Politics
3:16 pm
Wed September 5, 2012

Paul Concerned About Romney’s Electoral Map

Credit U.S. Senate

U.S. Sen. Rand Paul is worried that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney will not have enough Electoral College votes to beat President Obama this fall.

National polls show the race is a statistical tie in a popular vote with a slim margin of undecided voters, but the winner of the White House is the candidate who captures 270 electoral votes. A review of most interactive maps show Mr. Obama edging out Romney in November by winning key swing states.

Paul says there are a handful of states that are evenly divided and Romney will have to win most of them, adding the GOP will have to examine its electoral map strategy in future races.

"It’s tougher and tougher for Republicans because we don’t compete very well in the west coast (and) we don’t compete very well New England. Once you give up all those votes then you got to win pretty much the rest of the country," he says. "And that’s one of the messages I’ve had to the national Republican Party. You know what? Those areas where you’re not competing maybe a libertarian Republican would do better in California or New York state."

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Environment
3:00 pm
Wed September 5, 2012

Green Roof Unveiled on Housing Authority Building

One of the Louisville Metro Housing Authority’s administrative buildings is the city’s newest recipient of a green roof.

There are more than 1,200 plants covering the nearly 17,000 square foot roof on top of the building on Vine Street.

Housing Authority Director Tim Barry says a green roof was a natural choice for the building.

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Environment
2:45 pm
Wed September 5, 2012

Group Trying to Remove Chair of Electric Co-Op

A group of southern Kentucky businessmen are pushing to remove the chairman of the state's largest rural electric cooperative and making allegations that he has acted improperly.

Somerset businessman John Tuttle is spearheading the drive to oust Rick Stephens of McCreary County as chairman of the South Kentucky Rural Electric Cooperative. Tuttle says that some people are accusing Stephens of illegal activity, but he believes Stephens has made decisions that "don't pass the smell test."

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Local News
2:31 pm
Wed September 5, 2012

Arena Football Returns To Louisville

Louisville is getting a new professional indoor arena football team.

The Kentucky Xtreme will compete in the Continental Indoor Football League, which includes nine teams across the Midwest.

The Xtreme will play a ten game season in 2013, with five home games in Freedom Hall.

The team will be coached by Louisville native Roy McMillen, who played quarterback at Western Kentucky University. He was also an assistant coach for the Louisville Fire arena football team, which folded in 2008.

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Education
1:32 pm
Wed September 5, 2012

JCPS Interested in Local "Race to the Top" Grant

Credit Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons user Hidrafil

Jefferson County Public Schools is one of 893 districts that have announced an intent to apply for new federal “Race to the Top” funding.

Kentucky applied for the federal government's competitive Race to the Top grants before, and last year the commonwealth received around $17 million after losing the larger grant it applied for.

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Politics
1:00 pm
Wed September 5, 2012

Lawmaker Seeks to End Legislators' Pensions

A Kentucky Republican lawmaker is attempting to end the pension program for legislators.

State Representative David Floyd says Kentucky’s part-time lawmakers shouldn't get pensions. But currently they do, and some lawmakers are able to fatten their pensions by taking higher-paying jobs elsewhere in government, then collecting a pension for the higher salary after they retire.

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Local News
11:50 am
Wed September 5, 2012

Western Library Branch Re-Opens This Week

Credit LFPL

The Louisville Free Public Library will reopen its western branch this weekend following a $500,000 remodeling project.

The historic location was built in 1908 and was the first free public library in the nation to be fully staffed by African Americans. Included among the renovation projects is the creation of a new reading room for the African American archives, which the library houses.

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Environment
10:35 am
Wed September 5, 2012

Sierra Club to Hold Rally Against Coal at UK

The Sierra Club is planning a rally at noon today at the University of Kentucky to protest the ties between the school's athletic department and the coal industry.

UK and the coal industry have a fairly close relationship--the men's basketball dorm is called the Wildcat Coal Lodge, after coal industry contributions, and there have been prominent coal advertisements during some athletic events.

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Environment
9:59 am
Wed September 5, 2012

As Temps Rise, Cities Combat 'Heat Island' Effect

Originally published on Tue September 4, 2012 5:10 pm

More than 20,000 high-temperature records have been broken so far this year in the United States. And the heat is especially bad in cities, which are heating up about twice as fast as the rest of the planet.

High temperatures increase the risk of everything from asthma to allergies, and can even be deadly. But a researcher in Atlanta also sees this urban heat wave as an opportunity to do something about our warming planet.

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Award-winning journalist Richard Harris reports on science issues for NPR's newsmagazines Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Weekend Edition.

Harris, who joined NPR in 1986, has traveled to the ends of the earth for NPR. His reports have originated from Timbuktu, the South Pole, the Galapagos Islands, Beijing during the SARS epidemic, the center of Greenland, the Amazon rain forest and the foot of Mt. Kilimanjaro (for a story about tuberculosis).

In 2010, Harris' reporting uncovered that the blown-out BP oil well in the Gulf of Mexico was spewing out far more oil than asserted in the official estimates. He covered the United Nations climate negotiations, starting with the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, followed by Kyoto in 1997 and Copenhagen in 2009. Harris was a major contributor to NPR's award-winning 2007-2008 "Climate Connections" series.

Over the course of his career, Harris has been the recipient of many of the journalism and science industries' most prestigious awards. The University of California at Santa Cruz awarded Harris the 2010-11 Alumni Achievement Award – the school's highest honor. In 2002, Harris was elected an honorary member of Sigma Xi, the scientific research society. Harris shared a 1995 Peabody Award for investigative reporting on NPR about the tobacco industry.

As part of the team that collaborated on NPR's 1989 series "AIDS in Black America," Harris was awarded a Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Silver Baton, a first place award from the National Association of Black Journalists and an Ohio State Award. In 1988, Harris won the American Association for the Advancement of Science Journalism Award for his report, "Anti-Noise: Can Technology Turn Noise into Quiet?" which explored a revolutionary technology that uses computer-generated noise to cancel out, not just mask, unwanted noise.

Before joining NPR, Harris was a science writer for the San Francisco Examiner. From 1981 to 1983, Harris was a staff writer at The Tri-Valley Herald in Livermore, California, covering science, technology, and health issues. Under the auspices of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Harris spent the summer of 1980 as a Mass Media Science Fellow reporting on science issues for The Washington Star, in Washington, D.C.

Harris is co-founder of the Washington, D.C., Area Science Writers Association, as well as past president of the National Association of Science Writers.

A California native, Harris was valedictorian of his college graduating class at the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1980. He earned a bachelor's degree in biology, with highest honors.

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