with Kelly P. Kissel | Metro editorThe old Sherwood Forest golf course is in line to perhaps become a retention area for floodwaters. The state has given the city-parish $6 million for the effort to preserve undeveloped pockets of land and use the acreage as a buffer against high water. The Sherwood Forest project is intended to reduce flooding along Jones Creek. Parts of Louisiana are seeing as many deaths in a day as it saw in an entire week because of COVID-19, and medical experts say the latest wave of the coronavirus pandemic could be our longest ever. The state's low vaccination rate is to blame, along with the aggressiveness of the delta variant. The new president at LSU says a COVID-19 vaccine mandate is coming. He reaffirmed to the school's Board of Supervisors this morning that once federal regulators give the vaccine full approval and state health officials add it to the list of mandated vaccines, LSU students will be required to have one. And that haze you see outside in south Louisiana? It's not our regular humidity causing that. Smoke from wildfires out west and in California has drifted our way. Thanks for stopping in today on your way to the weekend. Stay safe. | 
