Month: August 2022

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves declared a state of emergency on Monday due to the state capitol’s water shortage. Reeves said the Mississippi State Department of Health (MSDH) is also working to prepare an emergency order due to little or no water pressure in the city of Jackson.

The state of emergency declaration comes after Jackson Mayor Chokwe A. Lumumba declared a water system emergency due to complications from the Pearl River flooding. The mayor said the flooding led to water pressure issues at the O.B. Curtis Water Treatment Facility, causing little to no water pressure for many Jackson customers. Until the issue at the treatment facility has been fixed, there is no reliable, running water in the city, affecting more than 100,000 people.

State Health Officer Dr. Daniel Edney said neighbors should boil their water for one minute before consuming it. The state has also created a mobile incident command center, which will be in operation on Tuesday to help with repairs and improvements at the water treatment plant. Reeves said the city of Jackson will be responsible for half of the cost of the emergency repairs that will be made at the facility.

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According to the Gorbachev Foundation, Mikhail Gorbachev — the final leader of the Soviet Union who helped end the Cold War and lead his country from communism to capitalism — died Tuesday at 91. The Interfax news agency said in a statement from the Central Clinical Hospital that “Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev died this evening after a serious and long illness.”  Gorbachev will be buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow next to his wife, Raisa Gorbachev, according to the agency.

Gorbachev grew up a committed communist during World War II. After graduating from Moscow State University with a law degree in 1955, he rose through the ranks of the Communist Party and ascended to the party’s top position of General Secretary in March 1985. Gorbachev inacted changes like “perestroika” and “glasnost”– reforms that sought to restructure the Soviet Union’s lagging economy and make its government more transparent.

In 1989, Gorbachev did not send in Soviet tanks to crush the uprisings when pro-democracy rallies began in Poland and swept across the Soviet bloc. The following year, he won the Nobel Peace Prize for helping end the Cold War. The Soviet Union quickly began to disintegrate as the captive Baltic nations of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia pulled away and other nations that had been under Moscow rule, including Ukraine, sought independence. Months after an attempted coup, Gorbachev resigned on Dec. 25, 1991; the Soviet Union was dissolved a day later.

Russian state news agency TASS reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed “deep condolences” over Gorbachev’s death.  Officials including Secretary General of the United Nations António Guterres and European Union Commission President Ursula von der Leyen praised Gorbachev’s leadership Tuesday, saying he changed the course of history and paved the way for a free Europe.

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