Mississippi lawmakers move toward restoring voting rights to 32 felons as broader suffrage bill dies
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) - Mississippi legislators advanced bills Monday to give voting rights back to 32 people convicted of felonies, weeks after a Senate leader killed a broader bill that would have restored suffrage to many more people with criminal records. The move is necessary due to Mississippi's piecemeal approach ...
Apr 23, 2024
A man escaped Sudan's bloody civil war. His mysterious death in Missisippi has sparked suspicion
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) - As a child, Dau Mabil escaped war-torn Sudan and built a new life in Mississippi. This month, fishermen found the body of the 33-year-old Mabil floating in a river, prompting calls for a federal investigation into his disappearance and death. Mabil, who lived in Jackson with his wife, went missing...
Apr 22, 2024
Mississippi legislators won't smooth the path this year to restore voting rights after some felonies
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) - Kenneth Almons says he began a 23-year sentence in a Mississippi prison just two weeks after graduating from high school, and one of his felony convictions - for armed robbery - stripped away voting rights that he still has not regained decades later. Now 51, Almons told lawmakers Wednesday that h...
Apr 18, 2024
Advocates push for full Medicaid expansion as Mississippi legislators enter negotiations
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) - A coalition of advocates rallied for full Medicaid expansion Tuesday at the Mississippi Capitol as lawmakers prepare to negotiate a final plan that could extend health care coverage to tens of thousands of residents in one of the poorest states in the U.S. Members of Working Together Mississippi -...
Apr 17, 2024
Storms bring floods and damaging wind across the South; 1 dead in Mississippi
SLIDELL, La. (AP) - Severe storms blamed for a death in Mississippi spawned a tornado that demolished buildings in one Louisiana city Wednesday while inundating streets in low-lying New Orleans with hours of steady rain that snarled traffic and strained the city's antiquated drainage system. Severe weather stretched ac...
Apr 11, 2024
Mississippi Senate blocks House proposal to revise school funding formula
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) - Mississippi lawmakers are unlikely to create a new funding formula for public schools this year, after senators blocked a House proposal Tuesday - an action that creates tension during the final weeks of a four-month legislative session. Senate Education Committee Chairman Dennis DeBar said leader...
Apr 10, 2024
As a Mississippi town reels from a devastating tornado, a displaced family finds its way home
ROLLING FORK, Miss. (AP) - As a deadly tornado barreled toward their home in the Mississippi Delta, Ida Cartlidge only had time to scoop up her 1-year-old son, Nolan, and hold him close. Cartlidge huddled with her husband and three sons on the living room floor of their Rolling Fork mobile home, its thin walls all that...
Apr 08, 2024
Mississippi state budget is expected to shrink slightly in the coming year
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) - Budget writers in the Mississippi Legislature will have slightly less money to spend during the coming year than they did in the current one. Top members of the House and Senate met Friday and set a revenue estimate of $7.6 billion for the year that begins July 1. That is a decrease of 1% from the...
Apr 08, 2024
11 injured as bus carrying University of South Carolina fraternity crashes in Mississippi
BAY ST. LOUIS, Miss. (AP) - Eleven people were injured when a bus carrying University of South Carolina students blew a tire and hit a concrete barrier in Mississippi. Mississippi state troopers said the driver and a student were critically injured and taken by helicopter to hospitals after the crash Friday, while nine...
Apr 08, 2024
Mississippi capital to revamp how it notifies next of kin about deaths with Justice Department help
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) - After men near Mississippi's capital were buried in a pauper's cemetery without their relatives' knowledge, the U.S. Justice Department will help the city's police revamp policies for performing next-of-kin death notifications. The intervention follows the discovery that seven men were buried in u...
Apr 05, 2024