Latest News

The federal government is set to sell off oil and natural gas leases in the central Gulf of Mexico off the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

The sale, taking place in the Superdome, starts at 9 a.m. CDT and ends at noon, when the U.S. Department of the Interior is expected to announce the results.

The government is offering 7,434 tracts covering about 38 million acres. As of Tuesday, 593 bids were submitted by 48 companies for 454 tracts.

The blocks are located from three to about 230 miles offshore.

A federal appeals court has scheduled a hearing for the case against three former New Orleans police officers convicted of charges stemming from a man's fatal shooting and burning of his body in Hurricane Katrina's aftermath.

A three-judge panel from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is scheduled to hear arguments on both sides of the case on July 11.

The Southern Baptist Convention will be under the leadership of its first African-American president. The country’s largest Protestant denomination is hoping to diminish its troubling racist past.

The nation's largest Protestant denomination is set to take its biggest step yet toward resolving its troubled racial past.

On Tuesday, the Southern Baptist Convention plans to vote on whether to elect an African-American president for the first time in the denomination's 167-year history. The Rev. Fred Luter Jr. is so-far unopposed for the position.

Seventeen years ago, Luter was one of the authors of an SBC resolution that apologized to African-Americans for perpetuating racism and resolved to strive for racial reconciliation.

BATON ROUGE — The top national organization of university professors has censured Louisiana State University for alleged mistreatment of faculty. The group also censured Southeastern Louisiana and Northwestern State universities for allegedly using state budget cuts as excuses to fire some tenured faculty.