Louisiana

Louisiana Road Safety Plan Highlights Impaired Driving, Reckless Behavior
The plan focuses traffic safety efforts on distracted and impaired driving, seatbelt wearing, and speeding, with a small nod to infrastructural factors.

Louisiana Capital Shifting to Electric Transit
The Baton Rouge area is now served by a fleet of nine all-electric buses.

Waging War on High Gas Prices
America is not at war, but that didn't stop President Joe Biden from calling the largest release of oil from the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve that he authorized on March 31 to lower oil prices, a 'wartime bridge.'

FEMA Flood Mitigation Initiative Will Pay Homeowners To Move
The Swift Current grant program will distribute $60 million to homeowners in high-risk counties to help pay for flood mitigation measures or relocation.

Louisiana City Halts Multi-Family Housing Construction Due to Infrastructure Concerns
The Hammond City Council has paused multi-family development approvals while it studies ways to improve the city's infrastructure.

Green Infrastructure Thinking for Southern Cities in 2022 and Beyond
Resilience planning requires communities to think of a well planned and maintained tree canopy as a public utility system with multiple benefits.

Railroad Merger Would Add Service Between Detroit and Toronto
An agreement between two rail companies would create a connection between Michigan and Ontario, improve passenger rail service in the Midwest, and add new lines in Louisiana and Texas.

Nation's Capital Is #1 COVID Hotspot
Coronavirus cases and hospitalizations per capita in the District of Columbia are higher than in any state or U.S. territory on New Year's Day. Only Puerto Rico and Louisiana have seen hospitalizations increase faster than D.C. in the last two weeks.

U.S. Supreme Court Upholds New York State Vaccine Mandate
Health care workers in New York will be required to be vaccinated against COVID-19 after the Supreme Court voted 6-3 to reject hearing an appeal brought by workers who had sought a religious exemption. Also, an update on the federal vaccine mandate.

Another Biden COVID Vaccine Mandate on Hold
Last month, a court stayed Biden's large private employer mandate that requires workers to be vaccinated or test-and-mask. On Tuesday, a federal district court judge stayed the vaccine mandate that applies nationwide to most health care workers.

Biden Orders Release from Strategic Petroleum Reserve: What's the Emergency?
The purpose of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is to maintain oil flow to refineries during national emergencies when oil supplies are disrupted. What national emergency prompted President Biden to order the release of 50 million barrels?

Court: Federal COVID-19 'Vaccine or Test-and-Mask' Mandate 'Fatally Flawed'
The Biden Administration's most sweeping and possibly controversial action to increase COVID vaccinations has been stayed twice by a federal appeals court and is likely headed to the Supreme Court

The Pandemic Crisis Is a Hospital Crisis
"Flatten the curve" was one of the first pandemic terms that Americans heard during the first surge. The idea was to reduce coronavirus transmission so as to prevent hospitals from becoming overwhelmed. But which curve? Case in point: Idaho.

Public Health Experts Question CDC Catchphrase, 'Pandemic of the Unvaccinated'
Five public health experts and a pollster take issue with calling the COVID crisis a 'pandemic of the unvaccinated,' suggesting it may be inappropriate, provocative, and not only ineffective but possibly counterproductive in increasing vaccinations.

Post-Katrina Programs a Blueprint for Housing the Working Class
The housing initiatives developed after Hurricane Katrina teach valuable lessons for post-pandemic affordable housing production.

Ida Takes a Deadly Toll in the Northeast
Hurricane Ida passed through New Orleans, knocking out power causing extensive damage along the Gulf Coast. Then it moved to the Northeast, killing dozens of people with flooding caused by heavy rains.

Louisiana's Health Care System on Brink of Collapse
We've been here many times before in the pandemic, but without the benefit of a vaccine. Gov. John Bel Edwards, one of a few governors to mandate mask-wearing indoors, warns of a collapse of the health care system, but also rules out restrictions.

The Vaccinated Account for 20 Percent of Covid Infections in a Few Hot Spots
All Americans, vaccinated and unvaccinated, are still in this pandemic together.

Coronavirus Litigation: CDC Loses Ability to Regulate Cruise Industry in Win for Florida Governor
In a stunning reversal, a federal appeals court panel on July 23 reversed its ruling issued six days earlier in favor of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention after Gov. Ron DeSantis appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court.

Friday Eye Candy: Photo Series Captures Abandoned Oil Wells
A photographer documents the 'orphan wells' strewn across northwest Louisiana in a stark reminder of our deep entanglement with fossil fuels.
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