Columbus | featured news

CONNEAUT — Authorities say a man walking along a Lake Erie beach found a partially decomposed body near the Pennsylvania state line. The Cuyahoga County medical examiner in Cleveland will attempt to identify the body.adcelannotate = {"mobilepaywallcategory" : "MOBILE_PREM-LOCAL","nativepaywallcategory" : "NATIVE_PREM-LOCAL"};

Outside the Volunteers of America thrift store on South High Street, Michael Coffee of Chillicothe doffed his fedora and showed off its inner label. “This is one of those old Lazarus hats,” he said. He’d scored the hat, as well as nearly everything else he was wearing on Friday, during previous shopping trips at the VOA.adcelannotate = {"mobilepaywallcategory" : "MOBILE_PREM-LOCAL","nativepaywallcategory" : "NATIVE_PREM-LOCAL"};

The row of green dumpsters lining Indianola Plaza in Clintonville is almost a dozen bins long. Last week, many of them were empty. That’s become an increasingly common state for public dropoff recycling sites across Franklin County parks, supermarkets and fire stationsadcelannotate = {"mobilepaywallcategory" : "MOBILE_PREM-LOCAL","nativepaywallcategory" : "NATIVE_PREM-LOCAL"};

The cost of curbside recycling and yard-waste pickup in Columbus could skyrocket in the next five years after the city received only one bid for its contract. Rumpke, the city’s current collection vendor, was the only company to bid on the five-year contract to empty the blue recycling bins and collect paper bags filled with lawn clippings and leaves.adcelannotate = {"mobilepaywallcategory" : "MOBILE_PREM-LOCAL","nativepaywallcategory" : "NATIVE_PREM-LOCAL"};

Heroin and fentanyl grab the headlines, but narcotic painkillers still fill Ohio medicine cabinets. Increasingly, heroin and fentanyl are responsible for overdose deaths. But narcotic pain pills such as OxyContin continue to be a problem.adcelannotate = {"mobilepaywallcategory" : "MOBILE_PREM-LOCAL","nativepaywallcategory" : "NATIVE_PREM-LOCAL"};

The small house that Habitat for Humanity built in 2015 on a busy street in South Linden was supposed to be a place of hope and dreams. But the owner, a woman who also worked on the house she lives in, has since barred the door, installed an alarm that remains on even when she’s home, and owns a pit-bull mix. It has become a prison, of sorts, a nightmare for the woman who declined to give her name because she fears for her safety.adcelannotate = {"mobilepaywallcategory" : "MOBILE_PREM-LOCAL","nativepaywallcategory" : "NATIVE_PREM-LOCAL"};

With the ascension of Donald Trump coming this week, we decided to look again at Ohio’s presidential election results — and stumbled across some amazing facts that perhaps shed a different light on his victory than what we’ve seen to date.adcelannotate = {"mobilepaywallcategory" : "MOBILE_PREM-LOCAL","nativepaywallcategory" : "NATIVE_PREM-LOCAL"};

Human traffickers often exploit the vulnerable: people from broken families or those who have mental illness or are dependent on drugs.adcelannotate = {"mobilepaywallcategory" : "MOBILE_PREM-LOCAL","nativepaywallcategory" : "NATIVE_PREM-LOCAL"};

Nowadays, when we see a surveying crew in the neighborhood or around town, the job does not appear to be that dangerous. I guess there’s a chance a vehicle might go out of control and run a surveyor down, but that’s about it. It wasn’t that way when our country was young.adcelannotate = {"mobilepaywallcategory" : "MOBILE_PREM-LOCAL","nativepaywallcategory" : "NATIVE_PREM-LOCAL"};

The Buckeye Lake region’s Fairfield Beach neighborhood is poised for multiple projects that local and county officials say will improve its streets, shoreline and houses. The unincorporated community in Fairfield County’s Walnut Township could use the help, officials said.adcelannotate = {"mobilepaywallcategory" : "MOBILE_PREM-LOCAL","nativepaywallcategory" : "NATIVE_PREM-LOCAL"};