BEAVER — The Pennsylvania Game Commission says continued warm weather is enabling an insect-borne virus to linger, leading to more deer deaths.

Game Commission official Mel Schake says epizootic hemorrhagic disease, or EHD, is responsible for at least 1,000 deer deaths in Allegheny, Beaver, Greene, Washington and Westmoreland counties.

The commission says the virus should stop spreading after the first hard frost, which will kill the insects which carry the virus. EHD is common in the south.

While officials say EHD isn't infectious to humans, deer displaying severe symptoms of the virus might not be suitable to eat. Symptoms include excessive drooling, weakness and a loss of fear of humans.

HARRISBURG — Democrat Seamus McCaffery and Republican Mike Krancer have each passed the $1 million mark in fundraising for their campaigns for state Supreme Court, according to campaign finance reports filed Tuesday.Republican Maureen Lally-Green and Democrat Debra Todd, meanwhile, both more than doubled their campaign war chests in the 15 weeks ending Sept 17. Lally-Green's total was more than $829,000 and Todd's was nearly $711,000.McCaffery, Lally-Green and Todd are judges on the state Superior Court. Krancer is a former chief judge of the state Environmental Hearing Board.They are competing in the Nov. 6 election for two open seats on the state's highest court.

HARRISBURG — At least two state appellate court judges are giving back the pay raises that the Legislature approved in 2005, and Debra Todd wants voters to know that she's one of them.Todd, a Superior Court judge and Democratic candidate for the Supreme Court, has made payments to the state treasury totaling $17,640, the Treasury Department confirmed Tuesday — representing the after-tax value of her raise from July 1, 2005, through June 30.The payments, which exclude the annual cost-of-living adjustments that judges receive, will continue in the future, said campaign spokesman Alison Rudolph Hall, who was spreading the word Tuesday in response to a newspaper editorial that characterized fellow Superior Court Judge Joan Orie Melvin as the only judge in the state who had given back income from the politically charged pay raises.Melvin, a Republican, filed a lawsuit seeking to reduce her salary to the level that prevailed when she was elected in 1997 — eliminating the need to pay taxes on the income — plus subsequent cost-of-living increases. She appealed a lower court's rejection of the suit to the Supreme Court.Melvin, seeking a second 10-year term in an uncontested "retention" vote in November, kept the after-tax portion of her raise in escrow until last month, when she sent the Treasury Department a check for more than $14,000.