Andanh.com

Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill anticipates that sometime in early May, guests at the Trustees' Office Dining Room will have the option of ordering beer or wine by the glass with a meal. The serving of distilled spirits, mixed drinks and wine by the bottle will be "phased in" at a later date, said Aimee Darnell, publicist for Shaker Village.

The historic site in Mercer County is already receiving inquiries from the public about when alcohol will be served.

"We've had lots of calls by potential visitors and by guests at the village," Darnell said. "I think a lot of people are excited about having a choice for the first time of having an alcoholic beverage with their meal."

Visitors will also be able to order alcohol by the drink at private group meetings elsewhere on the "Shakertown" campus, and in the "Winter Kitchen" at the West Family Dwelling cellar from Jan. 2 through mid-February, Darnell said. But alcohol will not be served on the village's Dixie Belle paddlewheeler, which goes up and down the Kentucky River near High Bridge.

The nutrigenomic center was built in a 20,000-square-foot expansion at the company's existing research facility. Databases generated there will be analyzed to determine the health and performance status of livestock and the best nutritional interventions for peak production potential.

Alltech's founder and president, Pearse Lyons, said the facility is the first built for the study of nutrigenomics.

Last year, Alltech partnered with the University of Kentucky to promote research in this field. The partnership included a $900,000 grant from Alltech to place faculty and staff members from UK's College of Agriculture at the nutrigenomics facility. Alltech expects 40 additional research professionals to work in the new lab.

Alltech is the sponsor of the Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games, which will be held in Lexington in 2010.

Those were some of the emotions that ran through about 1,000 Army privates from Fort Knox on a four-hour break from basic training Sunday during "Military Day" at Keeneland Race Course.

When the soldiers marched into Keeneland to patriotic music by the Fort Knox Army Band, spectators clapped and offered encouraging words.

"It was really touching," said Pvt. Joe Williams of Griffin, Ga. "I almost cried."

The Army had forbidden these trainees from betting, drinking and smoking on the trip, but no matter. For them, it was enough to lap up ice cream, candy and soft drinks -- treats that aren't on the menu during "basics."

ELECTRICAL SHORT BLAMED FOR FATAL FIRE IN BEREA

A Berea woman was killed Sunday morning in a fire at her home at 316 Prospect Street. Berea firefighters found the woman after entering through a second-floor window. The stairway to the second floor was burned. The fire department and the state fire marshal's office said the cause of fire was an electrical short. The fire department did not release the woman's identity.

LEXINGTON

BLACK ACHIEVERS GIVE AWARDS

Police expect to make more arrests in the case, which has remained unsolved since the killings of Ryan Keith Shangraw, 20, and Harold "Bo" Upton III, 18. Police have not released the name of the suspect or other information about the arrest because the case is continuing.

Details about what happened the night of Feb. 1, 2002, are sparse.

The two young men were at Shangraw's Stanford home with two girls -- a 15-year-old from Crab Orchard and a 16-year-old from Stanford.

About 8:30 p.m., "a number of unknown assailants" entered the house and shot Shangraw and Upton multiple times, state police said at the time. The two girls were wounded but survived.

For many Kentuckians, drinking water might not always be available with the flick of a sink handle. Instead, they have to rely on wells or cisterns for the water needed to carry out everyday tasks such as bathing or laundry.

"We need to clean up our streams from sewage," said Grieshop. "We need to give people water that is drinkable, that will not change their hair color."

To that end, the General Assembly last week authorized $250 million in bonds to pay for hundreds of water and sewer projects throughout the state. Kentucky lawmakers also approved some isolated water and sewer projects in the state's coal counties, and freed up more than $200 million in low-interest loans dedicated to wastewater projects and $30 million for water project loans.

The water and sewer projects differ.

With Gov. Steve Beshear and other dignitaries in attendance, Harrison Memorial Hospital in Cynthiana dedicated a $15 million, 45,000-square-foot expansion that was three years in the making. Close to 300 people turned out for a tour of the new facility.

With the expansion, the hospital bucks a trend of rural medical facilities joining with big-city hospitals. Although the hospital has an affiliation with the Markey Cancer Center at the University of Kentucky, it will remain non-profit and independent.

The hospital still has 61 patient beds, but the expansion adds an operating room, doubles the size of the emergency department and provides office space for visiting physicians, said Sheila Currans, the hospital's chief operating officer.

The hospital also expanded its radiology and rehabilitation services, among other things.

This is the third year Living Lands & Waters, based in East Moline, Ill., has spent time in the Louisville area, picking up junk and trash along and in the Ohio River, said Tammy Becker, project coordinator.

"Honestly, there's so much work to be done here it's sad," Becker said of the 15-mile or so stretch of shoreline they've been cleaning along Louisville. "We've been here since the beginning of March and there's still a lot to do."

The non-profit organization was founded in 1997. Becker said the full-time barge crew and its volunteers have removed an estimated 4 million pounds of garbage and junk from the shorelines of the Mississippi, Ohio, Illinois, Potomac, Missouri and Anacostia rivers.

The garbage collected by crew members over the years includes 11 bowling balls, 83 dolls and 46 bottles with messages, Becker said.

Among the portions of Kentucky's $19 billion budget vetoed last week by Gov. Steve Beshear was one provision that would have prohibited the Kentucky Horse Racing Authority from charging an assessment on smaller race tracks.

However, KHRA executive director Lisa Underwood said Monday there are no plans to start imposing the fees. Instead, a task force being created by the governor is expected to report back by December on ideas about how to keep the agency's funding afloat in the midst of a state budget crisis.

"We are very mindful some of the smaller tracks in particular are having budget difficulties, and we will definitely take that into account going forward," Underwood said. "This governor absolutely believes we ought to be properly funded so we can restore our regulatory mission. I think we're going to be fine, but we've got to come up with a long-term solution."

But one Republican state senator, Damon Thayer of Georgetown, said a task force is unnecessary. He plans to soon propose a measure that would use a large chunk of the taxes Kentucky charges on parimutuel betting as a way to give the racing authority a permanent funding source.

State police said 50-year-old Kenneth G. Hodges of Monroe County was arrested Monday in the death of Randall Page. Monroe County Coroner Jackie Walden said Page suffered multiple stab wounds.

Page was dead found in his home Sunday afternoon. State police did not give a possible motive in the slaying.

Hodges was being held in the Monroe County Jail.

The U.S. Geological Survey said a total of 22 aftershocks had been recorded since last week's tremor that was centered deep beneath the surface near West Salem.

They included one just before 12:40 a.m. Monday that registered magnitude 4.0 and had its epicenter northwest of Mount Carmel. That tremor was initially reported as 4.5 but was downgraded during the day.

The strongest aftershock registered magnitude 4.6 about 5 1/2 hours after the original quake Friday morning.

Friday's quake shook a wide area of the Midwest, including Kentucky, and caused minor damage.

Organizers of the various Derby-related events held at the Kentucky Capitol each year are cutting back on some of the size and pageantry this time. There won't be as many tents this year, and the chic private dinner hosted by the governor for honored guests and dignitaries will be scaled down to a Governor's Mansion cocktail party with appetizers.

"The governor definitely realized that we did need to scale things down this year due to budget concerns and that's what's taking place," Beshear spokeswoman Vicki Glass said.

Scaled down Derby parties come as the state faces gloomy times elsewhere. Kentucky lawmakers earlier this month approved a two-year $19 billion state spending plan that included numerous cuts to government agencies and programs.

Economic forecasters have projected state revenues will drop by $900 million over the next two fiscal years beginning July 1.

The Department of Defense says 22-year-old Spc. Benjamin K. Brosh died on Friday at Forward Operating Base Anaconda in Balad, Iraq.

Brosh was from Colorado Springs, Colo. He was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 327th Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault).

The lawsuit, filed in July by two non-profit groups representing military veterans, accuses the agency of inadequately addressing a "rising tide" of mental health problems, especially post-traumatic stress disorder.

But government lawyers say the VA has been devoting more resources to mental health and making suicide prevention a top priority. They also argue that the courts don't have the authority to tell the department how it should operate.

The trial is set to begin Monday in a San Francisco federal court.

An average of 18 military veterans kill themselves each day, and five of them are under VA care when they commit suicide, according to a December e-mail between top VA officials that was filed as part of the federal lawsuit.

Contact with outsiders was limited. Media inquiries were rejected with either stone-faced silence or a polite "no comment."

But after Texas officials removed 416 children belonging to members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the sect fired up the public relations machine.

From newspaper stories to appearances on morning network television, Larry King Live and Oprah, FLDS women are speaking publicly about the heartbreak of being separated from their children and sharing some details of their life.

"This was just such a heinous thing that the normal rules didn't apply," said Rod Parker, a Salt Lake City attorney serving as a spokesman for the church. "What we were trying to do was inject a human element into what was happening here. Put names to faces and not just think of these people as being so different."

Each campaign accused the other of distorting its candidate's positions in new TV ads launched in advance of Tuesday's Pennsylvania Democratic presidential primary.

Clinton unleashed a 30-second commercial taking Obama to task for criticizing her health care plan. The ramped-up back-and-forth comes as polls show Clinton holding a narrow lead in the Keystone State. A McClatchy-MSNBC-Pittsburgh Post-Gazette poll released Sunday put Clinton ahead by 48-43 percent with eight percent undecided.

Obama's camp released a 30-second ad of its own, blasting Clinton's claim that Obama is misleading voters when he says he doesn't take campaign contributions from special interest groups.

Clinton, speaking to a large crowd inside a high school gym here, continued trying to cast doubt on Obama's credentials and ability to lead the country while touting her readiness to be president.

ANTI-WEST PROTESTS REIGNITE IN CHINA

NATION

The fault zones beneath the Mississippi River Valley have produced some of the largest modern U.S. quakes east of the Rockies, a region covered with old buildings not built to withstand seismic activity. And, when quakes happen, they're felt far and wide, their vibrations propagated over hundreds of miles of bedrock.

Friday's quake shook things up from Nebraska to Atlanta, rattling nerves but doing little damage and seriously hurting no one. It was a magnitude 5.2 tremor centered just outside West Salem in southeastern Illinois, a largely rural region of small towns that sit over the Wabash fault zone. The area has produced moderately strong quakes as recently as 2002.

But it hasn't been studied to nearly the degree of quake-prone areas west of the Rockies, particularly along the heavily scrutinized Pacific coast.

"We don't have as many opportunities as in California," said Genda Chen, associate professor of engineering at the University of Missouri-Rolla, which sits near the well-known and very active New Madrid fault zone. "We cannot even borrow on the knowledge they learn on the West Coast" because quakes that happen in California -- where tectonic plates beneath the Earth's surface collide -- are so different from Midwestern quakes that happen far away from the edges of the nearest plates.

These hulking 18-wheeled beasts, iron mutants made of two Soviet-era buses welded together on a flatbed and pulled by a separate cab, have long been Havana's public transport nightmare. But their gradual disappearance is a telling sign of change in the twilight of the Fidel Castro age. The last camello is expected to go out of service in Havana on Sunday night.

The camello, so named for its humped front and rear sections, is being eclipsed by thousands of new city buses from China as the government under Castro's brother, Raœl, resuscitates a public transportation system on the brink of collapse.

Havana aside, camellos are far from extinct. The government has an island-wide fleet of more than 1,000, and those from the capital could be used to augment bus service elsewhere, transportation employees say.

Like those ubiquitous Detroit cars that predate the U.S. embargo, the camello is a definer of Cuba on wheels. What it lacks in glamour, it makes up for in sheer mass that dwarfs its Chinese successors. "We can carry up to 400 people. The bus cannot," lamented conductor Estela Doira.

The two Palestinians are considered terrorists by the U.S. government, and Israel accuses them of masterminding attacks that have killed hundreds of civilians. Both governments have sharply criticized Carter's overtures to the militant group.

Carter met Khaled Mashaal and his deputy, Moussa Abu Marzouk, for about an hour Saturday morning, after more than four hours of talks the night before.

Carter, on what he has called a personal peace mission, is the most prominent American to hold talks with Mashaal, whose group claimed new legitimacy from the meetings with the Nobel laureate.

On Saturday, Marzouk said Carter and Mashaal discussed a possible prisoner exchange with Israel, as well as how to lift a siege imposed by the Jewish state on the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. Carter, who brokered the 1978 Israeli-Egyptian peace, is trying to secure the release of captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

But amid the tenuous calm, aid groups say they are just buying time -- and long-term solutions seem remote in the desperately poor nation.

"The beans might last four days," said Jervais Rodman, an unemployed carpenter with three children who emerged from a churchyard Friday with small bags of food. "The rice will be gone as soon as I get home."

Rodman was one of the lucky ones. Many others arrived after the distribution centers had run out.

Haitian officials handed out 1,000 bags of U.N.-bought food Saturday in CitŽ Soleil, a huge seaside slum on the eastern edge of the capital. Though aid was limited to women over age 57 and the handicapped, at least 50 people who waited in line were turned away.

The twin blasts, just hours before the Jewish Passover holiday, wounded 13 Israeli soldiers in what Hamas said was an attempt to break the nearly yearlong blockade of the territory. Four Hamas assailants died, Israeli officials said.

Meanwhile, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter met with senior Hamas leaders in Damascus, Syria, for a second day to hear their views, defying U.S. and Israeli warnings that doing so would grant the group legitimacy. The United States and Israel have labeled Hamas a terrorist organization.

An Israeli army commander said the Hamas operation was the most ambitious since Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, even though another planned attempt at the border was averted Saturday. The attack was the fifth on a crossing by Gaza militants since last week, and Hamas threatened to target the passages again.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak later visited the area. "When the time comes, Hamas will bear the consequences," Barak warned, in comments quoted by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz on its Web site.

In what Detroit Police Chief Ella Bully-Cummings called an ambush, Sgt. David Cobb's wife, Rose Cobb, was shot Dec. 26 as she waited in the couple's van as he shopped at a pharmacy.

Cobb was arrested early Sunday morning at his home, Bully-Cummings said. The chief didn't offer any details about the arrest, and calls to the Wayne County jail went unanswered. Cobb was to be arraigned Tuesday.

Investigators went to Cobb's home after speaking with Vincent Smothers, 27, who was arrested Saturday in Shelby Township, about 20 miles north of Detroit, in a June 2007 drug-related shooting in which two people were killed and one was wounded.

Smothers told Detroit homicide investigators about four other cases, including the shooting death of Rose Cobb, 47, Bully-Cummings said.

U.S. District Judge Richard Arcara ruled that the 2004 mail and wire fraud indictment against Steven Kurtz, a University at Buffalo professor, was "insufficient on its face."

Kurtz is a founding member of the Critical Art Ensemble, which has used human DNA and other biological materials in works intended to draw attention to political and social issues. His arrest drew protests from artists in several countries who called the charges an intrusion on artistic freedom.

"Obviously this is a weight off his back, but he still had to suffer through this for four years," said Kurtz's attorney, Paul Cambria. "The last thing this guy is is a bioterrorist."

The U.S. Attorney's Office in Buffalo said it was considering an appeal but otherwise declined to discuss the ruling.

The state Senate passed a bill Monday that would settle a neighborhood quarrel in the San Francisco Bay area community of Sunnyvale.

A judge earlier this year had ordered Richard Treanor and Carolyn Bissett to cut down two of their eight redwood trees. The couple's neighbor, Mark Vargas, said the trees were blocking sunlight to his solar panels.

The case hinged on a 1978 state law that protects a person's right to sunlight.

But the bill before lawmakers would change the law to exempt greenery planted before installation of a solar collector. The legislation now heads to the Assembly.

Bobbi Parker was arraigned in Greer County District Court in Mangum and released on a $10,000 bond.

Parker appeared with her attorney, Rick Cunningham, and did not enter a plea. Following the arraignment, she was booked at the Greer County jail and released.

She is to return to court on May 15 for a status hearing.

District Attorney John Wampler said he has not had any discussions about a possible plea deal for Parker.

Authorities say the rodeo fans' injuries aren't considered life-threatening.

The bull made its bid to escape Sunday in Red Bluff, Calif., near the end of the city's 87th annual rodeo and landed in an audience seating area.

Rodeo director and spokesman Joe Froome calls it a freak accident.

The bull was being moved in preparation for an event called the "Wild Ride" in which eight ride bulls while wearing crazy costumes.

State Rep. Douglas Bruce, who has a history of provoking controversy, made the comment during debate on a bill that would allow the state to help immigrant workers get temporary federal visas. The measure is intended to ease a shortage of farm workers in the state.

"I would like to have the opportunity to state at the microphone why I don't think we need 5,000 more illiterate peasants in Colorado," Bruce said.

His outburst drew an audible gasp from the House.

"How dare you," said state Rep. Kathleen Curry, a Democrat who was serving as chairwoman during the debate. She told the Republican lawmaker he was no longer recognized to speak.

But rising interest rates brought on by turmoil in the financial markets boosted payments, and the organization got socked for an additional $650,000 in fees earlier this year for which it had not budgeted.

Like homeowners and stockholders, museums, concert halls, dance companies and other arts organizations are feeling the pinch from the faltering economy.

Museums and symphony halls that financed renovations with seemingly safe municipal bonds saw interest rates spike in recent weeks; other arts institutions are suffering from low returns on investments; and some arts executives are worried that recession fears could take a bite out of donations and ticket sales.

"What turns my stomach every time I turn on the news is the current perception of what's happening in our economy and whether people will get nervous and cut back on their charitable contributions," said Charles Thurow, executive director of the Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago, which used a $5 million fundraising campaign to renovate in 2006 an old Army warehouse into its first permanent home since opening in 1939. "That would affect our annual operating budget."

U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney sentenced Tai Mak to the maximum penalty allowed nearly a month after sentencing his older brother, 67-year-old Chi Mak, to 24 1/2 years in prison.

Tai Mak pleaded guilty last year to conspiring to violate export control laws. His attorney, John Early, did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

Chi Mak, an engineer for the Anaheim-based defense contractor Power Paragon, was convicted by a jury last year of conspiring to export U.S. defense technology to China, acting as an unregistered foreign agent, attempting to violate export control laws and making false statements to the FBI.

Tai Mak was arrested in late 2005 after FBI agents stopped him and his wife as they boarded a flight to Hong Kong and Guangzhou, China. Investigators said they found three encrypted CDs in the couple's luggage that contained documents on a submarine propulsion system, a solid-state power switch for ships and a PowerPoint presentation on the future of power electronics.