Tuesday, August 29, 2006
Tuesday Turmoil
August 29, 2006
Today’s Democrat-Gazette reports that two lawsuits were filed Monday and another is expected to be filed today in the wake of the Aug. 18 announcement by the U.S. Department of Agriculture that trace amounts of an unapproved, genetically engineered rice were discovered in U.S. long-grain rice supplies. The two suits filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas accuse Bayer CropScience of negligence. Attorneys representing 20 rice farmers say they will file suit at noon today in Lonoke County Circuit Court against Bayer and Stuttgart based Riceland Foods Inc.
A proposal to develop the National Bio- and Agro-Defense Facility for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in Jefferson County did not make a whittled-down list of 18 plans still being evaluated by the federal government.
A year after Hurricane Katrina, about 9,300 families who fled the storm remain in Arkansas, and more than half of them are having their rent paid by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. FEMA estimates that the families average 2.3 people, meaning that Arkansas has about 21,500 refugees.
At least one Springdale city council member, Mike Overton, is leading what appears to be a campaign to stop the new baseball stadium even though it was narrowly approved by the voters.
Arkansas schools will rely on teachers or small correction inserts to explain the elimination of the ninth planet until new textbooks can reflect the change in the future.
The state Board of Corrections invoked the Emergency Powers Act on Tuesday, making up to 650 prison inmates eligible for early parole hearings. To help ease overcrowding, the act authorizes the prison board to move parole hearings up 90 days for parole-eligible inmates convicted of nonviolent crimes. The act has been invoked every 90 days since 1998.
The Democrat-Gazette reports an estimated 45 shots were fired as hundreds of young people congregated outside two separate parties in Conway early Sunday, police said Monday. One man was shot in the leg, police said. Lt. Danny Moody, a spokesman for the Conway Police Department, said he knew of no arrests or any suspects in the shootings.
A man accused of calling in a bomb threat to the Fort Smith Regional Airport to keep his wife from leaving him can be released on bond, a federal magistrate judge ruled Monday. Michael Terrell Jackson reportedly was convicted of battery seven years ago, admitted to smoking marijuana regularly and doesn’t have a steady job.
Even as Lonoke County Prosecutor Lona McCastlain argued for a single, month-long proceeding in the 78-count indictment against popular former Lonoke police chief Jay Campbell, his wife and four others, Circuit Judge John Cole noted repeatedly that such a mega trial would be unwieldy or impossible, signaling that he was predisposed toward conducting two or more trials.
The Catholic Diocese of Little Rock, which oversees all parishes in the state, has removed the Rev. Paul Worm as pastor of St. Joseph Catholic Church in Fayetteville, citing misconduct in the decision. Worm had served the parish for seven years. In a letter to parishioners dated Aug. 18, Monsignor J. Gaston Hebert, diocesan administrator, said Worm’s actions, which reportedly do not include pedophelia, required immediate removal.
The question of whether St. Francis County Judge-elect Gary Hughes can also hold the position of mayor of Caldwell could lead to a request for an Arkansas Attorney General’s opinion. In June, Hughes, who currently serves as both mayor and quorum court justice, defeated Carl Cisco in a run-off election for the position as county judge. Last month, Hughes was the lone candidate to file for the mayor’s position in Caldwell for the November General Election, in effect granting him another term as mayor of that city.
Both Millsaps College and Tougaloo College have made The Princeton Review's ranking of the best colleges and universities in the U.S., and Millsaps also was included in the rankings of U.S. News & World Report and "The Fiske Guide to Colleges."
Connie Yingling Patterson, of Searcy, has been reunited with her Class of 1929 Pangburn High class ring, which she lost and found twice. 10 year-old Alec Bourgeois retrieved a gold band sticking up from the ground in his Searcy front yard and a friend of his mother’s figured out the owner from the initials “C. Y.” inside the band.
Today’s Democrat-Gazette reports that two lawsuits were filed Monday and another is expected to be filed today in the wake of the Aug. 18 announcement by the U.S. Department of Agriculture that trace amounts of an unapproved, genetically engineered rice were discovered in U.S. long-grain rice supplies. The two suits filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas accuse Bayer CropScience of negligence. Attorneys representing 20 rice farmers say they will file suit at noon today in Lonoke County Circuit Court against Bayer and Stuttgart based Riceland Foods Inc.
A proposal to develop the National Bio- and Agro-Defense Facility for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in Jefferson County did not make a whittled-down list of 18 plans still being evaluated by the federal government.
A year after Hurricane Katrina, about 9,300 families who fled the storm remain in Arkansas, and more than half of them are having their rent paid by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. FEMA estimates that the families average 2.3 people, meaning that Arkansas has about 21,500 refugees.
At least one Springdale city council member, Mike Overton, is leading what appears to be a campaign to stop the new baseball stadium even though it was narrowly approved by the voters.
Arkansas schools will rely on teachers or small correction inserts to explain the elimination of the ninth planet until new textbooks can reflect the change in the future.
The state Board of Corrections invoked the Emergency Powers Act on Tuesday, making up to 650 prison inmates eligible for early parole hearings. To help ease overcrowding, the act authorizes the prison board to move parole hearings up 90 days for parole-eligible inmates convicted of nonviolent crimes. The act has been invoked every 90 days since 1998.
The Democrat-Gazette reports an estimated 45 shots were fired as hundreds of young people congregated outside two separate parties in Conway early Sunday, police said Monday. One man was shot in the leg, police said. Lt. Danny Moody, a spokesman for the Conway Police Department, said he knew of no arrests or any suspects in the shootings.
A man accused of calling in a bomb threat to the Fort Smith Regional Airport to keep his wife from leaving him can be released on bond, a federal magistrate judge ruled Monday. Michael Terrell Jackson reportedly was convicted of battery seven years ago, admitted to smoking marijuana regularly and doesn’t have a steady job.
Even as Lonoke County Prosecutor Lona McCastlain argued for a single, month-long proceeding in the 78-count indictment against popular former Lonoke police chief Jay Campbell, his wife and four others, Circuit Judge John Cole noted repeatedly that such a mega trial would be unwieldy or impossible, signaling that he was predisposed toward conducting two or more trials.
The Catholic Diocese of Little Rock, which oversees all parishes in the state, has removed the Rev. Paul Worm as pastor of St. Joseph Catholic Church in Fayetteville, citing misconduct in the decision. Worm had served the parish for seven years. In a letter to parishioners dated Aug. 18, Monsignor J. Gaston Hebert, diocesan administrator, said Worm’s actions, which reportedly do not include pedophelia, required immediate removal.
The question of whether St. Francis County Judge-elect Gary Hughes can also hold the position of mayor of Caldwell could lead to a request for an Arkansas Attorney General’s opinion. In June, Hughes, who currently serves as both mayor and quorum court justice, defeated Carl Cisco in a run-off election for the position as county judge. Last month, Hughes was the lone candidate to file for the mayor’s position in Caldwell for the November General Election, in effect granting him another term as mayor of that city.
Both Millsaps College and Tougaloo College have made The Princeton Review's ranking of the best colleges and universities in the U.S., and Millsaps also was included in the rankings of U.S. News & World Report and "The Fiske Guide to Colleges."
Connie Yingling Patterson, of Searcy, has been reunited with her Class of 1929 Pangburn High class ring, which she lost and found twice. 10 year-old Alec Bourgeois retrieved a gold band sticking up from the ground in his Searcy front yard and a friend of his mother’s figured out the owner from the initials “C. Y.” inside the band.
