Oaklawn first in line for fastest Internet
Oaklawn Racing Casino Resort will be the first business in Hot Springs to get "ultra-high-speed" Internet provided by Jonesboro outfit Ritter Communications, the company said Thursday in a news release.
Earlier this year, Ritter said it would spend $7 million to give Hot Springs businesses access to 100% fiber Internet services, the highest speed available, by late summer.
The XGS-PON high-speed service will give Hot Springs businesses the "competitive advantage they need and want," Ritter President Alan Morse said in Thursday's statement.
Ritter Communications began as a local phone service in 1906 and has grown into a telecommunications firm, offering services to more than 45,000 customers across Arkansas, southeast Missouri and west Tennessee. Ritter is the largest privately held regional broadband fiber, telecom, video and data services provider in Arkansas.
-- Nathan Owens
Publix: Only officers can take guns inside
LAKELAND, Fla. -- The Publix supermarket chain has joined a growing number of retailers in asking customers not to openly carry firearms in its stores, even if state laws allow it.
The company announced the move by email in a one-sentence statement Wednesday, saying "Publix respectfully requests that only law enforcement officials openly carry firearms in our stores."
The chain based in Lakeland, Fla., has 1,226 stores in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia.
Survivors of last year's massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School have criticized the company for donating to a Florida gubernatorial candidate aligned with the National Rifle Association.
Publix's new gun policy comes a week after the competing Kroger grocery chain joined Walmart, Target and other companies in asking customers not to openly carry weapons in their stores.
-- The Associated Press
Arkansas Index ends at 438.03; rises 0.90
The Arkansas Index, a price-weighted index that tracks the largest public companies based in the state, closed Thursday at 438.03, up 0.90.
"Additional monetary stimulus announced by the European Central Bank, along with a conciliatory gesture by the United States towards China in tariff negotiations, fueled stocks higher early in the day, although stocks retraced some of the gains late in the session," said Leon Lants, managing director at Stephens Inc. in Little Rock.
P.A.M. Transportation shares jumped 5.7%. Dillard's Inc. shares dropped 4.9%.
The index was developed by Bloomberg News and the Democrat-Gazette with a base value of 100 as of Dec. 30, 1997.
Business on 09/13/2019