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Teche Regional Medical Center recently announced that Rachel Torres has been recognized as the hospital’s 2018 Mercy Award winner. The Mercy Award recognizes one employee from each of LifePoint Health’s hospitals who profoundly touches the lives of others and best represents the spirit and values on which the company was founded.
The Mercy Award is is considered the highest honor a LifePoint employee can receive.
"She goes above and beyond each and every day to ensure that every person she encounters receives the highest level of care and compassion," said Aphreikah DuHaney-West, CEO of Teche Regional Medical Center.
“Rachel has been a valuable member of the cardiopulmonary staff and Teche team as a respiratory therapist for 15 years,” said Raymond Pisani, director of Teche Regional’s Cardiopulmonary Department.
“She has been recognized on numerous occasions by her peers and patients for displaying a genuine smile along with a caring and compassionate attitude. She is very committed to her faith and devotes her time volunteering in the community."

The Daily Review/Bill Decker
B & G Food Enterprises LLC of Morgan City, which owns the local Taco Bell restaurants, recently gave donations to public agencies in the Tr-City area.

On Friday there was more good economic news as the jobs report showed the unemployment rate dropped to 3.9 percent the lowest since 2000.
For African Americans and Hispanics, the unemployment rate is now the lowest ever recorded. In April, 164,000 nonfarm jobs were added to payrolls surpassing a 135,000 increase in employment in March. Among the sectors to perform well in April were construction which added 17,000 new jobs and manufacturing employment which surged by 24,000 jobs.
Most analysts believe that the economy is nearing full employment, so it is not surprising that the Economic Cost Index shows wages are increasing at the fastest rate in 11 years.
This has not triggered inflationary pressures, as prices only increased 1.9 percent last month and the Federal Reserve did not increase interest rates.
As the economy does well, incredible progress is also being made with North Korea. A summit is being arranged, American hostages will soon be released and the North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un has indicated a willingness to give up his nuclear weapons. If the Korean peninsula become a nuclear free zone, retired four-star General Jack Keane believes it “could be the most historic diplomatic achievement since World War II.”
With remarkable progress in both foreign and domestic policy, it is no surprise that President Trump is now enjoying a 51% approval rating, according to Rasmussen Reports, several points higher than former President Obama at this point in his first term.
While more Americans show appreciation for President Trump, it has not impacted the liberal media. For the Trump haters on CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS and NBC, these good news stories are only momentary distractions from their most significant issues: Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Stormy Daniels and Impeachment.
This week, the media went into overdrive when the President’s new attorney, Rudy Giuliani, reported that attorney Michael Cohen was reimbursed for his $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels. Even though the President claimed that the money paid to Cohen was from his personal account, and not campaign related, the talking heads were not restrained from reporting that the President is in tremendous legal jeopardy.
Giuliani also predicted that there is a 50 percent chance the president will be subpoenaed by special counsel Mueller even though there is still no evidence of Russian collusion or obstruction of justice.
This week, a list of 49 potential questions that Mueller could ask President Trump was leaked to the media, along with reports that the Special Counsel’s office is looking at Trump confidante Roger Stone as a subject of their investigation.
While the Special Counsel’s Ofice furiously leaks and works non-stop to destroy President Donald Trump, the media is only too willing to assist. In fact, in aFriday morning press briefing as he was about to board Marine One, the pesident blasted the media for focusing on the Mueller investigation “all the time, that’s all you want to talk about.”
Fortunately, the American people are starting to realize that the Mueller probe is nothing but a witch hunt. In an April Rasmussen Reports poll, only 46 percent of Americans believed that the special counsel investigation was an “honest attempt to determine criminal wrongdoing.” This is a decrease of 6 percent from October, when 52 percent supported Mueller’s investigation.
With an out-of-control special counsel and a public becoming more disgruntled, one Congressman finally decided to act.
On Thursday, U.S. Rep. Todd Rokita, R-Indiana, introduced a resolution calling for the Mueller investigation to end within 30 days unless evidence of Russian collusion is introduced. According to Rokita, he proposed the resolution to “preserve the integrity of our democratic institutions.”
Rokita is disturbed by both the scope and the $17 million cost of the Mueller investigation. He believes it is “an attempt by the Washington elite to destroy President Trump.” However, it is also an unprecedented political and legal assault on the 63 million Americans who voted for Donald Trump on Nov. 8, 2016.
The special counsel and his team of partisan Democrat attorneys are attempting to overturn the results of the last election, and enact, in essence, the first political coup d’état in American history.
In this toxic environment, it is amazing that the president is able to provide positive leadership on both the economy and national security issues like North Korea. As the approval ratings indicate, this progress is being recognized by an increasing number of Americans.
The best efforts of the media, the Democrats, the Deep State and the Mueller team appear to be failing. No wonder all of these groups have such hatred for Donald Trump.
Jeff Crouere is the Host of “Ringside Politics,” which airs at 7:30 p.m. Friday and 10 p.m. Sunday on WLAE-TV 32, a PBS station, and 7 till 11 a.m. weekdays on WGSO 990 AM in New Orleans and the Northshore. He is the political analyst for WGNO-TV ABC26 and a columnist for selected publications. For more information, visit his web site at RingsidePolitics.com. E-mail him at jeff@ringsidepolitics.com.

NEW YORK (AP) — “I don’t even call it a bed. I kind of think of it as your grandmother.”
So declares Dr. Harvey Karp, a Los Angeles pediatrician whose smart-tech baby sleeper, the Snoo, is a game-changer for some sleep-deprived parents.
The Snoo has earned rave reviews from baby gear experts and parents alike, including Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis. Last year, the consumer products show CES bestowed its coveted baby safety award on the invention.
The Snoo is all about swaddling. Just don’t call it a bed.
In a video on his website, Papa Karp says the Snoo provides a service “more than being a thing.” It gently rocks and jiggles babies from birth to 6 months old, a period he calls the “fourth trimester,” when — he believes — simulating the womb environment is key to calming babies.
Babies are zipped into a mesh sleep sack after a broad cotton swaddle tightly pins the infant’s arms to the side from shoulder to wrist. The sack is then secured to the Snoo’s frame before the rocking and a white-noise lullaby commence.
Karp, who’s also written a book, “The Happiest Baby on the Block,” says infants should be soothed in 40 to 60 seconds. The Snoo increases its motion and noise based on persistent sound from the baby, until it reaches its fourth and final level. If that doesn’t work, it turns off. Parents can adjust settings manually or with an app. The Snoo also comes with an organic cotton sheet and sleep sacks in three sizes.
But at $1,160, the Snoo more expensive than many rocking devices — though designer baby beds can run higher.
New York mom Kathleen Udo heard about the Snoo and “thought, ‘Wow, that sounds great, sign me up,’ until I looked at the price. I was, like, ‘Get out of town.’”
Then her son Jack, now 3 months old, was born. Parental fatigue set in and she found a mommy friend with a Snoo to lend.
“My little terrorist over here wouldn’t sleep. Even with the Snoo, we’ve only gotten to about four hours at a stretch at night,” said Udo, who is an attorney. “I’m going back to work in mid-June and I need to be back on my A-game. The Snoo was a desperation move.”
Karp says babies who aren’t put in the Snoo from birth have a learning curve, and that was the case with Jack. But, says Udo, “It definitely calms him,” so that she doesn’t need to rock him to sleep anymore.
Jamee Zalewski of Denver tried the Snoo with her second child Ruby. “The mental break was really important for me,” she said. “I was able to take it because I knew the Snoo’s soothing would shut off if Ruby needed me. I could watch it on my phone and get an alert.”
Her husband Paul, who blogs about baby gear at Fathercraft.com, said they sometimes wondered, “‘Are we letting a robot do our job?’ There were these moments when we would walk away after Ruby fell asleep and we’d be like, ‘We should be doing something.’”
While the Zalewskis did become Snoo fans, they opted to return the device before the 30-day trial period was up. The reason: Ruby was colicky and congested and needed to sleep on an incline. The company has since added leg lifts so it can be adjusted.
Karp, who worked with designer Yves Behar on the Snoo, says the device also promotes safety, by keeping babies in the supine position recommended for sleep by the American Academy of Pediatrics, and by making it unnecessary for sleep-deprived parents to bring babies into their own beds. About 3,500 infants in the United States die suddenly and unexpectedly each year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease and Control, and the causes include accidental suffocation in a parent’s bed.
Getting babies to sleep soundly can also reduce postpartum depression and marital stress. “The No. 1 stress that new parents talk about is exhaustion,” Karp said.
Karp’s team works with companies offering rented Snoos to parents returning to work, foster parents and doctors treating babies born to drug-addicted mothers. He is also working on a plan to offer Snoos for rent at reasonable cost.
At the University of Kentucky Children’s Hospital in Lexington, 10 Snoos are available for babies with the addiction and withdrawal condition called neonatal abstinence syndrome, in a state where 15 of every 1,000 babies is born dependent on opioids. Such babies routinely experience disrupted sleep, said Dr. Lori A. Shook, a neonatologist there. Before she stumbled on the Snoo at a pediatrics conference, she’d notice the babies in the eight-bed unit fussing terribly in their bassinets.
The Snoos are used in addition to aromatherapy and massage for calming, in a unit that focuses on families caring for their babies.
“Now on rounds I see every baby asleep in their Snoo bed,” Shook said. “At first I think the nurses were leery because of the motion, but now we realize it also allows families to sleep better, and hopefully get the babies out of the hospital sooner and with less medication.”