Republican Sen. Robert Adley of Benton has proposed the bill for the legislative session that begins in less than two weeks. It would make the sale of the energy drinks, which are growing in popularity including with teenagers, to anyone 15 years old or younger an unfair trade practice.

That would include any drink - except coffee - that has at least five milligrams of caffeine per fluid ounce.

Google recently announced a plan to bring ultrahigh-speed broadband networks to as many as 500,000 homes in selected cities. The service will be about 100 times faster than most users now have. Proposals are due March 26.

Chamber of Commerce research director John Zachary says Baton Rouge should target its approach toward students, the scientific community and bringing high-speed Internet to poorer communities. Google has not said how many cities it intends to choose or what will guide its decisions.
   

Thirty-six-year-old Quacy L. Francis was arrested Thursday morning on a warrant in relation to one instance of HIV exposure, according to police reports cited in The Times of Shreveport.

Investigators are looking for others who may have been intentionally exposed to the HIV virus by Francis without their knowledge.
   

Prosecutors said the Federal Emergency Management Agency awarded 42-year-old Sonja T. Jones more than $41,000 when she wasn’t entitled to that money. Jones allegedly used her own name but the home addresses and social security numbers of others on applications she submitted.

Jones faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine following her guilty plea Wednesday to fraudulent use of a social security number and making false claims to FEMA. Her sentencing is set for June 16.
   

The former National Guard armory on Highway 1 in Alexandria is the site of a new shelter for homeless veterans.  Eric Miller is heading up a group called the recovery mission to complete the project.

Miller said, “We’re creating a facility that will house anywhere from 10 to 20 homeless vets on a daily basis in a program that will last 90 days educating that veteran on substance abuse and getting them on their feet and out into the community as a productive citizen.”

So far the group has raised about $75,000 for the renovation of an old warehouse on the property.

Miller said, “Fund raisers through bucket drives asking businesses to donate materials anything we can do to try to get our project finished and get it open we don’t have any secret pot of money or grant funding this.  It’s basically donations and out of our own pockets.”

The ASH students picked the project for a fund raiser that will give them a taste of living on the streets. 

Student council advisor Dorothy Long said, “The student council is raising money for the homeless in Cenla and students paid $20 to bring a box to sleep in a field all night.”

Long says there won’t be any skipping class the next day.

“They won’t be allowed to go home and take a shower or get dressed they’ll go straight to class and they have to be in class all day long.”

With 87 students taking part they raised $1,740 dollars for the shelter.

The group hopes to have the shelter completed in about eight weeks.  The cost of the renovation is about $150,000.

“I was walking out with my groceries, going out to my car,” said Phyllis Friske.

The woman can been seen in surveillance video pushing a shopping cart outside an Everett Safeway.

“I saw a car along the curb with the doors open, but you know I never thought a thing about it,” said Friske.

On the video, three male shoplifters can be seen with beer in hand running out of the store. Two run past her and jump into the car, the third collides with her, lands on top of her, slamming her head into the ground.

“What shocked me is the way I’m flat out on my back,” said Friske.

“She fell down to the ground, the car took off and hit her in the head,” said Everett Police Sgt. Robert Goetz.

“I had a concussion. I had to have staples on the back on my head,” said Friske.

She also has deep bruises on the back of her leg that keep her from sitting for long periods. She spent a night in the hospital and missed three days of work, all because three guys wanted to steal some beer.

“[They] had no concern about her safety after she had been knocked down. All their concern was to get away with beer,” says Goetz.

Friske wonders what the three suspects were thinking.

“They don’t realize what they’re doing to their future. They just think it’s a lark. ‘Let’s get some beer for a party!’ But it’s going to affect their lives,” she said. “I just wish they would take responsibility and suck it up.”

It’s new technology designed to destroy tumors without surgery.

“The way we do it is with imaging guidance and we use very thin needles or electrodes, probes as we call them. We place them in the vicinity of the tumor. Usually around it and its connected to a generator,” Govindarajan Narayanan, an Interventional Radiologist, said. 
Delivering high voltage electrical current through the probes.

“And what the current does is it makes multiple nano sized holes in the tumor in the cell membrane thereby killing the tumor cells,” Dr. Narayanan said.
The patient in this case is 67 year old Maria Gomez. They’re treating a tumor in her liver.

“They had recommended early on that I have a liver transplant, and I didn’t really want a liver transplant now. So secondly they recommended this,” she said.

5 weeks after her procedure Maria has a cat scan to see if the Nanoknife has a made a difference.

Dr. Raj Narayanan pointed to the tumor before treatment, which shows up lighter than other tissue. Now a dark area is where the tumor has disappeared.

And he shows Maria the results.

“And I don’t see any active tumor there,” Dr. Narayanan said.

First there’s disbelief:

“But the lesion is gone,” Maria said.

“The lesion, I don’t see any,” Dr. Narayanan said.

“Its beyond elation. Just feeling very grateful to God, and Dr. Narayanan and his team just for being so lucky that I can be helped,” Maria said.

So far only a handful of patients have been treated with the Nanoknife at UM’s Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center. All have had liver tumors.

In the future doctors at UM Sylvester will expand its use to include kidney and lung tumors as well.

Seventeen-year-old Isaiah Vinson was a student at Central High School. Police say it appears Vinson and several other teens were standing at the corner around 2 p.m waiting for a light to change when they began pushing and shoving each other. Eventually Vinson was pushed out into the roadway where he was struck by a city of St. Paul Parks and Recreation maintenance truck.

On Wednesday morning, family and friends gathered at a memorial that was created on the sidewalk. As the memorial continued to grow, the hugs between family and friends got longer. For them, it’s not easy to understand how a young life could end too soon and so suddenly.

“We’re still shocked, just kind of wondering exactly what happened and why it happened,” Beverly Johnson, Isaiah Vinson’s aunt, said “He had a smile that just brightened up the room.”

While at first police weren’t sure if there had been an argument and Isaiah was pushed intentionally, investigators now say at this point witness accounts lead them to believe it was likely an accident. They hope finding more witnesses will help fill in missing details.

The 52-year-old truck driver has worked in St. Paul’s Parks and Recreation Department for six years with a clean record. City officials say he wasn’t speeding, intoxicated or distracted and there was nothing wrong with the truck.

“The way it happened, there was no way for him to swerve; there was no way for him to hit the brakes. It’s just too bad,” says Brad Meyer, with the St. Paul Parks and Recreation Department.

Vinson was a student at St. Paul Central High School, an average teenager who loved to sing, his family tells KARE 11. They hope the community will remember him the way they do.

“The most beautiful eyes you’d ever want to see. He was tall handsome, very intelligent,” says Beverly Johnson. “Just a beautiful person and we’ll miss him.”

Students were able to meet with grief counselors at Central High School.

Chick-Fil-A openings around the

country.

about the Forest Hill Nursery Festival.

about local Chick-Fil-A.

first person in Chick-Fil-A.

for March 18, 2010.

U.S. District Judge Patricia Minaldi handed down the sentence Tuesday to Kenneth Gary Washington. Acting U.S. Attorney William Flanagan said Washington was convicted in October 2009 of conspiracy to possess and distribute cocaine and marijuana, money laundering conspiracy and unlawful use of a communication facility.

Flanagan said Washington was among 18 defendants indicted following an Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force investigation dubbed “Operation Fowl Play” and “Rio Gallo.”

The Times reports Wednesday that six former Bossier City firefighters, laid off there, are taking part in the latest Shreveport Fire Department training class. It’s a five-week session instead of the normal 18-22 weeks because all the members, are certified firefighters who have worked in other jurisdictions.

In addition to the six former Bossier City firefighters, the class has one from the city of Natchitoches and another from South Bossier Parish Fire District Officials say hiring the experienced firefighters saved the city roughly $200,000.
   

The 32-year-old Caillier appeared in federal court Tuesday for his initial appearance and arraignment. The former Opelousas High School teacher pleaded not guilty to charges of production and possession of child pornography, and attempt to coerce a minor to engage in criminal sexual acts. He was arrested Feb. 26 and indicted by a federal grand jury last week.

Elbert Guillory, one of Caillier’s attorneys, tells The Advertiser that he is convinced the evidence does not warrant the charges Caillier is facing.

The Minerals Management Service says 67 companies submitted 642 bids on 468 tracts in the central Gulf of Mexico. Crude oil closed Tuesday at $81.70 per barrel. Last year, oil was around $50 a barrel - and the sale attracted 476 bids on 348 tracts. That sale garnered $703 million in winning bids.

In 2008, with oil well above $100, the sale set a record $3.67 billion in high bids.

Quein on the Red is this week-end.

“We Walk Fitness Program”.

the Czech Heritage Festival.

March 17, 2010.

* The LC Lady Wildcats improve to 18-0 after defeating UT-Dallas this afternoon in a doubleheader.

* The Cats fell to LSUS in their annual DARE game this morning at Bringhurst Field.

How much rain will a hurricane making landfall on the Gulf Coast bring to places as far inland as Kentucky or the Northeast? When does a monster hurricane suddenly dissipate? The answer to many of these type of questions often is tied to knowing how much moisture swirls in the atmosphere around a hurricane.

This hurricane season, researchers with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration say they will use Global Positioning System technology to measure the dynamics of moisture far offshore in the Gulf of Mexico. And they say that will help them track the fuel available to ramp up tropical systems moving through the Gulf.
   

Health and Hospitals Secretary Alan Levine delivered the grim news Tuesday to the House Appropriations Committee. Economists predict an unexpected drop in state revenue that would force cuts across nearly all state agencies in the current fiscal year that ends June 30. Any cuts on the health department would come on top of a $40 million state fund shortfall with which Levine is already grappling.

Levine says he may propose to pull some funds he wanted to use in next year’s budget to help fill holes this year. That would create deeper cuts next year.
   

State police say the 13 riverboat casinos, Harrah’s Entertainment’s New Orleans casino and the four race track casinos took in $208.7 million in February, up from $189.7 million in January. The latest figure was down 6 percent from $220 million in winnings in February 2009. However, the January-to-January winnings figure was down 14.6 percent. The February figure is a break from double-digit revenue decreases that have hit Louisiana casinos in recent months.

Last month, the riverboats won $145 million, the New Orleans land casino won $29.2 million and the track casinos won $34.5 million.