Kentucky lowers its flags to honor those killed in Israel.

This guy is a pathological liar, Renee.

The candidates for Kentucky secretary of state didn't hold back the accusations and responses ahead.

I really think that the archery, the shooting sports as a whole became a unifier.

Archery is safe in America's schools thanks to a solution that's right on target.

Production of Kentucky Edition is made possible in part by the KET Endowment for Kentucky Productions, the Leonard Press Endowment for Public Affairs, and the KET Millennium Fund.

Good evening and welcome to Kentucky Edition for Tuesday, October 10th.

I'm Chip Polston, filling in tonight for Renee Shaw.

Thanks so much for joining us.

Flags at state building are at half staff today in honor of those killed during the Hamas attacks on Israel on Saturday.

Governor Andy Beshear ordered flags lowered from this morning until sunset on Friday, October 13th.

And he urges private businesses, organizations and individuals to also lower their flags.

Yesterday, he urged all Kentuckians to pray for the families who have lost loved ones.

US Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky voiced support for Israel but urged the U.S. to hold off on big financial aid.

In an appearance yesterday on the Clay and Buck Radio show in New York City.

Here are some of Senator Paul's remarks.

Well, you know, we've had a long standing role with Israel goes back, you know, 30, 50 years or more.

And I think that continues.

And I think when people start looking for things in the midst of a crisis, like what are we doing?

What are we to do?

Well, we've already done lots for decades.

And so I would venture to say that Israel is probably one of the most well-stocked munitions country in the world.

And I think they're adequately prepared for this.

But I don't think it's sort of like, oh, let's give them $20 billion or something that's give $50 billion, because really it's about being smart about it.

And in the end, they're already comparing this to 911.

We were the best equipped military, the strongest soldiers, strongest army in the world, and we got attacked on 911.

So it's going to be figuring out the vulnerability of what happened.

People are already talking about where was the failure in intelligence.

And I know we share a lot of intelligence with the Israelis.

All of those things have cooperation on border.

I just kind of hate it as much as I have nothing but the utmost sympathy of everybody says, what are we going to do?

What are we going to what can we give them?

Because we bankrupted our damn country and given it to everybody on the planet?

And it's not that I have sympathy, I do.

And I want to help and I want to be helpful.

But I hope it's not just sort of let's open the spigots and just, you know, drain the coffers.

Senator Paul has been very critical of U.S. aid for Ukraine as it fights Russia.

We continue to learn about Kentuckians who are trapped in Israel.

That includes members of two southern Kentucky churches, a dozen people who attend River Lake Church in Glasgow, plus six more from other churches were touring the Holy Land when Hamas attacked.

The group was supposed to leave Israel yesterday.

Pastor Nick Smith, who's with the group, posted an update on the church's Facebook page.

Hey, everybody.

I have had a lot of people reach out to me and ask how I'm doing and so grateful for that and figured the easiest way would be to post a video on social media and just let you know just really, really quickly.

We are really good with stuff and we're stuck in Israel right now, but we're safe.

And that really is the most important thing.

Broadway United Methodist Church in Bowling Green also had members stuck in Israel.

Pastor Adam Schwartz posted on Facebook that he and his group made it to Jordan yesterday.

They're now working on finding a flight back to the United States.

With less than a month to go before the November 7th election, we heard from the candidates for Kentucky's secretary of state last night on Kentucky tonight.

Republican incumbent Michael Adams is being challenged by Democrat Charles Buddy Wheatley.

The former Covington fire chief and a former state representatives.

The candidates did not hold back in their criticisms of each other.

Here are some of the accusations and the responses.

And right now, alarms are sounding how Michael Adams has run our elections in 2022.

We had we had the lowest voter turnout in 30 years.

Hundreds of polling locations were removed.

Folks, this is what happens when you have a secretary of state who treats the office.

This part time while he's working his side job for election deniers.

Who are his candidate, who are his his clients outside of the state?

How many hours is he working for them instead of Kentuckians?

He won't answer that.

Mr. Secretary, I want to begin with some of the allegations that we heard.

Mr. Wheatley just enunciate.

And that's about you having a part time gig and not being a full time secretary of state.

There was a report, I will say, that came out, that you use public funds to pay bar association dues.

So please answer all of those allegations.

Well, Mr. Wheatley hasn't spent as much time in the gutter since he drove drunk and crashes taxpayer on vehicle in a ditch.

This report you're talking about was put out by a Democratic superPAC.

It was put out by the Democrats.

It was an actual report.

They quoted a lawyer who was the lawyer for the Democratic Party and didn't said that in their in their report.

One of the problems we have in politics today is fake news, literally fake news where people set up a website, pretend to be journalists, but they're not, and they confuse gullible people.

I'm sorry that people have been fallen for this and it's not true.

Well, what I said and what I say now is that my office does pay for dues for lawyers who practice in our office on behalf of the office.

That's true of me.

It's true of my general counsel and my deputy general counsel.

But we've achieved a cost savings in our office by in-sourcing a lot of our legal work.

I personally briefcases.

I personally argue cases on behalf of the office.

I do it pro bono, and the state pays for the bar dues.

And by the way, we actually I'm the first Secretary of state to remove our office from the taxpayer dollar.

We don't take tax dollars.

We actually run the surplus based on fees that we assess 15 bucks a year to operate a business in Kentucky.

We run a surplus because we're such skinflint with our budget.

We actually turn money back over to the General Assembly so they can pay for education and roads and bridges.

So I do want to go to a point that Secretary Adams just said a moment ago in his rapid fire response about that.

You did have a vehicle accident and a publicly owned vehicle where you had been drinking and you did crash that vehicle.

Tell us about that and the outcome.

Well, this is an incident that happened 15 years ago that Michael Adams has been misleading people on for a while.

I had an accident, ran off the road, paid for the accident, took responsibility for it, stayed on as the fire chief was elected two terms to a state representative.

So Kentuckians are familiar with this.

These are things that you bring up when you're trying to deflect from failings of your own office.

And I think that's what's happening with Michael Adams here related to what he's doing outside of that, his his outside work as the attorney for election denial, actually like the master Death Index.

On election related topics, Wheatley said the polls in Kentucky should be open until 7 p.m. instead of the current 6 p.m., and he favors two weeks of early voting.

Adams says having three days of early voting, including voting on a Saturday, is more helpful to voters than extending the voting hours from 6 to 7 on Election Day.

Both seemed supportive of allowing independent voters to vote in primaries.

You can see the full candidate interviews with Adams and Wheatley online on demand at Kate Morgan k y tonight.

Also last night we talked to Sierra Enloe, the Democratic candidate for commissioner of agriculture, the Republican candidate.

Jonathan Schell declined our invitation to appear.

The first ever Kentucky Opioid symposium kicked off yesterday.

The event featured presentations from law enforcement agencies, nonprofits and more to discuss developments in the fight against the drug epidemic.

This is the first Opioid Abatement Commission conference, so it's an opportunity to bring together thought leaders and talk about the opioid addiction issue in the Commonwealth in particular, things that the managed care companies are involved with, or things like peer support, recovery, housing, which was the result of some legislation from a few years ago known as Senate Bill 90.

So it's a great opportunity to get people together and talk about those concerns and look at plans to move forward.

A lot of times in the legal system or in the criminal justice system, we don't see the options out there and we don't see what is happening outside of our little box.

Right.

It has so much potential to make such great changes because now what we're doing is we're communicating and we're we're we're able to communicate hard and get and get those types of services.

And I will say this.

It doesn't matter if we're all doing something similar.

The point is, is we should all be doing something.

What we're hoping to spread the awareness about are the pitfalls of fentanyl, the danger associated with fentanyl.

Many don't realize what a microscopic amount is.

Lethal, and any time a pill is consumed, there's no way to know the exact amount of the product that's in the pills.

And it's playing Russian roulette.

One pill can kill.

Many don't realize how deadly it is.

Many that consume the pill one time.

It's not the recreational drug users.

It's not the it just one time can kill high school students, college students, and are most at risk because they don't realize the danger associated with it.

Two milligrams is enough to kill the average person depending on white tolerance and genetic factors or just bringing an awareness is the most important thing and reducing the availability.

I came here today to talk about Senate Bill 90, which is our new behavioral health conditional dismissal program.

In general, we've seen amazing results.

So it is really new and it's kind of taken us a little while to get it going and to get the ball rolling.

But what we have seen so far is that we're changing lives and it's just it's exciting to see it.

People are getting all the services they need.

So we are we're getting them that clinical assessment.

We're taking them in.

We're determining if they have a need, if they have a substance use disorder or a behavioral health and mental health disorder.

If they do, then we're taking them into the program.

We're assessing them not just for their mental health needs or their substance use disorder needs, but also the whole package so we can help them get a job.

But they need housing.

We can help them get housing.

If they need transportation to get to a provider, we can help them with that.

One of the things that's been surprising for me is I've attended different outreach programs in the state is what I perceive to be something that was really a rural problem is in fact, as much an urban problem as a rural problem.

In particular.

If you think about the community here in Lexington, also in Louisville, where we've seen dramatic increases in homelessness and what the relationship is between opioid and fentanyl usage and homelessness and that impact, hopefully these funds that Kentucky has been awarded will make a difference in the lives of all Kentuckians.

Kentucky has been devastated over the last two decades by opioid abuse, and these funds, we are optimistic, will make a difference and righting the ship back to where it needs to be.

After two days of discussions, the symposium wrapped up this afternoon.

More Toyota jobs in Kentucky.

Auto workers rallied to support their striking colleagues, and a group in northern Kentucky was not happy to see a national library leader.

Toby Gibbs has details in this.

Look at what's happening around the Commonwealth.

Toyota boss show Koo broke ground on its $225 million manufacturing facility in Hopkinsville last week.

The hop town Chronicle reports that construction of the 365,400 square foot facility began a few months ago and is expected to be completed in 2025.

Toyota Basho COO makes interior filtration and powertrain components.

Company officials said the plant will feature advanced robotics and automation to streamline work and reduce waste.

A state package of tax incentives requires the company to pay its 157 employees an average of $40 an hour with benefits as union laborers from General Motors Bowling Green Corvette Assembly Plant met at the local United Auto Workers Union Hall last week to show support for the nationwide strike.

That's according to the Bowling Green Daily News.

Since September 15th, 43 assembly plants and distribution centers have gone on strike against the Big three automakers.

None of those facilities have been in Kentucky.

The United Auto Workers demands include a 36% increase in wages over four years.

A 32 hour workweek, regular cost of living adjustments and the restoration of defined benefit pensions.

Blank and K-Y reports that Northern Kentucky Moms for Liberty protested the arrival of American Library Association President Emily Dora Bensky in Florence Friday.

The chapter chair told Lincoln Care why the group is in opposition to what they deemed American Library Association policies, and that Drew Bensky is quote, pushing pornography books in our schools and in our libraries, unquote.

She said that material is being strategically placed in parts of libraries where children and young adults can see it.

Stravinsky told Link and Kaye why the American Library Association is a nonpartisan organization committed to library services for everyone, and she favors professional librarians making decisions for their communities.

Last week at Preston's Burke City Hall, Floyd County officials unveiled an opioid overdose rescue kit that contains Narcan nasal spray.

The Floyd County Chronicle reports it's the first of many that will be placed across the county, health department, officials said.

Another kit will be located at the fire station in Lancer.

Floyd County ranks third in the number of overdose deaths in Kentucky.

The Somerset Pulaski Special Response Team will have a ribbon cutting for its new building this weekend.

The last one caught fire in 2021.

The Commonwealth Journal reports that the dedication is Saturday, October 14th, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. and is open to the public.

The response team also lost five of its vehicles after a faulty charger in a vehicle that was parked inside the building's bay started the fire.

With headlines around Kentucky, I'm Toby Gibbs.

An update now to a story we brought you last month about concern over the future of archery programs in schools.

On Friday, President Biden signed legislation to restore federal funding for archery programs and hunters safety education in schools.

It's in response to an interpretation of the 2022 bipartisan Safer Communities Act that had many believing public schools could be stripped of federal funding for those programs in their curriculum.

Tommy Floyd, president of the National Archery in the Schools program, said it was a situation lawmakers on both sides of the aisle acted quickly to correct.

This is a conversation that I think brought people together.

There had been some issues with interpretations, interpretations from the from the from the national education folks about the use of ESEA funds for archery instruction, hunter education instruction and others.

Alaska was wanting to possibly use some federal funding to continue and establish training for for NASCAR programs there, and it was their intent to seek guidance, as any administrator would, about whether they could use those funds.

The the guidance back from U.S. Department of Education was simply they interpreted that the wording of the bipartisan Safe Communities Act would prevent federal funding to be used for those for those purposes.

Now, this caused a stir across the nation, if you would.

There was there were a lot of conversations about what is the proper use.

The people who crafted the bipartisan Safe Communities Act were very concerned that it was a mis interpretations.

All that led to a situation where in a rapid order you had genuine bipartisan support for H.R.

5110 to go to the president's desk for signature.

Last Friday, last Friday, President Biden signed H.R.

5110 into law, which allowed the language to to not be restrictive for the use of these funds, which, according to the folks who worked real hard on the original bipartisan Safe Communities Act, was their intent.

Having some time to have thought about it since.

I really think that the archery, the shooting sports as a whole became a unifier.

And in, if I may, that's really what makes us great about Americans, is that we can have different viewpoints.

But there are certain things that are non-negotiable.

October is National Pedestrian Safety Month.

Governor Andy Beshear and the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet are asking drivers, cyclists and pedestrians to stay safe in light of an uptick in road deaths.

Pedestrian fatalities reached a 40 year high across the U.S. last year.

Kentucky saw a bump, too, says Bill Bell, executive director of Kentucky's Office of Highway Safety.

We've always focused on seatbelt safety and impaired driving, but over the past couple of years, basically since the pandemic, we've put more of an emphasis on pedestrian safety.

In 2022, 96 pedestrians were killed on Kentucky roads.

That's up almost 30% from the year before.

So far, 69 pedestrians have been killed this year.

Bell says pedestrians should be vigilant at night.

That's when most accidents occur and everyone needs to pay more attention to the road in front of them instead of the screens in their hands.

One thing that you don't want to be doing is you don't want to cross the road and be on your phone.

You don't want to be distracted while walking.

But we're seeing a lot of problems with drivers being distracted as well.

Stay off your phone, especially in dense urban areas where there's a lot of foot traffic.

These actions can save lives, but transportation officials know there are others solutions.

We still look at what we can do from an engineering perspective as well as behavioral perspective.

Pedestrians are more likely to be hit on roads in Kentucky's larger cities.

Bell says a third of Kentucky's pedestrian deaths happened in Louisville last year.

That's why the Kentucky Transportation Action Cabinet has partnered with the city of Louisville to figure out what safety features can be built into the river cities, roads and walkways.

Small changes.

Now we've already started like re striping where there's the walkway is not as visible as it should be and so some of the things we're learning in Louisville Metro and have learned over the past few months, we will spread those throughout the state.

Last year, Louisville adopted a Vision Zero approach.

The goal is to eliminate all pedestrian deaths by 2050.

For Kentucky Edition, I'm June Leffler.

We'll hear later this week how Kentucky cities are redesigning roads to make them safer.

The Professional Women's Soccer League is coming to Lexington.

Today, the Lexington Sporting Club announced a new stadium to be built off Athens, Boonsboro Road near Interstate 75.

Now, this will be the home place for the men's and the new women's professional soccer teams in Lexington.

And there is hope the new stadium will mean new fans and new players.

This is home for us.

This is Lexington.

And this is where we want to be.

We want we want to develop a community relationship where our fans can all get together and have a great time and support a team that's going to be better every year.

This is so the kids can see the pros practice, play with the pros.

Our pros have been out to the practices before and we want to integrate the system.

It is one club with one logo for everybody.

We're talking about the growth of women's soccer and the opportunity here in Lexington with the USL Super League, I think.

Well, well, we'll highlight.

Kentucky's kids are going to see if they want to be a professional soccer player.

They can.

They're going to see both men and women that look like them, that put in the time and the effort.

They're going to be out of practice alongside them, see the work ethic that it takes to be a professional athlete, which will be an amazing teaching moment no matter what they go on to do.

This is more jobs for women and men to work in the front office, to be presidents of clubs, to be sporting directors of clubs, to be coaches, to work in PR, media marketing.

All of those different areas in a in a soccer business are truly special and creating more opportunities for more women, more men.

The initial stadium will be 5500 ish seats, and we will, we hope to conduct our first Super League game next August.

As mayor, I look at this announcement through an economic development lens.

This is the type of quality of life addition that will help us attract and grow new jobs as well as create jobs of its own.

In addition, this facility will support our hotels and our restaurants, our tourism industry.

Now, it is wonderful to be talking about a facility that will offer new opportunities for these businesses.

The men's team, founded in 2021, will finish its inaugural season in the USL League one on October 14th against the Greenville Triumph soccer Club from South Carolina.

Now the new women's soccer team will have its first season in 2024, the same year the new stadium will be finished.

Here at Katie, we just launched our 29th season of Kentucky Life, and I'm so proud to be able to host that show.

And I'm really excited to share with you some of the amazing people and places that make up this wonderful state that we call home.

That includes a recent trip we took to the town of Horse Cave in Hart County, where you can explore Down under.

Kentucky, Down under.

Brian, how did all this come about?

What's the origin story of Kentucky Down under?

Young gentleman from Horse Cave was a scientist.

He went to Antarctica on expedition, had a layover in New Zealand, met a young physical therapist from Australia, and they fell in love back to the States.

This property was his grandfather's and there was a cave here.

And following the cave they did tours twice.

And you know, there's so many caves in this area.

What makes our different when we do something like Branson?

I'm from Australia.

I had pet kangaroos growing up, so the start of under Down Under for Australia, down under from day one, from hundred.

We'll double back to the mammoth Onyx cave in just a bit.

But first a walkabout for a closer look at those kangaroos.

So how has that worked out for you in terms of people's interest in coming here and getting to interact with the kangaroos?

How's that done?

People first are fearsome, but then they find out how low, low and also our kangaroos are.

And they've had so much interaction with guests here and they're super friendly and people just can't get over.

They fall in love with it.

They want to take selfies with.

That was just a preview of one of the great stories we're sharing with you on this new season of Kentucky Life.

Now, you can watch that entire episode right now online at Kate Morgan, Kentucky Life.

And be sure to tune in to new episodes of Kentucky life each Saturday, beginning at eight seven Central right here on KET Lexington's Best service.

Lex Tran held a contest to find an artist to paint a bus stop mural They just found that artist.

So this combines nature, which I love, color what I love, and most important, a woman here and see more from that artist.

Tomorrow on Kentucky Edition.

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