0.08 5.1 70.61 91.53 2.44 Talos En TALO 20.96 1.07 11.0 9.08 25.49 - Targa Res TRGP 75.40 -0.01 2.6 52.60 81.50 1.86 Target TGT 164.60 4.85 10.4 137.16 254.87 2.62 TC Energy TRP 42.79 0.52 7.4 38.35 59.38 6.21 Team Inc TISI 8.98 -0.53 71.0 5.06 30.70 - TechnipFMC FTI 12.88 0.02 5.7 5.48 13.14 - Tellurian TELL 2.01 -0.12 19.6 1.54 6.54 - TETRA Tech TTI 3.94 0.09 13.9 2.70 5.82 - Tidewater TDW 39.05 0.88 6.0 12.14 39.53 - Transocean RIG 5.66 0.21 24.1 2.32 5.80 - TtlEnrgsSE TTE 64.63 0.08 4.1 43.84 64.93 4.59 Untd Arlns UAL 51.65 0.35 37.0 30.54 53.12 - UntdPrclSv UPS 182.15 -0.80 4.8 154.87 233.72 3.34 US Silica SLCA 12.48 0.02 -0.2 8.91 21.54 - USPhysclTh USPH 89.65 1.19 10.6 73.30 131.50 1.83 Valero En VLO 136.13 0.81 7.3 75.04 146.81 2.88 Verzn Comm VZ 41.86 0.05 6.2 34.55 55.51 6.24 Via Rnwbls VIA 5.75 -0.01 12.5 4.89 11.80 12.61 W&T Offsh WTI 6.01 0.10 7.7 3.57 9.16 - Walmart WMT 145.29 0.48 2.5 117.27 160.77 1.54 Wast Cnnct WCN 130.59 2.60 -1.5 113.50 148.20 0.78 Waste Mgmt WM 154.19 1.51 -1.7 138.58 175.98 1.69 WdsdEnGrp WDS 25.82 0.20 6.7 17.12 26.79 8.44 Westlake WLK 114.39 -0.08 11.6 81.29 141.19 1.25 WhtstnREIT WSR 10.31 -0.01 7.0 8.15 13.66 4.66 WlgrnsBtsA WBA 36.78 0.12 -1.6 30.39 54.35 5.22 WllsFrg & WFC 44.22 1.39 7.1 36.54 60.30 2.71 WstlkChemP WLKP 25.13 0.14 6.9 19.71 29.40 7.50 WstrnMdstP WES 28.32 -0.06 5.5 21.69 29.50 7.06 METALS Ticker Name $1K return 1mo $1K return 3mo $1K return 1yr IAU iShares Gold T 1,072 1,169 1,055 SLV iShares Silver T 1,045 1,328 1,053 TREASURIES, INTEREST RATES Daily close and change in value for selected stock indexes: Daily close of the Nasdaq Composite index and the S&P 500 over the past six months: Top and bottom performers among Houston-based and other major energy companies: BANGKOK — Shares were mostly higher in Europe and Asia on Monday ahead of China’s release of economic growth figures and a policy update this week from Japan’s central bank. Oil prices declined. Germany's DAX edged 0.1 percent higher to 15,101.73 and the CAC40 in Paris was nearly unchanged at 7,022.46. Britain's FTSE was up 0.1 percent at 7,851.93. The future for the S&P 500 lost 0.5 percent while that for the Dow Jones Industrial Average slid 0.3 percent. China was due to release a slew of economic data on Tuesday, including its GDP for the last quarter. Economists estimate that the world's secondlargest economy slowed further in October-December with a sharp rise in COVID-19 outbreaks as the government reversed course and loosened its rigorous pandemic controls. On Wednesday, Japan's central bank is due to provide an update on monetary policy as expectations build that it might opt to let yields on long-term government bonds rise further even if it does not change its minus 0.1 percent benchmark interest rate. The Bank of Japan's decision last month to let the yield on 10-year bonds fluctuate in a wider range shook world markets. In Asian trading Monday, Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 lost 1.1percent to 25,822.32. The Hang Seng in Hong Kong gained less than 0.1 percent to 21,746.72 and the Kospi in Seoul added 0.6 percent to 2,399.86. The Shanghai Composite index added 1 percent to 3,227.59. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 climbed 0.8 percent to 7,388.20. Taiwan advanced 0.7 percent while Mumbai's Sensex lost 0.3 percent. The year has begun with optimism that cooling inflation could lead the Federal Reserve to ease off soon on sharp interest rate hikes that slow the economy and risk causing a recession. They also hurt investment prices. Slowing segments of the economy and still-high inflation are dragging on profits for companies, which are one of the main levers that set stock prices. Friday marked the first big day for companies in the the S&P 500 to show how they fared during the final three months of 2022, with banks at the head of the line. If the economy does fall into a recession, as many investors expect, sharper drops for profits may be set for 2023. That's why the forecasts for upcoming earnings that CEOs give this reporting season may be even more important than their latest results. In other trading Monday, U.S. benchmark crude oil lost 23 cents to $79.63 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent crude, the pricing standard for international trading, gave up 34 cents to $84.94 per barrel in London. World shares higher ahead of China data ASSOC IATED PRE SS

B4 TUESDAY, JANUARY 17, 2023 HOUSTON CHRONICLE | HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM Notice to Physicians and Providers Superior Vision of Texas (Block Vision of Texas, Inc) is a vision care HMO that provides eye health and wellness examinations and corrective eyewear. Applications from physicians and eye care professionals who wish to become network participants under this plan will be accepted from Feb 1, 2023 through Feb 20, 2023. An application may be requested by visiting superiorvision.com/eye-careprofessionals/join and completing the form. In the additional information section please reference “Newspaper Notification”. Superior Vision participates with the following plans: Aetna, Amerigroup, Christus, Children’s Medical Center and Dell Children’s Health Plan. Superior Vision, Attn: Network Development, 881 Elkridge Landing Rd #300, Linthicum Heights, MD 21090 NOTICE TO PHYSICIANS and PROVIDERS Texas Children’s Health Plan, STAR, CHIP and STAR Kids HMO administering medical and mental health services will be accepting letters of application from April 1 – April 20, 2023 from providers who are interested in applying for participation. Please mail your letter of application to Texas Children’s Health Plan, P.O. Box 301011, Houston, TX 77230- Attention: Contract Administration. No phone calls or faxes, please. The Houston Housing Authority (“HHA”), is soliciting proposals with the intent to partner with entities to acquire, rehabilitate, construct, or develop several affordable housing developments, in accordance with the requirements and terms and conditions specified in QBS 23-01 Development Partners. Interested parties who wish to respond to this solicitation must submit the required documents in a sealed envelope by 2 P.M. Central Daylight Time (“CDT”) the second Friday of each month, beginning February 10, 2023 through January 12, 2024, to the Houston Housing Authority Attn: Austin Y. Crotts, MA Subject: QBS 23-01 Development Partners DO NOT OPEN 2640 Fountain View Drive Houston, Texas 77057. QBS 23-01 can be obtained by going to the doing business with HHA section of HHA’s website at www.housingforhouston.com , or by sending an e-mail to HHA’s Procurement Dept. at [email protected] with QBS 23-01 in the subject line. A Fair and Equal Employment Opportunity Agency. For assistance: Individuals with disabilities may contact the 504/ADA Administrator at 713-260-0528, TTY 713-260-0574 or [email protected] The Houston Housing Authority (“HHA”), is soliciting sealed bids for a contractor to perform all the necessary construction-related work needed to facilitate the Remediation and Demolition of Bldg. 127 at the Irvinton Village located 2901 Fulton Street, Houston Texas 77009 , in accordance with the requirements and terms and conditions specified in Invitation for Bid (“IFB”) 23-02. Interested parties are highly encouraged (but not required), to participate in a Pre-bid On-site/Teleconference scheduled for 10 A.M. Central Standard Time (“CST”) January 18, 2023 . Information about the Pre-Bid Conference can be found in Exhibit A of IFB 23-02. Interested parties who wish to respond to this solicitation must submit the required documents in a sealed envelope by 2 P.M. “CST” February 15, 2023 to the Houston Housing Authority, Attn: Austin Y. Crotts, Procurement Manager, Re: IFB 23-02 Remediation and Demolition of Bldg. 127 at the Irvinton Village- DO NOT OPEN, 2640 Fountain View Drive Houston, Texas 77057. IFB 23-02 can be obtained by going to the doing business with HHA section of HHA’s website at www.housingforhouston.com , or by sending an e-mail to HHA’s Procurement Dept. at [email protected] with IFB 23-02 in the subject line. A Fair and Equal Employment Opportunity Agency. For assistance: Individuals with disabilities may contact the 504/ADA Administrator at 713-260-0528, TTY 713-260-0574 or [email protected] Gulf Coast Community Services Association, Inc. is seeking proposals from vendors for the lease of (1) 16’ Box Truck to be used for picking up commodity products and donations and making food distributions/deliveries. The agreement period will be determined by the lease terms. Proposals can be downloaded from the agency’s website at www.gccsa.org. Proposal submission deadline is 5:00 p.m. February 3, 2023. This project is funded by the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs. The Houston Housing Authority (“HHA”), is soliciting sealed bids for a contractor to perform all the necessary construction-related work needed to facilitate the Remediation and Demolition at 100 E. 45th Street, Houston Texas 77003 as part of Clayton Homes, in accordance with the requirements and terms and conditions specified in Invitation for Bid (“IFB”) 23-03. Interested parties are highly encouraged (but not required), to participate in a Pre-bid On-site/Teleconference scheduled for 10 A.M. Central Standard Time (“CST”) January 19, 2023 . Information about the Pre-Bid Conference can be found in Exhibit A of IFB 23-03. Interested parties who wish to respond to this solicitation must submit the required documents in a sealed envelope by 2 P.M. “CST” February 16, 2023 to the Houston Housing Authority, Attn: Austin Y. Crotts, Procurement Manager, Re: IFB 23-03 Remediation and Demolition 100 E. 45th Street, DO NOT OPEN, 2640 Fountain View Drive Houston, Texas 77057. IFB 23-03 can be obtained by going to the doing business with HHA section of HHA’s website at www.housingforhouston.com , or by sending an e-mail to HHA’s Procurement Dept. at [email protected] with IFB 23-03 in the subject line. A Fair and Equal Employment Opportunity Agency. For assistance: Individuals with disabilities may contact the 504/ADA Administrator at 713-260-0528, TTY 713-260-0574 or [email protected] NOTICE TO PHYSICIANS AND PROVIDERS AMERIGROUP TEXAS, Inc. is a medical HMO that offers a wide range of health care services. We will accept applications for participation in our provider network from 12/01/2023 – 12/21/2023. All applicants must meet practice standards. Call us at 713-414-6600 for an application packet. Amerigroup Texas, Inc. Attn: Credentialing Dept. 5959 Corporate Drive, Suite 3500 Houston, TX 77036 Aldine ISD is accepting sealed proposals in its eBid system for Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) Refresh RFP# TS-UPS-02-Y26 and Wireless Networking Refresh RFP# TS-WiFi-02-Y26 until 2/14/2023 at 4pm. Vendors must register and submit a proposal in the eBid system at www.aldineisd.org. CAUSE NUMBER: 2022-22129 Plaintiff: JAVIER BARRIOS vs. Defendant: RUDY SARAGOSA, JR AND HOLDEN ROOFING INC IN THE 269TH JUDICIAL DISTRICT COURT OF HARRIS COUNTY, TEXAS CITATION BY PUBLICATION THE STATE OF TEXAS County of Harris To: RUDY SARAGOSA, JR WHOSE RESIDENCE AND WHEREABOUTS ARE UNKNOWN YOU ARE HERBY COMMANDED to be and appear before the 269TH Judicial District Court of Harris County, Texas in the Courthouse in the city of Houston, Texas at or before 10:00 o’clock A.M. Monday, the 27TH DECEMBER, 2022, being the Monday next after the expiration date of fortytwo days after this citation is issued, and you are hereby commanded and required then and there to appear and file written answer to the PLAINTIFF’S ORIGINAL PETITION, filed in said Court on the 26TH day of APRIL, 2022, in a suit numbered 2022-24863 docket of said court, wherein JAVIER BARRIOS the Plaintiff, RUDY SARAGOSA, JR the Defendant, the nature of plaintiff’s demand and the said petition alleging: MOTOR VEHCLE ACCIDENT SUMMARY ON OR ABOUT AUGUST 2, 2022, PLAINTIFF BARRIOS WAS LAWFULLY TRAVELING SOUTHB OUND IN THE 10800 BLOCK OF ALDINE WESTFIELD IN HARRIS CUNTY, DEFENDANT, SARAGOSA, WAS TRAVELING NORTHBOUND ON THE 10800 BLOCK OF ALDINE WETFIELD DISREGARDED A RED LIGH WHILE ATTEMPTING TO MAKE A LEFT TURN AND STUCK PLAINTIFF’S VEHICLE. AT THE TIME OF THE COLLISION, DEFENDANT SARAGOSA WAS IN THE COURSE AND SCOPE OF HIS DUTIES AS AN EMPLOYEE FOR DEFENDANT HOLDEN. Notice thereof shall be given by publishing this Citation once a week for four consecutive weeks previous to the 27TH day of FEBRUARY 2023, in some newspaper published in the County of HARRIS, if there be a newspaper published therein, but if not, then the nearest county where a newspaper is published, and this Citation shall be returned on the FEBRUARY 21, 2023, which is forty-two days after the date it is issued, and the first publication shall be at least twenty-eight days before said return day. HEREIN FAIL NOT,but have before said court on said return day this Writ with your return thereon, showing how you have executed same. WITNESS: MARILYN BURGESS, District Clerk, Harris County Texas GIVEN UNDER MY HAND AND SEAL OF SAID COURT at Houston, Texas this 10TH day of JANUARY, 2023. (SEAL) Newspaper: HOUSTON CHRONICLE Issued at the request of: COLIN W. JACOBSON 5858 WESTHEIMER SITE 400 HOUSTON, TX 77057 TEL: ( 713) 800-1200 Bar Number: 24116562 Marilyn Burgess, District Clerk Harris County, Texas 201 Caroline, Houston, Texas 77002 P.O. Box 4651, Houston, Texas 77210 By: /s/ Cynthia Clausell, Deputy District Clerk Cynthia Clausell Texas Commission on environmenTal QualiTy NOTICE OF RECEIPT OF APPLICATION AND INTENT TO OBTAIN WATER QUALITY PERMIT RENEWAL PERMIT NO. WQ0010541001 APPLICATION. Sheldon Road Municipal Utility District, 9419 Lamkin Road, Houston, Texas 77049, has applied to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) to renew Texas Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (TPDES) Permit No. WQ0010541001 (EPA I.D. No. TX0020991) to authorize the discharge of treated wastewater at a volume not to exceed a daily average flow of 230,000 gallons per day. The domestic wastewater treatment facility is located at 9403 Sheldon Road, Houston, in Harris County, Texas 77049. The discharge route is from the plant site to Harris County Flood Control District (HCFCD) Ditch G103-07-00 (intermittent portion); thence to HCFCD Ditch G103-07-00 (perennial portion); thence to Muleshoe Lake; thence to San Jacinto River Tidal. TCEQ received this application on November 16, 2022. The permit application is available for viewing and copying at the TCEQ Region 12 Office, 5425 Polk Street, Suite H, Houston, Texas. This link to an electronic map of the site or facility’s general location is provided as a public courtesy and not part of the application or notice. For exact location, refer to application. h t t p s : / / g i s w e b . t c e q . t e x a s . g o v / L o c a t i o n M a p p e r / ? m a r k e r = - 95.135,29.851944&level=18 ALTERNATIVE LANGUAGE NOTICE. Alternative language notice in Spanish is available at https://www.tceq.texas.gov/ permitting/wastewater/plain-languagesummaries-and-public-notices. El aviso de idioma alternativo en español está disponible en https://www.tceq.texas.gov/ permitting/wastewater/plain-languagesummaries-and-public-notices. ADDITIONAL NOTICE. TCEQ’s Executive Director has determined the application is administratively complete and will conduct a technical review of the application. After technical review of the application is complete, the Executive Director may prepare a draft permit and will issue a preliminary decision on the application. Notice of the Application and Preliminary Decision will be published and mailed to those who are on the countywide mailing list and to those who are on the mailing list for this application. That notice will contain the deadline for submitting public comments. PUBLIC COMMENT / PUBLIC MEETING. You may submit public comments or request a public meeting on this application. The purpose of a public meeting is to provide the opportunity to submit comments or to ask questions about the application. TCEQ will hold a public meeting if the Executive Director determines that there is a significant degree of public interest in the application or if requested by a local legislator. A public meeting is not a contested case hearing. OPPORTUNITY FOR A CONTESTED CASE HEARING. After the deadline for submitting public comments, the Executive Director will consider all timely comments and prepare a response to all relevant and material, or significant public comments. Unless the application is directly referred for a contested case hearing, the response to comments, and the Executive Director’s decision on the application, will be mailed to everyone who submitted public comments and to those persons who are on the mailing list for this application. If comments are received, the mailing will also provide instructions for requesting reconsideration of the Executive Director’s decision and for requesting a contested case hearing. A contested case hearing is a legal proceeding similar to a civil trial in state district court. TO REQUEST A CONTESTED CASE HEARING, YOU MUST INCLUDE THE FOLLOWING ITEMS IN YOUR REQUEST: your name, address, phone number; applicant’s name and proposed permit number; the location and distance of your property/activities relative to the proposed facility; a specific description of how you would be adversely affected by the facility in a way not common to the general public; a list of all disputed issues of fact that you submit during the comment period and, the statement “[I/we] request a contested case hearing.” If the request for contested case hearing is filed on behalf of a group or association, the request must designate the group’s representative for receiving future correspondence; identify by name and physical address an individual member of the group who would be adversely affected by the proposed facility or activity; provide the information discussed above regarding the affected member’s location and distance from the facility or activity; explain how and why the member would be affected; and explain how the interests the group seeks to protect are relevant to the group’s purpose. Following the close of all applicable comment and request periods, the Executive Director will forward the application and any requests for reconsideration or for a contested case hearing to the TCEQ Commissioners for their consideration at a scheduled Commission meeting. The Commission may only grant a request for a contested case hearing on issues the requestor submitted in their timely comments that were not subsequently withdrawn. If a hearing is granted, the subject of a hearing will be limited to disputed issues of fact or mixed questions of fact and law relating to relevant and material water quality concerns submitted during the comment period. TCEQ may act on an application to renew a permit for discharge of wastewater without providing an opportunity for a contested case hearing if certain criteria are met. MAILING LIST. If you submit public comments, a request for a contested case hearing or a reconsideration of the Executive Director’s decision, you will be added to the mailing list for this specific application to receive future public notices mailed by the Office of the Chief Clerk. In addition, you may request to be placed on: (1) the permanent mailing list for a specific applicant name and permit number; and/ or (2) the mailing list for a specific county. If you wish to be placed on the permanent and/or the county mailing list, clearly specify which list(s) and send your request to TCEQ Office of the Chief Clerk at the address below. INFORMATION AVAILABLE ONLINE. For details about the status of the application, visit the Commissioners’ Integrated Database at www.tceq.texas. gov/goto/cid. Search the database using the permit number for this application, which is provided at the top of this notice. AGENCY CONTACTS AND INFORMATION. Public comments and requests must be submitted either electronically at https://www14.tceq. texas.gov/epic/eComment/, or in writing to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, Office of the Chief Clerk, MC-105, P.O. Box 13087, Austin, Texas 78711-3087. Please be aware that any contact information you provide, including your name, phone number, email address, and physical address will become part of the agency’s public record. For more information about this permit application or the permitting process, please call the TCEQ Public Education Program, Toll Free, at 1-800-687-4040 or visit their website at www.tceq.texas. gov/goto/pep. Si desea información en Español, puede llamar al 1-800-687-4040. Further information may also be obtained from Sheldon Road Municipal Utility District at the address stated above or by calling Mr. Ryan Nokelby, P.E., HDR Engineering, Inc., at 713-622-9264. Issuance Date: January 6, 2023 UNITED STATES BANKRUPTCY COURT, SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF TEXAS, HOUSTON DIVISION In re: QUOTIENT LIMITED,1 Debtor. ) ) Chapter 11 Case No.23-90003 (DRJ) NOTICE OF COMMENCEMENT OF BANKRUPTCY CASE AND HEARING ON DISCLOSURE STATEMENT AND CONFIRMATION OF PREPACKAGED PLAN PLEASE BE ADVISED THAT ARTICLE X OF THE PLAN CONTAINS CERTAIN DISCHARGE, RELEASE, EXCULPATION,ANDINJUNCTIONPROVISIONS. ALL HOLDERS OF CLAIMS OR INTERESTS THAT DO NOT (X) VALIDLY OPT OUT OF THE RELEASES CONTAINED IN THE PLAN, (Y) FILE AN OBJECTION TO THE RELEASES CONTAINED IN THE PLAN BY THE PLAN OBJECTION DEADLINE THAT IS NOT RESOLVED BEFORE CONFIRMATION, OR (Z) TIMELY VOTE TO REJECT THE PLAN WILL BE DEEMED TO HAVE EXPRESSLY, UNCONDITIONALLY, GENERALLY, INDIVIDUALLY,AND COLLECTIVELY CONSENTED TO THERELEASE ANDDISCHARGEOF ALL CLAIMS AND CAUSESOFACTIONAGAINSTTHEDEBTORANDTHERELEASEDPARTIES. YOU ARE ADVISED AND ENCOURAGED TO CAREFULLY REVIEW AND CONSIDER THE PLAN, INCLUDING THE DISCHARGE,RELEASE, EXCULPATION,AND INJUNCTION PROVISIONS SET FORTH IN ARTICLE X OF THEPLAN,ASYOURRIGHTSMIGHTBEAFFECTED. PLEASE TAKE NOTICEthat, on January 10, 2023 (the “Petition Date”),the above-captioned debtor and debtor in possession (the “Debtor”) filed with the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas (the “Court”) a voluntary petition for relief under chapter 11 of title 11 of the United States Code (the “Bankruptcy Code”) commencing the above-captioned chapter 11 case. Subsequently,the Debtor filed thePrepackaged Chapter 11 Plan of Reorganization of Quotient Limited(as may be amended from time to time, the “Plan”) and a proposed Disclosure Statement for the Prepackaged Chapter 11 Plan of Reorganization of Quotient Limited (the “Disclosure Statement”)2 pursuant to sections 1125 and 1126(b) of chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code. Copies of the Plan and the Disclosure Statement may be obtained free of charge upon request of the Debtor’s solicitation agent, Kroll Restructuring Administration LLC (the“Solicitation Agent”),by calling (833) 234-5627 (U.S./Canada) or (646) 440- 4735 (International), or sending an electronic mail message to [email protected], and are on file with the Clerk of the Bankruptcy Court, 515 Rusk Street, Houston,Texas 77002. The Plan and the Disclosure Statement also are available for inspection on the Court’s website at www.txs.uscourts.gov or free of charge on the Debtor’s restructuringwebsite athttps://cases.ra.kroll.com/quotientlimited. PLEASE TAKE FURTHER NOTICEthat the hearing (the“Combined Hearing”) will be held before the Honorable David R.Jones, United States Bankruptcy Judge, at the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas,515 Rusk Street,Houston,Texas 77002,on February 15, 2023, at 2:00 p.m.(prevailing Central Time) to consider the adequacy of the Disclosure Statement,Confirmation of the Plan,any Objections to any of the foregoing, and any othermatterthatmay properly come beforethe Court. Please be advisedthatthe CombinedHearingmay be continuedfromtimetotime bythe Court ortheDebtorwithoutfurther notice otherthan bysuch adjournment being announced inopen courtorby anoticeof adjournmentorhearing agendafiledwiththe Court. PLEASE TAKE FURTHER NOTICE that any objections (each, an “Objection”) to the Plan or the Disclosure Statement must: (i) be in writing; (ii) comply with the Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure and the Local Rules of Bankruptcy Practice and Procedure of the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas; and (iii)state,with particularity,the legal andfactual basisforthe objection,and,if practicable,a proposedmodificationto the Plan(or related materials)that would resolvesuch Objection. Objections must be filed withthe Court andserved uponthe following parties(collectively,the“Notice Parties”) no laterthan 4:00 p.m.(prevailing Central Time) on February10,2023:(i) proposed counselfortheDebtor,PaulHastings LLP,600Travis Street,58th Floor,Houston,Texas 77002,Attn: James Grogan ([email protected]),Paul Hastings LLP,71 SouthWacker Drive,Suite 4500, Chicago, Illinois 60606, Attn: Matt Murphy ([email protected]), Matthew Micheli (mattmicheli@ paulhastings.com), and Michael Jones ([email protected]), Paul Hastings LLP, 200 Park Avenue, New York, New York 10166, Attn: Jayme Goldstein ([email protected]) and Christopher Guhin ([email protected]);(ii) counseltothe Bridge Noteholders,Senior Secured Noteholders,and Convertible Noteholders,Ropes&Gray LLP,1211Avenue oftheAmericas,NewYork,NewYork 10036,Attn:RyanPrestonDahl(ryan. [email protected]), Sam Badawi ([email protected]), Jonathan Gill ([email protected]), and Matthew Roose ([email protected]); (iii) counsel to certain Bridge Noteholders, Senior Secured Noteholders, and Convertible Noteholders, Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP, Four Embarcadero Center, 22nd Floor, San Francisco, CA 94111-5998,Attn:Joshua D.Morse ([email protected]), and John A.Pintarelli ([email protected]);(iv) the Office of the United States Trustee for the Southern District of Texas,515 Rusk,Suite 3516,Houston,Texas 77002,Attn:Hector Duran ([email protected]),andJanaWhitworth (Jana. [email protected]);and(v)thosepartieswhohavefiled anoticeof appearance inthe Chapter11 Case. UNLESS AN OBJECTION IS TIMELY SERVED AND FILED IN ACCORDANCE WITH THIS NOTICE IT MAY NOT BE CONSIDEREDBYTHECOURT. 1 The Debtor is a public no par value limited liability company incorporated in Jersey, Channel Islands, with registered number 109886. The Debtor’s registered address is Quotient Limited, 28 Esplanade, St Helier, JE2 3QA, Jersey,ChannelIslands. 2 Capitalized terms used but not defined herein shall have the meanings ascribed to such terms in the Plan. In the eventthatthestatements containedherein conflictwiththestatements inthePlan orDisclosure Statement,thestatements inthePlan andtheDisclosure Statement(as applicable)willgovern and controltothe extentofsuch conflict. Notice To Creditors Ad $74.00* Call the Legals Team 713-224-6868 Ext. 6435 or 4204 *$74.00 includes first 36 lines and 1 Affidavit of Publication *$1.92 per line over 36 lines ciaries can come collect those items at their leisure. It should be noted, however, that you say your wills cover your bank and investment accounts. Assuming these accounts don’t have beneficiaries named to receive the accounts after you both die, then probate of at least one of your wills would be needed. Like the person who asked the first question, you should consider meeting with an estate planning attorney to get everything sorted out before it’s too late. The information in this column is intended to provide a general understanding of the law, not legal advice. Ronald Lipman of the Houston law firm Lipman & Associates is boardcertified in estate planning and probate law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. Email questions to: stateyourcase@lipmanpc.com. LIPMAN From page B1 More likely than not, the U.S. economy will enter a recession this year, Bankrate’s Fourth-Quarter Economic Indicator poll found. The U.S. economy has a 64 percent chance of contracting in 2023, according to the average forecast among economists. Just two experts (or 15 percent) said the financial system could avoid a downturn, putting the odds of a recession at 40 percent. Meanwhile, one economist arrived at 100 percent odds — signifying he was absolutely certain of a recession. Recession odds for 2023 have jumped sharply as the Fed’s massive tightening campaign has unfolded. The fourth-quarter forecast is up from just 33 percent in the first-quarter poll and 52 percent in the second quarter. Forecasting is a practice destined for failure almost as much as predicting the weather or a hurricane’s path. Yet, economists have rarely been so aligned on a recession’s probability like this. That could have more to do with history than anything. The last time the Fed combatted surging inflation, it intentionally manufactured a recession by raising interest rates and slamming the brakes on the economy. Key takeaways on recession odds from Bankrate’s Fourth-Quarter Economic Indicator survey • The U.S. economy has a 64 percent chance of entering a recession this year. • Just 15 percent of economists said the chances of a downturn this year are less than 50 percent. • The unemployment rate is projected to hit 4.7 percent a year from now, according to the average forecast among economists. That would be the lowest unemployment rate of any recession,if a downturn does indeed occur. Odds are high Recession fears are far and wide right now. Almost 7 in 10 Americans (or 69 percent) said in an August Bankrate poll they’re worried about a possible recession by the end of the year. At the same time, few Americans have an optimistic outlook for the year, with 66 percent in a separate December survey saying they don’t see their finances improving this year. Fed officials since the 1980s haven’t approved as many rate hikes in a single year as they did in 2022. Rate-sensitive sectors felt the impact of higher rates almost immediately. Mortgage rates more than doubled while stocks slumped. The year ahead is when the full effect of those rate hikes could be felt, spreading to consumer spending and the job market. ‘Cautionary impact’ “As the lagged effect of higher interest rates begins to show greater effects in 2023, it is likely that there will be a greater cautionary impact on consumer spending leading to a reduction in expenditures,” says Nayantara Hensel, senior economic advisor at Seaborne Defense. “The resulting decline in demand for products will lead to lower labor demand, as reflected in declining job openings and increasing job losses, thus increasing the unemployment rate.” The Fed is shifting from massive rate hikes to more traditionally sized ones to avoid damaging the economy too much in its inflation fight. But it’s not so much the rate hikes anymore that risk bringing the most disastrous economic consequences. Instead, it’s how long Fed officials have to hold rates historically high to get the job done. “The amount of monetary tightening necessary to rebalance the labor market and bring inflation down to target will likely require at least a mild recession by historical standards,” says Scott Anderson, chief economist and senior vice president at Bank of the West. Regardless of whether the Fed’s rapid tightening ensues a recession, economists note it’s unlikely to be as disastrous to consumers’ wallets as the coronavirus pandemic or the Great Recession before it. Unemployment surged to 10 percent in the aftermath of the financial crisis, while joblessness soared to the highest level since the Great Depression (14.7 percent) because of coast-to-coast lockdowns to curb the novel virus’s spread. Both Fed officials and economists see a 4.6 percent unemployment rate a year from now. “We expect the recession to be mild because there are no glaring imbalances in the economy’s balance sheet,” says Ryan Sweet, chief economist at Oxford Economics. Spencer Platt/Tribune News Service Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Investors are nervous as the year starts. Survey: Economy has a 64% chance of entering a recession By Sarah Foster BANKRATE.COM

HOUSTON CHRONICLE | HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM TUESDAY, JANUARY 17, 2023 B5 WASHINGTON — Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will hold her first face-to-face meeting with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He on Wednesday in Zurich, making a detour on her way to talks in Africa. The pair “will exchange views on macroeconomic developments and other economic issues,” the Treasury Department said in a statement. China’s Ministry of Commerce confirmed the meeting late Monday, saying it’s aimed at strengthening economic and financial policy coordination, and implementing the agreements made during a summit between Chinese President Xi Jinping and President Joe Biden late last year. Trade teams have maintained “sound communication,” the ministry said. The surprise announcements follow the November meeting of Biden and Xi on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Bali, Indonesia. It was the first faceto-face session for the heads of state and has initiated a modest thawing of relations between the two governments. Despite that, the Wednesday morning meeting in Switzerland could be contentious as Washington and Beijing continue to squabble over trade, human rights and the autonomy of Taiwan. In recent months Yellen has championed a so-called “friend-shoring” policy that would see the United States and its allies rely less on China for the supply of critical goods. That and efforts to deny China access to technologies, including advanced semiconductors, has led Beijing to accuse the U.S. of economic protectionism and to file a dispute with the World Trade Organization. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is scheduled to visit Beijing early this year. Yellen said in December she had no specific plans for a similar trip but was open to that possibility. In addition to addressing several touchy topics, Yellen might also use the Zurich get-together to quiz Liu on the state of China’s economy and the direction of economic policy following Xi’s consolidation of power during a Communist Party congress in October. Yellen told Bloomberg News in November that Xi’s strengthened grip on power, and the turnover of leading officials in Beijing, had increased uncertainty over the direction of the world’s secondlargest economy. Yellen may ask about a series of recent developments suggesting the new leadership team is indeed willing to give the private sector more space and support. Liu, with whom Yellen has held three videoconferences, is among officials expected to leave his current post when Xi unveils his new government in March. The Zurich stop comes at the front end of an 11- day journey taking the Treasury chief to Senegal, Zambia and South Africa. It’s part of a Biden administration strategy to build ties on the continent and counter China’s influence across the world. Liu is in Switzerland to attend the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos. Yellen, in a surprise, to confer with Chinese official By Christopher Condon BLOOMBERG Yellen DAVOS, Switzerland — The World Economic Forum is back with its first winter meetup since 2020 in the Swiss Alpine town of Davos, where leaders are seeking to bridge political divisions in a polarized world, buttress a hobbling economy and address concerns about a climate change — among many other things. Sessions will take up issues as diverse as the future of fertilizers, the role of sports in society, the state of the COVID-19 pandemic and much more. Nearly 600 CEOs and more than 50 heads of state or government are expected, but it's never clear how much concrete action emerges from the elite event. Here’s what to watch as the four-day talkfest and related deal-making get underway in earnest Tuesday: Who’s coming? Back in the snows for the first time since the pandemic and just eight months after a springtime 2022 session, the event will host notables like European Union Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry, and the new presidents of South Korea, Colombia and the Philippines. Chinese Vice Premier Liu He addresses the gathering Tuesday, a day before his first meeting with his U.S. counterpart, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, in Zurich. Yellen will skip Davos. Who else is missing? President Joe Biden, Chinese President Xi Jinping, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Emmanuel Macron. Russian President Vladimir Putin, of course: Envoys from his country has been shunned because of his war in Ukraine. Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska was on her way to Davos and will speak Tuesday, while her husband, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, will give a remote address Wednesday and other officials from Ukraine are appearing on panels. Outside the main convention center, a themed venue known as Ukraine House is hosting a concert, photo exhibits, seminars, cocktail events and other meetings this week to drum up support for Ukraine’s efforts to drive out Russian forces. Economic focus The slowdown in the global economy will be a major theme at Davos, with officials ranging from International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva and European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde speaking. Inflation soared as the world reopened from the pandemic and Russia invaded Ukraine, driving up food and energy prices, and though it has started to slow in major economies like the U.S. and those in Europe, inflation is still painfully high. Georgieva said in an IMF blog post Monday that divides between nations — the theme at Davos this year is “Cooperation in a Fragmented World” — are putting the global economy at risk by leaving “everyone poorer and less secure.” Georgieva urged strengthening trade, helping vulnerable countries deal with debt and ramping up climate action. Prioritizing climate A major climate theme emerging from the forum’s panel sessions is the energy transition from fossil fuels to clean energy. Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore will be talking about decarbonization, efforts to build clean energy infrastructure and ensure an equitable transition. It follows a strong year for the energy transition: Many countries passed incentives for renewable energy in 2022. One hot topic on the agenda — harnessing nuclear fusion — focuses on science that offers immense potential but is many decades away from a commercial rollout that could feed the world’s skyrocketing thirst for energy. Sessions on issues such as adaptation to climate change and panels on deforestation, biodiversity and the future of environmental protection will give a greener hue to the gathering. Critical voices The elite gathering is regularly skewered by critics who argue that attendees are too out-oftouch or profit- or powerminded to address the needs of common people and the planet. Throughout the week, critics and activists will be waiting outside the Davos conference center to try to hold decision-makers and business leaders to account. It started Sunday, when dozens of climate activists — some with clown makeup — braved snowfall to wave banners and chant slogans at the end of the Davos Promenade, a thoroughfare now lined with storefront logos of corporate titans like Accenture, Microsoft, Salesforce, Meta, as well as country “houses” that promote national interests. Greenpeace International also blasted use of corporate jets that ferry in bigwigs, saying such carbon-spewing transportation smacks of hypocrisy for an event touting its push for a greener world. The group said more than 1,000 private-jet flights arrived and departed airports serving Davos in May. Forum President Borge Brende acknowledged Sunday that some government leaders and CEOs fly in that way. "I think what is more important than that is to make sure we have agreements on how we, overall, move and push the envelope when it comes to the green agenda,” he said. Economy, war, climate on agenda for Davos meeting By Jamey Keaten ASSOC IATED PRE SS Stefan Wermuth/Bloomberg The global economy will be a key theme in Davos, Switzerland, with officials including IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva speaking. A new year has brought Europe a little bit of good fortune. Unusually mild, even warm, weather has helped pull down natural gas prices after they soared for much of last year and sent inflation rates to record highs, upending the region’s economy. With this luck in mind, analysts have strengthened their conviction that European inflation, the highest in generations, has peaked. Data this month showed that consumer prices in the eurozone rose at an annual rate of 9.2 percent in December, down from 10.1 percent in November. That overall rate, also known as headline inflation, was lower in all but two of the 19 economies that used the euro in December. These signs of slowing inflation will bring some relief to consumers — but won’t ease the concerns of central bankers tasked with getting inflation back to their 2 percent target. That’s because they are closely watching another measure of inflation that continues to climb. That measure is called “core inflation,” and the uncertainty about where it is heading is “what keeps the European Central Bank up at night right now,” said Oliver Rakau, chief German economist at Oxford Economics. There are many ways to measure inflation to determine how deeply higher prices are becoming embedded in an economy. Core inflation is one of the most common ones because it excludes food and energy prices, which are prone to volatility as they fluctuate alongside globally traded commodities markets. And it can highlight domestic sources of inflation, such as higher prices in the services industry, which often rise when employers raise wages to attract workers in a tight labor market. It can serve as a warning signal for how long high prices may last, and encourage central bankers to keep raising interest rates. Bankers’ conundrum In the eurozone, core inflation was 5.2 percent last month, unexpectedly rising from 5 percent in November. Services inflation rose to 4.4 percent in December, from 4.2 percent the previous month. On Friday, data showed that core inflation in Spain rose to 7 percent in December, setting it above the broader headline inflation rate. This divergence between headline and core inflation presents a conundrum for central bankers debating when to stop raising interest rates. The headline inflation rate is slipping, and is expected to fall quite sharply later this year when last year’s surge in energy prices falls out of the annual calculations. But core inflation, which can represent the lagging impact of those price rises, isn’t expected to fall as quickly. After the most aggressive cycle of monetary policy tightening in the European Central Bank’s history, there are a range of opinions among policymakers — as there are at the Bank of England — about the severity of the risks ahead. Those who feel it may soon be time to slow or halt the pace of interest rate increases argue that wage growth in the region has not gotten too strong, consumer expectations about inflation aren’t too high and the impact of rate increases in recent months is still to come and will help arrest inflation. On the other hand, high core inflation, the uncertainty about fiscal policy, potential wage growth and the inherent volatility of energy prices have made others reluctant to take their foot off the economic brakes yet. Since July, the European Central Bank has raised rates by 2.5 percentage points. On Friday, economists at Fitch Ratings said they expected another 1.5 percentage point increase in the first half of this year because “the central bank has become much more concerned about core inflation pressures.” Staff at the European Central Bank forecast core inflation to average 4.2 percent over all of 2023 and to still be elevated in 2025 at 2.4 percent. U.S. also grappling High core inflation is not just a concern for European policymakers. In the United States, the headline rate of inflation has declined for six consecutive months, helped by a decline in gasoline and other prices, but the core inflation rate is more sticky, rising on a monthly basis in December, data published Thursday showed. Inflation among service industries, driven by a strong labor market, means Federal Reserve policymakers are expected to keep raising interest rates but at a more modest pace. In fact, economists at the European Central Bank predict that underlying inflation will stay higher in the United States than in the eurozone in the near future. But “Europe could be really be the focus of attention going forward,” said Daniel Tenengauzer, head of markets strategy at BNY Mellon. For one, he said, he expects that wage adjustments to higher inflation in Europe to go on for years. “That will cause a fairly high pressure” on core inflation, he added. Policymakers and other economists are also alert to the risk that fiscal policies aimed at protecting households from the worst effects of soaring energy costs will also fuel inflation. If they are too broad-based and longlasting, they could boost consumer demand. Other signs that the eurozone’s economy will fare better than expected, including its relatively strong labor market, add to the risks of persistent inflation and encourage the central bank to sound resolute in its plan for higher rates. Price gains ease in Europe, but core inflation still up By Eshe Nelson NEW YORK T IME S Andrei Pungovschi/Bloomberg Pedestrians pass by street food kiosks Sunday at a shopping plaza in Vienna, Austria. Headline inflation is falling in Europe, but central bankers are still worried about core inflation, a measure that continues to climb.

B6 TUESDAY, JANUARY 17, 2023 HOUSTON CHRONICLE | HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM Kilpatrick, Ronald Sr. Morris, J.C. Ron was born at home in Catoosa, OK during a snowstorm on January 23, 1939 and died peacefully, surrounded by his family, on December 28, 2022 of an aggressive form of cancer only diagnosed two weeks prior. He was 83 years old. Ron was a health insurance pioneer, recognized as a great innovator throughout his career. He was a natural born dealmaker who was at his best outside the office, shaking hands, making friends, doing favors and making deals. He was known as “Killer” by his friends and “D” by his children. Ron leaves a tremendous legacy. Ron’s father was a plumber and pipe fitter who moved from town to town to find work. When the United States entered WWII in 1941, Ron’s parents moved to California to work in the shipyards. Ron moved in with his maternal grandparents in Roff, OK where he lived for four years until his parents returned. He spent fifth and sixth grade in Dallas then moved to Barnwell, SC where his dad worked on the construction of the Savannah River Hydrogen Bomb Plant. Ron slept on a couch in a government furnished traveler. Barnwell’s population grew from 2,500 to 13,000 residents overnight. Unable to accommodate the influx, the local middle school separated the students into morning and afternoon shifts. The students like Ron who played sports attended the morning shift so they could practice in the afternoons. Ron moved to Harlingen, TX in the middle of ninth grade and became well-liked by his teachers and classmates. He had two daily newspaper routes and spent his summers working 12-hour shifts seven days a week at the local cotton gin. Over the Thanksgiving weekend his senior year of high school, while riding home from an evening in Mexico with five of his friends, Ron was in a horrific car accident that took the life of four friends and nearly his. He spent the next four months alone at John Sealy Hospital in Galveston living between surgeries and endless self-pity. His doctor, who assumed the role of father-figure, treated his mental state by forcing him to work three hours a day in the hospital’s pediatric burn unit. He learned there are so many others who were in worse shape. He returned home in March to test out of his senior year and traveled back to Galveston by bus each weekend for surgeries. The experience molded his character with an immense capacity for compassion and empathy. Ron started college at Texas A&I in Kingsville but quickly decided he was not ready and enlisted in the Air Force. He trained as an interceptor who eventually earned crypto topsecret clearance and worked in the war room at McClellan Air Force Base in Sacramento, CA. After leaving the Air Force, Ron found his way back to Harlingen selling cars. In 1964, he was lured into the insurance business by a local agent named Lloyd Pratt. Within a couple of years, he discovered his passion for group health insurance and talked his way into a job at Pan American Life in San Antonio selling group health insurance. He rapidly excelled and, in 1969, was promoted to District Manager in Houston. In 1970, a new type of group health insurance program—the Multiple Employer Trust—emerged. Ron saw the future and found his calling. Recognizing the opportunity to bring these plans to small employers with less than 10 employees who were unserved by the existing marketplace, Ron helped develop one of the first group health trusts for small employers in the nation. He started his own agency in 1972 and bargained for exclusive marketing rights. He was 32 years old. The agency, now known as Kilpatrick Companies, recruited and trained insurance agents and agencies across the southern US and grew the program to the largest of its kind in the country. The distribution system he helped innovate in the 1970s became the dominant system across the country and used by the industry today. Ron married Jackie Chambers in December 1979. Jackie joined the agency in 1984. Working together, the agency evolved with the industry, pursuing new ideas as opportunities emerged. The agency introduced one of the first PPO products in Texas, launched the first HMO available to small employers, pioneered the first occupational accident product written in the state, and sold unique accident deductible buyback programs for the largest offshore drillers and many national airlines. Ron and Jackie retired in 2012 when they sold the agency to their sons who continue its innovation-minded legacy. Ron was a first-principles thinker with a talent for simplifying complicated issues. He was a tough man with a gentle soul, magnetic personality, and an infinite capacity for goodness and generosity. Throughout his adult life, he supported many different charities including the 100 Club, International Fellowship of Christian & Jews, St Jude, Star of Hope, Operation Smile, Mercy Ships, Salvation Army, Paralyzed Veterans of America, Shriners Hospital, the Wounded Warrior Project and was a past director for the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. Ron funded many people in start-up businesses and supported their efforts with sage advice. Ron is preceded in death by his parents, William and Valera Banks Kilpatrick, and his grandparents, Arby and Ina Lovelace Banks. He is survived by his sons, Ronnie Kilpatrick and his wife, Danielle Clooney Kilpatrick, Scott Kilpatrick and his wife Kathy Slough Kilpatrick, six grandchildren, and the mother of his children, Jackie Kilpatrick. In lieu of customary remembrances, please direct memorial contributions to a charity of your choice or the one most special to Ron, St Jude Children’s Research Hospital at https://www. stjude.org. RONALD KILPATRICK SR. 01/23/1939 - 12/28/2022 J.C. Morris passed away on January 12th, 2023. Born in Houston on July 12th, 1942, he graduated from Stephen F. Austin High School and served in the U.S. Army. For 54 years, he designed and manufactured industrial hose fittings, always doing his best to serve his customers. He is survived by his wife Suzanne Page Morris, son Quentin and wife Michelle, and grandchildren Brian, Molly and Megan. A private ceremony will be held at a later date. Memorial donations may be made to Baytown Humane Society, P. O. Box 2772, Baytown, Texas 77522. J.C. MORRIS 01/12/1942 - 01/12/2023 Gina Lollobrigida, an Italian movie actress who became one of the post-World War II era’s first major European sex symbols, died on Monday in Rome. She was 95. The death was confirmed by her agent, Paola Comin. Lollobrigida had already appeared in more than two dozen European films when she made her first English-language movie, John Huston’s 1953 camp drama, “Beat the Devil,” in which she played Humphrey Bogart’s wife and partner in crime. That film, and the attention she garnered in “Fanfan la Tulipe,” an Italian-French period comedy released in the United States the same year, were enough to put her on the cover of Time magazine in 1954. She went on to unqualified American movie stardom, exuding a wholesome lustiness in a handful of high-profile films. She starred in “Trapeze” (1956) with Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis; “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” (1956), as Esmeralda, Quasimodo’s beloved beauty (Anthony Quinn played Quasimodo); “Solomon and Sheba” (1959), a biblical epic with Yul Brynner; “Come September” (1961), a romantic comedy with Rock Hudson; and “Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell” (1968), a comedy about an unwed mother. Throughout her career, however, she continued to make many more European films than American ones. She starred with the continent’s leading men, including JeanPaul Belmondo, Marcello Mastroianni, Jean-Louis Trintignant and Yves Montand. A 1955 film, “La Donna Più Bella del Mondo” (“The Most Beautiful Woman in the World”), released in the United States as “Beautiful but Dangerous,” brought Lollobrigida her first major acting award: the David di Donatello, Italy’s equivalent of the Oscar. She won the Donatello twice more, for “Venere Imperial” (1962), in a tie with Silvana Mangano, and for “Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell,” in a tie with Monica Vitti. Lollobrigida was always considered more a sex symbol than a serious actress — at least by the American press — but she was also nominated for a BAFTA award as best foreign actress in “Pane, Amore e Fantasia” (1953). She received Golden Globe nominations for “Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell” in 1969 and for a recurring role on the prime-time television soap “Falcon Crest” in 1985. After two decades in front of the camera, she embarked on a multifaceted second career as artist and filmmaker. She published her first book of photographs, “Italia Mia,” in 1973. “Believe it or not, she takes good pictures and isn’t just trading on her name,” Gene Thornton of The New York Times wrote. She wrote, directed and produced “Ritratto di Fidel,” a documentary based on her exclusive interview with Fidel Castro, the Communist leader of Cuba, which was shown at the 1975 Berlin film festival. She was also a sculptor, and an exhibition of 38 of her bronze pieces was presented at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, among other venues, in 2003. Lollobrigida was awarded the French Legion of Honor in 1993. She ran unsuccessfully for the European Parliament in 1999. Liugina Lollobrigida was born on July 4, 1927, in Subiaco, Italy, east of Rome. She was one of four daughters of Giovanni Lollobrigida, a furniture maker, and Giuseppina (Mercuri) Lollobrigida. In her teens she studied art. But after she was discovered by a movie director, Mario Costa, she began appearing in small roles in 1946. By 1949 she was a star, billed second in “La Sposa Non Può Attendere” (“The Bride Can’t Wait”). The next year she appeared in “Miss Italia,” inspired by her real-life experience: She had come in third in the 1947 Miss Italy pageant. After her film career wound down in the early 1970s, Lollobrigida appeared on television in Europe and the United States, including episodes of “Falcon Crest” and an American television movie, “Deceptions” (1985), in which she played an excitable duchess entertaining in Venice. Her last feature film appearance was in “XXL” (1997), a French comedy that also starred Gérard Depardieu, about a Jewish family in the garment trade. She married Milko Skofic, a Yugoslavian-born physician who became her manager, in 1949. The couple separated in 1966 and divorced in 1971. Their son, Milko Jr., survives her, along with a grandson. In 2006 she announced plans to marry Javier Rigau y Rafols, a 45-year-old Spanish businessman, but she canceled the wedding less than two months later, reportedly because of overwhelming press attention. Lollobrigida broke a thigh bone in a fall last year and had surgery to repair it in September. She said she was able to walk again soon afterward. Lollobrigida was often outspoken in interviews. In 1969 she suggested that women pretended to be stupid in front of men. She claimed to have no beauty secrets and to do no exercise other than dancing, and to have no objections to being seen as a sex object and being told that she had a beautiful body. “Why should I be offended?” she said in a 1995 interview with the New York Times. “It’s not an insult.” Yet she had grown philosophical with age. “Success is something that goes up and down,” she said in the same interview. “I was hungry, I was rich, the life changed again, and now I’m not rich, but I still have my mind.” GINA LOLLOBRIGIDA: 1927-2023 Movie star became a post-WWII sex symbol By Anita Gates NEW YORK T IME S Keith Bedford/New York Times file Italian movie actress Gina Lollobrigida, pictured in 2010, spent two decades in front of the camera from the 1950s to the 1970s, starring in major films across Europe and in America. LaPresse via Associated Press file Lollobrigida’s acting career put her on the cover of Time magazine and thrice earned her Italy’s Oscar equivalent.

HOUSTON CHRONICLE | HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM TUESDAY, JANUARY 17, 2023 B7 percent jump from the $2.91 per million British thermal units a year earlier, according to the Energy Information Administration. One million Btu equals about 1,000 cubic feet of natural gas. Over the summer, highpriced natural was the main culprit behind higher gas bills. By this winter, utility customers in some parts of the state were seeing monthly bills nearly double as furnaces cranked out heat. But elevated prices for natural gas have also helped make solar more competitive, said Carey King, assistant director of the Energy Institute at the University of Texas-Austin. Solar generation in Texas increased 54 percent last year from 2021, and King said it could continue growing quickly in Texas for some time before potentially leveling off. “That helps the economics of solar, to have a high gas price,” he said. “So I expect the next couple of years to still be pretty good for solar installations.” Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has said that one of his major priorities this legislative session is to ensure more gas-fired power plants are built statewide. Even so, gas-fired capacity is “not the only thing that’s important,” King said. Grid alternatives “Gas capacity ... is not a reliable thing for a winter peak or a big winter storm,” he said, pointing to problems with gas supply, which froze up in Texas during the 2021 winter storm and hit more snags during a cold snap late in 2022. “For the winter, it seems dubious to think more gas capacity is going to help.” Aside from more generating capacity, King said demand response programs “will have to become more and more prominent, and should compete with the natural gas investments.” A virtual plant The Public Utility Commission of Texas is conducting a “virtual power plant” pilot that seeks to use residential home batteries, such as the Tesla Powerwall, to store or dispatch energy from the grid. “People sign up for a program to have their storage dispatched or charged under certain conditions,” King said of the idea. The PUC and ERCOT still have to work out the technical kinks of pulling and pushing power from many different small sources. But combining large, utility-scale battery arrays with homeowners’ storage systems could help utilities meet peak demand, King said, and that could be less expensive than investing in more gas power plants. diego.mendoza-moyers@express-news.net SOLAR From page B1 Billy Calzada/Staff file photo Battery storage units stand at a CPS Energy facility. Under a proposed power generation plan, CPS would add over 1,000 megawatts of storage by 2030. and gas industry. The death helped Transocean decide to commission Houston company Offshore Robotics to build a robot riser system that can help take humans out of the most dangerous areas of a drill ship, known as the “red zone.” Now, the companies are getting ready to launch the third robotic riser system in the Gulf of Mexico. But while Transocean has signed on to the concept, experts said barriers such as cost and a hesitancy to adopt new technology could prevent the widespread use of robots in the oil field. Robots are already well represented in manufacturing facilities, according to Marcia O’Malley, an associate dean and mechanical engineering professor at Rice University who studies issues related to human interactions with robotic systems. But O’Malley said bringing robots out of a controlled environment and into workspaces where they’re around people is relatively new. “We’re (now) better able to design these systems to handle those anomaly events that are unexpected, that are likely to happen much more frequently when you’re in the field, as opposed to in the controlled environment,” she said. Another Houstonbased company, Nabors Industries, in partnership with Texas oil giant Exxon Mobil, introduced a robotic drilling rig for use onshore in 2021. Nabors said last year it has been able to retrofit existing land rigs with robotic modules. Even though robotic technology continues to get better, O’Malley said, there are still a lot of barriers to the widespread adoption of companies bringing robots into the field. First, it’s expensive. Cost was one of the questions asked back at the American Petroleum Institute Houston chapter’s event discussing robots in the industry.While the price varies, the robotic riser system can cost upwards of $2 million. Another barrier is hesitancy to bring in new technology, McCormick told the gathering. “There’s a lot of companies that want to go second to get new technology on their rig,” he said. “No one wants to be first.” If companies can get past those challenges, robotic systems like the offshore riser can not only help improve safety, but can allow workers to step away from boring jobs with the potential for injury. John Martin, the president of Offshore Robotics, said that’s what makes the riser successful: it eliminates the need for four people to haul and install those 55 pound bolts. “It’s very tiresome on the people that are doing the task,” Martin said, but when they got the robotic riser system up he adds that, “the operators, the floor hands, they are seeing these robots doing the job that they used to do – and instead of being upset, they come and thank me.” While technologies such as robots can replace certain tasks, O’Malley at Rice said she’s not worried about the fear that “robots are coming for our jobs.” People will continue to be needed to build and maintain robotic systems, she said, although human workers may be tasked with learning how to better interact with emerging technology. While robots can increase safety and efficiency, O’Malley points out that the energy industry has a lot on its plate right now, namely the shift to low-emission fuel sources. “(Companies) only have so much money to invest, so do you bring robotics and automation to the way things are done now?” O’Malley said. “ Or do you focus your investment on what is needed to get us to more renewable energy sources – and then the robotic solutions there might look very different than what we need for current offshore rigs.” [email protected] ROBOT From page B1 Photos by Brett Coomer/Staff photographer Robert Kellermann works on putting together a “robo roughneck” at ARC Specialties, an automated manufacturing systems facility, last May in Houston. A robot arm works at Offshore Robotics in Houston. other setback on Friday when he rejected Musk’s bid to transfer the trial to a federal court in Texas, where Tesla moves its headquarters in 2021. Musk had argued that negative coverage of his Twitter purchase had poisoned the jury pool in the San Francisco Bay Area. Musk’s leadership of Twitter — where he has gutted the staff and alienated users and advertisers — has proven unpopular among Tesla’s current stockholders, who are worried he has been devoting less time steering the automaker at a time of intensifying competition. Those concerns contributed to a 65 percent percent decline in Tesla’s stock last year that wiped out more than $700 billion in shareholder wealth — far more than the $14 billion swing in fortune that occurred between the company’s high and low stock Chen has already decided were a falsehood. Chen dealt Musk anprices during the Aug. 7-17, 2018, period covered in the class-action lawsuit. The lawsuit is based on the premise that Tesla’s shares wouldn’t have traded at such a wide range if Musk hadn’t dangled the prospect of buying the company for $420 per share. Tesla’s stock has split twice since then, making that $420 price worth $28 on adjusted basis now. The shares closed last week at $122.40, down from its November 2021 split-adjusted peak of $414.50. After Musk dropped the idea of a Tesla buyout, the company overcame a production problem, resulting in a rapid upturn in car sales that caused its stock to soar and minted Musk as the world’s richest person until he bought Twitter. Musk dropped from the top spot on the wealth list after the stock market’s backlash to his handling of Twitter. The trial is likely to provide insights into Musk’s management style, given the witness list includes some of Tesla’s current and former top executives and board members, including luminaries such as Larry Ellison, Oracle co-founder, as well as James Murdoch, the son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch. The drama also may shed light on Musk’s relationship with his brother, Kimbal, who is also on the list of potential witnesses who may be called during a trial scheduled to continue through Feb. 1. TESLA From page B1 Austin American-Statesman file photo Tesla CEO Elon Musk said in a 2018 tweet that he had lined up the financing to pay for a $72 billion buyout of Tesla. But the buyout never happened.

B8 TUESDAY, JANUARY 17, 2023 HOUSTON CHRONICLE | HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM Honolulu Anchorage Havana Belmopan Cancún Villahermosa Mérida Mexico City Guadalajara Monterrey Chihuahua Hermosillo Veracruz Acapulco El Paso New Orleans Dallas Washington New York Miami Atlanta Detroit Houston Chicago Minneapolis Phoenix Salt Lake City Denver Los Angeles San Francisco Portland Little Rock Seattle Boston Montreal Ottawa Toronto Thunder Bay Winnipeg Regina Calgary Saskatoon Vancouver | Go to AccuWeather.com Shown are noon positions of weather systems and precipitation. Temperature bands are highs for the day. Forecasts and graphics provided by AccuWeather, Inc. ©2023 HOUSTON’S SEVEN-DAY FORECAST METRO AREA OUTLOOK NORTH AMERICA TODAY UV TODAY COMFORT INDEX RIVERS, CREEKS AND BAYOUS Yesterday’s readings by the Houston Health Department: Note: No measurements on weekends; charts in Sunday and Monday papers reflect forecast ratings from the previous Friday. Count percubicmeter of air Low Medium Heavy Extremely heavy Tree pollen Weed pollen Grass pollen Mold spores Values indicate the exposure to the sun’s Ultraviolet rays. 0-2, Low 3-5, Moderate 6-7, High 8-10, Very high 11+, Extreme Today’s forecast for the entire metro area by the TCEQ: Good Moderate Unhealthy for sensitive groups Unhealthy Very unhealthy Hazardous Ozone watch The comfort index takes into account how the weather will feel based on a combination of factors. A rating of 10 feels very comfortable while a rating of 0 feels very uncomfortable. KEY TO CONDITIONS SUN AND MOON POLLEN AND MOLD AIR QUALITY NATIONAL 8 a.m. Noon 2 p.m. 4 p.m. 6 p.m. 10 a.m. COASTAL FORECAST FOR THE RECORD INTERNATIONAL GALVESTON TIDES 110s 100s 90s 80s 70s 60s 50s 40s 30s 20s 10s 0s -0s -10s T-storms Rain Showers Snow Flurries Ice Jet stream TEXAS TEXAS LAKES Cold front Warm front Stationary front NATIONAL cont. WEATHER Highs Feet Lows Feet Flood Latest 24-hr. Location stage stage chg. Full Latest Release pool level cfs s - sunny pc - partly cloudy c - cloudy sh - showers t - thunderstorms r - rain sf - snow flurries sn - snow i - ice Temperature Degrees F Precipitation Inches Other readings 78 69 TODAY Fog in the morning; mostly cloudy 73 50 Cloudy with drenching thunderstorms WEDNESDAY 68 45 THURSDAY Partly sunny 62 50 FRIDAY Cloudy 58 46 SATURDAY Cloudy with a couple of showers 62 43 SUNDAY A couple of morning showers 61 46 MONDAY Plenty of sun GALVESTON BAY: Wind from the south at 6-12 knots today. Seas 1-3 feet. Visibility less than a mile in patchy morning fog. Tonight: Wind from the southeast at 6-12 knots. Seas 2 feet or less. Mostly cloudy, a shower late. MATAGORDA SHIP CHANNEL TO HIGH ISLAND OUT 20 TO 50 MILES: Wind from the south at 6-12 knots today. Seas 2 feet or less. Visibility less than a mile in patchy morning fog. Tonight: Wind from the south-southeast at 7-14 knots. Seas 2 feet or less. Mostly cloudy, a shower late. Canyon Dam 909 898.55 71 Conroe 201 200.73 0 Houston 41.73 42.45 N.A. Lake Travis 681 639.64 223 Livingston 131 130.95 N.A. Brays Bayou South Main 54 16.80 -0.01 Brazos River Bryan 43 6.77 none Hempstead 50 9.67 -0.25 Richmond 48 8.93 -0.24 Buffalo Bayou Piney Point 50 28.53 -0.31 Shepherd Dr. 23 2.31 +0.08 Clear Creek Friendswood 12 1.50 +0.18 Colorado R. Austin 29 10.87 +0.05 Bastrop 25 2.49 +0.14 La Grange 32 2.41 -0.02 Columbus 34 9.19 +0.03 Wharton 39 7.77 -0.07 Bay City 44 3.11 +0.45 Greens Bayou Eastex Fwy. 61 38.95 none Guadalupe R. Hunt 12 7.75 -0.01 Comfort 26 3.28 -0.01 Spring Branch 36 1.82 +0.02 New Braunfels 13 9.40 none Gonzales 31 11.23 +0.10 Cuero 20 7.24 -0.05 Victoria 21 5.10 +0.04 Dupont 20 9.18 -0.10 Little River Little River 30 1.06 -0.02 Cameron 30 0.96 -0.03 Navasota R. Easterly 19 3.23 -0.01 Neches River Evadale 19 7.99 -0.77 Pine Island B. Sour Lake 25 15.94 -0.91 Sabine River Bon Wier 30 23.96 -0.11 Deweyville 24 24.66 -0.12 Orange 4 1.40 +0.38 Burkeville 43 23.92 -0.01 San Bernard R. E. Bernard 17 7.41 -0.20 E. San.Jac. R. Cleveland 19 5.02 -0.10 W. San.Jac. R. Conroe 116 94.06 -0.11 San Jacinto R. Sheldon 10 2.10 +0.42 Sims Bayou Telephone Rd. 30 2.00 +0.36 Trinity River Goodrich 36 4.50 -0.13 Liberty 26 7.29 -1.13 Village Creek Kountze 20 6.95 -0.79 White Oak B. Heights Blvd. 48 7.89 -0.04 3:01 p.m. 1.1 --- --- 5:56 a.m. -0.6 --- --- Today Wed. Cleveland 52/38/c 41/37/c Columbus 56/38/c 46/41/c Denver 32/21/c 25/13/sn Des Moines 39/27/pc 36/29/sn Detroit 48/38/c 40/36/c Duluth 33/19/sn 26/22/c Fairbanks 2/-13/pc -2/-9/pc Great Falls 37/23/s 39/26/pc Hartford 46/32/pc 47/34/c Honolulu 79/65/pc 82/66/pc Indianapolis 51/34/pc 44/43/r Jackson, MS 74/62/r 76/54/sh Juneau 38/32/r 38/34/sn Kansas City 48/37/pc 40/32/r Las Vegas 53/36/pc 52/35/s Little Rock 68/54/pc 66/43/t Los Angeles 58/42/pc 60/45/s Memphis 67/55/pc 68/49/t Miami 76/60/pc 79/67/s Milwaukee 43/34/c 38/34/c Minneapolis 34/26/sf 33/26/c Nashville 66/47/r 65/56/sh New Orleans 78/66/r 78/64/sh New York City 43/39/pc 52/38/pc Oklahoma City 65/51/c 60/30/r Orlando 73/50/s 79/57/pc Philadelphia 45/41/c 54/39/pc Phoenix 59/42/c 58/39/pc Pittsburgh 50/40/r 44/38/c Portland, OR 47/43/sh 46/36/r Sacramento 54/37/c 53/39/pc St. Louis 53/39/pc 45/42/r Salt Lake City 37/26/sn 34/22/c San Diego 59/45/pc 61/45/pc San Francisco 57/45/pc 57/46/c Santa Fe 42/22/c 34/13/c Seattle 49/44/c 47/36/r Tucson 56/37/sh 55/33/s Washington, DC 50/43/sh 56/42/pc Today Wed. Africa Cairo 67/53/s 71/51/s Cape Town 88/67/s 81/65/c Casablanca 64/55/c 63/46/pc Dakar 85/70/pc 83/69/s Johannesburg 85/60/pc 83/62/pc Lagos 94/75/pc 92/76/pc Asia/Pacific Beijing 41/13/pc 41/15/pc Ho Chi Minh City 91/73/pc 92/74/pc Hong Kong 63/52/pc 67/57/pc Islamabad 62/33/s 62/39/c Jakarta 90/76/t 88/75/sh Karachi 77/51/s 79/56/s Kuala Lumpur 92/75/c 89/74/sh Manila 87/77/c 86/77/c New Delhi 62/42/pc 61/45/pc Seoul 36/21/c 38/15/s Shanghai 45/31/pc 52/31/pc Singapore 89/76/c 85/76/sh Sydney 82/70/s 88/67/t Taipei 61/55/c 60/56/c Tokyo 50/41/pc 54/39/pc Canada Calgary 36/19/s 39/23/c Edmonton 24/7/pc 21/9/pc Montreal 28/25/c 36/19/c Toronto 40/36/r 39/30/c Vancouver 47/43/r 47/35/c Winnipeg 12/5/i 16/7/c Europe Amsterdam 41/28/pc 42/37/sh Athens 65/60/pc 67/60/pc Berlin 41/27/pc 36/26/pc Copenhagen 40/35/sn 40/32/pc Dublin 38/31/pc 41/27/pc Frankfurt 40/28/pc 37/26/sn Geneva 38/31/r 38/19/c Istanbul 60/56/pc 64/54/pc London 38/28/pc 42/30/pc Madrid 51/36/sh 44/33/sh Moscow 34/32/sn 37/35/sf Paris 38/30/r 40/31/pc Prague 39/30/pc 34/24/c Rome 59/50/r 55/44/r Stockholm 36/33/c 36/30/pc Vienna 45/35/c 44/31/c Warsaw 42/32/r 41/29/sn Zurich 39/33/c 37/26/c Latin America Bogota 66/50/r 67/48/r Buenos Aires 88/74/pc 84/71/pc Caracas 87/73/pc 87/72/sh Havana 81/54/s 83/58/pc Kingston 86/72/s 87/73/s Lima 76/68/pc 76/68/pc Rio de Janeiro 86/78/s 87/75/t San Juan 83/71/pc 82/72/pc San Salvador 84/65/pc 85/64/s Santiago 84/56/pc 90/58/s Sao Paulo 84/68/t 81/66/t St. Thomas 83/74/pc 83/73/pc Mexico Acapulco 84/68/pc 83/67/s Cancun 81/73/pc 83/76/pc Guadalajara 81/39/c 79/41/pc Guanajuato 76/45/c 75/44/pc Mazatlan 75/57/pc 75/56/s Merida 87/65/s 90/71/s Mexico City 79/41/pc 78/45/c Puerto Vallarta 78/58/pc 78/59/pc Tampico 80/69/pc 85/69/pc Veracruz 85/70/c 86/70/s Middle East Baghdad 62/46/s 64/46/s Beirut 66/56/pc 70/54/s Dubai 83/70/c 74/64/pc Jerusalem 58/42/s 61/44/s Kabul 37/16/s 38/23/c Mecca 80/63/pc 84/65/s Riyadh 70/46/pc 63/43/s Tehran 45/35/c 48/35/s Tel Aviv 66/51/s 69/49/s Today Wed. Today Wed. Abilene 75/50/c 65/35/pc Amarillo 61/33/c 50/25/s Austin 80/62/pc 77/47/pc Beaumont 79/67/c 79/51/t Brownsville 82/70/pc 84/60/c Bryan/College St. 78/66/s 74/47/t Corpus Christi 80/67/pc 85/53/t Dallas/Ft. Worth 74/58/pc 70/40/pc El Paso 54/36/sh 51/30/s Galveston 75/68/c 73/57/t Kingsville 80/69/pc 84/53/pc Laredo 86/62/pc 81/52/c Longview 77/62/pc 69/43/t Lubbock 60/34/c 55/27/s McAllen 83/67/pc 86/57/c Midland/Odessa 68/41/c 57/33/s San Angelo 76/52/pc 65/35/pc San Antonio 81/61/pc 78/45/c Texarkana 79/64/pc 71/43/t Victoria 79/68/c 81/48/t Waco 79/57/pc 74/41/pc Albany, NY 36/30/sf 43/30/c Albuquerque 47/27/sh 40/22/pc Anchorage 29/19/pc 25/19/c Atlanta 62/57/r 67/60/c Baltimore 48/40/c 57/40/pc Billings 39/23/s 40/25/s Birmingham 66/59/r 69/62/c Boise 40/25/c 40/30/pc Boston 47/38/pc 50/34/c Buffalo 43/37/r 38/34/sn Charleston, SC 68/55/c 71/57/pc Charlotte 54/47/r 67/58/pc Chicago 43/33/c 40/36/c Cincinnati 58/38/pc 49/46/c George Bush Intercontinental Airport through 3 p.m. Mon. High 76 Low 66 Normal high 64 Normal low 43 Record high 81 in 1936 Record low 22 in 1972 24 hours through 3 p.m. Mon. Trace Month to date 0.79 Normal month to date 1.95 Year to date 0.79 Normal year to date 1.95 Top wind speed 14 mph High barometer 29.89 in. Low barometer 29.77 in. High dewpoint 63° Low dewpoint 59° Average dewpoint 61° High humidity 81% Low humidity 59% TODAY: Patchy fog this morning; otherwise, mostly cloudy. High 75 to 80. Winds south-southwest 4-8 mph. TONIGHT: A shower in the area late. Low 66 to 71. Winds south-southeast 6-12 mph. Heavy Low Low Medium 0 1 1 1 1 0 Sunset tonight 5:45 p.m. Sunrise Wednesday 7:17 a.m. Moonrise today 2:55 a.m. Moonset today 1:33 p.m. New moon First quarter Full moon Last quarter Jan 21 Jan 28 Feb 5 Feb 13 Today Wed. Thu. Fri. Sat. Sun. 10 8 10 7 3 7 An unexpected result of the pandemic era has been a surge in entrepreneurial activity. Since 2020, applications to start new businesses have skyrocketed, reversing a decadeslong slump. The reasons for the boom are manifold. Millions of people were suddenly laid off, giving them the time, and inclination, to start new businesses. Personal savings jumped, buoyed partly by a frothy stock market and government stimulus payments, providing would-be entrepreneurs with the means to fulfill their visions. Rock-bottom interest rates made money cheap and widely available. But the ebullient economic environment that helped foster this entrepreneurial spirit has given way to high inflation, rising interest rates and dwindling savings. That has left these nascent businesses to navigate challenging financial crosscurrents — and a possible recession — at a moment when they are at their most fragile. Even under normal conditions, roughly half of new businesses fail within five years. “Young businesses are inherently vulnerable,” said John Haltiwanger, an economist at the University of Maryland who studies entrepreneurship. “They’re likely to fail, and they are especially likely to fail in a recession.” In 2021, Americans filed applications to start 5.4 million new businesses, according to data from the Census Bureau. That was on top of the 4.4 million applications filed in 2020, which had been the highest by far in the more than 15 years the government had been keeping track. Data on actual business formation will not become available for several years, so it is not possible yet to measure the effects of the cooling economy on new ventures. Whether these new businesses pull through could have broad implications for the health and dynamism of the overall economy. “Innovation drives gains in productivity,” said John Dearie, president of the Center for American Entrepreneurship, an advocacy organization. “And innovation comes disproportionately from new businesses.” But he cautioned that the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy — intended to tamp down the fastest price increases in decades — is “ramping up the headwinds facing entrepreneurs to gale force by crushing demand and by increasing the price of money.” In interviews, entrepreneurs expressed a mix of resolve and resignation about the months ahead. Some said they had learned lessons from the pandemic’s upheaval about how to endure financial adversity that they believed had recession-proofed their business models. Others were cleareyed about needing outside funding that they feared would no longer arrive. “It’s been a bumpy ride, for sure,” said Jennifer Sutton, who started a juice and wellness bar in Park City, Utah, in 2021. She is most worried about inflation, she said, as well as the prospect of a recession that could reduce the tourism that her business depends on. She opened a second location inside a grocery store, partly because it required less startup capital than opening another stand-alone storefront. In many ways, however, Sutton is lucky. She largely self-financed her company, High Vibes Juicery and Wellness Bar, with her family’s savings and credit card debt. Taylor Wallace, an entrepreneur in Florida, is in a different position. After he was laid off from the augmented-reality company Magic Leap at the start of the pandemic, he reconnected with a friend, Mike Mayleben, who was looking to start a day care business for dogs. In the fall of 2020, the two began acquiring dog day care locations that were for sale, rolling them into a new business called Paws ‘n’ Rec. The company, which offers membership-based day care, boarding and grooming, currently has two locations in the Tampa, Florida, area, with a third under construction. But the company wants to grow by opening more locations — just as inflation is pushing up construction costs and rising interest rates are making terms on loans more onerous. His borrowing costs on the company’sline of credit, which he expects to draw on soon, are based on prevailing interest rates and have increased by more than 4 percentage points from a year ago. “Debt being more expensive is going to be massively challenging for us and everyone,” he said. “When we started this, we were dealing with money being the cheapest it’s ever been ever in the United States.” Higher interest rates and uncertainty about the economy have also appeared to dry up onceflowing sources of capital, some entrepreneurs said. Census data shows that a large swath of new-business applications were for sole proprietorships that had no intention to hire employees. Many filings were also for businesses in industries that had been upended by the pandemic, including retail, food services and logistics, some of which may have been replacing others that shuttered. But despite a slowdown that could harm new businesses, many economists are optimistic that the rush to start businesses that began in 2020 will still translate into job growth, innovation and, ultimately, a more productive economy. “A lot of these new businesses are continuing to grow and hire,” said Luke Pardue, an economist at Gusto, a small-business payroll and benefits platform. “These new businesses are really driving employment growth right now because they are continuing to grow and because they are ambitious in their future roles.” The CEO at a vacuum manufacturer in Price, Utah, that his father started in 1985, Spencer Loveless grew frustrated during the early months of the pandemic that supply chain issues were preventing him from getting parts from China. So he began using 3D printers that his company had on hand to make his own parts. Companies that were similarly stuck in supply-chain snarls caught wind of what he was doing and began asking him to print items for them, too. In November 2020, he started Merit3D, a 3D printing company. The business originally had two employees, but it has been growing. Last year, he had 20 workers; this year, he aims to have 30 to 40. After burst of new businesses, soft economy intrudes By Sydney Ember NEW YORK T IME S Kim Raff/New York Times Jennifer Sutton started High Vibes Juicery and Wellness Bar in Park City, Utah. The pandemic has brought a boom in startups, but times are getting tougher. Zack Wittman/New York Times A Tampa dog resort opened last year as did many businesses. But economic obstacles are growing.

HISTORY OF COACHING TRADES 1970 Baltimore Colts Miami Dolphins Don Shula First round draft pick 1997 New England Patriots New York Jets Bill Parcels Four draft picks (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th) 1999 Green Bay Packers Seattle Seahawks Mike Holmgren Second round draft pick 2000 New York Jets New England Patriots Bill Belichick Three draft picks (1st, 4th, 5th) 2002 Oakland Raiders Tampa Bay Buccaneers Jon Gruden Two draft picks, $8 mil. (1st, 2nd) 2006 New York Jets Kansas City Chiefs Herm Edwards Fourth round pick 2019 Arizona Cardinals Tampa Bay Buccaneers Bruce Arians Fourth round pick When I asked fans on Twitter how many draft picks they’d be willing to give up to hire former Saints coach Sean Payton, the answer varied from the 12th overall pick to “nothing the Saints would accept.” That last one made me chuckle. Shoutout to Twitter user KT. The Texans interviewed the 59-year-old veteran coach, who took the year off after the 2021 season, on Monday. But Payton remains under contract with the Saints through the 2024 season. That means if another team wants to hire him, that team will have to compensate New Orleans for Payton. That compensation will likely come in the form of a draft pick and maybe some cash. Even before meeting with Payton, the Texans would have to have agreed with the Saints on a package. It’s unclear how much it would take for the Texans or any team to secure Payton. There are only a few blueprints to suggest what New Orleans could get. But the Saints would likely shoot for the stars and ask for at least a first-round pick. And why not? Payton won Super Bowl XLIV and is considered one of the best offensive minds in NFL history. The Saints hold the cards. And if history offers any indication as to what could happen, the price could be steep. Here are some past coaching trades that might indicate what the Saints would ask. Jon Gruden After firing coach Tony TEXANS A look at the history of NFL head coach trades offers hints of what a deal for Sean Payton might cost Spinning the wheel of fortune Bill Parcels Traded from Patriots to Jets in 1997 for first, second, third and fourth round picks. Jon Gruden Traded from Raiders to Buccaneers in 2002 for two first-round picks, $8 million. HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM SPORTS • TUESDAY, JANUARY 17, 2023 • SECTION C HHHH Jacksonville laughed in the face of a 27-0 deficit and entered mid-January as a playoff winner. Brock Purdy, the No. 262 overall pick of the 2022 NFL draft, is 1-0 in the postseason and entered Monday still waiting on his next opponent. Brian Daboll, who received little to no interest from the Texans the last time they searched for a head coach, won again with Daniel Jones at quarterback and just knocked a 13-win Minnesota team out of the playoffs. The Texans? Obviously, they’re searching for their fourth HC since the start of the 2020 campaign. They also haven’t been to the postseason since a stunning 24-0 road lead over Kansas City painfully became 51-31 Chiefs on Jan. 12, 2020. Smith continues on C3 BRIAN T. SMITH COMMENTARY Playoff teams provide a blueprint Ohio State quarterback C.J. Stroud declared for the NFL draft Monday, the deadline for college athletes to decide, which creates a combination of interesting outcomes for the quarterback-needy Texans. Stroud had a year of eligibility remaining, and the proliferation of million-dollar NIL deals cast questions of whether the Heisman Trophy finalist would return to college for one last season. The quarterback quelled those questions in a Twitter post Monday morning. “This process has been difficult,” Stroud wrote, “and the decision, one of the hardest I’ve ever had to make. As a kid, I dreamed of playing football at the highest level and after much Stroud presents another option By Brooks Kubena STAFF WR ITER Stroud continues on C3 Stroud LOS ANGELES — The Rockets gave the Lakers everything they had, everything that seemed beyond their capabilities on the road trip and through much of the losing streak. But the Lakers had LeBron James. The Rockets did not. They pushed the Lakers to the final minute, closing to within two with 1:11left. But James was at his unstoppable best, scoring 19 of his season-high 48 points in the fourth quarter to lift the Lakers to a 140-132 win Monday night and send the Rockets to an 11th consecutive loss. They needed everything James could give them because Rockets center Alperen Sengun had the game of his life, scoring 33 points with 15 rebounds, six assists and four blocked shots. LAKERS 140, ROCKETS 132 Jae C. Hong/Associated Press Lakers star LeBron James could not be stopped Monday, scoring a season-high 48 points against the Rockets. LeBron treats visitors to 11th consecutive loss By Jonathan Feigen STAFF WR ITER Rockets continues on C4 UP NEXT ROCKETS VS. HORNETS When/where: 7 p.m. Wednesday at Toyota Center. TV/radio: ATTSW; 790 AM, 93.3 FM (Spanish), 1010 AM (Spanish). Sean Payton Jonanthan Alexander ON THE TEXANS Texans continues on C3 Chants of “o-ver-ra-ted” are common when top-ranked University of Houston hits the road. Some chants can get personal, if not uncivil, as rowdy student sections heckle the Cougars from the moment they step on the court. “Where’s Beaumont?” UH freshman guard Terrance Arceneaux recalled hearing from the crowd at Oregon’s Matthew Knight Arena during a game in late November. Not exactly A-level heckling but nonetheless a valid question for those in the Pacific Northwest. Arceneaux, who played at Beaumont United, just smiled. “You’ve just got to block out the noise,” Arceneaux, who scored a season-high 15 points, UH BASKETBALL Cougars not fazed by hostile venues By Joseph Duarte STAFF WR ITER UH continues on C5 UP NEXT UH AT TULANE When/where: 6 p.m. Tuesday at New Orleans. TV/radio: ESPN+; 950 AM.

C2 TUESDAY, JANUARY 17, 2023 HHHH HOUSTON CHRONICLE | HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM NFL Sports Editor: [email protected] • 713-362-2734 • [email protected] 3 CINCINNATI N.Y. GIANTS 6 2 BUFFALO 4 JACKSONVILLE PHILADELPHIA 1 [] AFC TITLE GAME NFC TITLE GAME Jan. 29 at high seed Jan. 29 at high seed SUPER BOWL LVII 5:30 p.m. Feb. 12 State Farm Stadium, Glendale, Ariz. (Fox) AFC DIVISIONAL ROUND 3:30 p.m. Saturday at Kansas City, NBC 1 KANSAS CITY AFC WILD-CARD ROUND First-round bye Saturday at Jacksonville, Fla. Sunday at Cincinnati Sunday at Orchard Park, N.Y. 1 KANSAS CITY (14-3) 5 L.A. CHARGERS (10-6) 4 JACKSONVILLE (9-8) 6 BALTIMORE (10-7) 3 CINCINNATI (12-4) 7 MIAMI (9-8) 2 BUFFALO (13-3) NFC WILD-CARD ROUND First-round bye Monday at Tampa, Fla. Sunday at Minneapolis Saturday at Santa Clara, Calif. PHILADELPHIA (14-3) 1 DALLAS (12-5) 5 TAMPA BAY (8-9) 4 N.Y. GIANTS (9-7-1) 6 MINNESOTA (13-4) 3 SEATTLE (9-8) 7 SAN FRANCISCO (13-4) 2 NFC DIVISIONAL ROUND 7:15 p.m. Saturday at Philadelphia, Fox 23 41 SAN FRANCISCO 2 5:30 p.m. Sunday at Santa Clara, Calif., Fox DAL-TB WINNER 30 31 31 34 2 p.m. Sunday at Orchard Park, N.Y., CBS 31 24 17 24 DALLAS 5 31 14 TAMPA, Fla. — So much for notion that Dak Prescott and the Dallas Cowboys might not be up to the challenge of beating Tom Brady. Prescott played his best game in weeks, throwing for four touchdowns and running for another to answer critics of “America's Team” with a 31-14 rout of Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in an NFC wild-card playoff game on Monday night. “It just shows he’s resilient,” Cowboys linebacker Micah Parsons said. “The light’s different on Dak. I think the criticism is unfair and unjust sometimes. But the way he handles it, the way he comes back every time and shows who he truly is, it’s a credit to the work he puts in. It makes us keep believing every time.” Prescott completed 25 of 33 passes for 305 yards and played turnover-free ball for the first time in eight games as the Cowboys (13-5) dominated the listless Bucs (8-10) in what may turn out to be Brady’s last game in a Tampa Bay uniform. “Not the way we wanted to end it,” Brady said. “Kind of typical of the way we played all season.” Dallas beat Brady for the first time in the seven-time Super Bowl champion's career and won in the postseason on the road for the first time in 30 years to earn a trip to San Francisco to face the 49ers in the NFC divisional round next Sunday. “You watched this team that had all the reasons in the world to have criticism — you can call it doubt, you can call it whatever you want — and they came back and they’re not the same team that came to town,” Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said. “They’re a better team having beaten Tampa and beaten a great player at quarterback.” The Cowboys had dropped eight straight playoff games away from home since winning the NFC championship game in San Francisco on Jan. 17, 1993. They were also coming off a poor performance in a lopsided regular season-ending loss to Washington. “Didn't listen,” Prescott said about all the talk about the Cowboys not being ready for the playoffs. “Simply just didn’t listen to anybody else’s opinions, anybody else’s thoughts. Made sure I was conscious of what I put in my own head,” Prescott added. About the only thing that went wrong for theCowboyswas kicker Brett Maher missing his first four extra points, becoming the first player in NFL history to miss that many in a game. Maher finally converted on his fifth attempt after coach Mike McCarthy decided against sending him out to try a field goal from roughly the same distance as a PAT. Tampa Bay receiver Russell Gage was strapped to a backboard and carted off the field late in the fourth quarter. Gage slipped and fell to the turf while running a route and took a blow to the neck as he went down. He was unable to get to his feet and silence fell over the stadium as players took a knee and medical personnel tended to him. Coach Todd Bowles said Gage was taken to a hospital with a concussion and was being evaluated for a neck injury. Gage's injury occurred two weeks after Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin went into cardiac arrest and had to be resuscitated on the field in a Monday night game at Cincinnati. Brady, who signed with Tampa Bay in 2020 and led the Bucs to a Super Bowl title two years ago, will be a free agent this winter. He retired briefly last February before changing his mind and returning for a 23rd season at age 45. Brady threw a career-high 66 passes, completing 35 of them for for 351 yards, including secondhalf touchdowns of 30 yards to Julio Jones and 8 yards to Cameron Brate. He was sacked twice and also threw a costly interception — a second-quarter, endzone pick from the Dallas 5 that prevented the Bucs from potentially taking the lead when they were only trailing 6-0. While Brady broke his own league record for completions in a season and ranked third in passing yards behind Patrick Mahomes and Justin Herbert, Tampa Bay finished 25th in scoring at 18.4 points per game and never won more than two in a row while holding off Carolina, New Orleans and Atlanta to repeat as NFC South champions. “It's always tough,” Brady said of the disappointing finish to the season. “But we didn't earn it. They did.” COWBOYS 31, BUCCANEERS 14 Prescott’s 5 TDs wipe out Brady, Tampa By Fred Goodall ASSOC IATED PRE SS Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott rushes for a touchdown during the second quarter of Monday’s game in Tampa, Fla. Prescott accounted for five touchdowns in Dallas’ win. Cowboys 31, Buccaneers 14 Dallas 6 12 6 7 — 31 Tampa Bay 0 0 6 8 — 14 First Quarter Dal: Schultz 22 pass from Prescott (kick failed), 6:28. Second Quarter Dal: Prescott 1 run (kick failed), 6:13. Dal: Schultz 11 pass from Prescott (kick failed), :27. Third Quarter Dal: Gallup 2 pass from Prescott (kick failed), 10:04. TB: Jones 30 pass from Brady (pass failed), :00. Fourth Quarter Dal: Lamb 18 pass from Prescott (Maher kick), 10:13. TB: Brate 8 pass from Brady (Evans pass from Brady), 2:04. Dal TB First downs 26 24 Total Net Yards 425 386 Rushes-yards 35-128 12-52 Passing 297 334 Punt Returns 2-7 3-34 Kickoff Returns 1-35 3-58 Interceptions Ret. 1-0 0-0 Comp-Att-Int 25-33-0 35-66-1 Sacked-Yards Lost 1-8 2-17 Punts 4-47.25 5-49.0 Fumbles-Lost 0-0 1-0 Penalties-Yards 2-15 3-34 Time of Possession 35:30 24:30 INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS RUSHING: Dallas, Pollard 15-77, Elliott 13-27, Prescott 7-24. Tampa Bay, R.White 7-41, Fournette 5-11. PASSING: Dallas, Prescott 25-33-0-305. Tampa Bay, Brady 35-66-1- 351. RECEIVING: Dallas, Schultz 7-95, Gallup 5-46, Lamb 4-68, Pollard 3- 12, Hilton 2-23, N.Brown 2-18, Ferguson 1-34, Elliott 1-9. Tampa Bay, Godwin 10-85, Jones 7-74, Evans 6-74, Otton 4-58, R.White 4-36, Gage 2-10, Brate 1-8, Fournette 1-6. MISSED FIELD GOALS: None. The Houston Texans completed their interview with former Saints coach Sean Payton, a league source said Monday night. Payton is the fourth coach to interview with the Texans, following Eagles assistants Jonathan Gannon and Shane Steichen and Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson. Payton is under contract with the Saints through the 2024 season. To hire him, they would need to exchange a draft pick with the Saints for Payton. Payton, 59, was on “The Herd with Colin Cowherd” earlier Monday, and when asked said he would willing consider the Texans job, he said “absolutely.” He said he has some knowledge of CEO and chair Cal McNair through previous joint practices. “They’ve got really good draft capital,” Payton said. “They are in a division you can at least look at and say — I think there’s growth potential immediately there from their two or three wins that they had this year. I know a little bit, Nick Caserio. Because when he was in New England we had a lot of practices with their team. Each team would be like we’re having this discussion.” Payton is considered one of the best offensive minds in NFL history. He is 152-89 alltime with a 9-8 postseason record. In 15 seasons, his Saints teams made the playoffs nine times, and won a Super Bowl. The Texans plan to interview 49ers defensive coordinator DeMeco Ryans on Friday, according to 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan. The team also plans to interview Broncos defensive coordinator Ejiro Evero, Rams assistant head coach Thomas Brown and Giants offensive coordinator Mike Kafka, among others. Jonathan Alexander Panthers looking to meet with Payton The Carolina Panthers have received permission from the New Orleans Saints to interview Sean Payton for their vacant head coaching position, according to a person familiar with the situation. The Panthers have also requested permission to speak to Philadelphia Eagles defensive consultant Vic Fangio, New York Jets safeties coach Marquand Manuel and New Orleans Saints defensive backs coach Kris Richard for their defensive coordinator position. Ossenfort hired as Cardinals GM The Arizona Cardinals have hired Monti Ossenfort as the team’s new general manager. The franchise announced the hiring on Monday, one week after owner Michael Bidwill announced that head coach Kliff Kingsbury and general manager Steve Keim would not return following a dreadful 4-13 season. The 44-year-old Ossenfort has spent the past three seasons as director of player personnel for the Tennessee Titans. Before that, he spent 15 seasons with the New England Patriots, helping the franchise win four Super Bowls. In 21 seasons, his teams have made the playoffs 16 times. NOTEBOOK Texans interview former Saints head coach Payton STAFF AND W IRE REPORTS Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images Sean Payton won 152 games as head coach of the Saints, and he led New Orleans to a win over the Colts in Super Bowl XLIV.

HOUSTON CHRONICLE | HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM TUESDAY, JANUARY 17, 2023 C3 TEXANS Dungy in 2002, the Buccaneers traded two first-round draft picks, two second-round draft picks and $8 million in cash to the Raiders in exchange for Gruden, who had one year left on his contract. Those picks became the 21st and 53rd overall picks in 2002, the 32nd overall pick in 2003, and the 33rd overall in 2004. Gruden won a Super Bowl in his first season against his former team, the Raiders. Gruden’s teams made the playoffs two more times in his remaining six seasons there. But he never got past the wild card round. During that same period from 2002-2008, the Raiders had only one winning season and one playoff appearance, going through five head coaches. Bill Belichick In 2000, after coach Bill Parcells stepped down as head coach of the Jets, Belichick was hired to succeed him. But Belichick had a last-minute change of heart and decided to sign with the Patriots. Because Belichick was under contract as head coach with the Jets, the Patriots traded a firstround pick (12th overall), a fourth and a seventh in exchange for Belichick, a fifth and a seventh. In Belichick’s 23 New England seasons from 2000-2022, he has won six Super Bowls while establishing a reputation as one of the greatest coaches of all time. During that same span, the Jets have been to the playoffs six times, with two trips to the AFC Championship Game. Mike Holmgren In 1999, Holmgren, then the Packers’ head coach, was offered an eight-year, $32 million deal to be the head coach, general manager and executive vice president of the Seahawks, giving him total control of football operations. Because he was under contract with Green Bay, the Seahawks traded a second-round pick, 47th overall, for Holmgren. Holmgren had a 75-37 record in seven seasons with the Packers and made two Super Bowl appearances, winning one. And Seattle hadn’t made the playoffs in 10 years. In 10 seasons with the Seahawks, Holmgren’s teams made six playoff appearances, including a trip to the Super Bowl in 2005. Bill Parcells In 1997, Parcells wanted out of New England, and the Jets wanted him to help turn around their team. But he remained under contract with the Patriots. Forced to get involved, the NFL helped broker a deal that gave New England a third- and fourth-round pick that year, a second-round pick in 1998, and a first round pick in 1999. The first round pick in 1999 ended up being 28th overall. In three seasons with the Jets, Parcells was 29-19 but made the playoffs only once, in 1998, getting to the AFC Championship Game before losing to the Broncos. Herm Edwards Edwards left the Jets in 2006 to take a job with the Chiefs as their head coach. He had two years left on his contract. But the Jets didn’t get much for him. Kansas City gave New York a fourth-round pick for Edwards, who had just finished with a 4-12 record in 2005. In Kansas City, he made the playoffs during his first season in 2006, losing in the wild card game, but he failed to make it back in the remaining two seasons with the team. He was fired after the 2008 season. What do the Texans have? Given the history of coaching trades and the past success of Payton, the price to hire him will likely be somewhat steep. Payton is 152-89 all-time with a 9-8 postseason record. In 15 seasons, his Saints teams made the playoffs nine times. Payton also has interest from the Denver Broncos, Arizona Cardinals and Carolina Panthers, and New Orleans general manager Mickey Loomis told reporters Friday that the Saints plan to get fair value for Payton. “I absolutely want the best for him,” Loomis said. “But I also recognize he’s a valuable asset, his contract is a valuable asset to our club, and it’s our duty to maximize that. Look, I think between the quarterback, or a head coach, no one impacts winning more than those two guys in any building. So I know what he brings to the table, and I know that’s really valuable. And it’s our obligation to maximize that value if he chooses to coach again within that time frame where we have those rights.” Speaking on the Herd radio show with Colin Cowherd, Payton said based on his conversations with Loomis, he thought the compensation would be a “mid to late first-round pick,” for his services, which could be arrived in different ways, whether that is a 2023 pick or a future pick, depending on the team. The Texans have the No. 2 and No. 12 overall draft picks this year, as well as two first-round choices in 2024 that they can play with. But those picks are a big part of what makes their job attractive and could entice the best candidates. The Texans certainly have an interesting choice to make. Do they go with Payton and potentially give up a first-round pick and more? Or hire one of the up-and-coming coaches with whom they have an interview? The fact they have requested an interview with Payton indicates the Texans would be willing to make some kind of trade. [email protected] twitter.com/jonmalexander TEXANS From page C1 Charlie Riedel/AP Herm Edwards made the playoffs in his first season at Kansas City in 2006, but was fired after the 2008 season. Three years later, what’s become known as super wildcard weekend provided multiple lessons and reminders for a rebuilding team that can only dream of the playoffs right now. 1.) Head coaches matter. Kyle Shanahan has been an offensive magician with Purdy, despite the fact San Francisco has already burned through two QBs this season. Daboll continues to get the best out of the New York Giants, despite a roster that isn’t .500- worthy on paper. Then there’s Doug Pederson, who also was available on the open market less than a year ago and now has the AFC South champs heading to Kansas City for a divisional round matchup against the Chiefs. Two of the above three should have received serious consideration for past jobs on Kirby Drive. Shanahan is a sideline reminder that modern offense drives everything in 2023 and a good coach can help create a good QB — even when the QB was the final pick of the draft. 2.) The Purdy factor. Mr. Increasingly Relevant isn’t Tom Brady — yet. But the longer Purdy remains alive in these playoffs, the more the normal franchise QB formula will be questioned. Joe Burrow and Trevor Lawrence are both former No. 1 picks and already franchise faces. Jones was selected at No. 6, while Josh Allen was taken off the board at No. 7. But as wild-card weekend stretched into Monday, Dak Prescott (No. 135) and Brady (No. 199) were reminders that you don’t always have to find your QB at the peak of the draft. Jalen Hurts was taken at No. 53 and was the NFL MVP before an injury highlighted again the brilliance of Patrick Mahomes’ (No. 10, via trade). The Texans hold the Nos. 2 and 12 picks this year and a ton of other future selections. General manager Nick Caserio used No. 67 on Davis Mills in 2021. A 5-19-1 record as a starter says Mills shouldn’t be the Texans’ go-to answer anymore. But how does a Patriotstaught Caserio value the QB position, and what will the Texans do if Bryce Young or C.J. Stroud is eventually taken, via trade, at No. 1? Purdy might peak as a pro with a 6-0 record. But as long as he keeps starting and winning big games, while being backed by an elite defense, No. 262 makes the Texans’ decision at No. 2 even more interesting. 3.) Baltimore’s other QB. I haven’t heard or read of any connection between Lamar Jackson and the Texans, so I’m not going there. But Derek Carr is already available. With Purdy rewriting history for San Francisco and Trey Lance still on the 49ers’ roster, Jimmy Garoppolo should soon hit the market. Then there’s the 2019 NFL MVP, who is only 1-3 all-time in the playoffs but clearly one of the most talented athletes in the sport. Tyler Huntley almost pulled off a huge upset of Burrow’s Bengals before a 98-yard fumble return and a ticking clock got in the way. Even with the wildcard defeat, Jackson moved further away from the team that drafted him (No. 32) in 2018. Is Jackson’s potential availability as a franchise QB the equivalent of Sean Payton’s being available as a head coach to the highest bidder, meaning you must at least have the conversation and engage in the discussion? I’m not going there yet, since Jackson has increasingly become a question mark and his career trajectory doesn’t fit the Texans’ rebuild. But falling dominoes lead to other falling dominoes, especially in pro football. Almost every QB-needing team will kick the tires on Jackson the moment his name is floated on the trade market. That’s all I’m saying. 4.) Turnarounds. Seattle wasn’t supposed to do anything this season. Pete Carroll’s Seahawks made the playoffs with Geno Smith. That’s coaching, teamwork and grit. San Francisco started 3-4. Then a bold Christian McCaffrey trade and Purdy saved the 49ers’ season. The Giants were 4-13 before hiring a rookie coach who’s done nothing but impress. The Jaguars were a three-win team and worse than the Texans. Then Jacksonville hired a former Super Bowl winner to get the best out of a former No. 1 pick. There’s no perfect formula in the NFL, and there are always exceptions to the constantly changing rule. But the Texans are desperate for a turnaround, and they can learn from the 49ers, Giants and Jaguars, among others, right now. And if Caserio decides the Texans have so many roster holes that he needs to use Nos. 2 and 12 on non-QBs ... a franchise-changing talent from Baltimore could soon be available to the highest bidder. [email protected] twitter.com/chronbriansmith SMITH From page C1 prayer, I’ve made the decision that it’s time to turn those dreams into a reality.” Stroud is widely considered one of the top quarterbacksin the draft. The upcoming evaluation process, including next month’s scouting combine, will further stir speculation whether he or Alabama’s Bryce Young will be the first quarterback taken. It is uncertain what the lastplace Bears will do with the No. 1 overall pick. Chicago appears pleased with Justin Fields, but quarterback-heavy drafts drive up the trade market. It’s possible the Bears could dangle the opportunity to select either quarterback in front of an organization willing to pay the price. This is the scenario the Texans created for themselves after winning their final game against the Colts. General manager Nick Caserio and his personnel department must now decide whether to pick a quarterback at No. 2 overall, which one they prefer, and if they are willing to let one slip past them at the No. 1 overall slot. Below is the analysis of potential outcomes. Outcome 1 — Texans draft Bryce Young Analysis: There are still plenty of draft evaluators who prefer Young to Stroud. There are still plenty of scenarios in which the Bears indeed use their No. 1 overall pick, just not on a quarterback. If watching Houston’s lastplace run defense induced headaches, Chicago’s second-to-lastranked run defense didn’t exactly spark serotonin. Alabama defensive end Will Anderson and Georgia defensive tackle Jalen Carter will almost certainly establish themselves as surefire alternatives to the available quarterbacks, and the Bears, who pressured opposing quarterbacks at the league’s second-lowest rate, could supply their defensive-minded head coach, Matt Eberflus, the sort of freak athlete who can elevate his four-manfront scheme. Such a scenario essentially makes moot any immediate concerns the Texans fan base had when the Houston lost out on the No. 1 overall pick on a HailMary and two-point conversion. Caserio and (insert coach name here) get to pick their quarterback. There’ll be time enough to evaluate the difference between Young and Stroud. But conventional wisdom sways toward Young, the only Alabama quarterback to throw for 3,000- plus yards in two seasons, the 2021 Heisman Trophy winner, and a 6-foot, 194-pound righty who fielded a 165.0 quarterback rating while playing in the Southeastern Conference. Outcome 2 — Texans draft Ohio State’s C.J. Stroud Analysis:There was brief uncertainty of Stroud’s choice when Brian Schottenstein, the founder of an Ohio-based nonprofit that crowdfunds NIL deals for Ohio State players, announced Monday morning on Twitter that he “got some big news today.” Minutes after Stroud declared for the draft, Schottenstein added to his initial tweet a video of he and his wife celebrating a gender reveal for their child. It was either elitelevel trolling, the crazy crossfire of counterbalancing personal life updates and sports on social media as a quasi-celebrity, or both. There might be a time when it actually makes financial sense for an elite athlete to eschew the NFL for another year of NIL revenue. But Stroud’s $2.8 million NIL valuation, according to On3, is still substantially lower than the four-year, $39.1 million contract he’d be slotted to acquire, according to Spotrac, if the Texans picked him No. 2 overall. The Texans could arrive at this selection in a few ways. The Bears might trade the No. 1 overall pick to a quarterback-needy team that selects Young. The Bears might trade Fields and take Young themselves. The Texans might just decide they like Stroud better, even when given a choice between the two. It’s hard to imagine Stroud escaping the Colts at No. 4, and when that pick has a slot value of $36.6 million, it’s not hard to deduce why Stroud isn’t staying at Ohio State. Outcome 3 — Texans draft best available non-QB Analysis: Let’s say one quarterback is chosen by the time the Texans are on the clock. And let’s say Caserio and his personnel staff simply have that quarterback graded at a higher tier on their draft board than the other. If that’s the case, there’s plenty of precedent to suggest Caserio would then seek out trading the pick to the highest bidder of teams that want to choose the remaining quarterback before another team does. But let’s also say Caserio can’t find a trade partner to meet an acceptable price. As was stated about the Bears in Outcome 1, the Texans could supply their miserable run defense with Anderson or Carter — an outcome that might even be favored if a defensive-minded head coach is hired. There’s data to support such a decision. In the Chronicle’s study of No. 1and No. 2 overall picks in the Super Bowl era, the win percentage of the NFL team’s regime (GM/head coach) at the time of the selection is 8.8 percentage points higher when the team picks a non-quarterback at No. 2 overall. And remember, the Texans also wield the No. 12 overall pick. Perhaps Kentucky’s Will Levis, a 6-3, 232- pound prospect, impresses enough in the draft process to surge into a higher tier on Caserio’s draft board. The Texans could snag the best non-quarterback, select a signal-caller their scouting department grades highly, and call it a victory. This outcome carries a significant risk: Will the third-best quarterback be available beyond the Seahawks, Raiders and Panthers? Outcome 4 — Texans trade the No. 2 overall pick Analysis: As previously stated, Caserio is prone to draft-day trades. On the day David Culley was fired after a 4-13 season gave the Texans the No. 3 overall pick, Caserio hinted he’d be willing to trade the selection Houston eventually spent on Derek Stingley Jr. Now that there are two premier quarterbacks available in the draft, the haul the Texans could receive in a potential draftday exchange could be substantial. The Dolphins gained two additional first-round picks and a third-round pick by trading their No. 3 overall pick to the 49ers, who then selected Trey Lance in the 2021 draft. But the Dolphins had already drafted Tua Tagovailoa No. 5 overall the year before, so they really had no desire to draft another quarterback. The Texans are in no such position. Davis Mills largely regressed in his second season, albeit within an offense with sparse weapons, and it would be confounding if the Texans didn’t pursue to some degree another option at quarterback in the offseason. Indeed, the Texans have many roster holes to fill. Is it better suited for them to sign Jimmy Garoppolo or trade for Derek Carr and use their draft capital on other players? [email protected] twitter.com/bkubena STROUD From page C1 Butch Dill/Associated Press Alabama quarterback Bryce Young, the 2021 Heisman Trophy winner, passed for 3,000-plus yards in two seasons.

C4 TUESDAY, JANUARY 17, 2023 HHHH HOUSTON CHRONICLE | HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM NBA WESTERN CONFERENCE W L Pct GB Denver 30 13 .698 — Memphis 30 13 .698 — New Orleans 26 18 .591 4 ½ Sacramento 24 18 .571 5 ½ Dallas 24 21 .533 7 L.A. Clippers 23 22 .511 8 Golden State 22 22 .500 8 ½ Utah 23 24 .489 9 Minnesota 22 23 .489 9 Portland 21 22 .488 9 Oklahoma City 21 23 .477 9 ½ Phoenix 21 24 .467 10 L.A. Lakers 20 24 .455 10 ½ San Antonio 13 31 .295 17 ½ Houston 10 34 .227 20 ½ EASTERN CONFERENCE W L Pct GB Boston 33 12 .733 — Brooklyn 27 15 .643 4 ½ Milwaukee 28 16 .636 4 ½ Philadelphia 27 16 .628 5 Cleveland 28 17 .622 5 New York 25 20 .556 8 Miami 24 21 .533 9 Indiana 23 22 .511 10 Atlanta 22 22 .500 10 ½ Chicago 20 24 .455 12 ½ Toronto 20 24 .455 12 ½ Washington 18 26 .409 14 ½ Orlando 16 28 .364 16 ½ Detroit 12 35 .255 22 Charlotte 11 34 .244 22 Sunday’s results New York 117, Detroit 104 L.A. Clippers 121, Houston 100 Chicago 132, Golden State 118 Oklahoma City 112, Brooklyn 102 Sacramento 132, San Antonio 119 Denver 119, Orlando 116 Portland 140, Dallas 123 Philadelphia 113, L.A. Lakers 112 Monday’s results L.A. Lakers 140, Houston 132 Boston 130, Charlotte 118 Milwaukee 132, Indiana 119 Cleveland 113, New Orleans 103 Golden State 127, Washington 118 Toronto 123, New York 121 (OT) Atlanta 121, Miami 113 Utah 126, Minnesota 125 Memphis 136, Phoenix 106 Tuesday’s games Toronto at Milwaukee, 6:30 p.m. Brooklyn at San Antonio, 7 p.m. Portland at Denver, 8 p.m. Philadelphia at L.A. Clippers, 9 p.m. Wednesday’s games Atlanta at Dallas, 6:30 p.m. Washington at New York, 6:30 p.m. Charlotte at Houston, 7 p.m. Cleveland at Memphis, 7 p.m. Indiana at Oklahoma City, 7 p.m. Miami at New Orleans, 7 p.m. L.A. Clippers at Utah, 8 p.m. Minnesota at Denver, 9 p.m. Sacramento at L.A. Lakers, 9:30 p.m. AT A GLANCE TATUM SCORES 51 TO LEAD CELTICS TO 7TH STRAIGHT Jayson Tatum had 51 points, including seven 3-pointers, and the Boston Celtics beat the Charlotte Hornets for the second time in three days, 130-118 on Monday, for their seventh straight victory. Derrick White added 19 points and eight assists and Malcolm Brogdon scored 16 for the Celtics, who improved to 33-12 on the season — maintaining the best record in the Eastern Conference. Tatum was 15 of 23 from the field and 14 of 14 from the foul line. Jalen McDaniels led the Hornets with a careerhigh 26 points on 5-of-7 shooting from 3-point range. LaMelo Ball finished with 25 points on 8-of-23 shooting. HAWKS PROMOTE KORVER The Atlanta Hawks promoted Kyle Korver to assistant general manager as they continue to remodel their front office. The move comes less than one month after Travis Schlenk stepped down as team president on Dec. 21 and general manager Landry Fields assumed control of daily operations. Schlenk was named to an advisory position. Fields was promoted to general manager last year. MONDAY’S HIGHLIGHTS Fred VanVleet scored 33 points, Scottie Barnes had 26 points and the Raptors recovered in overtime after RJ Barrett's tying slam with 0.6 seconds left in regulation to beat the Knicks. ... Steph Curry scored 41 points and Jordan Poole added 32 in the Warriors’ win over the Wizards. ... Walker Kessler had career-highs of 20 points and 21 rebounds and the Jazz rallied from a 10-point deficit in the fourth quarter to beat the Timberwolves. Wire reports NOTEBOOK LeBron James set a halfhearted screen on the left elbow before popping to the top of the key where Russell Westbrook found him with a pass. James caught it and squared up without hesitation, effortlessly flipping the ball toward the hoop during the first quarter Sunday night against the Philadelphia 76ers. As it passed through the rim and into the net, James became the second player in NBA history to score 38,000 career points. The player he’s chasing, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, is the only other member of the club. After the next timeout, when James’ milestone basket was shown on the Crypto.com Arena scoreboard, public address announcer Lawrence Tanter called it another great moment in Lakers history. But these moments in James’ career have hardly been great as far as the team’s play is concerned. When he passed Michael Jordan in Los Angeles on the all-time scoring list, the Lakers lost. When he moved past Kobe Bryant, the team lost in Philadelphia, and when he became the second all-time leading scorer in Washington, that also came in a Lakers loss. And by the time the horn sounded and Joel Embiid fired the ball up in the air, points 38,000 and 38,001 couldn’t truly be celebrated, another loss marring one of James’ milestone achievements. RussellWestbrook’s potential winning drive didn’t connect, the Lakers losing another heartbreaker to Philadelphia, this time 113-112, that dropped Los Angeles’ record to 19- 24 entering Monday’s game against the Rockets. James was terrific, executing a 360-degree spinning layup in the second half in yet another reminder that he’s aging in a way few have in any sport. He scored 35 to go with 10 assists and eight rebounds. And Westbrook had 20 points, 14 rebounds and 11 assists — his fourth triple-double this season since moving to the bench, the most for an NBA reserve. But for all the fight and excellence from the top of the Lakers’ roster, they left the court losers for the third straight time — Embiid’s silky midrange game in the fourth the ultimate difference. A Troy Brown Jr. 3- pointer and a Lakers stop gave them a chance to win, but coach Darvin Ham didn’t call timeout as Westbrook moved the ball up the left wing. With Embiid guarding him, Westbrook fumbled the ball before attacking the rim, ending the game sitting underneath the basket in frustration. Embiid finished with 35 points and 11 rebounds and James Harden scored 24 to go with 13 assists. LAKERS LeBron passes 38K points, inching closer to Kareem By Dan Woike LOS ANGELE S T IME S Allen J. Schaben/Tribune News Service Lakers forward LeBron James became just the second player in NBA history to score 38,000 career points Sunday against the 76ers, but the milestone was overshadowed by another loss in Los Angeles’ dismal season. Jalen Green scored 17 of his 23 points in the second half, going from making two of 12 shots to five of his last seven. Eric Gordon added 19 points with a season-high eight assists. The Rockets, however, missed five free throws in the final 2½ minutes, including a pair that Sengun missed with 11 seconds left and the Lakers up six. The Rockets, who had been down as much as 16, the deficit of their comeback wins against the Suns and Hawks, put together a 17-7 run to pull within three with less than four minutes remaining. Dennis Schröder drove to a three-point play as the Lakers had begun to click again after James returned to the game. James had immediately posted up Jabari Smith Jr. when he checked back in, getting a threepoint play that gave him 40 points. Russell Westbrook had gotten a switch and knocked down a mid-range jumper over Sengun. Smith answered the Schröder bucket with a 3- pointer, his first of the night, before James hit a deep jumper. Smith went to the line, making one of two free throws to move the Rockets back within four. But Juan Toscano-Anderson scored on a break as the Rockets stopped for Sengun to tie his shoe. Smith kept it tight with an offensive rebound he put back in, giving the Rockets 20 second-chance points. Troy Brown Jr. missed the corner 3 he made the night before, and K.J. Martin pulled the Rockets to within two. The Rockets still stayed in the game. After Westbrook scored on a break after a Green turnover, Gordon drove to cut the lead to two. The Rockets still could not stop James. He banked in a 14-footer. Gordon missed everything on a drive. Sengun fouled James on the rebound, sending James to the line with the Lakers holding a fourpoint lead with 39.5 seconds remaining. Rockets coach Stephen Silas challenged the call but after a review, the foul remained as called. With that, James sealed the win, as he always seemed certain to get around to eventually. Still the King James saw Smith stationed in front of him at the top of the key and was determined to welcome the rookie to the NBA. Smith had drawn the assignment from the opening tip, and James had given him a taste of what was to come. But late in the first half, he toasted the rookie and then let the crowd know how much he enjoyed it. He blew past Smith, who was all of 5 months old when James was an NBA rookie, and smashed his slam with everything he had, stopping only to tell the crowd, “I’m a bad (expletive).” Smith on Monday was one of two sons of former NBA players who James has gone against in his career. He had a few possessions against K.J. Martin as well with Kenyon Martin looking on. If he did not know, Smith made sure to tell him during the game, saying, “You played against my dad in your first NBA game.” Silas was a Cavaliers assistant coach then. But he saw the full LeBron again on Monday. The Alpe Show Sengun more than kept the Rockets in the game in the first half. He put on a show worthy of Showtime. This was not just the best scoring half of his career, with Sengun making nine of 11 shots, including a 3-pointer that caromed high off the rim and in, to score 20 points. He added nine rebounds, three assists and three blocked shots. But if that were not enough, he took one defensive rebound and took off the length of the floor before sending a no-look, behind-the-back pass to a trailing Jae’Sean Tate. It was a play that in L.A. could be considered Magic like. Or at least Magic Light. Either way, he drew oohs and ahhs from the Lakers crowd accustomed to the Lake Show. He did not need long to get the career-high thing out of the way. Sengun opened the second half with a pair of buckets inside, the second for a three-point play off a nice dish by Smith. He followed that with his second 3-pointer to get his career high, giving him 28 points with 10½ minutes left in the third quarter. Gordon’s answer The Rockets’ most improved player since Gordon said there has been no improvement has been Gordon. After scoring 24 points Sunday, matching his season high, he played the second half of the back-toback for the second time this season and picked up where he left off. Gordon was so aggressive going to the basket, he went 9-of-10 from the line and shot 3- of-4 on drives — in the first half Monday. In the five games prior to his complaint, he had averaged 6.8 points on 26.2 percent shooting. He might need to let his frustration show again. [email protected] twitter.com/jonathan_feigen ROCKETS From page C1 Jae C. Hong/Associated Press The Rockets’ Alperen Sengun put on a show in Los Angeles with 33 points, 15 rebounds, six assists and four blocks, but it wasn’t enough to snap the skid. MOST POINTS IN NBA HISTORY Player Years Points 1. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar 1969-1989 38,387 2. LeBron James 2003-present 38,072 3. Karl Malone 1985-2004 36,928 4. Kobe Bryant 1996-2016 33,643 5. Michael Jordan 1984-2003 32,292 Lakers 140, Rockets 132 Houston 35 26 37 34 — 132 L.A. Lakers 37 36 29 38 — 140 FG FT Reb HOUSTON Min M-A M-A O-T A PF PTS Martin Jr. 30:20 7-15 1-2 2-7 0 4 17 Smith Jr. 28:28 5-11 3-4 1-4 4 5 14 Sengun 37:19 14-17 3-5 4-15 6 5 33 Gordon 31:58 5-11 9-11 0-2 8 1 19 Green 39:22 7-20 6-8 1-5 3 3 23 Eason 20:23 4-6 0-0 5-7 0 2 9 Tate 17:40 3-8 1-1 1-1 4 3 7 Mathews 13:26 2-5 0-0 1-4 1 1 6 Garuba 10:40 2-3 0-0 1-2 1 1 4 Christopher 10:23 0-4 0-0 1-1 1 0 0 Totals 240:00 49-100 23-31 17-48 28 25 132 Percentages: FG .490, FT .742. 3-Point Goals: 11-30, .367 (Green 3-10, Sengun 2-2, Mathews 2-3, Martin Jr. 2-5, Eason 1-1, Smith Jr. 1-4, Tate 0-1, Christopher 0-2, Gordon 0-2). Team Rebounds: 12. Team Turnovers: None. Blocked Shots: 7 (Sengun 4, Martin Jr. 2, Eason). Turnovers: 8 (Martin Jr. 2, Sengun 2, Eason, Green, Mathews, Smith Jr.). Steals: 0 Technical Fouls: None. FG FT Reb L.A. LAKERS Min M-A M-A O-T A PFPTS Brown Jr. 29:39 2-4 0-0 0-3 1 0 6 James 35:51 16-26 11-12 1-8 9 1 48 Bryant 17:41 1-6 4-4 0-6 0 3 6 Beverley 21:53 3-6 2-2 0-2 1 2 11 Schroder 33:13 3-9 3-5 0-2 3 3 9 Westbrook 32:11 9-16 6-8 2-5 4 2 24 Gabriel 24:07 5-8 4-4 5-9 1 6 14 Nunn 23:58 7-12 0-0 0-2 1 0 15 Toscano-Anderson 16:14 3-4 0-0 1-2 3 2 7 Christie 5:11 0-0 0-0 0-0 0 0 0 Totals 240:00 49-91 30-35 9-39 23 19 140 Percentages: FG .538, FT .857. 3-Point Goals: 12-33, .364 (James 5-10, Beverley 3-6, Brown Jr. 2-4, ToscanoAnderson 1-2, Nunn 1-5, Bryant 0-1, Gabriel 0-1, Schroder 0-1, Westbrook 0-3). Team Rebounds: 7. Team Turnovers: None. Blocked Shots: 5 (Bryant 2, Gabriel 2, Brown Jr.). Turnovers: 2 (Brown Jr., Toscano-Anderson). Steals: 4 (Brown Jr., Gabriel, Toscano-Anderson, Westbrook). Technical Fouls: Lakers, 8:23 first; Westbrook, 2:33 fourth. A: 17,657 (18,997).

HOUSTON CHRONICLE | HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COMHHHH TUESDAY, JANUARY 17, 2023 C5 COLLEGE BASKETBALL said after the 66-56 win. Another noisy sellout reception awaits Tuesday as the Cougars visit Tulane’s 4,000-seat Devlin Fieldhouse for a battle of the top two teams in the American Athletic Conference standings. As the Cougars (17-1, 5-0 AAC) have found out, being the No. 1 team in men’s college basketball comes with all sorts of challenges as each game becomes “the biggest game on the schedule” for opponents. “Every gym we walk into is going to be loud,” redshirt freshman guard Emmanuel Sharp said. “You’re going to hear a lot of heckling from the opposing fans because we’re No. 1. Who wouldn’t do that to the opposing No. 1 team walking into your gym?” Twice this season, the Cougars have encountered a close game in a hostile environment, winning 69-61 over No. 2 Virginia before a crowd of 14,629 on Dec. 17 in Charlottesville and 72- 59 on Jan. 8 in front of 10,264 at Cincinnati. Tough games have not been reserved just for the road, with the Cougars clawing out close wins over Kent State, UCF and USF at home and against Saint Mary’s in Fort Worth. “We go into every game knowing we have a target on our backs,” redshirt junior forward J’Wan Roberts said. “We know we are going to get every team’s best shot. We know what comes with being the No. 1 team.” Jarace Walker became accustomed to playing on the road during a prep career at IMG Academy, known for its national schedule and top-level competition. “I have a great time playing on the road,” said Walker, who will return to the lineup Tuesday after missing one game with flu symptoms. “It feels like it’s just you and your brothers out there against everybody.” Walker’s approach to the noise: “I just block them out. They are yelling and screaming. Whatever they are saying, I really don’t listen.” Houston is 4-0 in true road games this season, joining Kansas, Texas, UCLA, Purdue, Alabama, UCLA, Xavier, San Diego State and Saint Mary’s as the only schools yet to lose on the road. Six more road games remain in the regular season, among them visits to SMU’s Moody Coliseum, which has been a tough place to play for the Cougars in recent years, UCF’s Addition Financial Arena and FedExForum in Memphis. “When we go on the road at Memphis, at Cincinnati, at Central Florida, at Temple, at Tulsa, at South Florida … everywhere we go is their biggest crowd of the year,” coach Kelvin Sampson said. Sampson recalled the welcome the Cougars received from a packed student section for last season’s game at UCF. “An hour before the game, they were in their seats booing us, saying vile, nasty (things), cussing at us, doing all that stuff,” Sampson said during a preseason pep rally in early November. “But what they were doing was creating such a great home-court advantage for their team. I’m not promoting the vile stuff, but our students when these teams come to our gym, we need to give to them what they are giving us when we go on the road.” With 13 games left in the regular season, Tuesday offers UH a chance to take a two-game lead in the AAC. As of now, the Cougars have only two chances left (at UCF and at Memphis) for a Quadrant 1 victory —used by the NCAA Tournament selection committee for seeding purposes — that could help build a résumé worthy of the top overall seed in the tournament. Tulane (12-5, 5-1 AAC) has won five straight games since losing its AAC opener to Cincinnati. The Green Wave feature a veteran lineup led by guard Jaylen Forbes, who is averaging 23.5 points in conference play. Tulane ranks 19th nationally in scoring (81.9 points per game) and is second in free-throw percentage (.821). “He’s got that thing at a level where they can beat just about anybody,” Sampson said of Tulane’s fourth-year coach, Ron Hunter. “It’s a conference road game. It’s not supposed to be easy.” Neither is life as the No. 1 team in the nation. “We’re expecting them to play hard like every other team,” Arceneaux said. “Being No. 1 still doesn’t change how we play. We still have the same mindset whether we are ranked or unranked. We just have to go out with the same focus, knowing every team is going to play hard because of who we are. We are the biggest game for every team.” As for the Oregon crowd asking where Beaumont is? “Hopefully, they looked it up after the game,” Arceneaux said. [email protected] twitter.com/joseph_duarte UH From page C1 Karen Warren/Staff photographer Guard Jamal Shead, top, and No. 1 UH have had to get used to getting every opponent’s best effort this season, as they did when they hosted South Florida on Jan. 11. The Cougars won 83-77. Alabama men’s basketball coach Nate Oats said Monday the fourth-ranked Crimson Tide is going through “kind of a grieving process” after player Darius Miles and another man were charged with capital murder following a fatal shooting near campus. Oats said he couldn’t discuss any specifics related to the case. He said he spoke with Miles’ mother multiple times Sunday, and met with the team that night. “I thought it was important that we were all here and around to support one another through this situation,” Oats said. Baylor women’s poll streak is snapped Baylor’s 19-year run in the Associated Press women’s college basketball poll is over. The Bears had been ranked for 365 consecutive polls in a streak that began Jan. 5, 2004. Fiedler, Rice outlast UTSA in overtime Max Fiedler had a tripledouble with 24 points, 13 rebounds and 11 assists, Quincy Olivari scored 30 points and Travis Evee added 19 as Rice defeated UTSA 88-81 in overtime at San Antonio. Olivari had eight rebounds for the Owls (13-5, 4-3 Conference USA). Japhet Medor led the Roadrunners (7-12, 1-7) with 30 points. In other games, Zach Edey finished with a career-high 32 points and 17 rebounds to help No. 3 Purdue hold off Michigan State 64-63 at East Lansing, Mich. … Chris Craig’s layup as time expired lifted host Texas Southern to an 84-82 victory over Jackson State. John Walker III finished with 28 points for TSU (8-14, 1-5 SWAC). … Dominic Brewton scored 20 points as Alcorn State won 77-68 in overtime at Prairie View A&M. Yahusa Rasas scored 21 points for Prairie View (7-12, 3-3 SWAC). … Katelyn Crosthwait scored 23 points as Rice (12-4,3-4 C-USA) edged visiting UTSA 78-76 in a women’s game. NOTEBOOK Alabama players deal with tragedy W IRE REPORTS AUSTIN — Texas interim coach Rodney Terry has faith Tyrese Hunter will rediscover the form that made him the 2022 Big 12 freshman of the year. Like Terry said after the sophomore guard went scoreless in Saturday’s 72-70 win over Texas Tech, “He’s too good a player not to.” Still, Terry acknowledged these last few weeks have been rough on the Iowa State transfer. Hunter has scored under nine points in seven of his last nine outings. He’s finished with a positive assist-to-turnover ratio only twice in five Big 12 contests after doing so nine times over his first 12 games as a Longhorn. “I think he’ll find his groove here at the right time,” Terry said. “He’s a high-level player, and he’s a guy that we have extremely high expectations for. And I know he has high expectations for himself.” Maybe Tuesday’s return trip to sold-out Hilton Coliseum for a tilt with No. 12 Iowa State (13-3, 4-1) will help Hunter recapture the magic of his lone season in Ames. No. 7 Texas (15-2, 4-1 Big 12) would certainly welcome the dime-slinging, shot-making, ball-stopping version of Hunter while playing in front of a combative crowd that can’t wait to shower the one who got away in venom. Sure, Iowa State fans are grateful for what Hunter helped the program achieve last season. The Cyclones improved by 20 wins, reached No. 8 in the Associated Press poll, and advanced to the Sweet 16 for the first time since 2016. Those same fans also felt spurned by Hunter after he decided to transfer to an in-conference rival. The official Twitter account of the Hilton Coliseum student section dubbed “Cyclone Alley” even sent out a light warning Monday morning: “I am hearing a rumor that the passion will be in full force tomorrow night.” Iowa State coach T.J. Otzelberger was a bit more tactful when asked about Hunter’s imminent return. “I have a lot of gratitude and thankfulness to all the guys that were on our team last year and what they did to help jump-start our program,” Otzelberger said, per the Des Moines Register. “I understand the player and the competitor that (Hunter) is. At the same time, our focus is on moving forward on our team, our group.” Iowa State isn’t an ideal matchup for a slumping guard looking to get back on track. The Cyclones lead the Big 12 and rank fifth nationally in defensive efficiency. They also force 19.4 turnovers per game, third most in the nation. But these are the sorts of challenges for which Hunter sought out a bigger spotlight. “I felt like I needed more of that platform where I can showcase my skills the best,” Hunter said in October when asked about his reasons for transferring to Texas. As Hunter proved throughout last season and at times during this one, he’s among the most dynamic playmaking guards in the country when everything is clicking. The speedy 6-foot sophomore popped off for 26 points on 9-for-14 shooting and hit five 3s in Texas’ 19-point win over No. 2 Gonzaga back in November. He tallied 29 points with a handful of triples in a frenetic 116-103 loss to Kansas State on Jan. 3. And last season, Hunter joined former Davidson star turned NBA superstar Steph Curry as the only players in NCAA Tournament history with at least seven 3s and five steals in a game while leading 11th-seeded Iowa State past sixth-seeded LSU. Texas doesn’t necessarily need Hunter to enter “Steph Curry Mode” again. The Longhorns have kept winning through his offensive malaise because of a talented roster loaded with veterans who have fully embraced their roles. But for Texas to remain among the conference’s upper echelon while positioning itself for a high NCAA Tournament seed, it will probably need Hunter to improve upon the nine points (on 27.9 percent shooting) and two assists he’s averaged across five Big 12 games. Terry and his teammates all know that version of Hunter is still in there, just waiting to burst out again. And maybe he’ll come out to play Tuesday against his old team. “There’s no doubt in my mind Tyrese is going to be playing at a very high level when we need him to be,” Terry said. “But even when he’s not, I think his leadership out there and his experience out there really give us a lift on both ends of the floor. He’s a terrific young player. There’s no doubt, again, that he’s going to close out this season at a very high level.” [email protected] twitter.com/nrmoyle TEXAS Scuffling Hunter back at Iowa St. Eric Gay/Associated Press Texas guard Tyrese Hunter, center, has found the going tougher in Big 12 games as he’s averaging fewer points and assists and has a worse assist-to-turnover ratio in league play. By Nick Moyle STAFF WR ITER UP NEXT TEXAS AT IOWA STATE When/where: 7 p.m. Tuesday at Ames, Iowa. TV/radio: ESPN+; 790 AM.

C6 TUESDAY, JANUARY 17, 2023 HHHH HOUSTON CHRONICLE | HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM Television Col. basketball Mississippi at South Carolina SEC 5:30 p.m. Col. basketball North Carolina St. at Georgia Tech ACC 6 p.m. Col. basketball Davidson at Dayton CBSSN 6 p.m. Col. basketball Kansas at Kansas St. ESPN 6 p.m. Col. basketball Tennessee at Mississippi St. ESPN2 6 p.m. Col. basketball Florida St. at Notre Dame ESPNU 6 p.m. Col. basketball Creighton at Butler Ds1 6 p.m. Col. basketball Penn St. at Wisconsin Big Ten 7:30 p.m. Col. basketball Alabama at Vanderbilt SEC 7:30 p.m. Col. basketball Murray St. at Belmont CBSSN 8 p.m. Col. basketball Georgia at Kentucky ESPN 8 p.m. Col. basketball Baylor at Texas Tech ESPNU 8 p.m. Col. basketball San Jose St. at New Mexico FS1 8 p.m. NBA Toronto at Milwaukee TNT 6:30 p.m. NBA Philadelphia at L.A. Clippers TNT 9 p.m. NBA G League Rio Grande Valley at Birmingham NBA 7 p.m. Tennis ATP/WTA: Australian Open ESPN2 8 p.m. Winter sports World University Games ESPNU 9 a.m. Radio Col. basketball Houston at Tulane 950 AM 6 p.m. Col. basketball Texas at Iowa St. 790 AM 7 p.m. Col. basketball Baylor at Texas Tech 100.7 FM 8 p.m. ON THE AIR Odds Home team capitalized College basketball Tuesday FAVORITE LINE UNDERDOG Ole Miss 6 SOUTH CAROLINA Creighton 6 ½ BUTLER BUFFALO 6 ½ Bowling Green Kansas 2 ½ KANSAS STATE NC State 5 ½ GEORGIA TECH Akron 7 ½ C. MICHIGAN Kent State 13 ½ E. MICHIGAN DAYTON 11 Davidson MIAMI (OH) 5 ½ Northern Illinois BALL STATE 10 ½ Western Michigan NBA Tuesday FAVORITE LINE O/U UNDERDOG MILWAUKEE 6 OFF Toronto Brooklyn 6 235 SAN ANTONIO DENVER 7 233 ½ Portland LA CLIPPERS OFF OFF Philadelphia FAVORITE OPEN TODAY O/U UNDERDOG NFL Saturday FAVORITE LINE O/U UNDERDOG KANSAS CITY 8 ½ 51 ½ Jacksonville PHILADELPHIA 7 ½ 48 ½ NY Giants Sunday FAVORITE LINE O/U UNDERDOG BUFFALO 4 ½ 50 ½ Cincinnati NHL Tuesday FAVORITE LINE UNDERDOG LINE TORONTO -184 Florida +152 Winnipeg -194 MONTREAL +160 Minnesota -120 WASHINGTON +100 PHILADELPHIA -184 Anaheim +152 NASHVILLE -200 Columbus +164 Buffalo -182 CHICAGO +150 Detroit -140 ARIZONA +116 EDMONTON -170 Seattle +140 Colleges Men’s basketball AP Top 25 Record Pts Prv 1. Houston (34) 17-1 1460 1 2. Kansas (23) 16-1 1446 2 3. Purdue (3) 16-1 1382 3 4. Alabama 15-2 1347 4 5. UCLA 16-2 1237 7 6. Gonzaga 16-3 1178 8 7. Texas 15-2 1122 10 8. Xavier 15-3 1047 12 9. Tennessee 14-3 1019 5 10. Virginia 13-3 926 13 11. Arizona 15-3 838 9 12. Iowa St. 13-3 795 14 13. Kansas St 15-2 771 11 14. TCU 14-3 753 17 15. UConn 15-4 668 6 16. Auburn 14-3 553 21 17. Miami 14-3 487 16 18. Coll of Charleston 18-1 351 22 19. Clemson 15-3 339 - 20. Marquette 14-5 306 25 21. Baylor 12-5 267 - 22. Providence 14-4 262 19 23. Rutgers 13-5 131 - 24. FAU 16-1 126 - 25. Arkansas 12-5 115 15 Others receiving votes: NC State 111, Saint Mary’s 106, Arizona St 79, New Mexico 67, Illinois 61, San Diego St. 44, Michigan St. 29, Duke 24, Wisconsin 14, Creighton 9, Kent St. 8, Boise St. 6, Texas A&M 5, Ohio St. 3, Missouri 3, Iowa 2, VCU 2, North Carolina 1. Monday’s results Top 25 No. 3 Purdue 64, Michigan St. 63 No. 17 Miami 82, Syracuse 78 No. 18 Charleston 82, William & Mary 54 No. 24 FAU 76, W. Kentucky 62 EAST Cornell 102, Columbia 85 Dartmouth 60, Harvard 59 Fairleigh Dickinson 65, Stonehill 57 Howard 89, Morehouse 65 Lehigh 74, Loyola (Md.) 70 Northeastern 59, Delaware 58 Princeton 72, Penn 60 Sacred Heart 54, St. Francis (Pa.) 51 Saint Joseph’s 71, La Salle 59 St. Francis (NY) 73, LIU 66 Towson 68, Hofstra 47 UMBC 87, Hartford 62 Villanova 77, Georgetown 73 Wagner 62, Merrimack 57 Yale 81, Brown 78 SOUTH Alabama St. 69, Alabama A&M 61 Florida A&M 60, MVSU 59 George Washington 78, George Mason 75 North Texas 64, FIU 57 UNC-Wilmington 62, Elon 54 UTEP 60, Charlotte 58 MIDWEST Cleveland St. 72, Fort Wayne 60 Illinois 78, Minnesota 60 WEST UC Davis 78, UC San Diego 70 Standings AAC Conference All Games W L Pct W L Pct Houston 5 0 1.000 17 1 .944 Tulane 5 1 .833 12 5 .706 UCF 4 2 .667 13 5 .722 Cincinnati 4 2 .667 13 6 .684 Temple 4 2 .667 10 9 .526 Memphis 3 2 .600 13 5 .722 Wichita St. 2 3 .400 9 8 .529 South Florida 1 4 .200 8 10 .444 SMU 1 4 .200 6 12 .333 East Carolina 1 5 .167 10 9 .526 Tulsa 0 5 .000 4 12 .250 Tuesday’s game Houston at Tulane, 6 p.m. BIG 12 Conference All Games W L Pct W L Pct Kansas 5 0 1.000 16 1 .941 Kansas St. 4 1 .800 15 2 .882 Texas 4 1 .800 15 2 .882 Iowa St. 4 1 .800 13 3 .813 TCU 3 2 .600 14 3 .824 Baylor 2 3 .400 12 5 .706 Oklahoma 2 3 .400 11 6 .647 Oklahoma St. 1 4 .200 9 8 .529 Texas Tech 0 5 .000 10 7 .588 West Virginia 0 5 .000 10 7 .588 Tuesday’s games Kansas at Kansas St., 6 p.m. Texas at Iowa St., 7 p.m. Baylor at Texas Tech, 8 p.m. C-USA Conference All Games W L Pct W L Pct FAU 6 0 1.000 16 1 .941 North Texas 5 2 .714 14 4 .778 UAB 4 3 .571 13 5 .722 Charlotte 3 3 .500 12 5 .706 Rice 3 3 .500 12 5 .706 W. Kentucky 3 3 .500 11 6 .647 Middle Tennessee 3 3 .500 10 7 .588 Louisiana Tech 3 4 .429 10 8 .556 UTEP 2 4 .333 9 8 .529 FIU 2 4 .333 8 9 .471 UTSA 1 6 .143 7 11 .389 SEC Conference All Games W L Pct W L Pct Alabama 5 0 1.000 15 2 .882 Texas A&M 4 0 1.000 12 5 .706 Auburn 4 1 .800 14 3 .824 Tennessee 4 1 .800 14 3 .824 Georgia 3 1 .750 13 4 .765 Florida 3 2 .600 10 7 .588 Vanderbilt 2 2 .500 9 8 .529 Missouri 2 3 .400 13 4 .765 Kentucky 2 3 .400 11 6 .647 South Carolina 1 3 .250 8 9 .471 Arkansas 1 4 .200 12 5 .706 LSU 1 4 .200 12 5 .706 Mississippi St. 1 4 .200 12 5 .706 Mississippi 0 5 .000 8 9 .471 Tuesday’s games Mississippi at South Carolina, 5:30 p.m. Tennessee at Mississippi St., 6 p.m. Alabama at Vanderbilt, 7:30 p.m. Georgia at Kentucky, 8 p.m. SOUTHLAND Conference All Games W L Pct W L Pct Texas A&M-CC 4 1 .800 11 7 .611 SE Louisiana 4 1 .800 10 8 .556 Nicholls 3 2 .600 8 9 .471 New Orleans 3 2 .600 6 10 .375 Texas A&M Commerce 3 2 .600 7 12 .368 Houston Christian 3 2 .600 6 12 .333 Northwestern St. 2 3 .400 10 8 .556 McNeese St. 2 3 .400 5 13 .278 Lamar 1 4 .200 5 13 .278 Incarnate Word 0 5 .000 6 12 .333 SWAC Conference All Games W L Pct W L Pct Southern U. 5 0 1.000 9 9 .500 Alcorn St. 3 1 .750 6 10 .375 Jackson St. 3 1 .750 4 13 .235 Grambling St. 3 2 .600 10 7 .588 Ark.-Pine Bluff 3 2 .600 7 11 .389 Prairie View 3 2 .600 7 11 .389 Alabama A&M 2 2 .500 6 11 .353 Bethune-Cookman 2 2 .500 6 11 .353 Alabama St. 2 2 .500 4 13 .235 MVSU 1 4 .200 2 17 .105 Texas Southern 0 5 .000 4 14 .222 Florida A&M 0 4 .000 2 13 .133 Women’s Basketball AP Top 25 Record Pts Prv 1. South Carolina (28) 18-0 700 1 2. Ohio St. 18-0 670 3 3. LSU 18-0 604 5 4. Stanford 17-2 601 2 5. UConn 15-2 600 4 6. Indiana 16-1 586 6 7. Notre Dame 14-2 546 7 8. Utah 15-1 477 10 9. UCLA 15-3 428 8 10. Iowa 14-4 414 12 11. Maryland 14-4 413 9 12. Virginia Tech 14-3 391 13 13. Duke 16-1 361 16 14. Michigan 15-3 341 17 15. Oklahoma 14-2 304 19 16. Gonzaga 17-2 249 20 17. North Carolina 12-5 237 22 18. Iowa St. 11-4 205 15 19. Arizona 14-4 185 14 20. NC State 13-5 139 11 21. Illinois 15-3 120 24 22. Villanova 16-3 94 25 23. Oregon 13-5 75 21 24. Colorado 14-3 65 - 25. Texas 13-5 62 - Others receiving votes: Baylor 51, Middle Tennessee 39, Arkansas 34, South Florida 24, Miami 23, Florida St. 23, Tennessee 19, Southern Cal 7, Creighton 4, Louisville 4, Kansas 3, West Virginia 2. Monday’s results EAST Bryant 65, New Hampshire 44 Columbia 91, Cornell 64 Fairleigh Dickinson 70, Stonehill 36 Harvard 68, Dartmouth 52 Princeton 55, Penn 40 Sacred Heart 73, St. Francis (Pa.) 60 St. Francis (NY) 66, LIU Brooklyn 60 Wagner 69, Merrimack 63 Yale 72, Brown 59 SOUTH Alabama A&M 60, Alabama St. 46 Bethune-Cookman 63, Ark.-Pine Bluff 61 Florida A&M 69, MVSU 53 George Mason 67, George Washington 57 Middle Tennessee 76, UAB 54 W. Kentucky 76, FAU 66 MIDWEST IUPUI 64, Youngstown St. 61 SOUTHWEST Arkansas 84, Vanderbilt 81 Jackson St. 87, Texas Southern 58 North Texas 71, FIU 45 Prairie View 56, Alcorn St. 55 UTEP 68, Charlotte 60 WEST Omaha 75, Denver 64 UC San Diego 65, UC Davis 63 Hockey NHL EASTERN CONFERENCE GP W L OT Pts GF GA Boston 43 34 5 4 72 166 94 Carolina 44 27 9 8 62 141 120 New Jersey 44 29 12 3 61 156 116 Toronto 44 26 11 7 59 147 117 Tampa Bay 42 28 13 1 57 152 122 N.Y. Rangers 45 25 13 7 57 144 120 Washington 46 24 16 6 54 148 129 Pittsburgh 43 22 15 6 50 139 130 N.Y. Islanders 45 23 18 4 50 136 124 Florida 45 21 20 4 46 148 153 Buffalo 42 21 19 2 44 160 146 Detroit 42 18 17 7 43 131 145 Philadelphia 44 18 19 7 43 122 143 Ottawa 43 19 21 3 41 126 139 Montreal 44 18 23 3 39 116 162 Columbus 43 13 28 2 28 110 170 WESTERN CONFERENCE GP W L OT Pts GF GA Winnipeg 44 29 14 1 59 148 114 Dallas 45 26 12 7 59 156 119 Vegas 45 28 15 2 58 147 130 Seattle 43 26 13 4 56 159 134 Los Angeles 46 25 15 6 56 154 157 Minnesota 42 24 14 4 52 134 118 Edmonton 45 24 18 3 51 164 150 Calgary 45 21 15 9 51 143 136 Colorado 42 22 17 3 47 131 121 St. Louis 45 22 20 3 47 141 160 Nashville 43 20 17 6 46 120 127 Vancouver 43 18 22 3 39 150 173 San Jose 45 13 23 9 35 137 172 Arizona 43 13 25 5 31 115 158 Anaheim 44 12 27 5 29 103 185 Chicago 41 11 26 4 26 94 154 NOTE: Two points for a win, one point for overtime loss. Top three teams in each division and two wild cards per conference advance to playoffs. Monday’s results Florida 4, Buffalo 1 Boston 6, Philadelphia 0 Colorado 6, Detroit 3 Tampa Bay 4, Seattle 1 New Jersey 4, San Jose 3 (SO) Dallas 4, Vegas 0 N.Y. Rangers 3, Columbus 1 Pittsburgh 4, Anaheim 3 (OT) Washington 4, N.Y. Islanders 3 (OT) St. Louis 2, Ottawa 1 Nashville 2, Calgary 1 Tuesday’s games Anaheim at Philadelphia, 6 p.m. Florida at Toronto, 6 p.m. Minnesota at Washington, 6 p.m. Winnipeg at Montreal, 6 p.m. Columbus at Nashville, 7 p.m. Buffalo at Chicago, 7:30 p.m. Detroit at Arizona, 8 p.m. Seattle at Edmonton, 8 p.m. Soccer English Premier League GP W D L GF GA Pts Arsenal 18 15 2 1 42 14 47 Man City 18 12 3 3 46 18 39 Newcastle 19 10 8 1 33 11 38 Man United 18 12 2 4 29 21 38 Tottenham 19 10 3 6 37 27 33 Fulham 20 9 4 7 32 29 31 Brighton 18 9 3 6 35 25 30 Brentford 19 7 8 4 32 28 29 Liverpool 18 8 4 6 34 25 28 Chelsea 19 8 4 7 22 21 28 Aston Villa 19 7 4 8 22 27 25 Crystal Palace 18 6 4 8 17 26 22 Nottingham Forest 19 5 5 9 15 34 20 Leeds 18 4 5 9 26 33 17 Leicester 19 5 2 12 26 33 17 Wolverhampton 19 4 5 10 12 27 17 Bournemouth 19 4 4 11 18 41 16 West Ham 19 4 3 12 15 25 15 Everton 19 3 6 10 15 26 15 Southampton 19 4 3 12 17 34 15 Wednesday’s game Crystal Palace vs. Man United, 2 p.m. Thursday’s game Man City vs. Tottenham, 2 p.m. Saturday’s games Liverpool vs. Chelsea, 6:30 a.m. Bournemouth vs. Nottingham Forest, 9 a.m. Leicester vs. Brighton, 9 a.m. Southampton vs. Aston Villa, 9 a.m. West Ham vs. Everton, 9 a.m. Crystal Palace vs. Newcastle, 11:30 a.m. Sunday’s games Leeds vs. Brentford, 8 a.m. Man City vs. Wolverhampton, 8 a.m. Arsenal vs. Man United, 10:30 a.m. Jan. 23 game Fulham vs. Tottenham, 2 p.m. Tennis Australian Open Tuesday’s results At Melbourne, Australia Men’s singles First round Andrey Rublev (5), Russia, def. Dominic Thiem, Austria, 6-3, 6-4, 6-2. Grigor Dimitrov (27), Bulgaria, def. Aslan Karatsev, Russia, 7-6 (3), 7-5, 6-2. Laslo Djere, Serbia, def. Zizou Bergs, Belgium, 6-4, 1-6, 6-4, 6-1. Women’s singles First round Ekaterina Alexandrova (19), Russia, def. Ysaline Bonaventure, Belgium, 6-2, 6-1. Camila Giorgi, Italy, def. Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, Russia, 6-0, 6-1. Taylor Townsend, United States, def. Diane Parry, France, 6-1, 6-1. Anna-Karolina Schmiedlova, Slovakia, def. Martina Trevisan (21), Italy, 6-3, 6-2. Aryna Sabalenka (5), Belarus, def. Tereza Martincova, Czech Republic, 6-1, 6-4. Shelby Rogers, United States, def. Arianne Hartono, Netherlands, 6-4, 6-3. Leylah Annie Fernandez, Canada, def. Alize Cornet, France, 7-5, 6-2. Monday’s results At Melbourne, Australia Men’s singles First round Yosuke Watanuki, Japan, def. Arthur Rinderknech, France, 6-3, 6-3, 6-2. Jannik Sinner (15), Italy, def. Kyle Edmund, Britain, 6-4, 6-0, 6-2. Francisco Cerundolo (28), Argentina, def. Guido Pella, Argentina, 6-4, 6-4, 6-3. Juncheng Shang, China, def. Oscar Otte, Germany, 6-2, 6-4, 6-7 (2), 7-5. Tomas Martin Etcheverry, Argentina, def. Gregoire Barrere, France, 3-6, 6-3, 6-4, 6-4. Hubert Hurkacz (10), Poland, def. Pedro Martinez, Spain, 7-6 (1), 6-2, 6-2. Botic Van de Zandschulp (32), Netherlands, def. Ilya Ivashka, Belarus, 6-3, 3-6, 7-5, 6-3. Yoshihito Nishioka (31), Japan, def. Mikael Ymer, Sweden, 6-4, 6-2, 7-5. Denis Shapovalov (20), Canada, def. Dusan Lajovic, Serbia, 6-4, 4-6, 6-4, 6-1. Sebastian Korda (29), United States, def. Cristian Garin, Chile, 6-4, 1-6, 6-3, 6-2. Tallon Griekspoor, Netherlands, def. Pavel Kotov, Russia, 6-3, 7-6 (3), 6-3. Corentin Moutet, France, def. Yibing Wu, China, 6-4, 5-7, 6-2, 4-6, 7-5. Karen Khachanov (18), Russia, def. Bernabe Zapata Miralles, Spain, 7-6 (3), 6-2, 6-0. Mackenzie McDonald, United States, def. Brandon Nakashima, United States, 7-6 (5), 7-6 (1), 1-6, 6-7 (10), 6-4. Jiri Lehecka, Czech Republic, def. Borna Coric (21), Croatia, 6-3, 6-3, 6-3. Frances Tiafoe (16), United States, def. Daniel Altmaier, Germany, 6-3, 6-3, 6-7 (5), 7-6 (6). Jason Kubler, Australia, def. Sebastian Baez, Argentina, 6-4, 6-4, 6-4. Dalibor Svrcina, Czech Republic, def. Jaume Munar, Spain, 6-3, 6-2, 6-2. Taro Daniel, Japan, def. Ernesto Escobedo, United States, 7-5, 6-2, 3-6, 6-3. Rafael Nadal (1), Spain, def. Jack Draper, Britain, 7-5, 2-6, 6-4, 6-1. Lorenzo Sonego, Italy, def. Nuno Borges, Portugal, 7-6 (4), 6-3, 6-7 (6), 6-1. Christopher Eubanks, United States, def. Kwon Soon Woo, South Korea, 6-3, 6-7 (1), 6-3, 4-6, 6-4. John Millman, Australia, def. Marc-Andrea Huesler, Switzerland, 6-7 (8), 7-5, 6-7 (2), 6-2, 6-3. Cameron Norrie (11), Britain, def. Luca van Assche, France, 7-6 (3), 6-0, 6-3. Marton Fucsovics, Hungary, def. Federico Coria, Argentina, 4-6, 7-5, 2-6, 7-6 (6), 6-2. Stefanos Tsitsipas (3), Greece, def. Quentin Halys, France, 6-3, 6-4, 7-6 (6). Alex Molcan, Slovakia, def. Stan Wawrinka, Switzerland, 6-7 (3), 6-3, 1-6, 7-6 (2), 6-4. Constant Lestienne, France, def. Thiago Monteiro, Brazil, 6-3, 7-6 (2), 6-3. Rinky Hijikata, Australia, def. Yannick Hanfmann, Germany, 4-6, 4-6, 6-3, 7-6 (5), 6-3. Felix Auger-Aliassime (6), Canada, def. Vasek Pospisil, Canada, 1-6, 7-6 (4), 7-6 (3), 6-3. Lloyd Harris, South Africa, def. Lorenzo Musetti (17), Italy, 6-4, 6-1, 6-7 (0), 2-6, 7-6 (4). Daniil Medvedev (7), Russia, def. Marcos Giron, United States, 6-0, 6-1, 6-2. Women’s singles First round Jessica Pegula (3), United States, def. Jaqueline Adina Cristian, Romania, 6-0, 6-1. Marta Kostyuk, Ukraine, def. Amanda Anisimova (28), United States, 6-3, 6-4. Olivia Gadecki, Australia, def. Polina Kudermetova, Russia, 7-5, 6-1. Coco Gauff (7), United States, def. Katerina Siniakova, Czech Republic, 6-1, 6-4. Emma Raducanu, Britain, def. Tamara Korpatsch, Germany, 6-3, 6-2. Bianca Andreescu, Canada, def. Marie Bouzkova (25), Czech Republic, 6-2, 6-4. Cristina Bucsa, Spain, def. Eva Lys, Germany, 2-6, 6-0, 6-2. Diana Shnaider, Russia, def. Kristina Kucova, Slovakia, 7-6 (6), 7-5. Danielle Collins (13), United States, def. Anna Kalinskaya, Russia, 7-5, 5-7, 6-4. Maria Sakkari (6), Greece, def. Yuan Yue, China, 6-1, 6-4. Clara Burel, France, def. Talia Gibson, Australia, 6-3, 6-4. Bernarda Pera, United States, def. Moyuka Uchijima, Japan, 2-6, 6-3, 6-1. Karolina Muchova, Czech Republic, def. Lesia Tsurenko, Ukraine, 6-2, 6-1. Petra Kvitova (15), Czech Republic, def. Alison van Uytvanck, Belgium, 7-6 (3), 6-2. Anhelina Kalinina, Ukraine, def. CoCo Vandeweghe, United States, 6-3, 6-1. Jelena Ostapenko (17), Latvia, def. Dayana Yastremska, Ukraine, 6-4, 6-2. Zheng Qinwen (29), China, def. Dalma Galfi, Hungary, 6-0, 6-2. Aliaksandra Sasnovich, Belarus, def. Brenda Fruhvirtova, Czech Republic, 7-5, 6-2. Barbora Krejcikova (20), Czech Republic, def. Sara Bejlek, Czech Republic, 6-3, 6-1. Victoria Azarenka (24), Belarus, def. Sofia Kenin, United States, 6-4, 7-6 (3). Anna Bondar, Hungary, def. Ana Bogdan, Romania, 6-2, 2-6, 6-3. Camila Osorio, Colombia, def. Panna Udvardy, Hungary, 6-4, 6-1. Kateryna Baindl, Ukraine, def. Kamilla Rakhimova, Russia, 7-5, 6-7 (8), 6-1. Caty McNally, United States, def. Laura Pigossi, Brazil, 7-5, 6-1. Nadia Podoroska, Argentina, def. Leolia Jeanjean, France, 6-0, 6-3. Elena Rybakina (22), Kazakhstan, def. Elisabetta Cocciaretto, Italy, 7-5, 6-3. Zhu Lin, China, def. Rebecca Marino, Canada, 6-2, 6-4. Jil Teichmann (32), Switzerland, def. Harriet Dart, Britain, 7-5, 6-1. Kaja Juvan, Slovenia, def. Selena Janicijevic, France, 7-5, 6-1. Iga Swiatek (1), Poland, def. Jule Niemeier, Germany, 6-4, 7-5. Wang Xinyu, China, def. Storm Sanders, Australia, 7-6 (2), 6-4. Madison Keys (10), United States, def. Anna Blinkova, Russia, 6-4, 3-6, 6-2. SCOREBOARD MELBOURNE, Australi — Andrey Rublev beat wild-card entry Dominic Thiem 6-3, 6-4, 6-2 on Tuesday to advance to the second round of the Australian Open. Thiem, a runner-up at the Australian Open in 2020 and the U.S. Open winner the same year, missed much of 2021 due to injuries but has recovered from outside the top 350 last year to a place just inside the top 100. He was given a wild-card entry by tournament organizers. “When you see you have to play against Dominic you know it’s not going to be easy. I know he’s going through some not easy times so I wish him all the best to come back to the level he can be as fast as possible,” Rublev said. Rublev will next play either the Australian qualifier Max Purcell or Emil Ruusuvuori of Finland. Thiem had treatment to his abdominal muscles midway through the second set but said it was not serious and he was not disheartened by his performance. “This tournament doesn’t change anything because I just had a really tough opponent,” he said. “I hope that I can improve the results at the South American clay.” Grigor Dimitrov, a semifinalist in Melbourne in 2017, beat Aslan Karatsev 7-6 (3), 7-5, 6-2. He will take on Laslo Djere in the second round. Caroline Garcia started her quest for a first Grand Slam singles title with a 6-3, 6-0 win over Katherine Sebov, a qualifier from Canada. The fourth-seeded player, who won the WTA Finals at the end of 2022, took just 65 minutes for victory and now plays another Canadian, former U.S. Open runner-up Leylah Fernandez, who beat Alize Cornet 7-5, 6-2. No. 5 Aryna Sabalenka maintained her unbeaten start to the year with a 6-1, 6-4 win over Tereza Martincova. Sabalenka, who won the Adelaide International title in the first week of the year, hit 29 winners to her opponent’s seven as she won her fifth consecutive match. “It wasn’t that easy, I’m super-happy to start with the win,” said Sabalenka, who will play American Shelby Rogers in the second round. “I have to work on my mindset and stay calm and not get too upset when I make mistakes. I really believe this is the only thing missing in my game.” Sabalenka hasn’t made it past the fourth round at the Australian Open in five previous visits. Garbine Muguruza, the runner-up in Melbourne in 2020, lost her fifth consecutive match to start the year when she was beaten 3-6, 6-7 (3), 6-1 by Elise Mertens. Two-time Grand Slam champion Muguruza served for the match at 6-5 in the second set. Former No. 1 Karolina Pliskova eased past Wang Xyi of China 6-1, 6-3. Taylor Townsend won her first Grand Slam match since becoming a mother, beating Diane Parry, a wild-card entry from France, 6-1, 6-1. The American will next meet Ekaterina Alexandrova. AUSTRALIAN OPEN Rublev eliminates Thiem; Sabalenka extends streak By Howard Fendrich ASSOC IATED PRE SS Darrian Traynor/Getty Images Andrey Rublev plays a backhand shot against Dominic Thiem in their first-round match Tuesday. Jim Harbaugh is staying at Michigan, a decision he personally gave the school president to end another round of speculation that he would return to the NFL. “I just got off the phone with coach Harbaugh and Jim shared with me the great news that he is going to remain as the head coach of the Michigan Wolverines,” University of Michigan President Santa Ono shared on social media Monday. “My heart is at the University of Michigan,” said Harbaugh in a Twitter post. “I once heard a wise man say, ‘Don’t try to out-happy, happy.’ ” Harbaugh and the school have not reached an agreement on a contract extension, but both sides plan to work on a new deal this week. The Denver Broncos and Carolina Panthers spoke with Harbaugh about their head coaching vacancies this month. Harbaugh, 59, has a 74-25 record in eight seasons with the Wolverines and has led them to berths in the last two College Football Playoffs. WNBA Ex-MVP Jones goes to Liberty The New York Liberty have traded for Jonquel Jones, adding a big piece to their championship hopes. The Liberty acquired the 2021 MVP as part of a three-team deal with Connecticut and Dallas, the teams announced. Connecticut received the No. 6 pick in the draft as well as Rebecca Allen from New York and Tyasha Harris from Dallas. The Wings got Natasha Howard and Crystal Dangerfield from the Liberty. Kayla Thornton heads to New York also. The 6-foot-6 Jones averaged 14.6 points, 8.6 rebounds and 1.2 blocks last season as Connecticut reached the WNBA Finals for the second time in four seasons. Sparks deal for Thomas: The Los Angeles Sparks acquired former All-Star Jasmine Thomas and the 10th overall pick in this year’s WNBA draft from Connecticut in exchange for center Olivia NelsonOdoda, Jasmine Walker and the reserved rights to Kianna Smith. Moore officially retires: Maya Moore knew it was time to officially end her basketball career — four years after stepping away. The Minnesota Lynx star left the WNBA in 2019 to help her nowhusband Jonathan Irons win his release from prison by getting his 50-year sentence overturned in 2020. Irons married Moore soon after his release and they had their first child in July. MISCELLANEOUS Ex-Met Thomas dies at age 93 Frank Thomas, a three-time All-Star with his hometown Pittsburgh Pirates who later became the top hitter on the expansion New York Mets, died at age 93 from an undisclosed cause. Thomas, who hit 286 home runs in a 16-year big league career, also had stops with the Cubs, Reds, Phillies and Braves in his career, as well as a 23-game stint with the Astros in 1965. Wild extend Boldy: The Minnesota Wild signed forward Matt Boldy to a seven-year, $49 million contract extension, making the 21- year-old forward the latest young player in the NHL to cash in early off his entry-level deal. AROUND SPORTS Harbaugh staying at Michigan W IRE REPORTS Rick Scuteri/Associated Press Jim Harbaugh talked to NFL teams before deciding to return for a ninth season at Michigan. FOR THE RECORD

HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM STAR • TUESDAY, JANUARY 17, 2023 • SECTION D Non-fungible tokens, betters known as NFTs, and conversations about art in virtual realities, or web3, have dominated headlines in recent years. For those who haven’t fully grasped the digital asset industry, don’t worry. You’re not alone, and it might not matter anyway. If “Narrative Threads: Fiber Art Today” is any indication, the future is old school. Rice University’s Moody Center for the Arts tapped 22 artists to create more than 40 works for the exhibition now on view through May 13. The survey is almost entirely tactile. Visitors are encouraged to touch and even pass through some of the pieces. Try doing that with an iPhone. “Why are artists working in a very modern moment using a very historic art form as a medium?” asks Alison Weaver, founding executive director of the Moody Center. Curator Frauke V. Josenhans poses another. “And what is our relationship to textiles and fiber?” Put simply, fiber art is one of the oldest art forms. Embroidering, felting, knitting, sewing and weaving are often associated with craft, fashion and decorative objects. It’s sometimes reduced to domesticity. A flourish for the background. In that sense, “Narrative Threads” is surprisingly extra. Most of the works have main character energy, as the kids say. Like many Moody Center exhibitions, “Narrative Threads” begins outside. “The Admirer,” a site-specific installation by Austin-based sculptor Orly Genger, cascades in ripples and deep blue waves down the building’s front lawn. Using recycled fishing rope and paint, the artist rejects traditional outdoor materials such as steel or bronze. Instead, she inART Rice’s Moody Center has a new free exhibit showcasing touch and feel fiber art By Amber Elliott STAFF WR ITER Melissa Phillip/Staff Photographer Artist Sagarika Sundaram used felt-making, dyeing and craft techniques to make “Flame of the Forest.” Art continues on D6 The winter antiques shows in Round Top, which start on Jan. 19, are smaller, less intimidating versions of the fall and spring shows that leave a line of traffic crawling along Texas 237. Those seasonal shows, held every April and October, are well-known to Texans and others who appreciate antiques and shopping, but the winter show — with fewer venues and vendors — started small several years ago and has grown steadily each year. This year’s shows include the Original Round Top Antiques Fair, though only its Big Red Barn will be open, with about 80 vendors. (Its annex and Continental Tent will not be open.) Designer favorite Marburger Farm Antiques Show does not participate in the January show, but shoppers can visit plenty of smaller venues on the leg of highway that runs between Carmine and La Grange in Washington and Fayette counties. The Compound will be nearly full, and Blue Hills will open with about 50 vendors in its permanent structures but without the extra tents. Courtesy of Blue Hills Blue Hills will be open Jan. 19-22 for the 2023 winter antiques shows in Round Top. Round Top’s winter shows offer antiques without crowds By Diane Cowen STAFF WR ITER Round Top continues on D6 SHOPPING Courtesy of Birddog Interiors Murano glass accessories remain in demand at Jody Bishop’s Houston-based Birddog Interiors. Although there are fewer venues and vendors, the selection is still plentiful

The villains of the 2022 holiday season were the airlines, so it’s an apt moment for the Gerard Butler action vehicle “Plane” to take flight. The inciting incident involves a costcutting safety checker at Trailblazer Airlines insisting that Captain Brodie Torrance (Butler) pilot through a storm instead of around it in order to save fuel during a New Year’s flight from Singapore to Tokyo. Of course, since this is a Gerard Butler action film, the passengers on Trailblazer Flight 119 don’t end up stranded for days in an airport but rather fighting for their lives on a remote island in the Philippines ruled by a separatist militia whose primary source of income is hostages. Not to worry though, because Butler’s Brodie isn’t your average airline pilot, he’s an airline pilot who can kill bad guys with his bare hands. Plus, he has backup in the form of Mike Colter, and the two actors make a fine, fun and appealingly masculine pair in “Plane.” Consider this meet cute: Brodie Torrance is a widowed former Royal Air Force pilot stuck flying long-haul budget flights thanks to a viral video in which he put down an unruly passenger with a choke hold (his signature move, as we’ll come to find out). Louis Gaspare (Colter) is a convicted murderer who has been on the lam for 15 years, now being extradited from Bali to the United States. When Louis ends up on Brodie’s flight, sparks fly (from machine gun fire) as they battle the aforementioned separatist militia to save the passengers and get Brodie back to his daughter Daniela (Haleigh Hekking) in Hawaii. Jean-Francois Richet’s “Plane” is as efficient, economical and effective as its title, which is a good one, actually — clear, descriptive, communicates what the film is about. The characterization in the screenplay by Charles Cumming and J.P. Davis is lean to the point of scanty, but we’re given just enough to suffice, and any more would be overkill. Much like the aircraft itself, for the majority of “Plane,” this taut thriller remains grounded and gritty, and once we’re on land, Puerto Rico — subbing for the Philippines — offers a sense of texture and realism to the humid setting. Richet strings the tension methodically, alternating with bursts of chaotic violence, showing us that Brodie is capable of both method and madness. Sometimes it’s a carefully orchestrated and silent extraction of hostages, sometimes it’s a brutal, bruising brawl as Brodie wrestles an assailant into submission, captured in a single hand-held take. Butler’s fighting style is similar to the film’s: brawny, unshowy, effectual and explosive only when necessary. Far away from the steamy Filipino jungles, we see the inner workings of the Trailblazer war room, headed up by Tony Goldwyn in full hambone mode as crisis manager David Scarsdale, bossing around the top exec (Paul Ben-Victor) and calling in the mercs. With Butler’s stoic heroism, plus the behind-the-scenes corporate jockeying, “Plane” feels like the action-thriller version of “Sully,” with a nod toward Tobias Lindholm’s “A Hijacking” but without the bleak condemnation of a corporate culture that negotiates the price of human lives. The villains on the ground are a group of bloodthirsty rebels with great hair, and the leader, Junmar (Evan Dane Taylor), is so cool, you almost want to root for him (considering they crashed onto his island), but there is, of course, the murdering of innocent hostages. However, please don’t expect any political nuance or social commentary out of “Plane.” If you go into it expecting nothing more than to enjoy watching Butler sweatily manhandle some bad guys while Colter sweatily manhandles him, you’ll be more than satisfied with the ride “Plane” offers — a well-executed hunk of pulpy entertainment. FILM REVIEW Grounded action keeps ‘Plane’ on course By Katie Walsh TR IBUNE NEWS SERV ICE Lionsgate Gerard Butler, left, and Mike Colter star in action-thriller “Plane.” ‘PLANE’ Rated R: violence, language Running time: 107 minutes Where: Now showing throughout Houston. ★★★ (out of 5) ROME — Like the novel by Elena Ferrante on which it is based, the opening line of Netflix’s “The Lying Life of Adults” is spoken by the precocious teenage protagonist, Giovanna, who is listening at the door while her parents talk about her. “Before leaving home, my father told my mother that I was ugly,” Giovanna says, adding forlornly that he had compared her to his estranged sister Vittoria, an insult so vile that it prompted Giovanna’s mother to counter: “Don’t say that. She is a monster.” Thus the viewer is introduced to Giovanna (Giordana Marengo) and Vittoria (Valeria Golino), fitting new entries in the pseudonymous Italian author’s rich stable of formidable female central characters. Brought to life on screen in a recent six-episode adaptation of Ferrante’s 2019 novel, they are as complex and contradictory as Lila and Lenù, the main characters of Ferrante’s four bestselling novels chronicling their friendship, a version of which appeared in HBO’s “My Brilliant Friend.” In “The Lying Life of Adults,” too, Naples, Italy, provides a socially textured setting for this coming-of-age story, which propels Giovanna from the innocence of childhood into the world of adults’ complex and contradictory compromises. Set in the mid-1990s, the series underscores the slippery social standing of Italian girls, and women, seeking to find a footing in a world where men call the shots. The show is “rightly” Ferrante’s world, according to Domenico Procacci, CEO of Fandango, an Italian entertainment company that produced “Lying Life” for Netflix, who spoke at a news conference presenting the series in Rome last month. Fandango also coproduced “My Brilliant Friend” with HBO, RAI, the Italian national broadcaster, and others. In “Lying Life,” Giovanna navigates two distinct Neapolitan neighborhoods so drastically diverse that it is hard to believe they belong to the same city. She lives in the Rione Alto, an upper-middleclass neighborhood mostly developed in the 1960s and ’70s capping the Vomero hill with breathtaking views of the Gulf of Naples. “Outside of the Vomero, the city scarcely belonged to me,” Giovanna says in the novel. But in her determination to meet her aunt, Giovanna opens her world to the lower city neighborhood that her father, Andrea (Alessandro Preziosi), escaped but that Vittoria still inhabits: a rundown district called Pascone in the novel, which was shot in the formerly industrial rough-and-tumble Poggioreale neighborhood. “I don’t think there is any city in Italy where the differences between social classes are as evident as Naples, and at times where this difference counts so little,” Francesco Piccolo, one of the show’s four screenwriters, said at the news conference. In the series, viewers who do not speak Italian might miss the fact that the contrast is underscored by the difference in the Neapolitan dialect spoken between the two neighborhoods. In the wealthy Vomero, the dialect is spoken “for pleasure, for fun,” Piccolo said, while in the other, it is “a totally emotional dialect.” Getting Vittoria right, her movements as well as her dialect, weighed on Golino, who may be best remembered by American audiences for her star turn in the films “Rain Man” and “Hot Shots!” She, too, grew up in the Vomero neighborhood, on “the good side of the tracks,” she said in a telephone interview, and confessed to never having seen the “Naples of Vittoria,” to the point that she “had to go find it, understand it.” A voice coach taught what was to her essentially a new language. “Even though I am Neapolitan, I had never spoken in that way,” Golino said. “It was a sound that I had heard in the city, but it was never part of my world.” To embody the earthy bawdiness of Vittoria “was difficult,” the actor said. “I had to study the words, a way of moving, a way of inhabiting space,” which was foreign to her. “So I spent a lot of time in Naples, which is my city, but Naples is made of many layers,” she said. In turn, Marengo, 19, who made her screen debut as Giovanna after being selected from among 3,000 girls auditioning for the role, said Golino had nurtured her throughout the series. “She gave me a lot of advice,” Marengo said, and the two created a strong bond that Marengo thought was apparent on screen, she said in a telephone interview. “We really helped each other,” Golino said. “We were both in the same state of mind. She because it was her first time, I because I was constantly afraid of making a mistake.” Marengo said she had felt the responsibility of portraying the protagonist of a story that evolves entirely from Giovanna’s perspective. “At first, I was anxious that I wouldn’t be able to make it,” she said. But the director and the crew made sure she did not feel that responsibility, “and that really calmed me down,” she said. In the novel, Giovanna’s inward gaze is even more pronounced. But Edoardo De Angelis, the show’s director, said transposing that inner rumination into visual form was a natural extension of Ferrante’s writing. “Every single word contains an evocation that suggests and invokes a multitude of images,” De Angelis said in a telephone interview. “The words always suggested the path to take because Ferrante’s evocations are always very concrete, even if they begin with an interior thought.” Ferrante, the famously elusive author who has never officially made her identity public, has a screenwriting credit, and De Angelis, who is also credited with writing the script with Piccolo and Laura Paolucci, said that correspondence with Ferrante had involved “many letters to find a common language.” In transposing the novel to television, the story also took an unexpected turn, a plot twist that is not in the novel but that Ferrante signed off on, De Angelis said: She was well aware that moving from the pages to the screen “was an occasion to express elements that were only suggested and left to the imagination in the novel,” while on the screen, “the imagination becomes image,” offering the possibility of “more radical choices.” These radical choices open new avenues, and the episodes end with a series of unresolved questions to be answered, perhaps, in a possible sequel. (To this reader, the ending of the novel also suggested that a second book could follow.) TELEVISION ‘Lying Life of Adults’ reveals intensity of Naples By Elisabetta Povoledo NEW YORK T IME S Netflix Giordana Marengo, from left, Rossella Gamba and Antonio Corvino star in the Naples-based drama “The Lying Life of Adults.” ‘THE LYING LIFE OF ADULTS’ When: Streaming now Where: Netflix D2 TUESDAY, JANUARY 17, 2023 HOUSTON CHRONICLE | HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM

HOUSTON CHRONICLE | HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM TUESDAY, JANUARY 17, 2023 D3 ACROSS 1 Some cast-iron cookware 5 Letterson a foundation? 8 Singer Redding 12 Reebok rival 13 Husband-to-be 15 “That hurt!” 16 OvalOffice override 17 Trivial 18 On the house 19 Docwith an otoscope 20 Componentof somepaint and nails 22 “More info soon” 23 Severe 25 Had abite 26 Angels’auras 28 With crisp resolution 29 Currencywith loonies and toonies,briefly 30 Kingstonwith a recurring roleon “DoctorWho” 31 Textspeakqualifier 32 Leveling strips 34 “Youonly live __” 36 Nourish 37 Prefixmeaning “primitive” 38 Recover 39 Causing goose bumps,maybe 41 Clobbers 43 French couture monogram 44 Greenprefix 46 Noodle soup garnishedwith basil and lime 47 Hawaii’sMauna __ 48 Revelatory cries 49 Overnight __: breakfastdish 51 OptiononIn-N-Out Burger’s not-sosecretmenu,or the fashion sense that includes the answers to the starred clues? 54 Arrange in a row 56 Obtained 57 “Yer __ here!” 60 Spanish toast 61 Prefixwith Pen 62 Unitof saltor sand 63 Groupof friends 64 Place thatmaybe keptquiet? 65 Suitably DOWN 1 Surfer’s need 2 Kitchen counters? 3 *Short stiletto 4 “Saint,”in Portugueseplace names 5 Condiment also known as “rooster sauce” 6 *Updo in a scrunchie,maybe 7 “I had no idea!” 8 “That hurt!” 9 *Shirtwith a snug collar 10 Chilleddessert 11 Storage structures 13 HummerEV automaker 14 Hosp. scan 20 “Yourpointbeing?” 21 Tea,inMandarin 24 ValerieHarper sitcomof the 1970s 27 Waikikiwelcome 31 Far from certain 32 Hidden video gadget 33 “Yourpointbeing?” 35 Idina’s “Frozen” role 40 “President Barack Obama”portraitist __Wiley 42 Exercisediscipline in a verywarm studio 45 Great Plains people 46 Sticky note 48 Scottishbeef cattle 50 Drink noisily 51 Isn’twell 52 Easy stride 53 Californie,par exemple 54 Venomous snake 55 Thai neighbor 58 “Don’t knock it __ you try it” 59 “__minute now” Monday’s unlisted clue: VIENNA. Tuesday’s unlisted clue hint: MEMBER OF THE — RACE. Avenue Commute Confuse Eunice Excuse Frugal Future Mutation Numeral Ruby Student Tissue Unicorn Unicycle Uniform LONG “U” WORDS STREETS NAMED FOR MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. What do you think students in trigonometry classes ANSWER: must do continually? Work the angles. As East in this Par Contest deal, you pass out South’s preemptive four-spade opening. When West smartly lays down the heart ace, a depressingly strong dummy appears. You encourage with the eight and win the continuation with your king. What next? Given the strength of dummy’s minor-suit holdings, you should look to trumps for your fourth trick, and it is surely best to lead a heart through declarer in case partner has a promotable trump holding. However, leading a heart immediately would be ineffective if declarer could shed a singleton diamond — in effect, partner would be ruffing your diamond winner. It is a good rule of thumb to cash the side-suit winners that you do not need for communication before trying for a trump promotion. So, cash the diamond ace and only then lead a third heart. This defense sets the contract here, with partner’s spade 10 growing up into the setting trick. It would be a bad idea to cash the diamond ace only if declarer had a void in diamonds and a feeble spade suit such as ace-queen-jack-eighth. Then, an immediate third round of hearts would be the winner. If declarer ruffed with the queen, West would discard from his king-10-low, ensuring two trump tricks for the defense. Perhaps a case could be made for West shifting to a diamond at trick two with his actual hand, to keep his partner from going wrong, but it must be the percentage play for East to try the diamond ace at trick three anyway. ANSWER: You could open a weak two hearts, but your suit should really be better than this in second position, where you have only one opponent to inconvenience at the cost of one partner. Still, I might open two hearts in first seat, especially at favorable vulnerability, where there are two opponents and only one partner. At that vulnerability, the odds may favor aggressive preempting, even in second seat. YESTERDAY’S ANSWERS LEAD WiTh ThE ACES LOOKiNG BACK BiRThDAYS DAiLY CROSSWORD CRYpTOquip WORD SLEuTh JumBLE SuDOKu ACES ON BRiDGE By Bobby Wolff Find the listed words in the diagram. They run in all directions — forward, backward, up, down and diagonally. ©2023 King Features Syndicate Inc. The Cryptoquip is a substitution cipher in which one letter stands for another. If you think that X equals O, it will equal O throughout the puzzle. Single letters, short words and words using an apostrophe give you clues to locating vowels. Solution is by trial and error. ©2023 King Features Syndicate, Inc. Complete the grid so that every row, column and 3x3 box contains the numbers 1 to 9. ©2023 King Features Syndicate, Inc. ©2023 Conceptis Puzzles, Dist. by King Features Syndicate, Inc. ©2023 Dist. By Andrews McMeel Syndication for UFS 1977: convicted murderer Gary Gilmore, 36, was shot by a firing squad at Utah State Prison in the first U.S. execution in a decade. 1994: the 6.7 magnitude Northridge earthquake struck Southern California, killing at least 60 people, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. 1995: more than 6,000 people were killed when an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.2 devastated the city of Kobe (koh-bay), Japan. Actor James Earl Jones is 92. Talk show host maury povich is 84. Pop singer Chris montez is 81. Former first lady michelle Obama is 59. Actor Joshua malina is 57. Electronic music DJ Tiesto is 54. Rapper Kid Rock is 52. Actor-singer Zooey Deschanel is 43. Singer Ray J is 42. Actor Diogo morgado is 42. Former NBA player Dwyane Wade is 41. Actor Ryan Gage is 40. DJ-singer Calvin harris is 39. Actor Kathrine herzer is 26. By Rebecca Goldstein ©2023 Tribune Content Agency 1/17/23 All times Central. Start times can vary based on cable/satellite provider. Confirm times on your on-screen guide. The Rookie ABC, 7 p.m. In “Death Notice,” officer Nolan (Nathan Fillion) and Celina (Lisseth Chavez) are enlisted to stand guard at a hospital when a dangerous prisoner must have surgery and they suspect there is more to it than meets the eye. Meanwhile, Aaron (Tru Valentino) gets Lopez (Alyssa Diaz) and Harper (Mekia Cox) to help him investigate a string of home robberies. The Resident FOX, 7 p.m. Season Finale Medical drama The Resident concludes Season Six tonight with the finale episode “All Hands on Deck,” in which a heavy storm causes a helicopter crash and Sammie comes into the emergency room with a high fever. Night Court NBC, 7 p.m. New Series This follow-up to NBC’s 1984 to 1992 sitcom Night Court stars Melissa Rauch as eternally optimistic Judge Abby Stone, who follows in the footsteps of her revered late father, Judge Harry Stone (played in the original series by Harry Anderson, who passed away in 2018), when she takes on the challenge of overseeing the night shift of a Manhattan arraignment court. John Larroquette reprises his multiple Emmy-winning role of Dan Fielding, who this time is enlisted as the court’s public defender rather than prosecutor. The comedy launches with backto-back episodes. Finding Your Roots With Henry Louis Gates Jr. PBS, 7 p.m., WTTW Chicago, 8 p.m. In “Secret Lives,” Henry Louis Gates Jr. helps comedians Carol Burnett and Niecy Nash decode scandals in their roots, exploring secrets that their ancestors sought to conceal. New Amsterdam NBC, Beginning at 8 p.m. Series Finale The medical drama comes to an end after five seasons with two back-to-back episodes tonight. First, in “Right Place,” Max (Ryan Eggold) and Wilder (Sandra Mae Frank) face a dilemma over approvals for a revolutionary cancer drug as Max learns a secret about his own bout with cancer, Reynolds (Jocko Sims) goes the extra mile to correct a dire medical situation, and Iggy (Tyler Labine) tries desperately to help a woman in need but finds the system is working against him. Then, everyone’s story reaches a surprising, yet inevitable, conclusion in the series-finale episode, “How Can I Help?” American Experience: ‘Zora Neale Hurston: Claiming a Space’ PBS, 8 p.m., WTTW Chicago, 9 p.m. This biography explores the life of author Zora Neale Hurston, whose groundbreaking anthropological work would challenge assumptions about race, gender and cultural superiority. Best remembered for her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston was a key figure of the Harlem Renaissance. But even as she gained renown as a writer, she pursued anthropological studies at Barnard College, becoming the college’s first Black female graduate, and throughout her career, she struggled for recognition in two worlds — literary and scientific. TUESDAY January 17, 2023 NBC ‘Night Court’ What to watch Star of the Month: Marion Davies TCM, Beginning at 7 p.m. TCM continues its January celebration of the scandal-plagued silent-film actor Marion Davies. This appropriately nicknamed “Queen of the Screen” returns tonight beginning with The Bachelor Father (1931), a redemption story of a curmudgeonly old man who invites his three illegitimate adult children to live with him, followed by 1931’s Five and Ten (pictured), based on the 1929 Fannie Hurst novel of the same name, in CATCH A CLASSIC EVERETT COLLECTION which a young woman named Jenny (Davies) moves to New York City with her family and falls in love with an engaged man. A scandalous love triangle is the focus of the next film, Blondie of the Follies (1932), in which the friendship between two young women (Davies and Billie Dove) begins to fall apart when one wins a role in a Broadway show and the other’s boyfriend (Robert Montgomery) falls for her. Polly of the Circus (1932), a film adaptation of the play by Margaret Mayo, finds Davies playing an injured trapeze performer opposite the iconic Clark Gable, who plays a minister and a love interest. Davies is a love-struck teacher who pursues a radio singer (the legendary Bing Crosby) to Hollywood and gets hired to join a chorus in Going Hollywood (1933), then, lastly, in Operator 13 (1934), Davies plays Gail Loveless, a spy who meets and falls in love with a Confederate captain (Gary Cooper) during the Civil War.

D4 TUESDAY, JANUARY 17, 2023 HOUSTON CHRONICLE | HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM King Features Syndicate Blondie Beetle Bailey Curtis sherman’s lagoon garfield B.C. argyle sweater hoCus foCus Bizarro hagar the horriBle mother goose and grimm Brewster roCkit: spaCe guy! rex morgan, m.d. phantom royal stars Dear Abby: Thirty years ago, I had an affair with “Roger,” a married man.We worked together and fell in love. At the time, Roger was married with three children. My husband and I were separated, and I had one son. The 15-year age gap between us didn’t matter to me. I admired him. Roger was soft-spoken, intelligent and a gentleman. He was of Christian faith, so when he decided to divorce his wife, his partners held an intervention and bought out his equity in the company, which forced him to move out of state. Roger was a great person and struggled with the thought of leaving his family. I understood, and we parted ways. I kept informed about him as much as possible over the years but never contacted him, and we lived in different states.When he left, I was pregnant, but I didn’t tell him because so much was going on and I didn’t want the baby to be a tool. I had a son, reconciled with my husband and never told a soul. Eight years after that, my husband and I divorced. Although I tried, I never found the courage to reach out to Roger. Five years ago, I visited the state where he lived. I even went to his office, but did not reach out. I recently had several dreams about him and couldn’t stop thinking of him. They seemed so real. I looked Roger up online and found out he died a year ago. I am devastated and feel guilty for not giving my son the opportunity to know his father. Roger has other children. At this point, should I let them know or should I just leave everything alone? My biggest fear is causing pain to his wife. She is a good person and doesn’t deserve this. Holding Many Secrets Dear Holding:What is to be gained by making an announcement at this late date? As you stated, it won’t provide your son the opportunity to know his father. And receiving shocking news at this point will only cause Roger’s widow pain. However, I would do another internet search to see if you can find out what killed Roger. If it’s something that could be passed down to your son, warn him. Otherwise, I’m voting for leaving everything alone. Dear Heloise: For those of you, who get a Medicare Summary Notice, check it out carefully. I received one from a person I had never heard of, from a town in Texas I had never heard of. The notice included $711 for a glucose monitor during August and September 2022. I didn’t even know what a glucose monitor was until Medicare told me it was for diabetes. I don’t have diabetes. Medicare reported it as fraud. They also said to call my supplemental insurance company because the paperwork said they were sending my claim to my Medigap insurer. That amount was almost $150. They also reported it as fraud. Medicare said it is happening more and more frequently. Pat Shoemaker, in Texas Dear Heloise:I can’t tell you how many times our curious cat has batted the alarm clock or remote, causing them to fall between the mattress and headboard, under my bed. I keep a back scratcher beside the bed to retrieve items that stinker knocks off from under the bed. Deb, in South Dakota today’s Birthday (Jan. 17). You are creative and intelligent. You are also optimistic and positive thinking, which is why you like to encourage others. moon alert: Avoid shopping or making important decisions from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. EST today (6 a.m. to 10 a.m. PST). After that, the Moon moves from Scorpio into Sagittarius. aries (March 21-April 19) HHHH You’re happier today! Your idealism is aroused, and you’re hatching plans to travel and introduce some adventure into your life. Tonight: Avoid controversy. taurus (April 20-May 20) HHHH This is a good day for financial negotiations, especially about inheritances, insurance issues and the wealth of someone else, especially your partner. Tonight: Check your finances. gemini (May 21-June 20) HHHH This is a lovely day to schmooze with partners, close friends and even members of the general public. Tonight: Patience. Cancer (June 21-July 22) HHHWork-related travel is likely for some today. Meanwhile, because of an inner idealism that is aroused within you, any opportunity to help someone will make you feel rewarded and gratified. Tonight: Avoid squabbles. leo (July 23-Aug. 22) HHHH This is a playful day! Enjoy a coffee klatch, a long lunch, playful activities with kids or a romantic date. Tonight: Be helpful. Virgo (Aug. 23-Sept. 22) HHHH Discussions with family members will be upbeat because people are happy to see each other. Tonight: Keep the peace. libra (Sept. 23-Oct. 22) HHHH You’re happy today because you’re in a positive frame of mind. Casual conversations with daily contacts, siblings and neighbors will be upbeat and fun! Tonight: Don’t worry. scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 21) HHHH This is an excellent day for business and commerce, because it is possible for you to boost your income in some way. Tonight: Be frugal. sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 21) HHHH Today the Moon is in your sign dancing beautifully with your ruler Jupiter, which is why you feel happy and upbeat! Tonight: Don’t take the bait. Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 19) HHHH This is a pleasant day. You will certainly run the meeting if you are involved with others, because four planets are in your sign. Nevertheless, you will welcome an opportunity to benefit someone who is in need. You will also find this to be gratifying. Tonight: Stay mellow. aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 18) HHH Although you are happy to keep things down to a dull roar today, you will enjoy a heart-to-heart conversation with a female colleague. Or perhaps this person is a member of a group. You will want to discuss charitable ideas. Tonight: Take it easy. pisces (Feb. 19-March 20) HHHH You make a wonderful impression on others today, which is why this is the perfect day to make your pitch and go after what you want. People see you as friendly, approachable, successful and affluent. Don’t knock it. If it works, use it! Tonight: Respect authority. www.DearAbby.com Andrews McMeel Syndication [email protected] King Features Syndicate

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D6 TUESDAY, JANUARY 17, 2023 HOUSTON CHRONICLE | HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM “We’ll have all of our vendors except for one, and a lot of our dealers have new containers coming in,” said Kathy Johnston of the Compound. “Think of the winter show as a sneak peek to the spring show in March. It’s a quick little show that’s all about the shopping.” Bader Ranch will be full, though it will have no outdoor tent, with dealers bringing in two new containers of European antiques and one full container of midcentury modern furnishings. Bader Ranch fans will be happy to learn that the Lady Elaine vintage Airstream bar will be there serving cocktails and light bites. Market Hill and the Round Top Antiques & Design Center will have their usual vendors; the Excess I and II lots will only be open Jan. 21-22, with just a dozen or so vendors. Janet Wiebe, a former Houston antiques dealer who now lives in Italy and sells her wares online as well as at the fall and spring shows, just happened to be in Houston and had enough inventory that she’s trying the January show for the first time, setting up a booth in the Blue Barn at Blue Hills. Wiebe deals primarily in Murano glass lighting, working directly with the Murano factory in Italy for new lighting wired for American customers, but she also mixes some vintage pieces into her inventory. Higher natural gas prices in Italy prompted Murano to shut down some of its furnaces, affecting what Wiebe can get. She explained that each furnace at the Murano plant makes a different color of glass, so a partial shutdown affects what colors are available and reduces the overall output. Murano glass lamps are expensive, ranging from $1,495 to $4,000 a pair, with chandeliers costing considerably more. Still, her most expensive inventory is the first to get sold, and she’ll likely sell out of whatever she brings, she said. “It’s a forever lamp — beautiful, handmade and a piece of art. You either understand it and love it and want it or you don’t,” Wiebe said, noting that pink, blue and green Murano lighting are the most in-demand colors. Corey Layne — who with his sister, Stephanie Layne Disney, owns the Blue Hills venue — said that this weekend’s show will be the third for Blue Hills, and they’ll have a special event with Garden & Gun magazine, which is setting up a lounge called the G&G Club. That event will also feature test drives of new model Audis. “There’s much less traffic, and the crowds are smaller, but it’s exciting for us as show promoters. It’s fun to do something a little different for a shorter period,” Layne said. “(Garden & Gun) came in with a vision, and that makes our job much easier. I think the lounge will be a really big hit.” Jodi Bishop, who owns Houston-based Birddog Interiors, usually sells her wares at Marburger Farm, but she will be at Blue Hills for this winter show. She’s excited to be back out in public, after a long battle with COVID that left her in a coma for 23 days and then forced her to learn to walk and talk again. Bishop will be there with a large inventory of midcentury barware, along with brass and Murano glass home accessories — three things that are popular in home design right now. “Brass is hot, so I have a lot of that from the 1960s and ’70s. I sell tons of brass trays; they are very popular, and I have a hard time keeping those,” Bishop said. “Murano is popular because of the influence of Italian style. The Italians are such wonderful artisans, and they’re very chic when it comes to home goods and clothing design. I think a lot of the pieces were intended to be used as ashtrays, but people now use them as trinket dishes.” [email protected] Original Round Top Antiques Fair The Original Round Top Antiques Fair at the Big Red Barn will be open for winter 2023 shows on Jan. 20-21. Courtesy of Birddog Interiors Vintage barware, in a wide assortment of styles, can be found at Birddog Interiors. Courtesy of Janet Wiebe Janet Wiebe of Sourced by Janet Wiebe will have handmade Murano glass chandeliers, sconces and table lamps in her booth. ROUND TOP WINTER ANTIQUES SHOWS ORIGINAL ROUND TOP ANTIQUES FAIR Where: 475 Texas 237 S., Carmine When: 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Jan. 20-21 Admission: $10 (covers both days) Information: roundtoptexasantiques.com THE COMPOUND ANTIQUES SHOW When: 9:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Jan. 19-22 Where: 2550 S. Texas 237, Round Top Admission: Free Information: roundtopcompound.com BLUE HILLS Where: 1701 Texas 237, Carmine When: 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Jan. 19-21, 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Jan. 22 Admission: Free Information: bluehillsatroundtop.com BADER RANCH Where: 470 S. Washington, Round Top When: 8 a.m. until dark Jan. 18-22 Admission: Free Information: shoproundtop.com MARKET HILL Where: 1542 Texas 237, Round Top When: 10 a.m.-7 p.m. Jan. 19-22 Admission: Free Information: markethillroundtop.com EXCESS I AND II Where: Excess I, 3907 Texas 237, Round Top; Excess II, 145 Rohde, Round Top When: 9 a.m. until dark Jan. 20-21 Admission: Free Information: excessfield.com ROUND TOP ANTIQUES & DESIGN CENTER Where: 199 Henkel Circle When: Noon-4 p.m. Jan. 18; 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Jan. 19-21; 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Jan. 22 Admission: Free Information: henkelsquareroundtop/rtad ROUND TOP From page D1 vites the viewer to reconsider the endurance of processes such as knotting and weaving, which are socially categorized “women’s work.” Inside, Ana María Hernando follows suit. The Argentine native hails from a long line of textile workers. As a teenager, she worked in a textile factory owned by her grandparents. Hernando’s art career began in painting before she swapped canvases for sculpture using textiles as a medium to signal the “invisible work women have done.” “Cloud” (2018) hangs overhead in delightful twists of tulle and metal. It’s the first time the birdinspired installation has appeared indoors. “These are the colors birds love,” she says of the orange and white puffs. “It brings the sky to us and us to the sky.” On the adjacent wall, more blue fabric spills onto the floor like the train of a ballgown in “We Cannot Weep Without Vibrating the Waters” (2022). The excess celebrates female abundance and the ability to create life despite circumstance. “It’s an homage to the perseverance of women,” Hernando explains. “No matter what, women keep moving forward.” A rainbow awaits in the Brown Foundation Gallery. World, an architecture and graphic design studio that designed the exhibition, aimed to create a holistic experience. “Certain qualities come through in here: intimacy, openness and weaving techniques,” says founding partner Alejandro Stein. Panels of floor-toceiling fringe in pink, marigold, green and lilac split the space into two long bands. Visitors weave through the threads like needles. In there, the artists’ humor and self-reflection abound. Hangama Amiri’s “Late by Myself” from the series “Mirrors and Faces” (2021) depicts her living space and emotional state during the pandemic. An overflowing wine glass and cheese board hangs on chiffon, muslin, cotton, polyester, silk and suede. On a far wall, Qualeasha Wood’s “Madonna and Child” (2021) is a meta self-portrait. The artist illustrates herself as a haloed figure, holding a book of selfies. Text across the jacquard-woven cotton reads “Black women don’t owe you s—-” and “The audacity of Black women to provide all of the content on the Internet but exist beyond the boundaries of your consumption.” Sagarika Sundaram described her neighboring works as “not precious.” She utilized ancient felt-making, dyeing and craft techniques from India to make “Flame of the Forest” (2022). Wetting the wool and kicking the fabric to create friction — and subsequently, matting — inspired “Passage Along the Edge of the Earth” (2022). “Touching ‘Flame’ led to the other one that you can walk through,” Sundaram says. A third gallery, “Drawing With Thread,” hides discreetly within a cavelike space near the Moody Center’s main entrance and exit. Josenhans hopes that after “Narrative Threads,” visitors will see fiber everywhere. The medium is less ancient than timeless and still relevant today. Colorful, joyful and uplifting, the exhibition is best experienced in real life. Though in 2023, there’s enough shock value (lite) worthy of a social media post, too. [email protected] Photos by Melissa Phillip/Staff photographer “Late by Myself,” by Hangama Amiri, is on view at the “Narrative Threads: Fiber Art Today” exhibit in the Moody Center for the Arts at Rice University. ‘NARRATIVE THREADS: FIBER ART TODAY’ When: Through May 13 Where: Rice University Moody Center for the Arts, entrance 8 Details: Free; moody.rice.edu ART From page D1 “A Little Domestic Waste I” was created by artist Sarah Zapata. Artist Patrick Quarm created “Parallel Index” for the exhibition.