Baton Rouge

BATON ROUGE, La. -- The Rev. Jimmy Swaggart plays a scale on his grand piano and slides off the bench to grab the microphone. "Praise Jesus!" he says, launching a spellbinding two-hour sermon, which he interrupts twice to record 30-second promotional spots for the TV version.Swaggart yells. He collapses to the floor. He recounts a conversation with God. Seven times, he abruptly breaks into tears. And he lays hands on a partially paralyzed young man. "Jesus will heal you because he can heal you," says Swaggart, weeping again.

BATON ROUGE, La. -- Here's the scene: It's a splendid, warm October morning. The leading black politicians in the state are gathered for the 50th anniversary of the Southern University Law Center. The liveliest college musicians in the country, the Southern University Marching Band, perform a rousing number. And Vice President Al Gore ends his speech with a riff based on the preamble to the Declaration of Independence:''If you hold these truths to be self-evident, you are an American in your heart, even if you have never seen our shores.

Renato Simtaio, a 31-year-old Brazilian who is the second-leading scorer in the Eastern Indoor Soccer League, has been signed by the Spirit to a one-year contract.Playing for the Huntsville (Ala.) Fire, Simtaio led the first-year EISL in three-point goals with 15 in 21 games. He was second in scoring with 96 points.The Spirit also signed Mike Harper and Carlton Williams, both 23 and also of the EISL, to one-year contracts.Harper, of the Baton Rouge (La.) Bombers, had 21 goals in 24 games and Williams, a Huntsville defender, had 38 blocks.

Lewis Rumford II, 92, president of Standard LimeLewis Rumford II, retired president of Standard Lime and Cement Co., died of cancer July 25 at Broadmead retirement community, where he had lived since 1985. He was 92.Mr. Rumford was associated with Bethlehem Steel Corp. and U.S. Steel Corp. before he came to Baltimore in 1937 as a salesman with Standard Lime & Stone Co., which made limestone and dolomite additives used in the manufacture of steel.In 1954, he became president of Standard. He retired in 1970.

ROBERT E. SCHILLER would rather be known as a trouble-shooter than a hatchet man.The interim chief executive officer of the city school system has only three months (extendable to five) to complete a "transition" plan paving the way for a "permanent" CEO and chief academic officer.Schiller, 50, is on leave from a professorship at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., but the vast majority of his career -- 27 years -- has been in public elementary-secondary education as a teacher and administrator.

BATON ROUGE, La. -- Lake County investigators searched a slain couple's Ford Explorer yesterday. The car had been used by five vampire-worshiping teens charged as adults in the deaths.Investigators were tight-lipped about what they found but did say that an initial search had uncovered significant evidence linking the teen-agers to the bludgeoning deaths of Naomi Ruth Wendorf, 54, and her husband, Richard, 49, in their rural north Lake County home Nov. 24.Deputies were preparing five patrol cars at the sheriff's office in Tavares, Fla., for a trip to Baton Rouge to pick up the suspects, who fled from Florida late last week.

A 350-LB. BLACK bear named No Neck walked all the way from the Florida Panhandle across Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana until he got to Baton Rouge. That's the longest walk any recorded bear ever took, and he would have kept walking to the Atchafalaya Basin where about 300 black bears live.No Neck was apparently looking for a mate and thought the Atchafalaya community had possibilities. There are so few bears left, they must sense each other in the empty air; the bear frequency must ring with the poignant signals of their dying.

BOWIE -- It was the second anniversary of the first game at Prince George's Stadium, and the Bowie Baysox celebrated yesterday in the same fashion they had when they opened the facility.They routed the Binghamton Mets.A five-run eighth inning broke open a close game and the Baysox prevailed in their Double-A Eastern League meeting, 10-4, before a Father's Day crowd of 6,386.At the same time, Bowie unveiled a new hero, center fielder David Dellucci, who arrived from the Frederick Keys to deliver four hits, including a franchise-record-tying three doubles.

Michael Glover, 47, editor of the award-winning prison magazine the Angolite, died Monday after a heart attack at prison in Angola, La. He worked with ABC News on several documentaries, including the 20-minute report "In For Life" for ABC News' "Day One." He was serving a life sentence at Louisiana State Penitentiary for a murder committed during a holdup in Baton Rouge, La., in 1978.Rabbi Herbert C. Brichto, 71, a former dean of Hebrew Union College, died of cancer Monday in Cincinnati.

After 22 years, Baltimore has its oriole back.At its annual meeting in Baton Rouge, La., last weekend, a committee of the American Ornithologists Union reversed its 1973 decision and reclassified the eastern race of the northern oriole as the "Baltimore oriole."Because of its supposed wanderlust, the eastern race had been lumped with its western cousin, the Bullock's oriole, into one species called the northern oriole, even though the birds have generally different plumages, songs and habitats.