Mississippi

Authorities say a 70-year-old Mississippi oncologist is accused of hiring two men to kill the lawyer who represented his ex-wife when they divorced in the 1990s. Greenwood city police told the Greenwood Commonwealth (http://bit.ly/KkGz9W ) that Dr. Arnold Smith of Greenwood and William Paul Muller, a 54-year-old brick mason from Morgan City, were arrested Sunday and held without bond on a charge of conspiracy to kill attorney Lee Abraham. Police said 23-year-old Keaira Byrd and 25-year-old Derrick Lacy entered Abraham's law office Saturday night, but agents from the...

JACKSON, Miss. - Two shooting victims along Mississippi highways may have been killed by someone who posed as law enforcement and pulled them over late at night, authorities said Monday. Thomas Schlender, 74, of Raymond, Neb., was found in his car on Interstate 55 in Panola County on May 8 about 1:30 a.m. Three days later, Lori Anne Carswell, 48, of Hernando, was found near her car on Mississippi Highway 713 in Tunica County about 2:15 a.m. Friday. Larry Waggoner, director of the state Bureau of Investigation, said authorities were investigating whether the suspect was impersonating an...

WASHINGTON - The Homeland Security Department swept aside evaluations of government experts and named Mississippi - home to powerful US lawmakers with sway over the agency - as a top location for a new $451 million, national laboratory to study some of the world's most virulent biological threats, according to internal documents obtained by the Associated Press. Mississippi's lawmakers include the Democratic chairman of the department's oversight committee in the House and the senior Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee, which is expected to approve money to build the...

HATTIESBURG, Miss. Last November , Republicans finally took control of the House of Representatives here, the final victory of the party's long Southern strategy. Not since Reconstruction had the GOP controlled every facet of political life. It wasn't just any ol' Republicans either; former Governor Haley Barbour is considered a moderate now. Governor Phil Bryant is a creature of the Tea Party. Though this is not a border state, every aspect of political life was aligned to follow in the footsteps of Arizona, Alabama, and Georgia in passing sweeping...

The Mississippi River has a stature in American English commensurate with its size. Not only did it give one of our best writers his pseudonym — Samuel Clemens took the name Mark Twain from a riverboatman’s cry — but it also gave rise to a number of other words and phrases, from poetic names such as “Father of Waters” and the “Queen of Floods” to colorful terms like blackleg (a riverboat card cheat), showboat , sell down the river , and all alligator (someone notably strong or skilled)

The Navy is counting down to the christening of the submarine Mississippi at a shipyard in Groton. Officials including Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus are expected to attend the ceremony on Dec. 3 at General Dynamics Electric Boat. Construction on the Virginia-class attack submarine began in February 2007. It's expected to be commissioned at a ceremony next June in Gulfport, Mississippi. The sub is the fifth Navy vessel to carry the name Mississippi. Electric Boat and Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia take turns delivering the Virginia-class subs,...

Children returning home from school found the bodies of a man and two women in Mississippi, and police are investigating the deaths as homicides. D'Iberville Police Chief Wayne Payne tells The Sun Herald ( http://bit.ly/qFGBUd) that the bodies were found inside a home Wednesday. He said the three were alive when children who live in the home left for school that morning. Payne says one of the children returned home after school and found the bodies. A coroner says the victims were found slain in two bedrooms inside the home.

ATLANTA - Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee lead the nation when it comes to obesity, a new government survey reported yesterday. More than 30 percent of adults in each of the states tipped the scales enough to ensure the South remains the nation's fattest region. Colorado was the least obese, with about 19 percent fitting that category in a random telephone survey last year by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The 2007 findings are similar to results from the same survey the three previous years.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — Republican Newt Gingrich says he'll campaign for president until the party's nominating convention in August, but his candidacy largely rests on the results of primaries Tuesday in Alabama and Mississippi. Asked by reporters how he felt about his chances, Gingrich said: ‘‘Pretty good. " The former House speaker is banking on a Southern strategy that so far has yielded two victories: in South Carolina and Georgia, which he represented in Congress for 20 years.

A resurgent Rick Santorum swept to victory in primaries in Alabama and Mississippi Tuesday night, upending the race for the Republican presidential nomination yet again and trying to nudge Newt Gingrich toward the sidelines. Mitt Romney was running third in both states. "We did it again," Santorum told cheering supporters in Lafayette, La. He added, "Now is the time for conservatives to pull together" in an effort to defeat Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who still is the faraway leader in the delegate competition to pick an opponent to President Barack Obama...

WHO Linkie Marais WHAT The North Attleborough pastry chef and cake decorator, 28, is one of 15 finalists on season eight of "Food Network Star. " Marais grew up in Cape Town, South Africa, and moved to Mississippi at 16. Two years ago, she and her husband came to New England, where she's been freelancing in bakeries. WHEN A two-hour "Food Network Star" premieres Sunday at 9 p.m. on Food Network. Q. What were your concerns entering the competition?

Hip-hop is often so loud, cocky, and rhythmically suggestive that its most bullying tendencies can seem inevitable, even to fans with conflicted consciences. Big K.R.I.T.'s loud, cocky, and rhythmically suggestive performance Tuesday at the Middle East felt refreshing largely because it seemed to eschew bullying naturally, leaving out the violent tales and disparaging sexism without undercutting hip-hop's raw and rude rebellion. In its trappings, the show hit Southern hip-hop's blustering formulas expertly, demonstrating how this 25-year-old Mississippi rapper and producer has...

A bill to give businesses in Mississippi a larger income tax credit when they pay inventory taxes is headed to Gov. Phil Bryant. The final version of Senate Bill 2934 passed the Senate Monday, two days after clearing the House. The bill would increase the tax credit in phases. First, it would double the ceiling on the credit to $10,000 in 2014. In 2015 it would raise the ceiling to $15,000. Finally, in 2016, it would make the credit equal to state income tax or inventory tax, whichever is the smaller figure.

Authorities say a 70-year-old Mississippi oncologist is accused of hiring two men to kill the lawyer who represented his ex-wife when they divorced in the 1990s. Greenwood city police told the Greenwood Commonwealth (http://bit.ly/KkGz9W ) that Dr. Arnold Smith of Greenwood and William Paul Muller, a 54-year-old brick mason from Morgan City, were arrested Sunday and held without bond on a charge of conspiracy to kill attorney Lee Abraham. Police said 23-year-old Keaira Byrd and 25-year-old Derrick Lacy entered Abraham's law office Saturday night,...

JACKSON, Miss. - A former Mississippi mayor and prison warden was sentenced Tuesday to seven months behind bars for telling an inmate to lie to investigators about having sex with him in a hotel room in 2009. Grady Sims, who served as the mayor of Walnut Grove in central Mississippi for 31 years, told the judge that he lost his job as mayor, his personal vending business, and "suffered shame and disgrace. " Sims was first elected mayor in 1981. In October 2009, he became warden of the Walnut Grove Transition Center, a privately run prison designed as a reentry facility...

STARKVILLE, Miss. - Governor Phil Bryant on Sunday expressed his sorrow at the shooting deaths of two college students in Mississippi over the weekend. John Sanderson, 21, of Madison, Miss., was shot to death late Saturday in a Mississippi State University dormitory. The killing appears to be isolated, according to university officials. A 19-year-old freshman at Jackson State University was shot in the face and killed at an off-campus apartment pool party in Jackson early Sunday.

When Daniel Musgrove moves from Indiana to Mississippi with his family in the summer of 1972, the white 16-year-old begins a tragicomic odyssey through issues of race, violence, and sexuality that changes him forever. Such a novel would seem provocative, exploring as it does a complex adolescent experience and an evolving moment in our cultural history, when the transformations of prior years were just beginning to take shape. Unfortunately, this novel falls short of that promise.

Of nine polls conducted in Alabama this month, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum led in just one. Polls put Santorum in third place in Mississippi. When the two states held their primaries on Tuesday, Santorum won both, leading pollsters to wonder: what went wrong? "It appears that the intensity of support for Rick Santorum was higher than was picked up in the polls," said Scott Rasmussen, president of Rasmussen Reports, which polled in both states. "I think that's something we're going to have to contend with going forward.

WASHINGTON - Rick Santorum won primaries in Mississippi and Alabama on Tuesday night, notching striking victories in two Southern states and again reshaping the Republican nominating contest by challenging Mitt Romney's front-runner status and Newt Gingrich's ability to stay viable in the race. The narrow wins cement Santorum as the chief challenger to Romney, providing the former Pennsylvania senator with a clearer shot at a one-on-one contest that will distill the intraparty battle into two candidates who represent different factions of the party.