CYNTHIANA / HARRISON
Cynthiana Police Chief Ray Johnson told city commissioners Tuesday that police officers have selected areas that will be their specific beat and first and second shift officers will begin meeting residents and allowing the community to put faces to the names of officers. Third shift officers won’t be walking through their neighborhoods to show a police presence until the time changes and the weather improves. Johnson confirmed that the areas where most crimes occur had been adopted by officers.
http://www.cynthianademocrat.com/content/community-policing-efforts-underway-cynthiana-officers
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Heard Karen Angelucci request stories and photos for The Harrison County Historical Society is requesting stories and photos to be included in their family history book. To date, over 100 families have submitted their stories. Anyone interested in including their stories have through the end of February to make their submissions. Contact Angelucci at Karenangelucci67@gmail.com or call 859-338-7857. All submissions can be mailed to Harrison County History Book at PO Box 411, Cynthiana, KY 41031.
http://www.cynthianademocrat.com/content/community-policing-efforts-underway-cynthiana-officers
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Warrants were issued Monday afternoon for the arrest of a Harrison County man after an apparent car-jacking incident last week. According to a report by law enforcement, Henry D. Hogg, 45, of South Church Street allegedly forced his girlfriend, Kathy Dawson of Rankin Mill Road in Falmouth, out of her car at knife point at the intersection of U.S. 27 North and Ky. 1284 West.
In the report, Dawson said that Hogg threatened her at knife point, and injured her hand while taking the keys from her at the intersection and continued driving down Sunrise-Richland Road, Ky. 1284. Dawson said that Hogg intended to commit suicide by “taking a large quantity of pills and wrecking her car into a tree.”
Hogg was arrested on Wednesday, Feb. 4 by Kentucky State Police in Breathitt County on a misdemeanor charge of carrying a concealed deadly weapon. Hogg was later released on bond from Three Forks Detention Center in Lee County on Tuesday, Feb. 10. A warrant from the Harrison County Sheriff’s Department was subsequently issued for Hogg’s arrest on charges of first degree felony robbery and fourth degree assault.
http://www.cynthianademocrat.com/content/carjacking-results-charges-two-counties-says-sheriff
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The Cynthiana-Harrison County Chamber of Commerce Award Banquet is next Tuesday, 17 February, @ 6 pm at the Cynthiana Christian Church. Tickets are $25. Reservations are necessary.
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KENTUCKY
Kentucky voters in local communities would have the option to pay for specific projects with a temporary one percent sales tax increase under legislation passed by the House Thursday. The local option sales tax, championed by Lexington Mayor Jim Gray, requires that Kentucky voters approve a constitutional amendment. Advocates, including House Speaker Greg Stumbo, argued the bill put more control in the hands of citizens.
Rep. Jim Wayne countered that local option disproportionately affects low-income Kentuckians.
“I certainly commend those who are pushing this idea because they really want to help their communities, but this is not the right proposal. It’s a regressive tax on top of a very regressive tax system in our state,” the Louisville Democrat said.
The measure cleared the chamber 62 to 35 and now moves to the Senate.
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House members debated and ultimately lent their unanimous support to House Bill 8, which makes civil protective orders available to dating couples and streamlines the process for other victims of domestic violence. Under the bill, victims could invoke a single interpersonal protector order that inform the offender that any further violation could lead to arrest.
While the measure has been unsuccessful in previous years, bipartisan support has grown up around the issue during this short 30-day session.
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House Bill 70, a constitutional amendment granting non-violent felons the right to vote met House approval. An estimated 186,000 Kentuckians could be impacted were the amendment to become law.
http://wuky.org/post/local-option-domestic-violence-protections-felon-voting-rights-advance-house
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Right-to-work legislation approved in the Senate in the opening days of the 2015 session has died in a House committee. The bill permitting employees who don’t pay union dues to work for union businesses drew scores of labor groups to the Capitol Annex, who cheered in it’s defeat. With the defeat of the right-to-work, the focus now shifts back to a number of counties that are taking action on their own. This week alone, 23 counties have voted on local right-to-work initiatives. Labor groups have also mounted legal challenges to the ordinances.
http://wuky.org/post/house-committee-kills-right-work-momentum-shifts-counties
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Public libraries across Kentucky are reporting unprecedented usage as technology continues to change the way Kentuckians use their libraries.
Statistics compiled from Kentucky’s 119 public libraries show that Kentuckians checked out 30,664,564 items during the 2013-2014 fiscal year, setting a record which was an increase of 2 percent over the previous year. The driving factor in this increase was the circulation of more than two million e-books. For the first time, the number of e-books checked out from public libraries in the state surpassed the number of items checked out from bookmobiles.
In addition to the dramatic increase in usage of electronic materials, Kentucky’s public libraries provided 4,858 computers for public use. In a world where technology is necessary for so many activities, the library is the only place where many Kentuckians have access to a computer to search for employment, access government services, prepare school assignments, and take tests among many other tasks.
Kentucky’s residents have also taken advantage of public library Internet access. Many Kentuckians brought their own devices to use at the library as every library system offered wireless access. More than 1.25 million wireless sessions were counted at library locations. Many other Kentuckians visited their public libraries from home, school or office through library websites and the Kentucky Virtual Library as the libraries play an increasing role in the education of Kentuckians at every level of the educational process.
The number of people registered for library cards in public libraries increased to 2,664,920 or 60 percent of Kentucky’s population.
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A bill to reform telecommunication regulations to reflect the declining use of landlines in favor of new technologies has passed the Senate Committee on State and Local Government. Known as Senate Bill 3, the legislation would remove requirements that telephone companies offer basic landline service to everyone so the money used to maintain that old technology can be used to increase Internet and mobile phone access, said Sen. Paul Hornback, R-Shelbyville. He sponsored the bill along with Majority Floor Leader Sen. Damon Thayer, R-Georgetown.
SB 3 now returns to the full Senate for consideration where it has already received two readings.
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Kentucky’s decision to expand the Medicaid program is paying dividends in terms of jobs, economic growth, and improved health for the more than 375,000 Kentuckians who signed up last year, Gov. Steve Beshear announced at a press conference today. And according to a new study, those benefits will continue to accrue, he said.
Medicaid expansion will add 40,000 jobs and $30 billion to the state’s economy through 2021, according to the study released by Deloitte Consulting LLC and the University of Louisville’s Urban Studies Institute. Expansion will also generate a net positive impact of nearly $820 million to state and local government budgets.
A press release from the governor’s office said the report concludes that the estimated costs of expansion in the current and upcoming biennial budget would be more than offset by savings and new revenues generated from economic activity resulting from new health care spending. Conversely, choosing not to expand would have been expensive as well, incurring $100 million in costs.
The report, commissioned by the Cabinet for Health and Family Services, reviewed Kentucky’s first full year of Medicaid expansion, and found the expansion generated positive results for the state’s economy, local governments, medical providers and Medicaid recipients. A supplemental report on Medicaid reimbursements also noted positive fiscal impacts, particularly for hospitals.
In May 2013, Beshear announced his decision to expand Medicaid eligibility in Kentucky pursuant to the Affordable Care Act, allowing individuals and families earning up to 138 percent of the federal poverty line to enroll in the federal health insurance program. The first enrollment period added more than 310,000 Kentuckians to the Medicaid program, nearly double the expected number. Another 17,000 Kentuckians who were eligible but not enrolled under the traditional Medicaid criteria also signed up. By the end of 2014, more than 375,000 Kentuckians were enrolled in Medicaid through the expansion.
http://migration.kentucky.gov/newsroom/governor/20150212expansion.htm
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THIS DAY IN HISTORY
1462 – The Treaty of Westminster is finalised between Edward IV of England and the Scottish Lord of the Isles.
1542 – Catherine Howard, the fifth wife of Henry VIII of England, is executed for adultery.
1572 – Elizabeth I of England issues a proclamation which revokes all commissions on account of the frauds which they had fostered.
1633 – Galileo Galilei arrives in Rome for his trial before the Inquisition.
1668 – Spain recognizes Portugal as an independent nation.
1689 – William and Mary are proclaimed co-rulers of England.
1880 – Thomas Edison observes the Edison effect.
1914 – Copyright: In New York City the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers is established to protect the copyrighted musical compositions of its members.
1920 – The Negro National League is formed.
1935 – A jury in Flemington, New Jersey finds Bruno Hauptmann guilty of the 1932 kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby, the son of Charles Lindbergh.
1954 – Frank Selvy becomes the only NCAA Division I basketball player ever to score 100 points in a single game.
1955 – Israel obtains four of the seven Dead Sea Scrolls.
1960 – With the success of a nuclear test codenamed “Gerboise Bleue”, France becomes the fourth country to possess nuclear weapons.
1960 – Black college students stage the first of the Nashville sit-ins at three lunch counters in Nashville, Tennessee.
1961 – An allegedly 500,000-year-old rock is discovered near Olancha, California, US, that appears to anachronistically encase a spark plug.
1967 – American researchers discover the Madrid Codices by Leonardo da Vinci in the National Library of Spain.
1971 – Vietnam War: Backed by American air and artillery support, South Vietnamese troops invade Laos.
1978 – Hilton bombing: a bomb explodes in a refuse truck outside the Hilton Hotel in Sydney, Australia, killing two refuse collectors and a policeman.
1979 – An intense windstorm strikes western Washington and sinks a 1/2-mile-long section of the Hood Canal Bridge.
1981 – A series of sewer explosions destroys more than two miles of streets in Louisville, Kentucky.
1990 – German reunification: An agreement is reached on a two-stage plan to reunite Germany.
1991 – Gulf War: Two laser-guided “smart bombs” destroy the Amiriyah shelter in Baghdad. Allied forces said the bunker was being used as a military communications outpost, but over 400 Iraqi civilians inside were killed.
2000 – The last original “Peanuts” comic strip appears in newspapers one day after Charles M. Schulz dies.
2004 – The Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics announces the discovery of the universe’s largest known diamond, white dwarf star BPM 37093. Astronomers named this star “Lucy” after The Beatles’ song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”.
2011 – For the first time in more than 100 years the Umatilla, an American Indian tribe, are able to hunt and harvest a bison just outside Yellowstone National Park, restoring a centuries-old tradition guaranteed by a treaty signed in 1855.
2012 – The European Space Agency (ESA) conducted the first launch of the European Vega rocket from Europe’s spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.
“Morning News – 02/13/15” was originally published on J. Palmer
J. Palmer 