Kentucky’s Latest News – Wednesday October 16th

SEXUAL HARASSMENT

Ethics panel finds probable cause in Arnold case

FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — The Legislative Ethics Commission has found probable cause to believe former Democratic state Rep. John Arnold of Sturgis may have sexually harassed legislative staffers.

The panel on Tuesday scheduled a hearing for December 12 to determine if Arnold should be reprimanded or fined. Arnold resigned from the Legislature last month after the allegations were made against him.

Legislative Research Commission staffers Yolanda Costner and Cassaundra Cooper alleged that Arnold had touched them inappropriately and made vulgar comments. Both women said Tuesday they were pleased with the ethics commission's decision to move ahead with the case.

Arnold said in his letter of resignation that he had been "destroyed politically" and could no longer be an effective voice for his constituents. A retired chiropractor, he had served in the House since 1995.

PAWN SHOP SHOOTING

Warrants: Pastor angry with pawn shop owners

(Information in the following story is from: Lexington Herald-Leader, http://www.kentucky.com )

DANVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Search warrants and related affidavits say a central Kentucky pastor had been angry with a couple running a pawn shop in the days leading up to their shooting deaths.

The Lexington Herald-Leader reported that 48-year-old Kenneth Allen Keith of Burnside told a friend in Michigan that 35-year-old Michael Hockensmith and his wife, 38-year-old Angela Hockensmith, 'cost him a lot of money.' Keith is scheduled to be arraigned Wednesday in Boyle District Court on charges of murder related to the deaths of the Hockensmiths and a gold broker, 60-year-old Daniel Smith of Richmond.

All three were killed inside the ABC Gold Games and More in Danville on Sept. 20. The Hockensmiths co-owned the store.

Keith's attorneys say police arrested the wrong man.

ALLEGIANT AIR-CINCINNATI

Cincinnati airport adds nonstop service to Florida

HEBRON, Ky. (AP) — Las Vegas-based Allegiant Air will start nonstop service from the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport to two Florida locations in February.

Officials with the leisure-focused passenger airline made the announcement Tuesday at the airport in Hebron, Ky., across the river from Cincinnati.

Officials say nonstop service to Orlando Sanford Airport will begin Feb. 12. Nonstop service to Ft. Myers/Punta Gorda Airport will begin Feb. 14.

The carrier says it will provide service on a 166-seat jet two days a week from the Cincinnati airport to Orlando, on Wednesday and Saturday. It will offer two-day-a-week service to Ft. Myers/Punta Gorda on Monday and Friday.

The Cincinnati airport's chief executive officer says Orlando and southwest Florida have been popular destinations for area passengers.

The airline is a unit of Allegiant Travel Co.

I-69-OHIO RIVER BRIDGE

Ind., Ky. officials joining in I-69 bridge push

(Information in the following story is from: Evansville Courier & Press, http://www.courierpress.com )

EVANSVILLE, Ind. (AP) — Local officials from Indiana and Kentucky are teaming up to push for construction of an Interstate 69 bridge over the Ohio River near Evansville within the next eight years.

The BridgeLink partnership involving government and business leaders from Evansville and Henderson, Ky., plan to lobby officials in both states and Washington for the estimated $1.2 billion project.

Evansville Mayor Lloyd Winnecke tells the Evansville Courier & Press (http://bit.ly/GXZo9j) the group must be aggressive in pushing the project.

A nearly 100-mile section of I-69 north from Evansville to Bloomington should all be open next year. In Kentucky, parks of the Western Kentucky Parkway and Interstate 24 are now designated as I-69.

Henderson Chamber of Commerce president Brad Schneider says advocates for the bridge must talk about it being inevitable.

BUFFETT'S BUSINESS KITS

Warren Buffett backs new business kits for kids

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Earlier this year, Warren Buffett congratulated a group of three Kentucky kids for developing kits to help their peers set up businesses.

Now Buffett is teaching the young entrepreneurs how tough business can be by backing a competing product that will be sold exclusively in Toys R Us stores.

Both the new "Business in a Box" kits and the contest the Kentucky kids won in May are tied to "The Secret Millionaire's Club" cartoon that features advice from an animated Buffett.

A spokeswoman for A Squared Entertainment says the company behind the cartoon started developing the "Business in a Box" kits more than three years ago, so there's no link to the contest-winning idea.

The kids will likely have a hard time competing but their kits are $5 cheaper.

BLACK SCHOLAR-DIPLOMA

Black scholar's post-Civil War diploma survives

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Two rare documents from a fleeting time after the Civil War when the University of South Carolina first admitted African-American students and faculty have gone on display.

A law school diploma from the university and a South Carolina law license granted in 1876 to Richard Theodore Greener, the first African-American faculty member of the university, are being unveiled at noon EDT Tuesday at the South Caroliniana Library on the school's Columbia campus.

The exhibition explores contributions blacks made in the university's history and in its desegregation in 1963. The exhibition coincides with a yearlong remembrance of events leading to that desegregation, when the school again admitted black students in the Civil Rights era.

Authorities say both documents were saved from a Chicago home awaiting demolition in 2009. It's not known how they got there.