Some articles I read this morning...

Poverty Creates Toxic Stress for Young Children

With nearly one in three of Louisiana’s children under the age of five living in poverty, and an 81 percent increase in abuse and neglect cases in this age group over the past six years, the question of how to improve the lives of Louisiana’s youngest citizens is an increasingly pressing issue, says Geoffrey Nagle, director of the Tulane Institute of Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health.
Read More: http://tulane.edu/news/newwave/020309_child_poverty.cfm


New Orleans struggles to find compromise on trash

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and City Council members appeared to have reached an agreement late Monday on how to pay for washing streets and emptying litter cans in the French Quarter, but they were confronted with a separate smelly issue: garbage bags piling up throughout the historic neighborhood and the Central Business District.

The new front in the sanitation battle had little to do with the long-running feud between the executive and legislative branches that prompted Nagin -- claiming a $7.5 million shortfall in the 2009 city budget -- to pull the plug during the weekend on street sweeping and flushing and round-the-clock litter collection in the city's premier tourist destination.

Instead, the sudden accumulation of garbage along sidewalks in the Vieux Carre and CBD was the product of a surprise decision by the city's Sanitation Department to start enforcing a long-standing law that says owners of large businesses and residential properties with more than four units must hire private contractors to collect their trash. The law applies citywide.
Read more: http://www.nola.com/timespic/stories/index.ssf?/base/news-7/1233642021239700.xml&coll=1