There are only 138,000 Amish citizens in Pennsylvania and Ohio, but the newly-formed Amish PAC is hoping they’ll swing the states for Donald Trump. The Central Pennsylvania Business Journal reports that the Virginia-based PAC has launched billboard and print-media campaigns in parts of the states with significant horse-and-buggy traffic. Brazenly, the organization is insinuating similarities between members of the devout, pacifist, hyper-modest, technology-abstaining sect and the Republican candidate, a thrice-married, self-aggrandizing reality-TV star/casino-and-hotel owner addicted to Twitter. In its first print ad, Amish PAC notes that “Trump is known for his strong work ethic” and his “business is family-run,” adding that while running for president, “He has tasked his adult children with running his business” — apparently trying to create parallels between Trump’s oft-bankrupt “luxury” brand companies and the family farms and furniture-making shops of Lancaster. The ad also notes that Trump “abstains from alcohol,” but fails to mention he plastered his name on wine and vodka brands.
Pokémon Go, the smart-phone scavenger-hunt craze, is 1-1 in terms of harm vs. benefit in its role in Pittsburgh-area auto accidents. For starters, a 15-year-old girl in Tarentum was struck by a car while crossing an intersection to “collect” the cartoon creatures — virtual game pieces that players “catch” by traveling to physical locations. She suffered collarbone and foot injuries. Her mother, Tracy Nolan, predictably blamed the new youth trend, not her daughter or herself, for the accident. Nolan told WPXI, “The Pokémon game took her across a major highway at 5 o’clock in the evening. … Parents, don’t let your kids play this game because you don’t want to go through what I went through last night.” On the other hand, WPXI also reports a man searching for Pokémon in West Deer witnessed a car veer into a creek and helped pull the driver to safety before it burst into flames.
A boater was using a sonar device to fish the bottom of the Allegheny River near Springdale when he came across an odd shape, which he reported to police. A Springdale fire-department boat team escorted a squad of volunteer divers to the location. They found a rusted, mud-caked overturned automobile, missing all but one tire. The car had been submerged under 21 feet of water long enough for freshwater mussels to cling to it. Divers did not find a body or evidence anyone died in whatever wild night put the vehicle there, Springdale’s acting police chief told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Divers attached a tow line to the front of the object and the fire department tried to haul it up, but the beam axle attached to the line broke off. As of now, authorities do not know how and when it got there.
While a relative was cleaning out a trailer in Penn Township inhabited by Joshua Lee Long, currently in the Cumberland County Prison on a string of burglary charges, she reportedly discovered a human brain in a Walmart bag beneath a porch. A coroner told The Sentinel newspaper of Carlisle that the brain is likely a stolen teaching specimen. Long, 26, allegedly told the relative that he and his roommate, Robbie Lee Zoller, wetted marijuana in the formaldehyde in which the brain is soaked to enhance the drug. (It’s not clear from the report if the brain is in a jar of the fluid or simply retains it.) Long, who faces new charges for abuse of a corpse, reportedly said he and Zoller nicknamed the organ “Freddy.” This, everyone, is your brain on drugs — and also apparently your drugs on brain.
