Indy Car will try to breathe some life into its series outside the Indianapolis 500 with a road course race at the historic Speedway.
First announced last week when it was approved by Indy Car‘s board of directors, plans for the Grand Prix of Indianapolis were laid out by Mark Miles, the CEO of Indy Car owner Hulman and Company, and the Speedway‘s president Doug Boles.

The race will be held Saturday May 10 as part of opening weekend at IMS.  The course will have 14 turns, be just under two-and-a-half miles in length, and the cars will run clockwise as opposed to oval racing‘s traditional counterclockwise direction.

Though some Indy 500 traditionalists, like A.J. Foyt, have criticized the idea of road racing at the Speedway, Boles says the late Indy Car champion Dan Wheldon was a major proponent of the idea.  Boles says Wheldon advocated such a race after doing some road course test driving in Indianapolis.

Miles says the thought occurred to him during opening weekend this year.  “I just had this nagging feeling we could do more.

We could give people a more compelling reason to be here,” Miles said.  While Indianapolis 500 race day attendance has remained strong, Miles says they would like to boost it even more, and he hopes the Grand Prix will help. “More people will begin to understand that, sure, we race the Indy Car series on ovals.

But we also race on road courses and street races, and there‘s so much content and so many stories because of the diversity and the talent of our racers.

Arsenal Technical High School in Indianapolis has dismissed one of its assistant football coaches following last Friday‘s altercation with members of the Fort Wayne South Side High School football team.

Indianapolis Public Schools spokesman John Althardt says assistant coach Angelo Muhammad, who was suspended for the season by the Indiana High School Athletic Association, has been let go from the football program.

In addition, nine players involved in the brawl last Friday will each face one-game suspensions.  Althardt says two sets of parents who entered the field during the fight have been banned from all Arsenal Tech events for the remainder of the school year.

He adds Tech will send a letter of apology to the Fort Wayne South Side principal, athletic director, football coach and district superintendent.

Althardt says Tech will follow all guidelines set forth by I-H-S-A-A Commissioner Bobby Cox.  He says the school‘s student-athletes will complete a service learning program and will be mentored in character and leadership development opportunities on a weekly basis.

The I-H-S-A-A suspended both team‘s head coaches for one game as well as any player identified to have been a part of the fight.

An assistant coach for Fort Wayne South Side was also suspended for the remainder of the season.

Coaches and players from both teams will also have to complete a sportsmanship course in order to be eligible for the state tournament series.

Some House Republicans are looking for a way to jump-start discussions to bring an end to the government shutdown.

Fifth District Republican Susan Brooks says she and other freshmen in both parties have been talking, trying to figure out where there‘s common ground for an agreement. But Brooks acknowledges the freshmen lack the clout to get a deal done. And she joins other Republicans in pinning the blame on President Obama and Senate Democrats for refusing to negotiate on the spending bill.

House Republicans deleted funding for the federal health care law from a proposed stopgap bill to keep the government open. When the Senate restored funding, the House tied a new spending bill to a one-year delay in the law‘s effective date.

Brooks complains President Obama is setting the tone by ruling out negotiations. She says the president should be taking the lead in convening those talks.

Brooks says mail and calls from constituents has been about evenly split between calls for the G-O-P to stand its ground and calls to end the shutdown. She vows the House won‘t simply give in to Democratic demands for a “clean” spending bill.

IU Health is announcing yet more job cuts.

In a statement released late Tuesday, IU Health announced it‘s cutting more than 100 additional positions.

This after stating on September 12th that it was eliminating about 800 positions at six facilities across Central Indiana.

They now say that figure tops 900 and affected workers are being told this week. IU Health blames the changing face of the healthcare industry for the reductions as hospitals nationwide experience fewer admissions and declining insurance reimbursements.

The announcement comes on the same day Americans are beginning to sign up for healthcare insurance exchanges.

Four federally-owned recreational properties in Indiana are closed by the government shutdown.

The George Rogers Clark Memorial in Vincennes, the Indiana Dunes in northwest Indiana, and the Muscatatuck and Big Oaks Wildlife Refuges in southern Indiana are closed until Congress approves a spending bill.

The Hoosier National Forest is also federally owned, but Indiana Department of Natural Resources spokesman Phil Bloom says the 200-thousand-acre forest is “generally a walk-in type of place” and can‘t easily be closed.

Bloom says a handful of callers have mistakenly believed the shutdown affects state parks. The 24 state parks and eight reservoirs are all open, though Bloom says a prolonged shutdown could cut into their federal funding support.

Indiana doesn‘t expect to lose much federal funding to the government shutdown — as long as it doesn‘t drag on too long.

Office of Management and Budget director Chris Atkins says the state has enough cash reserves to keep many programs going for as long as a month before running into trouble. For instance, the way in which the government sends the funding checks for the WIC nutrition program for mothers and young children means there‘s still cash on hand to keep the program going.

Some other federally funded programs, such as the National Guard, are reimbursed after the fact.  Atkins says the state will dip into its surplus to put Guardsmen on the state payroll for up to a week, and reevaluate if the shutdown isn‘t resolved by then.

In past shutdowns, the government has made up lost paychecks after the standoff is resolved. Atkins says the state is counting on that happening again.

Atkins says he expects the state economic impact of the shutdown to be “small but manageable,” though he says the state will be monitoring the effect on defense contractors in particular.

Funding for Medicaid, highways, unemployment and education is unaffected.

Indiana High School Athletic Association Assistant Commissioner Chris Kaufman says Friday‘s fight involving Arsenal Technical and Fort Wayne South Side High School football players and coaches is unacceptable.

Kaufman says that‘s why IHSAA Commissioner Bobby Cox is meeting late this afternoon with school administrators on both sides to determine a possible course of action or even punishment.

Kaufman says the IHSAA spends a lot of money promoting sportsmanship and Friday‘s events go against IHSAA standards.

Tech has already fired a volunteer coach who brawled with a Fort Wayne South Side coach. Some fans also came onto the field during the fight.

The latest government shutdown is the first in 18 years. But Washington veterans know stalemate used to be the rule, not the exception.

The government shut down six times during Ronald Reagan’s presidency, for anywhere from one to four days, as Reagan and the Democratic House haggled over spending priorities.

Democrat Lee Hamilton and Republican Dan Coats were part of Indiana‘s congressional delegation for those fights, and for the 1995 faceoff between Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich which produced two shutdowns totaling 26 days. Both say Washington is more dysfunctional this time, but they place the blame in different places.

Hamilton, now retired, says Congress is lurching from one crisis to the next while denying the risks to the economy. Coats, now Indiana’s senior senator, says both Reagan and Clinton were deeply engaged in trying to reach a solution, while President Obama has refused to negotiate.

Both Hamilton and Coats warn the economy is more fragile than it was in prior shutdowns. And Coats points out Congress had passed seven of the necessary 13 appropriations bills in 1995. This time, none of the spending bills has passed, which he notes means troops overseas could see their paychecks dry up.

The commissioner of the Indiana High School Athletic Association will decide tomorrow how to address the fight between players and coaches during Friday‘s football game between Arsenal Technical High School and Fort Wayne South Side.

Indianapolis Public Schools spokesman John Althardt says school administrators will meet with IHSAA commissioner Bobby Cox to determine what, if any, punishment will be given to the schools.  Tech High has already dismissed a volunteer coach who fought with a Fort Wayne South Side coach – the school and IPS have not released the coach‘s name.

The game was stopped with 1:41 left in the third quarter and Tech leading 24-to-6.  The teams briefly scuffled after a South Side player was flagged for a late hit well out of bounds on the Tech sideline.  The fighting had seemingly stopped when the coaches started shoving each other.  Some fans also came out of the stands and on to the field during the melee. Indianapolis Metropolitan Police were called in to assist IPS poilce, but no arrests were made.

No one from Fort Wayne Community Schools has said anything outside of a statement released by the school district.  “We are disappointed with the turn of events at Friday’s football game, and we expect all involved in high school athletics – both our teams and those we play – to demonstrate good sportsmanship,” the statement read. “We will conduct our own investigation into what took place as well as cooperate with the IHSAA investigation.”