State briefs

AG asks court to halt birth certificate mediation

LITTLE ROCK — Arkansas’ attorney general is asking the state’s highest court to lift a judge’s order that the state go into mediation with three samesex couples over how to change a birth certificate law that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled illegally favors heterosexual parents.

Attorney General Leslie Rutledge asked the state Supreme Court Wednesday to vacate Pulaski County Circuit Judge Tim Fox’s orders requiring mediation on how to change the birth certificate law. Rutledge also challenges Fox’s order that she personally attend the mediation, scheduled for Saturday.

The filing said both sides negotiated a proposed order to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling, but Fox had rejected it.

Fox last month threatened to block Arkansas from issuing birth certificates if attorneys don’t find a fix for the law by Jan. 5.

Nonprofit to award coding scholarships to 12 adults

LITTLE ROCK — An Arkansas nonprofit organization is creating a program to award scholarships for 12 adults to attend classes on computer coding.

ARCodeKids announced Wednesday it was creating the program to award $6,000 scholarships for the adults to attend the 12-week Arkansas Coding Academy. Representatives of the ARCodeKids and the academy announced the new program at the state Capitol with Gov. Asa Hutchinson.

Four of the 12 scholarships have been designated for employees of state government, one from each of Arkansas’ congressional districts, and the state workers will receive paid leave during the academy.

Hutchinson also announced that enrollment in state high school computer science classes has increased to more than 6,000 students this year, compared to 5,500 last school year.

Little Rock police say 3 dead in apartment

LITTLE ROCK — Little Rock police say three people,

including children ages 4 and

5, were found dead in an apartment Tuesday in what is believed to be a triple-homicide.

Police spokesman Officer Steve Moore says investigators were summoned to the apartment and found the bodies of a

24-year-old woman and a boy and a girl who were believed to be her children. Moore did not say how the victims died, or a motive. A relative of the woman called officers after the children did not show up at school and the relative was not able to reach the woman.

“Two o’clock’s the time that we found them. As far as the time the incident occurred, that’s still unknown right now,” Moore said Tuesday afternoon outside the apartment.

The city had been on a pace to approach a record-high homicide rate but violence tapered off amid additional patrols that began in August. That month, two children died in what police said was a double murder-suicide.

Moore says all three of Tuesday’s deaths are believed to be homicides and pushed the city’s total for 2017 to 55. Justice Department records show Little Rock had 68 deaths in 1993 that were attributed to murder or manslaughter.

New Ten Commandments display wins initial OK

LITTLE ROCK — A plan to reinstall a Ten Commandments monument outside Arkansas’ Capitol months after it was destroyed has won initial approval from a state panel.

A subcommittee of the Capitol Arts and Grounds Commission on Tuesday approved a proposal to reinstall the privately funded memorial and make it more secure. The display was installed outside Arkansas’ Capitol in June but destroyed less than 24 hours later. The man accused of driving his car into it apologized in 2015 for also destroying one outside Oklahoma’s Capitol.

The Arkansas replacement would be surrounded by four concrete posts for protection. A public hearing on the proposed changes will be held Thursday, before they go before the full commission next week.

Oklahoma replaced its monument but its state Supreme Court later ordered it removed.