An event this week in Bowling Green is aimed at giving past criminals a second chance while filling a few thousand job vacancies in the region. 

An expungement fair will be held Wednesday to help prospective workers with a criminal past wipe the slate clean.  The state legislature passed a bill last year allowing Kentuckians convicted of certain felonies, often drug offenses, to have their records expunged. 

Robert Boone heads the South Central Workforce Development Board and says a September screening event yielded 28 people considered work-ready.

"A lady came up to me and had tears in her eyes," Boone told WKU Public Radio.  "She said 'I'm now a mother and I volunteer in the community, but this mistake I made in my past has been weighing on me for years,' and she felt that it was on the way to being removed and was very thankful for that."

Kentucky has one city – Louisville - that earned top-ranking in a new report on towns that support lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender members of the community. Bowling Green was at the bottom.

The “Municipal Equality Index,” published by the Human Rights Campaign, grades cities on a scale of 1-to-100, based on issues like non- discrimination laws in employment and housing. The index also includes grades for the relationship city officials and police have with LGBTQ individuals.

The Kentucky Farm Bureau is hoping to raise awareness of the important role migrant labor plays in making the state’s agriculture system work.

Joe Cain is director of the bureau’s commodity division, and is the featured speaker at an event Tuesday night in Muhlenberg County.

He says he hopes any changes to the nation’s immigration laws will include updates to the H2A program, which allows agriculture employers to bring workers to the U.S. for seasonal work.

The Australian company developing a coal mine in McLean County reports that construction is accelerating. That move comes as county officials respond to a lawsuit filed by brothers who own land near the mine site. 

The Mclean County Fiscal Court and the McLean County Joint Planning Commission filed a response in McLean Circuit Court to allegations by brothers Gordon and Ken Bryant that approvals for the Hartshorne Mine were not in line with required procedures.

Reports of child abuse and neglect in Kentucky have increased by about 55 percent in the past four years. A child is at higher risk for developing a substance abuse problem is they’ve suffered from an adverse childhood experience. That can be the death or incarceration of a parent, witnessing or being a victim of violence, or living with someone who has a drug or alcohol problem.

Pam Darnall is CEO of Family and Children’s Place. She said some organizations that support children and families are struggling just to stay in business.

The chief justice of the Kentucky Supreme Court is renewing his call to lawmakers to redraw judicial boundaries in the state to ease caseloads in local courts.

Chief Justice John Minton said there is “urgent need” to redraw the boundaries of several judicial circuits where populations have shifted over the century — the last time the lines were changed.

“It almost doesn’t bear to comment that the population of our state has redistributed, which has altered the workload demands of the courts needed to serve the local communities,” Minton said.

Capping more than a decade of reviews and debate, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs said Friday it has selected a suburban site for a new hospital in Kentucky's largest city.

Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin signed off on the location— a 35-acre tract off Brownsboro Road several miles east of downtown Louisville — in an order made public Friday.

Representatives of state employees, teachers and police officers aren’t happy with Gov. Matt Bevin’s proposal to offer less-generous retirement plans and tinker with state worker benefits in an effort to save the state’s ailing pension systems.

David Smith, executive director of the Kentucky Association of State Employees, said the organization will hold a “torches and pitchforks” rally at the state capitol if Bevin calls a special legislative session for lawmakers to vote on the proposal.