This week’s biggest Winners & Losers

If you came into a windfall, you might get yourself a place in Miami. And that’s what Carnegie Mellon University is doing, now that it’s $3 billion dollars richer. The Pittsburgh institution this week celebrated the largest-ever individual gift to a university – from Citadel CEO and Florida native Ken Griffin – by announcing it will open a Miami campus focused on research into society’s major challenges. Of the $3 billion, $1 billion of the gift will go toward CMU’s Pittsburgh campus, including $500 million for the School of Computer Science.

This week Pennsylvanians are reaching for the stars – and beyond. In that latter category is Philadelphia’s Chinyere Ukeje, a 25-year-old who won a $300,000 first prize in a NASA competition to design food for astronauts on Mars. Meanwhile, a Lower Paxton Township family could see their Southern Gothic-style antebellum manse crowned “America’s Scariest House” in an upcoming HGTV segment, “The Eeriest of the East.” If it takes the prize, the house will get a $150,000 makeover – presumably to excise, or exorcise, what the current residents describe as eerie noises, bee infestations, mysterious wet footprints, fluid that inexplicably pours out of kitchen cabinets and a dryer that bursts into flames.

Who wants to teach how to ink in the clink? The state Department of Corrections is launching a tattoo apprenticeship program at SCI Frackville in Schuylkill County. DOC is seeking a tattoo artist with at least three years of experience to provide up to 40 hours of instruction a week to incarcerated individuals looking to learn the trade. 

Microplastics have been crossing the Delaware like our forefathers before us. PennEnvironment Research and Policy Center released a new report detailing the prevalence and persistence of microplastics in the Delaware River Watershed, including in the Philly region. With help from Drexel University, the report findings show plastic fragments in 82% of waterways and plastic film in 77% of waterways. 

Republican state Rep. Aaron Bernstine is (once again) facing calls to resign, this time after reportedly directing a homophobic slur at Democratic state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta and suggesting that Kenyatta – who is gay – has lost weight due to AIDS, according to a report from PennLive. The outburst allegedly occurred at McGrath’s Pub, a Harrisburg bar often frequented by lawmakers. Bernstine, in a statement obtained by Spotlight PA, claimed the allegations are “false” and said the report left out details from an encounter he had with the Pennsylvania Building Trades Council. One lawmaker said “more than a dozen people saw and heard the words directly” from Bernstine – and the Philadelphia House Delegation, Pennsylvania Legislative Black Caucus and Pennsylvania Equality Caucus have all called on Bernstine to resign.  

A cofounder of the Kensington Voice announced that the independent local news outlet – which covered Lower Northeast and North Philadelphia – has ceased operations, leaving a hole in Philadelphia’s local news landscape. According to The Philadelphia Inquirer, the outlet ran out of money needed to pay its staff, who have since been laid off. The Kensington Voice earned a reputation as a community-centered newsroom that lifted up local perspectives; its work will remain archived online.