Highly pathogenic avian influenza – commonly known as bird flu – has been detected in a commercial chicken flock in Noxubee County. 

Birds from the infected flock, which were being raised for meat, have not entered the food system. 

This is the third case of avian influenza uncovered in commercial poultry in Mississippi since the spring of 2023. The virus, which is widespread in wild birds worldwide, has also been detected in migratory waterfowl in multiple areas of Mississippi since November 2024. 

The public health risk associated with avian influenza in birds remains low, and poultry and eggs are safe to eat when they are handled and cooked properly, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Poultry and eggs should be cooked to an internal temperature of 165°F to kill bacteria and viruses. 

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Veterinary Services Laboratory notified the Mississippi Board of Animal Health that the poultry tested positive for avian influenza after testing samples from the flock at a laboratory in Mississippi and confirming the samples at a national laboratory in Iowa. 

The area has been quarantined and birds on the property have been killed to prevent spread of the virus.

The Mississippi Board of Animal Health is working with the poultry industry to heighten monitoring of chicken flocks statewide.

There has been one death associated with avian influenza in Louisiana and 70 human cases reported in the United States since 2024. There have been no reported cases in humans in Mississippi. 

Most reported cases have been mild, and cases generally last from a few days to less than two weeks. Symptoms include eye redness and irritation, fever, cough and a sore throat, though some symptoms can be more severe. 

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

by Rick Cleveland, Mississippi Today
March 13, 2025

They play the SEC Basketball Tournament this week in Nashville. The weather calls for pleasant springtime weather until Saturday when there is a 100 percent chance of rain and the forecast calls for thunderstorms that are likely to be severe.

And you ask: Why the hell does that matter? They play basketball indoors.

Well, let me tell you, there was one March when it really did matter. Boy, did it matter. 

We’re talking Atlanta and the Georgia Dome. 2008. It was a Friday night, March 14, although Friday the 13th should have been much appropriate. This was the quarterfinal round, last game of the night. Mississippi State vs. Alabama. Hell of a game. I was covering for the Clarion Ledger with my sidekick Kyle Veazey. We were on a fairly tight deadline, which is to say the newspaper was going to hold the presses until we filed our stories.

Of course, Alabama hit a desperation three-pointer to send the game into overtime. And now, State led 64-61 with two minutes, 11 seconds remaining. Just steps away from us, Bama’s Mykal Riley, who had hit the game-tying shot at the buzzer, dribbled the ball near the sideline with State’s Ben Hansbrough guarding him closely. Suddenly, we all heard this incredible roaring sound, really, like a freight train coming straight through the building, which began to shake. 

I looked at Veazey, and managed this: “Tornado?”

Kyle replied, wide-eyed, “Earthquake?”

Riley stopped dribbling. Hansbrough quit guarding. Both looked up at the ceiling. They were so close to us, we heard Hansbrough say to Riley, “Sounds like a tornado.”

It was.

Astonished and frightened fans all stood and looked all around, trying to figure out what was happening. Some rushed for the exits. A catwalk, hanging far above us, menacingly swung back and forth as if it might fall any second. Veazey and I didn’t know whether we should hide under the press table, check our britches, or run like hell. Suddenly, deadline pressure was the least of our worries.

As it turned out, the winds had torn off a huge section of fabric siding, leaving a gaping hole near the ceiling on one end of the building. Rain blew through that. The Georgia Dome cooled considerably in just minutes. Nature provided a lot more air conditioning than needed.

On the State bench, Coach Rick Stansbury looked into the stands and finally spotted his wife, Meo, and one of their three sons. He texted her and asked where the other two sons were. She texted back that they were sitting down on the bench with him.

“I had a little lapse there,” Stansbury later told us.

We all did.

The delay lasted about an hour. The Bulldogs – Hail State and all that – eventually claimed a two-point victory. Alabama’s Riley launched a 3-pointer at the buzzer from nearly the same spot where he had been dribbling when Mother Nature so rudely interrupted. The ball went in the basket, then rattled out.

What came next was a waiting game. SEC officials and athletic directors met behind closed doors for a couple hours before a decision was made the tournament would be continued the next day at Georgia Tech. The Georgia Dome was declared unsafe.

Several of us reporters already knew before the announcement came. How? We were walking around near the loading docks when we saw workers loading up all the cameras and production equipment on the TV trucks.

“Where y’all headed?” we asked.

“Georgia Tech’s gym,” one of them answered.

To make a long, long story short, the tournament was finished on Saturday and Sunday in the much smaller Georgia Tech arena. The SEC lost hundreds of thousands of dollars – if not more – on ticket refunds. As fate did have it, Georgia, one of the two lowest seeds, shocked everyone but perhaps themselves by winning the whole thing. Dennis Felton’s Bulldogs, who had upset Ole Miss by two points in the first round, defeated Kentucky, Mississippi State and then Arkansas. They heroically won those last three games over two days (30 hours). Georgia had entered the tournament with a 13-16 record. The Bulldogs entered the NCAA Tournament with the SEC’s automatic bid at 17-16.

It was weird, by far the weirdest SEC Tournament on record.

Thankfully, nobody died. In retrospect, many might have perished or been badly injured if not for Mykal Riley’s shot that sent the Alabama-Mississippi State game into overtime. Had Riley not made that shot, thousands of fans would have been exiting the arena – or already out on the sidewalks and streets – when the tornado roared through downtown Atlanta.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

by Taylor Vance, Mississippi Today
March 13, 2025

When representatives of Alcorn State University, one of the oldest historically Black colleges in the state, came to the Capitol recently to recognize Hiram Revels’ importance in Mississippi history, members of the House of Representatives offered a round of applause during the presentation.

The special recognition came after the majority-GOP House unanimously passed a resolution honoring Revels, a Natchez resident, the first president of Alcorn State and the first Black person to sit as a member of Congress in Washington.  

“In 1868, Revels became a delegate to the Mississippi State Republican Convention where he played a pivotal role in advocating for the rights of freedmen and ensuring their participation in the political process,” Democratic Rep. Gregory Hollaway of Hazelhurst said in his remarks about the groundbreaking figure. 

But legislation pending in that same chamber could honor Revels more prominently. Yet, House leadership has declined to advance it out of a committee and will likely let it die, as they have for the past several years. 

Rep. Robert Johnson III, the Democratic leader, authored a resolution to replace Mississippi’s two statues of Jefferson Davis and J.Z. George in the U.S Capitol’s National Statuary Hall Collection with statues of civil rights icon Fannie Lou Hamer and Revels. 

Johnson told Mississippi Today he is open to other replacements or other proposal to replaces the statues. 

House Rules Chairman Fred Shanks, who could advance the measure, told Mississippi Today last year he would consider legislation to replace the statues during the 2025 session, but he recently said he does not plan to address the issue this year. 

“There hasn’t been a lot of talk about it,” Shanks said. “The big thing leadership is pushing this year is tax cuts.” 

Each U.S. state is allowed to place two statues of people “illustrious for their historic renown” or “distinguished civil or military services,” after Congress passed a federal law in the mid-nineteenth century establishing the national collection. 

Some Democratic House members who participated in the event honoring Revels noticed that the measures to install a statue of Revels in Washington have stalled during the session. 

“It would speak volumes about our state racially and historically if we honored him with a statue in Washington,” Democratic Rep. Grace Bulter-Washington of Jackson said of Revels.   

Senate Rules Committee Chairman Dean Kirby, a Republican from Pearl, also let two Senate measures that would have replaced the statues in the U.S. Capitol die in his committee. 

Mississippi remains an outlier for its statues, even among other Southern states. The Magnolia State is currently the only state in the nation to honor two Confederate leaders in the National Statuary Hall Collection. 

Several Southern states have replaced their original statues with more inclusive figures. 

Alabama replaced a statue of Jabez Lamar Monroe Curry, a Confederate officer, with one of Helen Keller, a political activist and disability rights advocate.

Florida approved a measure to replace Confederate Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith with Mary McLeod Bethune, a civil rights activist and founder of a Florida university.  

Arkansas replaced statues of Uriah Milton Rose, a Confederate sympathizer, and James Paul Clarke, a former U.S. senator, with statues of civil rights activist Daisy Bates and musician Johnny Cash.

But Mississippi, whose leaders often fret that the rest of the nation does not recognize the state for its many contributions to music, literature, and civil rights activism, continues to honor the legacy of people who fought to maintain slavery and white supremacy during their day. 

Both Davis and George were leaders of the Confederacy, and their vivid racism is well documented.

Davis served in the U.S. House and Senate from Mississippi before becoming the first and only president of the Confederate States of America, which fought to preserve slavery. Davis later said in a speech to the Mississippi Legislature that if he had the chance to change his past actions about secession, he would not do anything differently.

George was a member of Mississippi’s Secession Convention in 1861, and he signed the secession ordinance that included these words: “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery — the greatest material interest of the world.”

George served in the Confederate Army and was also the architect of the 1890 Constitution that sought to reestablish white supremacy in the state and disenfranchise Black citizens from voting or holding elected office.

Mississippi’s legislative leaders could easily replace the two statues, as many Southern states have done. 
To change a statue, federal law requires a majority of lawmakers in both legislative chambers to vote to approve the replacement, and the state is required to pay for the costs of replacing the two statues.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.