Indiana taxpayers will receive a $111 credit on their state income tax returns next year as the state distributes part of its budget surplus.

Gov. Mitch Daniels announced the credit today.

It will be $222 for couples filing joint returns. The credit represents the automatic taxpayer refund plan that Daniels pushed through the state legislature last year.

Kentucky’s 17-member Child Fatality and Near Fatality Review Panel will meet next week to begin work and a starting point could be the 55 death or near death cases recorded this past fiscal year.

The independent panel was created to provide oversight to the Cabinet for Health and Family Services and to make recommendations for how the cabinet can improve. This follows long-term criticism in the way the CHFS handles its child abuse cases.

There were 410,000 first-time claims for unemployment insurance last week, down 41,000 from the level of the week before — when the number of applications soared because of the lingering effects of Superstorm Sandy.

The Employment and Training Administration just released the latest figure. At 410,000, claims were still running at a pace above the pre-Sandy range of 350,000 to 400,000 a week.

While flirting with a 2016 presidential bid, U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., also outlined how the GOP can expand its base by getting behind defense cuts, as well as marijuana and immigration reform.

Since President Obama's re-election, the political narrative has centered on the Republican Party redefining itself in the wake of a poor showing amongst key demographics. The conversation has been described as coming to terms with the party being "too white, too old" and "too male."

In September, Paul told WFPL he foresaw problems with Mitt Romney's electoral map for this reason. And a recent interview shows the Senator wants the GOP to reach out to Hispanic and younger voters.

From ABC News:

We're getting an ever dwindling percent of the Hispanic vote," Paul says. "We have to let people know, Hispanics in particular, we're not putting you on a bus and shipping you home."

(SNIP)

Paul himself does not favor legalizing marijuana, but he says individual states -- such as Washington and Colorado, which both voted to legalize in November -- should be allowed to make marijuana legal.

We are not making this up:

The University of Kentucky recently spent $25 million in energy savings projects, and that work is already showing results.

The Herald-Leader reports that costs have been cut by $2.4 million a year. $2.2 million of those savings will go toward the $25 million bond, while the remaining $200,000 will be set aside for future energy projects. And the projects have also reduced UK's carbon dioxide emissions by 23,291 tons a year.

This week, Maryland and Rutgers bolted from the ACC and the Big East, respectively, to the Big Ten (or B1G, as they call it now).

Just like that, the appearance of a fragile peace among college athletics conferences shattered.

The re-arranging again jolted the University of Louisville -- not that the last round of conference realignment ended ideally for the Cardinals, stuck in a Big East whose football membership spanned from San Diego to Annapolis.

So where does this leave UofL? Searching still, it seems.

Kentucky should do away with its requirement that anesthesiologist assistants also be certified as primary care physicians’ assistants.

That’s what the president of the Kentucky Society of Anesthesiologists told a legislative panel in Frankfort today.

Doctor Heidi Koenig is a University of Louisville physician. She says the dual requirement is a mystery to her. She compares it to how the legal profession would work if Kentucky established different tracks for lawyers.

Indiana state lawmakers held their organizational session today in preparation for the 2013 General Assembly.

The House and Senate meetings were largely ceremonial.

Brian Bosma was sworn in for a second term as Speaker of the House, where Republicans now hold a supermajority.

Bosma pledged to work closely with the Democratic minority, saying everyone needs to deal with critical issues like fiscal stability, job creation and education.