While federal lawmakers wrestle with their debt ceiling, legislators in Kentucky have their own debt problems to worry about. A bill comes due in September that worries state officials and business leaders.  Kentucky borrowed about 900 million dollars from the federal government for jobless benefits, and it must make a 28 million dollar interest payment.  If the state falls short, the premiums paid by business for unemployment insurance could go up 400 dollars per employee or about 640 million dollars.

Mid-summer is a time when movie audiences crave action. And that's no truer of the multiplex than it is at the art house, where Point Blank, a new thriller from France (no relation to the Lee Marvin/John Boorman crime picture from 1967) opens — quite literally — with a bang. It's the crash of a man who, clutching his bleeding stomach, smashes through a door into the wall of a metal staircase. And it's followed by another crash seconds later, when two men with guns smash through the door after him.

Robert Siegel talks with reporter Matt Largey of member station KUT about the arrest of an AWOL Army private named Naser Jason Abdo for threatening a terrorist attack on Fort Hood in Texas.

Hideki Irabu, a Japanese pitcher who debuted for the New York Yankees in 1997, was found dead after an apparent suicide in Los Angeles.

The AP reports:

"The body of Irabu, 42, was found at 4:25 p.m. PDT Wednesday, county sheriff's Sgt. Michael Arriaga said."

"'He was found dead by an apparent suicide,' he said."

"Irabu lived in Rancho Palos Verdes but it was not immediately clear whether it was his home, the sergeant said."

Too much acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, can damage your liver or worse.

Now to reduce the risk of accidental overdoses, Johnson & Johnson's McNeil division, marketer of the painkilling mainstay, is lowering the maximum dose for Extra Strenth Tylenol to six tablets a day from eight.

Bob Bradley has been relieved of his duties as the head coach of United States National Team for men's soccer.

U.S. Soccer President Sunil Gulati thanked Bradley for his five years at the helm of the team but said now is the right time to make change. "It is always hard to make these decisions, especially when it involves someone we respect as much as Bob," Gulati said.

When President Obama visited Fort Campbell just before Derby Day, Kentucky’s Governor confirms he did not receive a formal invitation to participate.  Nor, could Governor Steve Beshear rework his schedule to join in a ceremony for the Navy Seals who killed Osama Bin Laden.  At the time, Beshear did not talk about not receiving an invitation. The governor said today (Thursday) it was not an attempt to mislead the public for political gain

While exasperated over the debt ceiling debate, Kentucky’s governor thinks its impacts on the Commonwealth could be minimal. The governor says there’s no way the United States ought to be at this crossroads right now.  Steve Beshear says politicians in Washington have allowed partisan politics to rule the day with no thought to the interest of the American public.  Beshear says Kentucky relies on the federal government for Medicaid, transportation, and education funding.

Forty years ago today, Charley Pride and his longtime producer Cowboy Jack Clement walked into a recording studio after lunch and emerged before dinner with three new tracks. Pride says he had no idea that one of them—“Kiss an Angel Good Mornin’”—would become a country colossus. But to really appreciate the magnitude of Pride’s more than thirty year-long hit-making heyday, it’s best to go to the beginning.

Freshly pressed stormtrooper outfits, just like the ones worn in the original 1977 Star Wars film, are still legally for sale in Great Britain after the country's Supreme Court ruled that the south London industrial designer who originally made them could keep on making them.