Headed to the hall: The Manship School of Mass Communication will celebrate the Manships—widely known as the “first family of Baton Rouge media”—at a gala this evening at the Renaissance hotel, where four members of the family will be inducted into the journalism school hall of fame. Richard, David and Doug Manship, as well as Dina Manship Planche, will all be recognized for their role in carrying on their family’s media legacy. The Manship grandchildren own WBRZ-TV and WBTR-TV in Baton Rouge in addition to KRGV-TV in Rio Grande Valley, Texas. Other inductees include Richard “Dick” Alario, the founder of Alario Performance Management, and Manship School professor emeritus William “Bill” Dickinson, the inaugural editorial director of the Washington Post Writers Group. Read more.
Protecting the power: The federal government is making $25 million in grants available for research projects that pursue new approaches to making the nation’s power grid and pipeline sector more resilient to cyber attacks, Bloomberg reports. The announcement comes less than a month after web attacks hobbled electronic communications for several pipeline operators. The threat followed a U.S. government warning in March that Russian hackers are conducting an assault on the electric grid and other targets. In February, Energy Secretary Rick Perry announced the department would use $96 million in funding to create an office to address cyber threats to energy. The deadline for applications is June 18. Read more.
Fighting addiction: The number of new monthly prescriptions for medications that treat opioid addiction nearly doubled over the past two years, while prescriptions for opioid painkillers continued to decline, The New York Times reports, citing IQVIA Institute for Human Data Science. The changing reflects a stepping up of efforts among policymakers and the medical establishment to address the nation’s opioid epidemic, which is killing more than 115 people every day. Roughly 2.6 million people are believed to suffer from opioid addiction. The federal government has estimated that about 20% of them are getting some kind of treatment, but of those, only about a third are getting treated with medications approved to treat the addiction. Read more.
