There is good news and bad from my state of Mississippi…..

The good news is that the state legislature has deemed a state fruit and a state gemstone….

The state fruit is the blueberry….good call since the fruit is grown liberally in the west of the state.

The state gemstone is the opal…..this one confuses me since there is no major deposits of opal in this state to my knowledge.

Now for the bad news…..

Babies with an STD….

Mississippi, the nation’s poorest state, already claims the worst infant mortality rate in the US. Now, more bad news for newborns there: The number of babies treated for congenital syphilis—meaning the infection is passed down from mother to baby during gestation—spiked 900% over five years, rising from 10 in 2016 to 102 last year, reports NBC News. This new info comes via an analysis of hospital billing data conducted by Dr. Thomas Dobbs, who heads up the Crossroads Clinic run by the state’s Department of Health. That agency hasn’t yet released its final numbers for 2021, but preliminary stats align with Dobbs’ findings, and it noted that at least one baby died last year from the sexually transmitted disease.

Dobbs says that about 40% of women who contract syphilis while pregnant go on to miscarry, reports WKRG. The STD can also lead to early births, stillbirths, and low birth weight. Infants who contract syphilis can end up suffering from a range of problems, including serious anemia, an enlarged liver and spleen, jaundice, loss of eyesight or hearing, meningitis, and misshapen bones, per the Guardian. In severe cases, the babies can even die. “It is truly a very devastating condition,” pediatrician Dr. Braveen Ragunanthan, of Mississippi’s Delta Health and Bolivar Medical Center, tells NBC.

More bad news for the state…..

Recently the news had the Mississippi Coast buzzing with anticipation….SpaceX was considering launching rockets from a local Coastal city, Pascagoula.

But sadly that proposal has been crapped on…..

SpaceX will not launch rockets from the Mississippi Gulf Coast in the near future, the company’s president says.

Two oil rigs had been docked at the Port of Pascagoula for the past two years to be fitted by SpaceX to serve as launch pads for its Starship spacecraft.

 

SpaceX bought the oil rigs from Valaris for around $7 million in July 2020, weeks before it filed for bankruptcy during a market crash that sent oil prices in the negatives. The ENSCO 8500-series ships were built for about $560 million each in the late 2000s.

The company, owned by billionaire Elon Musk, had been planning to convert the rigs into launch platforms for its Starship vehicle to launch to the moon, Mars and hypersonic travel around Earth.

Phobos arrived at the Port of Pascagoula in January 2021 from Brownsville, Texas. Deimos docked in March 2022. The vessels are named after the two moons of Mars.

https://wgno.com/news/spacex-ditches-plan-to-launch-rockets-from-mississippi-gulf-coast/amp/

Not many will care about the doings in my state….but some of it is/was a big deal at least for awhile.

I hope you all have a great Sunday….Be Well….Be Safe….

“lego ergo scribo”