J. Blaine Hudson is resigning  at the end December as dean of the College of Arts & Sciences at the University of Louisville, a post he's held since 2004.

Hudson took a leave of absence in August for medical reasons. He told faculty then in an e-mail that he'd had cranial surgery but his prognosis was positive.

An internal audit could not find a signed agreement between Louisville Metro Government and Dismas Charities Inc. regarding the use of inmates from the non-profit’s halfway house at city departments.

The report includes a number of other troubling findings, including that Dismas workers were not consistently signing in or out at their assignments, did have proper monitoring of their activity and that their work logs were incomplete.

(Read the audit report here.)

Dismas is a non-profit group that through the Kentucky Department of Corrections houses inmates at its various halfway houses. While residing at those facilities, inmates are required to participate in community service and many work at Metro agencies as they transition to life outside of prison.

Mayor Greg Fischer's office told WFPL they were surprised to learn the city had no written contract with Dismas, and are working to address the problems and develop a corrective action plan.

"It was new information to us that there wasn’t a signed agreement. Obviously, we’ll get one executed," says mayoral spokesman Chris Poynter. "This audit clearly points out that there are deficiencies and we have developed a corrective action plan to deal with those deficiencies."

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.