Louisiana news briefs

10 years after Katrina, parish
gets river bike trail
VIOLET — The span of popular cycling and walking trails along the Mississippi River in the New Orleans metropolitan area is reaching into new territory: Down river into the marshes and plantation country of St. Bernard Parish.
It’s a slice of Louisiana that suffered even worse damage than New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina.
When completed, the parish will have a six-mile levee-top trail extending from Meraux to St. Bernard State Park, a state park along the Mississippi River. Construction is expected to start in the coming months.
The trail was on the planning board before Katrina hit 10 years ago, but the storm knocked it off the agenda.

La. maintains credit rating, escapes downgrade
BATON ROUGE — Louisiana has been spared a credit rating downgrade — for now.
Two national rating agencies — Moody’s Investors Service and Standard & Poor’s Rating Services — announced Friday they were keeping Louisiana at its current credit rating. But both moved the state from a “stable” to “negative” credit outlook.
Gov. Bobby Jindal made a personal pitch to Moody’s about the health of Louisiana’s economy and finances, after the rating agency said it was considering a downgrade amid the state’s ongoing budget problems.
Ratings from the two credit agencies help determine interest rates. The change in outlook will raise state costs for borrowing money, but not nearly as much as a downgrade would have.

Attorney accused of stealing money from his client
BATON ROUGE — A Baton Rouge attorney has been arrested following an investigation by the St. Martin Parish Sheriff’s Office.
Stanley “Stephen” Spring, 63, allegedly stole several items from a client, an elderly St. Martin Parish man.
Spring was arrested Friday by the U.S. Marshals Task Force at his Baton Rouge law firm. He is being held in the East Baton Rouge Parish Jail without bond and is awaiting extradition to St. Martin Parish where he will be booked for theft over $500.
It was unknown if Spring has an attorney.

Youngest priest in Baton Rouge once disliked church
BATON ROUGE — The youngest priest in the Diocese of Baton Rouge has a few confessions about his faith and his music: He didn’t like the Catholic Church as a youth, tried for years to run from his calling as a priest, and doesn’t want to be known only as the “Rapping Priest.”
The Rev. Joshua Johnson, serving at Christ the King Catholic Church at Louisiana State University, is 27, and in his first year as a priest.
“I was raised Catholic, but I just never liked the Catholic Church growing up. I thought it was boring, and I didn’t understand it,” said Johnson, a native of Baton Rouge whose rapping has brought him a measure of renown on YouTube and social media. He hosts the hip-hop show “Tell the World” on Catholic radio.
Johnson’s biggest difficulty with the church was with the Eucharist: “I never believed that it was the body and blood of Jesus Christ that the Catholic Church teaches.”
That changed one summer night before his senior year at Lee High School, during a retreat in Alexandria. He attended “Eucharistic Adoration,” when a piece of consecrated altar bread — the Holy Eucharist or host — is the focus of devotion and meditation.
“That night in adoration, when the bishop exposed Jesus Christ with the Eucharist, all I could say was it was God’s grace that overcame me,” Johnson said. “And looking at the Eucharistic prayer, I knew it was God, that it was Jesus Christ. It was as if I fell in love in an instant. I started crying. I was on my knees worshipping God.”
The long ache in his heart was lifted, he said.

Gerald loses appeal of sentence in fatal accident
CLINTON — The Louisiana Supreme Court has let stand Brett Gerald’s 35-year prison sentence in a 2012 alcohol-related crash near Slaughter that killed seven people.
Gerald pleaded in December 2012 to killing seven people while driving drunk, a wreck that also resulted in his fourth DWI. State District Judge William Carmichael sentenced him last July.
The the Supreme Court rejected Gerald’s challenge to his sentence.

Trial for accused Bourbon Street shooter delayed
NEW ORLEANS — The trial of Trung Le, the only person arrested in last summer’s mass shooting on Bourbon Street, has been delayed.
The New Orleans Advocate reports (http://bit.ly/1FL6xSL ) the Louisiana 4th Circuit Court of Appeal this week halted any trial for Le while it decides whether prosecutors must turn over its full list of witnesses to Le’s attorneys.
The 21-year-old Le faces manslaughter and attempted second-degree murder charges from the June 29, 2014, melee. Le’s attorneys argue their client shot in self-defense — only after the other gunman drew his weapon and pointed it at Le and his friends.
The second shooter has yet to be apprehended.

Michoud builds massive space launch system
NEW ORLEANS — When Kelley Easley first arrived at the NASA Michoud Assembly Facility in 1982 everything was big. Bigger than anything he had ever seen.
It was easy to get lost in the 43-acre eastern New Orleans facility. Easley, then a Louisiana State University engineering graduate hired to work on mechanical design for the NASA Space Shuttle external tank, relied on numbered columns inside to tell where he was.
He saw giant tools in action every day, some the size of a small building. He was in awe the first time he saw a completed 35-ton tank roll out.
“It used to be the external tank was the largest structure we could ever imagine in here,” Easley said.
Not anymore.
Michoud Assembly Facility is taking on its largest NASA project yet, the Space Launch System. The rocket, NASA’s most powerful to date, is designed to send astronauts beyond low Earth orbit to again land on the moon, to investigate asteroids and, one day, to walk on Mars. It will top 322 feet once completed, slightly taller than the Statue of Liberty.
NASA has spent $250 million over the past two years to ready the Michoud Assembly Facility.

Human remains found near LSU’s campus Saturday
BATON ROUGE — Baton Rouge police say the remains of a man in his 50s have been found on a levee near Louisiana State University.
Investigators have not released the man’s name, but say they don’t suspect foul play.

Plaquemines inmates leave Orleans Prison
POINTE A LA HACHE— Nearly 10 years after Hurricane Katrina, Plaquemines Parish inmates are in a new parish jail.
Orleans Parish Sheriff Marlin Gusman said Plaquemines Parish deputies took about 80 inmates from the Orleans Parish jail to the new jail on Thursday.
Former Sheriff Jiff Hingle is in prison for taking bribes from a jail contractor.