FAYETTEVILLE — The rich got richer Monday, with Arkansas baseball adding one of the best players available in the transfer portal to its pitching staff.

East Carolina lefty Zach Root announced his commitment to the Razorbacks on social media Monday evening, becoming the 10th Division I transfer to join Arkansas this offseason. According to 64analytics, Root is ranked as the No. 2 player in the portal.

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Root was the Saturday starter for the Pirates in 2024, going 6-2 with a 3.56 ERA. He struck out 76 batters and only allowed 21 walks in 68 ⅓ innings. Root held opponents to a .228 batting average.

Root is a rising junior who hails from Florida. The lefty primarily worked out of the bullpen during his freshman season at ECU, sporting a 3-3 record and a 5.33 ERA.

Arkansas will need to replace consensus national pitcher of the year Hagen Smith and all of its weekend rotation next season. Still, the Hogs are blessed with plenty of options, and Root will add to the depth.

Freshmen Gabe Gaeckle, Colin Fisher and Hunter Dietz are all potential options. Gaeckle was the bullpen ace this spring, while the two lefties both had their seasons cut short due to injury. Gage Wood finished the year as a starter, while Ben Bybee took over as the top midweek option after Fisher’s injury.

Root is also the third potential starter added through the transfer portal. Ohio State’s Landon Beidelschies (6-7, 4.15 ERA) and Oregon State’s Aiden Jimenez have also joined the program. Jimenez missed the entire 2024 season with an injury.

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This story was supported by a statehouse coverage grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

With a big yellow lab panting behind him, Gov. John Carney signed the FY25 budget on Sunday night. He also put his signature on a one-time supplemental spending plan, a capital spending bill and Grant-in-Aid legislation providing funding for nonprofit groups throughout the state. State lawmakers also passed dozens of bills before session ended on the last day of June, but a few didn’t manage to make the cut.

The FY25 budget is $6.1 billion, an almost 9% increase in spending compared to last year. Lawmakers also signed off on a $168 million supplemental spending proposal.

“We’ve taken action to make our communities safer, protect our environment, and we continue to invest in our students and educators,” Carney said. “I’m proud that our budget makes these important investments and is also sustainable.”

The budget directs $50 million towards a goal to increase teacher salaries to a base pay of $60,000. It also adds $94 million to cover Medicaid costs and services and more than $6 million in state and federal funding to raise Medicaid reimbursement rates for home health workers and people who care for individuals with intellectual and physical disabilities.

The $1.1 billion capital improvement bill, also known as the Bond Bill, includes money for roads, schools districts and nonprofits. Highlights include $352.7 million for road projects, $27.7 million to improve water quality and $37 million toward economic development projects, which consists of a new social equity fund.

“It does all the transportation investments, incredible investments in education from elementary, secondary and higher education,” Carney said. “That’s basically the future of our economy here in our state and which drives all the revenue that makes everything possible.”

The “record-setting” $98.4 million Grant-in-Aid bill includes, for the first time, 16 nonprofits that were previously included in the budget bill. The legislation directs more than half of the money to community groups, cultural and historic entities that work on issues like mental health and substance use disorder. It also gives money to fire companies and paramedic services. WHYY also receives funding in the Grant-in-Aid bill.

Since publishing NASA Earth Observatory Goes to the Beach in July 2017, we have explored even more of the planet’s coasts via satellite images and astronaut photographs. This week, we return to the beach with a look back at some of our favorite seaside stories published in recent years. The images and text on this page first appeared on November 19, 2023.

An astronaut aboard the International Space Station took this photograph of Destin, Florida, a beach city situated on the Gulf of Mexico coastline.

The city is built on a peninsula that separates the Gulf of Mexico from the Choctawhatchee Bay. Ship transport between the Gulf of Mexico and the bay is possible via the East Pass, while a bridge connects Destin to Santa Rosa Island. The thin white streaks seen in the water are wakes from boats.

Destin is part of Florida’s Emerald Coast, an area that spans about 100 miles (160 kilometers) of the Florida Panhandle. The beaches in this area are known for their “sugary white” sand and green-toned waters. The white sand is comprised primarily of quartz grains that were transported from the southern Appalachian Mountains by the Apalachicola River system. Sunlight interacting with algae in the water produces the emerald color.

Destin’s white sandy beaches, emerald waters, and proximity to the Gulf of Mexico make the town a popular tourist destination. Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection reports an estimated total of 4.5 million annual visitors to Florida’s Emerald Coast. Many tourists visit the area because Destin is a major fishing destination.

This peninsula was initially a barrier island. Over time, coastal processes including hurricanes, sand transport, and changing sea levels connected the peninsula to mainland Florida.

The astronaut used a high-focal-length lens to capture this shot. High-focal-length lenses make it possible for space station crew to take high-resolution photographs of the surface with handheld digital cameras while in a low Earth orbit of approximately 254 miles (400 kilometers).

Astronaut photograph ISS069-E-39255 was acquired on July 30, 2023, with a Nikon D5 digital camera using a focal length of 1150 millimeters. The image was provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observations Facility and the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit at Johnson Space Center. The image was taken by a member of the Expedition 69 crew. It has been cropped and enhanced to improve contrast, and lens artifacts have been removed. The International Space Station Program supports the laboratory as part of the ISS National Lab to help astronauts take pictures of Earth that will be of the greatest value to scientists and the public and to make those images freely available on the Internet. Additional images taken by astronauts and cosmonauts can be viewed at the NASA/JSC Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. Caption by Minna Adel Rubio, GeoControl Systems, JETS Contract at NASA-JSC.