Recognition: LIGO scientist and LSU professor Gabriela González will receive the Presidential Award for Discovery from the university’s Office of Research & Economic Development. LSU gives the award to faculty members in recognition of their outstanding singular achievements in research, scholarship and creative activity. González is an experimental physicist and spokesperson for the 1,000-member international LIGO Scientific Collaboration, which in 2016 detected gravitational waves to confirm Albert Einstein’s 1915 general theory of relativity. González has been recognized as one of the “Ten People Who Mattered” by the scientific journal Nature and is a recipient of the 2017 National Academy of Sciences Award for Scientific Discovery, among other honors. Read more.
On track: Louisiana’s FAFSA completion rate is at a new all-time high, with more than half of the state’s public high school students completing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, the state Department of Education says. FAFSA is used for all forms of federal aid, including Pell Grants, loans and work study programs that help students meet the costs of higher education. It also is required for students to receive priority consideration for the state’s TOPS Opportunity, Performance, Honors and Tech scholarship awards. Nationally, about 55% of students complete the application, but the state’s completion rate is expected to exceed that average by the end of the application cycle that ends on July 1.
A costly failure: Regulators on Friday seized New Orleans-based First NBC Bank in the costliest bank failure since the financial crisis, with cleanup costs estimated at $1 billion. The Associated Press reports the Louisiana Office of Financial Institutions handed the bank to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. in the fourth failure of a federally insured bank this year. Hancock Holding Co. of Gulfport, Mississippi, bought $1.6 billion in deposits and $1 billion in assets, including $600 million in cash. Hancock will fold First NBC’s 24 Louisiana branches into its Whitney Bank unit and First NBC’s five Florida Panhandle branches into its Hancock Bank unit. The billion-dollar loss comes from the difference in the FDIC’s obligations and what it can expect to collect from the assets. Read more.
