Governor Mike Beebe yesterday officially issued the call for a special session of the state legislature. The Federal Reserve Bank released its quarterly Burgundy Book, which provides some insight into the health of the state's economy. hundreds of volunteers associated with World Changers are descending upon Fort Smith to help with some repairs to homes in the city. And the city of Fayetteville recently released a new Web application to help city residents find city information applicable to where they live in the city.
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The Principal Fellows program at the U of A yesterday announced it had received a $1.9 million grant from the Walton Family Foundation. A recent report suggests that in coming years, the northwest Arkansas economy will be among the fastest growing in the U.S.. And the Bentonville City Council gets ready to fill two vacancies.

UA Professor Angie Maxwell argues that the attention the South received throughout the 20th century in regards to three particular events has shaped the Southern Identity that exists yet today. She discusses her book The Indicted South: Public Criticism, Southern Inferiorty, and the the Politics of Whiteness with Ozarks’ Christina Karnatz.
Latest Edition of Ozarks at Large
July 4th Weekend, 2014
For this holiday weekend we listen again to music recorded inside Firmin-Garner Performance Studio during the first six months of 2014. We hear from:
Pearl Brick
Cletus Got Shot
Sweetwater Gypsies
Isayah Wofford
The Riverblenders
Xcluded
Sons of Otis Malone
Finvarra's Wren
Dick Johnson
Elephant Revival
And a weekend update of things to do from Becca Martin Brown from Northwest Arkansas Newspapers.
Bill Parry, from the cast of Memphis, talks to us about the musical, life on the road and the changes theater has had in the past couple of decades. Memphis is at Walton Arts Center through the weekend.
"Big Love" performed by Will Mann, from the Memphis soundtrack
The Valley of the Vapors music festival turns Hot Springs into a hotbed of DIY and experimental music each March. There's a new documentary film out about the fest making its Northwest Arkansas debut at Nightbird Books in Fayetteville this Saturday. Ozarks at Large's Katy Henriksen has more.
The Arkansas Legislature considers a ban on the parental rights of convicted rapists, as well as a bill barring school districts from considering home school students as public school students. Plus, University of Arkansas chancellor G. David Gearhart calls for an independent audit of the university's advancement division.
"We Will Become Silhouettes (Matthew Dear's Not Scared Mix)" by The Postal Service
In reaction to the Newtown, Connecticut elementary school massacre, Arkansas schools continue to bolster security—from hiring armed guards to installing heavy surveillance. We check districts around the region, talk with school security experts, look at current state legislation, and hear from former U.S. Congressman Asa Hutchinson on the status of his National School Shield Emergency Response Program, commissioned by the National Rifle Association.
We talk to an expert who has studied norovirus for 10 years about the symptoms and conditions to lead to its exposure to humans.