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Today’s Lane Links

Documents released last week by the Cabinet for Health and Family Services, which oversees child protection in Kentucky, give an unprecedented look into how Kentucky’s abused and neglected children die and how the state’s child-protection system operates, reports the Lexington Herald Leader.

The cabinet and the state’s two largest newspapers have been fighting in court for more than two years over access to the case files of children who were killed or critically injured in 2009 and 2010 as a result of abuse and neglect.

The cabinet had long refused to release such files, but began doing so in January after Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd ruled they are public records, the paper says.

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The hotel developer of the $14 million Staybridge Suites under construction on Campbell Lane near Nashville Road has a blossoming friendship with Western Kentucky University, reports the Bowling Green Daily News.

The 80,000-square-foot hotel is expected to open Nov. 14 with 124 guest rooms and public spaces, and its proximity to WKU’s Carroll Knicely Conference Center has university President Gary Ransdell smiling about what he describes as a win-win relationship.

The hotel is a stone’s throw from the conference center, and Ransdell would like to see the developer build a second hotel in Block 12, which includes WKU’s Augenstein Alumni Center, a parking garage and student housing, the paper says.

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When James Comer took over as Kentucky Agriculture Commissioner, he inherited a department with a gigantic money drain, a fuel and pesticides lab built under former Commissioner Richie Farmer using millions in state tax dollars.

Comer has put together a bipartisan task force to figure out what, if anything, can be done to fix one of the biggest problems: the fuel lab. The task force holds its first meeting 9:30 a.m. Tuesday at Kentucky Department of Agriculture offices, 111 Corporate Drive in Frankfort.

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McDonald’s says net income slipped 4 percent in the second quarter as a result of unfavorable foreign currency exchange rates and a slowing global economy.

The world’s biggest hamburger chain says global sales at restaurants open at least a year rose 3.7 percent for the quarter, with gains in every region of the world. But like other U.S. companies, McDonald’s is finding itself pressured by the strong dollar, says USA TODAY.

When the U.S. dollar is rising against the other world currencies, companies that do business internationally take a hit when converting local currencies back into the dollar.

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Physical inactivity is such a problem worldwide it has become as deadly as smoking, a series of studies has found. Being sedentary causes about one in 10 premature deaths worldwide, in large part because it contributes to heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, breast cancer and colon cancer, Kentucky Health News Reports.

“If physical inactivity could be reduced by just 10 percent, it could avert some 533,000 deaths a year; if reduced by 25 percent, 1.3 million deaths could be prevented,” reports Alice Park for Time Healthland.

In a study published in the journal Lancet, researchers “calculated something called a population attributable fraction (PAF), a measure of the contribution of risk factors like physical inactivity to diseases such as heart disease or diabetes, and even risk of death,” Park reports. That calculation indicated how many incidences of disease could have been prevented if people started exercising like they should.

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