At their recent meeting, the Wood County commissioners were asked to formally oppose the Nexus natural gas pipeline which is to run through the count.  The Coalition to Reroute Nexus or CORN made the request.  The commissioners said they shared some of the same concerns as CORN, but that they need more time to evaluate the matter before taking any action.

Ohio Governor John Kasich attended Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress earlier this week sparking more speculation that he will run for president in 2016.  Kasich spent 18 years in the U.S. House of Representatives.  Kasich insisted that his appearance was spurred only by his deep interest in foreign relations.

The Ohio House is expected to pass a bill this week to combat toxic algae problem in Lake Erie.  The bill would prohibit farmers in northwestern Ohio from spreading manure and fertilizer on their fields if the ground is frozen or saturated with water, or if the forecast calls for a greater than 50 percent chance of precipitation exceeding 1 inch in a 12-hour period.  The goal is to reduce the phosphorus runoff from farmland

The Ohio Senate passed a measure to protect Ohio students from unintended consequences of new proficiency tests being rolled out this school year.  The bill would bar schools from using results from the increasingly criticized tests to determine a student’s advancement to the next grade level or in course credit decisions.   An exception is made for English language arts tests used in meeting Ohio’s third-grade reading guarantee.  Schools also could not release scores to outside sources without parental consent under the bill.