Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Cleveland-Cliffs will transform a massive warehouse in Weirton into a hub for electrical transformers that will help modernize the country’s electric grid and save jobs in an industrial town that learned months ago the last vestige of its steel industry was shutting down.

Pennsylvania’s ambition to launch a first-in-the-country industrial decarbonization program scored a $396 million grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, one of the largest among the 25 awards announced on Monday. The money will kick-start its Rise PA program, which stands for Reducing Industrial Sector Emissions in Pennsylvania, and takes on the biggest source of carbon emissions in the state, and the one that has been stubbornly increasing even as other sectors of the economy have seen emissions fall over the past two decades.

Home sellers in Pittsburgh and across the nation are double-checking their price tags. A recent Zillow study found that one in four home sellers nationwide have slashed their asking prices following the peak of this year’s spring selling season. “A growing segment of homes that aren’t competitively priced or well marketed are lingering on the market. Sellers are increasingly cutting prices to entice buyers struggling with affordability, said Skylar Olsen, chief economist at Zillow. Nationally, 24.5% of home listings received a price cut in June, the highest rate for this time of year in Zillow records, dating back to 2018.

Jesse Lawrence had five major surgeries after a car accident left him paralyzed from the waist down at 8 months old. Now a 34-year-old neurosurgeon, he has performed over 2,000 surgeries of his own.

The plan to convert Downtown’s historic Gulf Tower into apartments and an upscale hotel appears to be a step closer to reality. Rugby Realty, owner of the 44-story skyscraper, with the famous weather beacon at its top, recently paid off a $35 million mortgage on the building as the loan reached maturity. Cutting the debt on the property — Rugby replaced the $35 million mortgage with a $10 million mortgage — helps to position the building for redevelopment, attorney Jonathan Kamin said Tuesday. “This is a critical step in progressing toward the redevelopment of the property, assuming we’re able to put a larger development package together,” he said.

In Corey Comperatore’s final moment, he did what came naturally to the father of two daughters: He protected his family. With his own life. “He shielded my body from the bullet that came at us,” one daughter, Allyson Comperatore, wrote in a social media post. “He loved his family. He truly loved us enough to take a real bullet for us.” Mr. Comperatore was shot and killed Saturday at a rally for former President Donald Trump. Two other spectators were wounded: David Dutch, 57, of New Kensington, and James Copenhaver, 74, of Moon. They were in stable condition Sunday at Allegheny General Hospital on Pittsburgh’s North Side, police said.

The ghosts of Western Pennsylvania bellow in Carnegie Halls. Andrew Carnegie’s music halls in Western Pennsylvania were intended to become community hubs of art, learning and health for workers and their families. And they were magnificent. These music halls are relics of a time when the Pittsburgh metro area was the industrial capital of the country, forged in steel and at the confluence of three mighty rivers. As the U.S. steel industry collapsed in the wake of World War II — facing rising global competition and evolving economic conditions — Carnegie’s Pittsburgh-area music halls fell out of use one by one, except for the one in Oakland. Why did Andrew Carnegie build these halls? What do they tell us about Pennsylvania’s past and present? Jeremy Reynolds traces the rise and fall of Carnegie Halls in Western Pa. and Lewisburg, W.Va . — and what they will become.

Nationwide, nearly one in five Americans say student loan debt will have a major impact on how they vote in the upcoming presidential election, a June survey found. Student debt typically burdens young voters more than older ones, and those young voters represent a bloc that both candidates, President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump, are trying to win. In the spring, Mr. Biden led Trump by eight points among young Americans. His edge grew when looking at college students — 23 points — and college graduates under 30, a demographic where he had a whopping 47-point advantage. But Mr. Biden’s recent disastrous debate performance could change those voters’ minds. A post-debate New York Times/Siena College poll found that Trump now leads Mr. Biden by eight points in the 18-29 age demographic. The Post-Gazette spoke to young voters in the Pittsburgh region who indicated that higher education costs are on their minds as they cast their ballots — and they want to see nationwide reforms to ease the burden of attending college.

As real estate agents across the nation face housing inventory shortages and an imminent change in their commission pay, Pittsburgh stands out as one of the best markets for full-time agents to work. A recent report ranks Pittsburgh as the ninth-best place in the nation for full-time real estate agents, according to Clever, a St. Louis-based real estate data company. #realestate #pittsburgh #housing #realestateagent

Shortly after arriving as medical director at Philips four years ago, Hisham Elzayat faced an internal crisis that threatened one of the world’s largest makers of breathing machines. The longtime heart surgeon had pored over a spate of complaints about the company's best-selling devices, which were filled with an industrial foam capable of breaking down into tiny particles and fumes. When inhaled, the toxic material could move through the nose and sinus cavity and into the lungs, a stealth intruder that threatened incalculable harm. After meeting with a top Philips biosafety engineer who also expressed concerns, the 46-year-old doctor said he had seen enough. In June 2020, he pushed to stop all shipping of the devices from the company's factories near Pittsburgh and pressed to meet with one of the company's most powerful executives to take on what he called an unfolding emergency. "I have made my safety concerns known," he recalled in an internal complaint. But the company turned down his request to halt the deliveries and instead ratcheted up sales of its CPAPs and ventilators during the throes of the pandemic while Philips took in hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. Dr. Elzayat’s internal battle to pull the machines off the shelves is detailed in hundreds of pages of company emails, text messages and reports that have been turned over to federal prosecutors as part of a criminal investigation of the leadership of the company, according to sources with direct knowledge of the probe. The confidential documents, which have been obtained by the Post-Gazette, show for the first time the surgeon was among nearly a dozen Philips engineers and others who pushed the company to warn patients about the dangers of the foam before Philips removed millions of the devices from the market in a recall in June 2021 and to later stop the company from downplaying the risks.