Hearing for five alleged Ohio bombers focuses on informant ID, entrapment, pretrial publicity
The five men accused of trying to blow up a bridge over the Cuyahoga Valley National Park were in federal court today in Akron with about a dozen young supporters.

Their lawyers told U.S. District Judge David Dowd that they’re reserving their right to ask that the trial be moved because of extensive publicity following their arrests earlier this month. The FBI says the five were anarchists who planted a bomb at the base of the Route 82 bridge.

Meanwhile, the U.S. attorneys are trying to get the judge to try to keep the identity of the FBI informant in the case secret.

Defense attorneys claim entrapment, saying the informant engineered the whole plot. He’s been identified as a convicted felon who was arrested on new charges in the middle of the FBI’s seven-month investigation.

Dowd set trial for Sept. 17.

Charter school treasurer is accused of stealing hundreds of thousands
A Columbus area man who served as treasurer for nearly a dozen charter schools in Ohio is charged with embezzling nearly a half a million dollars in federal funds from those schools.

57-year- old Carl Shye of New Albany is accused of stealing 470-thousand dollars over six years from charter schools in Columbus, Youngstown and Dayton. U.S. Attorney Carter Stewart says each school Shye worked for received more than 10-thousand dollars a year in federal money.

“Because treasurers employed by schools are certified by the state, they are considered public officials. School treasurers bear the solemn responsibility of protecting public funds. Shye is accused of criminally abusing that trust.”

The state auditor’s office has also been looking into the books Shye was keeping, and Auditor David Yost says over the last decade, the office issued 62 findings against Shye amounting to more than a million dollars. Shye faces arraignment on the federal charges June 21.

FBI is looking into fight for control of the Ohio GOP
The Columbus Dispatch is reporting that the FBI is looking into the battle for control of the Ohio Republican Party.

The paper says the attorney for former Portage County Republican Party Chairman Andrew Manning confirms that FBI agents interviewed Manning.  Manning filed an affidavit in March saying Gov. John Kasich’s allies offered him special influence if he quit the race for the Republican Party’s state central committee.

Those aligned with Kasich took over the central committee in April, and ousted Chairman Kevin DeWine. Manning supported DeWine, and his affidavit says Summit County’s GOP Chairman Alex Arshinkoff and Bryan Williams offered Manning special influence over gubernatorial appointments if he backed out.

The paper says Kasich, Arshinkoff and Williams are all denying Manning’s claims.

NRC delays Davis Besse hearing
Nuclear regulators have canceled a meeting about whether cracks found at the Davis-Besse nuclear plant near Toledo should be part of the decision on renewing the plant's license.

The federal Atomic Safety and Licensing Board had planned to meet Friday near the plant, which is east of Toledo and run by Akron-based FirstEnergy.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission says opponents of the plant asked to reschedule the hearing so that they can revise their arguments. Operators of the plant say the cracks were spawned by a 1978 blizzard when wind, rain and a drastic temperature drop caused moisture to penetrate a concrete shell.

Separate tournaments may be coming for Ohio high school sports
Ohio’s public and private schools may be heading for a split – at least when it comes to high school football and basketball playoffs.

For years, public schools have argued that they can’t compete with like Cleveland St. Ignatius because they draw students from a broader area. The Ohio High School Athletic Association came up with a new bylaw to change tournament divisions for six sports by factoring in the boundaries, tradition and socio- economics of the schools.

But the schools narrowly voted that down this week, and critics of the current system say they’ll now push harder to divide public and private schools into separate playoffs.

License suspended for former Ohio Department of Public Safety lawyer
The Ohio Supreme Court of Ohio has suspended the law license of the former chief legal counsel for the Ohio Department of Public Safety.

Joshua Engel is set to get his license back in six months.
He had pleaded guilty in 2010 to three misdemeanor counts of disclosing confidential inspector general emails.

The state high court says Engle did not mean to see the emails, which were caught by a filter. But once he realized they were there, he kept it going for as much as a year.