August 28, 2024 4:59 am
North Strabane Township Supervisors approved a contract to pave McDowell Lane. According to Township Manager Andrew Walz, this is a project that they have been working on for several years. The contract, awarded to Morgan Excavating, comes in at $958,931.50 and will be paid from township funds. There are amenities that will be included that include walking paths to take advantage of Canonsburg Lake as a recreational destination. Those non-traffic upgrades will be paid for by grants from the Pennsylvania Local Share Account and from the Pennsylvania Multimodal Transportation Fund. The project is expected to be completed this year. In other business, supervisors authorized a takeover agreement with Berkley Insurance, to restart construction on the public safety building. In July, the previous contractor, Spartan Construction Services, pulled out of the general contractor and plumbing agreement to construct the building. The bonding company will now acquire a new contractor. According to Walz, a plumbing contract has been finalized. There is no estimated date of completion.
August 28, 2024 4:58 am
LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Former President Donald Trump will campaign in Michigan and Wisconsin as his campaign efforts in a handful of battleground states ramp up heading into the Labor Day turn toward the fall election. His visit to Michigan will be his third in the past seven days after he visited last week for a rally outside Detroit and on Monday spoke at the National Guard Association in Detroit. The Wisconsin visit will be his first since he attended the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. Michigan and Wisconsin, along with Pennsylvania, make up a crucial set of swing states known as the “blue wall” that Trump won in 2017 but that President Joe Biden flipped on his way to the White House in 2020.
August 28, 2024 4:56 am
City officials were back to the drawing board for the proposed sale of the Crossroads Parking Garage on North Franklin Street in Washington. City leaders and representatives from the Washington School Board met Tuesday evening to figure out next steps in the ongoing proposed sale of the structure to the county. The closed door executive session netted little public progress, but Washington Mayor – JoJo Burgess says the meeting was needed to get on the same page. Burgess says they will continue to discuss options and work to figure out what is best for the city. The building was completed in 2007 for about 14 million dollars and subsidized by grants for about half that amount.
August 28, 2024 4:53 am
PITTSBURGH — Thirty-seven Pittsburgh Public Schools without air conditioning will operate on a half-day schedule on Wednesday due to high temperatures in the forecast. A spokesperson for PPS made the announcement on Monday night. Typically on days with extreme heat, students of schools without AC learn remotely. The change this week is to “address the demands of the new school year,” according to a news release. “Ensuring the health and safety of our students and staff is our top priority,” said Dr. Wayne Walters, Superintendent of Pittsburgh Public Schools. “By adjusting our schedule, we’re taking proactive steps to manage the heat and maintain a conducive learning environment that supports our students and families during the back-to-school transition.”
August 28, 2024 2:50 am
Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt met Wednesday with the staff and director of the Washington County Department of Elections to hear “firsthand about the challenges they face when running elections.” Schmidt is planning to visit the election offices of all sixty-seven Pennsylvania counties. He also planned to visit the Greene County Elections Office as well. During his visit, Schmidt stopped in the WJPA Newsroom to talk about some current election issues such as ballot curing and the redesign of mail-in ballots. The Washington County Board of Elections was recently taken to court over its decision to not allow ballot-curing in the county in the recent primary election, and last week, Judge Brandon Neuman ordered the board of elections to notify people with deficiencies on their ballot to contact them about such errors. During the primary, 259 voters had their ballots cast aside due to minor clerical issues such as lack of signature or dates. Neuman also ruled the voters will be able to cast a provisional ballot in the event of such errors. Washington County Commission Chairman Nick Sherman, also a member of the elections board, had insisted they were following the letter of the law in not allowing errors on mail-in ballots to be fixed, however, Schmidt says there is no law that specifically states ballot-curing is not allowed. He says the decision is really up to the discretion of each county. Schmidt says many counties throughout the commonwealth allow minor mistakes to be corrected and they are not breaking any laws. Schmidt also addressed the revamp of ballots. He says the state did some research to see where the most mistakes were being made and then redesigned them in hopes of ensuring the process is more easily understood. Schmidt says his trips to county elections departments are not only to learn of the local challenges faced but to hear what the directors and staff feel the state department can do to solve those challenges and to help the process go smoothly and fairly. (Photo courtesy of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania)
August 28, 2024 2:20 am
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will visit Pittsburgh next week. Biden and Harris will make a stop in the Steel City on Sept. 2, Labor Day, for Harris’ campaign, according to the White House. An exact location or time has not yet been announced.
August 27, 2024 5:16 pm
WASHINGTON (AP) — Special counsel Jack Smith has asked a federal appeals court to reinstate the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump after it was dismissed by a judge last month. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon threw out the case, one of four prosecutions of Trump, after concluding that Smith’s appointment as special counsel was unconstitutional. Smith’s team then appealed to the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The appeal is the latest salvo in a prosecution that many legal experts consider a straightforward criminal case but has been derailed by delays, months of hearings before Cannon, a Trump-appointed judge, and ultimately a dismissal order that brought the proceedings to at least a temporary halt. (Photo: AP)
August 27, 2024 10:59 am
ALLENPORT, Pa. – (WPXI) -A missing 2-year-old was found after an early morning, hours-long search in Washington County. Stockdale Fire Department on Facebook said crews were activated for the search and detail at around 12:46 a.m. A 2-year-old girl was reported missing from her home in Allenport. K-9 units, a thermal drone and extra manpower were added to the early search due to the unknown amount of time the girl was missing for, the fire department said. The K-9 team got a scent and tracked it towards the river, so water rescue units and Lifeflight were requested to assist in the search. The child was found after an extensive ground search, the fire department said. She was taken to the hospital as a precautionary measure. The fire department said the search lasted for three and a half hours and “a happy outcome was the result.”
August 27, 2024 7:59 am
WASHINGTON (AP) — Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg says senior Biden administration officials pressured Facebook to “censor” some COVID-19 content during the pandemic. He vowed that the social media giant would push back if it faced such demands again. Zuckerberg sent a letter to Rep. Jim Jordan, the Republican chair of the House Judiciary Committee. Zuckerberg alleges that the officials, including those from the White House, “repeatedly pressured” Facebook for months to take down “certain COVID-19 content including humor and satire.” In response, the White House said in a statement that it was confronted with a deadly pandemic, and the administration was encouraging “responsible actions to protect public health and safety.”
August 27, 2024 5:00 am
BOONE COUNTY, W.Va. — (WPXI) – A West Virginia boy died after getting hurt at football practice over the weekend. NBC affiliate WSAZ reports Cohen Craddock, an eighth-grader at Madison Middle School in Boone County, suffered a head injury during practice on Friday. Cohen was taken to a nearby hospital for treatment. He died Saturday. WSAZ reports that Madison Middle School and the district have received an outpouring of support from surrounding communities after Cohen’s death. “The staff, students and football team at Madison Middle School would like to express our heartfelt thanks for the outpouring of love, support, kindness and caring that has been expressed from so many across the state, region, and nation,” said Shann Elkins, the principal of Madison Middle School. “It has been overwhelming and comforting in this time of heartbreak. We would like everyone to know that Cohen was a wonderful, polite, and smart young man who was an important part of our school family.”
