Ivy Tech Community College in Columbus is featuring two upcoming broadcast events at the school.

Starting at 7 p.m. on Sunday evening, the school will be airing a live broadcast with CNN anchor Anderson Cooper. You are invited to attend the event and to submit questions via Twitter and Facebook and those could be answered during the broadcast.

On Tuesday, at 7 p.m. the school will be featuring a broadcast with Charles Duhigg, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and productivity expert.

Both events are taking place at the Columbus Learning Center auditorium. That’s on Central Avenue in Columbus.

Both events are free and you are welcome to attend, as well as students, faculty and staff at Ivy Tech.

North Vernon police arrested two people on drug charges after executing search warrants on a home and pickup truck yesterday morning on Locust Grove Street.

According to police reports, a search warrant on the home was served at about 9 a.m. The home being search was the site of a drug overdose earlier in the month.  North Vernon Police dog Heros alerted to the smell of narcotics inside of a pickup and police obtained a second search warrant.

Among the items discovered were packaging material, scales, spoons, syringes and other drug paraphernalia along with cash and about 60 grams of marijuana, police say.

Police arrested 24-year-old Kaitlyn Lewis on charges of dealing in a controlled substance and possessing a syringe and drug paraphernalia. 50-year-old Troy Lewis is facing charges of dealing and possessing marijuana.

Work on the Haw Creek bridge onto State Street will be switching to the south side of the bridge, closest to Mariah Foods, today.

The city of Columbus announced that they will be shifting traffic to the north side of the bridge with two westbound lanes and one eastbound lane.

Stadler Drive between State Street and Indiana Avenue will be closed during this phase of construction. The lane shift will be in effect until the end of May.

The city is adding bike and pedestrian lanes to the bridge as part of its State Street improvement project.

Faurecia Clean Mobility will be investing $4 million dollars in a new production facility in Fort Wayne. The French company’s North American headquarters is in Columbus.

The company announced yesterday that the investment create more than 100 jobs in a 137,500 square foot facility in Allen County. It expects to begin hiring for production and engineering positions this fall.

The company employs about 1,800 workers in its Columbus facilities and it makes emissions controls, acoustic treatments, weight reduction and exhaust heat recovery equipment for light and commercial vehicles.

You can read more about the announcement here.

Indiana University will be offering a new master’s degree in architecture, focused on Columbus and the school’s downtown Center for Art and Design. IU made the announcement yesterday that the first class of about 20 students is expected to start in the fall of 2018.

The Indiana Commission for Higher Education approved the new degree program Thursday, saying that classes toward the degree would also be offered at the IU Bloomington campus. The Columbus-based offerings will include partnerships with the Columbus Indiana Architectural Archives and the Institute for Coalition building, which is part of the Community Education Coalition.

IU President Michael McRobbie said that the program helps build on IU’s efforts to create a culture of building and making. He said he sees this as a complement to IU’s strengths in the arts and humanities.

For the school’s announcement, you can click here.

North Vernon police believe that a Scottsburg man died from a drug overdose earlier this week.

The police department released the name of the victim today, saying that the body of 32-year-old Erick Austin was found under a bridge on Tuesday afternoon. Police report that there was no obvious signs of injury but syringes and material used in drug packaging were found near the body under the North State Street bridge.

Officers say that they are still waiting for toxicology reports.

Columbus Mayor Jim Lienhoop will be giving his second State of the City speech this morning at Donner Center.

The event will start with a free breakfast provided by the Columbus Fire Department. Donations will be accepted to support the Columbus Firemen’s Cheer Fund. They will start serving at 7:15 a.m.

The mayor’s speech will start at 8 a.m. and you can listen to it live on our News Talk 10 10 WCSi or streaming live on our Facebook page.

The Columbus Area Chamber of Commerce is hosting one of its quarterly SPARK events tonight.

This session will be focused on Kenny Glass. Cindy Frey, president of the Chamber, explains that the company’s owner, John McCormick, is an innovator with an interesting approach to growing his business:

The event starts at 5:30 p.m. at the Kenny Glass shop on National Road.

The town of Hope now has new rules in place to crack down on properties cluttered with trash.

This week the Town Council suspended its own rules so it could hold both the first and final reading on a new cleanup ordinance. The ordinance requires that property owners and residents remove unsightly trash and debris.

Town officials said just over 50 percent of the town’s residents pay for a trash removal service. And while many of the rest haul out their refuse themselves, some people are simply letting it pile up. Some residents at the meeting complained about neighbors who have trash piled up to the windows of their home or heaped behind sheds.

Tabatha Tallent, who organizes an annual town cleanup day, said some residents are bringing six to eight truck loads of trash to each cleanup. And rodents literally come scrambling out of the old trash bags as they are put into a dumpster.

The new trash ordinance requires the town to notify property owners to clean up their mess, and if the debris is not removed within 10 days they could be fined up to $25 a day.

The town is also considering a town-wide trash collection service. That will be considered at the council’s next meeting on March 21st.

The former reserve Nashville police officer facing charges for pursuing a motorcyclist through Bartholomew County will be represented by a public defender. Our news-gathering partners at “The Republic” are reporting that Columbus’ Whitted Law Firm was named to represent 25-year-old Leonard Burch, of Columbus, during a Wednesday hearing in Bartholomew Superior Court 2.

According to the report, Magistrate Joe Meek set a pre-trial hearing for Burch at 1:30 p.m. on April 19, while his trial date was moved to May 18. The paper is reporting that a half-day has been set aside for the trial as Burch has said in previous court hearings he plans to seek a jury trial.

A probable-cause affidavit filed in Bartholomew County accuses the former off-duty officer of pursuing 18-year-old motorcyclist Xavier Scrogham, of Hope, recklessly at a high rate of speed through Columbus and part of rural Bartholomew County. That pursuit ultimately ended in Scrogham crashing his motorcycle and dying.

Burch is facing misdemeanor charges of False Informing and Reckless Driving.

For more on this story, visit therepublic.com.