Metro Louisville recently completed an audit of  Dismas Charities Inc., which found that the workers who were jail inmates were not signing in and out assignment or were properly monitored. Here's the audit report:

Kentucky’s second sandhill crane hunting season is underway.

When the Kentucky Division of Fish and Wildlife first proposed a sandhill crane hunting season, it met with opposition from groups that argued the birds weren’t overpopulated or causing an environmental burden. There was also a worry that hunters could mistakenly kill an endangered whooping crane.

The Kentucky Department of Education’s new restraint and seclusion policy proposal is in the final stages of approval this week and will go before the state’s Administrative Regulatory Review Committee Monday.

Kentucky is one of several states that don’t have a law regulating restraint and seclusion for misbehaving students. Instead, the Kentucky Board of Education sets the governing policies, but the department has acknowledged changes to the regulations are needed.

Six-year-olds Jack Pinto and Noah Pozner — two of the 20 first-graders killed Friday when a gunman stormed Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. — are to be remembered at funeral services this afternoon.

Jack loved sports and was said to be a big fan of New York Giants wide receiver Victor Cruz, who wrote the boy's name on the cleats — along with the words "My Hero" — he wore Sunday.

Transcript of President Obama's speech at the interfaith vigil in Newtown, Conn., Dec. 16 in honor of the victims of the shootings at Sandy Hill Elementary. Source: White House

This week, the U.S. Department of Education will begin offering certain students a new long-term option for repaying direct federal loans called the “Pay as You Earn” plan.

On Friday, students who have taken out direct federal student loans after Oct. 1, 2007 and have received at least one disbursement after Oct. 1, 2011 could be eligible to participate in the program, which is an effort to keep higher education affordable and to relieve current student debt.

The Fund for the Arts launched the online fundraising platform Power2Give in Kentucky and Southern Indiana last December. In its first year, the platform has helped raise more than $700,000 in additional funds for the region’s arts organizations.

WFPL is proud to sponsor the University of Louisville’s Kentucky Author Forum presentation of Jared Diamond on January 9th at the Kentucky Center. Diamond is an evolutionary biologist, professor of geography at UCLA, and author of The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn From Traditional Societies?  

Diamond will be interviewed by Sarah Hrdy, Associate in the Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology at Harvard.

President Obama grieved with the community of Newtown, Conn., Sunday night, telling residents at a memorial service that he was there to assure those who lost loved ones in Friday's brutal attack "that you're not alone in your grief, that our world too has been torn apart — that all across this land of ours, we have wept with you."

Before he joins the call for legalized industrial hemp, Gov. Steve Beshear wants law enforcement officials to resolve their concerns about the issue.

The issue: Some Kentucky officials believe legalized industrial hemp would be good for Kentucky's economy, but law enforcement officials are concerned that such a move would conflict with efforts to crack down on marijuana growers.

“I think we’re going to have to answer those questions before we can really move forward in the industrial hemp area,” Beshear said.