WFPL-FM (Louisville, KY)

Mark Anthony Mulligan, a beloved Louisville folk artist, died Monday at Wedgewood Healthcare Center in Clarksville, Ind., according to his obituary. He was 59. Mulligan was a visual artist and performer, perhaps most known for his vibrant illustrations of street scenes, packed with signs and logos. The remembrance said Mulligan “loved telling jokes and stories, and he loved to eat.

At least a half-dozen power plants in Kentucky have long-term plans to store toxic coal ash in unlined storage ponds sitting in or near groundwater, threatening water supplies and potentially violating federal regulations. After burning coal to produce electricity, utilities store the resulting ash in massive landfills and ponds that often leak hazardous levels of pollution into the environment, often in disproportionately low-income communities and communities of color.

The Jefferson County Coroner’s Office has identified the construction worker killed after a trench collapse earlier this week in Clarksville as 22-year-old Emmanuel Martinez Moran. Moran was working with Dan Cristiani Excavating, a Clarksville-based company contracted by the town for a sewer relocation project on McKinley Avenue, when the trench collapsed Monday morning. Martinez was taken to University of Louisville Hospital, where he died around an hour later.

Jonathan Shell, a former Republican leader in the Kentucky legislature, formally filed to run for agriculture commissioner this week. Shell was the majority floor leader of the state House of Representatives from 2017 until 2019 before he was ousted during a primary election. He’s a fifth-generation farmer who will be running for the office which will be vacated by current Republican Agriculture Commissioner Ryan Quarles, who is term-limited. Quarles is a candidate in the 2023 gubernatorial race.

The Jefferson County Board of Education has given final approval to a three-year contract extension with the teacher’s union. It includes a 5% pay raise for district employees next year. The decision makes two years in a row Jefferson County Public Schools has raised pay. JCPS Superintendent Marty Pollio said the pay increase is a “critical step” to recruit and retain employees as the district grapples with a staffing shortage.

House and Senate Republicans are speaking out against former President Donald Trump’s dinner last week with Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, and white nationalist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes. “There is no room in the Republican Party for antisemitism or white supremacy,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday.

U.S. Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) filed paperwork with the state Tuesday to run for governor in 2024. Braun is currently in the middle of his first term in the U.S. Senate. Prior to that, the Jasper Republican was a state legislator for three years and served a decade on a local school board. A Braun run for governor had been rumored for months. The seat will be open in 2024, with current Gov. Eric Holcomb term-limited. The race is expected to attract several hopefuls, particularly in the GOP primary.

The University of Louisville Board of Trustees has named Kim Schatzel as the institution’s next president, according to a news release. Schatzel comes most recently from Townson University in Maryland. She is the 19th president to lead the university. U of L has been looking for a new president since last December when Neeli Bendapudi left the role to accept the president position at Penn State University.

A Louisville private school is seeking approval to destroy three occupied apartment buildings on its Cherokee Triangle campus to build a parking lot. Representatives of the Louisville Collegiate School say the Yorktown Apartments, which it took over in 2015, are deteriorating. They aim to use about an acre of the property to add 56 parking spaces, which they say will ease road congestion.

An experimental drug that removes a substance called amyloid from the brain appears to slow down Alzheimer’s disease. The drug, called lecanemab, reduced the rate of cognitive decline by 27% in a study of nearly 1,800 people in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, scientists reported at the Clinical Trials on Alzheimer’s Disease meeting in San Francisco. The study was published simultaneously in The New England Journal of Medicine.