|
Associated Press Tuesday Ohio Headlines - 1/19/2010
Latest Ohio news, sports, business and entertainment:
CYANIDE DEATH
Ohio doctor standing trial in wife's cyanide death
CLEVELAND (AP) - Jury selection has begun for an Ohio doctor charged in the 2005 cyanide poisoning death of his wife.
The judge in the Cleveland trial of 41-year-old Yazeed Essa (EE'-sah) warned prospective jurors on Tuesday that the case could last up to seven weeks. Some gasped at the prospect.
Essa has pleaded not guilty to aggravated murder.
Prosecutors say Essa gave his 38-year-old wife, a former nurse, a capsule containing cyanide that she thought it was a calcium pill. After taking the capsule, the sport utility vehicle she was driving crashed and she was pronounced dead at a hospital.
Essa left the country after his wife's death and was arrested in 2006 in Cyprus. He gave up a long extradition fight and was returned to Ohio last year.
GOVERNOR-RUNNING MATE
Ohio gov. introduces running mate online
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - Gov. Ted Strickland has introduced a former juvenile court judge as his running mate in an online video.
In the video on a Strickland campaign Web site, the Democrat says his running mate will be Yvette McGee Brown. McGee Brown directs a Columbus nonprofit that advocates for children and families.
McGee Brown, who is black, adds gender and racial diversity to Strickland's team less than a week after Republican rival John Kasich chose state Auditor Mary Taylor as his lieutenant governor pick.
A Strickland-McGee Brown news conference is scheduled for 2:30 p.m. Tuesday.
Strickland needs a new candidate for lieutenant governor because incumbent Lee Fisher is running for U.S. Senate.
NEW GOP CONTRACT
Boehner taps former Contract with America director
WASHINGTON (AP) - House GOP leader John Boehner's new chief of staff will be the same person who directed the Contract with America that became the political banner under which Republicans swept to power in 1994.
Boehner's announcement Tuesday that Barry Jackson would run his office came a week after he assigned a GOP colleague to craft a new political platform for this November to define the party's drive to retake control of Congress.
Jackson succeeds Paula Nowakowski, Boehner's chief of staff who died earlier this month.
Led by Newt Gingrich, House Republicans in 1994 ran behind the 10-point contract that included such issues as tax cuts, welfare reform, term limits, limiting lawsuits and greater defense spending.
HAITI-OHIOAN VIDEO
Ohioan's video camera captures Haitian earthquake
CINCINNATI (AP) - A Cincinnati man's video camera caught the Haitian earthquake's first rumbles and damaging jolts at an orphanage.
Rick Hursh was recording his son Matt playing with children at the HOPE Center near Port-au-Prince during a church mission trip.
Laughter quickly turned into screams when the center began shaking. All 20 Haitian girls, along with staff and missionaries, escaped without serious injury.
The center was heavily damaged in last week's quake. The children are living temporarily in an apartment.
The Hurshes have returned home with other participants in the mission trip. The center is administered by Muncie, Ind.-based CSI Ministries.
GERMANY-DEMJANJUK
Sobibor survivor testifies at Demjanjuk trial
MUNICH (AP) - One of the few survivors of the Sobibor Nazi death camp is testifying at the trial of John Demjanjuk (dem-YAHN'-yuk), accused of being one of the camp's Ukrainian guards.
Thomas Blatt gave evidence Tuesday at a Munich state court. Demjanjuk, an 89-year-old retired autoworker from suburban Cleveland, is being tried on accusations he was an accessory to the murders of 27,900 people during the time he is alleged to have been at the camp.
Blatt says he does not remember Demjanjuk specifically and told judges he did not often have contact with the camp's Ukrainian guards, who served under German supervisors.
But he says during work details outside the camp they were instrumental in keeping prisoners from fleeing.
The 82-year-old says that for prisoners of the camp, "every second we were threatened with death."
BURNED BOY
Severely burned boy leaving hospital
MAYSVILLE, Ky. (AP) - A young boy from northern Kentucky who was badly burned in a fire last month is well enough to leave the Cincinnati hospital where he was being treated.
The Ledger Independent in Maysville reports that 4-year-old Landon Cooper is leaving Cincinnati Shriner's Hospital on Tuesday.
The boy received burns over 50 percent of his body when his family's mobile home on Kentucky 11 was destroyed by fire Dec. 11 and still has a long way to go in his recovery.
The family plans to stay in a motel in Aberdeen, Ohio, until a new mobile home is ready for them to occupy. The landlords of their former mobile home are providing the new one.
The boy's mother, Angela Cooper, says he is doing well.
---
Information from: The Ledger Independent, http://www.maysville-online.com
BARGE WORKER DROWNS
Worker falls off towboat, drowns in Ohio River
KENOVA, W.Va. (AP) - A worker has drowned in the Ohio River after falling off a towboat at Marathon Oil Corp.'s loading docks in Kenova.
Kenova police say the accident was reported around 1:30 a.m. Tuesday.
A crew was untying a towboat from docked barges when the accident occurred. Police say the man went to disconnect the remaining rope line when the towboat pulled away from the docks.
Kenova Police Chief Bob McComas and the company identified the victim as 25-year-old Gary Adams of Waterloo, Ohio.
McComas says investigators found no evidence of negligence or foul play, and no criminal charges will be filed.
COLUMBUS CASINO
Company switches site for Columbus casino
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - A company bringing casinos to Ohio says it wants the first one to open in Columbus.
Tim Wilmott, president of Penn National Gaming Inc., said Tuesday the casino would be built on the city's west side on property occupied by a former Delphi auto parts factory. Plans call for the casino to open by the end of 2012.
The casino had been planned for city's Arena District, which is home to the Columbus Blue Jackets hockey team and the city's new minor league baseball stadium. But Mayor Michael Coleman objected to the downtown location.
Penn National Gaming still needs approval from a statewide vote in May to change locations and would go back to the downtown site should the measure fail.
Ohio voters approved a ballot issue last fall that allows for the construction of casinos in Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati and Toledo.
SUPREME COURT-ASIAN CARP
Court won't close shipping locks to keep out carp
WASHINGTON (AP) - The U.S. Supreme Court will not allow the immediate closure of shipping locks to prevent invasive Asian carp from infesting the Great Lakes.
In today's decision, the court refused a request by Michigan to issue a preliminary injunction that would order the locks closed.
Asian carp have been migrating up the Mississippi and Illinois rivers toward the Great Lakes for decades. They have swarmed waterways near Chicago leading to Lake Michigan.
Scientists fear that if they reach the lakes, they could disrupt the food chain and endanger the $7 billion fishery.
The biggest Asian carp can reach 4 feet in length and weigh 100 pounds while consuming up to 40 percent of their body weight daily in plankton, the base of the food chain for Great Lakes fish.
CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA STRIKE
Cleveland Orchestra and musicians reach labor deal
CLEVELAND (AP) - The Cleveland Orchestra and the union representing its musicians have tentatively agreed on a new labor deal, ending a brief strike.
Howard Landau, a spokesman for the musicians, says the agreement was reached early Tuesday. No more details were released.
Landau says the agreement needs to be ratified by musicians and the orchestra board. That could happen later Tuesday. A message seeking comment was left for the orchestra.
It wasn't immediately clear whether performances planned in Miami and at Indiana University would go on.
The Cleveland Federation of Musicians, Local 4 of the American Federation of Musicians, went on strike for the first time in 30 years Sunday over a pay impasse. The contract expired at the end of August.
MUSEUM-LYNCHING PHOTOS
Ohio museum sets age limit on lynching exhibit
CINCINNATI (AP) - A Cincinnati museum is restricting young children from seeing a new exhibit featuring photographs of black people being hanged in front of large crowds of whites.
The images are so graphic that the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center is limiting attendance to people 14 and older. Any student who attends on a field trip must have written permission of a parent or guardian.
Freedom Center President Donald Murphy says the exhibit takes a look back on a violent period in U.S. history.
The centerpiece is a series of photographs and postcards taken at lynching events from 1882 to 1968, when an estimated 5,000 African-Americans were hanged, set afire, castrated or otherwise tortured.
The photographs were previously shown in New York, Chicago and other cities.
---
Information from: The Cincinnati Enquirer, http://www.enquirer.com
DHL-OHIO AIRPORT
DHL to donate Ohio airport for redevelopment
WILMINGTON, Ohio (AP) - An Ohio community is taking control of an airport abandoned by package delivery company DHL Express.
DHL is donating the Wilmington Air Park to officials in Clinton County near Cincinnati. The community hopes to attract new businesses to the site.
About 8,000 jobs have been lost at the airport since DHL announced in May 2008 that it was pulling out and moving operations to the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport.
Wilmington Mayor David Raizk is part of the community's redevelopment task force. He says businesses are interested in the air park, but it would be premature to talk about potential tenants.
Raizk says the former airport employees are highly skilled, and he hopes former DHL workers will get new jobs at the site.
---
Information from: Dayton Daily News, http://www.daytondailynews.com
(Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
AP-NY-01-19-10 1459EST
|
