Ohio elections chief requests senator’s records

Ohio elections chief requests senator’s records

COLUMBUS — Ohio’s elections chief wants to see utility bills and bank records to determine whether a state senator is eligible to vote in the district he calls home.

Democratic Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner has asked Republican Jon Husted to provide more information to help her make a decision.

A list released Wednesday shows Brunner also wants to see Husted’s tax and telephone records and legal papers related to his home in Kettering, outside Dayton.

Montgomery County elections officials voted along party lines in a split decision on whether Husted had established residency. Brunner could break the tie.

Husted, a former House speaker, says he spends considerable time in Kettering, but his family lives in the Columbus suburb of Upper Arlington.

Healthy jaguar cubs born at Akron Zoo

AKRON — The Akron Zoo says a jaguar has given birth to three healthy cubs for the second time in recent years.

Zoo officials announced Wednesday that the two females and one male were born March 3. The cubs’ mother, Naom, has been nursing them, although animal-care staff monitored the cubs around the clock after the birth.

Jaguars are listed as an endangered species by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Zoo spokesman David Barnhardt says the cubs will remain indoors with their mother for the next few months before they’re put on outside exhibit. The zoo plans to sponsor a naming contest.

Naom produced three female cubs at the zoo in 2005. The cubs have since been moved to other accredited zoos in the United States.

Contractor worker dies

MIDDLETOWN, Ohio — An employee of a contractor has died after being injured at AK Steel’s Middletown Works plant in southwest Ohio.

Machinists and Aerospace Workers union local president Scott Rich says the worker leaned against a controller while working on a lift and was crushed between the lift and a pipe.

Cincinnati-based United Group Services Inc. says the worker died at Miami Valley Hospital in Dayton early Wednesday of complications from the Monday afternoon accident.

United Group vice president Kevin Sell says the 47-year-old worker was a highly skilled, veteran employee and that United Group has done work for AK Steel Holding Corp. for 10 years. The worker’s name wasn’t immediately released.

The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration is investigating.

Cincinnati lawyer gets 2 years in drug case

CINCINNATI — A judge has ordered two years imprisonment for a lawyer who gained notoriety after the 2001 riots in Cincinnati and was recently convicted in a drug-related case.

U.S. District Judge Sandra Beckwith sentenced Ken Lawson on Wednesday for conspiracy to obtain controlled substances by deception. Lawson had asked for probation and drug treatment.

Prosecutors say Lawson was the leader of the conspiracy that also included a friend and a doctor who investigators say wrote fraudulent prescriptions so Lawson could obtain drugs.

Lawson says he was a drug addict who was exploited by the doctor.

Lawson represented the mother of an unarmed black man who was shot to death by a white police officer, starting three days of rioting in the city in 2001.

9 hurt in truck-bus crash

DAYTON — Police say at least nine people were injured when a pickup truck struck a city bus after hitting several other vehicles in downtown Dayton.

Police Lt. Larry Faulkner says the truck was speeding before the Wednesday crash.

Three bus passengers were hurt as well as the pickup driver and five people from the other vehicles.

Faulkner says the pickup driver was taken to a hospital with moderate injuries.

Police say none of the injuries appeared to be life-threatening.

Witnesses say the truck lost one of its front tires before it hit the bus and that sparks could be seen coming from the truck.

Pa. teacher resigns during child-porn probe

HANOVER, Pa. — An elementary school teacher in south-central Pennsylvania has resigned after being investigated about alleged viewing of child porn.

The fifth-grade teacher hasn’t been charged with a crime, and the police investigation continues. The South Western School District in York County accepted his resignation Wednesday.

Superintendent Barbara Rupp says she’s shocked by the allegation but stresses that the allegations involve the man’s home computer. She says there’s no indication that the teacher did anything wrong in the classroom.

State police seized his home computer last week; the man hasn’t been in the classroom since.

Philly casinos fight returns to Harrisburg

HARRISBURG — Even as the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board approved a small slot-machine casino in suburban Philadelphia, the agency’s chaotic public meeting Wednesday signaled that the fight over the construction of two other casinos in Philadelphia has landed back in their lap.

Officials from SugarHouse Casino and Foxwoods Casino Philadelphia were heckled and shouted down by several dozen Philadelphia residents as they told the gaming board of changes to their construction plans that are designed to break a two-year stalemate with city officials that has stalled the projects.

Foxwoods official Brian Ford said the casino group has decided to move its location about two miles from the Delaware Riverfront into Center City. SugarHouse chairman Neil Bluhm said the group is making design changes that include a temporary facility that could open next spring.

“Since the board approved our application in December 2006, this has not been an easy journey,” Ford told the board.

The changes in both plans will require approval by the gaming board and city officials, who are pledging cooperation. If the facilities are built, Philadelphia would become the nation’s largest city with casino gambling.

Associated Press