New grad: Mayor Sid Edwards has completed the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative, a nine-month program launched in 2017 designed to equip mayors and senior municipal officials with the tools and expertise they need to solve problems effectively, strengthen their city halls and improve outcomes for their residents. Edwards was part of the program’s ninth cohort, which included 46 other mayors from around the world. Edwards told Daily Report last summer that the program was “probably the most valuable thing I’ve ever done in my life in terms of education.” Each mayor was asked to identify a “priority issue” for their city; Edwards chose blight, an issue signature to his campaign. Read a Daily Report story on Edwards’ participation in the program.
Nixed: A Louisiana bill that would have limited general or noneconomic damages in civil court verdicts to $500,000 has been defeated in the House Civil Law and Procedure Committee. House Bill 526, authored by Rep. Kellee Dickerson, R-Denham Springs, was rejected by the panel by a 4-5 vote. The measure would have capped what are known as “general damages,” or losses sustained by a plaintiff in a tort action that do not come with an exact monetary amount, like mental anguish or loss of enjoyment of life. The Louisiana Association of Business and Industry supported the bill. The Center Square has the full story.
Slight drop: U.S. applications for unemployment benefits fell last week, remaining in the range of the past few years even as the war in Iran continues to threaten the global economy. The number of Americans applying for jobless aid for the week ending April 11 fell by 11,000 to 207,000 from the previous week’s 218,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday. That’s less than the 217,000 new applications analysts surveyed by the data firm FactSet were expecting. Filings for unemployment benefits are considered representative of U.S. layoffs and are close to a real-time indicator of the health of the job market. The Associated Press has the full story.
