A jury has acquitted a former Harris County Sheriff’s deputy accused in the murder of his wife in 2019.

A jury pay increase went into effect in Harris County and the State of Texas, the county’s district clerk office announced Friday.

One potential juror for the Antonio “AJ” Armstrong Jr. re-trial was dismissed because they said they could not give Armstrong the presumption of innocence.

Hope for the future of cinema was front of mind for many as the Venice International Film Festival kicked off Wednesday on the Lido.

(Photo by Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP)VENICE – The Venice Film Festival is wrapping up the first COVID-era international cinema showcase Saturday, with critics, filmmakers and actors alike cheering organizers for having dared to hold the festival amid a pandemic and demonstrating how to go to the movies again, safely. Once the virus spread, the Cannes Film Festival was canceled outright, and other big international festivals in Toronto and New York opted to go mostly online. “We were a little bit worried at the beginning, of course,” festival director Alberto Barbera said. Twenty-twenty is not the year for those kind of discussions.”Instead, she said, Venice was a film festival that focused on the integrity of the films. The diversity of countries represented is a development that festival director Barbera has greeted with particular satisfaction.