Weekend in review: Top stories

7/9/2007

A 24-year-old soldier from Oak Harbor was killed this week by a roadside bomb near Baghdad, his family told The Blade yesterday. Keith Kline, a 2002 graduate of Oak Harbor High School, was a sergeant with the 82nd Airborne Division based in Fort Bragg, N.C., his uncle, Mark Lipstraw, said. The family was told of Sergeant Kline s death late Thursday, he said.

Even before the outbreak of strippers at a Lucas County Democratic Party fund-raiser, at least one candidate understood the controversy in getting a contribution from a strip club manager and returned it. Democrat Lindsay Webb is running for Toledo City Council in District 6, where Scarlett's Cabaret is located. Ms. Webb said that Ryan Kemp, the general manager of Scarlett's, appeared at her May 23 campaign kick-off.

April Farough took money from her employer for four years while she watched the business slowly fall into financial despair - actions that yesterday earned her time behind bars. Saying that Farough, 31, was a trusted employee who was "financially raping this business," Lucas County Common Pleas Court Judge James Jensen sentenced her to 17 months in prison and ordered her to repay the $96,462.17 she stole. She was convicted May 30 of grand theft after she was found to have taken more than $80,000 in cash from her employer and padded her hours to the tune of nearly $16,000.

Competition with sunny states, vibrant economies, and open spaces with less crime is continuing to force Lucas County s urban residents namely Toledoans to locations elsewhere. Toledo s suburban townships, villages, and counties, meanwhile, have absorbed thousands of new residents over the last seven years, according to estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau.

The latest round of Lucas County Party Democratic Party infighting - not to mention sparring among Mayor Carty Finkbeiner and some council members - began with a message from the mayor to Councilman Joe McNamara: Butt out. Early evening brought consecutive news conferences. As the mayor's spokesman, Brian Schwartz, listened in, Mr. McNamara vowed from his front lawn to press on - that John Irish should resign as chairman of the Lucas County Democratic Party because strippers worked at the party's golf fund-raiser and he should quit as chairman of the Toledo Charter Revision Committee.

Mike Karabin and his boss, University of Toledo Athletic Director Mike O'Brien, jump into Mr. Karabin's 2007 GMC Yukon and head to a Mancy's restaurant. Upon arriving at one of Toledo's most famous dining spots, they greet two University of Toledo supporters, and the four sit down to lunch. Their bellies full on the day's fresh catch, the soup du jour, and Diet Coke, they all head out for 18 holes of golf and conversation.