McNeese St. cancels game Saturday against Cal Poly

McNeese State canceled Saturday's home football game against Cal Poly because of Hurricane Ike's potential effects on Lake Charles.

The university is scheduled to close Thursday at noon, and Calcasieu Parish has called an 8 p.m. to …

SYMPHONY REVIEW: ; Orchestra does well with real German music

Pianist Markus Groh brought a prodigious amount of technicalability and a thorough understanding of the Old World-style ofplaying Beethoven's

Piano Concerto No. 3 to Thursday's West Virginia SymphonyOrchestra rehearsal.

Groh and conductor Grant Cooper were bound cheek to jowl in theirefforts to have the orchestra musicians understand how veryimportant all of the markings on the page were.

Beethoven really meant it when he called for sudden crescendosand dimuendos and accents on certain beats.

The orchestra was a quick study and by the time the entire workhad been gone over, real German music in the real German style wasechoing throughout the …

3-Day-Old Baby Seized at Texas Hospital

LUBBOCK, Texas - A woman posing as a medical worker kidnapped a 3-day-old girl from a hospital early Saturday, police said.

Mychael Darthard-Dawodu was last seen at 1:20 a.m. at Covenant Lakeside Hospital when a woman wearing blue and flower-print hospital scrubs and a gray hooded jacket took her and drove off in a pickup truck, police said.

Hospital surveillance video showed the woman with the jacket hood pulled around her head and holding a purse as she walked out of the building through the lobby.

It wasn't immediately clear if the kidnapper was wearing a hospital name badge, Gwen Stafford, senior vice president of Covenant Health System, said at a news …

US official: talks on Kyrgyzstan base continue

A senior U.S. official said Friday that Kyrgyzstan and Washington have agreed to continue talks over a key American air base that American forces had been told to leave within six months.

A Kyrgyz presidential spokesman reiterated that the base decision was final, but said the Central Asian country was still open to a new deal with the United States.

The base provides support for military operations in Afghanistan, and its potential closure poses a challenge to President Barack Obama's plan to send up to 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan this year to fight surging Taliban and al-Qaida violence.

Kyrgyzstan last month ordered the United …

Stock Spotlight

BEST BUY REPORT LIFTS HEWLETT-PACKARD

Hewlett-Packard Co. gained 1 percent Friday after the Wall StreetJournal reported that HP's flat-panel televisions with Internet-ready technology will be sold at Best Buy Co. stores beginning nextmonth. The agreement may generate as much as $200 …

Dallas Recruiter's first contract, his own brother

WAXAHACHIE, Texas-Staff Sgt. Jose Rivera, 33, and his younger brother Ariel Antonio Rivera, 25, grew up on the Island of Puerto Rico in a town called Bayamon. The two brothers are eight years apart and neither one imagined that more than 20 years later they would both be soldiers.

The Rivera brothers grew up in a middle class family, their mother, Maria, a housewife and their father, Jose, a mechanic. Staff Sgt. Rivera had always been interested in the military since he was small boy and after high school he decided to join the Army.

"I wanted to improve my life," explained he said. "Living in Puerto Rico was great, but I needed to expand my education. Joining the Army was …

Super 14: Queensland starts new season with 22-16 win over Otago

The Queensland Reds, last-place finishers in rugby's Super 14 last year, ran in two tries in the first 20 minutes Friday to set up a 22-16 win over the Otago Highlanders in the teams' season-opening match.

Queensland opened the scoring in the 15th minute through a pick-and-drive from skipper John Roe after strong leadup work by Digby Ioane.

Winger Clinton Schifcofske was awarded a contentious try five minutes later after several replays from the television match official failed to show him grounding the ball in the tackle of fullback Paul Williams.

The Highlanders picked up their three first-half points on a penalty goal to Daniel Bowden just …