Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Tuesday summary in the rain
The Russellville Courier reports that school officials took 12 days to notify Department of Human Services of an alleged sexual assault of a sixth grade girl on a school bus. Documents obtained as the result of a Freedom of Information Act request also show that the district took five days to notify the mother. State laws requires school to “immediately” contact DHS in such cases.
Fayetteville Sen. Sue Madison says Arkansas should close the Alexander Youth Services Center. Madison hopes that officials with the state’s Youth Services Division will recommend closing and rebuilding the center in Alexander - at an estimated cost of $66 million. She says the money could come from the state’s $843 million projected budget surplus.
House Speaker-designate Benny Petrus tells Roby Brock of TalkBusiness.net, he's not sure repealing the sales tax on groceries is the best way to help low-income Arkansans. Petrus promises to fight the sales tax cut.
Arkansas Coach Houston Nutt, whose annual financial package ranks eighth among the SEC’s 12 football coaches, is getting a contract extension through the 2012 season and an undisclosed raise from his current compensation of $1,049,644.
The largest developer of the Fayetteville Shale will drill between 400 and 450 wells in the play next year, part of an $875 million investment the company plans to make in northern and western Arkansas' natural gas-laden formation in 2007.
Employees at Wal-Mart’s China headquarters have set up a Communist Party branch, the company and party said Monday, amid a campaign to expand the ruling party’s presence in foreign companies.
Five years after the fact and a month after the November general election. County Clerk Helen Bradley mailed out new voter registration to voters in Justice of the Peace District 12, informing them they had been moved from Precinct 20 to Precinct 66 as a result of the 2000 Census. But none of these voters were able to make a choice Nov. 7 between the two men running for the District 12 seat on the Quorum Court. That election is the subject of a lawsuit.
State Sen. Jim Argue recovered well from surgery following a heart attack and will probably return home today, Senate Secretary Ann Cornwell says.
Pulaski County officials are meeting Wednesday with state finance administrators to determine how much money the county owes in back state sales tax that was collected but not remitted on several thousand trash bills in 2004 and 2005.
Fueled by a jump in murders and rapes, the number of violent crimes in Little Rock increased over the first six months of 2006, a FBI report released Monday shows.
Police arrested an escaped jail inmate late Monday who was found hiding in an El Dorado house, but two other men authorities consider dangerous remained on the lam after breaking out of the Union County jail earlier in the day.
Police are now conducting a homicide investigation into the death of a 52-year-old Earle woman, whose body was found inside her burned trailer last week, Crittenden County sheriff’s investigator Thomas Martin said Monday.
A Pulaski County circuit judge has denied bail for three men charged in a deadly July shooting at McCain Mall after hearing testimony that one of the defendants had been stalking the victims through the mall and phoning updates to the man accused of pulling the trigger.
A 17-year-old boy is in custidy after confessing to setting a fire that burned nearly 4,000 acres of timber in Ashley County earlier this year. Joel Holland will be charged as an adult with two felonies - arson and unlawful burning.
Demeche Shaun Lofton of Nashville pleaded guilty to firstdegree murder in the May slaying of Heather Littleton, a community college student, and was sentenced to 35 years in prison.
More than 50 Germantown High School students were injured in a chain reaction crash involving four school buses and a car on Germantown Road near Memphis Monday afternoon. None of the injuries was life threatening.
A $1,500 park bench stolen from the Fort Smith National Historic Site was recovered Monday when a visitor at a nearby park spotted it abandoned in a field.
Fayetteville Sen. Sue Madison says Arkansas should close the Alexander Youth Services Center. Madison hopes that officials with the state’s Youth Services Division will recommend closing and rebuilding the center in Alexander - at an estimated cost of $66 million. She says the money could come from the state’s $843 million projected budget surplus.
House Speaker-designate Benny Petrus tells Roby Brock of TalkBusiness.net, he's not sure repealing the sales tax on groceries is the best way to help low-income Arkansans. Petrus promises to fight the sales tax cut.
Arkansas Coach Houston Nutt, whose annual financial package ranks eighth among the SEC’s 12 football coaches, is getting a contract extension through the 2012 season and an undisclosed raise from his current compensation of $1,049,644.
The largest developer of the Fayetteville Shale will drill between 400 and 450 wells in the play next year, part of an $875 million investment the company plans to make in northern and western Arkansas' natural gas-laden formation in 2007.
Employees at Wal-Mart’s China headquarters have set up a Communist Party branch, the company and party said Monday, amid a campaign to expand the ruling party’s presence in foreign companies.
Five years after the fact and a month after the November general election. County Clerk Helen Bradley mailed out new voter registration to voters in Justice of the Peace District 12, informing them they had been moved from Precinct 20 to Precinct 66 as a result of the 2000 Census. But none of these voters were able to make a choice Nov. 7 between the two men running for the District 12 seat on the Quorum Court. That election is the subject of a lawsuit.
State Sen. Jim Argue recovered well from surgery following a heart attack and will probably return home today, Senate Secretary Ann Cornwell says.
Pulaski County officials are meeting Wednesday with state finance administrators to determine how much money the county owes in back state sales tax that was collected but not remitted on several thousand trash bills in 2004 and 2005.
Fueled by a jump in murders and rapes, the number of violent crimes in Little Rock increased over the first six months of 2006, a FBI report released Monday shows.
Police arrested an escaped jail inmate late Monday who was found hiding in an El Dorado house, but two other men authorities consider dangerous remained on the lam after breaking out of the Union County jail earlier in the day.
Police are now conducting a homicide investigation into the death of a 52-year-old Earle woman, whose body was found inside her burned trailer last week, Crittenden County sheriff’s investigator Thomas Martin said Monday.
A Pulaski County circuit judge has denied bail for three men charged in a deadly July shooting at McCain Mall after hearing testimony that one of the defendants had been stalking the victims through the mall and phoning updates to the man accused of pulling the trigger.
A 17-year-old boy is in custidy after confessing to setting a fire that burned nearly 4,000 acres of timber in Ashley County earlier this year. Joel Holland will be charged as an adult with two felonies - arson and unlawful burning.
Demeche Shaun Lofton of Nashville pleaded guilty to firstdegree murder in the May slaying of Heather Littleton, a community college student, and was sentenced to 35 years in prison.
More than 50 Germantown High School students were injured in a chain reaction crash involving four school buses and a car on Germantown Road near Memphis Monday afternoon. None of the injuries was life threatening.
A $1,500 park bench stolen from the Fort Smith National Historic Site was recovered Monday when a visitor at a nearby park spotted it abandoned in a field.
