Face to face: Gov. John Bel Edwards and Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development Secretary Shawn Wilson will travel to Washington D.C. on Monday to discuss the Comite River Diversion Canal Project with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The long-delayed project, which would take water from the Comite River near Baker and deposit it into Mississippi, was first approved in 1992 but has yet to be funded by the Corps. The estimated federal cost of the project is $125 million and the state’s has a commitment of up to $87 million. The project’s advocates have said the diversion canal could have helped alleviate flooding in the Capital Region in August of last year. Read more.
Youthful indiscretions: New research suggests people who become entrepreneurs are more likely to have engaged in illicit activities in their teens and early 20s, The New York Times reports. According to research by economists Ross Levine and Yona Rubinstein, entrepreneurs are apt to have high self esteem while growing up, and are more likely than others to have been intelligent people who engage in troublesome behaviors like taking property by force or stealing goods worth less than $50. Levine, who published a peer-review paper on the topic with Rubinstein, says as the brain matures energy focused on rule breaking shifts to what entrepreneurs feel they can do better. Read more.
A new suit: Google has been hit with a class action lawsuit filed by three former female employees who claim they were put on career tracks that would pay them less than their male counterparts. The suit, filed today in San Francisco Superior Court, follows a federal labor investigation that made a preliminary finding of systemic pay discrimination among the 21,000 employees at Google’s California headquarters. The initial stages of the review found women earned less than men in nearly every job classification. The suit aims to represent thousands of Google employees in California and seeks lost wages in addition to a slice of Google’s profits. A lawyer representing the women is seeking class action status. Google disputes the findings and says its analysis shows no gender pay gap. Read more.
