LITTLE ROCK (AP) — Arkansas cannot cut off millions of dollars in funding for desegregation programs in Little Rock-area school districts until the state asks a federal judge for permission to do so, an appeals court ruled Wednesday.
The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision comes after U.S. District Judge Brian Miller ordered an end to most of the payments, calling them counterproductive. He accused the districts of delaying desegregation to keep getting state money.

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JONESBORO (AP) — Three men who escaped from the Craighead County Jail and traveled as far north as Michigan before being caught in Florida are back where they started.
A judge set bond at $500,000 for each of the men during a court session conducted via video link from the jail after their return Tuesday.
Investigators allege the men stole vehicles and hopped a freight train to get around after their Nov. 23 escape. They were caught a week later in Polk County in central Florida.

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Sandra Caldron was able to walk away from her wrecked car late Wednesday afternoon, according to Arkansas State Police Trooper David Jones.
Caldron, 32, of Green Forrest was eastbound on Highway 14 in her 2008 Toyota Corolla when she lost control and crashed about a mile west of Locust Grove.
“She drove off the right edge of the highway,” Jones said. “When she pulled back up on the road she over corrected, lost control and crossed both lanes of traffic before she ran into a ditch causing her car to flip over onto its (passenger) side.”

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Girls seeking abortions in New Hampshire must first tell their parents or a judge, employers in Alabama must verify new workers’ U.S. residency, and California students will be the first in the country to receive mandatory lessons about the contributions of gays and lesbians under the set of state laws set to take effect at the start of 2012.
Many laws reflect the nation’s concerns over immigration, the cost of government and the best way to protect and benefit young people, including regulations on sports concussions.

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LITTLE ROCK — It was not a good year to be a bird in Arkansas.
2011 began with a bang, or, rather, lots of bangs as New Year’s revelers set off fireworks that flushed thousands of blackbirds and sent them colliding into houses, cars and each other. The discombobulated birds plummeted to their deaths in a town that shares the governor’s last name, ruffling the feathers of many a conspiracy theorist.

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The first semester of the 2011-12 school year has come to a close in the Batesville School District. The past 86 school days at Central Math and Science Magnet Elementary has been action-packed with exciting learning in classrooms, in labs, and on field trips.

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TUCKERMAN (AP) — Marietta Thompson has been a pen pal to the stars since she was 13.
“I thought I’d write letters to see if I could get a picture or a response. I kept a list of who all I wrote to. I had about an 85 percent return on all the letters,” she recalled. “I tried to write one a week to somebody.”
One of those letters has been included in a new book honoring the King of the Cowboys and the Queen of the West.

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Editor’s note: This column ran previously in the Guard on July 16, 1992.
95 YEARS AGO
Probably the youngest man ever admitted to practice law before the Supreme Court of Arkansas is Joe McCaleb of Batesville, the 24-year-old son of Mr. and Mrs. J.B. McCaleb of this city, who passed a most creditable examination before the court Monday. Last week Joe graduated from the law department of the State University at Little Rock. He arrived here last night and will be associated with his father and L.F. Reeder in the practice of his profession.

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PALM HARBOR, Fla. — A Florida animal sanctuary says Cheetah, the chimpanzee sidekick in the Tarzan movies of the early 1930s, has died at 80. But other accounts call that claim into question.
Debbie Cobb, outreach director at the Suncoast Primate Sanctuary in Palm Harbor, said Wednesday that her grandparents acquired Cheetah around 1960 from “Tarzan” star Johnny Weissmuller and that the chimp appeared in Tarzan films between 1932 and 1934. During that period, Weissmuller made “Tarzan the Ape Man” and “Tarzan and His Mate.”

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CHICAGO — Bill Dunphy thought his colonoscopy would be free.
His insurance company told him it would be covered 100 percent, with no copayment from him and no charge against his deductible. The nation’s 1-year-old health law requires most insurance plans to cover all costs for preventive care including colon cancer screening. So Dunphy had the procedure in April.
Then the bill arrived: $1,100.

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NEW MARKET, Tenn. (AP) — A fire broke out inside a zinc mine in Tennessee on Wednesday, trapping three miners inside for about three hours before they were rescued, authorities said. Two other miners below ground were injured by smoke inhalation.
The three miners were trapped by smoke and needed respirators before they could leave the mine. A rescue team helped them out and they appeared unharmed, though they were taken to a hospital as a precaution, said Tim Wilder of the Jefferson County EMA.

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