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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The U.S. Justice Department has finished its privilege review of the documents seized from former President Donald Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago.  The disclosure that the review is complete was made in a court filing Monday regarding a request from Trump’s lawyers for the appointment of an outside expert known as a special master to review the seized documents.

The Justice Department wrote in its Monday filing that the privilege review team has “identified a limited set of materials that potentially contain attorney-client privileged information” and has “completed its review of those materials.”  The DOJ also said it is “in the process of following the procedures set forth in paragraph 84 of the search warrant affidavit to address potential privilege disputes, if any.”

The filing came after U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon on Saturday indicated in a ruling that she would potentially grant Trump’s request for the special master, and gave the Justice Department until Tuesday to present its arguments. Cannon had also asked the Justice Department for an update on its review of the documents seized, and a more detailed listing of the documents in the trove.

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NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) and the Orion capsule, which were slated to launch as ‘Artemis I’ on a test flight to the moon, was scrubbed on Monday when engine troubles thwarted the much-anticipated liftoff.

Engineers detected an issue with one of the fuel lines as the rocket was being loaded with propellant. A liquid hydrogen line used to cool the rocket’s core-stage engines malfunctioned partway through the launch countdown, and the test flight was eventually called off after troubleshooting efforts failed. The SLS rocket’s four core-stage engines need to be cooled to cryogenic temperatures prior to launch to avoid shocking the system with ultracold fuel when ignited.

Artemis mission manager at NASA Headquarters Mike Sarafin said in a news briefing on Monday that the agency may try the launch again as early as Friday, if deemed safe to do so.  NASA Administrator Bill Nelson added that the agency will not go through with the test until the vehicle is ready: “When you’re dealing in a high-risk business — and spaceflight is risky — that’s what you do. You buy down that risk. You make it as safe as possible.”

NASA officials said the rocket and spacecraft are currently “in a stable, safe condition,” adding that engineers will continue to gather data from the vehicle on the launch pad. The agency is expected to hold another briefing Tuesday to discuss initial findings from the investigation.

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