Society

A new poll by a nonpartisan health organization suggests a majority of Kentuckians would support a statewide smoking ban.

The Kentucky Health Issues Poll is conducted by the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky. And its 2011 poll, taken last fall and released this week, shows that 54 percent of Kentuckians would approve an indoor statewide smoking ban.

Kentucky’s General Assembly has flirted with a law that would create a statewide smoking ban, but it has yet to fully make it through both chambers.

Clarksville Police have charged two teenagers in the shooting death of a Fort Campbell soldier. Police found 22-year-old Specialist Taylor Hotzoglou inside his car with multiple gunshot wounds early Sunday morning. Yesterday, police announced the arrests of 18-year-old Giovanni Johnson and a 17-year-old youth. Johnson is held without bond at the Montgomery County Jail. The juvenile suspect is in the Columbia Juvenile Detention Center. The victim’s family says he had just returned from a deployment to Afghanistan.

The Murray-Calloway County Community Foundation will host a seminar on the benefits of establishing endowments. Philanthropy 360 is scheduled from 5 to 6:30 Tuesday evening at Wrather Museum on the Murray State University campus. Featured speakers include Bob Long, a former grantmaker for the Kellogg Foundation, and Tony Watkins, executive director of the Community Foundation of West Kentucky. More than $150,000 dollars remain in the Endow Kentucky tax credits program for fiscal 2012. Endow Kentucky to increase philanthropic activity in the commonwealth.

Illinois' dropping unemployment rate will trigger the end of a federal program for the state’s long-term jobless. The Illinois Department of Employment Security says the Extended Benefit program ends May 12th. The program pays 20 weeks of benefits to anyone unemployed beyond 79 weeks. Department spokesman Greg Rivara says the program started paying benefits in Illinois in 2009 because of high unemployment, but the recent fall below 9 percent triggered its end. Officials urge anyone without a job to visit the Illinois JobLink website. It has postings for more than 90,000 job openings.

Former Tennessee Democratic gubernatorial candidate Richard Chesteen passed away yesterday at the age of 72. The Union City native was a candidate for governor in 1994, and was a longtime political science professor at the University of Tennessee at Martin. Chesteen was an Obion County commissioner from 1982 to 1994, and taught at UT-Martin from 1969 until retiring in December 2007. He’s survived by his wife and two children.