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Ameritas Technologies says it will open an information technology center in Baton Rouge creating 300 jobs.

The startup company's CEO, Brian Keene, said Tuesday that Ameritas will receive a state economic development grant of $125,000 per year over a 10-year period to offset leasing costs at the Chase Tower in the downtown area.

Gov. Bobby Jindal says Ameritas will start hiring in September and open by October. He says the company expects to reach the 300 mark on staffing by 2016.

Louisiana's top education board has backed accountability standards suggested by Superintendent of Education John White for the private schools that will get taxpayer-subsidized students through the voucher program.

The Board of Elementary and Secondary Education voted 9-2 Tuesday for the criteria.

A consortium set up after the 2010 BP spill to develop methods for containing deep-sea spills is conducting a test of its state-of-the-art equipment with federal regulators looking on.

The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement said the drill began Tuesday morning.

The Houston-based Marine Well Containment Company is moving a capping stack it has developed to a test wellhead that sits about 7,000 feet below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico.

Las Vegas-based Pinnacle Entertainment says it will build a 150-room hotel at the site of the company's Boomtown Casino in Jefferson Parish.

Construction of the $20 million development in the New Orleans suburb of Harvey is expected to begin in September and should be completed in late 2013.

Pinnacle spokeswoman Kerry Andersen said the casino, which opened in 1994 and has more than 1,400 slot machines and 32 table games, is the only one of the company's four Louisiana properties that isn't operating with an attached hotel.

Nicholls State University says the Louisiana Bond Commission has authorized $8.1 million to build a new, bigger headquarters for the Chef John Folse Culinary Institute.

A news release says the final design will be completed by Oct. 1, and the building should be finished by mid-2014.

Al Davis, dean of University College, says the new building will have more classroom and kitchen space and updated equipment.

Chef Randy Cheramie, executive director of the institute, said the new building will accommodate the program's growing enrollment.

The Advocate (http://bit.ly/PSpdoe) newspaper says it will expand into the New Orleans market with a specialized print edition.

Richard Manship, president and CEO of Capital City Press, says The Advocate is laying the groundwork to reach into the market following the announcement by The Times-Picayune that the newspaper will reduce publication to three days a week this fall while beefing up its online report.

Manship said The Advocate will add staff to supply this coverage of the area, but did not provide specific numbers.

A New Orleans woman was ordered to serve two years of probation for her conviction of having sex with a 14-year-old boy in Gretna two years ago.

The Times-Picayune reports 33-year-old Kendra Greenwald eluded prison time for her July 12 conviction of carnal knowledge of a juvenile, in connection with the June 10, 2010 encounter.

The boy's mother alerted police after learning her son had sex with Greenwald. Greenwald contends the boy, now 16, forced her to have sex by threatening her and to harm her child.

The LSU Athletic Department is making a $4 million contribution to the university to help with budget challenges in the 2012-13 fiscal year.

The transfer is the single largest contribution from Athletics to Academics in school history. Director of Athletics Joe Alleva says being able to make such a contribution is a "real credit to LSU's fans and alumni who support the Tigers."

State officials want to know exactly when ExxonMobil Chemical Plant staff knew that the amount of released naphtha, which includes benzene, was much higher than originally reported in the wake of a June 14 spill at the Baton Rouge facility.

The Advocate reports the Department of Environmental Quality issued a compliance order and notice of potential penalty against plant that in part states the facility did not notify the state and other agencies when estimates of a leak amount June 14 substantially changed.

Chef John Folse is taking a taste of Louisiana and the "Spirit of the Gulf Coast" to what he calls the "ultimate" stage.

Folse is leading the "Team USA" of the culinary world — eight chefs from Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida — to the Olympic Games.