Abby Lee Miller returning to Lifetime’s ‘Dance Moms’ for Season 8
People.com reports former Penn Hills reality star Abby Lee Miller has confirmed she is returning to Lifetime’s “Dance Moms.” The filming for Season 8 begins at the end of January. Via her Instagram account, Miller writes “Yes, it’s official!” adding hashtags #DanceMoms, #Aldcalways #abbyleemiller, #Season8, #ALDC, #Thebestisyettocome and #aldcla. According...
Latrobe man sentenced for hospital assault
A Latrobe man will serve up to three years in prison for assaulting security guards in the behavioral health unit of Excela Heath Westmoreland Hospital in Greensburg. Christopher Daykon, 33, pleaded guilty Friday to charges of aggravated assault in connection with two incidents in September 2017. Police said Daykon, a...
2 new lawsuits target Diocese of Pittsburgh, allege sexual abuse
New lawsuits were filed Friday against the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh, claiming sexual abuse by two priests and a cover-up by diocese officials. One suit claims a priest took a student on a trip to Super Bowl X in Florida in 1976 with two other children. The boy called it...
Dwarf Alberta spruce notoriously trouble plagued
Question: I have a dwarf Alberta spruce in front of my house, next to the walkway. Last season, I noticed that some of the needles were turning brown and falling off the plant. At first it was just from the inside of the plant, but now it appears that the...
At the border, Trump moves closer to emergency declaration
McALLEN, Texas — Taking the shutdown fight to the Mexican border, President Donald Trump edged closer Thursday to declaring a national emergency in an extraordinary end run around Congress to fund his long-promised border wall. Pressure was mounting to find an escape hatch from the three-week impasse that has closed...
Feds to examine limo 3 months after wreck that killed 20
ALBANY, N.Y. — Some federal employees furloughed under the government shutdown may be recalled to start examining a limousine that crashed in rural upstate New York three months ago, killing 20 people, the National Transportation Safety Board said Thursday. An NTSB statement said with the help of the county court,...
US Postal Service fined $150,000 after heat-related death of LA mail carrier
LOS ANGELES — The United States Postal Service is facing nearly $150,000 in fines after the heat-related death of a Los Angeles mail carrier last summer. Peggy Frank, 63, was found dead in her non-air-conditioned mail truck on July 6, the same day temperatures in the Los Angeles neighborhood of...
Local Texas GOP rejects outing vice chair over his faith
FORT WORTH, Texas — Republicans in one of the most populous counties in Texas voted Thursday to keep a Muslim doctor as their party vice chairman following infighting over some members’ claims about his beliefs. The executive committee of the Tarrant County Republican Party voted 139-49 to reject the effort...
South Butler schools will be in ‘modified lockdown’ on Friday
A student’s threat against the South Butler County School District led to what district officials called a “modified lockdown” last Monday, Jan. 7. With rumors still circulating through the community, Superintendent David Foley announced in a Jan. 10 letter posted to the district’s website that the district will implement a...
Democratic lawmakers call for delay in easing sanctions on close ally of Russia’s Putin
WASHINGTON — House Democrats said Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin failed to convince them in a closed briefing Thursday that the United States should lift sanctions on a Russian aluminum company controlled by a Vladimir Putin ally, calling for more information and a delay. Treasury notified Congress last month that it...
Wisconsin man, 21, arrested in teen’s abduction, her parents’ killing
BARRON, Wis. — A 21-year-old man is jailed in the deaths of a Wisconsin couple he killed because he wanted to kidnap their teenage daughter, investigators said Friday, a day after the girl approached a stranger along a rural road saying she’d been abducted in October and held against her...
Mining could cause section of I-70 ‘to settle about 2 to 5 feet in some areas’
At some point in 2019, PennDOT officials expect parts of Interstate 70 could sink up to five feet between the West Virginia line and the Claysville interchange in Washington County due to longwall mining. “When longwall mining occurs, the interstate can be expected to settle about two to five feet...
Republicans slam Rep. Steve King for what they call racist remarks
WASHINGTON — House Republicans on Thursday criticized a fellow GOP lawmaker for making what they said were “racist” comments. Rep. Steve King of Iowa was quoted in The New York Times saying, “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?” The comment drew a denunciation...
Wuerl knew of sexual misconduct allegations against McCarrick, officials confirm
D.C. Cardinal Donald Wuerl knew of sexual misconduct allegations against ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and reported them to the Vatican in 2004 despite his public denials, church officials confirmed Thursday evening. Robert Ciolek, a former priest who reached a settlement with the church in 2005 after reporting abuse and misconduct by...
Military looking for possible wall funding
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is informally scouring military construction projects it could cut or delay in preparation for a possible national emergency declaration by President Trump, which could force the Defense Department to divert funds from those planned initiatives to building a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico, according...
DEP must take a closer look at air-quality permits for Mariner East processing facility
The processing equipment designed to handle natural gas liquids from Sunoco’s Mariner East pipelines was unlawfully issued an air-quality permit, according to the Pennsylvania Environmental Hearing Board. The board ruled on Wednesday that the state’s Department of Environmental Protection erred in assessing multiple projects at Sunoco’s Marcus Hook, Pa., facility...
Report: Renewables, natural gas will power most new electric capacity in 2019
Much of the new electric generating capacity in 2019 will come from renewables and natural gas, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said on Thursday. The agency based its projections on the latest monthly inventory of electric generators. It was unclear whether the inventory included the December startup of the Tenaska...
Tarentum water valve installation finishes early
The installation of new water valves in Tarentum has been finished early. The work, initially expected to take two weeks, was completed on Thursday, Borough Manager Michael Nestico said. Residents were warned on Jan. 3 that the work could cause brief water outages. Nine new valves were installed as part...
National Aviary opens new Andean habitat, introduces golden eagle to public
The eagle has landed, as well as the Andean cock-of-the-rock and the Capuchinbird, at the National Aviary in Pittsburgh’s North Side. The golden mantle of the golden eagle is as majestic as it is unmistakable, and easily differentiated from its brethren the bald eagle when viewed up close. The Aviary...
4 Tarentum Council seats to be up for election this year
Four seats on Tarentum Council will be up for election this year instead of the usual three. The extra race comes about because of the resignation of 3rd Ward Councilwoman Rhonda Dzugan. The six remaining council members accepted her resignation Thursday. In her resignation email Tuesday, Dzugan cited family matters...
Penn Township grant will help absorb costs of stormwater improvements
A new state grant will help Penn Township in its ongoing struggle to overcome the effects of stormwater on the storm sewers of the Harrison Park neighborhood. The Growing Greener grant of $70,000, awarded by the state Department of Environmental Protection, will go toward the design, permitting, surveying and management...
Kentucky lawmaker hopes state’s action leads to demise of Roe v. Wade
FRANKFORT — With Kentucky embroiled in three abortion-related court cases and lawmakers considering tougher restrictions almost certain to draw a legal challenge, a leading Republican senator said Thursday that he hopes the state’s actions lead to a Supreme Court review of the Roe v. Wade ruling. Anti-abortion lawmakers hope to...
Tree of Life suspect is California lawyer’s latest notorious clientVideo
Some have called Judy Clarke the “attorney for the damned.” Among her clients: Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber; Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bomber; and 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui. Now, she’s representing Robert Bowers, accused Tree of Life gunman. Clarke, a federal public defender, has defended many of the most notorious...
New lawsuit filed against Glade Run Lutheran claims another boy was sexually assaulted
The parent organization that ran a since-closed Zelienople youth home and recently settled a lawsuit filed on behalf of a teenage sexual assault victim faces a new lawsuit of a similar nature. Attorney Michael Pisanchyn Jr. of the Pittsburgh-based Pisanchyn Law Firm filed the suit this month against Glade Run...
Allderdice High stunned by fatal shooting of classmate, 16, a ‘smart, funny’ AP student
Classmates and friends of Jonathan Freeman remembered the 16-year-old Allderdice High School honors student Thursday as a smart, funny boy with what seemed like a bright future while expressing shock and disbelief that he was shot and killed in the city’s Homewood South neighborhood the night before. “The whole school...
