Hello all, here's the news today.
A few hundred Avondale residents will soon be getting free Wi-Fi. The Avondale Comprehensive Development Corporation announced yesterday that it will partner with telecom company Powernet, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and developer The Community Builders, Inc. to offer Wi-Fi to residents living on Reading Road from Blair Avenue to South Fred Shuttlesworth Circle. The project is funded as part of the Choice Neighborhoods Grant from HUD, which was given to The Community Builders, Inc. in 2012. Powernet will install 15 access points along Reading Road that will give 250 families and businesses access to the network. The plan is part of the larger push for the revitalization of Avondale, one of the city's largest low-income neighborhoods.
• Cincinnati is getting younger, better-educated and more economically stable, according to the biannual economic report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. The report, which provides a quick look into the greater Cincinnati economy, found Cincinnati's average age is 37.3, just slightly under the national average of 37.9. It also found the local economy has better recovered from the great recession than the nation as a whole. It is 2 percent above its level before the recession while the nation's economy, on average, is still struggling to get back to its pre-recession level. Also, more of Cincy's adults now hold undergrad degrees. That number has risen 2.9 percent since 2009 and is now at 31.4 percent, which again is higher than the national average of 30.1 percent.
• A new Kentucky law expected to be signed by Gov. Matt Bevin will allow bourbon makers to sell their drinks "by the glass." Under the previous law, the bourbon makers were only able to offer tastes of their product to people who had purchased full tour tickets for their distilleries. Now they're able to offer cash bars for small samplings. Kentucky breweries will also benefit as they'll be allowed to sell at smaller events, like farmer's markets, without going through a distributor.
• Wisconsinites head to the polls today in what will surely add more fuel to the more recent heated round of this presidential nomination period. Wisconsin republicans will get to choose between Donald Trump, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who is still in the race despite recent complaints from Trump and Cruz that he should drop out. Kasich told a crowd of about 300 supporters at a town hall yesterday in Long Island, N.Y., that despite the bullying from his opponents, he's not going anywhere. Kasich, who is currently in a distant third, says he thinks he's the only candidate who has a shot at beating Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton in the general election. Clinton is also campaigning hard in Wisconsin, where polls are showing it could be a tight race against Democratic rival Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
• You know how many are skeptical of Trump's plan to build a border wall and make Mexico pay for it? Well, he finally said how he's going to do it. Trump sent a two-page memo to the Washington Post saying he plans to cut off the estimated $25 billion Mexican immigrants send home yearly to attempt to force Mexico to give in and pay for the wall. Not surprisingly, economists and policy experts have had some reservations about the possible legal and political feasibility of the plan, which would put a large amount of executive pressure on one of the U.S.'s key diplomatic allies.
