News

The Louisville Visual Art Association's Open Doors Program will celebrate two years of community-based arts projects with a retrospective exhibit, “Making Art. Changing Lives.”

Twelve art projects, selected from nearly forty pieces of art completed through the program, will be on view to the public in the Water Tower, with an opening reception on July 22. The exhibit will run through August 19.

Despite record breaking heat this month, the number of calls to Louisville Metro Animal Services (LMAS) has remained steady, and agency officials say community outreach efforts may be partly responsible.

The agency still receives most of its calls on hot summer days, said Margaret Brosco with LMAS rescue, foster and adoption services. 

“In the first 10 days of July we received 656 calls for service which is huge," she said.

Brosco said LMAS receives nearly 2,000 calls a month. But this year calls are down when compared to sample months in 2011.

Congressman Ben Chandler is joining a handful of prominent Democrats who will skip their party's national convention this year. 

Chandler, who represents the Sixth Congressional District in Central Kentucky, is facing Republican Andy Barr in his re-election bid. The matchup is a repeat of the 2010 race in which Chandler beat Barr by fewer than 700 votes. Other Democrats skipping the convention have been criticized for distancing themselves from President Barack Obama, who will be formally nominated for re-election at the event. But Chandler's campaign insists the decision isn't political. 

No traces of a powerful painkiller were found in sample testing from horses running in this year's Kentucky Derby and Kentucky Oaks.

That’s according to a report this week from state horse racing regulators.

Kentucky recently began testing race horses for dermorphin, a substance more powerful than morphine. It follows a recent outbreak of positive tests for the substance at Louisiana tracks, resulting in suspensions for several trainers.

There was no Air Quality Alert in effect yesterday, but ozone levels were unexpectedly high.

High levels of ozone were detected at air monitors at Buckner, Cannons Lane, Watson Lane and New Albany. All the levels detected were in the range that's unhealthy for sensitive groups.

Six Indiana teams have submitted bids  to help develop the first exit north of the East End Bridge.

This is the first contract for Indiana’s portion of the Ohio River Bridges Project. 

The $2.6 billion project is being split between the two states. Kentucky is responsible for rebuilding Spaghetti Junction and building a new northbound I-65 bridge. Indiana will build an East End Bridge.

Speaking before the Louisville Forum on Wednesday, Metro Police Chief Steve Conrad challenged residents and city institutions to do more to detour violent crime while addressing a probe into Councilwoman Barbara Shanklin's office.

The city has seen several high-profile acts of violence recently, such as a shooting spree this May in the Parkland neighborhood that killed three and injured others. Since then, there have been other brazen incidents, such as the murder of a 15-year-old high Shawnee High school student and an assault rifle homicide in Old Louisville.

Conrad says the police force can’t arrest its ways out of this problem and that there are many things social services and the community can do to reduce incidents like the shooting spree in west Louisville.

"There were many, many points between the day of that shooting (in Parkland) and when those people were born where families could have gotten involved, churches could have gotten involved and social services could have gotten involved," he says. "So we need to look for other institutions to help make a stronger and more sustainable community."

A vendetta against the CEO of a former for-profit college in Louisville may have forced the school’s closure, but a federal court ruling released this week may have opened the door for the college to recoup millions of dollars lost in bankruptcy.

In 2004 the Atlanta-based Council on Occupational Education approved accreditation for three new technical programs—carpentry, electrician and HVAC—at Decker College. The programs included distant, or online, learning in its applications.

A conference on renewable energy that was scheduled for next month has been pushed back to March 2013.

This year’s Kentucky Statewide Workshop on Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency—organized by the Conn Center at the U of L—was supposed to be next month. But Conn Center Assistant Director Andrew Marsh says the center just decided that more academic speakers would be available at a different time of year.

A new law that goes into effect tomorrow will help patients with chronic health issues maintain their standard of living.  The law allows doctors to show that a long-prescribed medicine would be the best for a patient. Previously, insurance companies could deny payments for such medication until patients had first tried a cheaper alternative.