Wednesday, August 30, 2006
Wednesday Wickedness
President Bush is in Arkansas today for a $500 per-person luncheon fundraiser at the home of former NBA star Joe Klein. Bush’s appearance will be inside an exclusive gated community and will benefit Republican gubernatorial candidate Asa Hutchinson.
Immigration reform will not pass this year without President Bush's personal intervention with congressional leaders, according to Sen. Mark Pryor. "This is not Republicans fighting with Democrats. This is Republicans fighting among themselves," Pryor told a group of Benton County Democrats while attending a "Night with the Senators" along with Sen. Blanche Lincoln at the Whole Hog Cafe in Bentonville on Tuesday night. Third District congressional candidate Woody Anderson also spoke.
Construction of a $150 million shopping center planned in North Little Rock’s Dark Hollow wetlands is expected to start in the next couple of months now that the deadline for opponents of the project to challenge a court decision has passed, the developer said Tuesday.
The Springdale City council has made a set of revisions to the proposed lease with the parent company of the Wichita Wranglers. The city will seek to retain naming rights and split property taxes, if the property should be deemed taxable. The bonds to finance the $50 million stadium must be approved within a week, or the option to buy the land will expire.
Arkansas’ 2006 high school graduates who took the SAT performed above the national average on all three sections of the newly lengthened college-entrance exam, according to scores the College Board released Tuesday.
Poverty in Arkansas has dropped slightly but still remains above the national average, according to U.S. Census Bureau. The report says the state's poverty rate dropped from 16.4 percent in 2003-2004 to 14.5 percent in 2004-2005. The national rate was 12.7 percent.
Despite a push for healthy lifestyles, Arkansas again ranked among the nation’s fattest states and this year even added a few pounds, a new obesity study said.
Arkansas rice farmers filed suit Tuesday in Lonoke County Circuit Court against Stuttgart-based Riceland Foods Inc. and several affiliates of the German conglomerate Bayer AG “for real and potential damages arising from the financial and emotional collapse of their farming operations beginning in 2006.” Trace amounts of an unapproved, genetically engineered rice were discovered in U.S. long-grain rice supplies.
Community leaders in Helena are scrambling to secure more funding for the October blues festival after the Isle of Capri casino cut its’ financial support by more than half. The Arkansas Blues and Heritage Festival is set for the first weekend in October.
Searchers are going through dense underbrush and deep gullies of Desha County, looking for a 17-yearold Pine Bluff girl reportedly missing since Sunday morning. Casey Crowder called her mother, Melinda Crowder, by cell phone at 6:08 a.m. Sunday to say her car had run out of gas on U.S. 65 in south Dumas. A short time earlier, the teen reportedly left her boyfriend’s home in Pickens, a few miles southwest of Dumas.
No one was hurt when a woman accidentally drove her pickup through the wall of the new Star City Municipal Swimming Pool building at about 8:25 a.m. Monday and landed in the pool.
The Arkansas Racing Commission made plans Tuesday for a mid-October trip to West Memphis to inspect video poker, blackjack and “Lock ’N Roll” gambling machines to see if they pass muster as “electronic games of skill.” Southland Park greyhound track, submitted a proposal that calls for installing more than 900 of these machines and opening them to public play Nov. 1.
Myriad Entertainment & Resorts Inc has initiated the engineering for the design of its proposed $1.9-billion resort in this Mississippi Delta city. Myriad-Tunica is proposing to develop and build a 540-acre resort in Tunica featuring a fully enclosed, climate-controlled championship golf course, a 1,200-room convention hotel, two 500-room casino hotels, casino, convention center and gardens.
The Sebastian County Election Commission has agreed to rent two voting machines to the Circuit Court for use in a court-ordered Sept. 10 election to determine who will control a Fort Smith Buddhist temple, which has 1200 members.
The Browns, will reunite on an Arkansas stage for the first time in nearly 40 years. The trio consists of Jim Ed Brown and his sisters, Bonnie and Maxine. They have reunited often - at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville and on TV specials since the sisters left in 1967 to focus on their families - but never in Arkansas. The group performs Sept. 10 at an Arkansas Hospice fundraiser in Russellville at Arkansas Tech.
Immigration reform will not pass this year without President Bush's personal intervention with congressional leaders, according to Sen. Mark Pryor. "This is not Republicans fighting with Democrats. This is Republicans fighting among themselves," Pryor told a group of Benton County Democrats while attending a "Night with the Senators" along with Sen. Blanche Lincoln at the Whole Hog Cafe in Bentonville on Tuesday night. Third District congressional candidate Woody Anderson also spoke.
Construction of a $150 million shopping center planned in North Little Rock’s Dark Hollow wetlands is expected to start in the next couple of months now that the deadline for opponents of the project to challenge a court decision has passed, the developer said Tuesday.
The Springdale City council has made a set of revisions to the proposed lease with the parent company of the Wichita Wranglers. The city will seek to retain naming rights and split property taxes, if the property should be deemed taxable. The bonds to finance the $50 million stadium must be approved within a week, or the option to buy the land will expire.
Arkansas’ 2006 high school graduates who took the SAT performed above the national average on all three sections of the newly lengthened college-entrance exam, according to scores the College Board released Tuesday.
Poverty in Arkansas has dropped slightly but still remains above the national average, according to U.S. Census Bureau. The report says the state's poverty rate dropped from 16.4 percent in 2003-2004 to 14.5 percent in 2004-2005. The national rate was 12.7 percent.
Despite a push for healthy lifestyles, Arkansas again ranked among the nation’s fattest states and this year even added a few pounds, a new obesity study said.
Arkansas rice farmers filed suit Tuesday in Lonoke County Circuit Court against Stuttgart-based Riceland Foods Inc. and several affiliates of the German conglomerate Bayer AG “for real and potential damages arising from the financial and emotional collapse of their farming operations beginning in 2006.” Trace amounts of an unapproved, genetically engineered rice were discovered in U.S. long-grain rice supplies.
Community leaders in Helena are scrambling to secure more funding for the October blues festival after the Isle of Capri casino cut its’ financial support by more than half. The Arkansas Blues and Heritage Festival is set for the first weekend in October.
Searchers are going through dense underbrush and deep gullies of Desha County, looking for a 17-yearold Pine Bluff girl reportedly missing since Sunday morning. Casey Crowder called her mother, Melinda Crowder, by cell phone at 6:08 a.m. Sunday to say her car had run out of gas on U.S. 65 in south Dumas. A short time earlier, the teen reportedly left her boyfriend’s home in Pickens, a few miles southwest of Dumas.
No one was hurt when a woman accidentally drove her pickup through the wall of the new Star City Municipal Swimming Pool building at about 8:25 a.m. Monday and landed in the pool.
The Arkansas Racing Commission made plans Tuesday for a mid-October trip to West Memphis to inspect video poker, blackjack and “Lock ’N Roll” gambling machines to see if they pass muster as “electronic games of skill.” Southland Park greyhound track, submitted a proposal that calls for installing more than 900 of these machines and opening them to public play Nov. 1.
Myriad Entertainment & Resorts Inc has initiated the engineering for the design of its proposed $1.9-billion resort in this Mississippi Delta city. Myriad-Tunica is proposing to develop and build a 540-acre resort in Tunica featuring a fully enclosed, climate-controlled championship golf course, a 1,200-room convention hotel, two 500-room casino hotels, casino, convention center and gardens.
The Sebastian County Election Commission has agreed to rent two voting machines to the Circuit Court for use in a court-ordered Sept. 10 election to determine who will control a Fort Smith Buddhist temple, which has 1200 members.
The Browns, will reunite on an Arkansas stage for the first time in nearly 40 years. The trio consists of Jim Ed Brown and his sisters, Bonnie and Maxine. They have reunited often - at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville and on TV specials since the sisters left in 1967 to focus on their families - but never in Arkansas. The group performs Sept. 10 at an Arkansas Hospice fundraiser in Russellville at Arkansas Tech.
