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Hmmm ... Gov. Ned Lamont’s suggestion last month towards the end of his annual State of the State address that kids lock away their smartphones during the school day unexpectedly generated a wave of applause that still is resonating. “I’m getting a lot of feedback, more feedback on this than anything I’ve done in a while,” Lamont said Tuesday on a school tour. “And I think it really has hit a chord with parents and teachers, and the kids are OK with it.” Lamont, Attorney General William Tong and education Commissioner Charlene M.  Russell-Tucker visited Illing Middle School in Manchester, where school administrators are three months into a smartphone experiment begun before Lamont mused that schools might do well to emulate Beyoncé. The singer is one of the performing artists who sometimes require phones be locked in Yondr pouches, small neoprene bags that allow patrons to keep their phones but not use them to take calls or make recordings or photographs during performances. Manche...

 Like Flint, Michigan and others before it, another American city has such poor water conditions they can't flush or floss : (CNN)Already dealing with flooded streets, residents of rain-battered Jackson, Mississippi, are now contending with little or no water pressure in their homes after the city's main water treatment facility failed Monday, leaving them without enough water to flush toilets or fight fires, Gov. Tate Reeves said. The governor said he will declare a state of emergency for the state's largest city and state authorities are scrambling to begin distributing water to 180,000 residents. The city's troubled water system has been plagued with issues for years. In February 2021, a winter storm shut down Jackson's entire water system, leaving tens of thousands of residents without water for a month amid the Covid-19 pandemic. On Monday evening -- as Jackson residents were dealing with record-setting rain that resulted in the Pearl River cresting at a danger...