Bug out: East Baton Rouge Parish is set to get a $605,000 federal grant to purchase a tire shredder to tackle old tires lying around the parish that hold standing water and breed mosquitoes. The state health department secured the grant from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The health department says tires are strong breeding sites for mosquitoes that can transmit West Nile, Zika and dengue. The city-parish mosquito control agency has mapped 109 piles of used tires throughout the parish and also will work with other parishes. Read the full story.
Cha-ching: Salaries on Wall Street rose last year to their highest level since the 2008 financial crisis, according to a report issued Monday by New York state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli. The report puts the average salary in New York City’s securities industry in 2017 at $422,500, a 13% increase over the year before the highest since 2008. Overall, Wall Street posted $24.5 billion in pre-tax profits in 2017, rising 42% from 2016’s figures. Profits for the first half of 2018 stand at $13.7 billion, 11% higher than the same period last year. Read the full story.
Time after: Time magazine, the storied publication whose cover images for decades helped shape the national conversation, has been sold to a Silicon Valley billionaire, The Washington Post reports. Salesforce.com owner Marc Benioff and his wife, Lynne, are buying the magazine from Meredith Corp. The sale comes months after Des Moines-based Meredith, owner of Family Circle and Better Homes & Gardens, completed its purchase of Time Inc. for $2.8 billion. The purchase price will be $190 million, according to a news release. Benioff is worth $6.7 billion, according to Forbes. Read the full story.
