Friday morning summary

White County Sheriff’s detectives arrested a KARN radio personality for Internet stalking on Wednesday. Charles David Ballard was caught by the new Child Predator Unit of the sheriff’s office, which focuses on Internet predators who solicit sex from underage children online. Ballard works for KARN, FM 102.9 and AM 920, owned by Citadel Broadcasting Corporation. Once the deputies had Ballard in custody, it was discovered there was a baby, which Ballard identified as his six-month-old daughter, in the back seat of his car. Ballard was found to have outstanding arrest warrants from Faulkner County, Conway police and Morrilton police for failure to appear on traffic citations. He was booked into the White County Detention Center for Internet stalking of a child, sexual indecency with a minor, fleeing, endangering the welfare of a child, reckless driving and driving on a suspended driver’s license. The mother of the child, Jamie Arnold of Little Rock came to the sheriff’s office to take custody of the baby but was found to have outstanding arrest warrants from four agencies, including Beebe police. She was also taken into custody and handed over to the warranting agencies.

Arkansas congressmen took to the House floor on Wednesday to honor Frank Broyles, the legendary University of Arkansas athletic director. The state’s lawmakers joined in a bipartisan recognition of Broyles just before Congress adjourned for the year. Rep. John Boozman even got in a Hog Call, albeit a modest one, during his speech.

Arkansas is among 21 states in the nation to share in $52 million in new federal money to help public schools classified as needing improvement because of their low standardized test results.

Catfish are coming back to the Buffalo River under a four-year restocking program that the state Game and Fish Commission approved Thursday.

A federal judge’s decision to change how the Little Rock District’s compliance with its desegregation requirements was evaluated is grounds for an appeals court to overturn an order declaring the district unitary, attorneys for black students argued Thursday.

Faced with a rash of recently trained police officers leaving for better paying jobs, the Jonesboro Police Department will offer incentive pay increases for those who remain and complete a variety of programs.

Southwestern Energy Co. plans to invest more than $1 billion in the Fayettevile Shale play next year, the second straight year the Houston-based company’s investment in the northern Arkansas rock formation will exceed the $1 billion mark.

A plan to revitalize Eureka Springs calls for a designated arts and culture district with improvements paid for using tax increment financing. The $10,000 study, conducted in 2004 by the University of Arkansas Sam M. Walton College of Business, was commissioned by Community Development Partnership of Western Carroll County, restaurateur James De-Vito said. DeVito reintroduced the plan at a Eureka Springs City Council meeting in late November.

The driver of a gas company truck was intoxicated when he drove his vehicle into a Searcy yard, according to state police. Jerry Johnsonof Searcy has been charged with DWI-drugs, driving on a suspended drivers license out of Oklahoma, careless and prohibited driving and not having a commercial driver’s license. The incident happened when Johnson was behind the wheel of a 2007 Dragon oil well finishing rig.

Former Paragould fire chief Eddie Brown has been let off with nine months of home confinement and four years of probation after admitting to falsifying about $40,000 in claims to the Homeland Security Department.

The mayor of the small Pope County town of Pottsville was questioned by police last week after driving home from a high school basketball game under the influence of alcohol. Chief Blake Herren said officer Kenny Smith met Mayor Jerry Duvall at his home Dec. 10 after fans at the Pottsville High School game complained that they smelled alcohol on the mayor’s breath. Smith gave the mayor a portable Breathalyzer test, which registered a blood alcohol level of 0.11.

Thursday morning summary

A police officer who fatally shot a 12-year-old boy last summer has resigned from the city police department, citing the community’s need for healing in the wake of DeAuntae Farrow’s slaying, as well as the financial needs of the officer’s family.

Justice Department communications director Brian Roehrkasse is one of the few senior officials in that agency to survive the prosecutor-firings scandal that consumed his last boss, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. So one of the fired U.S. attorneys, Bud Cummins of Little Rock, has taken the unusual step of calling on Roehrkasse to step down.

Opponents of payday lending say more than a third of the payday lenders operating in Arkansas are not being regulated. The Arkansans Against Abusive Payday Lending released a study that says 66 percent of the state’s 239 payday lenders are licensed and regulated by the Arkansas State Board of Collection Agencies and 34 percent are licensed and unregulated.

Arkansas’ personal income continued to grow faster than the national rate during the third quarter of the year, with the state ranking ninth in a report released Wednesday by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.

The National Transportation Safety Board has launched a ground search in east Texas for remnants of an “uncontained engine failure” on a Southwest Airlines flight from Dallas to Little Rock on Monday. None of the 133 passengers and five crew members aboard the Boeing 737-300 was hurt in the incident, which occurred shortly before 3 p.m. at an altitude of 25,000 feet over Hunt County, Texas.

A $2 million budget boost for the National Center for Toxicological Research is contained in a massive spending bill set for congressional approval this week. The new funding will pay for 14 new employees at the Jefferson County center, NCTR executive officer Jeanne Anson said.

The Federal Communications Commission has accepted a bid from Little Rock-based Internet service provider Aristotle Inc. to participate in the upcoming 700 MHz wireless spectrum auction, according to a regulatory filing made this week. Bids from other companies with Arkansas ties, including Alltel, AT&T and CenturyTel, are still pending, according to a separate filing that terms those bids “incomplete.”

An east Arkansas business owner and a Hempstead County couple Wednesday were refused permits to sell alcoholic beverages by the state’s Alcoholic Beverage Control Board. Board members cited location as a key issue in rejecting both applications.

The state Court of Appeals upheld a Cross County jury’s $7,000 award to Jason Murphy, who argued that he was sold a “new” truck by a dealer after the vehicle had been stolen for 90 minutes and driven 40 miles. Murphy argued that the truck was no longer new. The salesman who sold him the truck was supposedly not aware of the theft.

The fire at the federal courthouse Tuesday evening was caused by workers who had been removing a cooling tower from the roof, a spokesman for the Little Rock Fire Department said Wednesday.

David Smith reports in the Democrat-Gazette that taxpayers accustomed to getting their federal income tax refunds by late January or early February will be disappointed this time. Because Congress took until Wednesday to finalize a bill affecting the alternative minimum tax, the Internal Revenue Service will not begin accepting tax returns until early February next year, the agency said Wednesday on its Web site. That would delay early filers’ refunds until mid- or late February.

If re-elected in November, Rep. Robbie Wills of Conway will be the next Speaker of the House. With Rep. David Dunn of Montrose withdrawing his candidacy for the position, Wills’ name will be the only one on the ballot when the House of Representatives votes to fill the position, currently occupied by Rep. Benny Petrus of Stuttgart on Jan. 14.

The Arkansas Board of Parole denied the clemency request of Heath Stocks, saying the man who murdered his Lonoke County family a decade ago needs to spend more time in prison. Stocks, now 31, told authorities that he killed his family after his former Boy Scout leader Charles “Jack” Walls III told him “to kill the problem.” Walls made the statement after he found out that Stocks had told his family about the older man’s decade-long sexual abuse of him. Walls is serving a life term.

The state Parole Board recommended executive clemency for a murderer who has been behind bars for more than 30 years. Lee Otis Harris was convicted of capital murder in Conway County in August 1974 and sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole in the beating death of store owner Ellis Robbs, who died from injuries he received during a robbery. Harris wrote on his application that he is seeking clemency “to bring closure to a bad decision I made at age 20 for the victim’s family as well as my family” and “to put this behind us and move on.”

Sending a racially hostile letter threatening the black family next door was the “biggest mistake” of her life, a weeping Maumelle woman told a Little Rock federal judge, explaining her intentions were to protect her daughter. Shawn Simone Hardin was let off by Federal Judge James Moody with only six months in federal prison.

A trio of federal mail-fraud suspects returned to custody on a bond violation complaint will remain in custody until trial, a U.S. magistrate judge ruled after a hearing that was anything but routine. Alys Marie Dimmitt, Sharon Jeannette Henningsen and Timothy Shawn Donavan adopted the archaic language of their copious case filings, declaring themselves to be “living, breathing” children of the earth and not the “fictional” defendants represented by their names spelled in capital letters on court papers.

Wednesday morning summary

A video taken from the vehicle of an Arkansas State Police trooper has raised new questions about the trooper’s arrest last week of a newspaper journalist in Maumelle. “There’s an awful lot missing” in the video released to the media, said Bill Lawson a reporter-photographer for the Maumelle Monitor and other papers owned by Stephens Media.

A furnace caught fire at the Federal Courthouse in Little Rock on Tuesday night, but there was no damage to the building. The two-alarm blaze began in the furnace, according to reports, and did not spread to the building.

Gov. Mike Beebe said Tuesday that he won’t pardon or commute the sentences of the “West Memphis Three” and has never heard of the celebrity scheduled to be at the state Capitol today to advocate their cause.

One hundred and fifty-two days after Kevin Jones of Dover was acquitted of the first-degree murder of his longtime girlfriend, Nona Dirksmeyer, Prosecuting Attorney David Gibbons again declined to release the complete investigative file on Dirksmeyer’s murder citing “an ongoing investigation” when The Courier made a verbal Freedom of Information request Monday. Gibbons said, “Well, there are some samples being taken.”

Arkansas ranks among the bottom tier of states in preparedness for public health emergencies, according to a report released Tuesday. Joining Arkansas in the bottom tier are Iowa, Mississippi, Nevada, Wisconsin and Wyoming in the report released by Trust for America’s Health, a research group.

Arkansas is doing a good job funding employee pensions, but hasn’t set money aside for future retirees’ health-care benefits, a national report found. “Promises with a Price,” which was issued by the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Center on the States. The report, the first 50-state analysis of its kind, found that states have saved enough to cover about 85 percent of $2.35 trillion in pension costs over the next 30 years. However, states have saved only 3 percent of the $381 billion in promised retiree health care and other benefits.

Travelers who flock to Arkansas’ two main airports this holiday season fretful of delays at crowded connecting hubs may have more immediate cause for concern. Flight delays at Little Rock National Airport and Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport have been slightly more frequent than the industry average during a year of record delays, according to U.S. Department of Transportation statistics.

Pulaski County Quorum Court members approved a four-month moratorium on development in the Lake Maumelle watershed Tuesday night amid concerns from opponents that the stay would take away property owners’ rights. Developers have been seeking to poison Central Arkansas’ only source for drinking water.

The Little Rock Municipal Airport Commission approved a contract that finally will end the biggest conundrum at the state’s largest airport — whether to build a new terminal or overhaul the existing one.

Marmaduke has a new City Hall, thanks to a tornado that ripped through the city’s community center on April 2, 2006. The center’s western wall was destroyed by the twister, but instead of using the insurance money to just replace the wall, city officials dedicated some of the money to remodeling part of the center into a new City Hall. “We didn’t have room at the old City Hall,” said Marmaduke Mayor Byron Phillips. “This provided us with the space we needed without costing the taxpayers a dime.”

Newly formed Pine Bluff Poultry LLC says it will initially bring 150 jobs to the city after it renovates the old Tyson Foods Inc. plant and processes “spent chickens” from egg-laying operations starting early this summer.

Barge and tugboat manufacturer U.S. Technology Marine Services officially announced its new Fort Smith riverfront facility that could eventually employ over 200 people. The company has $16 million in contracts and plans to build 20 barges in 2008.  Initially, 50 employees will be hired in early January and the company expects to have 100 on its payroll by the end of the year.

The U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds and the U.S. Army Golden Knights will top the bill for the free Fort Smith 2008 Air Show on May 17-18 at the Fort Smith Regional Airport grounds, off Phoenix Avenue near the Arkansas Air National Guard’s 188th Fighter Wing headquarters.

A man who was stabbed in the eye with a pool cue during a weekend fight at a nightclub has died, and Pine Bluff police are seeking a suspect.

A 27-year-old Little Rock man who shot out a car window with a crossbow and a restaurant window with a shotgun was sentenced to eight years in prison. Convicted on two counts of committing a terroristic act in separate trials last month, Wayne Allen Dierks Jr. asked Pulaski County Circuit Judge John Langston for probation, blaming his problems on drinking.

Following a fatal accident on Interstate 40, a Russellville woman pleaded guilty to negligent homicide in the death of her friend, Brittany Pennington. Janell A. Honaker will serve 48 months in state prison, with an additional 48 months suspended. A blood-alcohol recorded her level of intoxication at .08 — the legal limit in Arkansas. Prior to the accident, Honaker was convicted in Pope County District Court of driving while intoxicated on two separate occasions.

A Dover man who reportedly admitted to investigators he installed a video recorder inside the air vent of a 12-year-old girl’s bedroom pleaded guilty to a charge of video voyeurism in Pope County Circuit Court. Circuit Judge Dennis Sutterfield sentenced the man, Mark Dalton to five years probation in accordance with the plea.