Reporting

Diversified Gas and Oil Corp. maintains a natural gas compressor station in Letcher County it believes it can leverage into an off-grid power generation data center project. Local economic development officials signed an agreement with the company and a real-estate firm called Maverick Holdings to explore the project for about a year. (Austin R. Ramsey / Herald-Leader) LETCHER COUNTY, Ky. — Plans are taking shape for the development of a major, 100 megawatt off-grid power gen

In November 2010, Bruce Maggard called up to the top at an underground coal mine in Perry County to alert them that a car was coming back up the mine shaft. (Jonatahn Palmer / Herald-Leader file photo) PIKEVILLE, Ky. — It isn’t lost on Brandon Crum that the coal dust never really left him or his family. A fourth-generation miner who dug coal in Appalachia since he was a teen, Crum, now a radiologist, sits in Eastern Kentucky exam rooms, studying X-rays and lung scans, diagnos

SB 39 would restrict game wardens from enforcing most fishing regulations on private lakes and ponds. (Austin R. Ramsey / Herald-Leader) JOHNSON COUNTY, Ky. — Legislation awaiting a final vote in the Kentucky Senate would strip state game wardens of their ability to enforce most fishing laws on private land and settle a growing controversy between regulators and angler groups who want to stock non-native, hybrid bass. Momentum for the bill, sponsored by Sen. Gary Boswell, R-O

Hazard city officials plan to ask the Kentucky Supreme Court to consider their legal battle challenging the state’s defunct tier system for local restaurant taxes. (Ryan C. Hermens / Herald-Leader) The Kentucky Court of Appeals has denied a petition for a rehearing from an Eastern Kentucky city attempting to levy a 3% restaurant tax, but the city’s attorneys intend to appeal the ruling on the grounds the amended state law underpinning local taxing authority is unconstitutiona

Boeing Co. workers are doubling down on reviving their legacy pensions, rejecting a labor deal with generous pay packages even as similar union efforts to restore those retirement benefits have failed. Two rounds of negotiations with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers to end a five-week strike have resulted only in offers to boost worker 401(k)s, signaling restoration of pensions axed a decade ago may be more of a bargaining chip than a viable r

New Orleans Public Radio coastal reporter Tegan Wendland and I spent months scouring documents and interviewing sources for a five-part investigative series that uncovered decades of overuse, unregulated pumping by industries and agriculture, and scant oversight or action from legislative committees in rural Louisiana. Known For Its Floods, Louisiana Is Running Dangerously Short of Groundwater Louisiana is known for its losing battle against rising seas and increasingly frequ

Analysis of arrests in 15 cities reveals most GeorgeFloyd protesters were charged with misdemeanors and lived within the metro area where they were arrested. Protesters arrested after the May 25 death of George Floyd were a diverse, young group of people who demonstrated close to home and were charged largely with nonviolent crimes, according to a Washington Post review of data on more than 2,600 people detained in 15 cities. The data contradicts suggestions by President Trum

Police found Alani Hutchins, 16, slain in a car in June. A stray bullet hit Michael Goodlow III, 4, in the head on the Fourth of July. Someone shot Victrail Mora, 14, in the back of the head near the steps to his mother’s apartment on Aug. 12. At least 17 children have died violently in St. Louis this year, a tally that has shocked residents and underscored a widening racial crime disparity in that city and others amid the coronavirus pandemic. As the upward trajectory of cri

After days of sharp pain shooting up her left abdomen, Rose Wong hobbled from her history class to the student health center at Duke University. A nurse pressed on the 20-year-old’s belly and told her it felt like gas. Wong questioned the diagnosis but said the nurse dismissed her doubts and sent her to the campus pharmacy to pick up Gas-X that afternoon in February 2019. The next morning, Wong doubled over in pain, and a roommate drove her to a nearby emergency room in Durha

Since demonstrations against racial inequality and police brutality erupted two weeks ago in the District, more than 400 people have been arrested, most for curfew violations or looting, and city law enforcement officials said they have seen no evidence so far that organized groups came to carry out violence. The most common charge was for violating a curfew that was in place for four days. Many other cases involve minor assault or destruction of property. President Trump has

In the two weeks that saw an uprising against racial injustice and police brutality spread from the streets of Minneapolis to cities across America, the specter of violent, left-wing militants invoked by President Trump and a chorus of conservative voices has yet to materialize. Instead, multiracial crowds have appeared in every corner of the United States, as the president sent more than a dozen tweets blaming clashes with police on antifa, the label associated with anti-fas

I had the exciting opportunity to put my video editing skills to task working alongside a team of features videographers at The Weather...

TOOLEVILLE, Calif. — An ongoing struggle between two communities less than a mile apart in one of the nation’s key farming regions is a microcosm that illustrates the challenges California faces as it tries to deliver clean, affordable drinking water to more than 1 million residents without access to what the state has called a “basic human right.” Nestled among orange groves in the Central Valley, the community of Tooleville has just 391 residents. Hardly a town or a village

It’s no surprise that President Donald Trump has pushed for stricter immigration enforcement since he came into office. It was a key focus of his campaign. In his first State of the Union address, President Trump spent more than 10 minutes of the address talking about immigration from the U.S-Mexico border wall to the need for more border officers and stricter enforcement. “It is time to reform these outdated immigration rules, and finally bring our immigration system into th