The clock is ticking towards another partial government shutdown. Andrew Greenstein reports.
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Some people in northeast Louisiana may have to wait a couple more days to get power restored. Jeff Palermo reports.
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Could we be headed for another government shutdown? That could happen – more specifically a partial shutdown – if the Senate fails to give its approval to a House-passed funding package by midnight tomorrow night. LSU Political Science Professor Robert Hogan says the six pending bills were cruising towards passage – but then, something happened last weekend.
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Democrats are saying they’ll pass the budgets for the other five departments, but they want to pull Homeland Security from the package, tying its funding approval to Republicans agreeing to a series of conditions, including ending roving patrols and establishing a universal code of conduct. Hogan says whereas Republicans might not have previously acquiesced to those demands, this time they might.
Hogan says even if there is a partial government shutdown, don’t expect the ICE and Border Patrol raids to end at least for the time being – Homeland Security has enough money to keep them going for now.
Cut 5 (08) “…tremendous immediate impact.”
Hogan points out that if Democrats are successful in separating Homeland Security from the six-bill package, the funding bill would have to go back to the House for its approval, and the House is in recess for the rest of the week.
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Some people in northeast Louisiana have been waiting a long time to get their power restored. Now, Entergy says they may have to wait a little longer. It says it may be as late as Saturday before it can restore power to everyone. Nyka (NIGH-kah) Scott, the vice president of customer service for Entergy, says that’s because the task was a lot more daunting than originally anticipated.
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Scott says restoring power in winter conditions is very challenging; for example, yesterday, workers found live powerlines underneath banks of ice. She says they don’t have those types of challenges following summer storms.
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Scott says while crews have made progress, there is a ways to go, and they’re working overtime to get everyone’s lights back on.
She says Entergy has opened information centers to help customers who are dealing with a prolonged outage.
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A teenage boy is arrested in connection with the killing of an elderly woman inside her Morehouse Parish apartment. On Tuesday evening, 73-year-old Ruby Lee Peterson was found stabbed to death inside her apartment in Bastrop. Chief Deputy James Mardis with the Morehouse Parish Sheriff’s Office says the following day, deputies arrested 17-year-old Amir Dowles.
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Mardis says deputies quickly zeroed in on Dowles as their suspect.
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Mardis says the only connection that investigators have established at this time between Dowles and Peterson is that they lived in the same apartment complex, the Eden Apartments.