Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has gotten the approval from the White House of a plan to build a series of sand berms to protect the Louisiana coast. Jindal had sharply criticized delays in approving the berm plan.

The risky effort to contain the leak involving robots working underwater with diamond-edged saw hit a snag. One of the saws got stuck on the pipe it was trying to cut.  But the saw has been freed, ad the Coast Guard says work is ongoing to finish the cut. 

But even when things get back on track, finishing this process will only contain the leak, not stop it.  "We had our first oil contact in the state of Mississippi and Mississippi Sound and some islands to the west. And we had some tar balls and sheening in Alabama," said Admiral Thad Allen.

Also today, Florida's governor is predicting that oil will hit the panhandle of his  state in a day or two.

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The Caddo School Board is reviewing a proposed general fund budget that could reduce total expenses by more than 13 million dollars; ten million of that would come from staffing changes.

A draft of the budget  proposes eliminating 25 special education aides and 11 assistant principal positions and cutting 12 counselor and 20 bus drivers positions through attrition.

The calls for cuts comes after the board voted Tuesday to adjust the pay rates of some employees. District officials say these aren't raises, but they are making sure each employee's pay is fair or equitable to the pay of other employees in similar positions.Some board memebers say this is not a time to give out more money.

The maximum pay increase will be $7,000 for a maintenance worker who was well below the average salary for his position. These pay adjustments, as the district is calling them, will cost more than $700,000.

The board is expected to vote on a final budget at it's June 15th meeting.

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A projected $10 million budget deficit has the Caddo Parish School Board looking for ways to cut costs across the district.

Schools Superintendent Gerald Dawkins said cuts in the state's contributions to local schools are the biggest cause of the problem.

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  Shreveport weightlifters Kendrick Farris, Cody Gibbs and Erin Wallace are stuck in the Central America country of Guatemala, which has been hard hit by a tropical storm and its aftermath.

  The group had just competed in the Pan American weightlifting championship when the country was hit.

  Flights in and out of Guatemala City have been canceled.

   Tropical Storm Agatha and its aftermath, which has included landslides, have left at least 179 people dead.

   In Guatemala, the country hardest hit by the season's first tropical storm, officials in the capital are dealing with a vast sinkhole that swallowed a clothing factory but caused no deaths or injuries. Authorities say it was caused by water from the storm.

   Thousands of people are still homeless and dozens are missing. Rescue crews are trying to reach isolated communities to distribute food and water.

   Officials in Guatemala reported 152 dead but said 100 people were still missing.

   Nearly 125,000 people were evacuated in Guatemala and thousands more fled their homes in neighboring Honduras, where the death toll is up to 17. Ten others died in El Salvador.

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   A Marshall, Texas, police officer shot and killed a robbery suspect on Monday after a confrontation that occurred after a convenience store holdup.

   A second suspect in the robbery was arrested after a vehicle chase and a third suspect was still at large on Tuesday.

 The robbery occurred about 2:25 a.m. Monday at the EZ Mart on West Pinecrest Drive. Police said three men went into the store and stole an undisclosed amount of money.

  Police said two men fled in a vehicle and a third stayed behind in the store.

 The car chase crossed U.S. 59 before it ended on Five Notch Road when the fleeing vehicle ran into a ditch.

  Police said 24-year old Anthony Harvey of Longview was arrested after a brief chase but 17-year old Roy Lee Martin Jr. took off running and eluded officers.

  During the chase, police said, the store clerk told them a third man who was involved in the robbery and had just left the store, Detective Sonya Johnson said.

  Police converged on the area around the store. An officer chased a man into woods just east of the store, Johnson said, and a confrontation ensued and the officer opened fire.

  Police would not provide details about what led the officer to open fire.

  Police have not identified the officer nor the man who was shot.

  The officer has been placed on paid leave while Texas Rangers investigate the shooting.

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  Northwestern State University plans to lay off 26 full-time employees and eight part-timers at the end of this month as part of continuing state-mandated spending reductions.

  The cuts, which are spread among departments, are expected to save the university $1 million in salaries and benefits, NSU said.

  University President Randall Webb said the layoffs will take place by July 1, the start of the state's new fiscal year.

  Webb said another 12 faculty members and five state civil service employees have accepted buyout offers and will retire by the end of this month.

  The Jindal administration has ordered cuts in state government spending to deal with ongoing budget shortfalls. State funding for NSU has been reduced by 19.5 percent, since July 2008 and that funding is expected to be cut by at least another $1 million next year, the university said.

  NSU over the past three years has eliminated 160 positions through layoffs, attrition or not filling vacancies. There are slightly more than 800 employees now at the university.

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  A settlement was reached Tuesday in a legal dispute between the Queensborough Neighborhood Association and a neighborhood resident who challenged the QNA board's authority to supervise the agency.

 Shreveport attorney John Settle, who represents former QNA employee Bobbie Bowers, alleged that some QNA board members don't meet residency requirements and others have stayed past their terms.

  Settle moved to block the board from taking any kind of personnel action, including against whistleblowers who cooperated with a Caddo Sheriff's Department investigation of QNA that found misuse of agency funds by its former director.

  Under the settlement reached during a meeting with Caddo District Judge Ramon Lafitte, the QNA board agreed to hold an annual meeting in August. They will also provide a member list to Settle for him to verify that all board members live in the neighborhood.

  A temporary restraining order, which prohibited QNA from taking administrative actions such as an audit or make personnel moves, has been lifted.

 Settle said he would go back to court if he felt punitive actions were being taken.

 QNA's lawyer, Larry English, called the lawsuit "frivolous legal action" but the judge denied English's request to make Bowers and her lawyer pay his legal fees.

 QNA's former director, Lola May, pleaded guilty last month to misuse of agency money for private purposes and resigned.

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Authorities say a Ville Platte teenager who was visiting with friends in Sabine Parish over the Memorial Day holiday drowned in the Toledo Bend Reservoir.
   Sabine Parish Deputy Coroner Ron Rivers says 19-year-old Corey Soileau went under water Monday evening while he and others were swimming in a cove near a friend's lakeside home.
   Rivers tells The Times that Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries agents found Soileau's body in about 6 feet of water.

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  For sale: Lemonade. Fifty cents a glass. For a worthy cause.

  Best friends and 4-year-olds Jillian and Victoria set up a lemonade stand on the parking lot of a south Bossier City shopping center on Memorial Day to raise money for medical care for Victoria's cousin, who needs a rare kind of bone marrow transplant.

 The mother of one of the girls said insurance won't cover the surgery because it's considered experimental.

 The stand was in business for four hours outside Johnny's pizza on Barksdale Boulevard. They hadn't totaled the collections at mid-afternoon but said business had been good.

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  The man who drowned in Lake Murvaul in Panola County, Texas, after wading out too deep into the water has been identified as Jose Alfredo Lopez Cruz, 22, of Carthage, Texas.

 Panola sheriff's deputies said Cruz, who could not swim, was in the swimming area Sunday afternoon but was holding onto a buoy cable. Witnesses said Cruz ventured into the deep end of the swimming area and for some reason let go of the cable and went under water.

  Cruz's body was recovered near Stovall's Marina Restaurant, deputies said.

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  Teresa Carpenter didn't know Joshua Tomlinson, the Webster Parish soldier who was killed in Afghanistan, but his funeral this past weekend buried some of her ghosts from another war.

  "Today brought a lot of healing and a lot of closure to me," Carpenter said outside First Baptist Church of Minden, where funeral services were held for Tomlinson.

 She was one of dozens of people who stood outside the church, ready to provide a "wall of silence" for protesters who were expected. Those protesters, who don't like the government's stand on gays in the military, did not show up. Those who had arrived in support of Tomlinson spoke of their support for U.S. troops and about the sacrifices of those who have been killed and wounded.

  Carpenter's husband died in Vietnam in 1969. Protesters threw rotten eggs and tomatoes at her when she arrived to meet her husband's remains in Dallas, she said.

 "To see a community come out and honor a fallen hero meant everything in the world to me," Carpenter, who still lives in Northwest Louisiana, said of the very different homecoming now.

 The flag that draped the casket of Carpenter's husband was stained by the eggs and tomatoes. She said the military offered her a new one, but she refused -- saying she wanted to remember what happened that day.

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   Memorial Day events were held across the ArkLaTex today.

Among them:

10:00 a.m.: Hillcrest Memorial Park on U.S. 80 between Bossier City and Haughton. 

10:00 a.m.: Oakwood Cemetery in Jefferson, Texas. 

Noon: Northwest Louisiana Veterans Cemetery near Keithville.

2 p.m.: American Legion Post 14 on South Lakeshore Drive jad its tolling of the bell and casting of the wreath on the lake waters. 

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  Caddo Parish sheriff's deputies on Monday were investigating the death of a woman who died of a gunshot wound at her house north of Cross Lake Sunday night.

  The woman was identified as Jacklyn Morris, 27, of Seminole Drive.

   Sheriff's deputies said the shooting occurred during a domestic dispute involving Morris, her old boyfriend and a new boyfriend.

  The man in the room with the woman said she committed suicide, but detectives were still investigating whether the wound was self-inflicted or whether foul play was involved.

 No arrests had been made on Monday.

 The old boyfriend was moving his things out of the house on Seminole Drive when Morris arrived with her new boyfriend about 8 p.m., deputies said.

 Morris went into the house and the old boyfriend followed her. He came out a short time later and said she had shot herself, deputies said.

  An autopsy would be conducted as part of the investigation into what happened, deputies said.

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