JUNCTION CITY — A ticket sold in Junction City at the Arkansas border of Claiborne Parish matched all six numbers in Saturday night’s Louisiana Lotto drawing.
The jackpot of $1.6 million will go to a winner who wishes to remain anonymous, a lottery spokeswoman said. The store that sold the winning ticket also was not identified.
Twenty-five Lotto tickets with five of six numbers were sold, earning the winners $1,735 each. The Lotto numbers were 1-9-18-27-30-40.
Just drive around town and look for a new Mercedes, and you’ll know who won.
There haven’t been any blog posts today because I’ve been involved with the groundbreaking ceremony at the new TETRA Technologies calcium chloride plant in Parkers Chapel. Governor Mike Beebe drove down for the event, which was pretty well attended.
The plant will provide 50 permanent jobs and hundreds of temporary construction jobs. That’s definitely a good thing for Union County.
I also interviewed the governor about the future of Pilgrim’s Pride in El Dorado. What he said was encouraging. For more on that, look to Saturday’s El Dorado News-Times.
For now, I’m off to SouthArk’s lecture series, where Maria Haley, the state’s top economist, will be speaking at 7 p.m. More later.
Gas prices are creeping forward to $4 for a gallon of regular. For once, though, South Arkansas isn’t on the list of the highest prices in the state. Just wait, I’m sure we’ll catch up soon. Here’s a rundown of the highest and lowest prices in the state as of today, courtesy of Arkansasgasprices.com.
Arkansas Governor Mike Beebe will speak at 10 a.m. Thursday at the groundbreaking ceremony of the new Tetra Technologies plant, 295 Old Feed Mill Road, Parkers Chapel.
In case of inclement weather, the event will start at approximately 10:30 a.m.
The plant is being built on land purchased from and adjacent to Chemtura’s Central Bromine Plant and will produce liquid and flake calcium chloride. Tetra is not affiliated with Chemtura.
Other guests speakers will include Jim Tidwell, manager of Tetra’s South Arkansas operations, Ray Symens, vice president of Tetra, as well as Union County Judge Bobby Edmonds and El Dorado Mayor Mike Dumas.
Lunch will be served after the program.
Sam’s Club, a division of Wal-Mart, said on Wednesday that it is limiting sales of certain types of rice “due to recent supply and demand trends,” according to an article from Reuters News Service.
On Tuesday, Costco Wholesale Corp, the largest U.S. warehouse club operator, said it has seen increased demand for items like rice and flour as customers, worried about global food shortages and rising prices, stock up, the article says.
Click here for more.
PHOTO CREDIT: Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/RICK MCFARLAND — Rice as it comes in from the fields (left) and as it leaves the mill (right) at the Windmill Rice Co.’s new rice mill that is nearing completion in Jonesboro Wednesday, April 16.
KATV Channel 7 in Little Rock has a special section dedication to the disappearance of John Glasgow, CFO of CDI Contractors, Inc. of Little Rock.
Glasgow was last seen on January 28, 2008.
KATV reporter Heather Crawford talked to family, friends, co-workers and investigators about the facts of this missing persons case.
Glasgow’s brother, Gary Glasgow, lives in El Dorado. Click here for more.
A mushroom cloud billows up over Nagasaki, Japan, after the dropping of the “Fat Man” atomic bomb on August 9, 1945. Image credit: KRT.
Here’s a scary thought: Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said in a recent interview that if Iran should attack Israel with nuclear weapons then she would support attacking Iran with a massive nuclear strike.
Something to think about at the voting booths. Click here for more.
ZZ Top, Huey Lewis & the News, Merle Haggard, .38 Special and more will headline this year’s Riverfest in Little Rock.
Click here for more.
The Magnolia Banner-News’ Brandy Ward reports:
A broken railroad track caused three tank cars full of liquid chlorine to derail and tip over Friday morning in north Magnolia.
The incident happened about 9 a.m. on the Louisiana & North West Railroad track that parallels Shanhouse Drive between Greene and West University streets.
Magnolia Police Chief Robert Gorum said five tankers were derailed. The L&NW train was pulling a total of eight chlorine tankers of chlorine from the McNeil rail junction southbound to the Albemarle Corporation plant south of Magnolia. The black and white tankers were labeled “Chlorine Inhalation Hazard.”
There were no leaks. One tanker does have a rupture in its outer wall. The outer wall of the tank is made of two inches of glass wool. A two-inch thick ceramic fiber container holds the liquid inside each tanker.
Gorum said there is no danger to the public.
Chlorine spills require an evacuation radius of a mile If an evacuation had been required, it would have included Magnolia Hospital, Southern Arkansas University, hundreds of homes and the Sapa Group, Unit Structures and Amfuel plants.
Gorum said authorities will consider a partial evacuation. In the event of an evacuation, law enforcement officers will go door-to-door to make sure everyone is aware of the situation.
“We will probably evacuate some of the area just in case,” said Gorum.
Try $3.48 a gallon locally and $3.50 a gallon across the nation on average. And that’s just for starters. How much higher will gas go? Click here for more.
But how feasible is it?
Are there enough people who travel between these cities to sustain such a rail system? Guess we’ll have to wait and see.
Click here for more.
Residents across the Midwest were awakened Friday by a 5.2 magnitude earthquake that rattled skyscrapers in Chicago’s Loop and homes in Cincinnati but appeared to cause no major injuries or damage, the Associated Press is reporting.
The quake just before 4:37 a.m. was centered six miles from West Salem, Ill., and 66 miles from Evansville, Ind.
Click here for more.
In my story on Thursday’s front page about the suspension of the water conservation tax, I said that residents pay 24 cents for each gallon of water used. It’s actually 24 cents for each 1,000 gallons used. Call it a gaffe on my part. We all make them.
A Connecticut toddler is dead after being refused fluids for a week by his caretakers, who were allegedly trying to keep the child from wetting the bed. The Associated Press reports that 23-month-old Amari Jackson died of dehydration while Sharon Patterson and her brother Robert Patterson were caring for him in February.
They were looking after the child while his parents were away.
Investigators said glasses around the house were laced with hot sauce to keep the boy from drinking.
Click here for more.
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