Delmont VFD Chief Don Cline said a female driver on Route 66 hit a pick-up truck, jumped the guardrail at the Greensburg Street intersection and crashed through the front of Edwards Family Chiropractic, which shares a small shopping plaza with Fox’s Pizza.
Acting as the county’s salary board, Republican commissioners Sean Kertes and Doug Chew, along with Republican Controller Jeff Balzer, approved the financial package for the auditors. It’s a move Balzer said was needed to retain a quality staff and was recommended by the county’s human resources department.
Gina Cerilli, a second-term Democrat, claimed Balzer threatened to shutter his auditing department and hire outside staff to complete those mandated functions should the proposed raises be rejected.
Balzer denied that a threat was made but conceded that during a private meeting last week he suggested that the hiring of an outside firm to perform the county’s routine auditing would be costly.
“It was a talking point and I don’t have the authority to do that,” Balzer said. “Once again, she’s exposed her inexperience in government and claims she knows everything.”
Kertes and Chew, first-term Republicans, supported the raises and said they were cheaper than hiring private auditors.
It’s 15 minutes past noon on a sunny October weekday — typically a bustling time for the food court at Fifth Avenue Place, Downtown.
But with the pandemic still raging and much of the city’s office staff working from home, the lunch counters are dark — and it’s eerily quiet.
Instead of the chattering din of a crowd, the only sound that can be heard is the whirring of the escalators rotating in a ghostly, endless loop. A sign declaring “Line Starts Here” at the end of a retractable rope at the shuttered Rosso Pizzeria stands as a mocking reminder of normal times.
Just outside, despite the unusually warm weather, the sidewalks are sparsely peppered with pedestrians.
Let’s talk: High office vacancies forcing landlords to wheel and deal, report finds
Across the street, there are no lines at McDonald’s, while the swanky Eddie Merlot’s restaurant is closed except for takeout until dinnertime. Down the street at the Sly Fox Taphouse, just two outdoor tables are occupied. There are no customers inside.
During these unsettling times, parking garages sit nearly empty, and many restaurants and businesses that rely on the regular swarm of office workers into town have been forced to close, at least temporarily.
Amid a fall surge in COVID-19 cases and with the governor’s mandate to work remotely still in force, the scene is unlikely to change any time soon.
“Closed until further notice” sign posted in a store window in the deserted Fifth Avenue Place on Thursday, Oct. 29, 2020, in Downtown.(Andrew Rush/Post-Gazette)
One of Pittsburgh’s signature skyscrapers, Fifth Avenue Place is the headquarters for health care giant Highmark Health, which occupies 26 floors in the now largely empty 31-story building.
“We continue to plan for a safe, phased and gradual return to work for our non-clinical employees after Jan. 1, subject to re-evaluation … as we draw closer to that date,” spokeswoman Janice Maszle said recently in an email. “The health and safety of our employees remain paramount.”
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) – With restaurants and bars operating at a lower capacity because of the pandemic, not as much food and garbage is going into dumpsters. Without their usual food sources, pest control experts say the rodents are going into the suburbs to find food.
Pest control expert Dan Martin says 2020 has been busy for his pest control company, Budget Pest Control in Ross Township. He says people who live in the suburbs are calling him because they’re seeing rats and mice in their yards or basements, many for the first time
While nearly 50,000 mail-in ballots from Westmoreland voters have been returned to the county’s Election Bureau, a number of residents have not received either the mail-in or absentee ballot they requested.
• If you have applied prior to the deadline of 5 p.m. Tuesday, come to the Election Bureau in Greensburg where the original ballot will be voided and a new ballot will be issued. Ballots can be completed immediately or at home and returned by mail, in-person or at a drop box.
The remains of 59 bodies have been discovered in clandestine graves in a region of central Mexico that has suffered some of the highest levels of drug violence in recent years, national authorities said on Wednesday.
Britain’s main opposition Labour party has suspended its former leader Jeremy Corbyn, in a stunning development that followed the release of a damning report by the UK’s human rights watchdog.
Arriving as a teenager, Ola Osaze was shocked by how the US treats Black LGBTQ+ migrants. Today he fights for their rights amid an international uprising
“I understand that we have issues with COVID, everybody does,” Wilson said. “We’re not the only school district. But there are many school districts who are just actually struggling with how to deal with some of these children who are not being reached.”
MCALLEN, Texas (KVEO) — Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Acting Secretary Chad F. Wolf gave a press conference in McAllen on the completion of 400 miles of border wall.
According to a release, the press conference focused on the impact of the border wall and discussed the wall’s massive impact on securing the border.
Regeneron’s anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibody cocktail has significantly reduced medical visits in ambulatory COVID-19 patients. The phase 2/3 clinical trial linked REGN-COV2 to a 57% decline in medical visits associated with COVID-19 in the 29 days after treatment.
One month ago, Regeneron shared data on the first 275 patients enrolled in the study. That update, which provided early evidence that REGN-COV2 reduces viral load, set Regeneron up to apply for FDA emergency use authorization. Now, Regeneron has shared data on an additional 525 patients to further elucidate the effect of REGN-COV2 on viral load and clinical endpoints.
The primary endpoint looked at average daily change in viral load through to Day 7 of the trial. In patients with a high viral load, REGN-COV2 drove a 0.68 log10 copies/mL greater reduction than the placebo. The effect was particularly pronounced over the first five days of the trial, over which period Regeneron linked REGN-COV2 to a tenfold reduction in viral load. A smaller, but still statistically significant, difference was seen in patients with all levels of viral load at baseline.
Philadelphia officials have said they will release the police body camera footage and the 911 tapes in connection with the officer-involved shooting of Walter Wallace Jr., an armed Black man reportedly with a mental health history, following three nights of unrest in the city and elsewhere in the country.
Officials to release police footage of the shooting of Walter Wallace Jr. after three nights of unrest in Philadelphia.
Philadelphia officials have said they will release the police body camera footage and the 911 tapes in connection with the officer-involved shooting of Walter Wallace Jr., an armed Black man reportedly with a mental health history, following three nights of unrest in the city and elsewhere in the country.
Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw pledged Wednesday that her office would release the video and audio footage “in the near future,” but will first meet with Wallace Jr.’s family “to ensure they get an opportunity to view the materials first.”
Protesters face off with police during a demonstration Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2020, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Michael Perez)
The city’s top cop announced the plan during a Wednesday afternoon press conference with Mayor Jim Kenney and other city officials to go over any updates in the case and detail the impacts of Philadelphia’s second night of riots and looting.
An estimated 1,000 people took to the streets on Tuesday night into Wednesday, ransacking big-name stores, such as Walmart and Foot Locker. During the course of the night, 81 people were arrested, 23 police officers were injured and at least 14 people were shot – including two who suffered fatal injuries, officials said.
The storm has killed at least two people and cut power to more than 2 million utility customers across the South.
As of 5 a.m. ET Thursday, Zeta’s center was near the state line in northern Alabama and Georgia, about 65 miles to the west of the Metro Atlanta area lashing parts of both states with winds gusting over 70 mph.
A heated protest erupted outside a D.C. police station for the second consecutive night as the family of a man who died after he was hit by a car while riding a scooter blames police for causing his death. Karon Hylton-Brown, 20, died Monday, three days after the crash in the Brightwood Park neighborhood.
The New York Post began running a series of exposés expanding the public scope of Biden family corruption based on material from a laptop retrieved from a Delaware repair shop. The computer, suspected of belonging to Hunter Biden, was first found by former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who then turned its contents over to the authorities and the Post.
Days later, the diligent reporters at the Post began publishing its contents. They broke the internet with earthshattering revelations and not only blew back the curtain on the Biden family’s corruption but also exposed Big Tech and mass media pushing everything in their power to prevent the “October surprise” from undermining their preferred presidential candidate’s campaign.
Here’s everything you need to know about the bombshells altering the dynamics of an already contentious race two weeks out.
Questions about the former vice president’s son’s overseas business activity had been present for years but attracted wider attention over last fall’s sham impeachment when Democrats went nuclear to protect their presidential frontrunner from close scrutiny. The Democratic witch trial ultimately backfired with Republicans emerging triumphantly from the partisan proceedings, during which important information emerged that pivoted the focus back on Biden.
In 2014, Hunter Biden was added to the board of Burisma, a notoriously corrupt Ukrainian energy firm that shelled out upwards of $50,000 a month to the vice president’s son despite his lack of any prior experience in the industry. At that time, Joe Biden was serving as the “public face” of White House policy towards Ukraine. Less than a year later, Joe Biden pressured for the firing of Ukrainian Prosecutor Viktor Shokin, who had plans to investigate Hunter Biden and the firm showering the younger Biden in excess compensation.
Joe Biden went on to brag about the role he played in Shokin’s ousting during a 2018 event with the publication Foreign Affairs. Biden said he threatened to withhold $1 billion in loans to the Ukrainian government if they did not fire the prosecutor looking into Burisma.
“I said, ‘You’re not getting the billion. I’m going to be leaving here in’ — I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,’” Biden recalled telling the Ukrainian president at the time. “Well son of a b-tch, he got fired.”
In September, Senate investigators released a long-anticipated report wrapping up a more than three-year investigation into the Biden family’s conflicts of interest while in the upper echelons of government. The Senate’s findings include an alleged $7 million bribe that Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky paid to Ukrainian officials to shut down an investigation of the firm following Hunter Biden’s hiring. The payment set off red flags in the State Department and the Justice Department, which referred it to the FBI.
U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent, the State Department’s top official in Ukraine, had previously told lawmakers he learned of Hunter Biden’s lucrative board position around the same time and raised his discomfort over the conflict of interest with the vice president’s office. Kent reported he was dismissed by White House staff.
“I raised my concerns that I had heard that Hunter Biden was on the board of a company owned by somebody that the U.S. Government had spent money trying to get tens of millions of dollars back and that could create the perception of a conflict of interest,” Kent told House members during a private deposition last year. “The message that I recall hearing back was that the vice president’s son Beau was dying of cancer and that there was no further bandwidth to deal with family-related issues at that time… That was the end of that conversation.”
Since jumping into the presidential race last year, former Vice President Biden has vehemently denied ever discussing his son’s overseas business ventures with his son, “or with anyone else,” and even fat-shamed an Iowa voter pressing him on the issue during a December town hall.
Less than three weeks before the general election 10 months later, the New York Post dropped its first bombshell report on Oct. 14 revealing emails that contradict Joe Biden’s repeated denials of discussing his son’s business. The emails show that Hunter Biden introduced his vice president father to a Burisma senior adviser named Vadym Pozharski and the three had an in-person meeting.
“Thank you for inviting me to DC and giving me an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together,” Pozharskyi wrote in an email to Hunter.
Yet throughout the entire election, the former vice president maintained, “I don’t discuss business with my son.”
Hunter Biden’s business in Ukraine, however, only tells half the developing story of the Biden family’s apparent pay-to-play dealings.
OFAC administers a number of different sanctions programs. The sanctions can be either comprehensive or selective, using the blocking of assets and trade restrictions to accomplish foreign policy and national security goals. Links to some US Government Sanctions are below:
French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel ordered their countries back into lockdown on Wednesday, as a massive second wave of coronavirus infections threatened to overwhelm Europe before the winter.
World stock markets went into a dive in response to the news that Europe’s biggest economies were imposing nationwide restrictions almost as severe as the ones that drove the global economy this year into its deepest recession in generations.
“The virus is circulating at a speed that not even the most pessimistic forecasts had anticipated,” Macron said in a televised address. “Like all our neighbours, we are submerged by the sudden acceleration of the virus.”
“We are all in the same position: overrun by a second wave which we know will be harder, more deadly than the first,” he said. “I have decided that we need to return to the lockdown which stopped the virus.”
Under the new French measures which come into force on Friday, people will be required to stay in their homes except to buy essential goods, seek medical attention, or exercise for up to one hour a day. They will be permitted to go to work if their employer deems it impossible for them to do the job from home. Schools will stay open.
Some residents are asking why police didn’t use a stun gun. Police fatally shot Walter Wallace, who was armed with a knife. But a lot of folks are also angry that the protests turned to looting, destroying neighborhood businesses.
Police say the investigation will be swift, but believe the anger is far from over.
“Like many of us I have watched the video of this tragic incident. And it presents difficult questions that must be answered,” said Mayor Jim Kenney.
Kenny promises a swift investigation into the police-involved shooting of 27-year-old Wallace.
Police were called to the Wallace family’s Locust Street home in West Philadelphia Monday around 4 p.m. for a domestic complaint. Video shows officers backing up as Wallace advances with what is believed to be a knife in his hand.
Police say several shots were fired, hitting Wallace. Officers took him to the hospital, where he died.
The full reopening of schools in the Norwin School District has been postponed because of COVID-19 cases, Channel 11′s news exchange partners at TribLIVE reported.
For the second week in a row, the Wolf administration says it’s speaking with Westmoreland County school districts because of “substantial” community spread.
The affected cars, trucks and SUVs are equipped with a fuel pump that may stop working, which would cause warning lights and messages to display on the instrument panel and the engine to potentially run rough, according to the company.
WESTMORELAND COUNTY, Pa. (KDKA) — A local contractor is accused of taking more than $38,000 for a construction job and never completing the work.
The alleged victim in the case says contractor Frank John Pasquarelli was hired to remodel a house on Home Drive in Penn Township.
“I hired him, we started off doing a step-by-step job,” said the homeowner.
The home’s owner, whom KDKA is identifying as Jeff at his request, said he gave Pasquarelli more than $38,000 in cash and checks to do the job, a claim backed by investigators.
“He claimed this was right up his ally,” Jeff said. “He’s built homes from the ground up. … He and his crew started off fine.”
Three months after the project began during the summer of last year, things went south quickly.
“I made the mistake of trusting him,” Jeff said.
The homeowner says he traveled out of state while Pasquarelli was supposed to be working on the house. He says that did not happen, and Pasquarelli did nothing, with the home sitting incomplete for months.
Pasquarelli allegedly blamed an electrician and then he stopped answering Jeff’s calls. So Jeff called the Penn Township Police Department.
Investigators obtained Pasquarelli’s bank account via search warrant. According to court records, Pasquarelli deposited Jeff’s $18,000, plus $20,000 more, into an account that he set up in his wife’s name and started spending, including just over $1,000 for an Ocean City, Maryland trip. After the trip and some spending, the account was drained to $3.58.
When police tried to contact Pasquarelli, they couldn’t and when they finally did, he said he’d call them back. He never did.
Pasquarelli, of Monroeville, faces multiple felony counts, including home improvement fraud. This isn’t the first time he’s been brought up on these charges. Pasquarelli faces a preliminary hearing on home improvement fraud in Allegheny County.
KDKA’s attempts to contact Pasquarelli were unsuccessful.
16 Psyche is one of the most massive objects in the solar system’s main asteroid belt — and it appears to be made entirely of metal worth approximately $10,000 quadrillion.
The study marks the first ultraviolet (UV) observations of the celestial object. New data reveals the asteroid may be made entirely of iron and nickel — found in the dense cores of planets.
“We’ve seen meteorites that are mostly metal, but Psyche could be unique in that it might be an asteroid that is totally made of iron and nickel,” lead author Dr. Tracy Becker said in a statement. “Earth has a metal core, a mantle and crust. It’s possible that as a Psyche protoplanet was forming, it was struck by another object in our solar system and lost its mantle and crust.”
The massive asteroid 16 Psyche is the subject of a new study by Southwest Research Institute scientist Tracy Becker, who observed the object at ultraviolet wavelengths.MAXAR/ASU/P. RUBIN/NASA/JPL-CALTECH
A US airstrike in northwestern Syria is believed to have killed seven leaders of al Qaeda affiliates, a military official said.
The strike was conducted on Oct. 22 as the alleged terrorists were meeting near the city of Idlib, Central Command spokeswoman Maj. Beth Riordan told the Associated Press.
The seven people who were killed were not identified, but Riordan said airstrikes like this will damage the terrorist group as they attempt to attack Americans and US allies across the globe.
On Monday, Afghanistan officials said they killed a top al Qaeda propagandist who was on the FBI’s most wanted list.
LONDON (Reuters) – Hollywood star Johnny Depp will find out on Nov. 2 the outcome of his libel action against a British newspaper which labelled him a “wife beater”, a ruling which could have a lasting impact on the actor’s career.
Depp, 57, sued News Group Newspapers, publishers of the Sun, and one of its journalists, Dan Wootton, over a 2018 article which stated he had been violent towards his ex-wife, actress Amber Heard, 34, and which questioned his casting in the “Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them” movie franchise.
Both Depp and Heard gave evidence before Judge Andrew Nicol during a three-week hearing at London’s High Court, laying bare their tempestuous private lives and making allegations of serious domestic abuse, drug-taking and affairs.
Delmont VFD Chief Don Cline said a female driver on Route 66 hit a pick-up truck, jumped the guardrail at the Greensburg Street intersection and crashed through the front of Edwards Family Chiropractic, which shares a small shopping plaza with Fox’s Pizza.
While nearly 50,000 mail-in ballots from Westmoreland voters have been returned to the county’s Election Bureau, a number of residents have not received either the mail-in or absentee ballot they requested.
The remains of 59 bodies have been discovered in clandestine graves in a region of central Mexico that has suffered some of the highest levels of drug violence in recent years, national authorities said on Wednesday.
Britain’s main opposition Labour party has suspended its former leader Jeremy Corbyn, in a stunning development that followed the release of a damning report by the UK’s human rights watchdog.
“I understand that we have issues with COVID, everybody does,” Wilson said. “We’re not the only school district. But there are many school districts who are just actually struggling with how to deal with some of these children who are not being reached.”
MCALLEN, Texas (KVEO) — Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Acting Secretary Chad F. Wolf gave a press conference in McAllen on the completion of 400 miles of border wall.
Regeneron’s anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibody cocktail has significantly reduced medical visits in ambulatory COVID-19 patients. The phase 2/3 clinical trial linked REGN-COV2 to a 57% decline in medical visits associated with COVID-19 in the 29 days after treatment.
A man used a knife to kill a woman and two men at the church, according to local media reports. The mayor of Nice calls it an attack on Christianity.
Zeta made landfall in Louisiana as a Category 2 storm Wednesday before weakening to a tropical storm, with sustained winds of 60 mph as of 5 a.m. ET Thursday.
A heated protest erupted outside a D.C. police station for the second consecutive night as the family of a man who died after he was hit by a car while riding a scooter blames police for causing his death. Karon Hylton-Brown, 20, died Monday, three days after the crash in the Brightwood Park neighborhood.
The case sought to shorten the window of time that North Carolina voters had for submitting mail-in ballots from nine days to three days.
French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel ordered their countries back into lockdown on Wednesday, as a massive second wave of coronavirus infections threatened to overwhelm Europe before the winter.
The Republican incumbent and Democratic challenger plan rallies in Tampa within hours of one another with only five days remaining until Election Day.
The full reopening of schools in the Norwin School District has been postponed because of COVID-19 cases, Channel 11′s news exchange partners at TribLIVE reported.
For the second week in a row, the Wolf administration says it’s speaking with Westmoreland County school districts because of “substantial” community spread.
A car overturned and then apparently crashed into a home in Pittsburgh’s California-Kirkbride neighborhood.
The affected cars, trucks and SUVs are equipped with a fuel pump that may stop working, which would cause warning lights and messages to display on the instrument panel and the engine to potentially run rough, according to the company.
