>> She played a bit.

Our community should be able to to know about this and make decisions.

They made decisions without us.

That's not what we elected them to do.

>> People speak out about a potential data center in Northeast Kentucky.

[MUSIC] The president promised to make him an ambassador.

But which country?

We know now where a Kentucky businessman could be headed.

>> Just seeing them, like dive bomb at different birds is really cool.

>> And what's the connection between Falcons and Kentucky power plants?

[MUSIC] >> Production of Kentucky Edition is made possible in part by the KET Millennium Fund.

[MUSIC] >> Good evening and welcome to Kentucky Edition for this Tuesday, June 2nd, I'm Renee Shaw, and we thank you for spending some of your Tuesday night with us.

Louisville's police chief has begun the process of firing an officer who shot and killed a man.

Over the weekend.

Chief Paul Humphrey made the announcement just this afternoon.

>> The officer involved in this incident is Nathan Scott.

He was hired in February of 2024 and was assigned to the sixth Division.

The video you're about to see is going to be difficult.

In this video, you will see a man who is naked, stumbling and unarmed and is shot by a police officer.

After reviewing the videos, 911 calls, dispatch and other preliminary information.

I've made the decision to begin the termination process of Nathan Stotts from the Louisville Metro Police Department.

The authority we are given as police officers comes with high standards and demands that we live to those standards.

Upholding our standards is not a choice.

It's a responsibility.

When an officer does not meet those standards, I am responsible for taking action.

And that's what I've done today.

As police officers, we have a difficult job, requires us to make difficult decisions in difficult circumstances.

But this is not an acceptable performance for us.

This is not meet our training.

It is not what we teach and it does not meet our values.

>> Chief Humphries said police were initially called about an assault.

Officers then saw the victim running down the street naked before he was found shot by Officer Stotts.

Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg commended the chief's quick response.

He also said a criminal investigation into the officer's actions are underway.

It's unclear how long the process to fire an Lmpd officer could take.

As we told you last week, a massive data center is in the works for Northeast Kentucky, and it's being led by the same company who's behind another center in Hancock County that's in western Kentucky.

Last night, elected officials hosted a town hall to bring residents up to speed.

With the controversial development.

Our Emily Prince was there and talked with a lot of folks on all sides of the issue.

>> She.

Quite a bit.

>> Hundreds of Northeast Kentucky residents packed the Boyd County Community Center last night for a lively town hall about a new, massive data center proposed for the area.

The Maryland based company Terra Wolfe wants to build the largest data center thus far in Kentucky.

The development would occupy nearly 300 acres at East Park Industrial Center, which is made up of five counties.

Boyd, Carter, Elliott, Greenup and Lawrence.

Because of this location, all five counties would share the tax revenue brought in by Terra Wolfe, Greenup County Judge Executive Bobby Hall said.

The industrial site has sat vacant for 20 years.

>> My guess is that 95% of the people in this room have probably never driven out and looked at this vacant land at an industrial site on the industrial park.

>> But many of last night's attendees are skeptical of the project, some even angry.

The judge executives of the five counties signed a non-disclosure agreement to not share any details of the development with the public.

The news of the data center was announced just last week after Terra Wolfe purchased the land.

>> We don't trust these people, and what they did was just wrong.

They need to.

Our community should be able to to know about this and make decisions.

They made decisions without us.

That's not what we elected them to do.

>> Boyd County Judge Executive Eric Chaney addressed the lack of transparency.

>> In the a. Never crossed my mind that I was doing anything wrong, which I didn't.

Never crossed my mind that it would ever even appear that way.

>> Residents were given the opportunity to speak and ask questions during the three hour long town hall.

Many had environmental concerns as some data centers have been linked to high electric and water usage.

A Lawrence County high school teacher said she tried to do her own research on how much water the system would initially require.

>> An internet search for this information returned the following result that information has not yet been disclosed.

So if the center development has been so carefully planned out, I'm curious as to why that basic information has not been made available to the public.

>> Chaney said that Terra Wolf's data center would operate on what's called a closed loop cooling system, meaning it continuously circulates water, which should reduce the amount needed.

He reassured the crowd that the region had a well equipped water and power supply.

He also said that, according to Terra Wolfe and demands from the state ratepayers, utility bills should not be affected.

A Greenup County commissioner spoke in favor of the project, saying he was optimistic about the potential jobs and tax revenue.

>> Well, this is Appalachia, and I believe that a lot of times we don't have a lot of hope with a industry coming in or businesses and looking at some of the tax money that this company will bring local governments, it does bring you hope.

>> It is still to be determined how many jobs will come from the development, and how many of those would be permanent after construction is complete.

>> They didn't answer the question.

They didn't know.

They don't know the environmental impact that this is going to cause.

There's not even been any studies.

>> Done, the Boyd County judge executive said.

Despite criticism and even some calls to resign, he stood by his decision.

>> Sometimes you're the hero and you kind of die the villain.

That's how I feel right now.

But I stand by the project, I stand by what we've done, and I'll keep being as transparent as I've always been for the people.

>> For Kentucky Edition, I'm Emily Prince.

>> Thank you Emily.

Representatives from Terre Wolfe are expected to visit the region on June 17th and host another community.

Town hall leaders said.

If all goes to plan, the first phase of the data center would open in 2028.

In other news today, Governor Andy Beshear issued an executive order expanding the list of qualifying conditions for medical cannabis.

The order directs the Office of Medical Cannabis to include 15 more medical conditions.

They include sickle cell anemia, Parkinson's, severe arthritis and glaucoma.

Governor Beshear says the executive order provides clarity regarding conditions that caused qualifying symptoms, such as chronic pain, but were not explicitly named in Kentucky law.

>> We recognize that the state's list of qualifying conditions can be a bit confusing.

For example, some of the conditions include chronic nausea, muscle spasms and chronic pain, which are of themselves not a condition but an underlying symptom of other serious medical conditions like ALS, like Crohn's disease, like sickle cell, and some terminal illnesses.

These conditions might not be listed in the statute itself, but the underlying symptoms of them are right there in the wording.

So we want to make this more clear and we want to help more people.

The Team Kentucky Medical Cannabis Work Group, the Kentucky Board of Physicians and Advisors, and the Office of Medical Cannabis have all asked the General Assembly not to fundamentally change, but just to clarify what's already in that law.

Unfortunately, they've refused to act.

Too much is at risk to just stand by and let the law's lack of clarity leave Kentuckians without relief.

>> Those who qualify must speak to a licensed practitioner in order to receive a medical marijuana card.

There are currently 500 licensed practitioners in the state.

Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman has randomly selected 12 counties for post-election audits.

This process is routine and occurs after each election.

You can see the counties selected today here on the map we're about to show you.

They are West Wing Oldham, Franklin Davis, Laurel Adair, Scott, Union, Fulton, Carroll, Floyd and Pike counties.

The audit is required by state law.

President Donald Trump has nominated Lexington businessman Nate Morris to be the next U.S.

ambassador to Columbia.

Morris was a candidate for U.S.

Senate in Kentucky's Republican primary.

He dropped out of the race at the request of President Trump, who endorsed Congressman Andy Barr, who was the eventual nominee.

Morris also endorsed Barr as he left the race.

Morris nomination now awaits U.S.

Senate confirmation.

School systems in virtually every part of the country are still recovering from Covid.

Area learning loss.

Nowhere is this learning loss more pronounced than in literacy rates.

However, a new study from Harvard, Stanford and Dartmouth identifies Kentucky as a top performer in reading and math recovery.

Our Clayton Dalton has an update on Kentucky's Reed to succeed.

>> Kentucky ranks fifth in reading and eighth in math recovery among states, and so it does put us as a top performer across the nation.

>> These gains aren't by chance.

In 2022, the state legislature passed the Read to Succeed Act, directing the Kentucky Department of Education to help school districts train teachers in a new phonics focused curriculum.

The two year training program is called Language Essentials for teachers of reading and spelling or Letters.

>> Over the last four cohorts of letters, we've had over 7000 Kentucky educators and administrators join in this professional learning.

Participants enter the course of letters with a pre-assessment average of 65%, and they left that course in professional learning with a post-test average of 95%.

So that is a substantial increase in learning and knowledge around the science of reading.

>> The data is clear.

Letters training is helping students read at or above their grade level, including students with disabilities who require additional support at school.

>> Grade five students taught by letters trained teachers over consecutive years, performed significantly higher than than their peers, than other students.

And then I think this is really powerful.

Students with an IEP in grades four and five who are exposed to two years of a letter string teacher significantly outperform their peers with less exposure to letter strain teaching.

>> Even with the improvement, Kentucky has more progress to make.

>> We ranked fifth in the improvement that's not in fifth.

And so and based on some of those other numbers, is we still are not at the levels we were before Covid because we were at 60 some percent reading proficiency and we're still at 45 and 50%.

>> Staff at the Kentucky Department of Education believe with time, the state will bounce back to pre-COVID reading proficiency levels.

>> The improvements that we are seeing, you know, statewide is amazing.

It's going to take a little while to get to that student level.

>> Data for Kentucky.

Edition.

I'm Clayton Dalton.

>> He says the next step is to expand the training to sixth through 12th grade educators.

Breathitt County Schools have settled a lawsuit with several social media giants for $27 million.

According to the Lexington Herald-Leader, Breathitt County is one of 1200 school districts nationally that sued meta, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube, saying they created addictive technologies that required schools to pay for mental health counseling and other programs.

The school system asked for $60 million in its lawsuit.

Kentucky celebrated birthday number 234 yesterday, but Kentucky history didn't begin in 1792.

In fact, it stretches back 12,000 years with the arrival of indigenous people.

Guest host Chip Polston and a panel of history experts talked about that.

Plus Louisville's founding, the man who beat Daniel Boone to Kentucky, and more.

Last night on a Special America 250 edition of Kentucky Tonight.

>> David Kloiber.

When the settlers first came in, most of the indigenous people had withdrawn.

Why did they leave?

And then why did they fight so hard to hang on to the land that they had once claimed here?

>> I'm always aware when I visit Ohio, how many Indian names I encounter.

Virtually none in Kentucky.

And I think that reflects the fact that when the European settlers entered Kentucky, there were no permanent Indian settlements.

The last had ended in 1754.

Why?

Well, I think that disease had decimated the Indian populations.

And so it made sense for the Shawnee to move north of the Ohio River, for the Cherokee to move south into Tennessee for mutual defense.

Although they may have left Kentucky, they still continued to use it as a hunting grounds.

They would often come in and spend long months hunting in this Paradise.

Really.

So they never, ever gave up their claim to Kentucky as their hunting ground.

And since they had been here 12,000 years, they were going to fight to keep it.

>> And, Stuart, many people point to Daniel Boone coming through the Cumberland Gap as really the seminal moment of those those settlers coming in.

But in the time frame that we're referencing, somebody actually beat him here that we don't hear a whole lot about.

Tell us about him.

>> Yeah.

He beat Boone by about 19 years coming through the Cumberland Gap.

That's Doctor Thomas Walker, who was a Virginian.

He was a politician, and he was part of a group that was called the Loyal Land Company that had been given hundreds of thousands of acres in what is now southeastern Kentucky.

And Walker led a group of surveyors into that region of Kentucky, stayed there for several months, never really got into the bluegrass region, but spent a lot of time surveying, built a cabin, and was sort of again predated Boone by about 19 years.

>> But the Daniel Boone mythology, that's what everybody has kind of locked into with the story of him coming through the Cumberland Gap, when really somebody had already been there.

>> Yeah, Boone had great press, which is.

>> A good PR person.

And doctor Smith Boone brought with him enslaved people when he came through the gap, as you and I were talking about, he was heavily influenced by one enslaved person in particular who was later emancipated for his efforts.

Tell us that story.

>> Yes.

Boone, as well as his family, were enslavers.

And once Fort Boonesborough was erected, there was one individual by the name of Monk Estill, who was played a very prominent role in all the activities that took place at Boonesborough.

It was Mark Estill that planted an apple orchard.

Who was the fiddler who was believed to be the father of the first child, African American child that was born in the state of Kentucky and and also became a hero in himself in terms of saving one of the European families that were attacked by Native Americans and was was emancipated because of that heroic act.

>> That's a remarkable story.

And, Simon, around this time, you know, we talked a lot about different areas of Louisville.

You said that Louisville wasn't much more than a swampy pond where your exact words that I remember you saying to me, tell me what Louisville looked like around this time around.

>> This time we're talking America.

250 1776 George Rogers Clark Dossett found Louisville until May of 1778.

Right.

So at this time, when he showed up with this flotilla of soldiers and families coming from Pittsburgh, the only reason they stopped here was because of the falls of the Ohio, which is the only natural impediment from Pittsburgh down to New Orleans, on the Ohio, into the Mississippi.

So you get 600 miles from Pittsburgh.

Your boats stop.

Oh, I got to get out.

I got to walk my boats two miles to get over these 28 foot rapids.

So Clark or George Rogers Clark founded Louisville here on Corn Island as a military outpost for a month later to go on to Kaskaskia and Cahokia and go to the northwest.

The folks, the citizens who came with him from Pennsylvania, came and settled on mainland Louisville in 7879 at that time.

But it all started because of the falls and the impediment that it imposed there.

>> A very interesting, hour long discussion about many aspects of Kentucky history.

And you can see it online on demand at ket.org/ky.

Tonight, you may not know this, but L, G, and E and K, you are in the Falcon business.

Since 1999, more than 200 peregrine falcons have hatched at utility sites.

It's part of a partnership with the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources.

The Falcons are fitted with small metal tags that allow the department to track them over their lifetimes.

Three new chicks have just been branded.

The goal is to help bring back a species that's declined over time.

>> Historically, peregrine falcons were pretty abundant across North America.

Then by the 1950s, they had disappeared east of the Mississippi River, and that was because of pesticide called DDT.

That caused their eggshells to thin and they couldn't hatch successfully.

So DDT was eventually banned, and we started a reintroduction program in the 1990s to start bringing baby peregrine falcons back.

Since then, our population has been increasing, but it's still a small population.

Their role in the ecosystem is they're a top predator.

You know, they a lot of people are happy to have them around because they'll help put a dent in your pigeon population.

They they also eat a lot of woodpeckers and ducks.

So they're just, you know, as a top predator, they're just keeping population levels of other birds in check.

>> Just seeing them like dive bomb at different birds is really cool.

I mean, I don't want to say that's something I've learned, but I really didn't know they were such voracious hunters.

And just to see them hunting other birds is amazing.

They're so fast when they dive, it's incredible.

It's like something out of National Geographic.

And like, that's one of my favorite parts of my job is just getting them to see, see them live their lives out here and just getting to know that we contribute to that success of that population and of their regional ecosystem success.

So yeah.

>> Peregrine falcons can nest in power plants, crevices and alcoves because they're similar to natural locations like mountain cliffs and ledges.

[MUSIC] We all know that sleep can be hard to come by, but it's especially true in rural Kentucky.

According to a new report, researchers at the University of Kentucky, in partnership with the University of Miami and the University of Arizona, studied the sleep habits of hundreds of people in 12 rural Kentucky counties.

What they discovered A significantly high number of adults suffering from sleep disorders.

More about this important topic in today's medical news, where he.

We hear what they say is behind the sleep loss.

[MUSIC] >> Sleep deficiencies is an umbrella term that encompasses both sleep dysfunction as well as validated sleep disorders.

We are specifically interested in three.

We're interested in insufficient sleep defined as seven or fewer hours per night.

We're interested in insomnia, which is typically defined as difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep, or early morning awakening, or some combination thereof.

And then the third thing that we're really interested in is obstructive sleep apnea risk, whereby people stop breathing for periods during their sleep, during the night that we found 64.9% of our participants versus 10% nationally are suffering clinically significant levels of insomnia severity.

And I would add to that that the obstructive sleep apnea risk in this population is 51.3% versus about 38% nationally.

And finally, in relation to insufficient sleep, what we found was that about 45% suffer from insufficient sleep versus 35% nationally.

And it was different risk factors for different groups.

So with insomnia, female sex is highly correlated with the insomnia in terms of obstructive sleep apnea, it was actually men.

Male sex is more associated with obstructive sleep apnea.

There is a very strong socioeconomic gradient, particularly when it comes to insomnia.

So the more money folks make, the less likely they are to suffer from insomnia.

And conversely, if people make in particular in the sample less than $20,000 a year, their rates of insomnia are about 80%, which is extremely high.

Now, we don't think it's just the income per se.

It's the stressors that come along with that the economic insecurity, the inability to afford basic needs, the inability to seek health care if needed.

There are also very high rates of trauma in the area, and that has only gone up since the flooding events that have occurred in recent years.

We've talked to a lot of folks who sleep was okay prior to the flooding events and then has was disrupted at that time and has never fully come back.

I would add to that, that lack of economic opportunities in the region and housing shortage or housing insecurity or other stressors.

>> We also saw an impact of other mental health conditions on, you know, the prevalence of of sleep disorders.

So.

Depression, depression, and anxiety in particular were highly correlated with with all of these sleep related problems.

So they kind of like go hand in hand.

And which is also important to, to consider in, in the population, not only from an intervention standpoint, but kind of explaining kind of the intricacies of, of these various factors in, in leading to, to what we are seeing in terms of sleep outcomes.

>> What we would love to offer to folks with these issues in Eastern Kentucky would be digital forms of cognitive behavioral therapy for sleep, whereby they relearn these sleep beliefs and sleep behaviors.

They learn to shut off their brains and to create better sleep habits.

>> We actually had a very good acceptance of the intervention with our pilot, and it's also because it doesn't carry any stigma.

They can do it on their in their own home.

It's kind of like self-empowering.

They are taking control over, you know, their, their sleep.

So it's, it's not, I think the feedback we received from participants in that pilot was very positive.

And we saw positive effects on several outcomes with regard to sleep, with regard to mental health, with regard to the use of medications, sleep aids in particular, even though that pilot was for a very limited period of time, we were able to see, and the feedback we received at the end of the intervention was very positive.

There was a great acceptability of such such an intervention.

>> The researchers say they found people who lived alone were far more likely to suffer from insomnia.

But they say that's tied to more to a lack of social support.

[MUSIC] The best three point shooter in America is coming to the University of Kentucky.

Details in tonight's look at sports news.

>> Not only does one thing he does about four or 5 or 6 things very well, so it's going to be somewhere Momcilovic got it.

And once again.

>> Milan Momcilovic of Iowa State pulled out of the NBA draft last Wednesday, and last night he committed to transfer to UK in his junior year.

Last year, he shot more than 48% from three point range, making 136 shots for the season.

He led the country in both categories.

Go big Blue Nation on that catch.

That will do it for us tonight.

We hope to see you again tomorrow night at 630 eastern, 530 central on Kentucky edition where we inform, connect and inspire.

Connect with us all the ways you see on your screen.

Look at our social media.

You can send us an email at the address on your screen, maybe a story idea and a shout out.

And of course, you can stream all kinds of great content on the PBS app and online@ket.org.

I'm Renee Shaw, thanks for being with us and I will see you real soon.

Take good care.