Business Blog

NEW YORK (AP) — Searching for compromise on a divisive issue, the Boy Scouts of America is proposing to partially lift its long-standing exclusion of gays — allowing them as youth members but continuing to bar them as adult leaders. The proposal, unveiled Friday after weeks of private leadership deliberations, will be submitted to the [...]

East Mississippi Electric Association is raising rates for some customers because of higher wholesale power rates charged by Mississippi Power Co. to cover the costs of its Kemper County power plant. The Meridian-based electric cooperative says customers in Lauderdale, Clarke, Newton, Wayne and Jasper counties will see power rates rise by 9.3 percent starting with [...]

  Wholesale natural gas prices have doubled during the last year, and that’s bringing sighs of relief from an unusual variety of interests. Soaring production and an unusually warm winter sent prices plunging to under $2 per thousand cubic feet last spring, prompting some to wonder whether the natural gas boom would kill demand for [...]

After two years of struggle, a bill to make it easier to create charter schools is on its way to Gov. Phil Bryant. The State Senate voted 34-18 Wednesday to approve House Bill 369, which widens legal authority for charter schools. Senate Education Committee Chairman Gray Tollison, an Oxford Republican, says he had hoped to [...]

Tate Reeves looked like a wizard after his first legislative session as Mississippi lieutenant governor. But the reputation of the Republican leader of the Senate could be in for a radical re-evaluation if a charter school expansion doesn’t make it into law in the closing days of the 2013 session. In 2012, Reeves stiffed the [...]

College Board officials say William “Bill” LaForge is their nominee to be president at Delta State University. » See related MBJ links for Bill LaForge LaForge is currently a lobbyist in Washington, D.C. A native of Cleveland and graduate of Delta State, his father was a professor of history there. LaForge will meet with campus [...]

Visitors to America’s national parks will encounter fewer rangers, find locked restrooms and visitors centers, and see trashcans emptied less often if 5 percent across-the-board cuts are enacted by sequestration. A National Park Service internal memo obtained by The Associated Press compiles a list of cuts in services in parks from Cape Cod to Yosemite. [...]

VICKSBURG — An Oklahoma Indian tribe and the bankrupt owner of two DiamondJacks casinos are suing each other over the collapse of the tribe’s plan to buy the gambling halls. Global Gaming Solutions, a unit of the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma, wants a federal bankruptcy judge to declare that it didn’t break its agreement to [...]

The Oklahoma Indian tribe that planned to buy DiamondJacks casinos in Bossier City, La., and Vicksburg is now suing to get back the $6.25 million deposit it put down on the purchase. Global Gaming Solutions, a unit of the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma, wants a federal bankruptcy judge to declare it didn’t break its agreement [...]

MENIFEE, Ark. — Officials say a University of Mississippi law professor was killed in a car crash on Interstate 40 in central Arkansas. Arkansas State Police say the crash happened Tuesday morning on I-40 between Conway and Little Rock. A preliminary report says that 58-year-old Richard Barnes of Oxford crossed the median into oncoming traffic [...]