1-car crash kills
Jasper man, 48
A Jasper man was killed Thursday in a single-vehicle crash near Marble Falls, police said.
Jay C. Buford, 48, was traveling north on Arkansas 7 when he lost control of his 2005 Buick Rendezvous, according to Arkansas State Police.
Buford was pronounced dead at the scene, after driving off the east side of the highway, down an embankment and into a tree, police said. The crash occurred at 5:20 a.m., police said.
- ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTELR unit wins
Air Force honors
The 19th Operations Group at Little Rock Air Force Base on Wednesday was named outstanding operations intelligence unit of the year by U.S. Air Force Air Mobility Command and is now in the running to be named the best across the Air Force.
Air Mobility Command received 70 award nominations for individual and group awards. Winners will compete for national honors against the top picks from the Air Force’s other seven major commands.
“All nominations reflected outstanding organizations and professional,” said Col. Martin MacNabb, Air Mobility Command’s director of Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance at Scott Air Force Base, Ill.
The intelligence unit of the operations group is part of Little Rock’s relatively new 19th Airlift Wing. The 19th began at Little Rock Air Force Base in Jacksonville a little more than two years ago.
The national awards are expected to be announced later this year.
- ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE
Nonprofit’s gift to aid 36 districts
Thirty-six school districts in eastern and southern Arkansas will receive thousands of dollars’ worth of art supplies from the nonprofit Thea Foundation for the 2011-12 school year, the foundation’s Paul Leopoulos said Wednesday.
The contribution for the next school term will benefit 141 public schools in 12 Arkansas counties.
High schools are to receive $2,500 in art supplies, and elementary, middle and junior high schools will receive $1,500 each.
The schools are in Ashley, Chicot, Columbia, Crittenden, Desha, Lafayette, Lee, Miller, Mississippi, Phillips, St. Francis and Union counties.
The supplies, which will be purchased by the Thea Foundation and shipped to the schools in August, are possible because of a $259,750 anonymous donation, said Leopoulos, the foundation’s executive director.
The foundation, based in North Little Rock, advocates art education in the academic and social development of students.
The foundation will distribute the “high-quality” supplies that include colored pencils, paper, paints and modeling clay through its Thea’s Art Closet Program, Leopoulos said.
The art closet program began in 2006 after Leopoulos was told by a teacher in a rural school, he said, that she spent $1,500 of her own money to buy art supplies for students because the school’s budget didn’t allow for the supplies.
“It occurred to me that the arts not only encouraged those kids to believe in themselves, but that her kids were winning scholarships, two to three a year,” Leopoulos said.
More information on the Thea Foundation is available at theafoundation.
org.
- ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE
LR novelist wins
Laman fellowship Novelist Kevin Brockmeier of Little Rock is the recipient of the 2011 Laman Library Writers Fellowship that provides up to $10,000 to a different Arkansas author each year.
The William F. Laman Library System in North Little Rock will present the award to Brockmeier on Tuesday, according to a news release.
The Laman Library Writers Fellowship was established in March 2010 to provide grants of up to $10,000 to an Arkansas author to assist in the writing and publishing process.
The grant is to be awarded in the first quarter of each year to a previously published author.
Brockmeier, who was raised in Little Rock, is a novelist whose work has been translated to 15 languages and has published works in The New Yorker, The Georgia Review and The Oxford American, among other publications.
The grant is to assist in the writing of his first memoir, titled Seventh Grade, the true story of his 1985-86 school year in Little Rock.
Author Grif Stockley won the first fellowship award last year.
- ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTENew charges filed
against parolee
KANSAS CITY, Mo.
- A judge has entered an innocent plea for a Kansas City man accused of raping several women in the city’s Waldo area.
Bernard Jackson, 53, made his first appearance Thursday in Jackson County Circuit Court on three new rape charges and several other felonies that were filed Wednesday. The charges stem from attacks in late 2009 and early 2010.
His attorney, public defender Carie Allen, waived the formal reading of the 22 charges. The judge entered the innocent plea and set a preliminary hearing for March 18, according to the Kansas City Star.
Jackson is also charged in four sexual assaults from 1983 and 1984, in the same area of Kansas City. When he was arrested last year on those charges, he was on parole for an attempted rape conviction from 1985.
- THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 10 on 02/18/2011