Local and state officials have pulled out all the stops to ensure COVID-19 does not prevent West Virginians from voting in the Nov. 3 election. In addition to normal in-person options to cast ballots, absentee voting by mail is available. But, if you are not a registered voter, you will not be ...

Earlier this year, hospitals in a few larger cities were flooded with COVID-19 patients. Health care professionals were coming down with the disease. Sick people were being treated in tents. But that was elsewhere, right? Yes, more than 200,000 have died across the country ... but the numbers ...

Notorious RBG, as some admirers referred to her, is gone. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died Friday, at 87, of cancer. She was an icon to some Americans — a scourge to others. Already, the battle over a successor has become heated, with ideology at the heart of the ...

UP: To all the good the Sisters Health Foundation has done for Mid-Ohio Valley residents over the years. Most recently, the group gave a $5,000 grant to the Wirt County Recovery Team, which will give the team access to dental and vision insurance. “There are a lot of our clients who are ...

It’s true for entrepreneurs and for teachers: See a need; fill it. In the case of Williamstown Elementary School third-grade teacher Jamie Deem, the need was for books. The new school’s book room needed restocking, and Deem was focused on finding books children would want to read. So she ...

At the beginning of this month, the sign-up period opened for the West Virginia Forest Stewardship Program. It is meant to help non-industrial landowners in all counties plan and manage the wild and wonderful on their land. Under the program, a landowner hires an approved consulting forester ...

It may be a different kind of school year, but some concerns remain. One is the safety of students — both those on buses and those walking or riding their bikes to school — as drivers adjust after six months of having no such worries. “Our top priority is the safety of students and ...

Remember just a few months ago when some disease analysts who had been predicting COVID-19 would kill 200,000 Americans were being ridiculed? For a time, it appeared the pandemic would claim fewer than 100,000 lives in our country. But on Sunday, the tally topped 194,000. It appears early ...

Nearly two months after former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder was arrested by federal agents charging him with participating in a $60 million bribery scheme, a key question remains unanswered, officially, at least. Federal prosecutors still have not identified the “Company A” their ...

UP: To Parkersburg City Council’s Urban Renewal Authority for passing a budget and timeline for an affordable housing initiative using modular homes, which is nearly $100,000 less than originally projected. Decisions made in July appear to be bearing fruit — and saving taxpayers’ money on ...

Pulling the plug on the experiment was the only realistic course open to West Virginia University officials this week. Had they not done so, the consequences might have been disastrous. Already, the state’s most serious COVID-19 outbreak is in Monongalia County, home to WVU’s main campus. ...

Today marks a somber anniversary for Americans — our annual reminder that we told ourselves we would “never forget,” after the horrific attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. We would never forget the nearly 3,000 lives lost — citizens of 78 different countries, by the way. We would never forget ...

Perhaps state plans to extend internet access in West Virginia will do some good, eventually. But, as was the case earlier this year, it appears local initiatives will have to take the lead in serving children who are supposed to be learning from home, but without any way to get online ...

A former employee of the veterans hospital in Clarksburg has filed a lawsuit maintaining he was fired for attempting to alert the public to a string of suspicious deaths there. Earlier this summer, a former nursing assistant at the hospital, Reta Mays, pleaded guilty to murdering seven ...

This morning, as many Mid-Ohio Valley parents are sending their children off to in-person classes again for the first time since March, they must have one very important conversation: Do not share or trade masks. Do not share or trade food ... or anything else, for that matter. Do not run up to ...

There is some debate, as there often is with good ideas, about who thought of it first. Was it Peter McGuire, general secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners and a co-founder of the American Federation of Labor, or was it machinist Matthew Maguire, secretary of Local 344 of the ...

It is no great surprise the amount of garbage, trash and junk Mountain State residents send to landfills has increased during the past decade. Still, legislators should be asking questions, especially because a state agency was created to reduce the amount of waste in landfills. As we ...

For the first time since 1985, Wood County Schools saw the opening of a new school this week, as Williamstown Elementary School hosted a ribbon cutting to celebrate the facility. By all accounts it is a beautiful new building — a state-of-the-art educational complex. But Wood County Board of ...

It’s a shame to see a pandemic reveal the worst in people, but among the instances in which we have seen an uptick in behavior that ignores common sense and decency is littering. Right in plain site is the number of people who feel no compunction about tossing masks, gloves and wipes just ...

West Virginia’s Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation is good at keeping human beings inside jails and prisons. Now, the agency needs to do all it can to keep the COVID-19 virus from escaping, too. Last Friday, Gov. Jim Justice revealed an inmate at the South Central Regional Jail in ...