Two Minnesota teenagers will be the youngest team to travel the entire Mississippi River by kayak. Emelie Gunn has more on the pair that is approaching New Orleans…
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Governor John Bel Edwards says they’re seeing an uptick in enrollment in the federally funded homeowner assistance program. Jeff Palermo has more…
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Two teenagers from Minnesota are attempting to be the youngest team to kayak the entire Mississippi River. 19-year-old Matt Rens and 18-year-old Jesse Richard are on day 49 of their journey from Itasca to the Gulf of Mexico and are approaching New Orleans. Rens says the pair is making this journey on behalf of LifeWater International.
The pair has raised a little over 4-thousand dollars and their goal is to raise 12-thousand, which sets up full sanitation for a village. Rens says they have encountered some unexpected things while on the Mississippi River, like getting poison ivy.
Rens says it’s expected they will be in New Orleans by tonight and plan to make it to Pilottown if the pair can find a boat to bring them back. He says during the journey they’ve only taken three days off, one due to a serious infected rash that came from the kayak and the water and they are mostly sleeping on the banks.
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Nearly one year after flood waters ravaged south Louisiana, one flood victim is getting ready to go home. Lillie Gumm of Baton Rouge was one of the first people to complete the flood recovery survey. Her home will be the third to be completed through the state’s homeowner assistance program, which she says turned out to be even better than she expected.
Gumm’s home is about 90 percent complete, after taking on three to four feet of water last year. She is one of 37,000 flood victims to complete the online survey at restore-dot-la-dot-gov, which gets the ball rolling on helping flooded homeowners repair their homes. She says throughout this ordeal, she has learned to be patient.
Gumm says the whole process took about three months from start to finish. Gumm is currently staying in a FEMA mobile home while repairs wrap up on her home. She encourages everyone impacted by the flood to complete the survey without delay.
Money from the homeowner assistance program, which was funded by Congress, is first going to the elderly, disabled and low-income individuals, and the state is beginning to expand the program to all income levels in the most impacted parishes.
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As of today, smoking is no longer permitted in Lafayette bars. Robin McMillan owns McMillan’s Pub in Lafayette, and she’s afraid the new ordinance will affect her business since about 80 percent of her patrons are smokers. She says they may start going to other bars because the smoking ban is only within the city limits.
McMillan says she’s been working for the past few weeks to accommodate her smoking customers. She says she’s bringing in lumber and construction workers to build a deck outside of her bar. But she says the task hasn’t been easy or cheap.
McMillan says the change is frustrating because she has owned the building her bar is in for years. She says with both smoking and nonsmoking bars throughout the city, bar goers already had options. At this point, she says she is hopeful nonsmokers will help keep her in business.
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More victims are now covered under Louisiana’s domestic violence laws. Two laws take effect today that expand the statutes to include same-sax couples and dating partners. Executive Director of the Louisiana Coalition Against Domestic Violence Mariah Wineski says this extends legal protections to more victims.
Cut 12 (10) “domestic abuse battery law”
Wineski says this means that abusers in same-sex or unmarried relationships would not be held accountable for their crimes. She says in the past many would only face simple battery charges, but one of the new laws creates the crime of battery of a dating partner.
Wineski says these new laws provide more protection for more victims, which could help reduce the domestic abuse homicide rate. She says that is invaluable because domestic violence occurs in all types of relationships.
Cut 14 (12) “through the cracks”
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