| Tuesday, June 23, 2015 |
| Memphis Zoo Exec Joining Mississippi State Faculty | |
 | Andrew J. Kouba, director of conservation and research at the Memphis Zoo, is the new head of the Mississippi State University Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Aquaculture. Kouba will begin serving Aug. 16 as head of the academic, research and extension unit of the university's College of Forest Resources. "We are fortunate to have Dr. Kouba join the Mississippi State University family and lead this active department," said George Hopper, dean of the College of Forest Resources and director of the Forest and Wildlife Research Center. "He brings a wealth of knowledge and leadership to this position and will further advance the Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Aquaculture." |
| Mississippi personal income grows at national average rate | |
 | Personal income in Mississippi grew at a 0.9 percent annual rate in 2015's first quarter. Figures released Monday by the U.S. Commerce Department showed the state's growth rate remained steady with the last quarter of 2014. Mississippi also equaled the national average of 0.9 percent, ranking 29th among the states. Of Mississippi's growth, most came from workplace earnings and transfer payments from government sources. Top growth sectors for wage earnings included construction, manufacturing, retail trade and health care and social assistance. |
| Fastest Rising Rents in U.S.? Jackson, Mississippi | |
| Home rental prices are climbing across much of the United States -- with the biggest gains coming from not from New York or San Francisco but Jackson, Mississippi, and Portland, Maine. Real estate data firm Zillow said Tuesday that prices nationally climbed a seasonally adjusted 4.3 percent in May from a year ago. Rents still are rising at double-digit rates in Denver, San Francisco and San Jose, California, with their job opportunities drawing new residents at a faster pace than construction can match. But two smaller cities led the gains in May. Houses in the Mississippi capital of Jackson are renting monthly for $1,169, a 22.7 percent yearly increase. |
| Gunn: Confederate part of Mississippi flag 'needs to be removed' | |
 | Mississippi House Speaker Philip Gunn said Monday night that the Confederate emblem in the state's official flag has to go. "We must always remember our past, but that does not mean we must let it define us," Gunn, a Clinton Republican, said in a statement. "As a Christian, I believe our state's flag has become a point of offense that needs to be removed. We need to begin having conversations about changing Mississippi's flag." It's the first time a Mississippi Republican elected official has publicly called for the removal of the emblem that served as the battle flag flown by the Confederate army during the Civil War. Later, it was adopted by anti-Civil Rights groups. |
| Speaker Philip Gunn: 'We need to begin having conversations about changing Mississippi's flag' | |
| A top Mississippi lawmaker said Monday that the Confederate battle emblem is offensive and needs to be removed from the state flag. House Speaker Philip Gunn became the first top-tier Republican to call for a change in the flag, which has had the Confederate symbol in the upper left corner since Reconstruction. "We must always remember our past, but that does not mean we must let it define us," Gunn, a leader in his local Baptist church, said in a statement. "As a Christian, I believe our state's flag has become a point of offense that needs to be removed. We need to begin having conversations about changing Mississippi's flag." Mississippi voters decided by a 2-to-1 margin in 2001 to keep the state flag that has been used since 1894. Republican Gov. Phil Bryant on Monday repeated his long-held position that the state should keep the flag as is. |
| Senate desk mates, now opponents, locked in residency dispute | |
 | Two state senators, both Democrats and desk mates in the Senate chamber for the past four sessions, are locked in a legal dispute over residency issues. Retired Circuit Judge Frank Vollor of Vicksburg, appointed to hear the case, issued a ruling last week that two-term incumbent Bill Stone is a legal resident of Holly Springs in Marshall County and is eligible to compete in the Aug. 4 Democratic primary against first-term incumbent Steve Hale of Senatobia. Vollor's ruling came after Hale filed a legal challenge to Stone's residence, saying he lived in Ashland in Benton County, not in Holly Springs. |
| Hood says Mississippi settles some tobacco claims for $15M | |
| Mississippi's attorney general says the nation's largest tobacco company will pay the state $15 million to settle claims that it was underreporting the number of cigarettes it was shipping to the state. On Monday, Attorney General Jim Hood announced the settlement with Reynolds American of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Reynolds American succeeded two companies that Mississippi raised claims against -- R.J. Reynolds and Brown & Williamson. In doing so, Hood agreed to take less money than a Jackson County chancery judge had ruled was due to Mississippi. |
| Senator rebuts Jackson County supervisors on open meetings law | |
 | State Sen. Brice Wiggins, R-Pascagoula, blasted the Jackson County Board of Supervisors in a tweet, saying they are wrong about the new law that puts public hospitals under increased scrutiny. "JCBS interpretation wrong on new law," Wiggins tweeted, and added that he would have been happy to fill them in, but they didn't ask him. Wiggins is the primary author on a new law, going into play in January, that opens hospitals like the ones under Jackson County's Singing River Health System to more scrutiny by the people who own them, the public. On Monday, the Board of Supervisors, complaining that they really have no power to do anything with the hospital system and dealing with SRHS retirees angry that the county hospital planned to eliminate their life-time pension, released a four-page statement that included a remark that set Wiggins off. |
| Video voyeurism case before Mississippi Supreme Court | |
| A former Mississippi minister secretly videotaped women taking showers at his home and later transferred the video to a computer in violation of the law, prosecutors argued Monday before the Mississippi Supreme Court. But an attorney for Samuel Allen Nuckolls told the court that the state never proved Nuckolls did the transfer and or when it took place. Nuckolls was charged in 2011 with making secret videos of women taking showers at his Olive Branch home between 2007 and 2009. Nuckolls was a pastor for LifeWay Christian Resources, a Nashville, Tennessee, organization that runs the popular Centrifuge youth camps affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, according to LifeWay's website. |
| Gregg Harper discusses ACA potential ruling, State Games | |
 | U.S. Rep. Gregg Harper (R-Miss.), who was back in Meridian Friday night for the opening of the State Games of Mississippi, said he expects the Supreme Court to issue its ruling on the Affordable Care Act's subsidies on Thursday. "We heard yesterday (June 18) that we should get the Supreme Court's decision on the Obama Care subsidies next Thursday," Harper said. "If the court strikes down the subsidies, our House leadership is looking at alternatives. One of those is opening up insurance markets across state lines. We also did vote (last) week to repeal the medical device tax." Harper, who represents the state's 3rd Congressional District, said the Supreme Court will try to resolve a case, King vs. Burwell, regarding whether consumers who purchase their insurance on the ACA's federal exchanges, and this includes Mississippians, are legally eligible for hundreds of dollars per month in subsidies that makes their coverage more affordable. |
| Supreme Court raisin case a 'great victory' for property rights | |
 | In an important decision bolstering protections for private property, the United States Supreme Court on Monday ruled that the government must pay compensation to a family of raisin farmers who had part of their crop appropriated under a mandatory agricultural price-support program. Ruling 8 to 1, the high court said that a marketing order issued under a New Deal-era statute amounted to a "taking" of private property, thus entitling the raisin farmers to a fair payment for their seized raisins. The decision stems from a dispute over the workings of the so-called Raisin Administrative Committee that requires raisin farmers in some years to turn over a percentage of their crop free-of-charge to the government in an effort to prevent oversupply and a collapse in the price of raisins. |
| Google didn't lead the self-driving vehicle revolution -- John Deere did | |
 | Google has received tons of gushy press for its bubble-shaped self-driving car, though it's still years from the showroom floor. But for years John Deere has been selling tractors that practically drive themselves for use on farms in America's heartland, where there are few pesky pedestrians or federal rules to get in the way. For a glimpse at the future, meet Jason Poole, a 34-year-old crop consultant from Kansas. After a long day of meetings earlier this month and driving five hours across the state to watch his little girl's softball game, he was still able to run his John Deere tractor until 2 a.m. thanks to technology that left most of the driving up to a computer. The success of self-driving tech in agriculture could serve as a guiding post for carmakers who are now trying to figure out how to move similar technologies onto U.S. streets. |
| Jackson State Breaks Ground on Tech, Engineering Facilities | |
 | Jackson State University held a groundbreaking ceremony June 18 for a proposed 24,000-square-foot engineering classroom complex, a two-story addition to the College of Science, Engineering and Technology building on campus. Jackson State's expansion of CSET comes after plans to build a domed stadium stalled earlier this year. The school approved the $7 million state-supported endowment in the 2014 budget. The university predicts construction will be completed in late 2016. The new addition will include classrooms and administrative offices, as well as research laboratories equipped for the newly renamed Industrial Systems and Technology Department. JSU is now offering bachelor's degrees in statistics and biomedical engineering and doctoral programs in engineering and computational data. The university plans to expand into biotechnology in the future. |
| Former Belhaven profs recall Dolezal student days | |
| Two former professors have broken their silence on Rachel Dolezal's undergraduate career at Belhaven University in Jackson. Dolezal, who identifies as black, outraged many recently when her parents came forward saying she was white. After attracting national attention, she resigned last week as president of the NAACP chapter in Spokane, Washington. Ruthanne Dolezal, Rachel's mother, said that Rachel, originally of Montana, came to Mississippi because she was interested in Belhaven's art program and the state-based civil rights activist John Perkins. In the fall of 1996, Dolezal enrolled in Belhaven's visual art BFA program. |
| Student Affairs at Auburn names Cox assistant vice president for engagement and outreach | |
 | The Division of Student Affairs at Auburn University has named Lady Cox as the assistant vice president for engagement and outreach. In her new role, Cox will oversee the Student Center, Student Involvement, Student Media and Parent and Family Programs. Prior to joining the staff at Auburn, Cox was the director of parent and student services in the Dean of Students Office at Mississippi State University. While at MSU, she also worked in the Department of Housing and Residence Life. A native of Starkville, Cox earned a bachelor's degree in communication studies from Mississippi State |
| U. of South Carolina president calls for Confederate flag removal | |
 | University of South Carolina President Harris Pastides Monday called for the removal of Confederate flag from a memorial on the State House grounds. Pastides is among several state leaders -- and the first from a major state public university -- to call for the flag's removal, in light of the massacre Wednesday night at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston. "It is because, simply, it is the right thing to do and the right time to do it.," Pastides told of a packed room at Capstone conference room on campus. Nine African-Americans were killed while attending a Bible study at the historic church. Twenty-one-year-old Dylann Roof, who is white, was arrested and charged; police say he has confessed. Pastides spoke at a noon memorial service at Capstone to remember the nine victims. |
| U. of Florida prof, grad students to testify on GMOs in D.C. | |
| University of Florida research scientist Kevin Folta will take two graduate students with him to testify before Congress on GMOs this week. Folta, the director of the Horticultural Science department and an expert in strawberry genomics, will accompany Chris Barbey and Alejandra Abril Guevara -- both doctoral students in plant biology -- to Washington D.C. to appear before the house Science Committee. Folta said he looks forward to giving scientific and evidence-based answers to congressional concerns about GMOs, product safety, food labeling and regulation. "The House Science Committee has been wrestling with issues of biotech for some time," Folta said via email. "My read is that between corporate lobbyists and raging activists, they probably have not had a chance to really discover the objective science." |
| UK's refusal to release information about animal research violates open-records law, state rules | |
 | The University of Kentucky has twice violated the state's open-records law since 2014, according to opinions released Monday by the Kentucky attorney general's office. In the first case, UK denied an August 2014 request by a researcher with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals for copies of "approved protocols for the use of animals in teaching exercises." UK denied the information on the grounds that releasing details of the protocols "jeopardizes the safety of researchers" by identifying them and describing activities that might "incite harassment of or violence against" those researchers. UK lawyers also argued the information was proprietary and might harm UK's pursuit of competitive grants. |
| Sale of UGA TV station will be complete July 1 | |
 | The University of Georgia will get out of the TV broadcasting business at the end of this month. The Federal Communications Commission approved the sale of UGA-owned WUGA-TV earlier this month, and university officials and the station's buyer, Marquee Broadcasting Georgia, agreed the station's broadcast spectrum and other assets will be transferred July 1, said Tom Jackson, UGA's vice president for public affairs. UGA administrators announced in April that Marquee would buy the public TV station for $2.5 million and convert it back into a commercial station. UGA will put the $2.5 million into student programs, primarily scholarships, Jackson said. |
| State Police: LSU police officer accused of stealing $1,500; $16,000 still missing | |
 | An LSU police officer and former treasurer of a campus police association was arrested Monday and accused of stealing $1,500 through her position as treasurer. Carrie Richardson-Heckard, 46, of Denham Springs, was booked on a count of felony theft, Sgt. Nick Manale, a State Police spokesman, said in a news release. State Police began an investigation in January after the LSU Police Association conducted an audit and discovered a misappropriation of more than $16,000 in funds between November 2007 and June 2010, Manale said. |
| Michael Benedik chosen as Texas A&M vice provost | |
 | Texas A&M University announced Monday that Dean of Faculties Michael Benedik has been chosen as the school's vice provost, effective July 1. Benedik, a professor of biology and genetics, will replace former Vice Provost Pamela Matthews, who was recently selected as the dean of the College of Liberal Arts. According to the news release, Benedik will provide leadership for a variety of campus-wide initiatives in concert with Provost Karan Watson, the dean of faculties, the college deans and the vice president for research, with an emphasis on multi-college interdisciplinary curricular programs and academic strategic initiatives. |
| Texas A&M engineering professor cuts size, cost of textbook | |
| Don Phillips has been around Texas A&M University long enough to see a fair share of changes take place. In his 40 years as a manufacturing and industrial engineering professor in the Dwight Look College of Engineering, he has seen women accepted into the Corps of Cadets for the first time, six Reveille mascots and campus enrollment grow by more than 30,000 students. But there was always one constant: textbook prices never seemed to stop increasing. Phillips bucked the trend in May when he and Auburn University professor J.T. Black teamed up to self-publish a 390-page textbook that won the Shingo Institute's Research and Professional Publication award in May for its unique content. He hopes the book, titled "Lean Engineering: The Future Has Arrived," which sells for as low as $48 used and $65 new through the official university bookstore, will encourage educators to produce award-winning materials while simultaneously keeping costs for students low. |
| U. of Missouri Graduate School increases stipends, cuts tuition waiver | |
 | The University of Missouri Office of Graduate Studies announced last week that it would raise the stipends for all graduate teaching assistantships but cut the traditional waiver of tuition to 50 percent for those with 10-hour appointments. Starting this fall, stipends will increase for all graduate student assistantships by 8 percent. Ten-hour appointments will increase from $2,550 to $2,754, and 20-hour appointments will increase from $5,100 to $5,508. Doctoral assistantships will increase to $3,029 for 10-hour appointments and $6,058 for 20-hour appointments. Beginning in the fall of 2016, new graduate students with 10-hour appointments will have to pay 50 percent of their tuition costs, but those with 20-hour appointments will not be affected. |
| Report calls attention to the 'crisis' in attacks on higher education worldwide | |
 | An April attack on Kenya's Garissa University College by Shabab militants that left 147 people dead. The disappearance -- and presumed killing -- of 43 students at Mexico's Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers' College of Ayotzinapa last fall. The September 2014 killing of Muhammad Shakil Auj, dean of Islamic studies at the University of Karachi in Pakistan and a liberal Muslim scholar who had reportedly been accused by fellow professors of blasphemy for a speech he gave abroad. Those are just 3 of nearly 250 incidents analyzed in a new report on global attacks on higher education from the Scholars at Risk Academic Freedom Monitoring Project. Rob Quinn, executive director of the Scholars at Risk Network, which is affiliated with NYU, said he hopes readers of the report will gain "an appreciation of the scope and crisis level of this problem." |
| A Professor Crowdsources a Syllabus on the Charleston Shootings | |
 | On Thursday morning, when Chad Williams woke up to the news that a white gunman had killed nine black people inside a historic church in Charleston, S.C., he thought he was having a bad dream. Watching the news only compounded his sorrow and frustration. Public conversations about the shooting were generally devoid of the kind of historical knowledge that frames contemporary racial violence and its deep roots. Two days later Mr. Williams decided that he wouldn't just sit and stew. He thought about how another historian, Marcia Chatelain, an assistant professor at Georgetown University, had responded to the events in Ferguson, Mo., last August by creating the #FergusonSyllabus hashtag on Twitter. That hashtag spawned conversations about race, violence, and history. Mr. Williams wondered if he could do the same. |
| Law on Confederate flag in South Carolina could prevent removal of one at Citadel | |
| In South Carolina, a state law governs the Confederate flag on the State House grounds -- a flag that has become the source of increasing criticism after the murders last week of nine people in a historic black church, apparently by a man obsessed with symbols of the Old South. Governor Nikki Haley and other South Carolina Republicans -- who have insisted on preserving the flag's honored place there -- have started to change their positions on the issue. It turns out that the state law also protects the placement of another Confederate flag. This one is in the chapel of the Citadel, a public university in the state. That flag is governed by the Heritage Act, which passed in 2000 and which led to the removal of the Confederate flag from atop the State House and placed it in a memorial on the State House grounds. |
SPORTS
| Russell Athletic confuses Mississippi State, Texas A&M on same jersey | |
| Fans have long complained about the similarities between Mississippi State and Texas A&M's jerseys manufactured by adidas. Both schools share similar maroon and white colors, which wound up confusing Russell Athletic. A picture of a maroon No. 15 jersey appeared on Twitter on Monday. It featured a Mississippi State and Texas A&M logo on the sleeves. Across the chest it read "Mississippi State." Adidas is the official jersey designer for MSU and Texas A&M. Last year, when Mississippi State signed a seven-year deal with adidas, the company's director of football acknowledged the similarities between the two schools. "I'll be really honest, as we've moved into the last couple of years things have gotten a little closer than we'd like them to be," Adidas' Director of football Mark Daniels told the Clarion-Ledger last year. "We are diligently focused on separating them even more." |
| SEC Network plans 'takeover' by schools | |
| The programming on the SEC Network will be "taken over" for two weeks, starting on June 29, by each of the league's schools for a day this summer. The Mississippi State takeover will be on July 6. Each SEC school will have representatives, who helped select some of the programming, appear in commercials on their day. For Mississippi State, that's football coach Dan Mullen and quarterback Dak Prescott. Programming will include some classic games, films, ESPN original content and some school-produced content. |
| O'Neal resigns as Ole Miss track coach | |
| A week after leading his team at the NCAA Track & Field Championships, Brian O'Neal has resigned from his post as head coach of the Ole Miss men's and women's track programs. The surprising news was announced in a release from Ole Miss on Monday afternoon. O'Neal, a native of Pontotoc and Ole Miss graduate, had been in Oxford three years after coming from the University of Florida. "I do so with a heavy heart, but I believe this action to be in the best interests of the university and my own interests," O'Neal said. |
| See how the largest video scoreboard in college football will look at Auburn | |
 | You've seen the unofficial renderings and the continuous live video updates from Jordan-Hare Stadium as Auburn ramps up to the football season and prepares to unveil college football's largest video board. Now we have our closest look yet at what the scoreboard in the south end zone will look like when the Tigers host Jacksonville State on Sept. 12. The board measuring 190-by-57 feet will be surrounded by a gray facade on the borders with a large "AU" shield logo at the top of the structure. The $13.9 million construction project is scheduled to be completed in July or August. |
| Peyton Manning hands out four more scholarships at U. of Tennessee | |
 | Denver Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning awarded eponymous scholarships to four incoming University of Tennessee students in Knoxville on Monday. The four students, who were presented with the scholarships during a ceremony in Tennessee's football locker room named for Manning, are Ainsley Ellington, Jason Liang, Michael Lidwin and Cookeville's Alayna Marie Cameron. Twenty-five students have now been awarded the Manning scholarship, which was first endowed in 1998. |
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