Nicole C. Brambila stories

For troops deployed oversees – especially those in Iraq and Afghanistan – getting a bottle of body wash isn’t as easy as making a quick trip to the Post Exchange. The base PX isn’t always accessible in isolated and hostile areas. Operation Reach Out by Pittsburgh-based GBU Financial Life, which...

The number of sexually transmitted diseases climbed again last year in the United States, with Pennsylvania’s rate of increase exceeding the national average. It was the fifth consecutive year that gonorrhea, chlamydia and syphilis cases went up, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s annual surveillance report. The...

The Allegheny County Health Department has released previously redacted information on victims involved in swimming incidents over the past three years. The Tribune-Review sought the information in a Right-to-Know request. The Pennsylvania Office of Open Records decision was a partial win for the newspaper, which sought basic information on 61...

Kathie Geary waited 10 months for a shingles vaccine. It was five months longer than her husband, who got the in-demand shot series through the VA. “The last time, you could go right in and they had it,” said Geary, 69, of East Deer. “Right now, it doesn’t seem like...

Initial estimates show that 16,000 Pennsylvanians registered to vote on National Voter Registration Day, which was Sept. 24. Nationwide, roughly 400,000 people registered, a number touted by organizers as unprecedented for an off year, when there is neither a presidential nor midterm election. More than 800,000 voters were registered nationally...

High demand for the shingles vaccine means Pennsylvanians wanting to protect themselves against the painful, blister-causing virus might have to wait. “The demand has been unprecedented,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and a Pittsburgh-based infectious disease physician. “We want to...

RecruitMilitary is holding a job fair for Pittsburgh-area veterans from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Oct. 3 at Heinz Field. More than 40 employers who are hiring will be at the fair. Among the organizations expected to attend Thursday’s event are the FBI, DeVry University, Catholic Cemeteries Association, Colonial Life...

An estimated 99 million Americans do not have federally compliant identification cards to fly domestically before the Oct. 1, 2020, deadline, a study by the U.S. Tourism Association has found. “We’re a year out,” said Tori Barnes, executive vice president of public affairs and policy for the association. “That means...

As more people in American cities are reducing their use of cars, Pittsburgh rates high as a place where one can live car-free. In the Metro Car-Free Index released this week by CityLab, Pittsburgh came in at No. 11 among large metro areas with over 1 million people. The report...

Pittsburgh makes a lot of lists — the best cities for its Oktoberfest, for coffee drinkers and to celebrate the Fourth of July. It even made the top three for the best Rust Belt comeback story. Yet as a retiree destination, it rarely outshines Sun Belt locales. But in a...

The history of Pittsburgh is a complex tapestry that includes August Wilson’s plays about working-class residents of the Hill District and an era’s most widely read black newspaper, with an impact that rivaled far larger African-American communities in Chicago and Harlem. Author and journalist Mark Whitaker captured the latter in...

An Allison Park man was killed in an early morning crash Friday on Interstate 79 in Butler County. According to state police, Joshua P. Travis, 22, was traveling northbound on I-79 in Muddy Creek Township when he lost control of his Dodge Ram 1500 at about 6 a.m. After over-correcting,...

A head-on collision in Sewickley Township on Saturday afternoon sent two people to the hospital, a Westmoreland County 911 dispatcher said. The crash happened shortly after 5 p.m. in front of 540 Dick Station Road. One vehicle remained on the road while the other careened into the woods. Both drivers...

A new report shows the number of uninsured people in Pennsylvania declined by more than 5 percentage points under the health care reform of the Affordable Care Act. Conducted by the Urban Institute, the research examined national uninsured rates from 2013 through 2017, using U.S. Census Bureau data. Among the...

New University of Pittsburgh research has found a correlation between public perception and police officers’ and firefighters’ job performance and that when community opinion sours, public safety officials become passive. In the era of the Black Lives movement, the implications are important for community relations, particularly for police officers, the...

Self-described Starbucks junkies, please apply. Business.org, a community of small-business advocates, is going to pay java addicts $1,000 to ditch corporate establishments for locally-owned coffee shops. The job requirements are: Must be a Starbucks fanatic; must be willing to share your experience going local and must commit for a full...

Are you a Real Ricks fan and want the T-shirt to show a little love for “Rick and Morty” on the Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim? You’re in luck, swim nerds. On Friday, the show is bringing the store, also called the Rickmobile, to East End Brewing in Pittsburgh’s Larimer neighborhood....