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FRIDAY December 28, 2012
Weather Mostly cloudy today. High 28. Low 18. Snow possible Saturday. High 25. Low 12. Page A9
‘Stormin’ Norman’ Dies Page A4 Retired general led coalition in Kuwait
Football Page B1 Chicago Bears facing uncertainty
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Auburn, Indiana
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Leaders to meet on ‘cliff’
Shipshewana Ice Festival
GOOD MORNING Museum to stay open later in 2013 AUBURN — The Auburn Cord Duesenberg Automobile Museum will change its hours of operations beginning Wednesday. In 2013, the museum will be open Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The last admission will be taken one hour before each day’s scheduled closing. The museum is closed only on Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day and New Year’s Day. “The Auburn Cord Duesenberg Automobile Museum is a community treasure. It needs to be open when members of the community and surrounding areas can take advantage of the beauty, history and mechanical marvels that this building holds,” said Kendra Klink, operations director. “The extended hours will also give more opportunities for guests to visit after 5 p.m. daily and for DeKalb County residents to take advantage of free admissions on Wednesdays.” “We have done a lot of research and discussed changing the hours of operation at the museum,” said Laura Brinkman, executive director and CEO of the museum. “We will offer many activities at the museum throughout the year for guests of all ages to participate in such as lectures, photography and art classes, fundraising events and special family activities, to name a few.”
2 rescued after car goes into frigid lake FISHERS (AP) — Bystanders have rescued two people who were trapped in a frigid lake when their car went off the road in a suburb north of Indianapolis. Fishers Deputy Fire Marshal Ron Lipps says in a news release that the accident happened Thursday morning at an old quarry filled with water that is believed to be 60 to 80 feet deep. The temperature at noon was about 30 degrees. Three or four people saw the accident and jumped into water to help the car’s occupants get out. Lipps says everyone made it out safely, but both people in the car and their rescuers were taken to area hospitals. Police were investigating whether road conditions were a factor following a snowstorm Wednesday.
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Classifieds...............................B5-B8 Life...................................................A8 Obituaries.......................................A4 Opinion............................................A5 Sports.......................................B1-B3 Weather..........................................A9 TV/Comics.....................................B4 Vol. 100 No. 357
Obama invites top lawmakers to talk at White House today
PATRICK REDMOND
Danny Bloss, of Niles, Mich., starts shaping a 300-pound block of ice into the image of Joseph Thursday afternoon for an ice nativity scene as part of the Shipshewana Ice Festival. More than a dozen professional ice carvers will be in
Shipshewana today and Saturday for the sixth annual Shipshewana Ice Festival. Ice art can be found all around the downtown area as well as at Yoder’s Shopping Center.
Cool artists set to sculpt Shipshewana plays host to annual Ice Festival BY PATRICK REDMOND predmond@kpcnews.net
SHIPSHEWANA — Sixteen tons of ice arrived in Shipshewana Thursday morning for the sixth annual Shipshewana Ice Festival that runs today and Saturday. More than a dozen professional ice carvers and their chainsaws are tearing up huge blocks of ice in the annual festi val that will showcase ice sculptures throughout the downtown area. At least nine ice artists will participate in a competitive ice-carving contest today at 10 a.m. just outside the Davis Mercantile. The artists will be carving 600-pound blocks of ice with chainsaws into works of art. Levi King, a local businessman and Ice
Festival promoter, said more than 30,000 pounds of specially made, crystal-clear blocks of ice have been trucked into Shipshewana just for the event. Ice artist Danny Bloss of Niles, Mich., said the Shipshewana event is one of the biggest ice-sculpting events in the area. Saturday, the festival kicks it up a notch, hosting a chili cook-off contest in a tent set up in the Davis Mercantile parking lot. Ten seasoned chili cooks will set up their kitchens and prepare their own secret versions of chili, hoping to win the local chili crown. Visitors can participate by purchasing tickets that allow them to sample the chili. The festival runs through Saturday evening.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A deadline looming, President Barack Obama will meet with congressional leaders at the White House on Friday in search of a compromise to avoid a year-end “fiscal cliff” of across-theboard tax increases and deep spending cuts. The development capped a day of growing urgency in which Obama returned early from a Hawaiian vacation while lawmakers snarled across a partisan divide over responObama sibility for gridlock on key pocketbook issues. Speaker John Boehner called the House back into session for a highly unusual Sunday evening session. Adding to the woes confronting the middle class was a pending spike of $2 per gallon or more in milk prices if lawmakers failed to pass farm legislation by year’s end. Four days before the deadline, the White House disputed reports that Obama was sending lawmakers a scaled-down plan to avoid the fiscal cliff of tax increases and spending cuts. Administration officials confirmed the Friday meeting at the White House in a bare-bones announcement that said the president would “host a meeting.” An aide to Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said the Kentucky lawmaker “is eager to hear from the president.” A spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner issued a statement that said the Ohio Republican would attend and “continue to stress that the House has already passed legislation to avert the entire fiscal cliff and now the Senate must act.” While there was no guarantee of a compromise, Republicans and Democrats said privately elements of any agreement would likely include an extension of middle class tax cuts with increased rates at upper incomes as well as cancellation of the scheduled spending cuts. An extension of expiring unemployment benefits, a reprieve for doctors who face a cut in Medicare payments and possibly a short-term measure to prevent dairy prices from soaring could also become part of a year-end bill, they said. That would postpone politically contentious disputes over spending cuts for 2013. Top Senate leaders said they remain ready to seek a last-minute agreement. Yet there was no legislation pending and no sign of negotiations in either the House or the Senate on a bill to pre vent the tax hikes and spending cuts that economists say could send the economy into a recession. Far from conciliatory, the rhetoric was confrontational and at times unusually personal. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., accused Boehner of running a dictatorship, citing his refusal to call a vote on legislation to keep taxes
SEE CLIFF, PAGE A9
New industry to get city electrical service BY AARON ORGAN aorgan@kpcnews.net
AUBURN — A Hartford City company has been contracted to run city electric service to the new Scot Industries plant west of I-69, the city’s Board of Public Works and Safety said Thursday. T&B Inc. will perform the job for $101,075. It was the low bidder of five companies vying for the project, city electric superintendent Stuart Tuttle told the board at its meeting in City Hall. The city will supply the material for the lines. T&B will perform the labor. Scot Industries, a manufacturer of steel tube and bar products, is nearing completion of its $34.7 million, 250,000-square-foot plant along the south side of C.R. 48, just west of I-69. The plant will bring 60-80 jobs by 2014 and as many as 165 jobs to the area once it is fully operational, Scot Industries has said. The 140-acre site that houses the massive plant has been annexed into the city.
Auburn Board of Works • In other business Thursday, the board awarded Fort Wayne asphalt company Wayne Asphalt contracts to repave stretches of both Dewey Street and Duesenberg Drive. The remaining stretch of Dewey, to Highland Drive, will be repaved for $87,359. Half of Dewey was paved earlier this year as part of a sewer separation project. Duesenberg, from the entrance of Smith Acres Park to Allison Boulevard, will be repaved for $61,263. Wayne Asphalt was the low bidder among four companies for both projects. The board accepted a $32,800 grant from the Indiana Criminal Justice Institute for the city’s IMAGE Drug Task Force. Auburn Police Chief Martin McCoy told the board the money will be used
SEE ELECTRICAL, PAGE A8
JUDY OXENGER JOHNSTON
Perfect for snow angels The beautiful sunshine found Bella Dangerfield, left, and Conner Slee making snow angels in their yard along South Clear Lake Drive Thursday afternoon. The fluffy snow was perfect for a variety of winter activities.