Entergy is proud to support programing on LPB and Greener practices that preserve Louisiana.

The goal of our environmental and sustainability initiatives really is to ensure that our kids and future generations can be left with a cleaner planet.

Additional support provided by the Fred B. and Ruth B, Zigler Foundation and the Zigler Art Museum located in Jennings City Hall.

The museum focuses on emerging Louisiana artists and is an historical and cultural center for Southwest Louisiana and the Foundation for Excellence in Louisiana.

Public Broadcasting.

With support from viewers like you Most people don't don't even realize at the onset that they are being hacked.

The global invasion by Russia, the things that they do measure and where we rank poorly, it all ties back in some way to poverty.

How Louisiana Escapes Life.

At the bottom, we're finding out that it is even harder and worse for those who are young.

Law enforcement grappling with rising crime in the Crescent City.

We are really encouraged with the the numbers of people.

First and foremost, just because we had Mardi Gras.

Was this Mardi Gras enough to revive our tourism industry?

Hi, everyone.

I'm Kara St. Cyr.

And I'm Andre Moreau.

The end of Mardi Gras.

The beginning of Lent and a goodbye to indoor mask restrictions.

New Orleans lifted that mandate Thursday with the hope that it can stay that way.

So visitors to bars, restaurants, stores, any indoor business can now go in without a face covering.

If cases remain low, the city will also lift negative test requirements and vaccines on March 21st.

At a press conference, city health director Dr. Jennifer Vigneault says lifting the mask mandate doesn't mean that the pandemic has ended.

Simply wishing the pandemic to be completely over does not make it so.

And viruses are unmatched in their ability to continue circulating, mutating and harming.

But at the end of two years, we are incredibly grateful for the patience, compassion and commitment of New Orleanians that's got us here today.

And a reminder, the mask requirement still stands on public transportation at health care facilities, public schools and airport terminals and flights.

And now a check on some other news making headlines across the state.

Louisiana has $900 million to give away, just waiting to be claimed by residents.

The state's unclaimed property division can mean an unexpected big payday for the unaware.

It's reported that some payouts are in the six figures.

Unclaimed property can be anything from forgotten bank accounts utility deposit refunds, wages and life insurance money.

The remains of a Louisiana man missing almost seven years have now been found and identified.

Kenneth Wayne Cole of Shreveport was 32 when he went missing in late.

2015.

Last August, DNA determined a skull found in the wooded area west of the city was that of the missing man.

The skull is now being studied at the Faces forensic lab at LSU.

A federal judge set today as the deadline for a former associate athletic director at LSU to add any new claims in her lawsuit against the university.

The order came when the lawyer for Sherron Lewis only weeks ago alleged that a former assistant coach exposed himself to Lewis, that coach Frank Wilson in December returned to LSU on the staff of new head football coach Brian Kelly.

Lewis has been a key whistleblower in the sex scandal that rocked LSU.

The return of Mardi Gras had New Orleans feeling like its old self again after COVID.

Knock it off the calendar in 2021.

Many hundreds of thousands of people returned to the Big Easy for Carnival season, which peaked on Fat Tuesday, then ended at midnight.

Also familiar for many the hangover and the start of Lent Lent is a period of 40 days during which Christians remember the events leading up to and including the death of their savior Jesus Christ.

Russia continues its push from all sides and Ukraine as the largest mobilization of forces Europe has seen since 1945 unfolds.

Ukrainian forces and resistance are battling the intrusion as much as they can, but more than 800,000 people have already fled their country.

The U.N. is saying that many, many millions will need help in this developing humanitarian nightmare.

Now at work, you may have gotten an email from your I.T.

computer specialists warning of another Russian invasion that could come this month to you, more stealth to your phone, computer, your information systems.

So we bring you, John, to reign.

Who is labs it and web manager to tell us about this thing we need to be concerned about.

This pretty much involves everyone, right?

So most people don't don't even realize at the onset that they are being hacked or that their information is being taken.

Everything from, you know, people misusing your credit cards to stealing your Social Security numbers and your personal information.

And we've seen this become more and more prevalent now through e-mail where people were receiving emails from their boss saying, hey, I need you to run a quick errand for me.

Would you reply back when they typically never do that?

Right.

Right.

And so I think the key thing no one is just to remain vigilant and to know that whatever you get treated as suspect before you trusted, never click on any links in an email If you get an email from your bank or your boss or someone else, go to the site.

That is the one that you normally log into.

So if you get an email that looks like it's from your bank, go and log in to your bank.

Don't click on a link in that email.

Yeah.

It's interesting you say that because I have in the past week gotten more emails and I've ever gotten.

I didn't think of it like that, but I just figured that a lot of the spam was coming through for some reason.

Right.

And so as his as this whole dynamic of what's going on with Russia changes and they're being cut off from monetary access, they are going to try to find ways to get at more money for their fight.

So additionally, we also have people trying to get information and you say, well, you know, I just work at the post office.

What information would be relevant Well, if they can get information about you, who your supervisor is, who they are, supervisor is, every bit of that information is power and it has a value to it.

And so they can take that to make the next phishing email to come from the postmaster.

And the postmaster would send you an email and somebody says, well, that's the postmaster.

So I'm going to click on it.

And once once that's done, it's just going to get worse and worse and spread more.

Is it we're blessed at the workplace to have someone like you as most workplaces would have, but say you're at home and this is you're not computer savvy even.

And so now you're concerned about this and you're not sure what to do at all.

Well, and so the thing is, no one to to keep keep track of everything.

And like I said, don't trust anything that you get.

Unfortunately, that's the world we live in today.

Awareness is big on awareness.

Is big.

And then also, if you're looking at your email and you see a link in it, you can take your mouse, don't click on it, but hover over it and you'll see where that link actually goes.

And if you see that it's going to suspect place, throw that email away, just get rid of it.

And if you have any questions, you can go call your bank or log on to your banking server where you normally do the protection part, the awareness part of who who puts that altogether well.

And in Washington or wherever all over the country.

Well, the CSA is a government organization that basically provides advice and warnings and watches right.

And so they will they will basically reach out to companies and organizations.

You can go to see this a dot gov.

And you can look at their website and they will put the latest threats that are being enacted into the problems that they are seeing.

But also, it's just to do some very basic things.

Number one, make sure your computer is up to date.

Microsoft and all of the software vendors actually release updates that are very important and they close up these security holes that the hackers will generally try to use to get in.

And it's important to do that on a regular basis because if you don't, then as soon as Microsoft publishes a gap that's in their software, the people who are hackers go and try to take advantage of it on as many computers as possible.

John, thank you so much.

It's it's been good for me to hear this because I can be a little sloppy sometimes about it personally at home.

And I don't need to be.

None of us do.

We've got more information also.

Adelphi Board, Santorini, thanks so much.

Thank you.

Each year, U.S. News and World Report compiles its list of state rankings.

Which state is best and which is worst and everyone in between.

This year, Washington State ranks first and 44th consecutive year.

Louisiana ranks last to discuss the factors behind this and a way out of this cellar, if possible.

Barry Erwin, president of Council for Better Louisiana, and also John Mueller, who is executive director of the Louisiana Budget Project.

So where do we go with this?

Very.

Well, I think the first thing is we need to learn some lessons.

We've had this year after year after year.

And it's not just us.

News and World Report There are a variety of them out there.

And actually, I scanned a few before we got together on this.

And one of the things I found is, you know, there's a lot of inconsistency in who's at the top.

You have different states.

One was Vermont.

Another one had Virginia.

Another one had New Jersey is the top state.

But we're in the bottom tier, all of them.

And so the lesson learned is we are doing some things.

We have some issues that we have not confronted fully and dealt with.

And I think we need leadership at some point to say these are these things.

And we need to figure out a plan for doing.

And it seems like decades we're talking about on the health care, education, economy, infrastructure opportunity, which is a big reason people need fiscal stability.

Crime and corrections while natural environment, John, I mean, it is it's like an obituary, I think, of of what you would die from if that was the case.

It's certainly depressing numbers.

You know, unfortunately, they don't rank us on things like quality of music, entertainment, sports, culture and food.

Right.

But the things that they do measure and where we rank poorly, it all ties back in some way to poverty.

And that is where we you have consistently ranked low for decades, for generations, really.

We are the third poorest state, second poorest, highest child poverty rate.

Almost half of black children in Louisiana are growing up beneath the poverty line.

So until we address poverty in a systemic, sustained way, I don't think we're ever going to improve on issues like crime, education, economy and so forth.

And as to the state's top watchdogs, this is all right up your alley.

This is what you advocate talk about.

We've got to do better.

And there has been talk about it.

But if there is improvement, everybody else is improving, too.

So we have not cut into any of the the bad part of this poll.

I think that's part of the problem.

I mean, obviously, you're right.

I mean, our group, John's group, we've been talking about a lot of these issues for a very long time.

And we have made progress there's no question we have.

The problem is a lot of the progress we've made is against ourselves.

I mean, other states are not static, as you say, too.

And so what we haven't really been able to do is close the gaps in a lot of these things now.

For instance, I use education.

Our kids are much, much better off than they were two decades ago.

I can we can look at the data it is very clear they have made progress.

They started at very low levels.

The problem is so if other states and so have other kids and we have not really accelerated the progress that we need to, and that's just one example.

All right.

So how do we accelerate and we need to do it quickly?

Well, I think it comes back to the fundamentals and that it means, again, fiscal stability, raising enough revenue to support the needs of the state, making targeted investments in things like education and infrastructure and doing so in a sustained way.

Barry is right.

We have made some progress on education.

We have made progress on health care.

Medicaid expansion has brought our uninsured rate to record lows.

It's now better.

We're doing better than average.

So people have health care coverage.

It takes a little while before that translates into a healthier population.

There's a lot more that goes into public health than just having coverage, but that's where it starts.

So we are starting to make some progress, but we still have a long way to go, particularly in areas of education, infrastructure.

We all know, you know, anybody who drives the roads in the U.S. and of course, knows how much and how far we have to go.

There was a study that came out just recently where Baton Rouge had the fourth worst traffic in the entire country, and the other three were, you know, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.

So that's ridiculous to rank fourth on something like that.

You can't fix that overnight.

It takes decades of sustained investment to solve these problems.

When you hear these rankings and they are thorough, it's always fascinating when you hear economic development and we're not like throwing stones at them.

Tell as we've got this big industry coming, another industry they all seem to be in a similar field to the large degree.

But again, it's not enough of those coming in and not enough of our talent is staying young talent to stay and that's that's a big problem.

You know, the other thing, just to touch on what you talked about earlier.

What do we need to do?

We need to set some things as priorities.

I mean, if you look at it last year during the legislative session, one of the things there were a couple of things that the legislature said is priorities.

They want to do some tax reform.

They wanted to do some things with infrastructure.

They said that was important whether you like the way they did it all the way through.

They made those priorities and they accomplished it.

But we don't hear that the same way in some of these other issues.

And I'll just give you one quick example.

If we had, you know, people running for governor and legislature the next time around and said what I want to do is move the needle on education and we're going to do it through early childhood investment, that's something we know we need to do a lot of education, things you don't see for a long time.

But if you do that with early childhood in eight years and two terms of a governor of a legislature, you will know whether you move the needle yes.

Well, the legislature is getting ready to start not too long from now.

And again, they've got a governor on one side and the legislature on the other.

Let's see if they can get together.

Great.

To have you here together with me to talk about this.

I appreciate it.

Thank you for having us.

Well, Louisiana rejoiced in Mardi Gras this year after a 20, 20 one's carnival season was canceled.

The festival brings in millions of dollars annually to the state's economy.

Charley went on with the Louisiana Office of Tourism, gives insight on the economic outcome of this year's Carnival season.

The reason I'm talking to you today is because we finally had a Mardi Gras after a very devastating 20, 20 and 2021 whenever it came to parades and the festivities.

So during 20, 21, actually, everything was canceled.

Do you know exactly how much revenue was lost because of that cancelation?

From the data we see, the numbers are staggering.

It's over a 1 billion with a B dollar loss to the entire state.

That includes the lion's share in New Orleans.

But that also means hundreds of millions of dollars across the rest of the state from Shreveport and Lake Charles and Lafayette and and Monroe.

There's a lot of folks think Mardi Gras is just one day in New Orleans.

That's outside of Louisiana.

That's kind of how they think.

But it's a season and it's celebrated statewide and it isn't just celebrated in New Orleans.

And it's a family friendly affair that that draws millions of people to our state every year.

What about this cancelation was so devastating Who was harmed the most when this happened?

Sure.

Lots of people.

That includes hoteliers.

That includes the people who work in the hotels and the restaurants, the attractions the folks who transport people from one place to another.

It includes tour operators without the customers, without the clients coming to Louisiana.

The entire state suffers.

Actually, it just is such a domino effect that people come to Louisiana they spend their money in restaurants, in hotels and at attractions.

And when, you know, because of our pandemic situation, it just dried up a lot of those resources and made it very, very tough for the last year or two years.

I know a lot of hospitality workers.

Some people were forced to close their businesses.

Some people may have had to furlough pretty much all of their workers just to get through that season.

How was Louisiana able to recoup any of that money or what were the efforts to try to recoup that while Mardi Gras was canceled?

Sure.

So when the pandemic first hit, Lieutenant Governor Billy Nungesser put into action basically a three year plan called the Sunshine Plan.

And so while everything was still on hold, it didn't mean that things would get better.

Things would return And that's exactly what we were setting ourselves up for.

And still, to this day, we're setting ourselves up for continued growth.

A great example, save for this year's Mardi Gras.

Well, we had a Macy's Day Parade float.

We also had a Rose Bowl parade float that generated 2 billion viewers across the world for both of those parades on on a global audience scale that said, hey, think about Louisiana when you are ready to travel.

And don't forget, we are here.

From what I'm hearing from people that did attend Mardi Gras this year in New Orleans.

There wasn't as big of a crowd as the royal family is.

Do you guys have an estimate of how many people attended this year?

Sure.

That's a very good question.

That that is still we're still waiting.

But we are really encouraged with the the numbers of people first and foremost, just because we had Mardi Gras, that's a wonderful thing that we could have it in New Orleans, in Shreveport, in Lafayette, in Alexandria, Lake Charles, all across the state.

We had Mardi Gras.

And that in and of itself is a huge success.

Now, if those numbers aren't back to the numbers that we have had you know, a few years back and as we've been peaking year after year after year before COVID, you know, that's okay.

We're we're planning.

Like I said, with the lieutenant governor, sunshine plan, it's a three year plan.

And we want success, of course, immediately.

But we're also thinking and we're thinking outside of the box to make sure we have a good game plan that lets visitors and and potential visitors know that Louisiana is open for business.

Is there protection for how much the state will make next year based off of 20?

22 is Mardi Gras.

Yeah.

If I had that answer, I'd be doing a whole lot of different prognostications across the country.

We don't know.

Coronavirus has just really been knocking us back and forth, back and forth.

But we're as hopeful as we've ever been.

We've been hopeful about a year ago, and we learned from that.

But once again, we're hopeful for this particular spring.

All the fairs and festivals are on in Louisiana.

We're so proud and happy to really brag about the over 400 fairs and festivals in our state.

And, and, and promote every corner of the state because people are going to be coming.

They've already started coming either by car or flying in.

There's more convention travel moving up.

And this most recent of Mardi Gras seasons and celebrations only adds to that.

That really high level of optimism with the lieutenant governor and everyone here with the Office of Tourism.

Well, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me here.

Thank you.

All right.

You take care.

Bye bye.

Since the onset of the pandemic, violent crime has gripped much of the nation.

But in New Orleans, officials fear the worst is yet to come.

If action isn't taken now.

Sheriff Susan Hutson shares her thoughts on the growing crime rate in New Orleans.

The city of New Orleans recorded a 64% increase in violent crime in 2020, which is a tremendous spike compared to 20, 18 and 2019.

In your opinion, I just want to know, what do you think is causing the surge?

I think it's the pandemic.

It is definitely in all of the manifestations that come out of it.

You know, we have children who are doing these things, youngsters people who are young, who are doing these types of committing these types of crimes.

And we also have people, youngsters who are hurting themselves.

So what we find out is that during this pandemic, which has not been good for those of us who are adults and who have lived through a number of things, we're finding out that it is even harder and worse for those who are young and so.

Do we have enough resources for them?

Do we have enough things for them to do to keep them occupied?

And some of them are actually breadwinners and their families as well.

I found that out during my time as police monitor that some of these youngsters are responsible for helping feed their brothers and sisters.

So it is is a tough time right now for everybody.

But the pandemic has made it even worse.

There've been a lot of solutions that have been thrown around to try to curb the violence that's going on in the city of New Orleans.

I believe the D.A., Jason Williams, has been trying to institute a revamped multi-agency gang unit, which was disbanded.

Do you think that this is a good solution to the problem?

The district attorney ran on a progressive plan, just like I did, which is reforming the system and holding the actors in the system accountable.

So if the district attorney is going to do that, but she pledged to do that, I think it's a good thing.

There has to be intervention.

We have to know who the people are committing these acts.

And we do need to intervene to stop them from going on because they are hurting people.

They are killing people.

It is indeed happening.

And so we do need to be able to intervene and we need police to do that.

That's who does that in our society.

But we need to make sure they're held accountable, that they're trained appropriately, that their tactics are constitutional and safe for the community.

And just make sure that whatever it is we're doing, we are accountable for what that is.

And so just doing in a very thoughtful way and being open with our community about what we are going to do.

The multi-agency gang unit has a lot of criticism behind it.

Some people think that it targets people of color unfairly.

Do you think that that's also a risk if this program is revamped?

Well, we police we're going to police constitutionally.

We're not going to be stopping and frisking.

We're not going to be racially profiling.

Those are the things that have to go also into this as well.

We do need to intervene.

We do have to do something about those who are running around doing hurting others.

But we do still have to do it in a constitutional manner.

And we cannot racially profile.

We've got to because that just turns the community even more off.

And then they don't want to work with police and want to help police.

They don't trust police so that we have to do it in a way that we incorporate our community into it.

And work with them.

There is no magic wand.

Cannot wave it and fix the issue.

It is a time consuming, thoughtful process that we all have to work on together.

It's our community making sure our community centers are open and that kids have something to do.

Pools to swim in the summer, etc.

It's making sure our education system works.

It's making sure we have jobs for people that pay a real wage.

And so it's we're all in this together.

There's no magic wand.

And if we all do our jobs, we will fix these issues.

So I'm looking forward to being a being very vocal about that and bringing that to our community and listening to them, listening to their fears, listening to their solutions, just as importantly.

All right.

Well, thank you so much for taking the time out.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Sorry.

Sorry about the delay and everything.

That's okay.

All right.

We have a good one, too.

The multiagency gang unit doesn't have a start date for operations, but D.A.

Jason Williams is looking to keep the agency around long term.

And before we wrap up, a special reminder that we will be airing eight of ten episodes of Safe Haven Explore Louisiana's Green Book.

Please tune in Tuesday, March 8th at 7 p.m.. All righty.

And everyone that is our show for this week.

Remember, you can watch anything LPB any time, wherever you are with our LPB PBS app, you can watch LPB News and Public Affairs shows.

As well as other Louisiana programs you've come to enjoy over the years.

And please, like us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok for everyone here at Louisiana Public Broadcasting, I'm Andre Moreau and I'm Kara St. Cyr until next time.

That's The State We're In Entergy is proud to support programing on LPB and Greener practices that preserve Louisiana.

The goal of our environmental and sustainability initiatives really is to ensure that our kids and future generations can be left with a cleaner planet.

Additional support provided by the Fred B and Ruth B. Zigler Foundation and the Zigler Art Museum located in Jennings City Hall.

The museum focuses on emerging Louisiana artists and is an historical and cultural center for Southwest Louisiana and the Foundation for Excellence in Louisiana Public Broadcasting.

With support from viewers like you