This week’s biggest Winners & Losers

It was a lucky first flight for Amelia Siemon, a 10-year-old from Plum Borough whose inaugural overseas voyage – a trip to Brazil – scored her a gold medal with the U.S. Youth Futsal under-10 girls national team (futsal is indoor soccer). Siemon, a Monroeville fifth grader and the team’s captain, scored four goals for her undefeated crew in August’s 2026 Copa Foz do Iguaçu Futsal international youth tournament.

Pennsylvanians feel so strongly about Wawa and Sheetz that news that the rival chains tied for second place in a national convenience-store survey may not feel like a win for either fan base. Wawa did have the edge in the Northeast region, beating out Sheetz for the top spot – but both ceded first place overall to Meijer, a Michigan chain, in the American Customer Satisfaction Index Convenience Store Study.

The U.S. Supreme Court sided with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s union this week, a decision that will require the Block family – the paper's former owners – to reimburse journalists for imposed pay cuts and increased healthcare costs, according to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. An attorney for the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh told the Tribune-Review that the Blocks owe workers more than $5 million, adding that the family “wasted more money than you can imagine.”

With several session days on the calendar this week, state lawmakers could have advanced legislation to tax and regulate skill games – something that has garnered bipartisan support in Harrisburg and could generate hundreds of millions of dollars in new state revenue. However, neither chamber advanced skill games legislation, leaving businesses, social clubs and other organizations at a crossroads ahead of an Oct. 13 compliance deadline. After that, unlicensed businesses that have come to rely on skill games could face criminal penalties and have their machines seized. 

Haverford College professor Guangtian Ha, a scholar of Chinese Islam, was arrested and charged with cyberstalking for using four anonymous accounts to send dozens of disturbingly antisemitic messages – many of a personal nature – to an unidentified Jewish colleague and the colleague’s family. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Education is expanding its antisemitism investigation of Swarthmore College after a suspended student group, Students for Justice in Palestine, shared a video – promoting a pro-Palestinian protest in Philadelphia on Oct. 7, the anniversary of the Hamas massacre of Israelis – that showed an effigy of an Israeli soldier being set on fire.

As if Flock cameras weren’t enough reason to feel paranoid, Pennsylvania drivers now have another: the erroneous bills they’re getting on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, whose (non-Flock) cameras have been misreading the zeroes as eights on the new Pennsylvania license plates. The updated plates, whose zeroes now have a slash to differentiate them from the letter O, were issued in January – and calls from disgruntled drivers began in February, when they noticed tolls for trips they hadn’t made.