Andanh.com

Samia Nawaz, a student at Little Rock's Anthony School, has reached the finals of the National Spelling Bee. Check out Rock Candy for video and more. Finals are on TV tonight.

The bee will be on ABC at 7 p.m.

Her last winning word: pyrrhotism. Rock Candy is particularly well-qualified to define.

UPDATE: She made it to the final 10, but was eliminated.

Another edition of Ask the Blog, for a reader who requested more information about Central Arkansas Water's contract with a new ad/PR adviser, Advantage Communications, and, for policy work, with Cranford Johnson Robinson Woods.

Advantage will receive a $4,000 monthly retainer, in addition to charges for specific projects. This compares with $5,000 a month plus charges for the previous ad/PR rep, Heathcott Associates. Here's the contract.

Heathcott was paid, in sum, $263,372 in 2003; $194,839 in 2004; $203,506 in 2005; $153,626 in 2006; $147,848 in 2007, and $103,418 in 2008.

Marie Crawford of CAW said Cranford will be paid by the hour on a per-project basis for support in "public policy analysis and development and public policymaker and stakeholder outreach (consumer, customer, ratepayer, watershed landowners, public officials, community groups, etc.)"

UPDATE: Check the jump for a statement from Crawford answering questions posed by readers.

Hmmmm. From the Memphis paper.

When Little Rock native Houston Nutt became Arkansas' coach in 1998, he could already see the future.

"I thought I was going to be there until I was retirement age, and then I was going to step into (the athletic director) shoes of Coach (Frank Broyles)," said Nutt, who resigned after 10 seasons at Arkansas last November to become head coach at Ole Miss.

"He told me that. He told me, 'Let's make that our goal.' He helped me a lot of different ways. He trained me administratively to prepare me in some ways for that.

"But I would never ever think about bringing it up or rushing him out. We had too close a relationship."

Broyles resigned effective last Dec. 31, but the school had already named Pittsburgh AD Jeff Long as his replacement back in September.

Blog reader CS alerts me to an out-of-the-ordinary house fire story on Channel 4.

A house at 43 Chenal Circle burned last night.

It happened around 1:45 Friday morning... Fire officials say the fire started at the back of the house.

They say a man was inside when the fire started, but was able to make it out. According to the police report, the owner, 31-year-old Aaron Jones, was asleep in his home when a man woke him up and pointed a black semi automatic gun at him.

Jones' stated his eyes and mouth were duct taped shut, and hands and feet bound. He states moments later he could smell smoke. Jones' was able to free himself and call 911 from a neighbors house.

The house is listed for sale at $1.8 million. It's shown above from the listing page in happier days. According to Arkansas Business, Jones (pictured) -- a lawyer with Spears and Jones of Benton -- and his wife Abigail bought the 4,685-square-foot house in 2005 for $1.6 million. "Jones said what attracted him to the three-bedroom home were the antique fixtures, the Baccarat crystal chandelier and the limestone columns."

The Fire Department said the house was a total loss in the fire, called in at 1:28 a.m. A spokesman said evidence was found that the fire was set in two different places on the ground floor. According to the Fire Department spokesman, Jones told fire investigators that the intruder he encountered was male and that there were perhaps others. A police report says there were two intruders who taped Jones. I've left phone and e-mail messages for Jones.

Jones is a land developer in Saline County. He landed on the Arkansas Business 40 under 40 list, too. He hosted a trip for Bryant aldermen that stirred up a bit of controversy in February. 

UPDATE: Arkansas Business adds some financial details. The home has been for sale for almost a year and has been marked down from about $2.2 million. AB reports finding $1.88 million in debt on the house, including a note for $430,000 to the previous owner. That note was payable May 5 and records do not indicate it has been paid, AB also reported.

Police statement on jump. I'm told further that when police arrived, Jones was still bound, his hands in front of him. He had "hopped" to a neighbor's house and rang the bell. She looked outside and, seeing a man with bound hands, immediately called 911, Lt. Terry Hastings said. The episode is being viewed as a home intrusion and arson, Hastings said. He said Jones had been very cooperative in working with police. In answer to a question posed by a reader, Hastings said Jones' wife and child were at the family's vacation home in Florida.

I can't take credit for the headline, it was suggested by a motorist who tipped me to the following development:

A crane was at work on Jennings Osborne's Cantrell Road spread yesterday as workers disassembled the giant light display on his yard. We haven't reached Jennings yet, but his wife Mitzi said the lights were coming down, in part because vandals continuously cut power to them.

We'll have more later I hope. I'm not sure yet if every last light is going, or whether Jennings is a 30 percenter, still happy to proudly advertise his support of George Bush in lights.

(For late arrivals to the LR scene, Osborne is the medical researcher whose annual Christmas light display grew so large that it spawned a lawsuit by neighbors over the traffic fallout. He's gone on to light up Disneyland World and Graceland and numerous other locales.)

UPDATE: Jennings checked in this morning. Gone for good is the giant American flag with the legend "God Bless America and George W." But, no, this is no signal of political defection. Osborne is a 30 percenter, he readily admits, though he acknowledges Bush has had a rough second term. Osborne prefers Hillary Clinton in this year's contest, in case you're wondering. "The Clintons have been very good to me," he said. Maintenance had become an issue on the flag sign and Osborne said he also has plans to sell the house and property on which the flag was constructed, as well as a house to the west of his main compound. This is not the end of all lighting. He said he would retain the 60-foot by 90-foot eagle that's erected inside the wall of his main house. He said he's having trouble finding someone to fix several rows of inoperative lights on the eagle.

 It would appear AP followed up our item and sent another Osborne story worldwide.

Here's a male columnist, E.J. Dionne, not ready to write off the idea that Hillary Clinton has endured criticism of a sort a male wouldn't have encountered.

How much anger is there among women about how Hillary Clinton has been treated during this campaign? Some of the nation's leading female politicians will tell you: quite a lot.

"From the beginning, she's been treated very badly," says Therese Murray, president of the Massachusetts Senate. "No woman would have run with Obama's résumé. She wouldn't have been considered." But Clinton has been "demonized by the press and the talking heads. How do you get away with that?"

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) says she is regularly approached "by women of all races, of all ages, of all faiths. They stop me, grab my hand and say, 'Look what they've done to her, we were so close.' They wanted this for their daughters and granddaughters. . . . It's so heartbreaking."

For Rep. Darlene Hooley (D-Ore.), the evidence that "sexism reigns supreme" lay in the wide availability of offensive anti-Hillary paraphernalia in stores and on the Internet. For Barbara Johnson, president of the Minneapolis City Council, Clinton may have been the victim of "ageism" as much as sexism. The message, she said, was: "Your time is past, it's time for somebody new to take your place."

There's more. The good news for Barack Obama, Dionne says, is that the anger is directed more at the media than at Obama.

Mike Huckabee governed as a big government Republican (and that's not criticism.) But it continues to rankle committed movement conservatives who hate "activist government." Columnist here thinks his continued defense of providing necessary services harmed his candidacy this year and could kill it in 2012.

This columns spins off a Huffington Post interview with Huckabee in which he described libertarians as more of a threat to the Republican Party than liberals. As you might guess, the Libertarian Party has something to say about that.