Compiled from staff and wire reports

Cincinnati police will begin enforcing a new false-alarm ordinance today that stiffens penalties for three or more false alarms in a year.

Users of residential or commercial electronic security alarms are required to register their systems with the Police Department. Registration is free; City Council repealed the $50 registration fee in August. But there's a $100 fine for any alarm call on an unregistered system.

Alarm users with more than two false alarms in a 12-month period will be fined on an escalating scale, starting with $50 for the third false alarm to $800 for eight or more.

Police say 30,000 false alarms last year cost taxpayers more than $500,000.

To resister an alarm system, call the False Alarm Reduction Unit at 352-1272.

Hospital holds fair for cancer patients

CORRYVILLE - University Hospital's cancer center will hold a health fair for cancer patients today.From 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Barrett Cancer Center, patients will be able to ask questions from a wide range of experts and find information on clinical research, genetic counseling, nutrition, pastoral care, pharmacy, depression and support groups.

Information: Barrett Cancer Center, 584-3466.

Bus provider fired; city cites ineptitude

BATH, Maine - The city has fired a Cincinnati-based company that provides bus service for the city's schools after parents complained about bus drivers not picking up students at designation stops.

Parents also said bus drivers got lost on routes and dropped off elementary pupils two hours after the end of school.

The First Student bus company was in the first year of a five-year contract.

The Bath school board voted Friday to terminate the contract, effective Sept. 26, for breach of contract. Chairman William Torrey said the city could be sued, but that it was worth the risk, citing the company's performance.

A First Student regional vice president declined to comment. The company is a subsidiary of a company in England.

Rangers get tough on ginseng poachers

MAMMOTH CAVE, Ky. - Rangers at Mammoth Cave National Park are cracking down on poachers whose forbidden quarry isn't an animal - it's ginseng.

Rangers have increased surveillance of areas where ginseng and other desirable plants are most plentiful. Hidden cameras and motion detectors are part of the plan. A special dye has been applied through the soil around ginseng plants to help park rangers track down and arrest poachers.

Ginseng is on many states' lists of threatened plants. It is coveted as a medicinal herb that can fetch more than $350 a pound in some places.

Ohio ranked No. 2 in highway spills

COLUMBUS - Ohio ranked second last year in the number of hazardous-material spills on highways, railways and in the air - the 10th consecutive year that it has either had the highest or second highest number of spills, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.

The 1,223 spills last year trailed only the 1,324 spills recorded in Illinois.

Last year, spills in Ohio resulted in $1.8 million worth of damage and cleanups. Most highway spills involved a corrosive chemical such as an acid or a flammable material such as gasoline.

Lotto fails to draw jackpot-sized crowds

ATLANTA - The whole point of the Mega Millions lottery was huge jackpots, headline jackpots, crowds-mobbing-the-gas-stations jackpots.

But more than a year after the multistate Mega Millions lottery was created, the top prizes haven't been the record-breakers organizers had hoped - leaving the 10 member states still waiting for a lottery windfall to cushion falling tax revenues.

You might call it a case of bad luck. The lottery grew out of the seven-state Big Game, which set an American record for a single jackpot when the lottery hit $363 million in 2000.

Thrilled by the crowds who bought Big Game tickets, lottery organizers made a plan. Make the odds a little longer - and, hey, they were bad to start with - and the jackpots could get even bigger, maybe topping $400 million. Lottery revenues would soar too because big jackpots inspire frenzied buying and first-time players.

So the Mega Millions drawings started in Atlanta in May 2002, with the seven original states joined by New York and Ohio. But the huge jackpots have yet to materialize, although statistics indicate it's only a matter of time. The biggest Mega Million jackpot so far is $180 million - a nice chunk of money, but not enough to have players skipping work to line up for lottery tickets.

In Ohio, sales for its Super Lotto Plus state game fell by as much as 48 percent some months from the year before, largely because players opted for Mega Million tickets, which still weren't hot sellers.

The state lotto drop-off was worse than organizers feared.

"We absolutely had a cannibalization to the in-state game," said Ohio Lottery spokeswoman Mardele Cohen. "It's been affected more so than we originally thought, because so far we haven't realized the jackpot potential."