As the Nov. 6 election fast approaches, an outside Republican group is dropping a six figure ad buy to help the GOP in state legislative races.

The Republican State Leadership Committee is running television and radio ads in Louisville and western Kentucky and sending political mail to another 10 or so House races across the state. 

The Bard's Town Theatre opened its production of "44 Plays for 44 Presidents" last night.

The landscape for Kentucky's two most prominent college football programs could hardly contrast more this Saturday.

The Louisville Cardinals -- ranked No. 12 by the AP and No. 10 in the USA Today poll -- will attempt to go 9-0 for the season. The Cardinals play the Temple Owls at noon Saturday at Papa John's Cardinal Stadium. Temple is 3-4, with a 2-2 record in the Big East.

Kentucky officials are once again facing the prospect of lawsuits over efforts to expand managed health care within  Medicaid. 

This time, it's Passport Health Plan that is threatening to sue, based on what they call broken rules and promises made to them. 

(Read the letter here.)

With four days until the general election a new independent poll shows Democrat Joe Donnelly with a double-digit lead over Republican Richard Mourdock in the Indiana Senate race.

The survey conducted by Howey Politics Indiana and DePauw University has Donnelly up by 11 points, which is a significant jump from the 2-point lead that the Democratic congressman held in the same poll two months ago.

Observers point to Mourdock's controversial comments on rape pregnancies as the culprit for his plummeting polls numbers.

The nation's unemployment rate edged up to 7.9 percent in October from 7.8 percent in September, the Bureau of Labor Statistics says.

But private and public employers added 171,000 jobs to their payrolls — nearly 50,000 more than economists had expected.

So the news is somewhat mixed: While the jobless rate remained stuck near 8 percent, job growth was better than forecast.

Update 9:45 p.m. Crews may attempt to stabilize and level two cars containing the dangerous gas hydrogen fluoride on Saturday afternoon -- work that would require another shelter-in-place warning for a five-mile radius of the train derailment site near Dixie Highway and Katherine Station Road, said Doug Hamilton, executive director of Louisville-Jefferson County EMA/MetroSafe.

On Friday night, crews were still moving cars at the derailment site to make way to the cars containing hydrogen fluoride, Hamilton said. They intended to work until midnight. 

The Kentucky Division of Waste Management's efforts to clean up illegal dumps are showing positive results.

From the Department of Environmental Protection's Naturally Connected blog:

Louisville’s fourth annual Bluegrass Bioneers conference begins today.

Bioneers is a conference held annually in California, then streamed to groups around the country. It’s meant to present innovative, pioneering solutions to some of the world’s most serious environmental issues.