Refuse pickup schedule

Refuse pickup schedule
NEW CASTLE, Pa. -- The city refuse department will work on schedule this week.
Garbage will be picked up on Monday as usual.
Parade street closings
SHARON, Pa. -- A portion of East State Street, from Hermitage Town Plaza to Buhl Boulevard, and all of Buhl Boulevard, will be closed to traffic Monday morning for the annual Buhl Day Parade.
The parade is expected to last about an hour.
Townships get grants
NEW CASTLE, Pa. -- Two townships in Lawrence County have been selected to receive grants from the state Department of Environmental Protection.
Wilmington Township will receive $1,207 and Perry Township will receive $1,552.
The grants will be used to reimburse the municipalities for 50 percent of their eligible expenses for enforcing the state's sewage regulations.
Plea for Baumhammers
PITTSBURGH (AP) -- The Latvian Embassy has asked an Allegheny County judge to spare the life of convicted mass-murderer Richard Baumhammers.
Baumhammers, 36, an unemployed Mount Lebanon attorney, was convicted and sentenced to death by a jury in May for killing five people in a hate-driven shooting rampage in April 2000.
Judge Jeffrey Manning received a letter Friday from Latvian Embassy First Secretary Uvis Blums about Baumhammers, who has dual citizenship in Latvia and the United States.
Although Judge Jeffrey Manning won't formally impose the death sentence by lethal injection until Thursday, Baumhammers' fate was sealed by the jury. That's because, in Pennsylvania, a jury's sentencing verdict in a capital case is binding.
Manning must formally impose the death sentence because only a judge has jurisdiction to place someone in the custody of the state Department of Corrections, which will house Baumhammers until he is executed or wins an appeal.
Also, Manning must sentence Baumhammers for 20 lesser counts, including ethnic intimidation, for which juries aren't empowered to impose sentences.
Baumhammers' defense attorneys argued at trial that his delusions led Baumhammers to shoot and kill his Jewish next-door neighbor, two Asian Indians, a Chinese restaurant owner and a black man.
A sixth victim, a clerk at an Indian grocery store, remains paralyzed.
The jury determined that Baumhammers deserved death for the killings, in part because they were driven by his white supremacist views.
Moonshine charges
ROANOKE, Va. (AP) -- A Philadelphia man has pleaded guilty for his role in a moonshining operation that investigators say produced 1.4 million gallons of illegal liquor in Franklin and Henry counties since 1992.
Leroy Marshall, 54, was accused of purchasing more than 6,000 gallons of untaxed liquor. He entered his plea Friday in U.S. District Court in Roanoke.
Marshall was charged as part of a federal bust that netted 20 people in Franklin and Henry counties, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.