State briefs

Arkansas’ unemployment rate continues downward slide

LITTLE ROCK — Arkansas’ unemployment rate was 5.1 percent in October, down onetenth of a percentage point since September.

The Arkansas Department of Workforce Services says nonfarm payroll jobs increased by 3,200 in October, with the largest gains coming in the government sector as public school employment reaches full capacity. Educational and health services jobs increased by 1,100, as did jobs in the trade, transportation and utilities sector.

The leisure and hospitality sector lost 2,100 jobs, which the agency says is a typical seasonal decline.

Arkansas’ October rate of 5.1 percent is down from last October’s unemployment rate of 5.8 percent. The national unemployment rate is 5 percent.

Officials: Harding University recovering from building fire

SEARCY — Harding University officials say the school is continuing to recover from a fire that destroyed a mechanical building on the Searcy campus.

The Daily Citizen reported Thursday that the mechanical building provided heating and cooling to the school’s health sciences centers. The building was destroyed early Sunday morning.

Officials say the mechanical building also housed fiber optic cables that carried network connections to several buildings.

Physical Resources Director Danny DeRamus says the cause of the fire is unknown.

Dr. Julie Hixson-Wallace, Center for Health Sciences assistant provost, says that students with classes in the health sciences buildings have been asked to go to class dressed in layers to adjust to varying temperatures.

2 found dead after suspected robbery in Texarkana

TEXARKANA — Authorities say two people were found shot to death after a suspected robbery at a Texarkana apartment.

Texarkana Police Department spokeswoman Kristi Bennett says the shootings happened shortly after midnight Friday at Beacon Point Apartments. The Texarkana Gazette reports that one person was found dead inside an upstairs apartment, while a second person was found dead outside the apartment.

Police say both people died from gunshot wounds. Bennett says a preliminary investigation shows that a possible robbery happened inside the apartment, and shots were fired from multiple weapons.

No arrests have been made.

Arkansas phone booth listed on register of historic places

PRAIRIE GROVE — A 56-year-old telephone booth in Prairie Grove has become the first structure of its kind to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported Friday that the Airlight outdoor booth was officially listed on the register on Nov. 9. Ralph Wilcox with the state’s Historic Preservation Program says the Prairie Grove telephone booth is rare in the state because it is a working telephone. Wilcox says the only other one in the state that he is aware of is in Bluffton in Yell County, where there is no cellphone service.

The metal-and-glass phone booth is a tourist attraction and is located on U.S. 62 across from Prairie Grove Battlefield State Park.

Wilcox said the National Park Service was initial hesitant about placing a phone booth on the list after it was selected for nomination in April by the state review board of the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program. The register said in its response to Wilcox that the “listing blurs the line between a ‘place’ and an artifact, and it begs the questions about where the line between significance and nostalgia is drawn.”

Wilcox resubmitted the phone booth’s nomination, emphasizing that the structure “represented a new and advanced design for the telephone booth.” He said that before the Airlight was developed in 1954, telephone booths were made of wood and placed inside buildings.

David Parks, president of Prairie Grove Telephone Co., who was notified Thursday about the designation, says he believes the company put in the phone booth around 1959. Parks says there are no plans to place a plaque outside the phone booth.

“It’s just a little hard to believe. I mean, who would have thought? I’m tickled. I really am,” said Parks.

According to the company president, the phone booth yields $3 to $4 in change per year.