WASHINGTON - A growing number of Arkansans will spend larger chunks of their wages on health costs in 2008, according to a report released Thursday by an advocacy group that said it shows medical care is becoming unaffordable even for families with insurance.

Barbara Mathes of Mayflower participated in a recent 13-day national study tour to Louisiana and Washington, D.C.

LITTLE ROCK (AP) Federal regulators have ordered an Arkansas Department of Community Corrections office to stop testing parolees' urine for drugs, saying the state agency lacks a needed certificate.

LITTLE ROCK (AP) -- Comparatively speaking, Arkansas is sluggishly reducing its teen-age birthrate.

LITTLE ROCK (AP) -- Comparatively speaking, Arkansas is sluggishly reducing its teen-age birthrate.

In observance of AIDS Compassion Day, which is Friday, June 25, the American Bible Society is offering its Scripture Portion, "Nothing Can Separate Us from the God of Love." It is designed to bring comfort and compassion to persons living with HIV/AIDS.

The volume of violent crime in the world has no trouble finding its way onto television screens and newspaper pages, often graphically and all-too-real; sadly, what often gets left behind when the shock wears off are the victims of this violence as they struggle to reassemble their lives into something normal.

Arkansas is among the best states in the nation for putting those on welfare into jobs, the state announced Tuesday.

Last month, a guest columnist for the Log Cabin Democrat and Gov. Huckabee's Saturday morning radio address both discussed welfare programs and their effect on families. The two offered very different opinions.

The Lupus Foundation of America Inc., Arkansas Chapter, Conway Branch, will join with the national organization and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office on Women's Health, in hosting a Town Hall Meeting from 3 to 5:30 p.m. on May 16 at Faulkner County Library.