| Wednesday, June 10, 2015 |
| It's Not All Video Games at Mississippi State Computer Camp | |
 | Cyber crime is one of the fastest-growing criminal activities affecting us locally and abroad. On the campus of Mississippi State University in Starkville, high school students from across the state are learning that we are under constant attack in the clouds by cyber criminals from places like China and Russia. During sessions at this cybersecurity-focused computing camp, students are being taught the latest in arming themselves against cyber criminals. Classes in computer forensics are teaching how to detect malicious software and keep our online experience safe. |
| CREATE executive: 'We have a massive problem on our hands' | |
 | For the past 10 years, Lewis Whitfield has been an executive with CREATE, the Tupelo-based community foundation that has grown to serve 17 counties in northeast Mississippi since it was founded in 1972. Whitfield spoke Monday to the Starkville Rotary Club about the foundation's goal of improving quality of life, but he relied on his previous experience as a banker in giving his audience a portrait of the region's challenges. Education, Whitfield insists, is the key factor in improving the quality of life in the region. CREATE has attacked that problem on several fronts, providing grants to GED programs, working with Mississippi State University and the University of Mississippi on their teaching programs, which seek to attract the "brightest and best" to the teaching profession and working with its partners throughout the region to provide free community college tuition to every high school graduate in the region. |
| 2015's Best & Worst Cities for Baseball Fans | |
 | As baseball grows in popularity in the U.S. and abroad, issues related to the sport are bound to arise. For additional insight into the challenges facing the sport, frugal advice for enjoying the ballgame and predictions on which teams will triumph, WalletHub asked a panel of leading sports experts to weigh in, including Alan L. Morse, an associate professor of sport management in the Department of Kinesiology at Mississippi State. |
| Mississippi youth to compete at Horse Park | |
| More than 120 children and teenagers from northeast Mississippi will compete in the Northeast District 4-H Horse Show at the Mississippi Horse Park from Wednesday to Saturday. Competitors between the ages 8-18 from 15 counties will be tested on equestrian speed, skill and style. The Northeast District 4-H Horse Show is held at the Horse Park every other year and includes the State 4-H Horse Championships and the state educational horse contests. Mississippi 4-H is a division of MSU Extension Services located on the Mississippi State University campus. |
| 6th graders in Oktibbeha County to attend same school | |
 | The newly formed Starkville-Oktibbeha County school district has big plans for students entering the 6th grade in the 2015-2016 school year. School officials say all 6th graders in the district will now attend Armstrong Middle School. School officials say they evaluated several options along with a review from the United States Department of Justice, and say this option would benefit students the most. They also anticipate this transition plan will remain in place until construction of the new Partnership School on the campus of Mississippi State University to hold all 6th and 7th graders is finished. |
| Republican candidates hold forum | |
| Starkville attorney Rob Roberson recalls a time when support for the Oktibbeha County Republican Party amounted to a half-dozen residents in a room listening to one, maybe two candidates. It was not like that Monday evening. Roberson, a District 43 state representative candidate, was among about a dozen candidates who spoke to a capacity crowd in the Oktibbeha County circuit courtroom on West Main Street. Roberson will face Little Dooey owner Mac Smith in a Republican primary in August. The primary winner will face Democrat Paul Millsaps in November's general election. "I think we have some of the finest candidates you could ask for, including my opponent," Roberson said during his comments to the crowd. District 43 is a new area created in the most recent redistricting and covers parts of Starkville and Oktibbeha County, including the Mississippi State University campus. |
| Columbus lands 2016 Mississippi-Alabama Rural Tourism Conference | |
| The Mississippi-Alabama Rural Tourism Conference is coming to town. Columbus Convention and Visitors Bureau Executive Director Nancy Carpenter on Monday announced the conference, which will be held Oct. 24-26, 2016, at the Courtyard Marriott. This marks the second time Columbus has landed the collaborative tourism event, Carpenter said, the first coming in 2008. The event will draw tourism professionals from all over Mississippi and Alabama, Carpenter said, and present ways for them to better market their community. |
| Mississippi to put up $15M for broadband connectivity incentives, governor says | |
 | Mississippi will invest $15 million to help build a broadband corridor along the coast that will help drive education, healthcare, innovation and the overall economy, Gov. Phil Bryant said Tuesday. He made the announcement during the Connect Mississippi Gulf Coast Conference at the Island View Casino in Gulfport. "People expect to be able to gather information, obtain their services, make purchases, all long a broadband system," Bryant said. "And you have to have this type of system to be able to do that." The money will come from the first wave of Restore Act funding, he said, and it will provide incentives for private businesses to create the corridor of connectivity. |
| Mississippi's Trent Kelly sworn in as House member | |
 | Mississippi Republican Trent Kelly became the newest member of the House on Tuesday. Kelly won a special election last week to fill the seat previously held by former Rep. Alan Nunnelee (R-Miss.), who died of brain cancer in February. The House now stands at 246 Republicans and 188 Democrats, with one vacancy. A successor for ex-Rep. Aaron Schock (R-Ill.) has not yet been decided, though the seat is expected to stay in GOP hands. Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) paused the House's first evening vote series to swear Kelly into office. Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) invoked the memory of Nunnelee, who served in the House from 2011 until this year, while introducing Kelly. |
| Neshoba native Trent Kelly wins House race | |
| Neshoba County native Trent Kelly was sworn in this week as a United States Representative after winning a special run-off election in the First Congressional District in north Mississippi last week. Growing up in rural Neshoba County near Union, Kelly said he never thought he would have the "huge responsibility" of representing 750,000 people in the U.S. House of Representatives, but God lead him to this position. Nothing has changed Kelly from his upbringing here in the Neshoba community in the southern part of the county which helped shape the person he is, he said. He remembers the Neshoba residents being community and church-oriented people and kept up with "what your neighbor was doing" partially by reading the Democrat. But some of the most vivid and colorful memories he has come from times at the Neshoba County Fair, which he still attends. |
| Zinn thankful for 1st District election experience | |
 | After a brief moment of silence following his campaign for the 1st District Congressional seat, Democratic candidate Walter Howard Zinn Jr. shared an encouraging message with his supporters. Zinn fell to Republican and Congressman-elect Trent Kelly last week during a runoff election to fill the seat left vacant following the death of Congressman Alan Nunnelee. While Zinn emerged as the front runner during the first round of voting May 12, the Pontotoc attorney got only 30 percent of the vote against Kelly in the June 2 runoff. In an email sent out late last week, Zinn asked supporters to excuse the tardiness of his statement as he did not return multiple requests for media interviews in the days after the election. |
| Justices question clarity of school funding titles | |
 | Mississippi Supreme Court justices quizzed attorneys Tuesday about how voters can tell the difference between two school funding initiatives on the November ballot. The nine justices heard arguments in a dispute about ballot titles. In 20 or fewer words, a title is supposed to describe what each amendment would do. The legal battle over the titles is important because the outcome could help determine whether voters accept one of the proposed constitutional amendments or reject both. Justices didn't say when they will rule in the dispute, but ballots must be prepared by early September for the Nov. 3 election. |
| Court hears arguments over initiative alternative language | |
| The nine-member Mississippi Supreme Court heard arguments for nearly two hours Tuesday on what 20 words should appear on the November ballot to describe a legislative alternative to a citizen-sponsored initiative designed to enhance funding for public education. Michael Wallace, a Jackson attorney representing the legislative leadership, argued to the justices that Hinds County Circuit Judge Winston Kidd did not have the authority to change the ballot title for the legislative alternative developed by the office of Attorney General Jim Hood. Justices peppered both Wallace and attorneys for the citizen-sponsored initiative supporters, who had asked Kidd to change the AG's language, with numerous, tough questions. |
| Mississippi Supreme Court hears from both sides of Initiative 42 | |
 | The Mississippi Supreme Court heard two hours of arguments Tuesday in the battle over an alternative ballot measure title. Justices are expected to rule within a matter of weeks whether Hinds County Circuit Judge Winston L. Kidd erred in revising the title of Alternative Measure 42-A. The Legislature had voted in January to put Alternative Measure 42-A on the November ballot as an alternative to citizen-sponsored Initiative Measure 42. Both call for a constitutional amendment requiring the state to fund a system of "free public schools." But Initiative 42 would let the chancery court enforce that requirement -- essentially forcing the Legislature to fully fund education even if lawmakers decide otherwise. The alternative has no such judicial oversight. |
| Choctaw Chief Anderson appears to be in run-off with Denson | |
| Incumbent Choctaw Tribal Chief Phyliss J. Anderson was apparently headed to a run-off election with former Tribal Chief Beasley Denson at press time Tuesday night with all communities reporting except for Pearl River. Anderson had 909 votes or 41 percent while Denson tallied 670 votes or 30 percent. About 1,100 votes were cast at Pearl River and there are more than 300 absentee ballots that remained to be counted overall. Anderson unseated Denson in 2011 with 56 percent of the vote to become the first female to lead the 10,000-member Tribe, which is headquartered in Neshoba County. |
| Behind tension over Texas pool party, a seismic shift in American suburbs | |
 | The video of a white police officer roughly wrestling a 14-year-old, bikini-clad black girl to the ground -- then drawing his gun at another group of teens -- has taken the national debate over excessive police violence to a new setting: white suburbs. That setting is significant. The spread of the controversy over race and policing into a Dallas suburb that is 75 percent white suggests that diversity is in some cases catching up with "white flight." Suburbs like McKinney, Texas, that grew as white Americans left urban areas and inner suburbs behind are now becoming more diverse themselves. The scene points to the evolving reality of suburban America, some say. |
| Mideast's worst case: A 'big war' pitting Shia Muslims against Sunni | |
 | The Middle East crisis that peaked one year ago Wednesday when the Islamic State captured Mosul may result in the breakup of Iraq and an indefinite continuation of a war in Syria that's already out of control, analysts say. Yet still worse things could happen. "The conditions are very much like 1914," says Michael Stephens of the Royal United Service Institute in London. "All it will take is one little spark, and Iran and Saudi Arabia will go at each other, believing they are fighting a defensive war." U.S. and foreign experts say the U.S still has not developed a strategy for dealing with the Sunni extremists who now hold more territory Iraq and Syria than one year ago. President Barack Obama on Monday acknowledged that the U.S. strategy in Iraq was a work in progress. |
| U.S. Prepares Plan to Send Hundreds More Trainers to Iraq | |
 | President Barack Obama is poised to send hundreds more American military advisers to a new base in a strategic Iraqi region to help devise a counterattack against marauding Islamic State militants, U.S. officials said Tuesday, a shift that underscores American concern over recent battlefield losses. The additional troops -- expected to be about 500 -- are intended to help Iraqi forces prepare for the looming fight to break the extremists' hold on Anbar province, which has long served as a command center for anti-American insurgents near Baghdad. The new plan is a marked if modest expansion of the U.S. military role in Iraq. |
| US to import egg products to ease shortage | |
| With an increasing egg shortage due to the widespread bird flu outbreak, the United States will soon allow imported egg products from the Netherlands to be used for commercial baking and in processed foods. It's the first time in more than a decade the U.S. has bought eggs from a European nation, and comes as consumers are seeing a surge in shell egg prices and a Texas-based supermarket began limiting purchases. Generally, the U.S. produces enough eggs to meet domestic supply and export more than 30 million dozen eggs a month to trade partners including Mexico and Canada, the largest buyers. But the H5N2 virus -- which began to spread widely through Midwest farms in the early spring, including in Iowa, the nation's largest egg producer -- has left nearly 47 million birds dead or dying. |
| SpaceX founder files with government to provide Internet service from space | |
 | Elon Musk's space company has asked the federal government for permission to begin testing on an ambitious project to beam Internet service from space, a significant step forward for an initiative that could create another major competitor to Comcast, AT&T and other telecom companies. The plan calls for launching a constellation of 4,000 small and cheap satellites that would beam high-speed Internet signals to all parts of the globe, including its most remote regions. Musk has said the effort "would be like rebuilding the Internet in space." The idea of saturating Earth with Internet signals from space has long been the dream of prominent business tycoons, including Bill Gates in the 1990s. But many of these ventures have run into obstacles that Musk is working to avoid. |
| William Carey University named a 'hidden gem' | |
 | Recent William Carey University graduate Kenna Spiller had plenty of reasons to choose the school for her college education. "I'm from Petal," she said. "I was looking to stay close. I only applied to William Carey and USM." But she was swayed toward Carey by the William Carey Scholarship she received. Only given to students with high ACT scores, it covered all her expenses for the entire four years of her studies. Spiller is not alone. Seventy-one percent of William Carey students receive scholarships toward their $10,800 tuition, with the average scholarship being $5,344. |
| Meridian Community College's Elliott presented 'Friend of Adult Education Award' | |
 | Meridian Community College President Dr. Scott Elliott was recently honored by the Mississippi Association of Adult and Community Education (MAACE) with its "Friend of Adult Education Award" at the organization's annual Adult Basic Education conference. Elliott is completing his 18th year as MCC's chief executive officer. The award is symbolic of Elliott's unwavering support of adult basic education in Mississippi, according to Jennifer Whitlock, former MAACE president and director of adult basic education at MCC. |
| Holliday celebrates 50 years on Northeast Mississippi Community College board | |
| By teaching his children to grow cucumbers and sell firewood to earn money, Troy Holliday taught them at an early age to value work. "We never knew anything except that if you work hard and you succeed, you give back to your community," John Mark Holliday said of his father, who is the longest-serving community college trustee in the state of Mississippi. Holliday has spent more than 50 years on the Northeast Mississippi Community College Board of Trustees, a tenure for which he was honored at a reception at NEMCC on Tuesday afternoon. He was appointed to the board in 1964. Not only is he the longest active-serving trustee in Mississippi, but Holliday is the third-longest serving community college trustee in the United States. |
| LSU Provost Stuart Bell leaving to be Alabama's new president | |
 | LSU will soon set out on a national search for a new academic leader, following an announcement Tuesday that executive vice president and provost Stuart Bell is being recommended for the University of Alabama president's post. Bell has served as LSU's chief academic officer since 2012. "It has been an honor and a privilege to serve as provost at LSU for the last three years," he said in a statement. "Susan and I have truly enjoyed our time at LSU, a great university made up of incredible people -- faculty, staff, alumni and students. All of these groups have come together to make many achievements possible." LSU College of Engineering Dean Richard J. Koubek will serve as interim provost until a permanent replacement is named. |
| U. of Kentucky trustees set to approve $3.4 billion budget next week | |
 | Next week, the University of Kentucky Board of Trustees is expected to approve UK's largest budget ever, a $3.4 billion document that reflects a burgeoning health care enterprise paired with continued reliance on tuition paid by out-of-state students. With its labyrinth of new buildings for patients, UK HealthCare has grown to a $1.3 billion enterprise, an increase of more than $200 million over last year. The health care division now accounts for 41 percent of the university's budget. In contrast, the state provided its flagship university a mere 8 percent of UK's total budget, the lowest percentage ever. State funding to UK has been cut $55 million since 2008 and now stands at $280 million a year. |
| Kentucky set to approve $74 million dorm project for upperclassmen | |
| University of Kentucky trustees are set to approve the fifth phase of new, privately funded student housing on campus, this time for upperclassmen and graduate students. The $74 million University Flats project will consist of two buildings of apartments and studios that will face University Drive and back up to the Kirwan-Blanding towers. It is scheduled to open in fall 2017. The project will be funded and built by EdR, a Memphis-based campus housing company that is responsible for $422.3 million in construction aimed at replacing and updating UK's aging housing stock. |
| Chris McCoy Named CIO by U. of Arkansas | |
 | Chris McCoy has been named associate vice chancellor of information technology services and chief information officer at the University of Arkansas, the school announced Tuesday. McCoy will assume his new duties on July 20. He is the associate vice president for information technology and CIO at Metropolitan State University in St. Paul, Minnesota. John English, dean of the College of Engineering, led an 11-member search committee that recommended McCoy's hiring. McCoy will manage the information technology services department and provide leadership in all facets of university technology, the university said. He will report both to the provost and the vice chancellor for finance and administration. |
| Pretrial diversion for student in UGA social media threat of campus mass violence | |
 | A University of Georgia student recently was accepted into a pretrial diversion program for a social media threat of mass violence last year that set off a panic on the UGA campus. If he successfully completes the program, charges against 20-year-old Ariel Omar Arias would be dismissed, according to a memorandum of plea agreement filed last Wednesday in Clarke County Superior Court. On Sept. 19 Arias warned people to stay away from the Zell B. Miller Learning Center "if you want to live," and that "I'm coming with an AK," in reference to an AK-47 assault rifle. The threat caused UGA police to evacuate the learning center and search the building for possible offenders and harmful devices. |
| Lawsuit challenges South Carolina's rules for in-state college tuition | |
| Aspiring college students who are legal U.S. citizens but can't prove their parents are in the country legally have sued South Carolina officials, saying the state is unconstitutionally denying college scholarships and forcing them to pay out of state-tuition even though they've lived in the state for years. The lawsuit, filed Monday in Charleston, challenges state regulations that classify would-be college students as non-residents -- even if they were born and raised in South Carolina -- if they can't prove their parents are in the country legally. The lawsuit seeks class-action status for an estimated 170 citizen-.children of unauthorized immigrants who seek to enroll in college in South Carolina each year. |
| Texas A&M University System receives $800M in revenue bonds thanks to 84th Texas legislative session | |
 | The Texas A&M University System made a unified push to secure funding during the 84th legislative session, and it paid off in a big way. System and flagship officials gathered in the Board of Regents quarters of the Memorial Student Center on Tuesday morning to give an overview of the session, which yielded $800 million for capital construction revenue bonds to use toward key projects on the flagship campus and across the state, and share their satisfaction of the results with media. A&M President Michael Young said the system's cut of the $3.1 billion capital construction revenue bonds for higher education will be an investment in the infrastructure that will help students thrive. "At the end of the day I know Texas has got a lot of oil, it's got a lot of cattle and it's got of other resources, but the most important resource is the minds of our young people and we farm that more than anyone else," Young said. |
| Greek students at Missouri outraged by proposals to ban women from visiting frats on weekend nights | |
 | Could parietals be reborn? The University of Missouri at Columbia is considering a plan that would ban female visitors to fraternity houses after 10 p.m. (and until 3 a.m. the next morning) on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. The plan was developed by a coalition of fraternity alumni leaders and proposed as a way to protect women from sexual assault. The plan embraces some strategies used on other campuses, such as banning hard liquor at fraternity events. But it goes beyond that, not only with the ban on weekend overnight visitors, but by proposing that fraternities and sororities all start drug testing members. Public reaction has been intensely negative, with people taking to social media to denounce the proposals. |
| In Heated State-Budget Fights, Students Strive to Be Heard | |
 | Public colleges and universities in several states once again face the prospect of sharp budget cuts this year, and students say they have an important role to play in opposing them. Still, student activists say, mobilizing peers is at least as significant a challenge, as they might not understand how budget cuts will affect them -- until the cuts occur. Other activists say politicians don't take them seriously. Timing can also be a barrier: Many legislative sessions wrap up in the summer, when most students are no longer on the campus. |
| AAUP committee survey data raise questions on effectiveness of student teaching evaluations | |
| They're almost universally loathed by professors as being too subjective and an unreliable indicator of performance. But beyond that, surprisingly little is known about student evaluations of faculty teaching. How many colleges require them, and what do they ask? How many students complete them, and what effect do they have on instructors' careers? A committee of the American Association of University Professors wanted to help answer some of the questions, and help stir discussions about a better way to rate professors in the classroom. Survey responses gathered by the committee from some 9,000 professors suggest diminishing student response rates for course evaluations, too much focus on such evaluations alone in personnel decisions -- especially for non-tenure-track faculty -- and a creep of the kinds of personal comments seen on teacher rating websites into formal evaluations. |
| Gun rights advocates' push for campus-carry measures like Texas' is slow going | |
 | This year more than a dozen states have considered measures that would allow the carrying of concealed weapons on college campuses, but so far only Texas has approved a so-called campus-carry law. By overwhelming votes, Texas lawmakers approved the legislation last week, and Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has said he will sign it into law. It would take effect in August 2016. Texas would then join seven other states that already allow the carrying of concealed weapons on public college campuses -- Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Mississippi, Oregon, Utah and Wisconsin, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Opponents of such laws say that allowing more guns on campus does little to improve security and instead makes it more likely that shootings will occur, including accidental gunfire and suicides. Proponents of the law say it will make campuses safer and allow law-abiding people to exercise their 2nd Amendment rights. |
| CHARLIE MITCHELL (OPINION): Drug tests don't deter Mississippi's freeloaders | |
 | Longtime Mississippi journalist Charlie Mitchell writes: "Last year Mississippi lawmakers insisted it was essential to start drug-testing welfare applicants. 'We must help them overcome their addictions,' was the altruistic reason. Almost a year passed. Oops. Guess how many people out of 5,578 applicants have been 'helped.' Eight. And the 'help,' of course, was to reject their applications for free money. Mississippi was not alone in its noble quest. Well over half the states have considered drug-testing applicants for assorted benefits. Nearly two dozen states passed laws. Mississippi's was modeled after Utah's. Results nationwide mirror the experience here: The screenings have cost more than they saved. Truth be told, these laws were not about helping druggies. Not at all." |
SPORTS
| Mississippi State ready to surprise at nationals in Oregon | |
| Mississippi State's football and basketball players are back on campus for summer sessions. Neither team will play a game for months. But there is still a spring-sport competing. The Bulldogs will send 16 athletes to the track and field championships in Eugene, Oregon, which begin on Wednesday and extends through Saturday. "Going into national championships, it's almost like a heavyweight fight," MSU coach Steve Dudley said. "You take whatever hit you get, you stay on your feet and don't get knocked out and try to keep all your kids remaining in the actual pool." |
| Former Bulldog Chad Ramey qualifies for FedEx St. Jude Classic | |
| Former Itawamba AHS and Mississippi State golfer Chad Ramey has qualified for this week's PGA FedEx St. Jude Classic at Memphis' TPC Southwind. The field includes 2014 winner Ben Crane, Phil Mickelson and Dustin Johnson, seven of this year's PGA Tour winners. Ramey lettered three seasons at MSU before graduating in 2014. He won three individual state championships at IAHS, leading the Indians to three team titles. |
| U. of Florida athletics approves a budget increase | |
 | The board overseeing the University of Florida's athletic program Tuesday approved a $113 million budget for the next year, a $9.3 million increase over the current year that includes money to help improve the quality of life for student athletes and build more sports facilities. Helping to pay for the budget increase is an $8 million rise in SEC Network revenue to be used on capital improvement projects, and $1.7 million in bowl payouts offset by a decrease in booster contributions. The University Athletic Association also saw small gains in multimedia rights and golf course revenue. |
| Auburn 'talking to anybody' for nonconference games in 2018-19 | |
 | Jay Jacobs welcomes any and all challengers. That's the message Auburn's athletic director had at the SEC Spring Meeting in Destin, Fla., when he was asked about scheduling nonconference opponents for football during the 2018 and 2019 seasons. "We're talking to anybody that will talk to us, and what I said, when we went to 12 games, we're going to have a BCS opponent as our 12th team," Jacobs said at the Sandestin Hilton Resort. "And so we'll go anywhere and play anybody in a home-and-home, or we'll go to a neutral site to play it." The key in scheduling a future big-name, nonconference opponent, according to Jacobs, is figuring out whether or not that foe will still be a formidable draw a few years down the line. |
| Former Player Opposes Settlement in N.C.A.A. Concussion Suit | |
 | A proposed settlement in a class-action concussion lawsuit against the N.C.A.A. may have been dealt a blow on Tuesday when the lead plaintiff in the case said he opposed the deal. In a statement released through the National College Players Association, an advocacy group for college athletes, the plaintiff, Adrian Arrington, called the settlement "completely unacceptable" and said that his lawyers agreed to the deal without his knowledge. "The first time I learned about it was in the media," Arrington said. "I feel that I have been misinformed and the preliminary settlement doesn't address the reasons I filed the lawsuit in the first place." |
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