Compiled from staff and wire reports

FAIRBORN, Ohio - Land around a limestone quarry rich with evidence that it once was under a sea hundreds of millions of years ago and under glaciers during the Ice Age will be turned into a park and a study site for scientists.

This Dayton suburb will use a $375,000 grant from the Ohio Public Works Commission and in-kind donations valued at $2.5 million to convert 183 acres donated by a builder.

The city will plant trees and lay walking trails. Park superintendent Pete Bales said water blasting and excavating will uncover coral reefs and glacial striations.

Paleontologists and geologists who have studied the site believe starfish and sea urchin-like creatures lived near coral reefs on the floor of the shallow sea that covered the area about 440 million years ago.

Scientists also can study glacial marks made 12,000 years ago and fossils and other evidence of Earth's geological history at the site, said Wright State University geologist Cindy Carney.

"Well-preserved fossils and rocks from the time period represented in this quarry are simply not available elsewhere in the United States," Ohio State University geologist William Ausich said in a letter supporting a park.

The site was turned into a quarry about 70 years to take advantage of limestone deposits created by the ancient sea.

Visitors bureau will honor Eichholz

LEBANON - Warren County Convention & Visitors Bureau today will honor a retiring board member who helped get the organization started.

Bernard "Bernie" Eichholz helped establish the bureau in 1980, and he served as a board member through May. Today, the tourism industry has a $410 million economic impact for Warren County, bureau statistics show.

Eichholz also is a former economic development adviser for the city of Springboro and a former city manager of Franklin.

The board will present a plaque in his honor and name their meeting room the Bernard F. Eichholz Board Room. The ceremony starts at 5:45 p.m.

Golf cart stolen, crashed; man charged

Police arrested a 23-year-old Cincinnati man early Sunday and charged him with auto theft after he made off with a golf cart, then crashed it, according to police reports.

Mark Kramer was out drinking about 4 a.m. when he allegedly took a golf cart from an unspecified location, drove it around for a while, then let it roll over a hill near 717 W. Martin Luther King Drive, according to police. The golf cart was damaged beyond repair.

Kramer also was charged with vandalism.

At 696 pounds, this pumpkin's the champ

INDIANAPOLIS - A Kentucky man who grew his first pumpkin only two years ago crushed the competition at the Indiana State Fair's Giant Pumpkin Weigh-off with his 696-pound entry.

The giant gourd grown by Frank Mudd of Flaherty, Ky., bested a 673-pound green squash raised by Thomas Beachy of Woodburn. Twenty-two pumpkins and squashes, both of the gourd family, vied for the blue ribbon in Saturday's contest.

Mudd, a 60-year-old retired golf course superintendent, earned the $1,000 prize in only his second year growing the giants. His wife talked him into ordering two seeds last year promising huge results. One grew to 751 pounds.

"That got me hooked," he said. "Growing these takes the right amount and type of fertilizer and water."

But the monsters are grown for size, not eating, said Mark Seest, of Mulberry, whose fourth-place entry weighed 555 pounds.

Trial date set after fatal 2001 accident

MAYSVILLE, Ky. - A truck driver indicted on a reckless homicide charge will stand trial in February in the death of a man.

Kevin Sharman of Poquoson, Va., is charged in the death of Danny R. Mitchell of Ewing, who was killed Feb. 7, 2001. Conditions were icy and foggy when the crash occurred at the intersection of Kentucky 9 and 11.

Mason County Circuit Judge John W. McNeill on Friday set a Feb. 16 trial date for Sharman.

A witness to the accident said that Mitchell pulled into the intersection when his light turned green and that Sharman blew the horn of his semi-tractor trailer a few seconds before he struck Mitchell's pickup truck.

Survey part of effort to save small theaters

Preservationists have launched a statewide effort to catalog and save Indiana's remaining single-screen movie theaters, opera houses and drive-in theaters.

A Department of Natural Resources survey sought the names and locations of Indiana theaters at least 50 years old. It yielded the names of 540 theaters - many of them long gone. In fact, only 376 of those 540 theaters still exist.

Many of the state's surviving old theaters are not necessarily functioning and most are endangered for one reason or another.

The agency's Historic Theatre Initiative aims to keep the remaining buildings and their facades part of downtown landscapes - ideally as functioning theaters.