The director of Kentucky's Office of Highway Safety has been fired after an investigation found improper acceptance of gifts, timesheet violations and racial harassment in the agency. The termination letter obtained by The State Journal Thursday under the Kentucky Open Records Act, did not give a reason for the firing of Director Boyd Sigler on July 22. But a report from the Transportation Cabinet's Office of Inspector General states that Sigler "accepted free passes to events at the Kentucky Motor Speedway, an organization under contract with (the cabinet) with specific oversight provided by" his office.
The Senate this morning approved a bill that ends the partial shutdown of the Federal Aviation Administration, reports the AP.
As NPR's Brian Naylor reported this morning, the bill is yet another short-term extension of funding that puts off dealing with the issues that prevented an agreement on a longer term deal.
Police arrested the wife of Union College's president this week after she allegedly came to the home of an accused drug dealer to buy a pain pill while officers were there for a raid. Lou Ann de Rosset, 40, was charged with operating her 2006 Toyota under the influence of alcohol or drugs and with endangering the welfare of a minor. Police filed the endangerment charge because de Rosset had her 5-year-old daughter with her, according to the citation.
A dozen Kentucky colleges and universities have made Forbes magazine's annual "America's Best Colleges" list. The Kentucky colleges are among those Forbes considers among the top 10 percent in the nation.
Neil deMause, a journalist based in Brooklyn, New York, is a contributing editor to City Limits, a senior editor for Baseball Prospectus and the co-author, with Joanna Cagan, of Field of Schemes.
The Environmental Protection Agency says injecting carbon dioxide underground doesn’t pose substantial environmental or health risks. The agency is proposing a rule to classify carbon dioxide as a non-hazardous waste and encourage a controversial coal technology. Carbon capture and sequestration—or CCS—is a process where carbon dioxide is removed from the emissions of coal-fired power plants and injected deep underground. It’s not widely used because it’s not yet economical.
The federal government has denied a petition that would set pollution limits for states in the Mississippi River Basin. The decision was criticized by environmental groups today. Pollution released from wastewater treatment plants and farm runoff eventually travel from Kentucky to the Mississippi River and are contributing to a growing ‘dead zone’ in the Gulf of Mexico. A dead zone is a spot where pollution has sucked out all the oxygen and there’s no aquatic life.
We've already touched on the big news of the day: The early plummet of the world markets in reaction to yesterday's dismal performance of the U.S. markets. We also covered the better-than-expected jobs report that buoyed the world markets and have positioned U.S markets to open higher.
