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SEARCY - A customer may have unknowingly foiled an attempt to abduct a child in a Wal-Mart store Tuesday, police said.An 11-year-year old girl, who has not been identified, was alone in the toy department of the Searcy store about 9 a.m. when a man approached her."I don't think she ever saw him approach her," said Aaron Murphy, a spokesman for the Searcy Police Department.The girl was browsing while her grandmother shopped elsewhere in the store."The man walked up to her, got ahold of her arm and tried to lead her away," Murphy said. "They took a couple of steps...

CAMDEN</> --Authorities want to talk to a man who offered to clean out septic systems in exchange for sex or guns.The barter arrangement apparently is not illegal, but Ouachita Count sheriff's Deputy Stephen Carneal said Thursday the agency wants to find the man to determine where he is dumping the waste he collects.Chief Deputy Paul Lucas said that the man is also wanted for questioning to determine whether he has the proper certifications to provide the septic service.The matter came to light after a woman in Reader reported that a man approached her with an offer to clean out her...

A U.S Air Force special operations refueling aircraft crashed Wed morning in a remote region of Afghanistan, U.S. military offcials told NBC news. All eight crewmembers survived the crash, which was not believed to have been the result of enemy fire.Injuries were reported to be minor. The plane, a Lockheed MC-130P Combat Shadow turboprop, went down about 5:20 pm ET Tuesday, officials said.

Sale of team's limited partnership may take place as early as today. Former Enron Chairman Ken Lay is expected to sell his stake in the Houston Texans to team owner Bob McNair as early as today, the Chronicle reports.Lay is one of 11 limited partners in the Texans' ownership group, which McNair began putting together prior to acquiring the franchise in 1999 and finalized late last year.A spokesman for the Texans said McNair had no comment, and a spokesman for the National Football League deferred all comment on the matter to the team.Lay has been subpoenaed to appear next week ...

About 300 soldiers, including U.S. Marines in an anti-terrorism unit formed since the Sept.11 attacks, will be patrolling North Little Rock in the next two weeks. The unusual action, a series of urban warfare and couterterrorism "experiments" by the Marine Crops Warfighting Labortary, will take place between Sunday and Feb. 22. The operation will allow military leaders to examine tactics, techniques and technology that someday could save lives during military missons in foreign cities. Marines in the 4th Reconnaissance Battalion from San Antonio and reserves from the 3rd Battalion 23rd Marines at Camp Robinson in North Little Rock will ...

The National Boring Institute has released its list of the Top 10 most boring people in the nation. The list is, frankly, not only boring but confusing. Former President Bill Clinton supposedly is the country's 10th most boring person, and he makes the list for, among other things, stealing White House furniture and pardoning felons. That's boring? Wrong, sure, but boring? U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton is No. 9 on the list. She's a bit wonkish, true, but she can spin a story almost as well as her husband, and that's got to count for something. The Rev. Jesse Jackson ...

Heifer Project International's plans for a global village and center on hunger and poverty will progress more quickly now that the land dispute concerning the Clinton library site has been resolved, the charity's chief executive said Tuesday.Once built, Heifer Project's global village and world headquarters will draw hundreds of thousands of visitors annually, Little Rock Mayor Jim Dailey said. With the Clinton presidential center, it's expected to become an economic anchor for downtown.Heifer Project, a $40 million charity, began purchasing land beside the future Clinton presidential park in January with plans to build a multimillion-dollar education center on world hunger ...

Billy Bob Thornton has plenty of real-life phobias, some of which he shares with his character in the new film Bandits. One fear: antique furniture."I get creeped out and I can't breathe and I can't eat around it," Thornton says. "But it's only certain kinds of antique furniture. It mosty ... has to do with France and England." The 46-year old says he doesn't know where his fear comes from. "I've had friends tell me that maybe I was beaten to death with an antique chair in a former life," he says. "I don't know, I'm not really sure what ...

Soon after former President Clinton breaks ground on his presidential library later this year, visitors to the River Market District will get a sneak preview of what the library will hold.On the third floor of the Cox Building--the Main Library's triangular brick building on Commerce Stret--a temporary Clinton exhibit will provide a glimpse into the 77 million documents and 75,000 gifts Clinton amassed during his presidency. The National Archives and Records Administration and the William J. Clinton Foundation are workng together on the display."It's only a minuscule {sample} of the collection," said Skip Rutherford, president of the foundation. The exhibit ...

Anyone hear that an Earthquake has just struck L.A???

Two Arkansans were discussing an item they read in the New York Post..The Post reports: "Like so many of America's washed-up acts, Bill Clinton is making a big splash with the Japanese.Bubba is heading to Las Vegas next week to give a series of speeches to over 8,000 sales-women from a Japanese company that markets a vitamin supplement extracted from prunes."Clinton will collect $100,000 for his trouble, though it's doubtful that he'll offer any advice on prunes."Prunes!?" one frustrated Arkansan exclaimed."What'd you expect?" the other asked. "I expected him to shut up and go away!"Clinton shrivel up and die? Never.sw

Imagine that it's the mother who is at work in Houston. And it's the father who is at home, tending to his children and his demons. Or are they the same thing? He gets blurry about this a lot--The voices are confusing. Confusing and loud. And demanding. The only sound that can compete with them is the rush of running bath water, so he twists on the faucets full force. But soon the tub is filled and the voices win. Kill them. One by one, he takes his biblically named chldren and washes them out like soiled sweaters. He fans ...

A 63-year-old Montgomery, Ala., man who aimed a spotlight at pilots flying military aircraft near his home was sentenced April 5 to 18 months in federal prison.At trial, Henri de Yampert, who lives 1.2 miles from the end of a runway, admitted he waved a spotlight at planes to veer pilots into a flight path away from his property.He was convicted of air sabotage.

Gene Lyons can't help bragging just abit."Not everybody hates me and Joe," he says, referring to his writing partner Joe Conason, with whom he wrote The Hunting of The President: The Ten Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton."A pleased Lyons noticed in US Weekly that cover girl Christie Brinkley says she's reading the book."It's about the right-wing attempts to [destroy] Clinton," Brinkley explains to the magazine."Let's see now," Lyons says, "The Weekly Standard and Lucianne Goldberg or Christie Brinkley? Who would we rather have saying nice things about us? It's a tough question, but I think we'd have ...

She shakes hand after hand at rope lines; she waves with royal aplomb; she poses graciously and hugs her parents often. What she does not do, in public, is talk."She," of course, is Chelsea Clinton. The New York Times Magazine on Dec 3 published an issue devoted to the topic of secrets. And though her parents have paraded the young Miss Clinton much in the last year, she's still a silent enigma."She is a secret we are all keeping," writes Margaret Talbot in the Times' "Chelsea Under Wraps"."When her father took office, Chelsea was 12 years old, fizzy-haired, freckled and ...

Nobody has posted that the Reform party convention is on CSPAN at this moment. This post might add another five viewers to the ten that are watching nationally.

The federal Trading With the Enemy Act that Congress adopted in 1963 doesn't specifically mention President Fidel Castro as public enemy No. 1, but he was the inspiration for the trade sanctions, travel restrictions and spending limits the act imposes on American relations with Cuba. That didn't keep two members of Arkansas' congressional delegation from acceptng gifts from Castro worth more than the allowed $100 and bringing them into the United States. Berry, Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln and 14 other Arkansans each accepted an autographed box of Cohiba cigars from Castro. "It's a situation that you basically don't know what ...