Julia Maruca stories, Page 13

Hempfield Area School District is a step closer to hiring an outside professional to oversee its stymied $150 million high school renovation, one of the first public steps forward since the project ground to a halt this summer. The school board this week approved advertising for possible candidates for an...

Peter O’Rourke can’t help but return to the Mt. Pleasant Glass and Ethnic Festival every year. As a longtime attendee and glass vendor at the event, O’Rourke jokes he’s “addicted” to glass. He has attended the event and showed off his trade there for all but a few of the...

The first time actress Brooke Smith’s character Catherine Martin spent time inside the ominous “Buffalo Bill” house in the 1991 thriller “The Silence of the Lambs,” she was trapped in a dingy basement well at the mercy of a deranged serial killer. This weekend, Smith ventured back into the basement...

Hempfield Township is meeting with engineering firms about the former SCI Greensburg prison property while soliciting proposals on how to best tackle the site, officials said. According to township manager Aaron Siko, a walk-through tour of the prison was held Wednesday for engineers who might be interested in submitting proposals...

Hempfield Area School District’s bus contractor is facing a shortage of substitute drivers. The district’s primary school bus contractor, First Student, is struggling to field substitutes to fill in for four regular Hempfield drivers who are out sick, according to a letter sent to parents Monday. The lack of substitutes...

A program that previously mailed free covid tests to households across the country will restart on Monday, allowing people to order another set of at-home tests for free, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. “Beginning Sept. 25, every U.S. household can again place an order to receive...

Western Pennsylvania residents have a colorful fall season ahead of them. According to a fall foliage prediction map created by smokymountains.com, a promotional site for the Smoky Mountains region, Allegheny and Westmoreland counties should begin to see slight foliage changes the week of Sept. 25, with the peak autumn colors...

Three high school marching bands will take the field at Spartan Stadium together during the Hempfield Area Band Festival this Saturday. The three ensembles — a step down in number from the annual festival’s usual total of eight to 10 bands — will combine into one “mass band” after an...

The over-the-counter decongestant medicine you reach for when suffering from a stuffy nose or clogged sinuses may not actually be giving you much relief, according to the Food and Drug Administration. But effective medications remain, though it may take an extra step to acquire them. FDA advisers voted this week...

You wouldn’t guess from their performance that the cast of “Steel Magnolias” at the Geyer Performing Arts Center come from very different places in their acting careers. Of the show’s six stars, three have never acted in a performance at the theater. For one of those three, the upcoming performance...

Western Pennsylvania doctors say the newly approved covid booster vaccine will help protect from severe impacts of the most recent variants. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration officially approved updated covid vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer on Monday. The vaccines have been tweaked to correspond to the Omicron variant XBB.1.5,...

Hempfield Area School District may consider hiring an outside professional to lead the district through its increasingly expensive high school revitalization project, board members said at a meeting Monday. The district is considering hiring an owner’s representative — someone to navigate the project as an independent fiduciary, said board member...

You don’t have to travel all the way to Germany to celebrate the autumn season. Baltzer Meyer Historical Society in Hempfield will host an Oktoberfest festival on Sept. 17, featuring beer, snacks, refreshments, and historical activities. The event runs from noon to 4 p.m. at the Historical Society at 624...

Amid ongoing nursing shortages, RNs and LPNs from other states will find it easier to begin working in Pennsylvania starting this week, as the state takes its first steps toward joining the Nurse Licensure Compact. The interstate agreement allows nurses to more easily take their licenses with them across state...

The halls of Wendover Middle School and West Hempfield Middle School in Hempfield were bustling with noise and activity Tuesday night — but not with students. Parents gathered and hurried from classroom to classroom, following the sound of the PA system’s bell as they traced their middle school students’ schedules...

A Pittsburgh man who was wanted in connection with a shooting in the West End was arrested early Tuesday morning in New York City. Richard Worley was wanted for shooting a woman in the hand and leg at Wabash Street and Sawmill Run Boulevard on Aug. 20. The woman was...

Susie Bell of Penn Township dreads this time of year. It’s not the hot weather that bothers her, but the fact that by early summer, she’s fallen into the “doughnut hole,” a colloquial term for the annual Medicare coverage gap — when the health care plan contributes far less toward...

A signed Bill Mazeroski jersey, fire department patches and a host of other items unique to Hempfield will be preserved for future generations in a time capsule as part of the township’s 250th anniversary celebration this year. The plan is to open the box 50 years from 2023, for the...

As students return to school and residents of Western Pennsylvania head inside for the fall, covid-19 cases are on the rise, local health care providers say. The increase in cases is modest compared with the past three years of larger pandemic waves, but it’s still representative of a seasonal uptick...

(Editor’s note: To mark Westmoreland County’s 250th birthday this year, we’ve come up with a list of 250 things — 10 things in 25 communities — that we consider to be important to the makeup of our area. This series will appear each week through December. If you have a...

If you’re in a rush to schedule a dentist appointment in Western Pennsylvania, you might be out of luck. Covid-era retirements and departures from the industry, combined with inflation and a backlog of patients who couldn’t make it to the dentist during the early months of the pandemic, have combined...

A newly approved vaccine for respiratory syncytial virus, better known as RSV, will give pregnant moms a chance to protect their babies from wheezing, coughing and other more serious symptoms that can land infants in the hospital. Pfizer Inc.’s Abrysvo is the first vaccine for use during pregnancy that works...

Following the approval of new district policies governing library resource materials, Hempfield Area School District posted an expansive list of books being considered for purchase at each of its libraries online Saturday. The books, ranging from elementary school books about animals to National Book Award-winning novels, will be listed online...

Living close to fracking sites can be linked to a host of adverse health effects, according to a three-year-long environmental study released by the University of Pittsburgh and the Pennsylvania Department of Health. For many environmental advocates, the news comes as no surprise. The PA Health and Environment studies, presented...

Among the trees of a national forest park near Frankfurt, Germany, survey lines, pin flags and neatly aligned squares of excavation dotted the ground in precise rows. With ground-penetrating radar, metal detectors, mesh and a host of other tools, a team of undergraduate students and teaching assistants, led by faculty...