Record year for tornadoes, lettuce parasite found in Pennsylvania, wildfires, snakes, and more
What’s happening locally, nationally, and globally
By Christopher Flowers
The world is an interconnected web of business and political deals. Things around the world can affect you in Pittsburgh and elsewhere. Let’s take a look at what’s happening locally and globally in the Weekly Roundup. Click here for last week’s roundup.
Since the president returned to office, the Federal Transit Administration has not signed a single new Capital Investment Grants agreement. The New York Times reports that the grants, “sometimes in the billions of dollars, have funded new railroad tracks, train stations and roads rebuilt for modern bus service.”
The number of pending projects are adding up, as well as money Congress designated for that purpose: More than $7 billion is sitting there, unused.
“It’s hard to look at the last year and see anything other than a deliberate slowdown of these grants,” said Steve Davis, director of the advocacy group Transportation for America.
Additional reading:
Why is it important to vote? (Cal Poly Pomona)
The Power of Dumb (In These Times)
The science behind why Donald Trump loves the ‘poorly educated’ (Flux)
The truth about Donald Trump’s sanity (TIME Magazine)
What’s happening in…
Pittsburgh
There have been 28 confirmed tornadoes “so far this year across the National Weather Service’s Pittsburgh’s forecast area, which includes portions of Western Pennsylvania, eastern Ohio and northern West Virginia,” per the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “That’s just one tornado shy of the all-time annual record set in 2024 — and nearly triple the 30-year average of 10 per year.” There have already been 48 tornado warnings in the first seven months of 2026, breaking the record for 12 months set in 1998.
Federal officials arrested 16 Pittsburgh residents on cocaine trafficking charges, CBS News reports. “These people were violent individuals,” the FBI said on social media. “The impact they had on violence and creating fear was not street level.” The suspects are believed to have started trafficking in November 2025. “There are individuals that were arrested today that were manufacturing crack. There are individuals that were arrested today that we previously served search warrants on and were in possession of Glock switches, a trigger that was able to make deadly weapons even more deadly,” an FBI agent said during a press conference.
The Pittsburgh Winery’s original strip district location is closing in August, WTAE notes. A social media post called the closure "painful and heartbreaking for all of us" and said it was "a fate that far too many independent music venues across the country are currently contending with." Co-owner Tim Gaber told WTAE that “financial difficulties are to blame, but … to come out one more time before the venue closes Aug. 15.”
The Pittsburgh City Paper has compiled a list of “8 times yinzers out-yinzered themselves on local TV.” The link explains itself.
Pennsylvania
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection launched a program to “train HVAC workers to install energy-efficient heat pumps and encourage more households to adopt systems that use less energy than older units,” reports TCD, an environmental-themed publication. “That can mean lower utility bills, especially for households replacing older, inefficient systems. Better-performing equipment can also improve comfort by maintaining more consistent indoor temperatures.”
Pennsylvania has now been linked to an outbreak of Cyclospora, per the CDC. “That means there are now nine states with related cases of the illness tied to the microscopic parasite,” WGAL reports. “The health departments across those states are reporting a combined total of more than 12,000 cases of cyclosporiasis, the majority of which are in Michigan. Federal and state health leaders are still investigating but believe iceberg lettuce from Central Mexico is the suspected source.”
A maneuver known as the “Budget Adjustment Factor,” reimbursed nursing homes below the cost of care, the Pennsylvania Capital-Star reports, adding that regulators would determine payments “depending on dollars allocated under the state budget, often at a rate that left operators shorthanded.” Over the next two years, nursing homes will receive an additional $162 million through the state formula, with a federal match of $215 million.
Realtor dot com tells the tale of a Pennsylvania family who discovered their “dream home” purchased at auction in 2020 was infested with snakes. The 6,000-square-foot, six-bedroom home sold for $460,000. “The property had sat fallow and unoccupied for more than a decade” and the snakes “appear largely unbothered by their human neighbors.” The snakes have been seen “slithering up the side of the house, slowly meandering across the front steps of the home, and running roughshod around the property.”
National
The Pentagon changed its “public-facing casualty database after abruptly revising its Iran war casualty figures last week, when it reduced the number of U.S. troops listed as killed in Operation Epic Fury from 18 to 14 and removed dozens of wounded service members from that tally,” ABC News reports. “The Defense Department now appears to be tracking casualties in its Defense Casualty Analysis System (DCAS) under a new category labeled Overseas Operations rather than Operation Epic Fury, the namesake previously used for the Iran campaign – in effect restarting its accounting of dead and wounded in the war.”
Trump’s border czar says vetting of ICE officer is under internal review after Maine shooting (the Associated Press)
Almost half in new poll can’t explain One Big Beautiful Bill Act (the Hill)
Putting South Carolina First Could Mean Less Power for Black Voters (Politico)
World
More than 320,000 people have been forced to flee their homes across France and Spain, Euro News reports, “as a series of wildfires continues to wreak havoc across parts of southern Europe.” The blaze has engulfed 162 square miles. Farmers offered assistance “to fire crews in southwestern France, providing water tanks and their knowledge of the local terrain to help emergency responders” battle the flames. “This allows firefighters to focus on the fire,” Theo Hernandez, a local wine grower, said. “It’s very strong, very virulent, it’s spreading everywhere.”
Berlin Pride attacker served less than 2 years in prison for wanting to join ISIS, prosecutors say (CBS News)
Cuban solves fuel shortage problem (the European Times)
Why are Israeli settlers on a rampage in the occupied West Bank? (Al Jazeera)
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