Kate Archer Kent

A California-based healthy vending machine company is spreading across Louisiana, with franchisees in Shreveport, Lafayette and now Alexandria. The owners of Cenla Healthy Vending, Graves and Anna Theus, launched their business earlier this summer by pitching the concept to local school principals. Two Rapides Parish high schools have signed on and will have vending machines with healthier snacks this school year.

The Women's Center of East Texas is hosting a conference exploring the exploitation of youth and young adults. Brooke Wyatt, the center's nonresidential projects director, says Houston is a major hub for trafficking and that spills over into East Texas and Louisiana. She says three youth were recently rescued in the Longview area. The conference is titled "The Exploitation of Our Society." It's set for Friday, Aug. 3, at Fellowship Bible Church in Longview.

A San Francisco consulting firm can take credit for making a flight school a reality in Natchitoches, La. Jane Zhang, president of Silk Wings Aviation, is helping forge a partnership between a Beijing aeronautics university, the city of Natchitoches, and Northwestern State University. Zhang estimates the flight school could enroll thousands of Chinese citizens a year once the program takes off.

Environmental protestors are organizing in East Texas to cause construction delays for the Keystone Gulf Coast pipeline project. Ron Seifert, spokesman for the group Tar Sands Blockade, says more than 60 people recently convened in Sulphur Springs, Texas, for civil disobedience training.

A new flight school opens Aug. 2 at Natchitoches Regional Airport. The Flight Academy of New Orleans will move into the hangar formerly occupied by Northwestern State University's aviation program that closed about a year ago. Stanley Salter, chairman of the Airport Commission, say the arrangement includes a partnership with Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He says China is experiencing an aviation boom and its citizens often seek flight training in the United States. The open house event is from 4 - 6 p.m. at Natchitoches Regional Airport.