Teghan Simonton stories, Page 14

Amber Sowers said her lifelong love of animals spurred her to start her own dog grooming and animal rescue business. “As long as I’m saving animals, that’s all I care about,” said Amber Sowers, a veterinary technician at Golden Mile Animal Clinic who plans to have a grand opening for...

PennDOT will extend expiration dates for certain products, the department announced . Commercial driver licenses and learner’s permits set to expire between March 16 and Sept. 30 will be extended. Additionally, expiration dates for Hazardous Materials Endorsements (HME) — for commercial license holders who held a valid HME with no...

The University of Pittsburgh saw a large increase in covid-19 cases last week, according to the most recent update to its covid-19 data dashboard. Since last week, the university recorded a total of 46 new cases among students — 35 of which were recorded just Friday through Sunday. There are...

Students at Peters Township High School will pivot to remote learning for at least the next four days, after discovering three possible cases of the coronavirus. Peters Township School District notified families via email that it learned of one case of covid-19 and two other cases presumed positive. “All three...

Activists and legislators are prepared to begin September with a campaign to bring awareness to food insecurity. State Rep. Jake Wheatley, D-Hill District, will introduce a resolution in the House to recognize September as “Hunger Action Month.” “The current pandemic has exacerbated food insecurity issues across our state and, according...

The public now has access to detailed datasets documenting the effects of covid-19 in Allegheny County, via the Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center (WPRDC). “We have received multiple requests for access to the data that is used to present the county’s covid-19 dashboard,” County Executive Rich Fitzgerald said in a...

Superintendent Anthony Hamlet will stay on with Pittsburgh Public Schools until June 2025, the school board voted Wednesday. In a meeting that lasted well over two hours and at times grew contentious, the majority of members spoke out in support of Hamlet. Initially hired at a salary of $210,000, Hamlet’s...

The Pittsburgh Public School Board will vote Wednesday on whether to renew the contract of Superintendent Anthony Hamlet and retain him for a four-year term. Hamlet’s contract, which began in 2016, expires June 30, 2021. If passed, his new contract will end at the end of the 2025 school year....

Some administrators in the Southmoreland School District are self-quarantining after being exposed to covid-19 — before the school year has even begun. An administrator in the district recently tested positive for the coronavirus, the superintendent confirmed to the Tribune-Review. That person has stopped visiting buildings and grounds. “In order to...

When it comes to mitigating the spread of covid-19 on campus, college administrators have been consistent: it all comes down to student behavior, they say. “We’ve been communicating our expectations all summer to students,” Pitt Dean Kenyon Bonner said during a Monday news conference. College students everywhere are being asked...

A popular bar in Pittsburgh’s Strip District was ordered to close for at least a week by the Allegheny County Health Department after officials said it failed to comply with covid-19 health restrictions. An inspection report for Lefty’s In the Strip from Friday listed several violations to county health mandates....

Chatham University in Pittsburgh was ranked second in a study of the nation’s top colleges for their use and consumption of renewable energy. The study was conducted by the environmental advocacy group PennEnvironment Research & Policy Center. The report compares local colleges and universities to other institutions across the country,...

The University of Pittsburgh will require first-year students to complete a new course on anti-Black racism. In a letter to students Wednesday that also clarified updated covid-19 procedures, Provost Ann E. Cudd said the course, which will be free of charge and count for one academic credit, is part of...

The Richard King Mellon Foundation recently allocated more than $2.5 million in grants to 12 regional colleges and universities. The grants can be used for a variety of expenses to address the covid-19 pandemic, including ensuring testing for students and staff, personal protective equipment, health care costs, enhanced virtual learning...

The Allegheny County Health Department is catching up on covid-19 hospitalization data that accumulated in the month of July. At a Wednesday news conference, Health Director Dr. Debra Bogen explained why this week, the county dashboard stopped providing daily counts of the number of past and present hospitalizations. During the...

Duquesne University hosted its freshman move-in over three days early this week. Normally a one-day affair, the university instead assigned time slots to the approximately 1,200 freshmen and transfer students to prevent crowding in the hallways. “Given the current situation, we just didn’t feel that was safe,” said Adam Wasilko,...

Kiski Area School District will start out the school year with two weeks of 100% remote instruction, followed by an optional hybrid plan. The first day of classes will be Aug. 31. The district had long planned to start out the year online, suspecting much would still be uncertain by...

Pennsylvania has increased its contact tracing staff to 1,205 people, the Department of Health announced Monday. Of that number, 955 are already working, while an additional 250 are being hired and trained through a partnership with the private firm Insight Global, according to a news release. “Pennsylvania has prioritized and...

Allegheny College has raised more than $202 million, concluding a five-year-long fundraising campaign and setting a record as the college’s largest fundraising campaign ever. The campaign, called “Our Allegheny: Our Third Century Quest,” was officially launched during the college’s bicentennial celebration in 2015 with a goal of raising $200 million....

A Braddock business owner made a Facebook post this week comparing Gov. Tom Wolf and Secretary of Health Rachel Levine to Nazis. Levine is Jewish. Robert Portogallo, owner of Portogallo Peppers N’AT, on Wednesday posted the photo of Nazis on Facebook, with Levine and Wolf’s faces superimposed. “Thursday’s lunch special...

University of Pittsburgh researchers are gathering the personal accounts of patients who have recovered from covid-19 as part of an ongoing project called Story Booth. The archive of stories will be used as a tool to promote patient-centered outcome research — a mentality that focuses attention on patient experience and...

The Shrine of the Blessed Mother, located on a South Oakland hilltop overlooking the Parkway East and Monongahela River, may soon receive historic designation, after a unanimous recommendation this week by Pittsburgh’s Planning Commission. The Shrine, created by a collection of community members in the mid-20th century, was blessed in...