Governor John Bel Edwards has signed an executive order to expand Medicaid access in Louisiana. Dawn Starns, state director of the National Federation of Independent Business, says they are disappointed in the governor’s decision. She feels there are bigger problems facing the state that should be handled first…:
CUT 6 (10) “down the road”
Edwards says accepting the federal dollars to expand the Medicaid program would benefit more than 300,000 low income workers in Louisiana.

Edwards is going to meet President Barack Obama tonight at AirForce when with the president arrives in Baton Rouge. Mr. Obama is in town to speak at McKinly High in Baton Rouge tomorrow morning. Whether the two men will sit down and talk is unknown at this time. The president is known to travel the country following his state of the union which he delivered last night.

A Denham Springs gas station clerk is under arrest for allegedly selling a dangerous sythetic drug at the store, which caused two high school students to overdose. 36-year-old Essam Farhat faces 228 counts of possession with intent to distribute. Denham Springs Police Det. Glenn Lemoine says undercovers went in and bought the drug and later executed a search warrant
CUT 10 (08) “in the wall”
Lemoine says the drug is a liquid known as “Juicy” and it’s injested through a vaporizer.

The price of oil per barrel has hit 30-dollars for the first time since 2003. Eric Smith with the Tulane Energy Institue says to stop the crash in oil prices, the supply has to meet a weak demand for oil, and in the short term the only way to do that is to cut back on production….
cut 11 (07) “…some more”