Rising star headlines Boston gospel fest

For Israel Houghton & New Breed, 5,000 seats may seem like playing in the lobby.

Back in Houston, his home church Lakewood Church Central -- pastored by Joel Osteen -- is set to move this July into what was home to the Houston Rockets basketball team, the renovated Compaq Center coliseum that seats 16 thousand people. According to Forbes Magazine, some 28,000 attend the Rev. Osteen's services every weekend. The church's congregation is one of America's most diverse.

Even so the Stellar male vocalist of the year is excited about performing this Saturday at the Bank of America Pavilion on Boston Harbor. He said that it's his first opportunity to perform at a ticketed …

Free throws lead URI to 86-77 win over Toledo

Kahiem Seawright had 16 points and went 4-for-4 on free throws as Rhode Island beat Toledo 86-77 Tuesday night at Savage Arena.

The Rockets and the Rams had 32 field goals each, including eight three pointers per team. Toledo lost the game on free throws, hitting just 5-of-18 to Rhode Island's 14-of-22. It was the 10th straight game during which Toledo made 10 or fewer free throws.

Rhode Island (11-4) also scored 24 points off turnovers to Toledo's eight. …

Kennedy assails Bork in visit here

Sen. Edward F. Kennedy brought his campaign against SupremeCourt nominee Robert H. Bork to Chicago on Sunday, saying PresidentReagan should not be allowed to "tilt the balance" of the court forthe next generation.

"We must not permit the president to rule our future through thenomination of Robert Bork,' " Kennedy (D-Mass.) said, adding that theReagan Administration has heightened its public relations campaignfor Bork "to change Mr. Bork's spots and portray him as a model ofmoderation."

But the Massachusetts Democrat said, "The public positions ofMr. Bork speak louder than the public relations of the White House .. . and Ronald Reagan is wrong to try to put him …

Jury Convicts 4 White-Supremacists

SANTA ANA, Calif. - A jury convicted four leaders of a white-supremacist prison gang Friday on charges they used murder and intimidation to protect their drug-dealing operations behind bars.

The trial is part of what is believed to be one of the largest federal capital cases, with more than a dozen people potentially facing the death penalty.

Barry "The Baron" Mills, Tyler "The Hulk" Bingham, Edgar "The Snail" Hevle and Christopher Overton Gibson were the first defendants to stand trial in the federal racketeering case aimed at dismantling the feared Aryan Brotherhood.

They all were convicted under Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations law, and offenses …

War Pass Fine After Last-Place Finish

War Pass is still on the Kentucky Derby trail despite his last-place finish in the Tampa Bay Derby.

Trainer Nick Zito told The Associated Press on Sunday that his colt suffered a few cuts on his leg after being jostled at the start of Saturday's race at Tampa Bay Downs.

War Pass had won …

4-legged Iraq war hero headed for life of leisure

He's a hero on four legs, a returning Iraq war vet who patrolled the mean streets of Baghdad with only his keen senses standing between American soldiers and death at the enemy's hand.

War dog Dexter, known to the government as MWD Dexter C067, is moving at the end of the month to far north suburban Spring Grove to start a life of supreme leisure, well-earned after months prowling around the Abu Ghraib prison.

"I wouldn't be here if it weren't for these dogs," said Danny Scheurer, 30, an Iraq war vet, now living in Round Lake. He worked with similar dogs in his basic infantry unit. "These dogs saved my life."

Scheurer, who founded the military dog-saving …

A working memory test battery for MATLAB

We present a battery of four working memory tasks that are implemented using MATLAB and the free Psychophysics Toolbox. The package includes preprocessing scripts in R and SPSS to facilitate data analysis. The four tasks consist of a sentence-span task, an operation-span task, a spatial short-term memory test, and a memory updating task. These tasks were chosen in order to provide a heterogeneous set of measures of working memory capacity, thus reducing method variance and tapping into two content domains of working memory (verbal, including numerical, vs. spatial) and two of its functional aspects (storage in the context of processing and relational integration). The task battery was …