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Sales tax holidays a chance to save

Editorials

Ohio and West Virginia are preparing to welcome back-to-school shoppers with sales tax holidays. And while residents of both states have become accustomed to that yearly break as they prepare to send their children back to the classrooms, Ohioans will see one big change: This year’s tax holiday has been expanded, and will run from midnight Friday through 11:59 p.m. Aug. 14. That’s two weeks for families to take advantage of tax-free purchases — made in-person or online — of eligible items up to $500. West Virginians, meanwhile, will get their sales tax holiday from midnight ...

The plot thins

Letters to the Editor

To the editor: I love good old-fashioned murder mystery. In a good police procedural, the detective always gets the killer in the end, but real life isn’t so tidy. There isn’t always a smoking gun. Sometimes, all you’ve got is a stack of circumstantial evidence — and that’s often enough. Maybe there’s no footage of the killer pulling the trigger, but the suspect — trying to be clever — releases a video proving he wasn’t near the body at the time of death. Then we learn the video was tampered with, and there’s a missing chunk of metadata. Remember: One missing ...

A letter to my grandson, please remember ...

Local Columns

Dear Layne: There is something I would like for you to know, something no one else may ever say that I believe you should hear at least once in your life. As your grandma, I feel it is my responsibility to let you in on a secret. And no, I am not trying to persuade you into changing who you are or who you will one day become. That wouldn’t be fair. Just please know this … in case no one else ever tells you. You are growing up in a completely different society than the one I grew up in, different than the ones your grandparents and great-grandparents lived through, ...

A tribute to 'Slugs' Smarrella

Letters to the Editor

To the editor: The recent passing of Joseph Smarrella is a great loss to the people he served as treasurer of United Steelworkers Local 1190 in the tri-cities of Steubenville, Weirton and Pittsburgh. He was known as “Slugs” to the community of Steelworkers where he worked for 40 years. What people might not have known was that he was a regional coordinator of a national, nonpartisan coalition of unions in 30 states. The coalition represented unions that fabricated products made from the steel mills in the Tri-State Area. The coalition included defense and aerospace workers, ...

Guest column/Minimum wage falling further behind cost of living

Local Columns

When the minimum wage does not go up, it goes down in buying power. The federal minimum wage has been stuck at $7.25 per hour since July 24, 2009. For full-time workers that amounts to $15,080 if you are paid for 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year. The minimum wage is falling further and further behind the rising cost of living. The federal minimum wage peaked in buying power way back in 1968, when it was worth $15.09 in 2025 dollars, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Inflation Calculator. Too little, too late ­— minimum wage increases are the next best thing to ...

Plenty of warm weather

Local Columns

The first day of August is coming on Friday, and that means many people have already started to look ahead to the end of summer. There are plenty of other signs all around us that even though we are just a little more than a month into astrological summer (which began June 20), there’s change coming our way. For example, football practice has started. The Steelers have been at training camp in Latrobe since Thursday, and last weekend saw the return of area high school football when the Ohio Valley Athletic Conference held its 79th annual Rudy Mumley Charity All-Star Football ...