FRANKFORT – At Gov. Steve Beshear’s direction, the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet has taken action to speed the emergency response to neighboring states hit with widespread electrical outages earlier this week. Transportation Secretary Mike Hancock signed an official order to waive special registration and permit requirements for utility repair vehicles headed to stricken areas.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other top diplomats are gathering in Istanbul, Turkey, this week to talk about Libya amid fresh optimism that Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi may be looking for a way out.

French officials have said that the Gadhafi regime is "sending messengers everywhere" to explore ways to end the conflict. U.S. officials have suggested that his regime is suffering from low morale and is running out of supplies.

Before setting off to Istanbul, Clinton told reporters that she's seen "contradictory signals" from Gadhafi's camp.

The cost of health care threatens to break the finances of cities like Lexington.  Last year, providing coverage for city worker cost 11-million dollars more than predicted.  Other cities are in better shape, but, the executive director at the Kentucky League of Cities says it’s still a struggle. Jon Steiner says increasing health care costs makes it hard to write a budget.

 A man who built a 25 year career at the Lexington jail is back in a leadership position there. Ray Sabbatine was announced Thursday as the interim director of Community Corrections. He will take over for retiring director Ron Bishop on July 25. 

Digital music service Spotify has officially launched in the United States, where it hopes to build on its success in Europe and compete with Apple, Amazon and Google in offering streaming music.

Here's part of a report NPR's Joel Rose filed for Newscast:

Pakistan's second largest city came to a standstill, when protesters torched cars and burned buses. Acrimony between political parties is being blamed for the violence that left 14 people dead and more than two dozen wounded in Karachi.

NPR's Julie McCarthy filed this report for our Newscast unit:

Amid international concerns that terrorists might seize Pakistan's nuclear materials, and amid Pakistani concerns that the U.S. might seize them, Islamabad has issued a strong statement declaring that the weapons are safe. Julie McCarthy

With much of the U.S. going through a heat wave and the report that the U.S. military spends $20 billion a year on air conditioning in Iraq and Afghanistan, we wondered just what's being done to make air conditioning more energy- and cost-efficient. Michele Norris asks Lloyd Alter, a senior writer for architecture and design for the web site, Treehugger.

Deficit-cutting talks resume at the White House this afternoon, amid growing pressure from the financial markets not to jeopardize the government's credit rating. Republican lawmakers continue to resist any tax increase, but a poll suggests they're out of step with voters, even in their own party. Scott Horsley

The Pentagon unveiled its strategy Thursday for defending against cyberattack, officially classifying cyberspace as a war-fighting domain along with air, sea and space. Tom Gjelten