1. IS STEROID USE UNDER CONTROL IN COLLEGE FOOTBALL An AP investigation finds more than 4,700 players packed on rapid weight in a season without drawing much attention from schools or the NCAA.
2. HOW ONE TEXAS TOWN KEEPS SCHOOLS SAFE Teachers are allowed to carry concealed guns in public schools in Harrold, where the nearest sheriff’s office is 30 minutes away.
3. FALLOUT FROM THE BENGHAZI INVESTIGATION Four State Department officials resign under pressure after a damning report blaming higher-ups for lax security.
4. OBAMA GUN CONTROL IN 2013 Reinstating an assault weapons ban is one possibility as the president pledges new proposals by January.
5. HOW MUCH A PENNY COSTS The U.S. Mint says a penny costs more than two cents and a nickel costs 11 cents to make and distribute.
6. WHAT’S LIKELY TO DISRUPT HOLIDAY TRAVEL The first big storm of the season heads to the Midwest after dumping more than a foot of snow in the Rockies.
7. WHY WOMEN IN INDIA ARE OUTRAGED Thousands protested to end harassment and violence after the gang-rape of a 23-year-old woman on a bus in New Delhi.
8. THE GETAWAY CAR FOR CHICAGO INMATES Surveillance video shows that after shimmying down the high-rise jail, Kenneth Conley and Joseph Banks hopped into a taxi.
9. MISS USA IS MISS UNIVERSE Olivia Culpo, a 20-year-old Boston University student and self-described “cellist nerd,” beat 88 other beauty queens to take the title in Las Vegas.
10. SUNNY CLIMES, SUNNY DISPOSITIONS Seven of the world’s 10 countries with the most upbeat attitudes are in Latin America, a poll says.
David Calhoun and Elizabeth “EB” Brooks are the first two employees of Lafayette Central Park Inc., the nonprofit charged with turning Lafayette Consolidated Government’s 100-acre Johnston Street Horse Farm property into a passive public park. Calhoun was named executive director, and Brooks is director of planning and design.
There will soon be a whole lot of shakin’ going on at Benny’s Sportshack Supplement Depot, a new concept by Opelousas native Benny Nele. Located at 2002 Johnston St., the supplement shop, smoothie bar and café, featuring hot off the press paninis and wraps, plans to open in late May.
This year’s Cool Town issue is all about people who are not native to South Louisiana but made a conscious decision to be here, to be among us, to participate in our culture and contribute to it.
A shelved ordinance transferring $200,000 from a northside drainage project to a south Lafayette development may not break any laws, but it stinks to high heaven.
An effort to restore a shuttered dancehall and document other vacant or razed honky-tonks could serve as a model for saving an endangered species of entertainment.
Lafayette’s gene pool has been host to a long line of eccentric characters who have blurred the lines between crazy, genius, disturbed and curiously entertaining.