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New pet emergency team lauded

Altoona’s Salvation Army Worship and Service Center has made a meaningful commitment by way of its decision to expand its already laudable work agenda. The new agenda item centers on the area’s animal population, specifically during emergency circumstances. All area emergency services should open themselves to what the local Salvation Army unit wants to do and begin a positive working relationship — a partnership — as soon as possible. Developing that relationship should be easy, and that cooperative agenda should be encouraged enthusiastically by area residents, whether or ...

Why does Pa. have a budget deadline?

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review Here we are again. July. The annual observance is upon us. No. Not Independence Day. Less celebratory, possibly just as explosive. Pennsylvania once more has seen the yearly state budget deadline — and blown past it like a reckless driver. Did anyone expect anything else? Hoped, sure, but expected? Doubtful. This is the fifth consecutive budget to miss deadline and the 15th in the past 23 years. That means the state is consistently delinquent in its obligations: to its residents, to county and local governments and to its own agencies. In 2025, the ...

America alive and looking to the future

July 4 community celebrations across America on this, the 250th anniversary of this great country’s founding, will try to project a nation unified, although in reality much skepticism about that supposed condition exists throughout the land. Still, consider this: Regardless of differing viewpoints — about politics, about businesses and industries, about schools and colleges, about the professions, and about almost anything else that’s a part of the national fabric — the one constant among them all is they’re all built upon a foundation seeking to make America as strong as ...

Vandalism costly for community

Vandalism at Hollidaysburg’s Canal Basin Park was of a deeply troubling category and scope. Unfortunately, it was of a category witnessed too often at other locales across America — over many decades of this nation’s history, not just in the year 2026. One thing is certain about the Canal Basin Park vandalism, nevertheless: It demands a community soul-searching, as well as ongoing reflection about whether there are local elements that would take great pride and pleasure in continuing to undermine everything that’s good about the county seat community. Or, was what occurred ...

Deepfake tech creates a trail of victims

Last weekend in this space we focused on the issue of “lunch shaming” — that the practice has no place in our schools. For the benefit of those unfamiliar with the topic, “lunch shaming,” which was the focus of an opinion column in the Wall Street Journal’s June 2 edition, was described in that article as “an insidious bullying tactic ‘creeping into school cafeterias across the country.’” It involves making and sharing unflattering photographs of other students eating. Julie Jargon, the Journal columnist who wrote the column, wrote that “kids are snapping and ...

Officers’ flawless work lauded

Anyone who ever has harbored the foolhardy notion of trying to smuggle an illegal substance or item into the Blair County Prison was dealt an “eye-opener” by way of the June 5 Mirror article “Warden commends work to halt smuggling.” The lesson was that, to be successful, it will take a plan much more sophisticated than the one hatched to “funnel” illegal items to an inmate who was at the Station Medical Center on Ninth Avenue in Altoona for an appointment — and that an even-more-sophisticated plan is likely to be doomed to failure, with additional criminal charges being ...