The Kentucky House has unanimously passed a bill to create an external panel to review certain child death and near death cases.

A similar bill failed to pass last year, but Gov. Steve Beshear signed an executive order in the spring to create a temporary panel, which has since been reviewing certain cases.

Here's what you'll hear on this edition of Byline ('play' button below):

At the top - This week, Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer announced the appointment of Anthony Smith as the city’s first Director of Safe Neighborhoods. It was a position recommended by a task force that’s been studying ways to reduce violence in the city.  WFPL's Devin Katayama discusses Smith’s appointment and his initial plans for the job.

The Louisville Cardinals return to the basketball court tomorrow against Seton Hall.

U of L coach Rick Pitino said after the Cards’ five-overtime loss at Notre Dame on February 9 that his team could make up for its poor performance that night by winning the last seven regular season games.  

U of L will seek victory number three toward that goal against the struggling Pirates.   Seton Hall has lost eight in a row.    Tipoff at the KFC Yum Center  is at noon.

A bill  moving Medicaid late payment claims to the Department of Insurance appears to have some support in the state Senate.

House Bill 5 would take prompt pay issues with the Medicaid managed care system and put it through the Insurance Department's current claims process. Currently, the Cabinet for Health and Family Services deal with late claims.

Sen. Julie Denton, chair of the Senate Health and Welfare Committee, said she plans to give the bill a hearing and supports the bill's attempts to make managed care organizations pay providers.

The caucus staff for the Louisville Metro Council Democrats and Republicans have created social media pages to better reach constituents.

Currently, a handful of city lawmakers have official Facebook and Twitter accounts where they update their ordinances and district events.

Others use their personal website to update on their council work, but most have not signed on to social networking to reach out to constituents.

Democratic Caucus spokesman Tony Hyatt says the technology is a good way to let residents know what’s on their agenda, and that more lawmakers will be logging on soon.

"I think the goal is to eventually bring everybody along. You know as well as I do there are some folks who were a little late to the game in understanding how social media operates. Our goal is to get the information out of what’s going on with the caucus, meeting notifications, letting them know about progress reports on certain things," he says.

Neurotic writers manipulating their self-aware fictional characters isn’t a new device, but unlike similar stories, The Bard’s Town’s funny and engaging “Chasing Ophelia” isn’t concerned with picking the navel of the writer’s creative processes or artistic tensions. For a romantic comedy, this play’s concerns are remarkably, well, theological: is an unseen, omniscient being really in charge of us, and how do we deal with feeling abandoned by him?

State Rep. Sannie Overly has filed a bill that will allow the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet to explore public-private partnerships to help construction projects with big price tags.

The bill doesn't specifically name any projects, but Kentucky currently has multiple instances where the bill could help work start, namely the Brent Spence Bridge in Northern Kentucky and Interstate 69 in western Kentucky.

Overly, a Paris Democrat, said the goal is to help the state have one more avenue to help fund its infrastructure projects.

It's not as elegant as some languages, but neither is it as impenetrable as, say, an economics textbook or the iTunes user agreement.

"We have our own language on Capitol Hill," says Don Ritchie, head of the Senate Historical Office.

That language — the budget terms and political euphemisms that fly freely through the air in Washington, D.C. — often ends up seeping into the nation's discourse.

Planned Parenthood released a television attack ad against Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell on Friday over his support of a lawsuit against a birth-control policy in President Obama's health care law.

Watch:

A new face for Louisville violence prevention efforts, an interview with new Kentucky poet laureate Frank X. Walker and the happenings in the General Assembly are coming up on Byline.

Mayor Greg Fischer recently announced that Anthony Smith will be the city's new safe neighborhoods director. WFPL's Devin Katayama will discuss what this means.