Kentucky News Now – August 6th 2014

SENATE-EASTERN KENTUCKY

Senate campaigns look east for votes

FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — Alison Lundergan Grimes and Mitch McConnell will compete for eastern Kentucky's coal country votes this week, and both are bringing in reinforcements.

Grimes will campaign in Hazard with former President Bill Clinton who carried Kentucky twice in presidential elections. McConnell will campaign with Hal Rogers, the Republican congressman who has represented eastern Kentucky for more than three decades.

Eastern Kentucky has traditionally been a stronghold for state Democrats. But Republicans believe they have a chance to eliminate that advantage given the unpopularity of Democratic President Barack Obama.

Grimes has tried to distance herself from Obama's energy policies. Last week she was endorsed by the United Mine Workers of America. But the McConnell campaign says Grimes would support Obama's agenda in the Senate.

KENTUCKY SENATE-MCCONNELL AD

McConnell's wife defends his record in new TV ad

FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — Sen. Mitch McConnell's wife defended her husband's record on women's issues in a new TV ad the campaign released Tuesday.

The ad is a response Democratic challenger Alison Lundergan Grimes' latest TV ad that criticized McConnell for voting against the Violence Against Women Act. Elaine Chao, McConnell's wife and the former Secretary of labor under President George W. Bush, called Grimes' attacks desperate and false.

The ad notes that McConnell sponsored the original Violence Against Women's Act and said he has always supported its purpose.

The act has been law since 1994 and has been reauthorized several times. McConnell has voted for different versions of the bill. But he has voted against the bill, most recently in 2012 and 2013, because he said it contained amendments he did not support.

APPALACHIAN HEALTH

CDC director takes aim at tobacco use

HAZARD, Ky. (AP) — A top U.S. health official has taken aim at tobacco use as a leading contributor to several diseases during a visit to Kentucky, where tobacco remains a big cash crop.

Dr. Thomas Frieden identified tobacco as the No. 1 preventable cause of death in the U.S. Frieden is director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He said Tuesday that tobacco affects virtually every part of the body and contributes to cancer, heart disease and strokes.

Frieden spoke at a symposium in Hazard during a visit to eastern Kentucky to discuss ways to improve the region's grim health statistics.

The prevalence of cancer, heart disease and diabetes are much higher in the state's Appalachian region than the national average.

Frieden also stressed the need for physical activity, calling it the closest thing to a "wonder drug."

AMERICANS-EBOLA

CDC director says effects of Ebola treatment can't be known yet

HAZARD, Ky. (AP) — Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Tom Frieden told reporters in Kentucky on Tuesday that it's impossible to know yet whether a drug being used to treat Ebola patients in Atlanta saved them.

The treatment is called ZMapp and was developed by a San Diego company using antibodies harvested from lab animals injected with parts of the Ebola virus. Tobacco plants in Kentucky are being used to make the treatment.

Frieden was in eastern Kentucky for a regional health symposium.

He told reporters all medicines have risks and benefits and that until there's a study, it won't be known whether the treatment helps, hurts or has no effect.

An American doctor and an American aid worker who worked together in Liberia are being given the experimental treatment in Atlanta.

Paul not first ensnared in Mideast policy in Iowa

HIAWATHA, Iowa (AP) — Republican Sen. Rand Paul says he's never proposed ending U.S. aid payments to Israel, but has been immediately confronted by his own budget proposal from 2011 to end such payments to all nations, including Israel.

The Kentucky Republican is not the first prospective White House candidate to become ensnared in the delicate web of policy and politics when it comes to talking about the Middle East in middle America.

Among them is President Barack Obama, who said in 2007, quote: "No one is suffering more than the Palestinian people."

Paul tells The Associated Press that he supports cutting aid generally, and that Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu has spoken publicly about aspirations to be independent of U.S. aid.

COAL ASH SPILL

Judge OKs settlement with Tenn. coal ash victims

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A federal judge has approved an agreement by the nation's largest public utility to pay $27.8 million to settle claims from Tennessee property owners who suffered damages from a huge spill of toxin-laden coal ash sludge in 2008.

U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Varlan approved the settlement on Monday.

The spill happened when a containment dike burst at the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston Fossil Plant, releasing more than 5 million cubic yards of ash from a storage pond. The sludge flowed into a river and spoiled hundreds of acres in a riverside community 35 miles west of Knoxville.

Varlan ruled in 2012 that TVA was liable for the spill. The settlement is with more than 800 property owners.

DIET DRUG-CHESLEY

Judge: Chesley owes $42 million in diet drug case

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — A Kentucky judge has ordered a disbarred prominent class-action attorney dubbed the "Master of Disaster" to pay $42 million to settle allegations he improperly took the money in a diet drug lawsuit.

The ruling from Boone County Circuit Judge James P. Schrand comes 17 months after the Kentucky Supreme Court found that Stanley Chesley of Cincinnati engaged in unethical conduct in the settlement of a $200 million lawsuit involving the makers of the diet drug fen-phen.

Kentucky disbarred Chesley in March 2013. He subsequently voluntarily retired from the Ohio Bar.

The judgment stems from a lawsuit brought by 342 clients sickened by the diet drugs against Chesley and three other attorneys.

In all, four lawyers and a judge have been disbarred in connection with the fen-phen litigation.

PAWN SHOP SHOOTINGS

Wife of slain attorney takes on Ky. pawn shop case

DANVILLE, Ky. (AP) — The widow of a prominent defense attorney says she is now representing a man accused of murdering three people at a Danville pawn shop last year.

Media report that Bethany Stanziano appeared in Boyle County Circuit Court Monday on behalf of Kenneth A. Keith, who is accused of fatally shooting 35-year-old Michael Hockensmith; his wife, 38-year-old Angela Hockensmith; and 60-year-old gold broker Daniel Smith of Richmond. The fatal shootings happened in a pawn shop co-owned by the Hockensmiths.

Keith had been represented by prominent defense attorney Mark Stanziano until he was gunned down in June. Bethany Stanziano, who practiced law with her husband in Somerset, asked to postpone Keith's hearing until October so police can finish testing evidence and she can review it.