Cleveland

President Donald Trump has nominated the U.S. attorney in Cleveland, Justin Herdman, to the same position in Washington, D.C. If confirmed by the Senate as U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Herdman would oversee cases referred by Robert Mueller’s investigation of foreign interference in the 2016 presidential election. The office has also been at the center of the recent decisions to lessen presidential ally Roger Stone’s prison sentence and drop charges against Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn.

The Plain Dealer is dissolving its news guild and will publish coverage exclusively from cleveland.com. The paper announced the changes Tuesday in a cleveland.com column from Editor-in-Chief Tim Warsinskey. The four remaining journalists at The Plain Dealer have been offered jobs at cleveland.com to continue their work, according to Warsinskey.

As different parts of the economy move to reopen, many arts and culture groups are discussing what reopening could look like for museums, theaters and music venues. “We anticipate that we’ll see museums perhaps being more readily prepared to open sooner than performing arts organizations,” said Megan VanVoorhis, president of Arts Cleveland. Museums could limit the number of people in galleries through timed entry and direct people to use different entrances, for instance, to space out the number of visitors.

Gov. Mike DeWine announced Wednesday a partial rollback on his ban on elective medical procedures in Ohio — the same day University Hospitals announced staff pay cuts. Less than 24 hours later, UH also said it plans to shut down some emergency services by the end of the month.

The state of Ohio has reached a $16.5 million partial settlement in its lawsuit against the operators of an illegal East Cleveland dump — but collecting that money will be a difficult task.

School district administrations throughout Ohio are “probably relieved” Gov. Mike DeWine made the call to keep students at K-12 schools out of the classroom for the remainder of the school year, Akron Public Schools spokesperson Mark Williamson speculated Tuesday, especially when reopening schools May 1 would have invited so many difficult questions with such short notice.

Updated: 5:37 p.m., Tuesday, April 7, 2020 Most of the remaining staff at The Plain Dealer will no longer cover news in Cleveland or Cuyahoga and Summit counties, instead shifting to become a "bureau" covering outlying areas. The announcement comes just days after 22 staff were laid off. The 14 remaining reporters will cover five Northeast Ohio counties: Geauga, Lake, Lorain, Medina and Portage, according to a statement from the Northeast Ohio Newspaper Guild Local 1.

Earlier this year, as health officials began tallying coronavirus cases across the United States, Janitorial Services Inc. in Cleveland was stocking up on hospital-grade disinfectant. “I bought about a year’s worth in a month and a half,” owner Ronald Martinez told ideastream. “And believe it or not, we’re probably down to 20 percent of what I bought, because we’ve been putting it out in the buildings, even though it’s not part of their normal daily disinfecting.”

At least one Cleveland program that addresses homelessness is ending its winter shelter program early, as shelters across the region face low staffing and high exposure risks during the coronavirus pandemic The Metanoia Project provided overnight shelter at three locations until March 23, but is now suspending operations.

Updated at 11:14 a.m., Wednesday, March 18, 2020 Cleveland-area hospitals are ramping up coronavirus testing and area residents are responding in droves. Cleveland Clinic and University Hospitals opened a new drive-thru testing center, at the UH Landerbrook Health Center in Mayfield Heights on Tuesday. This is in addition to the original site which opened Saturday near University Circle.