Helping hands: TruFund Financial Services Inc., a community development financial institution, is partnering with Capital One Bank to launch a small business recovery initiative that aims to help small businesses recovering from the August flood. Through the Baton Rouge Small Business Recovery Initiative, TruFund and Capital One Bank will provide low interest loans to impacted small businesses, a news release says. The 2016 Louisiana flood has caused an estimated $2 billion in damages to 20,000 businesses. In addition to offering low interest loans, the TruFund and Capital One Bank partnership will provide flood-impacted small businesses with access to workshops and one-on-one technical assistance. Get more information.
The show must go on: The first statewide TV debate in Louisiana’s U.S. Senate race will happen next week without disruption—and without a judge adding anyone to the participant list. State District Judge Tim Kelley refused Thursday to stop the debate or to force Louisiana Public Broadcasting and the Council for a Better Louisiana to add candidate Troy Hebert to the Oct. 18 debate stage, The Associated Press reports. “The debate can go on as scheduled,” Kelley said after a two-day hearing considering whether criteria that whittled the 24-candidate field to five debate participants violated the state’s laws or constitution. Hebert, a former state lawmaker running without party affiliation, filed a lawsuit challenging the criteria as unfair. Two other candidates who didn’t make the cut—Beryl Billiot, an independent, and Charles Marsala, a Republican—later joined him in the lawsuit. All three men, none of them lawyers, represented themselves in court for the hearing. The Associated Press has the full story.
Moving toward normalization: The United States announced this morning new measures to further ease trade, travel and financial restrictions on Cuba as President Barack Obama seeks to make his opening to the communist-ruled island irreversible before he leaves office in January, Reuters reports. The changes, the latest in a series of new rules since the two former Cold War foes began normalizing relations in December 2014, will allow export to Cuba of some U.S. consumer goods sold online and let U.S. firms improve Cuban infrastructure for humanitarian purposes, the U.S. Treasury and Commerce Departments says in a statement. They also lift limits on the amount of Cuban rum and cigars U.S. travelers can bring home for personal use.The measures are contained in the latest Obama administration order on Cuba to sidestep the Republican-controlled Congress. Read the full story.
