Top Local and National News Stories

An Ambridge man used his toddler as a shield from police during a standoff Tuesday, according to authorities. Manuel Antonio Turcios-Perez, 23, faces charges of endangering the welfare of children, reckless endangerment, resisting arrest, unlawful restraint and disarming a police officer in connection to the five-hour standoff that occurred in...

Four employees of the Blackburn Center in Greensburg are facing charges after, state police said, they denied entry to troopers attempting to serve an emergency child custody order. Police reported prying a door open Oct. 1 in an effort to locate the child after repeated attempts to get inside a...

Verona police are looking for a Buffalo, N.Y., woman suspected of stealing nearly $1,500 in high-end cigars. Caitlin Connelly, 40, was caught on Verona News and Cigars security footage taking six boxes of cigars by West Tampa Tobacco, a high-end cigar company based in Florida, without paying on Sept. 26,...

Hurricane Milton has made landfall along Florida’s Gulf Coast as a Category 3 storm. It has lashed the state with damaging wind, deadly storm surge and potential flooding. The cyclone had maximum sustained wind of 120 mph when it roared ashore near Siesta Key, Florida, at 8:30 p.m., the Miami-based...

Selena Ball and Michael Grisetti had been together for years. They worked for the same company, Crown Castle Inc. at Southpointe in Washington County, shared a home and had two young children. At some point between mid-2021 and April 2022, Grisetti video-recorded Ball getting out of the shower. But she...

Kyle Swan evacuated from the Tampa area Wednesday morning after official notice that his family’s Sarasota, Fla., home would be in the path of impending Hurricane Milton. “It was very worrisome,” he said. “I’ve lived here my whole life, and I don’t think I’ve ever experienced a Category 5 hurricane.”...

Allegheny County Executive Sara Innamorato proposed a 46.5% property tax hike Tuesday evening to help address a growing budget deficit. Innamorato included the 2.2-mill increase in her $3.1 billion budget proposal for 2025. It would be the county’s first property tax hike since 2011 and the largest one in recent...

Tree of Life Congregation Rabbi Jeffrey Myers made a daily call to Bob Butter for comfort and advice. Butter, a public relations giant in Pittsburgh, helped Myers handle the media onslaught after the Oct. 27, 2018, attack on Tree of Life in Squirrel Hill. “We knew we would need extra...

The portion of Black and other students of color declined in this fall’s entering class at Carnegie Mellon University, following the first recruiting cycle since the U.S. Supreme Court barred consideration of race in admissions. The share of new students who are white also slipped, but Asian student enrollment rose,...

A Pittsburgh man on Wednesday disrupted his sentencing for the 2022 road-rage killing of an off-duty Oakdale police officer by firing his lawyer, arguing with the judge and inconveniencing the victim’s relatives. Kevin McSwiggen, 42, of the city’s Greenfield section, was scheduled to be sentenced by Allegheny County Common Pleas...

An Allegheny Township man won’t be facing a possible death penalty when he goes to trial on charges of killing his ex-girlfriend at their Blawnox workplace in March. The Allegheny County District Attorney’s Office rescinded its intention to seek the death penalty against Sean Black, 43, because of opposition from...

Freeport Mayor Zack Gent is planning to step down at the end of the year due to his new, on-the-road job and what he called clashes with council over fiscal responsibility. The five members in attendance at this week’s council meeting barely reacted when Gent informed them of his surprise...

A former Pittsburgh building inspector will not go to prison after pleading guilty in federal court to accepting bribes. U.S. District Court Judge Mark Hornak on Wednesday sentenced Walter Eiseman, 59, to 18 months of probation and 90 days of home confinement. Eiseman also must pay a $1,500 fine and...

For months, Susan Shepherd fought to learn the names of the police officers who fatally shot her mentally ill son in Upper St. Clair so she could sue them. But Baldwin Borough, Bethel Park and Brentwood refused to tell her who pulled the trigger on Jan. 7 when members of...

Forty of the nation’s leading private colleges and universities, including Carnegie Mellon University, are accused in a federal class-action lawsuit of conspiring with the College Board to, in effect, overcharge students. The suit was filed Monday in Chicago before the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. The...

Storm and Baby are reunited. The runaway sheep from Plum spent three weeks on the lam, creating social media buzz with sightings from Lower Burrell to Tarentum. “It’s been a nightmare,” owner Rick Borowski said. Storm, a 180-pound black-and-white male sheep, was captured Monday in Brackenridge Memorial Park with help...

Michelle Majocha figures the odds are pretty good that more than doubling the cost of the Mega Millions lottery ticket from $2 to $5 next April won’t help sales of a lottery game that offers a jackpot of millions. With the news this week the consortium directing the 45-state Mega...

New Kensington’s only volunteer firefighter to die in the line of duty has been gone longer than he lived, but he has not been forgotten. Eric Lee Mangieri was 25 years old when he became trapped in a burning house on Freeport Road on Aug. 7, 1995. A memorial to...

NEW YORK — Nearly a decade into the Trump Era of politics, less than a month from his third Election Day as the Republican candidate for president and there is still remarkably little consensus within the media about how best to cover Donald Trump. Are reporters “sanewashing” Trump, or are...

Here are some of the latest news items from this morning: Wednesday, Oct. 9: Ambridge standoff involving 2-year-old ends peacefully A roughly five-hour standoff in Ambridge on Tuesday afternoon ended peacefully, according to authorities. A large police presence was seen in the area of 6th Street in Ambridge at around...

Only having cash to pay for a ticket to a school-sponsored activity would no longer stop anyone from gaining entry under legislation that passed the state Senate on Monday. The bill, sponsored by Republican Sen. Cris Dush, would require schools to accept cash as an optional means of buying a...

A Jeannette police officer is facing 18 misdemeanor charges because, investigators say, he was falsifying reports related to traffic stops, according to court papers. Matthew S. Painter, 40, of Penn Township was charged Tuesday with tampering with records. He is on paid administrative leave, according to city Manager Ethan Keedy....

Nearly 200 spectators packed a Pittsburgh courtroom Tuesday as the Pennsylvania Supreme Court heard arguments on whether the mandatory sentence of life without parole for second-degree murder violates the state constitution. The punishment, often called death by incarceration by opponents, applies to nearly 1,100 people in Pennsylvania currently serving time...