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BATON ROUGE — The board governing Louisiana's property insurer of last resort has agreed to drop rates by 10 percent across a dozen south Louisiana parishes, with the rate cut retroactive to June 7, when the reduction was signed into law.

The $16 million annual rate cut is for customers of the Louisiana Citizens Property Insurance Corp.

Citizens customers won't likely see a change on their bills until November, after the process for changing rates is complete. They'll get rebates for any money they paid above what they should have.

U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu says a transportation bill that Congress is close to approving includes a provision to steer 80 percent of the fines BP PLC is expected to pay in water pollution penalties stemming from the Gulf oil spill to pay for restoration in five Gulf states. 

The Army Corps of Engineers says it's scrapping plans to build a levee system to protect a large area of south Louisiana against hurricane flooding on the Barataria estuary southwest of New Orleans.  The corps says the project wasn't economically feasible.

A Louisiana businessman linked to a federal probe of former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin pleaded guilty on Wednesday to charges that he paid a $50,000 bribe to a former city official.

Authorities haven't identified the official Frank Fradella allegedly conspired to bribe. 

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama will address the National Urban League Conference on July 25 in New Orleans.

The conference by one of the nation's oldest civil rights organizations is focused on increasing employment for African-Americans, who now face a jobless rate of 13.6 percent, nearly 5 percentage points higher than the national average.