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"You chose to stand with me even when all the candidates were so well qualified," Kittredge said after he was sworn in. "I will respond to this opportunity and blessing by devoting myself honoring my oath to uphold the rule of law and be a faithful steward of this important position to all the people of South Carolina."

Kittredge, 51, was elected in February by state lawmakers to replace James Moore, who is retiring after 17 years on the high court. South Carolina is the only state where lawmakers alone select judges.

The Greenville native, who was elected to the Court of Appeals in 2003 after stints in Family and Circuit Court, was the sole candidate for the open seat on the high court after Chief Court of Appeals Judge Kaye Hearn, of Conway, and Circuit Court Judge John Few, of Greenville, withdrew from the race.

After graduating from the University of South Carolina School of Law in 1979, Kittredge served as a law clerk to former 4th U.S. Circuit Court Judge William Wilkins. He later worked in private practice with Wilkins' brother, David Wilkins, former South Carolina House speaker and current U.S. ambassador to Canada.

"'Together we can' is more than a slogan; it's a belief," Rex told educators in his annual "State of Education" speech at a weeklong leadership seminar sponsored by the state Association of School Administrators.

Legislators have talked for years about scrapping the complicated formulas, with no real progress. In January, the leaders of the House and Senate said reforming the education funding system is a top priority, and both chambers created committees to study the issue. But no changes were made.

State money now flows to public schools in several chunks, starting with the 31-year-old formula that sets the so-called "base student cost," which this year rose to $2,578 per student. Other pieces of the education funding puzzle include money generated by the 1-cent state sales tax increase approved in 1984, lottery money, federal money, local property taxes, and the state's reimbursement to districts for cutting some property taxes.

Many consider the current funding system unfair to poor children, saying it costs more to educate children living in poverty. Others complain it penalizes wealthier communities, because the oldest formula is based on property values, and promises less state money as property values rise.

Scott, the WMFX-FM Fox 102.3 afternoon DJ, died of lung cancer Wednesday morning at age 46.

Wilkie, of All-In Entertainment, said he sought Scott’s opinion when booking performers such as Leon Russell, Warrant, Great White, Robert Earl Keen and Mother’s Finest.

“He always cared about how the shows did, and that meant a lot to me,” Wilkie said.

Scott, whose real last name was Uischner, began his career at the classic rock Fox in 1988, a year after the station started broadcasting.

Robert William Custer II, 45, waived extradition and was picked up from the New River Valley Regional Detention Center in Giels County, Va., said Lexington County Sheriff James R. Metts.

Metts said police in Ocala, Fla., also have a warrant charging Custer with kidnapping and another for interfering with child custody.

Rashell Pennell and her son returned to Florida Tuesday after speaking with investigators.

Police are looking for the 1994 GMC Sonoma single-cab pickup with faded gray paint on the bottom that Custer was driving when he allegedly kidnapped Pennell and her 4-year-old son.

The University of South Carolina’s trustees heard an administration proposal today for a 5.9 percent increase in in-state tuition to $8,838, a $492 increase from the $8,346 sticker price for the just-completed 2007-08 academic year.

Many students entering USC have state-provided academic scholarsships that reduce the price they pay, but many of those also lose the grants if their grades fall below the required B average.

The Citadel’s trustees already increased tuition for the fall by 9 percent to $8,428 next fall, an increase of $693 from $7,735 this year.

We are in a period of rising costs," said USC President Andrew Sorensen. "Our utility bill alone rose $1 million."

Shari Lee, 40, an administrator at a private medical office, last week submitted the required number of signatures on petitions to qualify as a candidate, election officials said.

Wayne Shumpert had previously filed for the seat, left vacant when Bobby Vining moved to the mayor’s post in the April election.

A special election will be held July 15. The winner will serve the remaining two years of a four-year term.

— By Dawn Hinshaw, dhinshaw@thestate.com

Rex, in his annual State of Education speech at a meeting sponsored by the state Association of School Administrators, urged educators to contact community leaders and legislators about the need for reform.

Our K-12 funding system is part of a statewide tax structure that’s in desperate need of comprehensive repair,” Rex told more than 1,800 school principals and other educators gathered in Myrtle Beach. “Rather than fixing it, we’ve tinkered with piecemeal changes that make the system more complex, more unbalanced and less understandable.”

There are task forces working on recommendations for more equitably funding the state’s public schools, and Rex said it will be important to “look beyond ourselves, beyond our individual schools and school districts” for meaningful change to happen.

“We may be uncomfortable in the short term,” Rex said, “but in the long run it will be the only thing that saves our state from ruin.”

Austin said only police officers and firefighters are exempt from the freeze. Those posts total about 50 of the 200 positions affected.

Austin’s announcement came as city council members discussed next year’s budget today. The freeze is largely due to increasing costs for health insurance.

By Tim Flach, tflach@thestate.com

Solains Ortega, 41, of Bluffton, worked as a business administrator at Island West Golf Club, 40 Island West Drive, where her duties included depositing money in the bank, the report stated.

Between Feb. 13, 2007, and April 23, 2008, Ortega allegedly placed the original deposit slip in the golf club's files before making out a new one with a lesser value, the report aid. She then pocketed the difference, authorities said.

During that time period, Ortega is accused of stealing $103,559.

It took investigators and the golf club about a month to sort through the financial records. The investigation began when an Island West officials told sheriff deputies an employee had stolen $3,500.

In the Midlands:

Columbia City Council: 9 a.m., City Hall, 1737 Main St.

Richland County Appearance Commission: 5:30 p.m., Richland County Administration Building, 2020 Hampton St., Columbia.

Richland County CASA: 3:30 p.m. Reception for Richland County Family Court Judge Leslie K. Riddle, who has just been named the National CASA Judge of the Year, Richland County Courthouse, 1701 Main St, 4th floor Courtroom.

All seven council members at Tuesday's meeting voted in favor of the tax increase, which will raise about $1 million a year. One mill equals an additional $4 in property taxes for every $100,000 of assessed value for all owner-occupied homes, and $6 for every $100,000 assessed value of commercial property and second homes.

City staff members are tasked with coming up with a list of strategies for ending the rallies, and city leaders will choose which ones they want to try and which ones the city can afford.

It's news that will please the hundreds of anti-rally residents who showed up at last week's council meeting; but for others, it's not glad tidings.

"What I do in May and October is 40 percent of my business," said Ben Brown, owner of B&M Custom Cycles in downtown Myrtle Beach. "Without bike rallies, I don't have a business. What about all these other businesses - the drug stores, the movie theaters, the restaurants — that make money from the rallies? The money filters through the local economy."

The 27-page affidavit was unsealed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in the case against officers Gerald Holas and Jason Ross. The 35-year-old officers resigned last week.

The document said Holas and Ross admitted to investigators that they protected the alleged cocaine dealer, 25-year-old David C. Lockhart, in exchange for information they could use to arrest Lockhart's suppliers and customers.

The affidavit details a number of telephone conversations between Lockhart and Holas, including one series of calls that took place while other officers searched the suspected dealer at his home May 14.

Another occurred just before a drug bust at a Charlotte hotel, when Holas called Lockhart and told him to get out of the building. Holas was working with a drug interdiction team in the area at the time, the affidavit said.

Ahmed Abdellatif Sherif Mohamed, 26, one of two University of South Florida students arrested after a South Carolina traffic stop in August, pleaded guilty to providing material support to terrorists. He faces up to 15 years in prison when he is sentenced in September.

The arrests perpetuated the Tampa university's reputation as "Jihad U," a nickname coined after an Egyptian professor, Sami Al-Arian, was charged with raising money for terrorist attacks by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. He pleaded guilty to one count of providing support to terrorists and is in jail awaiting deportation.

Mohamed and fellow Egyptian student Youssef Samir Megahed were arrested after deputies stopped them for speeding near Charleston, S.C., and found what they described as pipe bombs in the trunk.

Deputies also found a laptop with a 12-minute video that had been uploaded to the video-sharing Web site YouTube.

He may be the first in West Virginia to ban plastic, but gas station operators nationwide are reporting similar woes as higher prices translate into higher credit card fees the managers must pay, squeezing profits at the pump.

"The more they buy, the more we lose," said Randolph, who manages Mr. Ed's Chevron in St. Albans. "Gas prices go up, and our profits go down."

His complaints target the so-called interchange fee - a percentage of the sale price paid to credit card companies on every transaction. The percentage is fixed - usually at just under 2 percent - but the dollar amount of the fee rises with the price of the goods or services.

As gas tops $4 a gallon, that pushes fees toward 10 cents a gallon. Now stations, which typically mark up gasoline by 11 to 12 cents a gallon, are seeing profits shrink or even reverse.

The sequence will be filmed Sunday on Assembly Street between Laurel to Gervais streets between 7 a.m. and 4 p.m., the Columbia Police Department said. Assembly Street will be closed intermittently during that period.

Streets from Park and Taylor to Park and Gervais will be closed and Main and Blanding to Main and Gervais, the department said.

Police officers will be assisting with traffic, the department.

For a map of the affected areas, click on the link with this story.

The Sun News of Myrtle Beach reports that the city council voted Tuesday to hike property tax by three mills to raise about $1 million. An average homeowner would pay an extra $12 on a $100,000 home.

The city wants to promote May as a family vacation month. Currently the month hosts two motorcycle rallies - one that attracts mostly white bikers and one marketed to black bikers.

Supporters of the rallies warned that once the events are gone, Myrtle Beach and could lose bikers who come down for vacations at other times.

The Anderson Independent-Mail reported Wednesday that Magistrate Mike Smith of Pelzer has been suspended by the South Carolina Supreme Court until a probe into the charge is finished.

Smith has said he did not see the fight and disputes accusations he grabbed a woman at a sports bar in Williamston earlier this month.

An off-duty sheriff's detective and another man also were arrested. The detective has since been fired.

Warrants say Smith was using loud profanity and interfered with a police investigation. He must turn in records, books and other property related to his office to the Chief Magistrate of Anderson County.

Drivers should use caution when approaching this intersection.

-- From staff reports

Berea Fire Chief Gary Brock told The Greenville News that firefighters found the body of Jordan Trammell in a closet near the master bedroom of the home after responding to the fire about 1:30 a.m. Tuesday.

Brock says small children often hide during fires.

He says two adults and three other children made it out of the home.

The cause of the fire is still under investigation.

Each of the fallen firefighters received medals of valor from the International Association of Firefighters at the hour-long memorial at Gaillard Auditorium. A firefighter standing next to a large, framed portrait of each man accepted the award.

The memorial service also included a 20-minute video tribute with personal pictures from each of the firefighters and an orchestra.

The men died battling a blaze at the Sofa Super Store after a small trash fire grew into a raging inferno inside the store and warehouse. It was the largest loss of firefighters' lives since the 2001 terror attacks in New York.

The site of the fire is now an empty lot. The city bought the land, but hasn't decided what to do with it. A private memorial for families and colleagues of the fallen firefighters was planned around the same time the fire chief ordered everyone out of the building last June 18.

“We’re not doing too well,” said Mulkey, a 68-year-old Navy retiree. “We grieve every day. Some days we don’t cry, but most of the time we do.”

In the year since a furniture store blaze killed nine Charleston firefighters, emotions in the city still can run raw.

There has been blame for a Fire Department that used outdated tactics and equipment.

There has been pride from the people who knew those killed.

Rep. Todd Rutherford, D-Richland, said he asked Carter several weeks ago to allow off-duty officers to work at Club Level, 1800 Blanding St., which Rutherford said he has patronized occasionally.

Rutherford said Carter declined to allow his officers to work off-duty at the club, saying alcohol and law enforcement don’t mix.

Carter, Columbia’s police chief since May, declined to comment Tuesday.

Rutherford said the officers typically would be paid by the club and are needed to work the dark parking lots near the club’s property. The club’s capacity is about 1,000, Rutherford said, and on Thursday nights, the line to get in snakes around the corner.

The new cost-of-living adjustment was part of a package of changes to the state’s retirement system to try to protect benefits for the more than 100,000 retired state and local government workers. Another change bumped the assumed return on state investments to 8 percent from 7.25 percent, which allows the state to assume more money will be available to pay for those benefits.

The 4-1 vote to guarantee the cost-of-living increases brought loud cheers from roughly 150 people who were gathered in the Wade Hampton Building lobby.

But Sanford criticized the changes, saying the state has added a $2.6 billion bill to its retirement benefits without finding a way to pay for it. State investments, Sanford said, were likely to fall short of the needed 8 percent gains.

For more than 45 minutes Sanford argued investing, the economy and long-term debts with retirement system and investment staff.

Land has been cleared from the first 24 acres to be developed on the new cemetery grounds at Fort Jackson, and full construction should begin this month, said Gene Linxwiler, the Veterans Affairs cemetery director in Columbia.

“We fully intend to create a national shrine in Columbia,” Linxwiler said. “People will visit their loved ones there but also visit the cemetery because of its beauty.”

Columbia is one of four cities where national cemeteries are under construction. The Fort Jackson site was chosen in 2006 as part of an expansion needed because of the rising deaths among World War II veterans.

The first section will be designed to hold 2,500 graves, Linxwiler said.

The committee has sitting college presidents on its wish list.

And at least one USC insider — Harris Pastides, the USC vice president for research and health sciences — is expected to have a shot at the job of running the eight-campus university system.

Miles Loadholt, chairman of the search committee, said the panel was interviewing on Tuesday the last of “six or seven” candidates. More than one were sitting presidents, he said.

The selection is not preordained, he said. “It’s still a horse race. I don’t know who the finalists are going to be.”

Keel, who spent nearly 29 years with the State Law Enforcement Division, was nominated in April to replace James Schweitzer, who was appointed in 2004.

Sanford on Feb. 29 forced the resignations of Schweitzer and Highway Patrol commander Col. Russell Roark, contending they should have fired a white trooper who used a racial slur while threatening to kill a fleeing black suspect during a 2004 traffic stop.

“It’s a great agency,” Keel said after being sworn in. “It’s been through some tough times. I’m looking forward to leading it out of the tough times.”

Keel is “going to be a great fit over at DPS,” Sanford said, “because of ... his experience on the ground, his experience at the top, his experience in really all facets of law enforcement.”

Marion Carter, 21, of Columbia, was partially ejected from a vehicle during the accident at 8:42 a.m. and was transported by EMS to Palmetto Health Richland hospital, where she was pronounced dead at 5 p.m.

Police are investigating.

— From Staff Reports

But this week, a group of about 350 young people visiting the Lowcountry through Friday are here not for recreation, but to help those less fortunate.

Their mission, while taking part in the Catholic HEART (Helping Everyone Attain Repairs Today) work camp, is to fix up the homes of elderly and disabled residents in the Lowcountry. The students will work on about 60 projects this week.

Ann Thompson of Charleston, one of the adults supervising the students, said the campers have very little down time. When they’re not busy with work orders, they’re housed at H.E. McCracken Middle School, where they participate in daily prayer. They also wait in line to take showers. And even if the students have their own money, stopping at an area fast-food chain is not allowed.

“The whole focus is on awareness of the poor and serving,” she said. “It’s amazing how they (the students) don’t complain.”

This May, she graduated from USC School of Nursing with a Ph.D., a new job as an assistant professor at the nursing school, and several thousand dollars in debt. She estimates it will take up to 10 years to repay her loans.

A new fellowship announced today will help ease the financial burden of future master’s and doctoral students, like Register, who want to become nurse educators. The move will address the state’s nursing shortage by producing teachers, nurse leaders say.

BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina Foundation has given $1.5 million over three years to help graduate nursing students at USC, MUSC and Clemson.

The program is designed to help people who want to earn higher degrees in nursing but can’t afford to do so, said Harvey Galloway, executive editor of BlueCross BlueShield Foundation.

The center will coordinate all of USC’s energy research programs.

Reifsnider also directs the Solid-Oxide Fuel Cell Program.

The Charles R. Drew Wellness Center’s pool will be closed all day Thursday while crews repair some of the building’s signature glass panels. The Greenview Park pool is scheduled to be closed Thursday while officials replace a broken pump, but a city official said they hope to fix the pump Wednesday so as not to conflict with a scheduled swim meet.

Charles Yelton at the Prairie Ridge Ecostation for Wildlife and Learning released the bird Monday afternoon, The News & Observer of Raleigh reported. Yelton is curator of programs and technology.

Ecostation employees had found the bird disoriented and starving on the side of a road Jan. 23. Officials think the bird had been hit by a car.

It recovered from a probable head injury at the Carolina Raptor Center in Huntsville all spring.

The hawk had to prove it could hunt in the Carolina Raptor Center’s large outdoor aviary before it could be released. Yelton said most released hawks do very well on their own.

Sunset Boulevard, 2900 block: Police were called to a convenience store parking lot at 3 p.m. Saturday after a woman said her husband had left her and their two children there. The woman told deputies the man was angry with her and was accusing her of having an affair. She said he demanded to see her cell phone, and when she resisted, he tore her shirt trying to get it. She said his behavior frightened her because all this was going on while he was driving with the children in the car. When he pulled over, he ordered her out of the carand destroyed her cell phone. He initially drove off with the children, but turned around and told them to go with their mother. He then told her to find her own way home, a report said.

RICHLAND COUNTY SHERIFF

Blossom Street at Beltline Boulevard, 29209: Police were called to a business at noon Monday after employees discovered someone had shot at the building. There were numerous bullet holes all over an area of the building, and police said the holes were made by a pistol. Damage was estimated at $10,000.

Judy Street, 3700 block: A man called police at 12:30 a.m. Monday and said his landlady attacked him. The 39-year-old man told deputies he and the landlady argued, and he refused to give her any rent money. He said she began to hit, slap and scratch him. When officers arrived, they noticed bruises and scratches on his face and back, a report said.

The ordinance, which passed 3-2, would ban anyone from wearing pants more than 3 inches below their hips “and thereby exposing his or her skin or intimate clothing.” The ordinance calls for a maximum penalty of $500 and 30 days in jail, county attorney Marvin Jones said.

Councilmen George Hood, LeRoy Blackshear and Fred Tuten voted for the ordinance. Councilwoman Gladys Jones (no relation to the attorney) and Councilman Hubert Tyler were in the minority.

Blackshear proposed the ordinance because he thinks the style, popularized by hip-hop artists in the 1990s, is indecent in public.

But Tyler said he opposed the ordinance because the style is a symptom of a problem and not the cause.

The restored 92-foot wooden yacht Innisfail is docked at Charleston’s City Marina.

It was built in 1939 for a Chicago meatpacking executive. It later was bought by the federal government and, during World War II, patrolled the East Coast looking for German submarines. After that, it was used for presidential cruises.

Frank Lynch, who owns a string of carwashes in the Charleston area, bought the yacht last year for $1.5 million, The Charleston Post and Courier reported. He’s renting it for $800 an hour for weddings and corporate retreats.

Contributing: Staff writers Dawn Hinshaw and Adam Beam; staff reports; The Associated Press

Flora is one of 21 South Carolina high schools included on the 2008 Newsweek/Washington Post “Challenge Index,” an annual survey that measures rigorous course offerings and how students perform in those classes.

Of the 1,358 public high schools on this year’s list, Flora was ranked 808th.

Tuesday, council approved the ban for public workplaces, including bars and restaurants, in unincorporated Richland County. Only Councilman Bill Malinowski voted no.

Council had delayed implementation to coordinate with the law passed for Columbia.

Atlanta attorney Ann Fitz, who took Esther Elizabeth Reed’s case pro bono after the woman contacted her from jail, said she plans to ask a judge to move the trial to New York, Chicago or Atlanta.

“Greenville is such a small area and so closely connected to Brooke Henson,” Fitz said of the missing woman whose identity Reed is accused of stealing. “Brooke Henson’s family has said that they want Esther Reed to get the maximum, that she should never see the light of day again.”

Reed, arrested Feb. 3 in Chicago, was indicted last year on federal charges accusing her of using Henson’s identity to obtain false identification documents, take a high school equivalency test and get into Columbia University.

Investigators have said they do not think Reed, of Montana, had anything to do with the disappearance of Henson, who last was seen in 1999.

And if more evidence proves the artifact is a type of tool archaeologists haven’t found before, it could be named after Matthew Carey of Hilton Head Island.

The 22-year-old USC anthropology major volunteered at the “Topper site,” where USC archaeologist Dr. Albert Goodyear has been excavating for 10 years. Carey found the tools June 8, the last day of the 2008 dig.

Though it’s Goodyear’s project, new finds typically are named after their discoverers.

That would make Carey the second local resident to earn name recognition by contributing a new find at the dig.

Today: How, Hollings says, President George W. Bush failed the country in Iraq.

THESTATE.COM

View portions of a recent Hollings interview conducted by The State’s James Hammond.

SAN ANTONIO — His lifelong dream of becoming a soldier had, in the end, come to this for Isaac Stevens: 28, penniless, in a wheelchair, fending off the sexual advances of another man in a homeless shelter.

Stevens’ descent from Army private first-class, 3rd Infantry Division, 11 Bravo Company, began in 2005 — not in battle, since he never was sent off to Iraq or Afghanistan, but with a headfirst fall over a wall on the obstacle course at Fort Benning, Ga. He suffered a head injury and spinal damage.

The injury alone didn’t put him in a homeless shelter. Instead, it was military bureaucracy — specifically, the way injured soldiers are discharged on just a fraction of their salary and then forced to wait six to nine months, and sometimes even more than a year, before their full disability payments begin to flow.

“When I got out, I hate to say it, but man, that was it. Everybody just kind of washed their hands of me, and it was like, ‘OK, you’re on your own,’” said Stevens, who was discharged in November and was in a shelter by February. He now has a temporary San Antonio apartment with help from the nonprofit Operation Homefront (www.operationhomefront.net).

The case is an appeal by the Bush administration on behalf of John Ashcroft, who at the time was attorney general, and Robert Mueller, then as now the director of the FBI.

The federal appeals court in Manhattan, in a pretrial decision last June, rejected the officials’ claims of immunity.

Javaid Iqbal, a Pakistani, was a 33-year-old cable television installer on Long Island at the time of his arrest on Nov. 2, 2001. His wife was a U.S. citizen and he had an application pending for a green card. He was charged with document fraud for using a Social Security card that belonged to someone else.

Iqbal pleaded guilty after several months of confinement in the special unit, where he says he was subject to beatings and body searches.

South Carolina’s sex offenders soon will have fewer places to live.

A bill, signed into law late Monday by Gov. Mark Sanford, limits sex offenders who have victimized children younger than 16 from living within 1,000 feet of schools, daycare centers, children’s recreational facilities, parks and playgrounds.

Sanford signed the bill begrudgingly, taking issue with an amendment to the legislation that reduced the first-offense penalty for sex offenders who fail to register.

The penalty under the original version of the bill was up to 90 days in jail. Under the new version, the penalty is 30 days and/or a $500 fine.

The Taliban assault on the outskirts of Kandahar is the latest display of prowess by the militants despite a record number of U.S. and NATO troops in the country.

The push into the Arghandab district — a lush region filled with grape and pomegranate groves and an area the Soviet army never could conquer — comes three days after a Taliban attack on Kandahar’s prison that freed 400 insurgent fighters.

Those fighters, NATO conceded Monday, appear to be massing on the doorstep of the Taliban’s former power base.

The sophisticated jailbreak, followed by the movement into Arghandab, is the latest evidence of the Taliban’s growing strength. The U.S. and NATO have pleaded for more troops in the last year and now have 65,000 in the country. Britain’s Defense Secretary Des Browne announced Monday that 230 more British troops are going to Afghanistan, describing the mission as “a noble cause.”

The scholarship created by Hercules Inc. is named in honor of Clemson student Ralph Pinnock Jr. of Columbia, who planned to be an intern at the company this summer. Pinnock died in December in a motorcycle wreck.

The center will coordinate all of USC’s energy research programs.

Reifsnider also directs the Solid-Oxide Fuel Cell Program, which will become a Center of Economic Excellence when matching funds are in place.

"There's quite a bit of energy research being conducted at Carolina, so the Future Fuels Center is really a university-wide initiative to focus those efforts," Reifsnider said. "We're going to promote all of the Centers of Economic Excellence that are related to energy, as well as our research programs in solar, nuclear engineering, clean coal, biomass and environmental sustainability. The center will also be a mechanism for fundraising for our energy research initiatives."

The center will:

Richard Stull is dean of the school of pharmacy and assistant provost for graduate studies at the University of Charleston, W. Va.

“Dr. Stull is a leader in pharmacy education and a noted and experienced pharmacology scholar and teacher,” Presbyterian College president John Griffith said.

“He has held leadership roles in the startup of three pharmacy schools and has led one of those startups. Dick brings a unique set of skills and experience to the job and has demonstrated both the academic and administrative leadership needed to create an outstanding school of pharmacy.”

Stull is focused on establishing a pharmacy program that reflects the values and academic reputation of Presbyterian College, officials said.

The eight students — a school record — include Crystal Denise Byrd, Regina Sierra Carter, Kimberly K. Cavanagh, Denis Leigh Dunovant, Matthew Thomas Enright, Stephanie Glotfelty, Sarah Elizabeth Schwartz and Pamela Lauren Szathmary.

The Fulbright Scholarship program was developed in 1946 after World War II and is sponsored by the Institute of International Education.

In 2007, the institute awarded about 6,000 grants worth more than $262 million to U.S. students, teachers, professionals and scholars to study, teach, lecture and conduct research in more than 155 countries.

The program also enables international students to live and learn in the United States. This past academic year, Fulbright scholars from Argentina, Thailand, Ukraine, Barbados, Senegal, Costa Rica, Brazil, Haiti, Russia and Cameroon attended the University of South Carolina.

Stover will join Chapin Middle School in Lexington-Richland School District 5 as the second in the Midlands to become a Green Power Solar School, a program sponsored by Santee Cooper and electric cooperatives statewide.

With soaring gas and energy costs and a growing national discussion on the need for options, solar power lessons from the program — launched in the 2007-08 school year — are more timely than ever.

“We’re interested in exposing students to alternative sources of energy,” said Stover principal Dennis Reeder. “Why not inspire young people to invest in solar energy?”

Stover students will learn about renewable energy sources with a 10- by 12-foot solar panel, which will be installed in August on a pole next to the school.