PITTSBURGH — Carnegie Mellon University engineers are developing technology designed to help blind people shop for groceries, catch buses and accomplish other daily tasks unassisted.

The system would identify products using a cell phone, a bar code reader and a wireless Bluetooth headset, a local newspaper reported.

Priya Narasimhan, an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon, said that to use the system, a blind person scans a grocery item with a bar code-reading device. That information is sent by wireless headset to an Internet-connected cell phone, which contacts a database and translates the bar code into a product name.

The name is relayed to the cell phone, where text-to-speech software articulates the name into the headset.

Narasimhan has received state funding to develop the technology and is seeking commercial partners and research facilities to market it.

PITTSBURGH — A Michigan man has been arrested in a fatal shooting at a New Kensington bar last month, police said.Brice Henry Allen, 39, of Pontiac, has been charged with criminal homicide in the death of Donny Lester Douthett, 28, of Arnold, Westmoreland County. The shooting took place June 26 at Baily's Bar.The suspect was arrested Sunday in Penn Hills after police received an anonymous tip about his whereabouts.