News

Kentucky Senate President David Williams and his wife are divorcing after nine years of marriage.

The announcement came today in a release from Williams' spokeswoman in Frankfort.

In a statement, Robyn Williams says the "rough-and-tumble pressures" of politics put "unique and incessant pressure" on their relationship. David Williams was the Republican nominee for governor last year but lost to Democratic incumbent Steve Beshear.

Robyn Williams has been mentioned as a possible candidate for state attorney general in 2015.

U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., is calling out New York Times columnist and economist Paul Krugman following a brief debate over public sector employment on Sunday.

The two appeared on ABC's This Week and had a disagreement over the size of government with Paul arguing that the size of government employment has ballooned since President Obama took office. Krugman pointed out that public sector jobs have actually declined since January 2009, but Paul says he was talking about federal workers only.

Paul says Krugman is being dishonest and "playing games with numbers", adding a challenge to a public debate to the mix.

From Sen. Paul's office:

"Professor Krugman argues statistics in his usual fashion: making them up or adding in irrelevant information to prove his predetermined point. On Sunday’s “This Week,” he and I were debating the size of government workforce under President Obama. The only logical number we could have been discussing was the number of federal workers. Since the last time I checked, Barack Obama was the President, not a mayor or governor.

State budget officials say they are paying close attention to revenue as the state budget sees a flat growth at the start of the fiscal year.

Budget director Mary Lassiter says in her monthly briefing that August revenues ticked up, helping make up 2 percent of losses in July. But that leaves revenues flat, while forecasters had expected an almost 3 percent growth this year.

Lassiter says while warning alarms aren’t going off yet, steady declines in income and sales taxes is giving her office causes for concern.

The Louisville Cardinals have moved up four spots in the latest national college football polls.

U of L is ranked 19th in this week’s Associated Press poll and 20th in the USA Today/coaches poll following Saturday’s 35-7 win over Missouri State.

Coach Charlie Strong says it’s too early to tell if the Cards are really one of the 20 best teams in the country.

Central Intelligence Agency Director and retired four-star General David Petraeus says strategic counter-insurgency won out over brute force in the Iraq war.

Petraeus spoke at the University of Louisville’s McConnell Center on Monday, where he discussed different leadership styles. He was invited to speakby Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who praised Petraeus as one of the country's best leaders.

The address bypassed partisan politics and noticeablly avoided security issues on the eve of the September 11 terrorist attacks. Instead, Petraeus offered insights into the U.S. military’s surge in Iraq that many credit with quelling much of the violence in 2007.

Petraeus says the amount of force that was used was less important than the larger idea behind the new strategy to win the conflict.

"Indeed with violence threatening to tear apart the very fabric of Iraqi society no surge of forces—no matter how large­—would have succeeded if we had not also changed our overarching approach," he says.

Another opportunity to gauge the strength of Kentucky’s Equine industry takes place over the next two weeks at Keeneland.   

The Keeneland Yearling Sale is regarded by many leaders in the thoroughbred industry as a ‘barometer’ on their business  Keeneland spokeswoman Julie Balog says one year olds from Kentucky, Indiana, New York, and Pennyslvania are auctioned off this week and next.

A Kentucky lawmaker is considering introducing legislation that would hold back third-graders who don’t meet the benchmark for reading. 

That’s the grade by which some experts have decided reading needs to be mastered.

News started rolling in via blogs and Twitter last night that prominent anti-mountaintop removal activist Larry Gibson was dead at age 66.

Gibson returned to his family's home on Kayford Mountain in Kanawha County, West Virginia in 1986, and spent the next quarter-century fighting the mountaintop removal operations that were slowly surrounding his land.

Filming for "Pleased to Meet Me," directed by Louisville filmmaker Archie Borders, wraps this week in Louisville. The crew needs 800 extras today to comprise the audience for the finale, a concert scene filmed at the Brown Hotel. Participants should arrive at the Brown (315 W. Broadway) at 5:30 p.m. for filming.