Dan Conti (KPR)

A state environmental official says some Kentuckians are turning to an unusual and illegal way to get money for scrap metal. John Gowins is the Environmental Control Supervisor for the Kentucky Division of Air Quality.

"One of the things that we are seeing, seems like more frequently, is the burning of mobile homes," Gowins said. "And people are trying to recover metal because scrap metal prices have gone up. But that is something that just cannot be done."

Gov. Steve Beshear said a special session of the Kentucky General Assembly to redraw legislative districts for the House and Senate is likely to happen this fall. He said details are still being worked out.

“I’m talking with legislative leaders in the House and Senate right now and I think everybody, if we can work it out, would probably like to do it in the fall,” Beshear said. “And let everybody have the summer while kids are out of school and they have some vacation time, and then wait until we get back in school before we have the special session.”

Average retail food prices in Kentucky supermarkets increased a little over half a percent during the first quarter of this year according to the latest Market Basket survey from the Kentucky Farm Bureau.

Dan Smaldone, the Bureau’s director of public relations, said the Farm Bureau totaled the cost of forty basic grocery items and the price came to $116.27. He says that’s 74 cents more than the previous quarter.

A Boone County man who is back home in Kentucky after competing in the Boston Marathon said there was a strange silence immediately after the first bomb went off Monday.

Kevin Dobson of Hebron said he finished the race about 90 minutes before the initial explosion. He was about two blocks away from the site where the blast occurred.

Kentucky may have to come up with new ways to pay for road construction and maintenance in the future, but revenues should be sufficient for now. At least that’s the view of the chief engineer for the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet’s regional office in Flemingsburg.

Kentucky U.S. Congressman John Yarmuth says the 85-billion dollars in cuts that have been imposed as a result of the federal budget sequester will hurt private business. The Jefferson County Democrat says seven of the nine largest employers in his district rely to a significant extent on business from the federal government. Yarmuth spoke Thursday during a meeting of the house budget committee. The acting director of the White House office of Management and Budget told the panel the sequester is likely to cost hundreds of thousands of jobs.

U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell says a gun control proposal from New York Democrat Charles Schumer takes the wrong approach. The Kentucky Republican says Schumer wants to make it a federal crime, punishable by up to five years in prison, for a person not to report a lost or stolen gun within 24 hours. McConnell calls Schumer’s bill a “clear overreach” that will punish law-abiding friends, neighbors and families.

U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell has asked the FBI to find out who placed a recording device in his Louisville campaign office and recorded a private meeting held on February 2nd.   That recording was of Republican McConnell and his aides strategizing about potential democratic opponents in next year’s election. A transcript of the discussion was published today in Mother Jones magazine and the senator’s aides are heard talking about research into actress Ashley Judd’s religion and mental health. At the time, Judd was considering a challenge to McConnell.

Kentucky congressman Thomas Massie says legislation he has introduced in congress to legalize hemp is picking up support. The Fourth District Republican says more lawmakers are seeing his industrial hemp farming act as a way to help the economy.

Massie concedes that hemp is not big enough to assist more than two or three states. However, he claims if Kentucky is first in the game, that’s where most of the processing facilities will be located.

Former Kentucky Agriculture Commissioner Richie Farmer has been charged with 42 ethics violations by the executive branch of the Kentucky Ethics Commission.

The panel’s executive director John Steffen says the charges are for alleged misuse of state funds and state employees during Farmer’s two terms in office. He also says number of violation is the highest ever issued by the Commission.

“I believe 16 was the prior high number of counts containing an executive order, an initiating order,” Steffen said. “We have not seen misuse of office at this level in the nearly 9 years I’ve been with the commission I’ve not seen anything that compares to this abuse of public trust and abuse of public office.”