WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's health care bill has millions of dollars to help Louisiana finance Medicaid at a time when he is hoping that state's wavering Democratic senator will support overhaul legislation.

The bill provides at least $100 million for Louisiana in extra funds for Medicaid, the state-federal health program for the poor.

Louisiana's Democratic senator, Mary Landrieu, has said she is undecided about the Democratic health care package. Reid needs the votes of all 60 Democratic senators for the Senate debate to begin.

Landrieu spokesman Aaron Saunders says the senator worked with Reid to get the Medicaid money into the bill, but remains undecided about whether she will vote to allow debate to start.

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Jean Phillip Joubert, a five-year veteran of the department, was issued a summons on Thursday for criminal damage to property. He was placed on administrative leave pending an investigation by the Lafayette Parish Sheriff's Office.

Opelousas Police Chief Perry Gallow said officers responded to Walmart around 7 p.m. Tuesday after a vehicle's tire was slashed.

Officials say that after reviewing a surveillance video, officers were able to identify the suspect as a law enforcement officer by the jacket he was wearing.

Gallow says the incident appeared to stem from an argument over a parking space.

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Information from: The News-Star, http://www.thenewsstar.com

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On Thursday, an East Baton Rouge Parish grand jury charged Fredrick Jermaine Taylor with second-degree murder in the killing of 27-year-old Allison Vallien in the cafeteria at The Haven at Windermere.

The Advocate of Baton Rouge reports Vallien was preparing to serve lunch to residents at the facility when Taylor allegedly made his way into the building and stabbed her.

Taylor was arrested at the scene.

It wasn't immediately clear if Staton has an attorney.

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Information from: The Advocate, http://www.2theadvocate.com

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NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The Archdiocese of New Orleans is set to receive $25 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Louisiana Recovery Authority to repair five Catholic schools damaged by Hurricane Katrina.

The money will repair eight buildings at five schools in Orleans Parish.

Katrina damaged more than 30 archdiocese facilities, and since the 2005 storm, the archdiocese has experienced an enrollment decrease of more than 9,000 students.

Once recovery work is completed, officials say the five repaired schools will accommodate the student population of other archdiocese schools that have not reopened since Katrina.

Archbishop Gregory Aymond says he is grateful for the assistance and plans to make a public accounting of how the money will be used.

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On the Net:

FEMA, http://www.fema.gov/latro

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The federal judge's harshly worded decision also served as vindication for residents of St. Bernard Parish and the Lower 9th Ward in New Orleans who have long argued that Katrina was largely a man-made disaster, caused by the federal government's failure to maintain the levees protecting the city.

"Finally, somebody has said the truth," said Catherine Serpas, 67, whose family runs a bicycle and lawnmower store in Chalmette, La. She said the Army Corps' work on a 76-mile channel called the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet "destroyed the family life we knew. St. Bernard will never be what it used to be."

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin told CNN the ruling would "open the floodgates" for people in the Lower 9th Ward to seek "proper compensation."

"If this is allowed to stand, I think you will see a multitude of lawsuits, the City of New Orleans included," Nagin said.

A Corps of Engineers spokesman said the agency and the Justice Department were reviewing the ruling and would not comment because issues in the case were still subject to litigation.

On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval ruled that the corps' shoddy oversight of the channel southeast of New Orleans caused much of the flooding of St. Bernard Parish and the Lower 9th Ward, two of the hardest-hit areas after Katrina.

The decision opens the door to billions of dollars in other claims by more than 100,000 individuals, businesses and even government entities that have pending damage claims against the corps. Duval awarded $720,000 in property damages to four individuals and one business.

Storm victims said they were eager for the government to pay up.

Serpas' sister, Melanie Koons, said she hoped the ruling would "make the corps accountable."

In the Lower 9th Ward, Gabriel Rogers exclaimed: "Pay up quickly. Get the money started down here." Pointing to the empty lots behind his house, the 63-year-old retired truck driver said: "You can ride down there and see nobody."

Dane Ciolino, a law professor at Loyola University in New Orleans, said that if Duval's ruling holds up on appeal, he would expect Congress to approve a federal settlement rather than going through individual trials. Total damages could reach into the billions of dollars.

The plaintiffs' lawyers hoped to head off more litigation by appealing directly to Congress.

"It's time to stop litigating and start negotiating," said Pierce O'Donnell, a Los Angeles attorney who was one of the lead lawyers on the case. "With Judge Duval's ruling, we now have a weapon."

The plaintiffs' lawyers said they would approach congressional leaders after Thanksgiving with a list of demands to settle the case. They said the federal government needs to compensate victims throughout the city, fix the region's broken infrastructure, restore the wetlands of south Louisiana and overhaul the way the corps operates.

Normally, the federal government is immune from lawsuits that arise from routine operations, including most flood-control projects. But in this case, the judge ruled that the Army Corps could be held liable because the channel in question is not strictly for flood control. It also gave ships and barges a shortcut to and from the Gulf of Mexico until the corps closed it with rocks this year.

Members of Congress urged the government to act swiftly.

Sen. Mary Landrieu, a Louisiana Democrat, called on the president to "use this decision as an opportunity to avert future loss of life and expense to the treasury. We cannot afford to wait for the next failure of our federal government to get it right. We have waited long enough."

She said she hoped the ruling was upheld and that "the people of the region are finally vindicated and receive a full and just compensation."

The Army Corps, she added, "can no longer be relied upon as the lone agency charged with protecting our coastal communities."

Sen. David Vitter, a Louisiana Republican, said the ruling could "serve as a warning for the future and as a means to help bring some form of relief to the victims of this storm."

In a joint statement, Sens. Russ Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat, and John McCain, an Arizona Republican, said the ruling was "further proof that the Army Corps of Engineers is in urgent need of reform. ... American taxpayers cannot wait for another natural disaster like Katrina before we act to improve the safety and security of Corps projects."

Mark Davis, director of the Tulane Institute on Water Resources Law and Policy, called the ruling "a watershed moment in how the government's responsibilities to the environment and the people are evaluated."

The ruling "clearly has implications for other areas beyond Louisiana," he said.

Regardless of what happens on appeal, he added, "the judge's views on the Corps of Engineers' credibility and narrow view of its responsibilities will put them under a magnifying glass that, quite frankly, they have never been under."

In his 156-page ruling, Duval referred to the corps' approach to maintaining the channel as "monumental negligence." He said he was "utterly convinced" that the corps' failure to shore up the channel doomed it "to grow to two to three times its design width" and that "created a more forceful frontal wave attack on the levee" that protected St. Bernard and the Lower 9th Ward.

"The corps had an opportunity to take a myriad of actions to alleviate this deterioration or rehabilitate this deterioration and failed to do so," Duval said. "Clearly the expression 'talk is cheap' applies here."

At a one-month trial in May, experts clashed over the causes of flooding and the channel's role in it.

Government experts argued the levees and floodwalls would have failed regardless of whether the channel had been dug.

The plaintiffs' team of experts said the channel became a "hurricane highway" that funneled storm surge into New Orleans. Without the channel, they said, the flooding would have been minimal.

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Associated Press writers Becky Bohrer and Alan Sayre contributed to this report.

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BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — A sister of Baton Rouge Mayor Kip Holden has been charged in connection with an alleged city court bribery scheme.

Evelyn Holden was charged Thursday with conspiracy. Prosecutors allege she solicited and obtained bribes from people with pending cases.

Clerk of Court Doug Wellborn says Holden quit her job with his agency Wednesday.

Federal authorities also charged two other people Thursday. Kevaria Williams is accused of accepting bribes to get cases reduced or dismissed, while Ann Warr is accused of altering community service records of city court defendants.

Court proceedings were continuing Thursday.

Four people have pleaded guilty in an investigation of Baton Rouge courts, including a former senior city prosecutor.

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THIBODAUX, La. (AP) — Thibodaux's next mayor and City Council will get pay raises that will cost taxpayers an extra $28,434 a year.

The council voted 4-1 Tuesday for both measures. Councilman Chip Badeaux was the lone vote against the ordinances, which take effect after the 2010 fall elections.

The new measures would raise the mayor's salary from $68,666 to $82,400 a year, a 20 percent increase; raise the salaries of three district council members from $9,600 to $12,700, a 32 percent increase; and raise the salaries of two at-large council members from $11,400 to $14,100, a 24 percent increase. Mayor Charles Caillouet says the at-large council members are paid more because they represent the entire city.

A report by Slavin Management Consultants says the city's pay schedules are 13 percent lower than those of similar-sized Louisiana cities, such as Gretna.

The last time salaries were raised was in October 1992.

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REDWOOD CITY, Calif. (AP) — A Louisiana man who was taken off a flight about to depart San Francisco International Airport when marijuana was found in his luggage will serve a lesser sentence after reaching a plea deal with prosecutors

As part of plea arrangement, prosecutors say Frank Grigsby pleaded no contest Tuesday to possessing pot for sale.

Assistant District Attorney Karen Guidotti says prosecutors dropped a charge of transporting marijuana, an additional count that could have sent the 36-year-old Grigsby to prison for four years.

Instead, Grigsby was sentenced to 16 months in prison.

Grigsby was taken out of the first-class section of a Continental Airlines flight to New Orleans in September after airport security personnel found seven pounds of marijuana in his bags.

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BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Gov. Bobby Jindal is in Texas for a Republican Governors Association conference.

Jindal, who's seen by many to be a rising star in the GOP, participated Wednesday in a panel discussion in which he voiced concerns about health care reform efforts in Washington, D.C.

Jindal says some believe that passage of a reform bill this year would bode well for Republicans in the 2010 mid-term elections because plans currently discussed in the Democratic-controlled Congress are so unpopular with the American public. But he says he worries about the long-term damage a pushed-through bill could cause in terms of higher deficits and a potentially worsened quality of care.

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The suspect, 34-year-old Brian Low, allegedly grabbed Candace "Candy" Edwards by her neck, punched her in the face and broke one of her teeth after she arrived at his Baton Rouge home to pick up their child on Sunday afternoon.

A spokeswoman for the East Baton Rouge Parish sheriff's office said Low was booked on a second-degree battery charge. He was released Monday on $200,000 bond.

Low told investigators that he and Edwards lived together for more than three years but have been separated for about three months. Edwards told The Times-Picayune of New Orleans that she didn't think the incident was newsworthy.

Edwin and Candy Edwards divorced in 2004 after he was convicted of corruption charges and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

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