SCOTT TADY

PITTSBURGH — We can start with the numbers: An 83-year-old musical legend thrilling a sold-out PPG Paints Arena crowd with 35 songs expertly paced throughout two-hours-40-minutes of nonstop fun.

But it’s the unquantifiable measures of passion and professionalism; joy and jests — a supreme songbook performed by a brilliant band — that made for a magnificent concert Tuesday from Paul McCartney.

McCartney looked like he was having a blast, as audience and artist fed off each other’s energy, throughout a show starring Beatles and Wings hits, with a few surprises and enjoyable deeper cuts sprinkled in.

The pre-show concern centered around the strength of his singing voice. Could he still sing with power?

The night’s opening selection, a revved up “Help,” which McCartney  is playing in its entirety on this tour for the first time in 50 years, didn’t instantly assuage any worries, as his voice did sound thin.

But as we’ve heard at concerts from other senior peers, like Rod Stewart, it just took a few songs for McCartney to warm up vocally, and get back to where his voice belonged. By “Drive My Car,” four songs in, any distractions about vocal flaws largely had dissipated. You couldn’t resist the urge to smile and sing along as McCartney delivered vocals with feeling, conviction and sufficient sturdiness, backed by twin guitar blazers Rusty Anderson and Brian Ray, drumming ace Abe Laboriel Jr. and slick Wix Wickens on keys, with added punch from the three-man Hot City Horns.

McCartney began on his trusty Hofner bass guitar radiating warmth on picks like The Beatles’ “Got to Get You Into My Life.”

McCartney later would showcase his southpaw strumming skills on acoustic guitar, mandolin and ukulele, that latter instrument shining in his solo on the George Harrison-penned “Something”. McCartney pointed skyward in his tribute to Harrison. McCartney also touchingly spoke about his other deceased Beatles mate, John Lennon, to whom he dedicated 1982’s “Here Today” and “Now And Then,” the 2023-Grammy Award nominated Beatles song that originated as a Lennon home demo.

Beatles and Wings footage from “Magical Mystery Tour,” “Let It Be,” the “Band on The Run” album cover shoot and other pivotal moments cropped up regularly on video screens.

There were tiny moments that mattered Tuesday, too, like the band adding a snippet of Henry Mancini’s “Peter Gunn Theme” amid “Coming Up,” and ending “Let Me Roll It” with a full-throttle jam on Jimi Hendrix’s “Foxey Lady.” McCartney told a story about being one of a handful of people in a club when Hendrix’s trio showed up unannounced and performed a full set of jaw-dropping greatness. Word spread quickly, as the next night a rock ‘n’ roll Who’s Who including Eric Clapton, Pete Townshend, Jeff Beck and McCartney attended to witness more Hendrix magic.

Seated at a piano, McCartney enthusiastically directed band traffic with hand gestures to ensure perfect timing to the start of “Maybe I’m Amazed.” It wasn’t vocally flawless, but sung with uplifting potency.

McCartney’s witty banter kept the entertainment non-stop. “That’s my one wardrobe change” he said after removing his vest early on.

“That’s our choreography” he later added when Laboriel did some booty shaking as part of “Dance Tonight.”

A timing issue with guitarist Anderson brought the launch of “I’ve Just Seen a Face” to an abrupt halt, and then a do-over.

“At least you know we’re playing live,” McCartney said.

McCartney musically strode down memory lane with “In Spite of All The Danger” from he, Lennon’s and Harrison’s pre-Beatles band The Quarrymen.

Expanding on a story he told on the 2010 opening night of PPG Paints Arena (then-Consol Energy Center), McCartney explained how he wrote the Beatles’ “Blackbird” as a song of support for the U.S. Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. He said the Beatles refused to play a Jacksonville, Fla. show until the show promoter agreed the audience would not be racially segregated.

In the show’s final hour, Beatles and Wings hits came with an exhilarating flurry. “Jet” lifted off with crisp and loud double barrel guitar. “Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da” allowed for an audience singalong.

“Band on The Run,” “Get Back” and McCartney back at piano for a soul-stirring “Let It Be” was a super trifecta.

The stage lights turned red, fire aggressively shot up from the stage and pyro explosions boomed and cascaded sparks as “Live and Let Die” amped up the energy.

Camera cranes flanking the stage beamed to the video screens images of fans singing along blissfully to “Hey Jude”.

The encore began with McCartney magically doing a virtual duet with Lennon, shown and heard on the video screens singing “I’ve Got a Feeling” from the Fab Four’s famed rooftop concert. McCartney said he and the band believe Lennon’s voice needed to be featured in that segment of the show.

An appropriately feisty “Helter Skelter” paved the way for the “Abbey Road” medley romp through “Golden Slumbers,” “Carry That Weight” and “The End,” building mightily to McCartney’s profound vocal line “And in the end/The love you take/Is equal to the love you make.”

A lovely night it was.

 

 

(File Photo: Source for Photo: FILE – Pennies are piled up Feb. 10, 2025, in Richardson, Texas. (AP Photo/LM Otero, File)

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Back in 1793, a penny could get you a biscuit, a candle or a piece of candy. These days, many sit in drawers or glass jars and are basically cast aside or collected as lucky keepsakes.

But their luck is about to run out.

The U.S. Mint in Philadelphia is set to strike its last circulating penny on Wednesday as the president has canceled the 1-cent coin as the cost of making them became more than their value.

President Donald Trump has ordered its demise as costs climb to nearly 4 cents per penny and the 1-cent valuation becomes somewhat obsolete.

The U.S. Mint has been making pennies in Philadelphia, the nation’s birthplace, since 1793, a year after Congress passed the Coinage Act. Today, there are billions of them in circulation, but they are rarely essential for financial transactions in the modern economy or the digital age.

“For far too long the United States has minted pennies which literally cost us more than 2 cents,” Trump wrote in an online post in February, as costs continued to climb. “This is so wasteful!”

Still, many people have a nostalgia for them, seeing them as lucky or fun to collect. And some retailers have voiced concerns in recent weeks as supplies ran low and the last production neared. They said the phase-out was abrupt and came with no guidance from the federal government on how to handle customer transactions.

Some rounded prices down to avoid shortchanging people, others pleaded with customers to bring exact change and the more creative among them gave out prizes, such as a free drink, in exchange for a pile of pennies.

“We have been advocating abolition of the penny for 30 years. But this is not the way we wanted it to go,” Jeff Lenard of the National Association of Convenience Stores said last month.

Some banks, meanwhile, began rationing supplies, a somewhat paradoxical result of the effort to address what many see as a glut of the coins. Over the last century, about half of the coins made at U.S. Mints in Philadelphia and Denver have been pennies.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Treasurer Brandon Beach were expected to be in Philadelphia on Wednesday afternoon for the final production run. The Treasury Department expects to save $56 million per year on materials by ceasing to make them.

But they still have a better production-cost-to-value ratio than the nickel, which costs nearly 14 cents to make. The diminutive dime, by comparison, costs less than 6 cents to produce and the quarter nearly 15 cents.

(File Photo: Source for Photo: FILE – The Pennsylvania State Capitol is reflected on the ground June 30, 2025, in Harrisburg, Pa. (AP Photo/Aimee Dilger, File)

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Billions of dollars for Pennsylvania’s public schools and social services could soon start flowing after months of delay, as lawmakers on Wednesday took up a roughly $50 billion spending plan to break the state’s budget impasse.

Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro was expected to sign key budget bills by the end of the day.

A key concession to help seal a deal meant Democrats agreeing to Republican demands to back off any effort to make Pennsylvania the only major fossil fuel-producing state to force power plant owners to pay for their planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions.

Democrats won’t get the amount of money that Shapiro originally sought in his initial budget proposal, but the deal — after weeks of closed-door negotiations — is expected to deliver substantial new sums to public schools and an earned income tax credit for lower earners, as Democrats had sought.

It will also bring relief that the stalemate is over.

“The win is that we’re going to, hopefully before the end of the day, have a funding plan for the commonwealth and that’s a win for everybody who’s been waiting on state resources,” said House Appropriations Committee Chairman Jordan Harris, D-Philadelphia, told reporters in a Capitol hallway Wednesday morning.

The advancing votes in the politically divided Legislature arrive weeks after counties, school districts and social service agencies are warning of mounting layoffs, borrowing costs and growing damage to the state’s safety net.

School districts, rape crisis agencies and county-run social services have gone without state aid since July 1, when the state lost some of its spending authority without a signed state budget in force.

The agreement to back off the carbon dioxide cap-and-trade program on power plants comes six years after then-Gov. Tom Wolf made joining the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative the centerpiece of his plan to fight climate change.

The plan made Pennsylvania — the nation’s second-largest natural gas producer — the only major fossil fuel-producing state to undertake a carbon cap-and-trade program. It has been held up in court and never went into effect.

It was popular with environmental groups and renewable energy advocates, but it was opposed by Republicans, fossil fuel interests and the labor unions that work on pipelines, refineries and power plants.

Under the $50.1 billion budget deal, new authorized spending would rise by about $2.5 billion, or 5%.

Practically all of the overall spending increase would go toward Medicaid and public schools. Billions in surplus cash will be required for the plan to balance, the second straight year that Pennsylvania is running a multibillion-dollar budget deficit.

(File Photo: Source for Photo: A cashier scans groceries, including produce, which is covered by the USDA Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), at a grocery store in Baltimore, Monday, Nov. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)

(AP) The Supreme Court on Tuesday extended an order blocking full SNAP payments, amid signals that the government shutdown could soon end and food aid payments resume.

The order keeps in place at least for a few more days a chaotic situation. People who depend on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to feed their families in some states have received their full monthly allocations, while others have received nothing.

The order, which is three sentences long and comes with no explanation on the court’s thinking, will expire just before midnight Thursday.

The Senate has approved a bill to end the shutdown and the House of Representatives could vote on it as early as Wednesday. Reopening the government would restart the program that helps 42 million Americans buy groceries, but it’s not clear how quickly full payments would resume.

Ruling follows path of least legal resistance

The justices chose what is effectively the path of least resistance, anticipating the federal government shutdown will end soon while avoiding any substantive legal ruling about whether lower court orders to keep full payments flowing during the shutdown are correct.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the only one of the nine justices to say she would have revived the lower court orders immediately, but didn’t otherwise explain her vote. Jackson signed the initial order temporarily freezing the payments.

The court’s action doesn’t do anything to settle uncertainty across the country.

Beneficiaries in some states have received their full monthly allocations while in others they have received nothing. Some states have issued partial payments.

How quickly SNAP benefits could reach recipients if the government reopens would vary by state. But states and advocates say that it’s easier to make full payments quickly than partial ones.

Carolyn Vega, a policy analyst at the advocacy group Share Our Strength, also said there could be some technical challenges for states that have issued partial benefits to send out the remaining amount.

An urgent need for beneficiaries

In Pennsylvania, full November benefits went out to some people on Friday. But Jim Malliard, 41, of Franklin, said he had not received anything by Monday.

Malliard is a full-time caretaker for his wife, who is blind and has had several strokes this year, and his teenage daughter, who suffered severe medical complications from surgery last year.

That stress has only been compounded by the pause in the $350 monthly SNAP payment he previously received for himself, his wife and daughter. He said he is down to $10 in his account and is relying on what’s left in the pantry — mostly rice and ramen.

“It’s kind of been a lot of late nights, making sure I had everything down to the penny to make sure I was right,” Malliard said. “To say anxiety has been my issue for the past two weeks is putting it mildly.”

The political wrangling in Washington has shocked many Americans, and some have been moved to help.

“I figure that I’ve spent money on dumber stuff than trying to feed other people during a manufactured famine,” said Ashley Oxenford, a teacher who set out a “little food pantry” in her front yard this week for vulnerable neighbors in Carthage, New York.

SNAP has been the center of an intense fight in court

The Trump administration chose to cut off SNAP funding after October due to the shutdown. That decision sparked lawsuits and a string of swift and contradictory judicial rulings that deal with government power — and impact food access for about 1 in 8 Americans.

The administration went along with two rulings on Oct. 31 by judges who said the government must provide at least partial funding for SNAP. It eventually said recipients would get up to 65% of their regular benefits. But it balked last week when one of the judges said it must fund the program fully for November, even if that means digging into funds the government said need to be maintained in case of emergencies elsewhere.

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to pause that order in a ruling late Sunday.

An appeals court said Monday that full funding should resume, and that requirement was set to kick in Tuesday night before the top court extended the order blocking full SNAP payments.

Congressional talks about reopening government

The U.S. Senate on Monday passed legislation to reopen the federal government with a plan that would include replenishing SNAP funds. Speaker Mike Johnson told members of the House to return to Washington to consider the deal a small group of Senate Democrats made with Republicans.

President Donald Trump has not said whether he would sign it if it reaches his desk, but told reporters at the White House on Sunday that it “looks like we’re getting close to the shutdown ending.”

Still, the Trump administration said in a Supreme Court filing Monday that it shouldn’t be up to the courts.

“The answer to this crisis is not for federal courts to reallocate resources without lawful authority,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer said in the papers. “The only way to end this crisis — which the Executive is adamant to end — is for Congress to reopen the government.”

After Tuesday’s ruling, Attorney General Pam Bondi posted on social media: “Thank you to the Court for allowing Congress to continue its swift progress.”

The coalition of cities and nonprofit groups who challenged the SNAP pause said in a court filing Tuesday that the Department of Agriculture, which administers SNAP, is to blame for the confusion.

“The chaos was sown by USDA’s delays and intransigence,” they said, “not by the district court’s efforts to mitigate that chaos and the harm it has inflicted on families who need food.”

(File Photo of Senator John Fetterman)

Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News

(Philadelphia, PA) U.S. and Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman’s new memoir titled “Unfettered” came out yesterday. The story highlights the personal struggle that Fetterman had with his mental health. Fetterman hopes to help others in the United States of America who struggle with depression to persevere through their obstacles.

(File Photo of a Truck carrying Vegetables from a farmer’s market)

Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News

(Aliquippa, PA) A Special Food Distribution will be hosted by Healing Hunger Beaver County’s Little Free Pantry on Saturday, November 15th at House of Prayer Lutheran Church in Aliquippa from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Distribution of ready-to-eat meals, shelf-stable food items, and personal hygiene products for individuals and families in need will be in the fellowship hall of the church, which can be accessed off of 21st Street.

(File Photo of Police Siren Lights)

Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News

(Pittsburgh, PA) Police are investigating an incident in which a car was partially hanging from the parking garage at UPMC Shadyside Hospital in Pittsburgh just before noon yesterday. The vehicle hit a barrier first before it was hanging out of the garage. The cause of this crash or if there were any injuries are both unknown at this time.

 

(File Photo of the Highmark Logo)

Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News

(Pittsburgh, PA) Highmark is ready to announce the launch of (un)Hungry, a community movement that is multi-faceted dedicated to addressing the issue of food insecurity during the holiday season. A launch event will take place today at 10:45 a.m. at the Fifth Avenue Place lobby in Pittsburgh. Highmark is now expanding its commitment to addressing food security that is long-standing across its footprint of four states. An animated film will be shown for those to take action and a “CANstruction,” a creation built entirely of canned goods which will be donated to the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank, will be unveiled at this event.