July 27, 2024 6:47 am
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Reserve’s favored inflation measure remained low last month, bolstering evidence that price pressures are steadily cooling and setting the stage for the Fed to begin cutting interest rates in September. Prices rose just 0.1% from May to June, up from the previous month’s unchanged reading. Compared with a year earlier, inflation declined to 2.5% from 2.6%. Excluding volatile food and energy prices, so-called core inflation rose 0.2% from May to June, up from the previous month’s 0.1%. Measured from one year earlier, core prices increased 2.6%, unchanged from June. Taken as a whole, Friday’s figures suggest that the worst streak of inflation in four decades, which peaked two years ago, is nearing an end.
July 27, 2024 6:43 am
PITTSBURGH — The wheels of progress are turning as Pittsburgh Regional Transit takes the first step toward replacing its entire fleet of T light rail cars. “We have to start somewhere and this is the first step in a marathon,” said PRT Deputy Chief Communications Officer Adam Brandolph. Brandolph says the transportation agency’s board signed off on a plan on Friday to begin seeking $390 million in federal grant funding to design and purchase brand new rail cars for the T system. The project is expected to take around 12 years to complete and cost around $750 million. “The beauty of this program is that we won’t have to start paying that off until we actually start getting those rail cars in,” Brandolph said. All 60-plus existing rail cars will be replaced across the entire PRT light rail system. Brandolph says this is necessary because the average age of each car in the fleet is currently 33 years old. “By the time we take acceptance of these new rail cars, they’ll be 45 years old. They’re expected last about 30 years, so we are just about approaching the end of their useful life,” Brandolph said. It will still be some time before the new cars hit the tracks and designs are far from being finalized. Until then, Brandolph says PRT will be doing the best it can to make its current cars last. “They don’t make replacement parts for the rail cars that we currently have. A lot of the parts that we have are manufactured in house, so that is basically going to have to happen more frequently over the next dozen or so years,” Brandolph said. PRT says it expects to begin testing prototype cars in the next four to five years. A design will then be finalized and the new cars will be custom built and delivered a few at a time to the company over the course of a couple years.
July 27, 2024 4:44 am
WASHINGTON (AP) — A key question is looming for Vice President Kamala Harris as she edges closer to gaining the Democratic presidential nomination: Can she turn the Biden-Harris economic record into a political advantage in a way that President Joe Biden failed to do? In some ways, her task would seem straightforward: The administration oversaw a vigorous rebound from the pandemic recession, one that shrank the U.S. unemployment rate to a half-century low of 3.4% in early 2023. Yet the cumulative jump in average prices over the past three years — roughly 20%, only partly offset by higher paychecks — has contributed to a general unease about the country’s direction.
July 27, 2024 4:42 am
KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israel’s military has ordered the evacuation of a crowded part of Gaza designated as a humanitarian zone, saying it’s planning an operation against Hamas militants in Khan Younis. Saturday’s evacuation order comes in response to rocket fire that Israel says originates from the area. It’s the second evacuation issued this week in an area designated for Palestinians fleeing other parts of Gaza. Many Palestinians have been uprooted multiple times in search of safety during Israel’s punishing air and ground campaign. The war in Gaza has killed more than 39,100 Palestinians, according to the territory’s Health Ministry.
July 27, 2024 4:40 am
California’s largest active fire has exploded in size, growing rapidly amid bone-dry fuel and threatening thousands of homes as firefighters scramble to meet the danger. The Park Fire’s intensity and rapid spread Friday evening led fire officials to make unwelcome comparisons to the monstrous Camp Fire, which burned out of control in nearby Paradise in 2018, killing 85 people and torching 11,000 homes. More than 130 structures have been destroyed by this fire so far, and thousands more remain threatened. Communities elsewhere in the U.S. West and Canada were under siege Friday, from a fast-moving blaze in rural Idaho to a new blaze that was causing evacuations in eastern Washington.
July 27, 2024 4:35 am
VERSAILLES, Pa. – A McMurray man is facing charges that include criminal homicide and assault of a law enforcement officer. The charges were filed against 40 year old Robert Kail in connection with a stabbing in Versailles that left a man dead and two other people taken to a local hospital. It happened around 8 p.m at a home along Worthington Street. First responders found a man on the porch of a duplex. He had been stabbed multiple times and was pronounced dead at the scene. The victim was later identified by the Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s Office as Vincent Bazzone, 38. A man in the adjacent home was also stabbed and a woman was assaulted. They were both taken to a local hospital. Initial investigation shows Bazzone and Kail were involved in an altercation that led up to the stabbing. Police say Kail then went into the attached home and got into an altercation with the residents, stabbing the man and assaulting the woman, before driving away. The car was found in McKeesport and Kail was arrested. While he was being taken into custody, police say he fought with officers. An officer and a police K-9 were injured in the fight. Kail was taken to a local hospital for treatment.
July 27, 2024 4:35 am
Washington County Coroner Tim Warco says a Cecil Township man died in a tractor accident Wednesday night. Warco says eighty-six-year-old Robert Cowden was the operator and sole occupant of a tractor that went over a hillside in the one-hundred block of Ciaffoni Road around seven-thirty. Warco says his death is being investigated as a medical emergency and is being handled by the Cecil Township Police Department. Meanwhile, an autopsy is pending.
July 26, 2024 7:48 am
Funeral services have been announced for Michael “Mickey” Flynn. The longtime owner of the Union Grill Restaurant in downtown Washington died Wednesday at the age of 82. He was a native of Washington and a 1959 graduate of Washington High School. He served in the U.S Navy before returning to Washington and acquiring the restaurant in 1967. He operated it for some forty years before turning it over to his daughter. Friends will be received Sunday from 2 p.m to 7 p.m. at the William G. Neal Funeral Home. A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated Monday at 10 a.m at Immaculate Conception Church with burial to follow at Washington Cemetery. (PHOTO: William G. Neal Funeral Home)
July 26, 2024 2:14 am
Republican State Lawmaker Bud Cook, who represents Washington and Greene counties, along with Democratic State Representative Jessica Benham from Allegheny County, participated in a “Save the Pharmacies” tour on Wednesday at Curtis Pharmacy in Carmichaels, in Greene County, to illustrate how her legislation will help smaller pharmacies compete and make medication more affordable for the patients they serve. “I’ve spoken with independent pharmacy owners in big cities, small towns, and everywhere in between,” said Benham. “And the story is always the same, that the pharmaceutical industry is currently set up to allow large corporations to dominate the market and drive up the cost of prescription drugs. “Given the lack of oversight on pharmacy benefit managers, I’m not surprised more than 140 Pennsylvania pharmacies have closed this year. I know the new reforms Governor Shapiro signed into law last week will help more community pharmacies stay in business, and I’m so proud we were able to come together in a bipartisan fashion to get this done.” “Convenient access to affordable prescription drugs is absolutely vital to the health and well-being of our citizens, and we cannot achieve that mission without independent pharmacies like those represented here today,” Cook said. “By reforming the way Pharmacy Benefit Management (PBM) operates, we can better protect these independent pharmacies and ensure they remain open to meet the needs of our communities.” “There is bipartisan support at both the state and federal level for PBM reform – that speaks to the significance of the issue,” said Curtis Pharmacy owner Erich Cushey. “We’ve had many local pharmacies close, and the chains are pushing us out. This new law is a great start, and we appreciate the governor and both sides of the aisle in passing the bill, but there will be more work to be done.”
July 26, 2024 5:02 am
FAYETTE COUNTY, Pa. — (WPXI) – More than 1,600 felony charges have been filed against a woman accused of stealing or misusing more than $600,000 of an elderly dementia patient’s money. Lisa Costolo, 58, is charged in the crime, according to Fayette County District Attorney Mike Aubele. “They use a scale for dementia from one to 15. One is the most severe. She was a four. She wasn’t able to care for herself and she was not cognizant of what was going on,” Aubele said, explaining the victim’s condition. According to the Pennsylvania State Police, the victim and Costolo were friends and neighbors, and the victim signed over power of attorney to Costolo in 2015. In 2020, police say Costolo told a care home she could no longer afford the monthly payments and needed to apply for Medicaid. The Medicaid evaluation led the staff at Uniontown Health and Rehab to call police. A 2021 forensic audit of the victim’s accounts from 2015 to 2020 revealed Costolo allegedly made $254,000 in ATM withdrawals, paper check withdrawals of $307,000, and $130,000 in debit card transactions, totaling $691,000. “The defendant and her family were essentially using this money as a paycheck, buying very lavish things, basically living off her income, to the point where they couldn’t afford to pay for this care home, and it was because of the Medicaid evaluation that the funds were discovered,” Aubele said. Costolo was arraigned Thursday and released on $200,000 unsecured bail.
