COLUMBUS, Ohio-Less than a week after U.S. Rep Marcia Fudge (D-11) announced her bid for reelection and snatched endorsements from nearly all of the Democratic elected officials from her 11th Congressional District including a host of mayors, members of the state legislature , and Cleveland and Akron city council members, the Republican controlled state legislature passed controversial HB 369, a state law of Ohio's revised map of 16 new congressional districts.

CLEVELAND, Ohio-The Rev. Charles "C.J." Matthews, senior pastor at Mt. Sinai Baptist Church in Cleveland, was sentenced to 15 months in prison yesterday for failing to pay $90 thousand in IRS income taxes collected by the mega church between Oct. 2005 and Jan. 2007 on the wages of church employees.

And the sentence, which was handed down by Federal District Court Judge Patricia Gaughan, came in spite of a plethora of support from members of the Black community, many of whom wrote letters on his behalf.

COLUMBUS, Ohio-The Ohio Supreme Court last week rejected a request by Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason to hear an appeal of a state appellate court's decision for a retrial of Joaquin Hicks, sending the case back to the courtroom of Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas Judge Daniel Gaul for another trial in the tragic case of a robbery of two young Cleveland Clinic employees that turned to murder.

And the saga is laced with recantation letters from some alleged witnesses against Hicks that were prosecuted too and are also serving time in prison, coupled with claims by defense counsel and the Hicks family that the wrong man was targeted, and railroaded, partly because of Gaul's negligence and prejudicial behavior at trial.

Mason spokesperson Maria Russo said the county prosecutor declined comment.