Compiled from staff and wire reports

Two face drug trafficking charges

HAMILTON - Two Hamilton men are facing felony drug charges after Butler County sheriff's deputies and Hamilton police raided an apartment late Thursday on Sirena Drive here.

Terry Rashawn Goode Jr., 24, is charged with trafficking in drugs, drug possession and permitting drug abuse. Jeremy Brittain Warren-Goode, 22, is charged with trafficking in drugs and drug possession, sheriff's deputies said.

Both men live at the Sirena Drive address, police said.

Authorities seized more than an ounce of crack cocaine and an additional 19 baggies of crack packaged for distribution. The cocaine is worth about $2,000, police said.

Packaging materials, digital scales, razor blades and more than $600 in cash also were discovered, police said.

"It's definitely a distribution outfit," Butler County Sheriff's Detective Jeff Riegert said. "This is not for personal use."

The raid culminated a three-month investigation that was spawned by complaints of heavy traffic in the apartment complex, police said.

The investigation is continuing, and additional arrests are possible, Detective Riegert said

Man arrested in Internet sex sting

COLERAIN TWP. - A Kettering, Ohio, man was arrested after he came to Colerain Township, allegedly to have sex with a 15-year-old girl he met in an Internet chat room.

The girl turned out to be an undercover detective with the Regional Electronic and Computer Investigations Task Force.

On Thursday, in the area of Colerain Avenue and Springdale Road, task force detectives arrested Joseph P. Kinser, 47, who detectives said had arranged to meet the girl at that location. Detectives said they had talked to him in chat rooms and on the telephone.

He was charged with attempted unlawful sexual conduct with a minor, and two counts of importuning. Mr. Kinser was taken to the Hamilton County Justice Center and will be arraigned today.

UC hires Chicago firm for marketing package

University of Cincinnati has hired Lipman Hearne, a Chicago-based marketing and communications firm to emphasize the school's reputation as a premier institution.

A multi-year contract was signed in December after a five-month search for a firm that could develop a comprehensive marketing package. Company chairman and founder, Bob Lipman, is a graduate of UC's graphic design program.

Learn to speak English in free classes

Cincinnati State Technical and Community College will offer free beginning-level English as a second language classes starting Feb. 3.

Registration for the winter term begins Jan. 5 and extends through Jan. 31. The free classes will be held from 6-9 p.m. on Mondays in Room 259 of the main campus building. It will continue through April 7.

For more information, call the school at 569-4848.

Bulldozer kills man as it falls off flat-bed

A Highland Heights man was killed Friday at Noramco Transportation in Riverside when a bulldozer he was delivering fell off its tractor-trailer, Cincinnati police said.

Nicholas J. Groeschen, 38, was pronounced dead at Noramco, at 3291 Southside Ave.

Mr. Groeschen was unloading the bulldozer from a flat-bed semi at noon, when the bulldozer fell off the left side of the trailer, killing him, police said.

He was employed by Art's Rental Equipment Co. of Newport, which was delivering the bulldozer. He did not work for Noramco.

Cincinnati police are assisting in the investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Two environmental groups join AK suit

A federal judge has granted the request of two national environmental groups to join as plaintiffs in a 2‡-year-old pollution suit against Middletown-based AK Steel.

The Sierra Club and National Resources Defense Council asked U.S. District Judge Herman Weber to let them join the federal government and state of Ohio in suing the steel maker for alleged pollution violations at the Middletown Works.

AK Steel argued the two groups shouldn't be allowed to join the lawsuit because their petition wasn't filed until more than a year after the original suit was filed in June 2000. But Judge Weber said both groups had a right to join the case under federal law and their request was still timely.

State sues day-care operation for $3.8M

CLEVELAND - The Ohio Department of Education is trying to recover more than $3.8 million it paid a Cleveland day-care operation accused of padding enrollment figures with phantom children.

The department accuses the nonprofit Ministerial Day Care Association of billing the Head Start program for about 600 children who never attended or didn't exist, according to documents filed this week in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court. The suit repeats findings of a state audit of the operation released in June.

Ministerial Day Care officials have denied the accusations, and they sued the education department after the state reduced the agency's Head Start funding.