An industrial gas provider is moving to Ascension Parish with plans to build a $4.5 billion clean energy facility, Louisiana officials announced Thursday.

Air Products, the company responsible for the project, will create 170 direct jobs with an average salary of $93,000, more than 400 indirect jobs in the region and more than 2,000 construction jobs over the three years it will take to build the facility near the community of Burnside. The project is expected to be operational in 2026.

Former President Bill Clinton, who has been hospitalized at the University of California Irvine Medical Center for a "non-Covid-related infection," is expected to be discharged on Sunday, his spokesperson said Saturday afternoon.

"President Clinton has continued to make excellent progress over the last 24 hours," Angel Ureña said in a statement released on Twitter.

 GOP WHIP WON’T SAY — The U,S, House of Representatives  second-ranking  Republican, Minority Whip  Steve Scalise,  is refusing to say whether or not  the  2020 presidential  election was legitimate.  In a television interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday,  the Louisiana congressman was repeatedly  asked  directly  if he thought the 2020 Presidential Election was stolen,   a claim former President Trump has repeatedly made since Joe Biden was certified as President by Congress.

ARK DEM ON REDISTRICTING-  The new chair of the Arkansas Democratic Party says Republican proposed  redistricting maps are illegal.  In an appearance on Arkansas Public Media’s “Talk Business and Politics”,  New Democratic Party of Arkansas Chair Grant Tenille suggested the GOP’s redistricting map efforts are a deliberate,  unilateral sign  that the Arkansas Republican Party’s focus is to dominate politics in the state.

Two candidates running for a hotly contested City Council seat have unusual endorsements for their campaigns: each other.

In a Times-Picayune article published Tuesday, councilmembers Kristin Gisleson Palmer and Jared Brossett urged voters to pick either candidate for the Division 2 at-large council seat when they head to the polls in November, as long as it's not their competitor, former State Sen. JP Morrell.