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Health officials are on high alert after a case of tuberculosis was reported in Charleroi, Pennsylvania, a small town thrust into the spotlight by President-elect Donald Trump during a rally in September. Trump highlighted a staggering 2,000% increase in Haitian migrants in the town in just a few short years, many of whom were funneled into local factories like cattle. The TB case has heightened fears of a potential outbreak. The Charleroi Area School District superintendent notified parents on Monday morning about a teen recovering from TB who returned to class without clearance from doctors. “I am writing to provide...

Charleroi has become a flash point in the presidential campaign, with former President Donald Trump saying Haitians are "invading" the Washington County town. Action News Investigates has learned federal authorities are investigating a company that supplies immigrant workers to a major Charleroi employer. Fourth Street Foods in Charleroi makes prepared meals that are sold in grocery stores across the country. It employs 700 immigrants from 41 countries, many of them Haitians. Getro Bernabe, a Haitian immigrant who used to work at Fourth Street Foods, is now Charleroi's liaison with the Haitian community. He said the immigrants at Fourth Street "work...

Charleroi, Pennsylvania, is a deeply troubled place. The former steel town, built along a stretch of the Monongahela River, south of Pittsburgh, has experienced the typical Rust Belt rise and fall. The industrial economy, which had turned it into something resembling a company town, hollowed out after the Second World War. Some residents fled; others succumbed to vices. The steel mills disappeared. Two drug-abuse treatment centers have since opened their doors. The town’s population had steadily declined since the middle of the twentieth century, with the most recent Census reporting slightly more than 4,000 residents. Then, suddenly, things changed. Local...

You're not going to believe what's happening in ANOTHER small town in America. Another migrant surge has overtaken a small town. This time, it's Charleroi, Pennsylvania.

CHARLEROI, Pa. — I ran my fingers over the words etched in the cornerstone of this granite building, probably once a bank or an insurer or something similarly solid and impressive: CHARLEROI OFFICE. Even more than the grander (and more dilapidated) neoclassical banks on the same block, this detail stuck with me from my visit this week. Charleroi was once the kind of place where an institution would open a satellite office and proudly carve it in granite, with the expectation it would be that kind of place forever. --snip-- Mr. Zelinsky is adamant that he and his team have...

Pennsylvania State Sen. Camera Bartolotta said she always tries to be respectful online. That is until “someone throws crap in my face, and I push back,” she told The Inquirer Wednesday. “That’s how I’ve always been.” When Bartolotta (R., Washington) saw Libs of TikTok, a far-right social media account whose inflammatory posts have often resulted in real-life consequences, repost a xenophobic YouTube video about Haitian immigrants in Charleroi, a small Western Pennsylvania borough that Bartolotta represents, the GOP state senator fought back against the account that she follows and often retweets. In a response on X, Bartolotta refuted the...

Charleroi, Pennsylvania, like Springfield, Ohio, is also experiencing a growing number of problems from a tidal wave of Haitian migrants flooding into their small town. While the media focuses on the woes of Springfield, Ohio, and its recent flood of Haitian migrants putting pressure on the small town, other small towns are experiencing similar problems. One of them is Charleroi, Pennsylvania, nestled on the banks of the Monongahela River south of Pittsburgh in the western part of the state. According to the activist group America-2100, the rural town has suffered a 2,000-percent increase in its population of Haitian migrants —...

Update: When I posted this story Saturday there was still no claim of responsibility and authorities were not 100% certain it was terrorism, though they were definitely leaning that way. Today, ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack and authorities seem confident the attacker had a terrorist motive. From Reuters: Islamic State claimed responsibility on Sunday for an attack by a machete-wielding man in Belgium that left two female police officers seriously injured, the group’s Amaq news agency said on Twitter.Shortly before the claim, Belgian prosecutors had identified the assailant as a 33-year-old Algerian, K.B., who had lived in Belgium since...

A man slashed a policewoman's face with a machete and shouted 'Allahu Akbar' before her fellow officer gunned him down in a chilling 'terror' attack. The attacker reportedly walked up to two policewomen at the entrance of the police station in the Belgian city of Charleroi just before 4pm, pulled a machete from his bag and hacked at the officer. After slamming the machete into the face of one officer, he then turned to another and began swinging the massive blade at her. A third female officer raced to the front desk and then blasted the attacker in the chest...

Two police officers have been wounded in Belgium by a man wielding a machete who shouted "Allahu Akbar". The man was shot after the attack in Charleroi but is alive, the city's police said in a tweet. Sky's Mark White said: "This was an attack that unfolded at 4pm local time in Belgium outside the police station. "Two police officers were attacked according to police officials by a man wielding a machete and it was a male and female officer injured. "The female officer suffered moderate injuries to her face. "The other officer with her, a male officer, is not...

Two policewomen were attacked and wounded with a machete by an attacker who shouted “Allahu Akbar” outside a police station in the Belgian city of Charleroi on Saturday. The attacker, a man, was shot by a third officer, Charleroi police said on Twitter. He later died in hospital, according to Belgian national broadcaster RTBF. Police said the attacker shouted "Allahu Akbar" ("God is great" in Arabic) as he lunged at the officers outside a police station. One of the police officers suffered severe face wounds. Her colleague was only slightly injured.

The crime victim, a businessman named only as Laurent, had been living in a suburb of Charleroi, in Belgium's depressed French-speaking southern region of Wallonia. He moved north after a series of violent attacks and robberies on his family but was taken to a local court because he had not paid back a grant to renovate his house in 1998. In 2006, his wife and children were threatened by armed raiders, who stormed his home at night and dragged him away in his pyjamas while his horrified family looked on. He was later freed and dumped on a industrial estate...

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Belgian police on Friday arrested a man suspected of trying to blow up a synagogue in what could be the latest in a string of anti-Jewish attacks across Europe linked to violence in the Middle East.Jules Mathieu, a spokesman for the public prosecutor's office, said the man was suspected of having placed five gas bottles in a car and torching it in front of the synagogue in a densely populated area of the southern town of Charleroi.There was no explosion and the blaze was rapidly put out by firefighters based nearby.Several synagogues and Jewish buildings in European...

The G20 summit in London will take place in a different universe from Charleroi, a Belgian city in the heart of Europe but cast into the economic wilderness for decades. Once at the centre of Belgium's "pays noir" coal and industry belt, Charleroi, is surrounded by a post-industrial landscape of slagheaps and derelict factories. It faces the latest global recession having never recovered from the last two. The city in the Walloon, French-speaking region of southern Belgium is openly acknowledged by many of its inhabitants to be the most depressing place in Europe. In recent times, Charleroi, whose people are...