Rejected: A Louisiana House committee today stalled a bill that would prevent employers from firing domestic violence victims for missing work. The Associated Press reports the state House Labor and Industrial Relations Committee deadlocked in a 6-6 vote, keeping the measure stalled in committee and unable to get a full House vote. Opponents said protections for victims of domestic abuse already exist and the bill oversteps in dictating Louisiana business policy. The proposal from Rep. Marcus Hunter, D-Monroe, would ban companies from demoting, suspending, firing or taking other disciplinary action against victims of domestic violence who leave work to go to court or to seek medical or other treatment for the violence. Read the full story.
Rain delay: Persistent rains and flooded fields are obstacles that Louisiana’s corn farmers are facing so far this year, according to the LSU AgCenter. Record rainfall during the middle of March caused significant damage to corn that had already been planted, and farmers are expected to have to replant nearly 40,000 acres, an LSU AgCenter news release says. “Many fields were flooded for quite some time, and some of them are still holding water. So, obviously those fields are going to have to be replanted,” LSU AgCenter corn specialist Dan Fromme says in a statement. Earlier in the year, experts were predicting a statewide increase in corn acres. Forecasts had corn at more than 500,000 acres, but the number is trending downward because of the wet conditions. “I think that will probably bring corn acres back into somewhere in the 400,000 area, somewhere between 400,000 and 450,000 acres,” Fromme said.
Grant given: LSU’s Louisiana Business and Technology Center has helped Advanced Polymer Monitoring Technologies, a New Orleans-based specialty chemicals company, secure a $1.1 million grant from the National Science Foundation’s Small Business Innovation Research program to study new ways to analyze the stability of biopharmaceuticals. A news release from LBTC says the grant will help support the development of technology to monitor the stability and aggregation of biopharmaceuticals. LBTC says it helped APMT secure a Phase 0 grant from the SBIR program for the research. APMT develops, manufactures and distributes products and services for the real time monitoring, analysis, and control of polymer reactions, solutions, dispersions and suspensions.
