08/27/10 Headline News…

The Cleveland Museum of Art has hired a new director.

Italian Renaissance and baroque art scholar David Franklin, is leaving his job as deputy director of the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa to come to Cleveland.

He will replace interim director Deborah Gribbon on Sept 20^th.  Gribbon stood in for Timothy Rub when he left last year to take the top job at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Franklin takes over the Cleveland museum with the institution still 3 years left in its 350 million-dollar renovation and expansion project.

The Museum needs to raise $130 million to pay off construction bonds, but is financially sound with its endowment of $600 million dollars.

Franklin will be the CMA's eighth director since the museum opened in 1916.

Supporters of a convicted former congressman Jim Traficant will get a chance Monday to prove he has enough valid petition signatures to run for Congress in November as an independent.

Backers of Traficant hope the elections board in Youngstown will approve the final 20 signatures he needs to make the ballot.

Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner ordered the review. She wants a ruling by Wednesday on whether Traficant has qualified for the 17^th Congressional District ballot.

Traficant represented the Youngstown area as a Democrat for

nearly two decades before being convicted of corruption in 2002.

The deal to sell a minority share of the Cleveland Cavaliers to a Chinese investment group is officially dead.

A team spokesman confirmed yesterday the partnership between the group headed by Chinese businessman Kenny Huang and the Cavs never materialized

The sale had been expected to be completed last year.

The Cavaliers will maintain a relationship with Huang's company for business development in China.

A study released by environmental activists yesterday lists 39 sites where tainted fly ash from coal-fired power plants is contaminating ground-water with toxic metals, such as arsenic and lead.  The activists say the problem is more extensive than previously thought.  One of the sites is the Industrial Access Landfill in Stark County.  The US EPA deemed the site clean in 2005, but now activists are saying some homes with private wells near the landfill may be at risk for contamination.  According to the report, all coal ash dumps showed concentrations of metals greater than federal health standards.

A developer in Mentor is suing his neighbors for trespassing on his vacant lake-front property.

Richard Osborne filed a complaint against the Mentor Marsh Beach Club and 20 other Mentor-on-the-Lake residents seeking $25,000 for damages. 

The 10 acre lake front parcel is valued at less than 9,000 dollars.

Osborne says the defendants acted “intentionally” and “recklessly” by accessing the lake from his property.

The question of lake front access is currently before the Ohio Supreme Court in a dispute between the State and land owners in Lorain County.

The Cleveland-founded law firm Squire Sanders & Dempsey is considering a merger with the United Kingdom-based Hammonds that would place it among the top 50 firms in the world. The merger would create a firm with operations in 17 countries, totaling around 1,300 lawyers. The firm’s partners are expected to vote on the merger before the end of the year.

A panel of state lawmakers is going with Thomas Edison for a new Ohio statue in the U.S. Capitol building.

The famed inventor was born in the northern Ohio town of Milan. The state wants to replace a statue of William Allen, a 19th century politician who supported Southern slave owners.

A foundation is providing a half-million dollar grant to help find ways to prevent invasive Asian carp from entering the lakes. The Charles Stewart Mott Foundation hopes the funding will help protect the Great Lakes' sport fishing industry.

The former Cavs general manager Danny Ferry is heading to San Antonio. Ferry will be vice president of basketball operations for the Spurs.

Ferry led the Cavs through the most successful period in their history. But he left this summer after five years in Cleveland, about a month before LeBron James took off for Miami.

New signups for unemployment benefits fell sharply nationwide last week, after reaching their highest level in nine months. Ohio had one of the largest declines, with new claims down by about 1,700.

A legal dispute is spinning around the new high-flying WindSeeker ride planned for Cedar Point and Kings Island. An Australian ride maker complains that it had the idea first, but the Dutch manufacturer says that claim is without merit.  The firm plans to install 4 of the rides in its parks with a cost of 5 million dollars each.