After almost a half-century, a well-known store at a Pittsburgh mall is shutting its doors.
MONROEVILLE, PA — When Naturalizer Shoes opened in Monroeville Mall, Jimmy Carter was president and people were flocking to movie theaters to see the John Travolta disco-themed film “Saturday Night Fever.”
Much has changed since then, but Naturalizer Shoes was a constant at the mall over the years. That’s about to change, however, as the store is closing on Dec. 31.
A retirement sale sign hangs above the store’s entrance and the impending closure was noted on the retailer’s Facebook page.
“Since 1977, we have been Pittsburgh’s destination shoe store, providing excellent service and fitting. Now, 47 years later, we’ve decided to hang up our shoe horns to spend more time with friends and family.
“We would like to thank our past and present employees and especially our loyal, loving customers. The relationships and friendships that have been made over the years have been invaluable. We sincerely thank you for supporting our small business. We’ll miss you.”
The FBI offers advice on how to avoid being scammed this holiday season.
Here are some prevalent scams that people should watch out for this time of year:
Non-Delivery Scams – A buyer pays for goods or services they find online, but those items are never received.
Non-Payment Scams – Goods or services are shipped, but the seller is never paid.
Auction Fraud – Involves a seller deliberately misrepresenting the condition or quality of an item on an auction website.
Gift Card Fraud – Scammers can steal numbers and security codes from gift cards in stores and wait for them to be activated, or consumers can be asked to pay for goods or services with a pre-paid card.
In addition to these scams, people should be on the lookout for phishing, smishing, vishing, spoofing, and pharming while shopping for gifts online this holiday season.
After nearly a week of nonstop snowfall, Denver woke up Saturday to the sights and sounds of shovels and plows scraping the pavement as the slow-moving storm began to move out.
DENVER—After nearly a week of what felt like nonstop snowfall, the Denver metro area woke up Saturday to the sights and sounds of snow shovels and plows scraping the pavement as the slow-moving storm began to move out of Colorado.
The system that slowly pushed its way through the state earlier this week dumped more than 19 inches of snow in parts of Denver over the past three days, according to the National Weather Service. The southeast area of the state was the hardest hit, with more than 4 feet recorded in the San Isabel area in the past 72 hours.
Interstate travel reached a standstill after major portions of Interstate 70 and Interstate 25 were shut down due to poor conditions. Gov. Jared Polis declared a disaster emergency and activated members of the Colorado National Guard as several drivers became stranded on the Eastern Plains.
Both I-25 and I-70 have since reopened, but hundreds of miles of highways remain closed in the eastern part of the state as of Saturday morning, according to the Colorado Department of Transpiration.
The Colorado Office of Emergency Management said crews have went on a total 22 search and rescue missions on the Eastern Plains, bringing stranded drivers to safety. They said rescue and recovery efforts will continue Saturday.
Stranded drivers find comfort at Hugo church as snowstorm rages on
Road conditions around the Denver metro area are slowly improving.
Denver’s Department of Transportation and Infrastructure (DOTI) wrote, “Denver’s big plows and residential plows are out this morning,” as many roads picked up more snow and slush overnight.
In other parts of the city, fallen tree limbs and collapsed roofs have been reported.
A Denver7 viewer shared photos Saturday morning of a carport roof at the Jasmine Condominiums that collapsed from the weight of the snow. The extent of the damage is unknown.
“I heard a big boom,” said Nell Narowski, a resident at the complex.
Narowski’s black Dodge was one of eight cars under the carport when it collapsed. Her car suffered a cracked windshield, and she’s waiting to see the remainder of the damages. When Denver7 arrived on scene, the vehicles were still under the wreckage.
“I have no idea how in the heck we’re going to get it out of there,” said Narowski.
Several residents told Denver7 that the building managers said they would remove the snow from other carports as a precaution. Cleanup crews were out Saturday morning, clearing out the snow.
Bonnie Wells
Carport roof collapse in Denver.
Meanwhile, thousands of people are in the dark after the epic storm knocked down power lines and tree limbs.
Xcel Energy said there were approximately 17,600 customers without power as of Saturday morning. The utility company said crews will typically focus first on repairs that will restore power for the largest number of customers. After that, crews will move to the neighborhood level, before handling individual customer outages.
Xcel Energy said many customers will be back online Saturday night, with full restoration expected by Sunday night.
CORE Electric Cooperative said around 200 members lost service during the winter storm, with most restored in a few hours. The utility said melting snow and ice could cause further service disruptions on Saturday.
Colorado snow totals: More than 4 feet of snow recorded in parts of state
As exciting as fresh powder can be, experts say it’s important to be aware of possible danger in the coming days for those venturing into backcountry ski areas. The most significant effect in the Northern Mountains will be felt from Rocky Mountain National National Park to Berthoud Pass.
“As we start getting more snow, we see the avalanche danger increasing,” said Ethan Greene, the director of the Colorado Avalanche Information Center.
The snow is expected to diminish on the plains through this morning. A winter storm warning is in effect for the Eastern Plains and continues through early Saturday.
After Saturday’s temperature of 37 degrees, Sunday in Denver will bring sunny skies and a high of 52 degrees. Denver’s 7-day outlook shows a warmer, drier weather pattern with highs in the upper 50s to low 60s through next weekend.
Because of its prolonged nature, this storm will likely be the largest the Denver metro has seen in November in nearly 30 years. The last major November storm was a two-day event on November 13-14, 1994. Officially, 12.1 inches of snowfall stacked up at Stapleton Airport, with 16.9 inches of snow overall that month.
The Pittsburgh Steelers head to Landover, Maryland, to face a surging Washington Commanders team.
LANDOVER, Md. — The Pittsburgh Steelers will face a 7-2 Washington Commanders team in what should be a hard-fought matchup. This commences the Steelers’ brutal second-half schedule, but already standing at 6-2 and at the top of the AFC North, the Steelers are in a solid spot to secure a playoff spot as long as they can take care of business.
Live updates, analysis and results from the 2024 presidential race. Follow MSNBC for the latest coverage as the country votes for its next president, Donald Trump or Kamala Harris.
What to know
NBC News has projected that Donald Trump has won Pennsylvania and its crucial 19 electoral votes, a major “blue wall” loss for Kamala Harris that obstructs her path to victory.
Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump each need at least 270 electoral votes to win the presidency. Follow here for 2024 presidential election updates, results, analysis and more.
The Fox News Decision Desk has projected Donald Trump as the winner of the 2024 presidential election. He defeats Vice President Kamala Harris after winning the key battlegrounds of Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia and Wisconsin.
For many Pittsburgh Public parents, the release of a controversial plan aiming to shrink the district has done little to alleviate their concerns.
The recommendations were publicly presented Tuesday, and, if enacted, would ultimately close 14 schools and streamline the grade structures at 12 others. It would also phase out five full magnet schools and two partial magnets.
While the recommendations represent what could be a drastic change for many families, some parents said the plan did nothing to address one of the root causes of the district’s need to downsize — falling enrollment numbers.
“It really makes it hard to continue to believe in the district because we’re seeing this massive overhaul because of declining enrollment, and there’s no analysis of the cause for it,” said Laura Mullen, whose 9-year-old son is in third grade at Fulton K-5 in Highland Park, one of the schools on the chopping block.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged in a scathing speech to Congress to achieve “total victory” against Hamas and criticized American opponents of the war in Gaza as “idiots.”
PITTSBURGH — March of Dimes, the leader in the fight for the health of all moms and babies, kicked off its 54th annual March for Babies Walk on Sunday at the North Shore. Hundreds of people came together to support one another on their parenthood journies.
Sunday was John Bricker’s 50th March for Babies walk and his first in Pittsburgh. The Harrisburg native started walking for March for Babies in 1971 before he had children, but when his twin sons were born, the walk became personal.
“One [of the babies] was no problems. One had a lot of physical difficulties. He had many, many surgeries and died out of Birmingham, Alabama, at the age of three,” Bricker said. “My wife said, ‘what are you going to do about the March of Dimes?’ And I said, ‘I’m going to raise more and more money so their parents don’t go through what we went through.’”
In 50 years, Bricker has raised $900,000.
March for Babies is the largest fundraiser for the March of Dimes and the nation’s oldest charitable walk. Participants in Pittsburgh’s event raised more than $800,000 for education, training, and research so moms and babies get the best possible start.
“The United States, unfortunately, is one of the most dangerous developed nations in the world for childbirth,” said Jim Hoga, from March of Dimes. “One in 10 babies is born too soon, and two babies die every hour.”
According to March of Dimes’ annual report, which measures the state of maternal and infant health in the U.S., the nation’s pre-term birth rate is a D+ Grade, with a pre-term birth rate of 10.4%. One in 10 babies in the U.S. will be born premature, and about 700 women die each year from pregnancy-related complications — making the U.S. among the most dangerous developed nations for childbirth. Pennsylvania earned a C+ in March of Dimes’ 2023 Report Card, with a pre-term birth rate of 9.6%. The study found 15.5% of Pennsylvania residents have inadequate prenatal care, and the pre-term birth rate among Black women is 1.5 times higher than the rate among all other women. There has been no improvement in the disparity ratio for pre-term birth.
The first-place Pittsburgh Pirates open their home season Friday. They host the Baltimore Orioles. First pitch is set for 4:12 p.m. — a nod to the city’s 412 area code — at PNC Park on Pittsburgh’s North Shore. The weather forecast isn’t looking favorable. Attendance is, however.
The game is expected to be a sellout, said Pirates President Travis Williams during Tuesday’s media tour for the annual “What’s New at PNC Park” event. All fans will receive a magnetic schedule.
As of 6 p.m. Tuesday, there were a limited number of tickets available starting at $109.
Powerball is about to match a record for lottery drawings with a stretch of more than three months without a jackpot winner. It’s that string of futility that has enabled Powerball’s top prize to reach $1.23 billion for the next drawing Saturday night.
It’s that string of futility that has enabled Powerball’s top prize to reach $1.23 billion, the 8th largest in U.S. lottery history. And it’s a sign that the game is operating exactly as designed, with long odds creating a massive jackpot that entices people to drop $2 on a ticket.
It means no one should ever expect to match all six numbers and hit it rich, though it’s likely someone eventually will.
ABOUT THOSE ODDS
The last time someone won the Powerball jackpot was on New Year’s Day, when a player in Michigan hit an $842.4 million jackpot.
Pens playoff hopes stay alive with 4-1 win against Capitals
Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin carried the Pittsburgh Penguins back into contention with starring performances over the past couple of weeks.
When they were held off the scoresheet Thursday night in arguably the team’s biggest game of the season, a handful of new faces stepped up to deliver a 4-1 victory at the archrival Washington Capitals. Alex Nedjelkovic led the way with 30 saves, Ryan Shea scored his first NHL goal, Michael Bunting got his fourth since joining in a trade and Pittsburgh moved closer to a playoff spot in the Eastern Conference.
It’s not just you! Pittsburgh is above-average for residents’ “burden of seasonal allergies,” according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America.
After losing money in 2022, Pittsburgh’s Highmark Health rebounded last year.
The health insurance giant posted net income of $533 million even as it grappled with operating losses at its Pittsburgh-area hospitals.
That compares with a $346 million loss in 2022, due largely to struggling investments during a bear market, officials said Monday during a conference call on Highmark’s 2023 financial results.
Benny Safdie, from left, Cillian Murphy, Robert Downey Jr., and Josh Hartnett, winners of the award for the award for outstanding performance by a cast in a motion picture for “Oppenheimer,” pose in the press room during the 30th annual Screen Actors Guild Awards on Saturday, Feb. 24, 2024, at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)
NEW YORK (AP) — The Oscars are poised to do something on Sunday that they haven’t done in a very long time: Hand its top award to a blockbuster.
After years of favoring smaller movies like “The Shape of Water” and “Nomadland, ” the clear best-picture favorite “Oppenheimer” — with just shy of $1 billion in tickets sold — is steam rolling toward the kind of big-movie dominance the Academy Awards hasn’t seen in two decades.
You have to go back to Ben Affleck’s “Argo” (2012) to find a best-picture winner that’s grossed more than $100 million domestically. Academy voters’ tastes have instead largely favored smaller independently produced films like “Moonlight,” “Nomadland” and “CODA,” an Apple release with zero reported box office in North America. Last year, the scrappy, distinctly un-Oscar-like indie “Everything Everywhere All at Once” played the role of awards-season underdog until it became an unlikely Academy Awards heavyweight.
A majority of voters who backed President Biden in 2020 now say he is too old to serve another term effectively, a new poll found.
The recent New York Times/Siena College poll found that 61 percent of those who voted for Biden in 2020 strongly agreed or somewhat agreed that he is “just too old” to serve effectively. Among those planning on voting for him in a hypothetical general election, 59 percent still say he is too old to be an effective president.
You can’t go wrong sending roses for Valentine’s Day, but other cut flowers, even plants, score meaningful points, too.
Each February, writers and bloggers delight in offering facts and myths about the day’s origins and traditions. Many stories trace it back to ancient Turkey and Rome, with religious origins and some folk legends tossed in.
In the third century AD, a Catholic bishop named Valentine defied a ban on marriage by Roman Emperor Claudius II and continued performing ceremonies in secret. Evidently, the emperor felt that single men made better soldiers. When Claudius found out about Valentine’s defiance, he had the bishop put to death (probably by one of the single guys). Valentine was declared a saint by the church sometime later.
The ancient Romans observed Lupercalia, a pagan fertility festival held Feb. 13-15 and dedicated to the Roman god of Agriculture, Faunus. After a full day of animal sacrifices, women placed their names in an urn and had their names drawn by the bachelors. Either the couples ended up in marriage or tried their luck again the following February. In the fifth century, Pope Gelasius I banned Lupercalia for its un-Christian-like practices, and renamed Feb. 14 St. Valentine’s Day.
Who can forget the commencement of the bird-mating season in mid-February, first written about by four English authors? The most famous, Geoffrey Chaucer, wrote “Parliament of the Fowls” in honor of the engagement between England’s Richard II and Anne of Bohemia, daughter of the Roman Emperor Charles IV, in 1382. “For this was on Saint Valentine’s day, when every fowl comes there his mate to take … .”
Perhaps the oldest known surviving Valentine’s Day poem was written in 1415 by Charles, Duke of Orleans, to his wife while he was imprisoned in the Tower of London after the battle of Agincourt between the English and the French. (“I’m already wearied by love, my very sweet Valentine.”) You can see and read in person his affectionate poem in the British Library in London. Today, there are over 145 million Valentine’s Day cards exchanged each year worldwide. E-Valentines are gaining in popularity. (Sorry, they’re just not the same as handwritten cards in my book.)
You may need to keep your coat and umbrella on standby this week, but looking into the coming months, a warmer and dryer winter is potentially on the horizon.
The Pittsburgh region will see some chilly and rainy days with a slightly warmer weekend, but a climate phenomenon could mean an overall milder winter in the city, said Rich Redmond, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Moon.
Another system bringing cold air is moving south into the overnight Monday into Tuesday and will last through at least Wednesday, he said.
That front will likely bring the coldest air the Pittsburgh region has seen so far this fall, prompting a freeze warning for the area from midnight Monday through 10 a.m. Tuesday. Frost and freeze conditions could kill crops, other sensitive vegetation and possibly damage unprotected outdoor plumbing, NWS said.
It will be wise to bundle up Halloween night for trick-or-treating. Tuesday will see a high near 45 degrees, with the evening temperatures hovering around 40.
House Republicans picked Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana as their nominee for speaker on Wednesday, but it’s unclear if he can lock down the votes needed to win the gavel following Kevin McCarthy’s abrupt ouster.
As of now, Scalise, who currently serves as House majority leader, lacks the 217 votes needed to be elected speaker in a floor vote and multiple Republicans have not committed to supporting him, signaling the potential for a drawn-out fight for the gavel. It’s not yet clear when the House will hold a speaker vote.
Until a speaker is elected, the House remains effectively paralyzed following McCarthy’s removal, an unprecedented situation that has taken on new urgency amid Israel’s war against Hamas. Raising the stakes further, the longer it takes Republicans to elect a new speaker, the less time lawmakers will have to try to avert a government shutdown with a funding deadline looming in mid-November.
Scalise won out over Rep. Jim Jordan in a closed-door vote by the House GOP conference to pick their speaker nominee on Wednesday.
President Biden joked when he was asked to respond to comments from Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., that the bribery allegations against him were “worse than has been reported so far.”
President Biden responded to questions Thursday about his alleged involvement in an international bribery scandal with a simple joke.
“Where’s the money?” he quipped when asked by a reporter for his response to Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., a member of the House Oversight Committee investigating the president, who said earlier in the day the allegations are “worse than has been reported so far.”
“I’m joking. It’s a bunch of malarkey,” Biden added.
Another craft brewer has opened a tap room in Greensburg, the fifth to be selling its own beer within a mile of the Westmoreland County Courthouse. Jeremy and Jennifer Shearer opened their Stone Bridge Brewing Co. tap room at 239 E. Pittsburgh St. this week.
The House voted on Wednesday night to pass the Fiscal Responsibility Act, the bill codifying the deal between President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., to raise the debt ceiling. The final vote — 314 — 117, with Democrats providing the majority of the votes in favor — highlighted just how much the final agreement changed versus when the GOP passed its “Limit, Save, Grow Act” in April.
With just days before a June 5 deadline that would have left the U.S. unable to pay its bills, there’s been no time to spare in actually getting the deal through Congress. Tellingly, the vote reflects the fact that the deal is bipartisan in the sense that it’s gotten votes from both parties, not that it is a win for both parties equally. Likewise, it is a compromise in that only some Americans will have their lives impacted for the worse. The alternative was either a massive hole Republicans tried to cut into the social safety net with their original bill, or widespread economic chaos a default would have caused.
In all, though, it is clear that the bill could have been much worse. The Republican priorities it contains have been significantly pared back and there are a few Democratic priorities that were unexpectedly worked into the deal.
First, the deal raises the debt ceiling until Jan. 1, 2025.
The bill includes federal spending caps for the next two fiscal years.
The bill further rescinds about $28 billion in unspent Covid relief funds.
Politics aside, the bill as passed is one based on a principle that government should do the least harm possible while benefitting the most. In this case, a decision was made to only hurt some people rather than allow a debt default that would have hurt everybody. Of course, the “some” isn’t ever the wealthy, whose tax rates were never at risk of rising thanks to Republicans shielding them. Predictably, the burden falls on the poor and needy, who are expected to be grateful they get any help at all.
DeSantis takes to twitter with musk for president announcement
The Twitter launch of Ron DeSantis’s 2024 bid for the White House was struck by early tech issues with the sound repeatedly dropping out.
The Twitter Spaces event crashed several times on Wednesday evening, with Twitter owner Elon Musk saying the servers appeared to be overwhelmed by the sheer amount of people trying to listen.
Mother’s Day is a holiday honoring motherhood that is observed in different forms throughout the world. In the United States, Mother’s Day is a holiday honoring motherhood that is observed in different forms throughout the world. In the United States, Mother’s Day 2023 falls on Sunday, May 14. The American incarnation of Mother’s Day was created by Anna Jarvis in 1908 and became an official U.S. holiday in 1914. Jarvis would later denounce the holiday’s commercialization and spent the latter part of her life trying to remove it from the calendar. While dates and celebrations vary, Mother’s Day traditionally involves presenting moms with flowers, cards and other gifts.
History of Mother’s Day
Celebrations of mothers and motherhood can be traced back to the ancient Greeks and Romans, who held festivals in honor of the mother goddesses Rhea and Cybele, but the clearest modern precedent for Mother’s Day is the early Christian festival known as “Mothering Sunday.”
Once a major tradition in the United Kingdom and parts of Europe, this celebration fell on the fourth Sunday in Lent and was originally seen as a time when the faithful would return to their “mother church”—the main church in the vicinity of their home—for a special service.
Over time the Mothering Sunday tradition shifted into a more secular holiday, and children would present their mothers with flowers and other tokens of appreciation. This custom eventually faded in popularity before merging with the American Mother’s Day in the 1930s and 1940s.
The GetGo Cafe + Market gas station and convenience chain expects to have a downtown Greensburg location open by early August, taking the place of a shuttered Family Video store that was razed to make way for the new business on South Main Street, near Euclid Avenue. It’s a change in the local retail scene that represents larger shifts on the national level — as home video rentals give way to streaming services, demand is high for convenient food on the go.
