Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has appointed Clay Bright to serve as CEO of the Memphis Regional Megasite industrial complex. The site will soon be home to a Ford Motor Co. electric vehicle and battery plant. Bright currently serves as the commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Transportation. He is slated to earn $175,000 a year … Read more
Tennessee’s most populous county has lifted a mask requirement for indoor, public spaces due to a drop in COVID-19 cases, but the face coverings are still required inside schools. Shelby County is still highly recommending mask-wearing inside restaurants, bars, grocery stores, retail shops and other indoor spaces, according to an order issued Wednesday by the … Read more
Emails show that the firing of Tennessee’s former vaccination director caught the state’s top health leaders off guard and sent them scrambling for answers. Meanwhile the health commissioner fumed over the praise fellow coworkers heaped on the ousted employee. Earlier this year, Tennessee’s Department of Health sparked national attention when Dr. Michelle Fiscus was fired … Read more
The Mississippi attorney general can take over a case when a local prosecutor steps away, but the takeover must be voluntary and a judge cannot set deadlines for the work. In a unanimous ruling Tuesday, Mississippi Supreme Court justices said a circuit court “acted outside its authority” this year when it ordered Attorney General Lynn … Read more
The governing board for Mississippi’s eight public universities is extending the contract of Mississippi State University President Mark Keenum, and while his annual compensation remains the same, a larger share of it will come from public money. The board of trustees for the Institutions of Higher Learning announced Thursday that it had approved Keenum’s new … Read more
The Mississippi Supreme on Thursday set a Nov. 17 execution date for an inmate who withdrew his appeals and once filed court papers calling himself “worthy of death.” Mississippi has not had an execution since 2012, and it had six that year. David Neal Cox pleaded guilty in 2012 to killing his wife, Kim, in … Read more
Tennessee lawmakers have committed to spending nearly $900 million as part of a sweeping plan with Ford Motor Co. to build an electric vehicle and battery plant near Memphis. It took the Republican-led General Assembly just three days to sign off on the economic package after Gov. Bill Lee called them back to the Capitol … Read more
Dr. Alton Cobb, a former Mississippi state health officer who helped create some of the nation’s most comprehensive vaccination requirements for children, died Friday. He was 92. Cobb was the top public health official from 1973 to 1992 in one of the poorest states in the nation. The current state health officer, Dr. Thomas Dobbs, … Read more
Good news on the COVID-19 front in Desoto County, as health officials locally say COVID-19 rates have declined significantly in the last couple of weeks. County EMS Director Mark Davis gave the board of supervisors an update oin Monday, saying there were 676 aqctiuve cases currently. That’s down about 455 cases since the last meeting … Read more
A top Southern Baptist Convention leader says he will resign after weeks of denominational division over a sexual abuse review. In a statement, Ronnie Floyd said Oct. 31 will be his last day as president and CEO of the convention’s Executive Committee.