Reaction was swift in Alabama on Tuesday after the Justice Department filed a lawsuit to block a new immigration law set to take effect next month.

Alabama's new law — considered the toughest in the country — requires authorities to confirm the status of anyone they stop if there's reasonable doubt that person could be in the U.S. illegally. The law makes it a crime for undocumented immigrants to work, rent an apartment or get a driver's license.

Louisville Metro Government has fined Louisville Gas & Electric for letting coal ash leave the Cane Run Power Station and contaminate nearby homes. Two weeks ago, LG&E released test results that found ash on three area homes. Now, the city has fined the company $4,000 for violating the district’s fugitive dust rule.

The Louisville Orchestra’s management and musicians continue their mediation this week. The two sides have been at odds over a new contract agreement. The management, which filed for Chapter 11 last year, is seeking to cut the number of full-time musicians. They’ve put forwrada plan that would group the players into tiers and sign various tiers to different-length. Another proposal would cut benefits and pay. The musicians have called it unacceptable.

Confessed Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik's "manifesto" references many statistics and papers dealing with both science and global population. But what if you were a writer — and you learned that the man who killed 77 people had quoted some of your work?

With the Senate's passage of the debt-ceiling legislation and President Obama having signed it Tuesday afternoon, the nation no longer needs to worry about defaultmageddon, at least not until early 2013 when the U.S. Treasury once again runs out of the room to borrow again.

But even though there wasn't a default, the fight left plenty of wreckage laying about.

Among the casualties was Obama. Yes, he seemed to have narrowly averted becoming the first president to have the nation default during his term.

Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul was one of twenty six lawmakers to oppose a compromise that keeps the nation from defaulting on its debt. The legislation was passed with broad support in both chambers of Congress, but Senator Paul claims the more than two trillion dollars in budget cuts included in the deal are more fiction than fact.

Western Kentucky University has an annual economic impact of $672 million on the community, according to a new study by WKU’s Center for Applied Economics. The money that WKU spends for supplies and other items in the community and for the salaries of faculty and staff amounts to about $385 million a year. But the standard multiplier effect of 1.75 puts that annual impact at $672 million - or roughly 26 percent of the money spent in Warren County - the study said. WKU salaries account for about $252 million, or 10 percent, of all income earned in the county.

After an unexpectedly strong, but ultimately unsuccessful, showing in May’s Republican gubernatorial primary, Louisville businessman Phil Moffett had been looking for ways to capitalize on what he calls “political capital.” Moffett apparently found it. The Bowling Green-based Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions announced Monday that it has tabbed Moffett as its next president and CEO.

We all know that exercise is good for us, but sometimes it's can seem too hard to even detach from the couch.

Plus, let's be honest, having the federal government tell us it's a terrific idea to get 2 1/2 hours of moderate-intensity aerobic activity a week doesn't really help our motivation much. Sorry.

Kentucky has changed the formula it uses to calculate graduation rates, and it has caused local numbers to drop – and in one case, nosedive. The Kentucky Department of Education today released the data for the graduating class of 2010, as required by the federal No Child Left Behind program. To meet their federal goals, schools and districts will be required to have a graduation rate of 82.32 percent or close the gap between the previous year’s rate by at least 10 percent. Statewide, the 2010 graduation rate is 76.7 percent. In 2009 under the old formula, the state reported a rate of 83.9 percent.