News

Today is Park(ing) Day, when city dwellers across the country put parking spaces to new use - ideally a green and park-like use. WFPL set up a streetside studio outside of our headquarters at 619 S. 4th Street.

The Louisville Cardinals begin a string of three straight road games tomorrow.

The first stop for coach Charlie Strong’s team is Miami, where U of L faces the Florida International Panthers.

"I just told them this team came in here last year and beat us, so we’re going to respect this football team," Strong said this week. "This is a good team. They returned 18 starters, so you guys know what you’re up against and you’re on the road, now you’re going to their place."

The 3-0 Cards are ranked 18th and 20th in the latest polls. Tomorrow’s kickoff is 7:00pm.

An influential Indiana lawmaker says he'll introduce legislation that would reduce penalties on people found in possession of small amounts of marijuana.

Republican state Sen. Brent Steele of Bedford plans to introduce a bill next session that would make possession of 10 grams or less an infraction, rather than a criminal misdemeanor. Ten grams is equivalent to about one-third of an ounce or roughly enough to make 20 to 30 marijuana cigarettes.

The Kentucky Department of Education is preparing the media this week for its new accountability data expected to be released next month.

The new system is meant to simplify accountability by using five main data sets to provide each district and school a score.

The data includes some the state was already using like achievement gaps, graduation rates and state test scores, but it will also include growth and new college-and-career ready standards.

Republican congressional candidate Brooks Wicker has launched his first ad of the general election campaign, and it attacks Democratic incumbent John Yarmuth over the country's increasing debt under President Obama.

The online ad features Yarmuth at a town hall meeting three years ago at Central High School discussing the president's pending health care overhaul. Yarmuth faced a series of questions from constituents, many of whom opposed the legislation.

It criticizes the congressman for saying he didn't know how the government would pay for the rising cost to entitlement programs on top of the Affordable Care Act.

Check it out:

WFPL is participating in this year's Park(ing) Day. We've claimed a spot in front of our building on the 600 block of S. 4th Street. We're recording 15-second interviews with anyone who wants to sit down and we'll broadcast Byline live from the space at 1:00 today. Stop by to talk, eat lunch or see the show. 

Louisville will block off parts of Bardstown Road and Baxter Avenue from Broadway to the Douglass Loop on one Sunday in October to encourage walking and biking.

When she was a child, Cynthia Lowen was painfully shy. She avoided clubs and sports, to her parents’ disappointment. She was most comfortable around books and horses—maybe most comfortable sitting quietly by herself reading books about horses. Lowen spent her childhood and teen years at a farm, mucking out stables and riding horses. The horses didn’t call her “giraffe neck,” she says, like her peers did.

Nikky Finney established herself as one of America's preeminent poets after winning the National Book Award last year and delivering a rousing speech that paid tributes to her forebears. (Watch it here, read it here)

When the organizers for IdeaFestival said that most events were sold out, they truly meant it. All of Thursday’s presentations were standing-room only.

Some highlights:

Peter Sims—Little Bets

When Kris Kimel introduced Sims, a best-selling author and entrepreneur, he said, “[Sims has] used the words ‘cool’ and ‘I love it’ and ‘awesome’ hundreds of times since he arrived in Louisville.” And indeed, Sims led his presentation with a discussion of Wednesday night’s dinner at Smoketown USA with Kevin Colleran, formerly of Facebook.