Feed aggregator

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) -- From the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium's two-day celebration to grand-scale egg hunts and Easter Bunny meet and greets, central Ohio communities are rounding out their Easter celebrations this weekend.

Colony Square Mall Easter Bunny Meet and Greet

3575 Maple Avenue through Saturday

• The Easter Bunny is stopping by for pictures at Colony Square Mall, at the head of Cinemark Corridor. Advanced reservations are encouraged and can be made here.

Columbus Recreation and Parks Department Egg Hunt

1826 Lattimer Drive from 10 a.m. to noon on Saturday

• At the Far East Community Center, kids ages 12 and under are welcome to hunt for plastic eggs filled with treats.

Eggs, Paws and Claws at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium

4850 W Powell Rd. on Friday and Saturday

• Hop on over for the two-day "Eggs, Paws and Claws" event that will feature photos with the Easter Bunny, Eggbert and Shelley’s Rolling Shell-ebration, the Egg-Splore-N-Find, and more.

(Adobe Stock)

Fortress Obetz Egg Hunt

2015 Recreation Trail from 10:30 to 12:30 p.m. on Saturday

• Experience an afternoon full of fun inflatables, temporary tattoos, pictures with the Easter Bunny, and an Easter egg hunt with more than 40,000 eggs.

Jeffrey Meadow Egg Hunt

Behind Jeffrey Mansion at noon on Saturday

• From start to finish, this event only takes a few minutes. The hunt starts promptly at noon, with eggs filled with treats and surprises.

Polaris Fashion Place Easter Bunny Meet and Greet

1500 Polaris Parkway through April 8

• The Easter Bunny is visiting Polaris from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday and noon to 6 p.m. on Sunday. Guests can save time by purchasing their photo package in advance here.

(Adobe Stock)

Richland Carrousel Park Egg Hunt

75 N. Main St. at 10 a.m. on Saturday

• The hunt includes more than 2,000 filled eggs.

The Mall at Tuttle Crossing Easter Bunny Meet and Greey

5043 Tuttle Crossing Blvd. through Saturday

• Hop over for Easter Bunny pictures at The Mall at Tuttle Crossing, in the lower level outside of Macy's. Advanced reservations are encouraged and can be made here.

Wyman Woods Park Egg Hunt

1520 Goodale Blvd. at 10 a.m. on Saturday

• More than 10,000 items hidden around the park in three separate age divisions.

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) -- A program connecting residents with free car repairs is receiving a half-million dollar boost as it enters its fourth year.

Project Taillight was launched by the city in 2020, providing free repairs on taillights, headlights, turn signals and other small issues to low-income Columbus residents. City Council voted Monday to invest $500,000 into the program's continuation.

Another developer proposes demolishing Ohio State dive bar for high-rise apartments

"When we were briefing with the city attorney's office last year, we saw the impact that we're making," Councilmember Emmanuel Remy said. "They said to really make an impact, if we increased it to half a million, we'd make a difference. So, that's exactly what we did."

City Attorney Zach Klein said the program has been a success, in part because it can remove a distraction for police.

"This started as an idea within my office about how we can eliminate unnecessary police interactions, and what better police interaction than a traffic stop that's really driven by poverty," Klein said. "These are folks who don't have operable taillights or headlights. So, the reason they're getting pulled over, it's a violation of law because they don't have the money to fix it."

The program has helped 302 residents since its launch in 2020, with a majority of participating residents being Black and female.

Columbus drops liquor license objection against Jack’s Corner Pub

"The reality is there's always going to be a need," Klein said. "There's always going to be the individual that's struggling to make ends meet."

Since its launch, the average cost for repairs under Project Taillight has been around $1,660. Now, the investment cap or max per vehicle has been set at $3,200.

"We know the costs are increasing," Remy said. "We're going to make sure that there's enough money there to take care of the needs of everybody."

To learn more about Project Taillight, email outreach@columbus.gov or call 614-702-7462.

Watch a previous NBC4 report on H.B. 68 in the video player above.

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) -- As an Ohio law banning gender-affirming care for transgender minors takes effect next month, a new survey has found a majority of voters oppose political candidates who often discuss restrictions on trans Americans.

About 53% of registered and likely 2024 voters said they oppose political candidates who speak frequently about restricting access to health care and participating in sports for trans youth, according to the poll by GLAAD, the world's largest LGBTQ+ advocacy organization. The survey also found 81% of 2024 voters, 83% of swing voters and 73% of Trump voters believe decisions about health care and mental health services for trans youth should be made by parents.

Ohio sued by ACLU for ‘unconstitutional’ trans athlete, healthcare ban

"Voters are insisting that politicians focus instead on the real issues facing our nation, including inflation, abortion rights, and climate change," said GLAAD CEO Sarah Kate Ellis. "Candidates, parties, strategists and reporters are on notice about the power of the LGBTQ vote and the issues that should be demanding attention."

GLAAD's survey comes as House Bill 68 will take effect in Ohio on April 23, prohibiting children's hospitals from providing treatment like gender-reassignment surgery and hormone therapy to trans minors. The Statehouse voted to override Gov. Mike DeWine's veto of the legislation, which also bans trans athletes' participation in women's sports.

DeWine rejected the bill after visiting several children's hospitals, arguing "parents should make these decisions and not the government." However, Rep. Gary Click (R-Vickery), the bill's primary sponsor, called gender-affirming care an "experiment" and has long argued "children are incapable of providing the informed consent necessary to make those very risky and life-changing decisions."

While the ACLU of Ohio announced Tuesday it filed a lawsuit to halt the law, Click said the complaint is "not surprising" and "par for the course," and argued H.B. 68 was written "to be bulletproof when it came to lawsuits."

Ohio school board may raise teacher license fees as budget shortfall looms

H.B. 68 is one of four anti-LGBTQ+ bills progressing in Ohio, among more than 725 proposed laws moving through statehouses across the nation. These bills are now galvanizing the LGBTQ+ community to participate in the 2024 election, GLAAD's survey said. The poll found 94% of LGBTQ+ registered voters are motivated as the presidential and key congressional campaigns approach and are definitely voting this November.

GLAAD also said 49% of LGBTQ+ voters reported experiencing real-world harassment or bullying caused by the current state of political discourse. In addition, 72% experience negative impacts to their mental health and emotional well-being caused by political discourse.

"GLAAD’s research shows that LGBTQ Americans are ready to exert their significant power to shape electoral politics, choose responsible leadership, and use their voices to advocate for equality," Ellis said. "Our new survey also shows that the majority of all voters reject harmful anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and candidates who spread it."

Other anti-LGBTQ+ bills proposed at the Ohio Statehouse include House Bill 245, a "drag queen ban" bill that would prohibit "adult cabaret performances," defined as a show "harmful to juveniles" that features "entertainers who exhibit a gender identity that is different from the performers’ or entertainers’ gender assigned at birth."

Timeline updated for recreational marijuana sales in Ohio

House Bill 183 would prohibit schools from allowing trans students to use a bathroom that doesn't correspond with the gender assigned to them at birth. The bill states institutions are required to set separate facilities based on a student's "biological sex," meaning "the sex listed on a person's official birth record."

House Bill 8 -- the "Parents' Bill of Rights" -- would require teachers to notify parents before teaching "sexuality content" and of any change in a student's mental, emotional or physical health. The legislation would also provide parents the opportunity to request excusal for their child from lessons, and parents whose concerns aren’t resolved after 30 days would be granted a hearing with the district’s board of education.

COLUMBUS (WCMH) – A person is in critical condition after driving a minibike into another vehicle Tuesday night in the northeast side of the city.

According to a release from the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office a serious injury traffic crash took place at 9:45 p.m. near the intersection of Westerville Road and Parris Boulevard in the Huber Ridge area.

Deputies responded to the scene where a black 2012 Toyota Scion was turning east onto Parris Boulevard from a southbound lane on Westerville Road, also known as State Route 3. At the same time a black minibike heading northbound on SR 3 struck the Toyota.

Ohio community reacts to collapse of Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore

The Sheriff’s Office said the minibike was not street legal and had no lights. Witnesses told officials that the minibike was driving recklessly before it struck the other vehicle.

The driver of the Toyota, who returned to the crash scene, told deputies they never saw the minibike and thought they hit a deer. Westerville medics took the rider of the minibike to Grant Medical Center in critical condition.

An investigation into the crash remains ongoing and the FCSO asks anyone with additional information to call the Crash Investigation Unit at 614-525-6113.

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) – Ohio’s state board of education is facing a budget cliff – and says for it to survive the fall, it must either raise teacher licensing fees or receive immediate funding from the state.

At the board’s March meeting, members mulled over a proposed licensing fee increase, from $200 to upward of $300, to prevent a $3.5 million budget shortfall by next June. With Ohio’s teacher licenses already among the most expensive in the region, education professionals – and board members themselves – argue that a fee increase disproportionately impacts newer, lower-paid teachers and would discourage prospective teachers from becoming licensed in the state.

Battle over board seat for Ohio teachers’ pension could define a limit to the governor’s power

The state school board is still navigating its new role as separate from the Department of Education and Workforce. Under the state’s two-year budget passed last June, the school board lost most of its powers – and a large portion of its funding. Instead of funding for staff salaries, travel expenses, IT costs and other board operation expenditures coming from the state, the vast majority of the school board’s money now comes from teacher licensing fees. 

“This is a problem 100% created by the state legislature and the governor when they changed the law taking away state funding from the state board of education while still giving the state board of education responsibility over licensure, teacher discipline, territory transfers and a number of other functions,” Scott DiMauro, president of the Ohio Education Association, said in an interview.

Dan Tierney, spokesperson for Gov. Mike DeWine, said examining the school board’s budget is, at present, like “looking at a cake that’s half-baked.” The board is still in the middle of its budget analysis process, he said, meaning it would be premature to say whether the body is facing a budget crisis that requires state intervention.

“It went from a regulatory board to a licensure board. This was very clearly a change in scope of the agency,” Tierney said. “We would assume that as a result of the direction in the legislation, that the board would not have the same needs for staff."

Circleville police chief placed on leave for ‘potential misconduct’, second time in two weeks

Although the school board lost most of its powers, it gained some responsibilities that Superintendent Paul Craft told board members is racking up expenditure costs. Included in the state budget, for instance, was the mandate that certain unlicensed school personnel be enrolled in the state’s criminal background check system. The school board is on the hook for an expected $600,000 in increased costs associated with that new requirement.

The board has eliminated $300,000 in estimated expenditures, according to board meeting materials, including by consolidating board meetings into one day and axing three staff positions it couldn’t afford to fill. But its predictions are even worse than before; in January, Craft estimated a $2 million budget shortfall by June 2025. Now, the board is expecting to be $3.5 million in the red.

The school board claims that upward of $6 million of its expenditures are nonnegotiable. It plans to ask the legislature for $10 million, or else it will need to raise teacher licensing fees. 

“We shouldn’t look at this situation and assume the state board has done everything they need to do to transition,” Tierney said. 

Another developer proposes demolishing Ohio State dive bar for high-rise apartments

With licenses needing to be renewed every five years, an additional $100 or so may not seem like a significant amount, DiMauro said, but many teachers hold multiple licenses. And any increase will most strongly impact those at the bottom of the pay scale – the minimum salary for public school teachers is $35,000 -- and new teachers more generally, as they face additional up-front costs for exams and provisional licenses.

Increasing teacher licensing fees would only add to the larger “tax on teachers,” Gregory Mild, a professional educator at Columbus City Schools, told the school board. He pointed to an analysis from the Learning Policy Institute that found that in 2023, Ohio teachers spent an average of $480 on classroom supplies. Most teachers are also responsible for the costs of their continuing education, which can run thousands of dollars every five years.

“Ohio’s legislators must be held accountable to foot the bill for the operations of the State Board of Education related to professional conduct investigations, teacher evaluation, territory transfers, and all other board functions required by Ohio Revised Code,” Mild said. “Licensure fees should never be viewed as a possible funding source for anything other than the operations directly related to the Office of Licensure.”

In Steampipe unbundled we showed how its plugins, which originally worked only with the foreign data wrapper loaded into Steampipe’s batteries-included Postgres, are now also available as stand-alone distributions that you can load into your own instances of Postgres or SQLite. Now Steampipe itself is unbundled: its dashboard server and benchmark runner have migrated to a new open-source project, Powerpipe.

To read this article in full, please click here

Graceful error handling is an essential aspect of well-designed software. It’s also tricky. This article offers an overview of error handling in React applications and how to use React error boundaries to handle render-time errors.

React error types

We can divide React application errors broadly into two types, and error handling into two aspects.

The two React error types:

• JavaScript errors: These are conventional JavaScript errors that occur in the code portion of a component.
• Render errors: These are errors raised by the rendering engine, emerging from the markup.

Note that the nature of JavaScript UI makes for tricky error handling. Aside from typical runtime errors, there are errors that spring from the “drawing” of the screen components. We are distinguishing these two types of errors here as “JavaScript errors” and “Render errors.”

To read this article in full, please click here

Visual Studio Code is a terrific software development environment, and not only because it has excellent code-editing features and language support. Thanks to its rich culture of extensions, VS Code supports many tasks besides editing. You’ll find VS Code extensions for everything from a speedier way to navigate the editor to effortlessly inserting placeholder text and images.

Here are 11 VS Code extensions that you might want to consider when putting together your development environment. Some could be extremely useful additions to your toolkit, and even part of your daily workflow. 

To read this article in full, please click here

Columbus and Central Ohio Weather QUICK WEATHER FORECAST:

• Today: Gradual clearing, breezy, high 52
• Tonight: Clearing clouds, low 32
• Thursday: More sunshine, breezy, high 53
• Friday: Iso. sprinkle, few clouds, high 61
• Saturday: Sct'd rain showers, high 63
• Sunday: Partly sunny, showers later, high 60

FORECAST DISCUSSION:

Happy Wednesday!

After a wet and windy Tuesday, we've got some improvements arriving today. Expect gradual clearing of the clouds as we head through the day, with breezy, but not gusty conditions. Highs will be a bit cooler, topping out in the lower 50s.

Then for Thursday, expect more sunshine, with a continued breeze, and highs in the low to middle 50s.

Friday looks to be one of our nicer days, with partly cloudy skies, and only an isolated sprinkle chance. Highs warm to the lower 60s during the afternoon.

Then this weekend, we are looking at scattered shower activity throughout Saturday. We're not talking real heavy rain, but it will be a day to keep the umbrella handy. Highs stick in the low to middle 60s.

For Sunday, we are looking at mainly dry conditions for most of the area, during the daytime hours. Our next system moves in Sunday evening, and brings more rain going overnight and into Monday. Highs Sunday top out near 60.

-McKenna

Intel Corporation has launched two new initiatives as part of its AI PC Acceleration Program to promote collaboration between software and hardware ecosystems, aimed at enhancing AI capabilities across over 100 million Intel-based AI PCs by 2025.

The first initiative, the AI PC Developer Program, is tailored specifically for software developers and independent software vendors (ISVs). Its primary goal is to provide developers with accessible tools, workflows, AI-deployment frameworks, and developer kits featuring the latest Intel hardware, including the Intel Core Ultra processor. This program seeks to streamline the developer experience and facilitate the adoption of AI technologies at scale.

To read this article in full, please click here