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National Night Out is chance to reflect on public’s role in public safety

The National Night Out provides community members a chance to meet and interact with local first responders. The event will be held from 6 to 9 p.m. this evening, Aug. 6, at Kish Park. Our first responders’ responsibilities too often come with a degree of danger and in stressful situations. We hope as communities we can pursue solutions and answers that reduce the stress and dangers they face. Some of those solutions must be found by our state, county and municipal governments. But — and it too often goes unsaid — many of them can be found in our families, homes and in the ...

Don’t miss local youth fairs

If you’re ready for an extravaganza of food and family fun as well as 4-H and FFA spirit, the Mifflin County Youth Fair is the place for you. The Juniata County Youth Fair just ended, and now their counterparts from Mifflin County are preparing to take their place in the spotlight. It officially opens on Monday and runs until Saturday, Aug. 10. If you haven’t gone, you’re really missing it. 4-H members not only actively engage in a variety of activities that showcase their skills and projects, but it provides them with an opportunity to present what they worked on for the past ...

Don’t trust our digital world

The latest theft of digital information is massive beyond scale. AT&T has reported that hackers stole six months’ worth of call and text message records of nearly every AT&T cellular network customer. This breach has the potential to reveal sensitive information about millions and millions of Americans. The data contains records of calls and texts between approximately May 1 and Oct. 31, 2022, and on Jan. 2, 2023. The company insists that the content of the calls and messages was not compromised and customers’ personal information was not accessed. Yeah, ...

Seek togetherness, not violence

For as much as our culture likes to hold itself as above political violence, people historically sure do a lot of it. The horrendous attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump, as he campaigned in Butler, Pa. — nearly three hours to our west, just north of Pittsburgh — is another wretched entry to an equally wretched list. Political violence extends beyond presidents and candidates, of course — consider the shooting of Republican U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise and the assault of Paul Pelosi, both among recent examples. In 2022, a man paused and called the police on himself ...

Local athletes close to representing the US

As the Olympic flame ignites in Paris, a spark of pride burns brightly in Mifflin County. The 2024 Summer Games mark a milestone for our community, with two local athletes coming tantalizingly close to representing the United States on the world stage. Skylar Ciccolini, a name familiar to many in Lewistown, showcased her prowess in the women’s javelin at the Olympic trials. The former Mifflin County High School standout hurled her way to a tenth-place finish, demonstrating the fruits of years of dedication and training. While narrowly missing the cut for Team USA, Ciccolini’s ...

Medicare needs to offer explanation

At the time when Congress launched the Medicare Advantage program concept several decades ago, the theory in place was insurers would make Medicare more efficient, have an incentive to keep patients healthier and probably save money for the government in the process. Those at the forefront of promoting the concept at that time probably never in their wildest dreams anticipated that one day a major, well-respected national newspaper would have on its front page the headline “Medicare paid $50 billion to insurers for untreated ills.” Yet that was the headline in the July 9 edition ...