LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) - Stepping into an issue on the political fringes, Republican Senate candidate Matt Bevin spoke at a Kentucky rally meant to build support for legal cockfighting, a bloody practice illegal nationwide.
The tea party-backed challenger to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell portrayed the event last Saturday as a states’ rights rally, but his appearance among cockfight backers prompted one animal-rights group to call on Bevin to withdraw from the May 20 GOP primary.
The McConnell campaign scoffed at Bevin’s description of the event.
“Only Matt Bevin would go to a cockfighting rally and claim he didn’t know what they were doing there,” said McConnell’s campaign spokeswoman, Allison Moore.
Bevin did not respond to several requests for comment Friday.
But he told WHAS-AM in Louisville he’s never been to a cockfight and doesn’t condone it. He added that he supports people’s right to gather to discuss issues.
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LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) - A federal judge is compelling immigration officials to make a decision about an application for permanent residency brought by an Iranian immigrant who distributed leaflets for a violent organization in his home country 30 years ago.
U.S. District Judge Joseph Hood in Lexington ruled Thursday that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and it’s immigration arm “unreasonably delayed” an application brought by Mehrdad Hosseini of Lexington for 12 years. Immigration officials now have two months to make a decision on his application.
“Even accounting for complexity, courts have found delays of four years or less to be reasonable, but that delays of six years or more are unreasonable,” Hood wrote.
Hosseini sued the federal government in 2013 in an attempt to force a decision on his application, which would allow him to legally stay in the United States with his wife and children. Immigration officials granted Hosseini asylum on Feb. 5, 2000, about a year after his wife, Nasrin Abdolrahmani, also received the designation.
In the suit, Hosseini said the lack of permanent residency status has caused problems with travel plans for his job as an engineer and subjected him to repeated questioning as he tried to re-enter the country on business trips.
“This process causes me a great deal of stress especially when I am told I have no residency status in the USA and am granted a temporary allowance to reside in the USA,” Hosseini said. “I am always in risk of not being allowed to return home to my family.”
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JAMESTOWN, Ky. (AP) - A south-central Kentucky man has agreed to spend the rest of his life in prison for raping and strangling a pregnant jogger nearly two years ago.
The Lexington Herald-Leader (https://bit.ly/1i8wtdwhttps://bit.ly/1i8wtdw ) reports 30-year-old Christopher W. Allman of Jamestown pleaded guilty in the death of 31-year-old Sarah Hart in June 2012. The plea Thursday spared Allman a possible death sentence.
He pleaded guilty to all charges, which were murder, fetal homicide, kidnapping, first-degree robbery, rape, tampering with evidence and being a persistent felony offender.
Sentencing will be May 6. The plea deal calls for Allman to serve a life sentence without possibility of parole.
Hart, who was about 10 weeks’ pregnant with her fourth child, was on an early-morning run along U.S. 127 with her sister when she felt ill and decided to return to her car alone.
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BOWLING GREEN, Ky. (AP) - A Bowling Green housekeeper has entered a not guilty plea to a charge of receiving stolen property.
Police say 36-year-old Elizabeth R. Cunningham took three rings valued at a total of $14,200 from a home where she worked. The Daily News reported (https://bit.ly/1hIX1p7https://bit.ly/1hIX1p7 ) that two of the rings were returned with an anonymous note in the owners’ mailbox, while a third was recovered from a pawn shop in Elizabethtown.
The owner of the rings she realized the jewelry was missing around March 24, after Cunningham had been working in the house for about three weeks.
Cunningham was in Warren County Regional Jail on Tuesday and bonded out later that day.
Cunningham’s attorney, David Broderick, did not return a phone call made to his office.
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