Top Local and National News Stories category, Page 1384
Woodland Hills High School student found shot to death in Swissvale park
Allegheny County Police are investigating after the body of a teenage boy was found Wednesday in a Swissvale park. Woodland Hills High School revealed in a letter that the student was a junior. He has not been identified. Police said he was 16. “We are deeply saddened by the loss...
Allegheny County officials explain why thousands of ballots can’t yet be counted
More than 35,000 ballots cast in Allegheny County will not be counted until Friday at the earliest, and county officials estimate there could be thousands more provisional ballots in boxes that have yet to be opened. About 29,000 ballots cannot be opened until 5 p.m. Friday as dictated by a...
Missouri election judge worked despite covid-19 diagnosis, then died
O’FALLON, Mo. — A suburban St. Louis election official who worked at a polling place on Election Day despite a positive test for the coronavirus has now died, raising concerns for the nearly 2,000 people who voted there. St. Charles County, Missouri, spokeswoman Mary Enger said in a news release...
Judges in Michigan, Georgia dismiss Trump campaign lawsuits
WASHINGTON — Judges in Georgia and Michigan quickly dismissed Trump campaign lawsuits Thursday, undercutting a campaign legal strategy to attack the integrity of the voting process in states where the result could mean President Donald Trump’s defeat. The rulings came as Democrat Joe Biden inched closer to the 270 Electoral...
Pennsylvania sees 2,900 new coronavirus cases, highest daily increase since pandemic began
Pennsylvania’s Department of Health reported 2,900 new positive cases of coronavirus on Thursday, following a day where the state saw over 2,700 cases. There were also 47 new deaths announced. The first days of November are continuing a spike in coronavirus cases that started in October. The state has seen...
Report: Pa. liquor profits up despite pandemic challenges
The covid-19 pandemic was as big a driver of alcohol sales as Christmas in Pennsylvania, according to the latest report from the state Liquor Control Board. Allegheny County reported the top sales figures, with more that $288 million in 2019-20, according to the report. Westmoreland County ranked 9th with sales...
Allegheny County adds 189 new coronavirus cases
After adding 200 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday, Allegheny County recorded 189 new cases on Thursday. The county has seen an average of 164 new daily cases over the past seven days, while adding 1,150 new cases in that time. The new cases bring the county’s total to 16,599, according...
McKees Rocks rehab founder gets 10 years for selling heroin
David Francis struggled with drug addiction his whole life, using heroin for the first time at age 9. He served in the Navy during the Vietnam War, and held a variety of jobs, including as a commercial boat captain and semi-pro baseball player. Following several years of sobriety, in January...
Westmoreland officials deciding fate of 4K questionable ballots; 3,600 provisional ballots to be counted Friday
Westmoreland County elections officials on Thursday night continued to individually review by hand 4,000 potentially defective mail-in ballots that were set aside earlier this week. Elections Bureau Director JoAnn Sebastiani said it appears most of those ballots looked at so far have been approved for counting with only a small...
Allegheny County ballot count nears end; Westmoreland officials discussing questionable ballots
The finish is in sight. Allegheny County officials said late Wednesday that about 90% of mail ballots had been scanned and counted, with about 35,413 such ballots still needing to be tabulated out of the 348,485 returned in all. Elections staff reported having scanned 313,072 mail ballots. That brings the...
Carnegie Museum and Library complex in Oakland turns 125 years old
It was the early 1890s and Scottish-American industrialist Andrew Carnegie was already one of the richest men in the world. Anxious to do something for what he called the “toilers,” the laborers and steel workers of Pittsburgh who enabled him to amass a fortune worth over $300 billion in today’s...
Biden pushes closer to victory in race for the White House
Democrat Joe Biden was pushing closer to the 270 Electoral College votes needed to carry the White House, securing victories in the “blue wall” battlegrounds of Wisconsin and Michigan and narrowing President Donald Trump’s path. With just a handful of states still up for grabs, Trump tried to press his...
Steelers players buy dinner for Allegheny County vote counters
As the vote-counting operation in Allegheny County stepped into the national spotlight Wednesday night, some members of the local football team made sure those doing the heavy lifting were well fed. Pittsburgh Steelers players had meals – chicken, rigatoni, vegetables, rolls, pie and more – delivered from The Goose Express...
Biden has the presidency in his reach, with Pa. in the balance and Trump railing against counting votes
SCRANTON, Pa. — Joe Biden appeared to be on the cusp of winning the presidency Wednesday, even as Pennsylvania’s election results remained uncertain and President Donald Trump made increasingly desperate attempts to stop the vote count. Biden won the critical swing states of Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin, according to The...
Trump backers converge on vote centers in Michigan, Arizona
Dozens of angry supporters of President Donald Trump converged on vote-counting centers in Detroit and Phoenix as the returns went against him Wednesday in the two key states, while thousands of anti-Trump protesters demanding a complete tally of the ballots in the still-undecided election took to the streets in cities...
With narrow lead U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb declares victory over Republican challenger Sean ParnellVideo
U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb declared victory Wednesday night as incomplete results showed the Democratic incumbent take a whisker-close lead over Republican challenger Sean Parnell, with barely 700 votes separating the candidates in the hotly watched race for the 17th Congressional District. By noon Thursday, Lamb’s lead had grown to about...
Greensburg rally: ‘Count all the votes,’ speakers sayVideo
In a sea of some 60 people rallying Wednesday in front of the Westmoreland County Courthouse for counting all mail-in ballots that reach county election bureaus by Friday, Bill Wertz of Greensburg stood out. At the Voice of Westmorelan rally, a community activist organization, Wertz admitted to the crowd carrying...
The monthslong political saga that guaranteed a long vote count in Pennsylvania
Spotlight PA is an independent, non-partisan newsroom powered by The Philadelphia Inquirer in partnership with PennLive/The Patriot-News, TribLIVE/Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and WITF Public Media. Sign up for our free newsletters. HARRISBURG — It didn’t have to be this way in Pennsylvania. Yes, the state’s universal mail voting law is only a...
‘You killed my son!’ Philly releases bodycam footage and 911 calls in police killing of Walter Wallace Jr.
PHILADELPHIA — In the moments before two Philadelphia police officers fatally shot Walter Wallace Jr. outside his family’s West Philadelphia home last week, the officers repeatedly told Wallace to put down a knife he was holding, while people on the street yelled that Wallace was “mental” and screamed “no” as...
Protesters in Downtown Pittsburgh disperse, 3 from splinter group arrested
Pittsburgh police have arrested three people in connection with a protest downtown Wednesday night, according to Pittsburgh Public Safety officials. The arrests came after a small group of protesters broke off from a larger group and began overturning every garbage can they passed and knocking over traffic signs shortly before...
Oakmont’s Carrie DelRosso holds small lead over House Minority Leader Frank Dermody
A first-term Republican councilwoman from Oakmont held a small lead Friday over House Minority Leader Frank Dermody with thousands of votes yet to be counted in Allegheny and Westmoreland counties. The state’s unofficial election results on Thursday showed Carrie DelRosso’s early lead tighten to a margin of just 4 percentage...
Pennsylvania could be key in Republican legal election challenges
It is likely that Pennsylvania will remain the epicenter of Republican legal challenges to continuing election results in coming days, but whether those challenges will even matter was in doubt Wednesday evening. The state Republican Party on Tuesday filed two lawsuits in Pennsylvania challenging whether counties could follow Secretary of...
Pennsylvania’s presidential vote could be moot before it is even finished
After more than five dozen campaign visits to Pennsylvania by President Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden and an estimated $100 million in campaign and PAC spending, the final count in the Keystone State’s election could be insignificant in determining Tuesday’s national outcome. The state — with 20 Electoral College...
Editorial: Pennsylvania is more than 20 electoral votes
Late night humor is often political, frequently gleeful and generally a fluid blend of accurate and exaggerated. That’s comedy. Stephen Colbert may be the reigning king of the savage political snark, but Tuesday, he took a Twitter stab at the Keystone State that might have seemed like humor but could...
Trump sues in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, laying ground for contesting outcome
WASHINGTON — As Democrat Joe Biden inched closer to the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the White House, President Donald Trump’s campaign put into action the legal strategy the president had signaled for weeks: attacking the integrity of the voting process in states where the result could mean...
