Gov. Steve Beshear was meeting Monday afternoon with House Speaker Greg Stumbo and Senate President Robert Stivers to try to work on a plan to resolve legislative redistricting.

The governor has said he is confident that the issue will be resolved in a special session sometime this year.

Each decade, lawmakers are required to draw new legislative district boundaries to account for population changes recorded by the U.S. Census Bureau. Kentucky had major population shifts between 2000 and 2010, requiring changes in boundary lines to comply with the federal and state "one person, one vote" mandate.

Two federal lawsuits have been filed in recent weeks to speed up the process in Kentucky. One asks that a three-judge panel redraw boundaries.

A western Kentucky child is in critical condition after ingesting a chemical used to make methamphetamine.

The 2-year-old Ohio County girl drank sulphuric acid drain opener that was in a shot glass. She suffered chemical burns to her lips, tongue, mouth and esophagus.

Authorities say the child's mother and her boyfriend were making meth inside the home.   They allegedly waited six hours before taking the child to the hospital.

An influential Eastern Kentucky legislator owns the permits on Pike County coal mines that have been cited repeatedly by the state for safety and environmental violations.

Rep. Keith Hall’s Beech Creek Coal Co. and others that are mining coal on the Phelps Democrat’s permits have been cited since 2010 for dropping rocks on homes, mining outside of permitted areas, water pollution and failing to obey regulations on blasting, reclamation and maintaining slurry ponds.

Barbara Eldridge lives next to the largest of Beech Creek’s three surface mines near Phelps. A year ago, a rock slab the size of a truck tire slammed into her home, denting a wall and shattering a paved walkway.

“It’s a danger to everybody out here, I think. Every time you hear the blast, you wonder if something’s about to come down on you,” Eldridge said.

Neighbors and state records say rocks from that mine also have landed on the properties of four other neighbors, though no injuries have been reported.

The Kentucky Community and Technical College System’s Board of Regents meets this week to consider tuition rates for the next academic year.  The board will vote on a recommendation to raise tuition 2.8% for the 2013-14 school year. 

The Council on Postsecondary Education has authority to determine tuition rates for Kentucky’s state-supported universities and the KCTCS.  At its April meeting, the CPE set a tuition parameter of three-percent for all schools. 

Under the $2.8% hike, in-state students would pay $144 per credit hour.  Out-of-state students from contiguous counties would pay $288 while other out-of-state students would be charged $504 per credit hour. 

The Board of Regents is expected to approve the tuition increase at its meeting Friday at Southeast Kentucky Community and Technical College in Cumberland.