Tagged: politics

A proposal that might make it easier for black candidates to win posts on New Orleans' City Council now has the support of all current council members.

The council president and vice president made that announcement Wednesday evening.

The only two African-American members of the 7-member council have stayed away from recent meetings after the council deadlocked on the issue earlier this month.

There was already one vacancy on the council, so the apparent boycott by Jon Johnson and Cynthia Hedge-Morrell made it impossible to get the quorum needed to conduct business.

BATON ROUGE, La. — Gov. Bobby Jindal is headed to North Carolina for a meeting of Republican governors.

The GOP governor's trip comes as the state's budget is mired in disputes, pieces of Jindal's agenda are stalled in the waning days of the legislative session and lawmakers are criticizing the governor for absenteeism.

Jindal spokesman Kyle Plotkin said Jindal was traveling to Charlotte on Wednesday and will return to Baton Rouge on Friday. Plotkin said Jindal is participating in a Republican Governors' Association policy summit.

BATON ROUGE, La. — Two bills focused on deterring pregnant women from getting abortions have been overwhelmingly approved by two legislative health committees.

Sen. Sharon Weston Broome said Wednesday that her proposal gives women the opportunity to listen to a fetal heartbeat before an abortion is performed. The measure is based on a similar law passed last year in Texas requiring that doctors conduct a sonogram, describe the fetus and play a fetal heartbeat for pregnant women seeking abortions.

It's been called the most successful alliance in world history. President Obama and fellow leaders of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO, are meeting at an important summit in Chicago this month to discuss the future of the alliance.

NATO troops have now spent a decade in Afghanistan, and more recently, NATO airpower helped to overthrow Moammar Ghaddafi in Libya. But in the face of economic stress, and war-weary publics in the United States and Europe, how will the alliance move forward?