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BUFFALO, W.Va. — Toyota is adding jobs to its plant in Putnam County.
The automaker announcing a $912 million investment in its U.S. plants including $453 million at Toyota West Virginia in Buffalo where 80 new jobs will be created.
According to Toyota, the investment will “increase assembly of 4-cylinder hybrid-compatible engines, sixth generation hybrid transaxles and rear motor stators. The expansion, which will begin production in 2027, also includes new shift patterns for greater

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — About 50 people filed into the Gold Ballroom in the Mountainlair Monday night for the final Public Employees Insurance Agency Finance Board public meeting on proposed health insurance plan changes.
The group provided the board information on what they would face due to the proposed three percent premium increase and the addition of a $200 spousal surcharge.
John Taylor, president of the Taylor County Association of Retired School Employees, said the increases cut directly

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A federal audit says the state Bureau of Social Services did not comply with intake, screening, assessment and investigation requirements for responding to reports of child abuse and neglect.
Kyneddi Miller
The Office of Inspector General in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services ordered the audit after the case of Kyneddi Miller, the Boone County teenager who starved to death at her home in 2024.
The audit report, posted Friday, said auditors reviewed 100 reports

Bluestone Coal, a company owned by Senator Jim Justice’s family, has had more than $3 million in liens filed against it for unpaid severance and special reclamation taxes over the past few years, according to public records on file in McDowell County.
The liens were filed by the West Virginia Tax Division between 2023, when Justice was still governor, and this past summer.
Bluestone Coal is run by members of the Justice family, including siblings Jay and Jill Justice, plus close associates,

West Virginia Supreme Court justices are being asked to halt — sooner, rather than later — a lower court’s actions that could allow hundreds of students to go to public school without required vaccinations.
Michael Froble
Raleigh Circuit Judge Michael Froble last month certified a class action that would affect similar cases in other counties. The case before Froble was originally brought by a couple of local families seeking to have religious exemptions recognized by public schools in the area.

SWISS, W.Va. — Governor Patrick Morrisey says Steve Lipscomb, the miner who was found dead at the Rolling Thunder Mine Thursday, was among the best West Virginia had to offer.
Lipscomb, 42, of Elkview, was killed as a result of the mine flooding over the weekend. Lipscomb was a foreman, and according to Morrisey, he ensured his colleagues got out of the mine safely.
“As I started to learn more information, I knew that Steven was doing some pretty incredible things. Trying to make sure, as the

SWISS, W.Va. — A mine foreman missing since Saturday has been located inside the Rolling Thunder Mine near Swiss in Nicholas County.
Steve Lipscomb, 42, of Elkview, was discovered by a two-man search team inside the mine around 7:37 a.m. Thursday, according to Gov. Patrick Morrisey.
Morrisey told those in attendance the 2025 Governor’s Energy Summit in Charleston that crews were able to enter the mine around 6 a.m. after water levels had been sufficiently receded to allow for a safe reentry by

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — A fire at an apartment building at Marjorie Gardens in Morgantown has resulted in multiple injuries and close to a dozen residents becoming displaced.
The Brookhaven Volunteer Fire Department was the first to respond among a half dozen different departments around the Morgantown area to the scene early Wednesday night, where a fire inside an apartment on the lower end of a building at the start of the property resulted in two injuries.
Residents who lived inside the singular

NICHOLAS COUNTY, W.Va. — Governor Patrick Morrisey says there’s still hope of finding the coal miner that went missing on Saturday alive.
The miner, who has been described as a foreman, has been unaccounted for since Alpha Metallurgical’s Rolling Thunder Mine flooded on Saturday.
Morrisey visited the mine Tuesday evening and met with reporters.
“I don’t have any updates to report right now. Obviously, it’s been a few days, but I can tell you this. This is still a rescue mission, and it’s focused

The state Supreme Court is being asked to halt class certification in a case about religious exemptions to West Virginia’s school vaccination requirements.
Raleigh Circuit Judge Michael Froble last month certified a class action that would affect similar cases in other counties. The case before Froble was originally brought by a couple of local families seeking to have religious exemptions recognized by public schools in the area.
More than 570 families around the state so far have sought and