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Edwins Leadership & Restaurant Institute Wins National Award For Work With Former Prisoners [Crain’s Cleveland Business]
Edwins provides an intense six-month restaurant training program for ex-offenders, who learn all facets of front-of-the-house and kitchen operations both through culinary courses and service in its chic French restaurant.

Chess Grandmaster Faces 50 Detroit-Area Students…And Meets His Match [Model D]
“The psychology of the game is almost more important than the game itself. You have to be mentally strong to be a great chess player.”

Waukesha Plan for Lake Michigan Water Raises Worries [The New York Times]
Surely … the needs of Waukesha, with a population just over 70,000, would be but a drop from the gigantic Great Lakes bucket, which amounts to one-fifth of the earth’s fresh surface water. That little drop, however, has stirred up a colossal struggle.

The Heroin Epidemic’s Toll: One Pennsylvania County, 70 Minutes, Eight Overdoses [The Washington Post]
By all accounts, it has only grown worse since. In Washington County, there have been more than 50 fatal overdoses this year. The national drug-death total, larger than that from auto accidents, is disproportionately concentrated in the Rust Belt, the Great Lakes region and the Northeast.

In Gentrifying Ohio City, Helping The Ones Who Need It Most [Fresh Water]
“We see people that are really hurting, and it’s grown in the last two years. The city’s doing well, but we still have a lot of neighborhoods that are not.”

Region’s Plan For Growth Tempered By Growing Company’s Recruitment Challenges [The News-Sentinel]
Smith said MedPro has little trouble recruiting top executives to Fort Wayne, in part because of the higher salaries. And the company hires many of its entry-level employees locally. The challenge, he said, can come when trying to woo mid-level employees who are living in larger cities on relatively lucrative incomes. “Fort Wayne isn’t Chicago, Denver or Colorado Springs, and it never will be,” he said.

Can The Great Lakes Become An Engine For Growth Again? [The Buffalo News]
Great Lakes communities can boast of an asset that other parts of the country – and world – can only dream of: a water resource that can be tapped for new, high-tech manufacturing, agriculture, food processing, cooling computer server “farms,” power generation and recreation.

Banner photo credit: Unterstrich

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