News

In April of 2010,  29 coal miners were killed in an explosion at Massey Energy's Upper Big branch Mine in West Virginia. It was the worst U.S. coal mining disaster since 1970.

In March of this year a former Massey Energy official accused Don Blankenship, the former CEO of Massey Energy, of conspiring and plotting to hide safety violations from federal safety inspectors. And that was just the tip

of the iceberg.

Pittsburgh Arts and Lectures Executive Director Jayne Adair's reading list is as rich and varied as her schedule of speakers. She shares some powerful book ideas this week with WESA host Josh Raulerson.

RZA's talking about how sometimes you just really do need to raise a ruckus!

-Jayne Adair on The Tao Wu

Many people dream of running their own business but don't know how to get started. Business contributor Rebecca Harris continues a two-part series on the basics of starting a business. She talks with business mentor and attorney Beth Slagle about choosing the best business entity, from partnerships to sole proprietorships.

Listen to the Essential Pittsburgh interview with Jack Butler from July 2012

The voice on the other end of the telephone was husky and polite. It belonged to an octogenarian and one of the greatest defensive backs ever to play pro football, Jack Butler. It was the middle of last summer and Mr. Butler was getting a lot of attention because at the age of 84, he was finally going to be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. I was hoping he would be able to come in to our studios to be a guest on Essential Pittsburgh. Mine was but the latest in a long line of requests.

One of Pittsburgh’s most popular film festivals opened this weekend and continues through Sunday with the goal of not only entertaining viewers, but also opening the door to a better understanding of Asian cultures.  

The Silk Screen Film Festival defines Asia as stretching from Israel to Japan. Executive Director Harish Saluja said the goal of the organization and all of its events throughout the year is to build cultural bridges between Pittsburgh and that region of the world.

A trash incinerator that helped bankrupt Harrisburg has prompted two Pennsylvania senators to roll out a package of bills that would better evaluate municipal investments.

Pennsylvania Sens. Rob Teplitz (D-Dauphin County) and John Blake (D-Lackawanna County) drafted the package to give the state more oversight over municipal financing deals.

The gap between the front runners in the Pittsburgh Democratic mayoral primary has widened beyond the margin of error in the latest poll, but it is still far less than the percentage of those who are still undecided.

Pittsburgh City Councilman Bill Peduto leads former Pennsylvania Auditor General Jack Wagner 39 percent to 32 percent with a margin of error of plus or minus 4.9 percent in the latest Keystone Analytics poll.   

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is celebrating “VA Research Week,” highlighting the VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System’s Human Engineering Research Laboratories at Bakery Square, where robotic technology is being used to improve the mobility and function of people with disabilities.  

The KitchenBot can be programmed to make an entire meal; the Cueing Kitchen is a cabinet layout with appliances that gives audio prompts to those with cognitive disabilities so they can function in the kitchen.

Calling it "phony" and a boon to "corporate education," a handful of Democrats in the Pennsylvania Senate blasted Gov. Tom Corbett's proposal to implement new standardized tests that would determine students' high school graduation status based on knowledge of Common Core academic benchmarks.

Last week, Pittsburgh City Council gave preliminary approval to Councilman Ricky Burgess's bills to reform the police bureau's domestic violence response policies.  One bill pays for training under the "Maryland Domestic Violence Lethality Assessment Program," and the second bill changes the city code to reflect the new policies. A final vote comes Tuesday.

When receiving a 911 call regarding domestic violence, responders must ask the callers a series of questions to determine the risk of imminent harm to the victim. Afterward, the officers must offer to call a women's shelter to help the victim.

A dispatcher says four children and two adults have died in a house fire in eastern Pennsylvania.

Schuylkill County emergency dispatch supervisor Bill Lindenmuth says the fire broke out around 11:55 p.m. Sunday at a home in Pottsville and that firefighters later found the bodies inside. The blaze was declared under control shortly before 1 a.m.

Names and ages of the victims haven't been released.

Legislative leaders on both sides of the aisle in the state Senate are noting the time is fast approaching to make a final decision about a potential expansion of Medicaid.

For months, the Corbett administration has insisted that the door is not closed to such a move.

Senate Republican Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi - not exactly a public cheerleader for the move - said last week the governor needs to decide soon whether he'll allow hundreds of thousands more Pennsylvanians to enroll in the program.

State Sen. Matt Smith (D-Allegheny/Washington) is introducing legislation that would mandate insurance companies reimburse people with diabetes for pain management. 

Smith noted that while patients are reimbursed for other diabetes-related costs, treatment for neuropathy is not one of them.

"Patients who have it experience intense aching, tingling, burning and numbness," he said. "What's really problematic about it is if it's left unmanaged, the condition can worsen to the point where the individual will need hospitalization or further treatment by way of an operation."

Two high school students from the Pittsburgh region are finalists in the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair this week in Phoenix, where more than 1,500 high school students from more than 70 countries will present their solutions for real-life problems. Last year's fair was here in Pittsburgh.  

Rishi Mirchandani, a sophomore at Fox Chapel Area High School, has developed a new algorithm for dividing something that is desired by multiple individuals. 

Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor is hoping that a two-year concentrated effort on organ donation education will help to swell the rolls of organ and tissue donors in the state. The focus of the campaign is that it takes just 30 seconds to register to become an organ donor. 

“In the time it takes you to tie your shoes, you can change your life,” said Lt. Gov. Jim Cawley.  “You can become a hero and become an organ donor. It takes a half minute ... so do it.”

Pittsburgh Arts and Lectures executive director Jayne Adair's reading list is as rich and varied as her schedule of speakers.

Nathaniel Philbrick, Bunker Hill

The Mattress Factory, known for its installation art, has received a $100,000 grant from the Benedum Foundation to continue its educational outreach in western Pennsylvania and extend it into West Virginia.  

Felice Cleveland, the museum's director of education, said artists create educational tools called "The Space I'm In" to be used in K-12 classrooms by pairs of teachers: one art teacher paired with a teacher from another subject. Together, they develop a series of inter-disciplinary lessons to present core curriculum to their students.

According to urban legend, athletes and teams that appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated have been known to experience a streak of bad luck. So what's in the stars for Penguins Center, Sidney Crosby now that he's on the cover of SI? 

And the lasting legacy of late Pittsburgh Steelers Hall of Famer Jack Butler is definitely felt by Pittsburgh Post Gazette Sports Writer emeritus, Bob Dvorchak.

"He played in an era when the Steelers did not have a great team. But he helped define that team."

Butler passed away last weekend and was a guest on Essential Pittsburgh before being inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2012.

Perhaps you’ve heard of a gallery crawl, or even a bar crawl. Well, the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust is sponsoring a “sketch crawl” all throughout downtown Pittsburgh on Saturday. Just bring all the art supplies you need and show up at the Cultural Trust’s Education Center on 805 Liberty Avenue at 10:00 a.m. Accomplished sketch artist Rick Antolic will take participants to various locations throughout the Cultural District, helping with the sketches along the way.

Washington DC and Pittsburgh have a common trait of being build right by the water, with low lying areas and old infrastructure. When it became necessary for DC to improve its water and sewage systems - like Pittsburgh - the nation’s capital opted for a focus on traditional "gray" options. Tunnels and pipes were the main solution for Washington's sewage and storm water problems.

But George Hawkins, General Manager of DC Water has worked to convince the district and the EPA to embrace green infrastructure ideas. By reopening the EPA consent decree, DC is on track to becoming a model of sustainable infrastructure.

Gov. Tom Corbett is reluctant to pull any legislative issue from the very top of his crowded agenda.

But other legislative leaders appear more than happy to do it for him.

The governor has said he wants four things done before lawmakers leave for their summer recess: a budget, liquor privatization, a transportation funding package and an approved overhaul of the state’s two pension plans and the debt that comes with them.  

On May 15, 1892, bookkeeper, amateur photographer and bicycle enthusiast Frank Lenz set off on his bike along rail lines in Pittsburgh. He was headed east to New York City on the first leg of his journey to cycle around the world.

More than a century later, cyclists in Pittsburgh will gather Saturday morning at the Pump House in Homestead. They are not headed for New York but rather Duquesne. And the supplies they will be carrying are food donations destined for the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank.  

For years, both anglers and scientists have witnessed death and disease in the Susquehanna River’s smallmouth bass population.

The issue has gained national attention, yet two state agencies have clashed over how to handle the problem.

The state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission disagreed over whether a 100-mile stretch of river’s main stem should be officially labeled as “impaired.”

Pittsburgh's bomb squad has been busy overnight responding to three reports of suspicious devices found along city streets that turned out to be loss-prevention devices, perhaps discarded as shoplifters drove away.

The first call came in just after 11 p.m. Thursday, and two more were reported Friday morning.

The plastic devices, which are equipped to beep and which hang from retail products by a small wire, were found wrapped in foil — which, at first, made them appear more suspicious.

The annual state Supreme Court’s State of the Commonwealth Courts report finds the two biggest issues facing Pennsylvania’s court system are financial shortfalls and misperceptions about the system.