A month after a fare increase took effect, the Transit Authority of River City will alter several of its routes, effective Sunday.

Five routes will be eliminated and ten more will be altered. These cuts and more were proposed this spring after TARC saw a drop in revenue. After a flood of public comments, TARC instituted a rate increase but held off on changing some routes.

Kentucky Republicans are ramping up their campaign to take control of the state house in this year's elections. 

The GOP has latched on to House Speaker Greg Stumbo's declaration that he will vote for President Barack Obama this fall.

Republicans are circulating video of the comments and asking for donations, but money isn't the main goal.

Kentucky is number one on a list of the states with the most toxic air pollution from power plants.

The Natural Resources Defense Council analyzed the data self-reported by industries in the Toxic Release Inventory, which is managed by the federal government. The most recent data is from 2010, and that year, Kentucky’s power plants emitted more than 40 million pounds of toxic air pollution. This gives the state the dubious honor of being ranked number one in the nation.

While Kentucky students as a whole made small gains in graduation rates during the 2010-2011 school year, Jefferson County Public Schools students fell slightly backwards in most major categories.

In all major categories--including gender and race-- JCPS continues to fall at least 7 percentage points behind the state. This has been consistent with the four previous years the Kentucky Department of Education has provided.

The JCPS total graduation rate dropped from 69.3 percent in 2010 data to 67.8 percent in 2011 bringing the number closer to its 2008 rate of 67.7.

Amy Harder of the National Journal has a story out today about the United Mine Workers of America, and the union's reluctance to back either presidential candidate this year.

Harder went to Fairmont, West Virginia and spoke with UMWA official (and Democratic member of the state House of Delegates) Mike Caputo.

Comparing Papa John's pizza to "the ass of a raccoon that drowned in your birdbath" political satirist Stephen Colbert mocked founder and CEO John Schnatter for his opposition to the Affordable Care Act.

Schnatter, who is a well-known Republican fundraiser, said President Obama's health care overhaul will increase the cost of pizza and hurt business. Since then, he has been criticized for being a cheapskate and mistreating employees, with threats of a boycott by Democratic activists.

Watch below:

The Colbert Report
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This map is disturbing, once you understand it. It's a new attempt to visualize an old problem — the shrinking of underground water reserves, in most cases because farmers are pumping out water to irrigate their crops.

A drop in natural gas prices is hurting balance sheets across the petroleum industry. The second-largest natural gas producer in the United States — Oklahoma City-based Chesapeake Energy — has been hit especially hard.

After 23 consecutive years of touting its increasing natural gas production, Chesapeake CEO Aubrey McClendon told investors during a conference call Tuesday that the company projects its gas output will drop about 7 percent in 2013.

It's official: last month's heat wave (which cooked Louisville as well as most other states in the region) was the hottest ever on record in the continental U.S. According to an Associated Press story, this beats the record set during the Dust Bowl in the 1930s.

A diverse pool of candidates has filed for Jefferson County’s three open school board seats.  The most recent is local radio host Tom Mitchell, who plans on running an anti-student assignment campaign, according to reports by the Courier-Journal.

As the deadline to file nears--Aug. 14--some are hoping interest in the races increases. That idea was included in  former Courier-Journal editor David Hawpe's opening speech at the Louisville Forum Wednesday afternoon.