Ohio
Ohio inmates whip up five-course meal from prison garden for 60 community members
Michelin star from behind bars?
Inmates at an Ohio prison with a penchant for cooking whipped up a five-course meal over the weekend and served it to members of the public in a first for the state.
Almost 60 people dined in the Grafton Correctional Institution’s garden space, where the very fruits and vegetables they were munching on for the groundbreaking meal were grown by prisoners.
Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction
The unique experience was made possible thanks to the prison’s EDWINS Leadership and Restaurant Institute, which offers six-month culinary courses to incarcerated people at 652 prisons and jails around the country, setting them up with the skills and certifications needed to work in a fine dining establishment.
Founder Chef Brandon Crostowski said the program was born out of the belief that “every human being, regardless of their past, has the right to a fair and equal future” — an ideal that was felt by all for the momentous meal.
“They’re not looking at me as a number. They’re looking at me as a person,” Greg Sigelmier, 40, an inmate at GCI, told the Associated Press.
A long rectangular table adorned with a white linen cloth, bouquets of flowers and fresh bread was placed between the two gardens, dubbed the “EDWINS’ Garden” and the “Hope City Garden.”
Guests from the local community were offered a beet salad with goat cheese and greens to start, followed by a kale “purse” with farmer cheese.
Next, they were treated to roasted salmon topped with a béarnaise sauce and braised garden greens. Roasted lamb with tomato provencal followed.
Dessert included a corn cake with blueberry compote and Chantilly cream.
Each course was paired with a mocktail, one of them named the “botinique” — soda with a thyme-infused honey syrup and lemon.
Almost all the bites were grown in the prison garden.
“Working together as the community that we are and at the end getting to eat the food, it’s the best part. You should see the faces on these guys when they’re eating just the regular chicken noodle soup that we just all worked together. It’s incredible,” 28-year-old Efrain Paniagua-Villa said.
Cooking was not foreign to Paniagua-Villa — he routinely made meals with his mom and sister before his incarceration — but the task has served as a fruitful pastime.
He said cooking with EDWINS has helped fill the gap that was left when he began his stint in prison 2 1/2 years ago.
The incarcerated men in the EDWINS culinary program at GCI are serving a variety of sentences from short to life and range in age from 20 to 70, according to the organization.
Some of the men will have the opportunity to graduate from the program and apply to work at many restaurants in the Cleveland area upon their release.
“Many of our guys that live here are going home, so they’re going home to be our neighbors. We want our neighbors to be prepared to be law-abiding citizens, and that’s what this program is about. It’s not just about teaching guys how to cook or how to prepare food,” said GCI warden Jerry Spatny. “
This gives them reentry level skills so that when they go home, they can be successful in that environment.”
How robots and AI are changing farming
Robotics and AI are reshaping how food is grown. An innovative robotics farm equipment company shares how AI is impacting the future of farming.
Bloomberg – Quicktake
A wind-swept blaze at an Ohio hog farm complex caused “catastrophic” damage and left thousands of pigs dead, fire officials said, marking another devastating barn inferno contributing to the deaths of millions of animals in recent years.
The massive fire occurred on Wednesday, Feb. 25, at Fine Oak Farms in Union Township, Madison County, located west of Ohio’s capital of Columbus, according to the Central Townships Joint Fire District. Fire crews received a report of a barn fire shortly before 12 p.m. local time.
The incident was later upgraded to a commercial structure fire after Chief Brian Bennington observed a “large column of smoke visible from a distance” and requested additional resources. Multiple local fire departments, along with several other emergency agencies, were called to the scene.
“What our crews encountered upon arrival was a very difficult and heartbreaking incident,” Bennington said in a statement on Feb. 26.
The fire chief described the facility as a large farm complex used for hog production consisting of five large agricultural buildings, including four that housed about 7,500 hogs. When crews arrived at the scene, they found two of the barns engulfed in flames, Bennington said.
Crews were challenged by windy conditions that significantly impacted fire suppression efforts, according to Bennington. Three barns were destroyed in the fire, and about 6,000 hogs and pigs were killed.
Firefighters saved one barn and about 1,500 hogs, the fire chief added. No injuries were reported in the incident.
Bennington highlighted the assistance of the farming community throughout Madison and Clark counties, as multiple farmers responded with water trucks to help with water supply efforts. “Rural Ohio’s agricultural community is tight-knit, and they truly step up when one of their own is in need,” he said.
The incident remains under investigation, and the Ohio State Fire Marshal’s Office will determine the fire’s cause and origin. Bennington said there is no suspicion of arson and no ongoing threat to the public at this time.
‘Rapidly changing fire behavior conditions’
Heavy smoke from the fire could be seen for miles, and Bennington said first-arriving units were met with fire conditions coming from the opposite side of the hog farm complex.
The fire chief noted that the incident required extensive water-shuttle operations due to rural water-supply limitations in the area. Crews attempted to cut the fire off by deploying multiple handlines and using an aerial device, but “faced extremely challenging conditions throughout the incident,” according to Bennington.
Sustained winds of about 20 mph with gusts up to 35 mph accelerated the fire’s spread, Bennington said. The high winds made it “extremely difficult” to contain forward fire progression and created “rapidly changing fire behavior conditions” across the agricultural complex, he added.
After about four to five hours, the fire was contained by fire personnel from four different counties, according to the fire chief.
“Unfortunately, the fire resulted in catastrophic damage to the business,” Bennington said in an earlier statement on Feb. 25. “A significant portion of the agricultural structures were destroyed.”
Latest major fire to impact an Ohio hog farm
The incident at Fine Oak Farms is the latest major fire to cause significant damage to an Ohio hog farm in recent years.
In August 2024, about 1,100 pigs were killed in Versailles, a village about 50 miles northwest of Dayton, Ohio, according to data from the nonprofit Animal Welfare Institute. In March 2022, about 2,000 hogs died in a barn fire at Kenneth Scholl Hog Farm in Brown Township, just west of Columbus.
Before the fire at Fine Oak Farms, the Animal Welfare Institute reported that other barn fires in Ohio this year killed 162 sheep, horses, cows, chickens, and other animals.
Hundreds of thousands of animals killed in barn fires each year
Data from the Animal Welfare Institute shows that hundreds of thousands of animals are killed in barn fires across the country each year. Since 2013, over 9 million farm animals have been killed in barn fires, according to the organization.
As of Feb. 26, the Animal Welfare Institute reported that 118,738 farm animals have died in U.S. barn fires this year, including the incident at Fine Oak Farms. The majority of farm animals killed were chickens in separate incidents in North Carolina and Georgia in January, and another incident in Missouri earlier this month.
“Most fatal barn fires occurred in colder states, particularly the Upper Midwest and the Northeast. New York, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Illinois had the highest number of barn fires, respectively,” according to the organization. “The amount of cold weather a state experienced appeared to be a greater factor in the prevalence of barn fires than the intensity of a state’s animal agriculture production.”
In an updated report on farm animal deaths due to barn fires in 2025, the Animal Welfare Institute said more than 2.53 million farm animals were killed in barn fires from 2022 to 2024. The organization noted that the high death toll was “driven primarily” by fires at large operations that housed several thousand to over 1 million farm animals.
The majority of deaths in these incidents during that period, over 98%, were farmed birds, such as chickens and turkeys, according to the Animal Welfare Institute. But in 2023, a massive fire at a west Texas dairy farm became the single deadliest event involving livestock in the state’s history and the deadliest cattle fire in America in at least a decade.
18,000 head of cattle perished in the fire at the South Fork Dairy farm near Dimmitt, Texas. At the time, Roger Malone, who is the former mayor of Dimmitt, called the incident “mind-boggling.”
“I don’t think it’s ever happened before around here. It’s a real tragedy,” Malone said.
Contributing: Rick Jervis, USA TODAY; Shahid Meighan, Columbus Dispatch
Trump announces ‘War on Fraud’ at State of the Union 2026
President Donald Trump announced a “War on Fraud” during his State of the Union address, saying it’d be spearheaded by Vice President JD Vance.
Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose discussed voter fraud and Ohio’s efforts to prevent it during a recent radio appearance.
LaRose appeared on “The Bill Cunningham” radio show, where he defended the state’s efforts to minimize voter fraud. A clip posted on X shows audio of LaRose arguing that policies aimed at preventing voter fraud are necessary even though cases are rare.
Here’s what to know.
Secretary of State Frank LaRose says voter fraud in Ohio is rare, compares prevention efforts to TSA security
In the clip, LaRose says that Democrats claim voter fraud is rare, and should be ignored.
“The left claims that voter fraud is rare, so we should just ignore it,” he said. “Well, airplane hijackings are also rare — we don’t abolish the TSA. The reason why we keep voter fraud rare in states like Ohio because we do these very things that they’re trying to take away from me.”
LaRose announced the inaugural meeting of the new Ohio Election Integrity Commission, which replaces what he called the flawed Ohio Elections Commission, in January 2026. The new committee, he says, will be used in “enforcing Ohio’s election laws, reviewing alleged violations, and ensuring accountability in matters relating to voting.”
In October 2025, LaRose said that he forwarded more than 1,000 cases of voter fraud to the U.S. Department of Justice. The cases involved 1,084 noncitizen individuals who appear to have registered to vote unlawfully in Ohio, and 167 noncitizens who appear to have also cast a ballot in a federal election since 2018.
In February 2026, President Donald Trump said Republicans should “nationalize” elections. He also accused Democrats of bringing migrants into the United States to illegally vote, a claim that is not backed by evidence, USA TODAY reports.
Voter fraud in the U.S. is considered rare nationwide, according to NPR, but there are still debates from both political sides on how frequently it occurs.
What is voter fraud?
Electoral fraud is defined as illegally interfering with the process of an election, according to Ballotpedia. This includes in-person voter fraud, absentee or mail ballots and illegal voter suppression.
Criminal penalties can include fines or imprisonment for up to five years, according to U.S. code. In Ohio, election interference can carry a felony of the fourth degree, according to Ohio Code.
Voter fraud is often a topic of debate among Democrats and Republicans, where organizations such as the conservative Heritage Foundation maintains a database claiming to show nearly 1,500 cases of election fraud since the year 2000.
Meanwhile, research by law professor Justin Leavitt published in 2014 found 31 cases of in-person voter fraud among billions of ballots cast from 2000–2014, according to Ballotpedia.
Newsom staffer who told California reporter to ‘f— off’ is raking in massive taxpayer-funded salary
Walz slams Trump admin for temporarily halting Medicaid funding to Minnesota: ‘Campaign of retribution’
Trump introduces Cornyn, Paxton but stays mum on endorsement in heated GOP primary
Illegal immigrant arrested after showing up to Florida Border Patrol office for contract IT work
Alleged New Hampshire country club shooter said he was targeting wealthy ‘elites’: report
Florida High School Football Rankings: Top 25 teams – Oct. 21
Cleary's 21 help Le Moyne down Central Connecticut State 69-64 in OT
How old is Bo Nix? What to know about Oregon quarterback ahead of 2024 NFL Draft
99th annual Pony Swim held in Virginia
Indiana Members Credit Union announced as new anchor tenant at Bottleworks District
Where Iran’s ballistic missiles can reach — and how close they are to the US
Has India’s influence in Afghanistan grown under the Taliban?
Bill Clinton to testify before House committee investigating Epstein links
Read Judge Schiltz’s Order
Vulnerable House Dem lashes out at Trump’s ‘racist’ SOTU challenge: ‘That was uncomfortable’
-
World2 days agoExclusive: DeepSeek withholds latest AI model from US chipmakers including Nvidia, sources say
-
Massachusetts2 days agoMother and daughter injured in Taunton house explosion
-
Montana1 week ago2026 MHSA Montana Wrestling State Championship Brackets And Results – FloWrestling
-
Oklahoma1 week agoWildfires rage in Oklahoma as thousands urged to evacuate a small city
-
Louisiana5 days agoWildfire near Gum Swamp Road in Livingston Parish now under control; more than 200 acres burned
-
Denver, CO2 days ago10 acres charred, 5 injured in Thornton grass fire, evacuation orders lifted
-
Technology6 days agoYouTube TV billing scam emails are hitting inboxes
-
Technology6 days agoStellantis is in a crisis of its own making