Always more hurdles: Today, after a second disappointing Olympic finish in the 100-meter hurdles, former LSU All-American Lolo Jones publicly fired back at her critics. Jones reacted to a New York Times article from Saturday that compared her to Anna Kournikova, the former tennis pro known more for her good looks than for her accomplishments on the court. “I think it was crazy just because it was two days before I competed, and then the fact that it was from a U.S. media,” Jones said while on the Today show, fighting back tears. “They should be supporting our U.S. Olympic athletes, and instead they just ripped me to shreds.” Read the full story and see the video here.
Plea deal: Sources close to the investigation of Brandon Scott Lavergne in the death of 21-year-old UL Lafayette student Mickey Shunick say Lavergne’s attorneys negotiated a plea bargain with the district attorney’s office that will avoid a lengthy death penalty trial, The Independent reports. Instead, the 33-year-old convicted sex offender will serve a life sentence for her kidnapping and murder, sources say. Shunick’s body was discovered in rural Evangeline Parish Tuesday, buried near a small family cemetery located between Reddell and Oakdale. Read the full story here.
Out through the inbox: Google’s Internet search engine is getting more personal by highlighting information drawn from its users’ Gmail accounts on its main results page. The feature announced today marks Google’s latest attempt to deliver data that people are seeking more quickly as it tries to maintain the dominance of the Internet search engine, the business that generates most of the company’s revenue. Gmail users who are logged into their accounts will now be shown a list of relevant emails on Google’s main search results page if the correspondence contains a word entered in a search request. Google is initially testing the feature with just 1 million Gmail users.
