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BATON ROUGE, LOUISIANA
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T u e s d ay, J u ly 14, 2026
‘BUILDING A FOUNDATION’
Landry trumpets impact on Louisiana from massive expansion of Meta AI data center
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Perkins Rd. overpass project gets underway Pedestrian path to connect Garden District BY AVERY WHITE Staff writer
Shielded from the Monday morning rain, business owners and city officials gathered under the Perkins Road overpass to break ground on the long-awaited $2.9 million pathway designed to make the busy area more pedestrian-friendly. The project, under MovEBR, is expected to be completed in six months and aims to connect the Garden District and Perkins Road with a walkable, well-lit path, replacing the dirt-and-gravel track under the overpass currently used by pedestrians. The project has been in the works since 2020. Years ago, a handful of shops and restaurants along the corridor, Varsity Sports and BLDG 5 among them, raised money to have the land
ä See PERKINS, page 7A
STAFF PHOTOS By MICHAEL JOHNSON
Dina Powell McCormick, president and vice chair at Meta, talks about Meta’s commitment to Richland Parish and Louisiana on Monday. BY STEPHANIE RIEGEL and ALYSE PFEIL Staff writers
Gov. Jeff Landry and other Louisiana leaders on Monday cheered the announcement that Facebook parent Meta is more than doubling the size of its mammoth Hyperion data center in Richland Parish, as the scale of the investment — and what it could mean for the state — came into greater focus. At a news conference hours after the tech giant released details of its planned expansion, Landry, who has aggressively courted new industrial development in the state, championed it as a moment that “Louisiana has been waiting for.” “We’re building a foundation for the next generation of American prosperity,” he said during a presentation that included remarks from Meta executives and some Richland Parish leaders who welcomed the expansion. Meta will now spend $50 billion on
most sophisticated and power hungry data centers planned to date. The project also will take longer to build and come online, meaning more workers will move into the area and more permanent jobs will eventually be created, even as concerns remain about power, water usage and the return on the state’s investments via tax breaks. Hyperion will be one of the first 5-gigawatt data centers in the U.S., and only a handful of others are in the planning stages or under construction. Oracle and OpenAI are building a more expensive data center in the desert of New Mexico Gov. Jeff Landry discusses the with a $165 billion price tag, but it’s impact on the state’s economy roughly the same size as Hyperion Monday after announcing Meta’s and, for now at least, is a planned plans to expand its Richland Parish 2.5-gigawatt facility. Since the project broke ground in data center. January 2025, it has fueled a boom Hyperion, up from $10 billion just 18 in Richland Parish, a tiny rural months ago. Its footprint has more community of 20,000 full-time resithan doubled to roughly 5 square dents. Richland Parish Assessor Lee miles. And its computing power has ä See META, page 5A doubled, making it one of the fastest,
STAFF PHOTO By MICHAEL JOHNSON
East Baton Rouge Parish Metro Council member Carolyn Coleman speaks at the groundbreaking for the Perkins Road overpass project on Monday.
U.S. begins new Iran strikes Trump says ships will be charged to use the Strait of Hormuz
BY JON GAMBRELL, KONSTANTIN TOROPIN and WILL WEISSERT Associated Press
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The U.S. launched strikes on Iran early Tuesday morning, hours after President Donald Trump said Washington is “reinstating” a blockade on Iran in the Strait of Hormuz. Trump separately suggested the United States will charge other ships for safe passage, upending hundreds of years of American policy
ä See STRIKES, page 7A
BR police enlist FBI, more to find body of missing teen Investigators from 2025 N.O. terrorist attack return to state
BY OLIVIA TEES Staff writer
In the early hours of Monday morning in a command room set up at the East Baton Rouge Parish North Landfill, nearly 70 personnel gathered around two photos of 15-year-old Ja’Derrius Minnieweather, reminding each other of their common goal. Then they began the grueling search through
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roughly 10,000 cubic yards of Baton Rouge’s refuse to find Minnieweather’s body and any clues about his death. Minnieweather has been missing since June 4 and is presumed dead, with his body dumped somewhere in the 400-acre landfill in Zachary. More than two weeks later, police arrested Maurice Parms, 51, on a count of first-degree murder after he allegedly beat the boy to death and went to great lengths to hide the evidence from the police. While the Baton Rouge Police Department is the lead agency on the case, is has enlisted the help of 12 other law enforcement agen-
cies, including the specialty teams from the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations and the Louisiana National Guard. Special Agent Jonathan Tapp, of the FBI New Orleans office, said that through the FBI Laboratory’s Technical Hazards Response Unit and Evidence Response Team Unit they have identified a search area of 0.64 acres out of 400. The last time these units were deployed to Louisiana was after the Jan. 1, 2025, terrorist attack on Bourbon Street in New Orleans that killed 14 people.
Searchers spread out at the East Baton Rouge Parish North Landfill to look for the body of Ja’Derrius Minnieweather. STAFF PHOTO By JOHN BALLANCE
ä See BODY, page 5A
Business ......................6A Commentary ................5B Nation-World ................2A Classified .....................6D Deaths .........................3B Opinion ........................4B Comics-Puzzles .....3D-5D Living............................1D Sports ..........................1C
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