• B.R. scores major video game company
BATON ROUGE -- Couch potatoes and video game addicts take note: You can make a living doing what you like most right here in Louisiana.

• Fixing Charity is the faster, cheaper option, study says
BATON ROUGE -- The shuttered Charity Hospital can be gutted and rebuilt into a state-of-the-art teaching hospital for less money and in shorter time than it would take the state to build a new hospital, according to a structural assessment of the building unveiled Wednesday.

• Jindal to speak at prime GOP time
BATON ROUGE -- Gov. Bobby Jindal will not deliver the keynote address at the Republican National Convention in Minnesota next month, but he will have a prime-time slot on the night reserved for the acceptance speech of the party's yet-to-be-named vice presidential nominee.

• Bush to laud post-storm progress
BATON ROUGE -- President Bush plans to mark the upcoming three-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina with a speech at Jackson Barracks today that will extol the progress made since he promised the federal government would stay "as long as it takes" to rebuild the Gulf Coast.

• Jindal bucks tradition, gives up LSU tickets
BATON ROUGE -- The long-standing bond between Louisiana governors and the LSU football team -- once symbolized by Huey Long leading the school's marching band onto the Tiger Stadium field -- has been frayed.

• Protesters call for Shell to pay La. $362 million
Carrying signs in a driving rainstorm demanding that Shell Oil Co. "fix the coast you broke," about 25 environmental activists on Tuesday attempted to deliver a bill for $362 million to the corporation's New Orleans headquarters.

• Troy Carter: Promises a fresh perspective
When a fifth-place finish in the 2nd Congressional District race two years ago dashed his hopes for a political comeback, Troy Carter chalked up the defeat to voters having little time to focus on elections amid the everyday difficulties of life in the year after Hurricane Katrina.

• James Carter: Working behind the scenes
As Hurricane Katrina raced toward shore almost three years ago, it seemed inevitable to James Carter that such a monster storm would cause massive suffering. So Carter, an attorney in private practice at the time, decided to send his wife and young son out of harm's way, then hunker down in his Algiers Point home so he could join the immediate relief effort.

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• VA brass keep options open on site of hospital
Last year, frantic that they might lose the veterans hospital to another city or even another state, local and state leaders pulled together a plan to commandeer land in a historic but struggling neighborhood on the edge of the Central Business District and offer it to the federal government as a place to build.

• Give cockfighting law a chance, advocates say
BATON ROUGE -- Animal rights advocates said Friday they will wait a year before trying to toughen penalties or make changes in a new law that outlaws cockfighting in Louisiana, the last state to abolish the activity.

• Jindal positive after GM meeting
BATON ROUGE -- Gov. Bobby Jindal emerged from a private meeting with General Motors Corp. executives Friday saying he is confident that cuts at the firm's Shreveport plant will go no deeper than the 800 layoffs already announced and that the company might consider expansion there in the future.

• A raft of new state laws take effect today, targeting everything from firearms at work to cockfighting to home-repair fraud
BATON ROUGE -- Starting today, employees can bring their firearms to work, but can't ride in the bed of a pickup truck if they take interstate highways to get there.

• Mandeville probe changes hands
The state attorney general has opened an investigation into possible criminal wrongdoing by Mayor Eddie Price and other Mandeville officials after St. Tammany District Attorney Walter Reed recused himself from the case.

• Gas find producing windfall in state
BATON ROUGE -- The state collected a $93.8 million windfall Wednesday thanks to a boom in land leases by energy companies betting on a major discovery of underground natural gas reserves in northwest Louisiana called the Haynesville Shale.

• Budget surplus is windfall for coast
The state Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority agreed Wednesday to spend $300 million in 2007 budget surplus money on a variety of hurricane protection and coastal restoration projects, including $100 million that will help speed completion of 100-year east bank and West Bank levees in the New Orleans area.

• La.'s ACT average hits new high
In an achievement hailed as an unprecedented level of readiness for college, Louisiana's high school seniors this year attained the state's highest overall score ever on the ACT entrance examination.

• Navy signs federal city lease
In a significant step toward making a campus for federal agencies and the military a reality in Algiers, the Navy and planners have agreed on basic terms for a 75-year lease of the Naval Support Activity's West Bank site, setting the stage for congressional approval.

• Landrieu stirs talk on Social Security
BATON ROUGE -- Democratic U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu on Wednesday introduced Social Security as a potential wedge issue in her campaign against Republican challenger John Kennedy.

• Contracts linked to mayor's family
The lavish golfing and hunting excursions enjoyed by Mandeville Mayor Eddie Price, courtesy of city contractors and a prominent local developer, were perhaps the most sensational revelations in a report released Monday by the Louisiana legislative auditor.

• Louisiana's ban on cockfighting takes effect Friday
BATON ROUGE -- Some call it a blood sport. Others call it a way of life. But whatever the view, as of Friday cockfighting will be illegal in Louisiana, the last state in the nation to outlaw it.

• La. poised to reap rewards of quest to tap natural gas
BATON ROUGE -- The state is expecting a huge revenue bonus today with a new round of land leases auctioned to energy companies seeking to tap a potential bounty of deep underground natural gas reserves in the northwest corner of Louisiana.

• Utility panel declares first energy emergency
The Louisiana Public Service Commission on Tuesday unanimously declared the state's first "energy emergency," a move that allows elderly, low-income and disabled customers to defer paying portions of their electricity bills for as long as a year. The commission also called on the state to appropriate $20 million for energy assistance and efficiency programs.

• Price lived lavishly on contractors, city
The state legislative auditor issued a scathing report Monday on the city of Mandeville, describing an administration where the mayor flew to golf tournaments on a private jet owned by a city contractor and where abuses of city credit cards by top officials were rampant.

• Officials scrap contract to issue grants
In another failed start for a recovery program that has languished for two years, Louisiana officials decided Monday to scrap a contract for doling out home-raising grants after they concluded two top bidders had conflicts of interest.

• Kennedy backs off his attack ad claim
BATON ROUGE -- John Kennedy's U.S. Senate campaign backed off Monday on a claim it made last week that a national Democratic group had purchased air time for negative ads in Louisiana.

• State GOP stays out of decision on keynote talk
BATON ROUGE -- State Republican Party officials say they want Gov. Bobby Jindal to land the keynote speaker slot at the party's national convention next month, but declined to back a resolution urging presumptive presidential nominee John McCain to make it happen.

• Jindal urging death penalty for child rapists
LAFAYETTE -- Gov. Bobby Jindal said Saturday his administration is working with prosecutors on a bill that would reinstate the death penalty for rape in limited cases, especially for "monsters" who prey on young children.

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• Firm ready to build St. James iron plant
CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Nucor Corp. plans to build a 500-employee iron plant in Convent and wants to break ground in January, as long as Louisiana grants the necessary environmental permits and the Legislature backs an incentives package crafted by the administration of Gov. Bobby Jindal, the steelmaker's chief executive officer said.

• Ex-lawmaker on ethics board
BATON ROUGE -- The state Board of Ethics, decimated by mass resignations more than a month ago, picked up its second member Friday when the House chose a former lawmaker to fill one of the 10 vacancies on the 11-member panel.

• Louisiana given 30 years to pay to raise levees
President Bush has agreed to give Louisiana 30 years to pay its $1.8 billion share of the cost of raising hurricane protection levees in the New Orleans area, Gov. Bobby Jindal and Gulf Coast Recovery Coordinator Maj. Gen. Doug O'Dell said at a surprise news conference Thursday evening.