PITTSBURGH, PA – The CoGo’s name, a staple in the Pittsburgh area since the mid-1980s, is about to be gone forever from the 38 convenience stores. Canonsburg-based Coen Markets, which bought the chain in 2018, will convert all of them to Coen locations.
Coen announced it also is bringing its Ruff Creek Market stores under the Coen name.
Additionally, Coen Markets will convert its stores’ gas pumps to Amoco gasoline by the end of the year. Coen operates nearly 60 stores in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia.
CoGo’s was funded as Stop-N-Go in 1962 and rebranded as CoGo’s about 20 years later.
The plane took off from the airport and witnesses said it appeared to be trying to return when it crashed in a nearby field, National Transportation Safety Board spokesman Peter Knudson said.
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — Some good news for restaurants and their customers in Pennsylvania.
Governor Tom Wolf is allowing all restaurants to open to 50 percent capacity indoors. But that will help some restaurants more than others.
Local restaurants have been free to serve food and drink outdoors while following coronavirus safety regulations, but they have been limited indoors to just 25 percent of capacity. But that will change on Sept. 21.
“Step in the right direction, for sure,” Jeff Broadhurst, CEO and president of the Eat’n Park Hospitality Group, told KDKA money editor Jon Delano on Tuesday. “Great to hear that this morning. And I can tell you as an industry, we’re ready for it, and we’re prepared to serve people safely.”
The bill includes $300 a week for expanded unemployment insurance benefits through the end of the year and $257 billion for a second round of the small-business focused Paycheck Protection Program. The bill also includes $105 billion for schools and $16 billion for expansion of coronavirus testing.
Westmoreland County will hire as many as 1,800 poll workers for election day.
Elections Bureau Director JoAnn Sebastiani said recruiting has been underway for the last several weeks to have each of the county’s 307 voting precincts fully staffed on Nov. 3.
“We’re going to take as many poll workers as we can get. We’ll over schedule if we have to,” Sebastiani said.
Poll workers are responsible for overseeing all activities at each of the precincts, checking in registered voters, making sure the touch-screen computers and digital scanners are operational and are required to transport completed ballots back to the courthouse on election night.
The county is hiring judges of elections, inspectors and clerks. Judges earn $130 for the day and inspectors and clerks will be paid $95. Applications for the positions can be found on the county’s website or by calling the elections bureau at 724-830-3564.
Sebastiani said poll workers must be registered voters.
“Some might have to work out of their areas, if needed,” Sebastiani said.
Areas of need include Lower Burrell, New Kensington and Monessen as well as Rostraver and Washington townships.
The job will require training and workers will be paid to attend a 90-minute class at the courthouse prior to the election.
Officials struggled to find enough workers to man the polls for the June primary as the coronavirus pandemic surged, causing some who committed to work in the voting precincts to back out days before the election.
Sebastiani said the county wants to be sure it has enough staff on hand to handle what is expected to be a heavy turnout at the polls, even with as many as 100,000 ballots that could be submitted by mail. Presidential elections typically produce the most voters.
Turnout in Westmoreland County for the 2016 presidential election was more than 75% as more than 184,600 ballots were cast that year.
As of Aug. 31, there were 243,267 registered voters in Westmoreland County.
Rich Cholodofsky is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Rich at 724-830-6293, rcholodofsky@triblive.com or via Twitter .
The incident occurred shortly before 4 p.m. on the northbound Norfolk Southern Railroad tracks near the 3-mile marker of Route 28, according to emergency dispatchers.
The site is near the entrance to the Millvale Riverfront Park.
The victim is Francis Whalen Connelly, 31, according to the Allegheny County Medical Examiner.
Connelly was pronounced dead at the scene.
Bret Gibson is a Tribune-Review digital content producer. You can contact Bret at 724-850-1268, bgibson@triblive.com or via Twitter .
Carolyn Maloney, the Democratic chairwoman of the Oversight and Reform Committee, said the committee will start an investigation into DeJoy on the suspicion he may have lied to it under oath.
A raucous contingent of Black Lives Matter protesters harassed white diners over the weekend in Pittsburgh, hurling insults before one demonstrator stole a drink off one pair’s table.
Cellphone footage posted on Twitter shows the protesters converge on a restaurant’s outdoor dining area Saturday in the Steel City.
“F–k the white people that built the system,” one demonstrator could be heard yelling at the patrons, some of whom grabbed their belongings and walked away.
The group approached an older man and woman who stayed put, with a female protester clad in a shirt reading “Nazi Lives Don’t Matter” reaching onto their table, grabbing a drink, downing it and walking away as the patrons look on in disbelief.
Each year, some choose to ‘disappear’ and abandon their lives, jobs, homes and families. In Japan, there are companies that can help those looking to escape into thin air.
All over the world, from the US to Germany to the UK, some people decide to disappear from their own lives without a trace – leaving their homes, jobs and families in the middle of the night to start a second life, often without ever looking back.
In Japan, these people are sometimes referred to as “jouhatsu”. That’s the Japanese word for “evaporation”, but it also refers to people who vanish on purpose into thin air, and continue to conceal their whereabouts – potentially for years, even decades.
“I got fed up with human relationships. I took a small suitcase and disappeared,” says 42-year-old Sugimoto, who’s just going by his family name for this story. “I just kind of escaped.” He says that back in his small hometown, everybody knew him because of his family and their prominent local business, which Sugimoto was expected to carry on. But having that role foisted upon him caused him such distress that he abruptly left town forever and told no one where he was going.
From inescapable debt to loveless marriages, the motivations that push jouhatsu to “evaporate” can vary. Regardless of their reasons, they turn to companies that help them through the process. These operations are called “night moving” services, a nod to the secretive nature of becoming a jouhatsu. They help people who want to disappear discreetly remove themselves from their lives, and can provide lodging for them in secret whereabouts.
“Normally, the reason for moving is something positive, like entering university, getting a new job or a marriage. But there’s also sad moving – for example, like dropping out of university, losing a job or escaping from a stalker,” says Sho Hatori, who founded a night-moving company in the 90s when Japan’s economic bubble burst. At first, he thought financial ruin would be the only thing driving people to flee their troubled lives, but he soon found there were “social reasons”, too. “What we did was support people to start a second life,” he says.
Sociologist Hiroki Nakamori has been researching jouhatsu for more than a decade. He says the term ‘jouhatsu’ first started being used to describe people who decided to go missing back in the 60s. Divorce rates were (and still are) very low in Japan, so some people decided it was easier to just up and leave their spouses instead of going through elaborate, formal divorce proceedings.
“In Japan, it’s just easier to evaporate,” says Nakamori. Privacy is fiercely protected: missing people can freely withdraw money from ATMs without being flagged, and their family members can’t access security videos that might have captured their loved one on the run. “Police will not intervene unless there’s another reason – like a crime or an accident. All the family can do is pay a lot for a private detective. Or just wait. That’s all.”
For the loved ones who get left behind, the abandonment – and resultant search for their jouhatsu – can be unbearable.
More than a dozen protesters gathered outside the San Francisco home of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday following her controversial visit to a salon in the city, according to reports.
The Los Angeles Police Department tweeted that the temperature reached 121 degrees at about 1:30 p.m. at the official recording site at Pierce College in the San Fernando Valley. The neighborhood looked like a ghost town and was still 100 degrees at 7:30 p.m.
High temperatures in the San Fernando Valley are not unusual during the late summer months, but the Labor Day weekend heatwave has prompted the California Independent System Operator to declare a Stage 2 Emergency.
A federal judge on Saturday ordered the Trump administration to temporarily stop “winding down or altering any Census field operations.” The order applies nationwide.
Prince Harry and wife Meghan Markel faced criticism for canceling a scheduled fundraising event for injured veterans last week, shortly after signing a multiyear media production deal with Netflix just days before, worth over nine figures.
State police in Indiana County arrested a Johnstown woman for drug possession on Friday, following a traffic stop, according to a news release. Troopers say 25-year-old Kaitlyn Marie Krise was charged with possession with intent to deliver, possession of a controlled substance, and providing false identification to law enforcement following a traffic stop Friday evening in East Wheatfield Township. Authorities say on Friday, just before 7:30 p. m.
PITTSBURGH, PA — Longtime Steelers and Pitt Panthers radio announcer Bill Hillgrove has been suspended for the first two games of the season by both teams. The move comes as Hillgrove is facing DUI charges.
Police said Bill Hillgrove, 79, drove his car into two glass panes at Ferri’s Shur Save supermarket in Murrysville in June. KDKA-TV reported that Hillgrove acknowledged to police that he had “a couple of beers” before the incident.
Hillgrove was hired in 1969 as a broadcaster for the Pitt Panthers basketball team, and later became a color and lead announcer for Pitt basketball and football games. The former WTAE-TV sports director has been the radio play-by-play announcer for Steelers games since 1994.
CONEMAUGH TOWNSHIP, CAMBRIA COUNTY, Pa. (WTAJ) — Two people are dead following a late night shooting in Cambria County. This incident happened Friday along Truman boulevard in Conemaugh Township
Police arrested 27 people, mostly on charges of interfering with law enforcement or disorderly conduct after not complying with orders to clear the area where they assembled and throwing items at officers.
“Officers began to make targeted arrests and in some cases moved the crowd back and kept them out of the street,” according to a press released issued on Saturday.
One arrested protester was injured with a “bleeding abrasion” on her head, police said.
The 39th annual Pittsburgh Labor Day Parade may be canceled this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but the Allegheny-Fayette Central Labor Council, which hosts the event, is still determined to honor both Labor Day and frontline workers across the country.
In place of the parade, which ACLC president Darrin Kelly called “the largest in the country,” the organization will instead hold a “Labor Day Weekend of Service” from Friday through Monday.
Police said Andre Crawford, 29, of McKeesport; Devon Thompson, 36; and Marvin Hill Jr., 41, of Spring Hill, are all charged in connection with the death of Zykier Young.
More than two dozen people have been indicted for their alleged links to an international drug ring in Pittsburgh.
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) – More than two dozen people have been indicted for their alleged links to an international drug ring in Pittsburgh.
U.S. Attorney Scott Brady says the drug pipeline started with Mexican cartels, which sent large quantities of cocaine into the U.S. through California and Arizona. These drugs then ended up on the streets of Pittsburgh.
Operation Tripwire started 2 years ago after the postal service found cocaine hidden in a package.
“This is a major organization that was trafficking hundreds of kilograms of cocaine across the entire country and has direct ties to the Sinaloan Cartel in Mexico,” Brady said.
Investigators say the operation is one of the largest ever undertaken in western Pennsylvania.
The 27 people named in the indictment — including several from the Pittsburgh area — could face 10 years to life in prison, a fine of up to $10,000,000 or both.
