Payment pending: East Baton Rouge is one of six parishes that will receive the bulk of roughly $438 million in federal flood recovery dollars allocated to Louisiana in October. The Advertiser reports the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has decided to allocate 80% of the funding to East Baton Rouge, Ascension, Livingston, Lafayette, Ouachita and Tangipahoa parishes because they were the “most impacted and distressed.” Ninety-two percent of the money, $405.8 million, will be spent on rehabilitating homes, while $20 million will be for rentals and $12 million for small businesses. Last week, Congress earmarked an additional $1.2 billion at the request of Gov. John Bel Edwards, bringing the total to $1.6 billion, which is “still woefully short of what we need for recovery,” state officials say. Read the full story.
Answering the call: AT&T has named Morgan Collins as its assistant vice president for mobility sales and operations in east Louisiana, including Baton Rouge, New Orleans and surrounding areas. In a news release, the telecommunications giant says Collins will manage more than 600 employees and more than 100 national retail distribution points. A 12-year veteran of AT&T, Collins previously served as executive director of marketing management with AT&T Entertainment, helping to launch products such as the AT&T Unlimited plan, Data Free TV and DIRECTV NOW. “Morgan brings great talent to the table. She has experience in many aspects of the business, from network operations to retail management,” says Eric Goldfeld, vice president and general manager of AT&T Gulf States, in a statement.
Getting moving: The National Institutes of Health has awarded a $5.28 million grant to LSU’s Pennington Biomedical Research Center to study the benefits of exercise on health. Specifically, the center will study the molecular mechanisms behind the benefits of physical exercise under a program called The Molecular Transducers of Physical Activity in Humans, or MoTrPAC. With data gained from the study, the NIH plans to develop a comprehensive map of the molecular changes that occur in response to physical activity. Pennington Biomedical is one of six clinical centers across the country that will recruit healthy, inactive adults for a 12-week exercise study beginning in 2018. Get more details.
