When the Fayette County Public Schools redistricting committee announced that it would tackle overcrowding at Wellington Elementary School, residents in the Willow Oak and Willow Bend neighborhoods started to worry. [H-L]
This is what U.S-Cuba relations looked like over the past 50 years. [HuffPo]
Even with Jeb Bush in, it’s a spread field for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016. [C-J/AKN]
Exports of U.S. agricultural products such as wheat, rice, soybeans and meat products stand to gain from a surprise U.S. move toward repairing relations with Cuba, agriculture industry officials said on Wednesday. [Reuters]
Barren County Fiscal Court joined a few other area government entities Tuesday in approving a resolution asking the National Park Service to withdraw its plans for Mammoth Cave Hotel. [Glasgow Daily Times]
Federal terrorism insurance, the government backstop that was first passed in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, died in the Senate on Tuesday night after a retiring senator refused to drop his opposition to an extraneous measure that had been added at the last minute by House Republicans. [NY Times]
The federal Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement plans to clarify rules to protect coalfields communities from the toxic gases that are released when blasting on surface mines. [WFPL]
Over the weekend, tens of thousands of marchers rallied against police brutality, standing in solidarity with families who have lost loved ones to police violence. [Mother Jones]
Kentucky Power Co. is seeking a 12.48 percent rate increase, saying the company needs it to complete the purchase of a West Virginia power plant that will replace the generating unit slated for shutdown at the Big Sandy plant in Louisa. [Ashland Independent]
One by one, in a room just off the gym floor at Edna Brewer Middle School in Oakland, Calif., seventh-graders go on the interview hot seat. Some 80 students have applied to be “peer leaders” in the school’s new, alternative discipline program called “restorative justice.” [NPR]
Don’t miss the craziness that was Montgomery County Schools this week. [Page One Here, Here, Here Here, Here & Here]
Arctic ground squirrels could play a greater role in climate change than was previously thought. [BBC]
The former head of a coal company that ran the West Virginia mine where 29 men were killed in a 2010 explosion told a judge Wednesday that he wants his federal criminal case moved and his trial delayed for a year. [H-L]
The number of Americans who identify racism or race relations as the nation’s top problem increased dramatically to 13 percent, according to a new Gallup survey, a figure not seen since the Rodney King verdict and subsequent Los Angeles riots in 1992. [HuffPo]
