Awards honor state Latino businesses
The Arkansas Small Business and Technology Development Center (ASBTDC) and the Springdale-based Conexion de Negocios Latinos entrepreneurial support organization gave out the first-ever Arkansas Latino Business Awards on Thursday evening in Little Rock.
Santiago's Bakery in Glenwood, owned by Juventino Gonzalez, is the small business of the year.
Awards for the year's top woman-owned business, young entrepreneur, community organization and community champion went to Ali Alcaraz of Bentonville's Ali Cleaning Services, Little Rock's Natali Carmona of Get Nailed 32, higher-education access nonprofit Mamás Unidas in Little Rock and Arisbeth Garcia of the Springdale breast cancer survivors' nonprofit Alas/Wings, respectively.
Three people's choice awards went to top vote-getters on a Facebook poll. The Mercado San Jose grocery stores in Little Rock won for legacy business, the Centerton Food Trucks Park in Benton County won for emerging business and the Walking Dog in De Queen won food truck of the year.
"Here in Hispanic Heritage Month, we are excited to celebrate the contributions of the Latino community to the economic growth and development of Arkansas. We are thrilled with the great response to this new awards program," Laura Fine, state director of the ASBTDC, said in a statement.
-- Aaron Gettinger
EX-IRS contractor charged after leaks
WASHINGTON -- A former contractor for the Internal Revenue Service was charged Friday with leaking tax information to news outlets about a government official and thousands of the country's wealthiest people.
Charles Edward Littlejohn, 38, of Washington, D.C., is accused of stealing the tax return information and giving it to two different news outlets between 2018 and 2020, the Justice Department said in a statement. Littlejohn declined to comment when reached by The Associated Press, which also left a message for his attorney, Lisa Manning.
Both organizations published numerous articles about the tax information, some of which dated back more than 15 years, charging documents state.
The outlets are not named in charging documents, but the nonprofit investigative journalism organization ProPublica reported in 2021 on a trove of tax-return data about the wealthiest Americans. It found that the 25 richest people legally pay a smaller share of their income in taxes than many ordinary workers do.
-- The Associated Press
Index finishes week with 0.75-point drop
The Arkansas Index, a price-weighted index that tracks the largest public companies based in the state, closed Friday at 854.92, down 0.75.
The index was developed by Bloomberg News and the Democrat-Gazette with a base value of 100 as of Dec. 30, 1997.