A study funded in part by North American racing groups and conducted using South African racehorses has indicated that furosemide, the diuretic administered prerace to about 90 percent of all horses racing at North American tracks, plays a significant role in reducing the severity of bleeding in the lungs.

Ron Geary, the owner of Ellis Park in western Kentucky, said that the track will close after the 2009 meet and that he will not apply for racing dates next year in light of failed legislation to legalize slot machines at Kentucky racetracks.

LEXINGTON, Ky. - A Senate committee of the Kentucky legislature killed a bill on Monday night that would have legalized slot machines at seven racetracks in the state. The vote effectively torpedoed the racing industry's aggressive effort to get the legislation passed during a brief special session of the legislature.

The Senate Budget Committee voted 10-5 against sending the bill to the floor of the Senate. The vote was largely along party lines. In general, state Democrats have supported the effort while Republicans have been opposed.

The Kentucky House of Representatives narrowly approved a bill Friday that would legalize slot machines at the state's racetracks, but the leader of the Senate contended that the bill would not pass the Senate and countered with a plan of his own to subsidize purses.

The House voted 52-45 to approve the bill, which needed 51 votes to pass, after three hours of debate. The House is controlled by Democrats, who have rallied behind the slots legislation with the help of Gov. Steve Beshear, also a Democrat.

Four northern Illinois casinos have taken legal action that could prevent distribution of about $76omillion to the state's horse racing industry this summer.

Last Thursday, lawyers for the casinos filed a lawsuit with the U.S. District Court in Chicago accusing former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, the campaign fund Friends of Blagojevich, and John Johnston, a major player in Chicago harness racing, of racketeering and corruption.

Kentucky's attorney general, Jack Conway, issued an opinion on Monday that a constitutional referendum is unnecessary to legalize slot machines at the state's racetracks.

The opinion was issued on the first day of a special session of the legislature called by Gov. Steve Beshear, a Democrat. A bill legalizing slot machines at Kentucky's racetracks that is supported by Beshear and the state's Democratic leadership is expected to be introduced to the House during the session. Conway is also a Democrat.

Nassau Regional Off-Track Betting Corp. in New York filed a lawsuit on Thursday that seeks to require the New York Racing Association to restore in-home broadcasts of its races to cable subscribers in Nassau County, the company said.

The lawsuit was filed in response to NYRA's blocking the distribution of the broadcasts to cable subscribers just days before the Belmont Stakes. NYRA withheld the signal after accusing the offtrack betting company of illegally streaming its races over an account-wagering site Nassau owns from mid-January to mid-April.

CHICAGO - The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal of a 2008 Illinois Supreme Court ruling that upheld legislation directing four casinos in the northern part of the state to pay an impact fee to the horse racing industry. The decision not to hear the appeal will free up some $80 million to be distributed to the racing industry this summer.

The National Thoroughbred Racing Association has established a fund to aid its federal lobbying efforts. Called the Foal Fund, it replaces the check-off program breeders could use when registering foals with the Jockey Club; that program has been supplanted by the Jockey Club's new check-off initiative to support racehorse retirement and retraining programs.

A group of university researchers announced Thursday they are going to test how various racetrack surfaces affect the incidence and type of injuries in horses.

They intend to build laboratory models of synthetic and dirt surfaces, and then test the surfaces under a variety of conditions to gather data on how horses' hooves impact with the materials. The data will be fed into a computer model of a horses' forelimb to determine how likely certain conditions are to result in bone, joint, tendon, or ligament damage.