JACKSON, Miss. (AP) - Jackson Mayor Chokwe Lumumba (SHOW-kway Lu-MOOM-bah), a nationally prominent attorney and human rights activist who persuaded voters into accepting a sales tax to fix crumbling roads and infrastructure in Mississippi’s capital, died Tuesday.
He was 66.
City officials said Lumumba died at St. Dominic Hospital. A cause of death was not immediately clear, though City Council president Charles Tillman, who was sworn in as acting mayor, said he had met Monday with Lumumba, who had a cold.
“He kind of joked around about it,” Tillman said.
As an attorney, Lumumba represented Tupac Shakur in several cases, including one in which the rapper was cleared of aggravated assault charges in the shootings of two off-duty police officers who were in Atlanta but from another city. Shakur died in 1996.
In 2011, Lumumba persuaded then-Gov. Haley Barbour, a Republican, to release sisters Jamie Scott and Gladys Scott from a Mississippi prison after they had served 16 years for an armed robbery they said they didn’t commit. Barbour suspended their life sentences and released them. The sisters did not receive a pardon from Barbour when he left office in early 2012, although he granted pardons and other reprieves to more than 200 people during his final days as governor. Barbour released the women on the condition that Gladys give a kidney to Jamie.
___
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - Tennessee was among the more than two-thirds of states rated as “high risk” for security problems related to its computers tapping into the federal health insurance exchange system.
Federal cybersecurity experts worried in advance of the Oct. 1 deadline for new insurance exchanges that state computer systems could become a backdoor for hackers and identity thieves. But the Obama administration says the issues have been resolved or addressed, and no successful cyberattacks have occurred.
The federal data hub is used to check Social Security, Internal Revenue Service and Homeland Security records to verify key personal information for determining coverage eligibility under the Affordable Care Act.
“Tennessee is taking all necessary safeguards to protect applicant and enrollee data,” Kelly Gunderson, a spokeswoman for TennCare, said in an email.
Gunderson said that “while there may have been a possible concern” raised in November about needing an outside security assessment, the state was ultimately granted access to the federal system.
Still, Tennessee is the only state of the 46 with authority to connect to the federal hub that is operating under a 60-day access agreement. The others operate under three-year arrangements.
___
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - A man whose 1965 Volkswagen Beetle was stolen nearly 40 years ago and recently recovered in Detroit says he never stopped thinking about that car.
Joe MacDonald of Knoxville, Tenn., said he used to buy Beetles to fix up and sell. He had many of them, but he says he never stopped grieving for the red convertible that he had running “slick as a ribbon” before it was stolen.
The car was found in January when federal border agents checked the paperwork as it was about to be shipped overseas for restoration. MacDonald said he learned the car had been located from a reporter at WBIR-TV.
MacDonald has contacted U.S. Customs and Border Protection about getting the car back. He says they are sending him a form to fill out.
___
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - A petition with more than 9,000 signatures supporting Tennessee’s Common Core standards was released Tuesday amid efforts by some lawmakers to do away with them.
A statewide alliance of more than 400 business, community and education organizations in Tennessee released the online petition, which was to be emailed to members of the Tennessee General Assembly.
Hard copies of the petition were presented to members of the House Education Subcommittee that was to hear proposals addressing the new benchmarks for reading and math. Proposals to do away with the standards or restrict them were delayed until the final meeting of the subcommittee, which faced a room packed with Common Core supporters.
“Anytime there is a bill related to Common Core state standards … and raising expectations for students in Tennessee, there will be Tennesseans who will be here expressing their support,” said David Mansouri, executive vice president of the State Collaborative on Reforming Education, or SCORE, which is part of the alliance.
The standards - developed by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers - are intended to provide students with the critical thinking, problem solving and writing skills needed for college and the workforce.
They have been voluntarily adopted by 45 states. Tennessee adopted them in 2010 and began a three-year phase-in the following year.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.