A Kentucky lawmaker has crafted legislation that would abolish the death penalty in the commonwealth.

Similar measures have been proposed intermittently over the past 25 years, but none have had enough support to pass. Now Democratic state representative Carl Rollins has posted a bill that has the support of anti-death penalty activists.

Rev. Patrick Delahanty with the Kentucky Coalition To Abolish The Death Penalty says even though past attempts have failed, he senses growing support for the measure.

Mayor Greg Fischer will discuss with WFPL the happenings of 2012 and what to expect in 2013 at 1 p.m. Thursday. 

Topics will include violence in Louisville, the city's prospects for landing an NBA team, the future of Kentucky Kingdom and much more. Listeners are encouraged to call with questions to 814-8255. Questions can also be left at the WFPL Facebook page or at Twitter to @WFPLNews.

Unwanted telemarketing calls, trademarked for interrupting dinners across the nation, have become such a nuisance over the years that the Federal Trade Commission is calling for help to stop the illegal robocalls.

The agency receives more than 200,000 complaints a month about the prerecorded messages, which offer everything from credit cards to new medications.

Decades of Burger family tradition ends in a few months.

“For 40 years, one of us has opened the store, one of us has closed it,” Tony Burger says. 

He's talking about Burger's Market,the small, family-run grocery that stands across from the Louisville Collegiate School. It's something of a landmark for commuters on Grinstead Drive.

Burger's Market closes in March.

Over 11,000 Jefferson County residents are expected to participate over the next few months in crisis phase of the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, LIHEAP, but the federal government has allocated less money for the program this year.

LIHEAP provides one-time funding for eligible residents at or below 130 percent of the poverty line in the cold winter months. Between November and December nearly 11,000 residents use the program, according to Debbie Belt, community outreach specialist for the Department of Community Services and Revitalization. 

U.S. Rep. John Yarmuth, D-Ky., is hopeful that new lawmakers being sworn in this week create a new coalition to pass meaningful legislation.

Public records show the outgoing 112th Congress was the least active in modern history with just 219 bills passed. And the latest poll numbers put their approval rating at a dismal 12 percent.

The members of 113th Congress take office Thursday, and although Republicans still control the House with a lesser majority and Democrats picked up seats in the Senate, political observers are eager to see if cooperation is possible.

Blaming the regime of President Bashar Assad for "ruthless suppression of what were initially peaceful and legitimate protests by unarmed civilians," the U.N. Human Rights Office today released a report that estimates at least 59,648 people had been killed in Syria through November in the protests and fighting there since March 2011.

INDIANAPOLIS — A federal judge says Indiana has been "deliberately indifferent" to the plight of mentally ill inmates in its state prisons, who amount to nearly a quarter of the system's population.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Walton Pratt ruled that the Indiana Department of Correction doesn't provide adequate treatment for mentally ill prisoners in violation of their constitutional right against cruel and unusual punishment.

LOUISVILLE, Ky.  — Artifacts recently unearthed during the filming of a new National Geographic Channel show appear to pinpoint the location of a turning point in the yearslong feud between the Hatfield and McCoy clans.

We're sorry to start the first work day of 2013 on a negative note, but here goes:

Though the House voted 257-167 late Tuesday to OK legislation that kept the federal government from going over the so-called fiscal cliff — and stopped income taxes from rising for about 99 percent of Americans — lawmakers didn't reach agreement on other very divisive issues.