News

Baseball’s cheating scandal is creating waves in Cleveland. Several Indians players, including pitcher Mike Clevinger, are blasting Major League Baseball for not coming down harder on the Houston Astros. An investigation found that the Astros stole pitching signals to help their batters during their 2017 World Series run. They used a combination of technology and banging a garbage can. WKSU sports commentator Terry Pluto says players have a right to be angry.

The percentage of medication induced abortions has been increasing each year. In 2018, about 30% of all abortions tracked by the Ohio Department of Health were medication induced. 

Now, a bill to prevent doctors from using telemedicine to provide abortion-inducing drugs has been introduced. But  backers of the bill don't know of any cases where that is happening in Ohio right now.

The respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, that babies and older people can get after being around someone who appears to have a cold is not new. But it’s the second leading cause of infant death.

The Ohio Department of Health doesn’t track RSV cases because the Centers for Disease Control doesn’t require reporting of it. But Dr. Maria Mejias of Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus says there have been 1,800 cases of RSV since October in her medical center alone.

Two Republican Ohio House members want to introduce a bill soon that would eliminate the prevailing wage on construction projects. And that puts the GOP leader of that chamber in a spot.

The number of public school buildings where students will be eligible for the state’s largest private school voucher program will more than double in the coming school year. And that could blow huge holes in the budgets of 70% of Ohio’s school districts.

The Ohio primary is set for March 17th this year. In addition to the race for the White House, Democrats and Republicans  will be choosing their respective party’s candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives.  One district to watch this year is the 13th district in Northeast Ohio, a traditionally Democratic district with a Democratic incumbent, where President Donald Trump had a very strong showing in 2016.

While the owners of Chapel Hill Mall face foreclosure, trouble with utility providers is ongoing.

New York-based Kohan Retail Investment Group was notified last week that Summit County had initiated foreclosure proceedings for the North Akron mall.

We recognize the civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. on Monday. Akron legislator Emilia Sykes recalled Dr. King’s work as she delivered a lecture Sunday at the Akron Library in his honor.

Sykes is the minority leader in the Ohio House. She talked about some of the issues she touched on in her speech—job training, transportation, and infant mortality—and why those are civil rights issues.

At Women’s Marches around the state over the weekend, a grassroots group collected signatures as part of a drive for mandatory background checks on gun sales.

Akron Municipal Court is clarifying two proposed amendments related to the city’s eviction process. Judge Jon Oldham said coverage of the amendments has caused some confusion.

Ohio's Democratic U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown is blasting the White House's trade deal with China, calling it "much ado about nothing." Brown says it falls short of the problems that forced the U.S. into a trade war to begin with.

Sherrod Brown has been a vocal opponent to Chinese trade practices and has been wanting the U.S. to get tough. But he says President Donald Trump's first trade deal with China does not prioritize workers.

The impending closure of the last anchor store at Chapel Hill Mall could have mixed impact for the rest of the shopping center as well as the stores nearby.

Only one of the baby blue-painted escalators at JCPenney is still functioning. Since the holiday shopping season, the shelves have been looking sparse and there are temporary walls set up to move everything inward, decreasing what would have been empty floor space. Penney’s was one of the original anchors at Chapel Hill, and it’s now the last one standing – until it closes in April.

From Lake Erie to Little Italy -- and from Public Square to the public schools -- daily life in Cleveland is the subject of an exhibit opening Monday at the main library downtown.

The library’s outreach director, Aaron Mason, says there’s a gap in the archives that they don’t want to repeat.

“Around 1980 or 1990 is when most of our photographs stop. There isn’t much past that point.”

When former President Bill Clinton was impeached in 1998, Senator Sherrod Brown was a representative in the U.S. House. Now as a Senator, he’ll be a juror in the trial of President Trump—deciding whether the impeached president should be removed from office.

Brown says the process has been much different this time.

Akron Public Schools is forming a new partnership with Huntington Bank for the district’s latest College & Career Academy.

The director of Ohio Medicaid says her agency is dealing with big problems and could face huge fines from the federal government if they’re not fixed. And she’s pointing to the administration of former Gov. John Kasich for creating and not handling those mistakes. 

The memo is scathing. Medicaid director Maureen Corcoran uses words such as “inadequate”, “unacceptable”, “poorly implemented” and a “mess” to describe what she inherited after being appointed by former Gov. John Kasich’s fellow Republican and successor Mike DeWine.

Thousands of retirees in the state's largest pension fund will see changes to their health care benefits. The leaders of the Members of the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System have voted to change the way retirees receive health care, and a portion of those would have to find their own plan. 

The change eliminates what's known as the group plan for OPERS retirees under 65 and will instead give them a stipend for their own plan.

Retirees over the age of 65 on Medicare will receive less aid intended to fill in the gaps in coverage.

A Portage County farmer welcomes the signing of a trade agreement with China Wednesday. The truce asks China to respect intellectual property laws in exchange for the U.S. reducing some tariffs.

The first phase of the trade agreement is the starting point of recovery for many Ohio corn and soybean farmers who were impacted most by the trade war.

The Cleveland Browns on Tuesday introduced their sixth head coach under owner Jimmy Haslam. Former Minnesota Vikings offensive coordinator Kevin Stefanski takes over for Freddie Kitchens, who was fired after a disappointing 6-10 season.  WKSU sports commentator Terry Pluto says Stefanski fits into the Browns' analytics approach to the game, but says what the team really needs is leadership.