Kentucky.com: Nation
News, sports, and entertainment from Kentucky.com

• Winter arrivesin bitter mood
  DES MOINES, Iowa Weekend storms in the nation's northern half knocked out power to thousands of customers Sunday and created nightmarish conditions for holiday travelers coast to coast on the first day of winter. Gusty winds in the Midwest, where wind chills dipped to minus 30 or lower, produced whiteout conditions that contributed to at least two vehicle pileups, in Wisconsin and Michigan. And blizzard warnings were issued for parts of Maine, where up to 24 inches of snow was expected. Forecasters warned that strong wind could create whiteout conditions and deep drifts. A temperature of minus 40 was reported early Sunday in Aroostook County in northern Maine.
• Cheney defends Bush's use of executive powers
  WASHINGTON Vice President Dick Cheney on Sunday vigorously defended the White House's use of broad executive powers during the last eight years, saying he believed that historians would ultimately look favorably on the Bush administration's efforts to keep the nation safe. Cheney said the Bush White House had been justified in expanding executive authority across a broad range of policy, including the war in Iraq, treatment of suspected terrorists and the domestic wiretapping program. And he said the president "doesn't have to check with anybody" not Congress, not the courts before launching a nuclear attack to defend the nation "because of the nature of the world we live in" since the terrorist strikes of Sept. 11, 2001. The vice president also sharply criticized Vice President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., offering a pointed response when asked about Biden's plans to operate differently from him as vice president and about Biden's remark during the vice presidential debate that Cheney had been "the most dangerous vice president we've had in American history." "If he wants to diminish the office of vice president, that's obviously his call," Cheney said of Biden in an interview on Fox News Sunday . He added that President-elect Barack Obama "will decide what he wants in a vice president. And apparently, from the way they're talking about it, he does not expect him to have as consequential a role as I have had during my time."
• S.C. city discovers being U.S. microcosm is tough
  COLUMBIA, S.C. Even before the job fair opens, the line snakes into the parking lot of the state fairground, a muted parade of lives derailed by layoffs. "It kills me, it eats me up inside," said Raymond Vaughn, who has been out of work for seven months, since he lost his job as a window installer. His fianc e now pays the bills. "I go into this fantasy world where I'm like, I'm in the wrong life and I'm actually a millionaire. It really bothers me I can't do the things I'd like for her. Sometimes you get where you feel less than a man." As the American economy sinks deeper into one of the more punishing recessions since the Depression, frustration and fear color the national conversation. This city in the center of South Carolina is an ideal listening post, a modern-day Middletown. According to a range of indicators assembled by Moody's Economy.com, from job growth to change in household worth, this metropolitan area came closer than any other to being a microcosm of the nation over the last decade.
• Firefighter: Miracle no one died on plane
  DENVER It was a miracle that no one was killed when an airliner veered sharply off a runway during takeoff, burst into flames and nearly broke apart, firefighters said Sunday. There was no official word on the possible cause of the crash of Continental Flight 1404 at Denver International Airport, which injured 38 people. Cockpit and voice recorders were recovered and appeared to be in good condition, the National Transportation Safety Board said Sunday. The entire right side of the Boeing 737-500 was burned in the Saturday evening accident, and melted plastic from overhead compartments dripped onto the seats. "It was a miracle ... that everybody survived the impact and the fire," said Bill Davis, an assistant Denver fire chief assigned to the airport. "It was just amazing."
• Fewerin U.S. moved this year
  Despite the nation's reputation as a rootless society, only about one in 10 Americans moved in the last year roughly half the proportion that changed residences as recently as four decades ago, census data show. The monthly Current Population Survey found that fewer than 12 percent of Americans moved since 2007, a decline of nearly a full percentage point compared with the year before. In the 1950s and '60s, the number of movers hovered near 20 percent. The number has been declining steadily, and 12 percent is the lowest rate since 1940, when the Census Bureau began counting people who move. An analysis by the Pew Research Center attributes the decline to a number of factors, including the aging of the population (older people are less likely to change residences) and an increase in two-career couples.
• Madoff scandal links disparate people
  NEW YORK In the non-profit legal center Steven Schwartz runs from a converted furniture store in Northampton, Mass., the e-mail was very good news: By week's end, a check for $243,000 would be on its way. The money couldn't come soon enough. The sharp downturn in the economy had put Schwartz's group working to improve treatment of teen offenders with mental illnesses under very tight budget pressure. At least the check was a promise he could count on. By that Thursday, though, events were unfolding 160 miles away that would upend those assumptions and assurances. In a federal courtroom in lower Manhattan, a Wall Street wizard stood before a judge, charged with running a $50 billion fraud that targeted scores of wealthy and powerful investors. The name of the accused, Bernard L. Madoff, meant nothing to Schwartz and why should it? He'd never heard of the money manager with the beachfront mansion and the 55-foot yacht. They'd certainly never met. There was no reason to think they had anything in common.
• Emanuel can't shake Blagojevich scandal
  CHICAGO Gov. Rod Blagojevich is legendary in Illinois political circles for not picking up the phone or returning calls, even from the state's senior U.S. senator, Dick Durbin. But there was always one call Blagojevich regularly took, his aides say, and that was from Rahm Emanuel his congressman, his onetime campaign adviser, and more recently (and troubling for Emanuel) one of his contacts with President-elect Barack Obama's transition staff. The rapport Blagojevich and Emanuel shared over the years has suddenly become a liability for Emanuel and the new president he will serve as chief of staff. Emanuel and Obama have remained silent about what, if anything, Emanuel knew of the governor's alleged efforts to peddle Obama's vacant Senate seat to the highest bidder.
• Obama's picks for science posts target global warming
  WASHINGTON President-elect Barack Obama's selection Saturday of a Harvard physicist and a marine biologist for science posts is a sign that he plans a more aggressive response to global warming than did the Bush administration. John Holdren and Jane Lubchenco are leading experts on climate change who have advocated forceful government action. Holdren will be Obama's science adviser as director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Lubchenco, an Oregon State University professor specializing in overfishing and climate change, will lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees ocean and atmospheric studies and does much of the government's research on global warming. Holdren also will direct the president's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology. Joining him as co-chairs will be Nobel Prize-winning scientist Harold Varmus, a former director of the National Institutes of Health, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Eric Lander, a specialist in human genome research. "It's time we once again put science at the top of our agenda and worked to restore America's place as the world leader in science and technology," Obama said in announcing the selections in his weekly radio address.
• U.S. troops likely to double in Afghanistan
  KABUL, Afghanistan The top U.S. military officer said Saturday that the Pentagon could double the number of American forces in Afghanistan by next summer to 60,000 the largest estimate of potential reinforcements ever publicly suggested. Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that 20,000 to 30,000 additional U.S. troops could be sent to Afghanistan to bolster the 31,000 already there. This year has been the deadliest for U.S. forces in Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion to oust the Taliban for hosting al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. Suicide attacks and roadside