Associated Press

Airports in Nashville and Memphis will soon offer the Transportation Security Administration’s pre-check program.  

According to the TSA, the program allows passengers traveling on Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, United Airlines and US Airways to participate in expedited screening. Advantages include being able to leave on shoes, light outerwear and belts, not having to remove laptops from their cases and leaving liquid or gel bags in carry-ons.

Eligible passengers include U.S. citizens who have opted-in through a participating airline and members of one of U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Trusted Traveler programs. 

Pre-check should be available in Nashville by April 1st.

The mother of a young woman whose kidnapping more than 17 years ago remains unsolved has sued members of FBI, the Kentucky State Police, the Henderson Police Department and others alleging a cover-up.

Sarah Teague, of Madisonville, is asking for a jury trial in the hand-written lawsuit she filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Owensboro.

Teague's daughter, Heather Teague, was 23 years old when she disappeared while sunbathing on an Ohio River beach in western Kentucky on Aug. 26, 1995.

The case remains open. Just last year, Kentucky State Police issued a plea for someone to come forward with information.

Former Indiana governor, now Purdue University President Mitch Daniels, has joined a panel that will make recommendations about the future of the nation's space program. 

The Committee on Human Spaceflight is part of the 2010 NASA Authorization Act. Its purpose is to review the space program's long-term goals and direction and suggest ways to sustain it. 

Daniels says Purdue has a long history with the space program and that he's honored to serve on the panel. Purdue's alumni include astronauts Virgil `Gus' Grissom, Roger Chaffee, Neil Armstrong and Eugene Cernan. Armstrong was the first man on the moon, and Cernan was the last. 

Daniels will serve as co-chairman of the committee through June 30, 2014.

Kentucky's education commissioner says the state will step in and take over management of struggling Jefferson County schools as soon as August if progress isn't made soon.

The warning from Terry Holliday came Tuesday in a meeting with the Courier-Journal editorial board. A state analysis last week showed that 16 of the 18 low-performing schools in Jefferson County have made little or no progress since they were ordered to undergo overhauls.

Holliday last week called the situation "academic genocide." He told the newspaper he chose those words specifically as a way to get the community to realize and act on the seriousness of the situation.

In the past three years, 41 public schools in Kentucky have been selected for overhauls because of chronically poor academics.

Senate Republicans are again pushing a bill that would require doctors to allow women seeking abortions to look at ultrasound images.

The Senate Committee on Veterans, Military Affairs and Public Protection passed the perennial measure Thursday morning on a 7-2 vote. The panel also gave thumbs up to another measure that would require that women get face-to-face consultations with medical professionals before undergoing abortions.

The proposals have repeatedly cleared the GOP-led Senate in recent years only to die in the Democratic-controlled House.

The ultrasound measure has been softened over the years from an original version that would have required doctors to show women the images.