Fisheries aid: U.S. Rep. Garret Graves wrote a letter urging the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to allocate the remaining $100 million available in fisheries disaster assistance to Louisiana. The funding would go toward the disaster impacts of the two openings of the Bonnet Carre Spillway in 2019. This letter comes after NOAA announced today several states that had catastrophic fishery losses, after Hurricane Michael, would receive $65 million. Louisiana is eligible to receive disaster assistance due to the previously declared disaster declarations for fishing communities by the U.S. Department of Commerce. Read the letter here.
Check your sources: LSU mass communication professor Leonard Apcar is relaunching a website designed to aggregate news, analysis and research about fake news and disinformation to help students, academics and citizens defend themselves against misinformation heading into the fall elections. The website, www.detectfakenews.com, is a curated resource guide on the latest developments in fake news and disinformation.
Update: Americans pulled back on their spending in January, even as their incomes surged, a sign the economy was growing modestly before the threat of coronavirus arose. The Commerce Department said this morning that consumer spending increased 0.2% last month, down from 0.4% in December and the smallest gain since October. Incomes, however, rose 0.6%, the biggest rise in nearly a year. Read the full report.
