1 killed, 2 wounded in shooting at San Diego restaurantVideo
SAN DIEGO — Police searched for a gunman who shot three employees — killing one — at a fast food restaurant in San Diego on Wednesday. The shooting happened around 5:30 p.m. at a Church’s Chicken in the Otay Mesa area, officials said. The suspected gunman had been in the...
Removing Martin Luther King’s name in Kansas City opens wounds, discussionVideo
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Kansas City leaders and residents on Wednesday began what is likely to be a challenging conversation about how to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and recover from wounds inflicted during a nearly yearlong debate over naming a street for the civil rights icon in the...
Prosecutors: Roger Stone lied because ‘truth looked bad’ for TrumpVideo
WASHINGTON — Prosecutors in the trial of Roger Stone told jurors Wednesday that the longtime Donald Trump confidant repeatedly lied to Congress “because the truth looked bad” for the president. The opening arguments in the case against Stone, a longtime Republican operative and provocateur, made clear that the president will...
Juli Briskman, woman who flipped off Trump’s motorcade, wins Virginia electionVideo
NEW YORK — Juli Briskman, who went viral in October 2017 when she was photographed flipping off the president as she rode past on her bicycle, defeated the incumbent Republican on Tuesday and won a seat on the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors in Virginia. Briskman, a first-time politician, will...
Democrats sweep through suburban Philadelphia counties
HARRISBURG — Democrats completed an electoral sweep of Philadelphia’s four suburban counties in Pennsylvania, long a bastion of Republican control and a critical bellwether for statewide candidates. Democrats won control in Delaware and Chester counties in the election Tuesday for the first time going back to the Civil War and...
Longtime Rolling Rock bartender friend of many
Butch Hammill loved people, an important trait for a man who worked 30 years as a bartender at the prestigious Rolling Rock Club in Ligonier Township and operated his own restaurant, the Meadows in Ligonier. “He was an old-school bartender. No matter where he worked, the clientele followed him. People...
Matt Bevin seeks vote recanvass while Andy Beshear starts transition for Kentucky governorshipVideo
LOUISVILLE — Republican Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin asked Wednesday for a recanvass of vote totals, as election results showed him trailing by several thousand votes, but Democrat Andy Beshear turned his own focus toward transitioning into the governor’s office. Beshear, the state’s attorney general, said he’s confident in the election...
Diplomat William Taylor had ‘clear understanding’ of Ukraine quid pro quoVideo
WASHINGTON — A State Department envoy told lawmakers it was his “clear understanding” the U.S. government intended to withhold military aid from Ukraine until the country committed to investigations sought by President Donald Trump, including into a political rival, according to a transcript of the closed-door interview released Wednesday. William...
Congress approves Toomey-led bill expanding animal cruelty law
WASHINGTON — Congress has passed a bill making certain types of animal cruelty a federal felony. The bill would expand a 2010 law that made creation or distribution of so-called “animal crushing” videos illegal. The new bill would make the underlying acts of cruelty a federal crime. The Senate unanimously...
Trump attacks whistleblower anonymity, but won’t utter nameVideo
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is blasting the media for not reporting the name of a person who has been identified in conservative circles as the whistleblower who spurred the impeachment inquiry. Yet Trump has carefully avoided using the name himself. Exposing whistleblowers can be dicey, even for a president....
House Dems announce public impeachment hearings next week
WASHINGTON — House Democrats will launch a major new phase of their impeachment inquiry next week with public hearings that will feature three State Department officials who have testified about their concerns about President Donald Trump’s dealings with Ukraine. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, who is leading the impeachment...
Kansas City votes to remove MLK’s name from historic street
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Kansas City voters on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved removing Dr. Martin Luther King’s name from one of the city’s most historic boulevards, less than a year after the city council decided to rename The Paseo for the civil rights icon. Unofficial results showed the proposal to remove...
Sheriff: Murder suspects who fled California jail arrested
SAN FRANCISCO — Two murder suspects who escaped from a California jail over the weekend were arrested by federal officials, authorities said Wednesday. The Monterey County Sheriff’s Office said in a tweet that Jonathan Salazar, 20, and Santos Fonseca, 21, were arrested by Customs and Border Protection officials. It says...
Judge rejects moral-objection rule for abortion providers
A federal judge on Wednesday struck down a new rule, not yet in effect, that allowed health care clinicians to refuse participation in abortions and other services on moral or religious grounds. U.S. District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer in New York said he was tossing out the rule in its...
Caller leads LA police to $800,000 in stolen artwork
LOS ANGELES — This time, detectives didn’t have to track down the stolen art. Someone brought it to them. Los Angeles police said Tuesday they recovered $800,000 worth of prints by Scottish abstract expressionist Benjamin Creme after a caller said they were in a home in the Los Angeles suburb...
Citing voter approval, Marsy’s Law supporters call on ACLU to drop challenge
Advocates are calling on the ACLU of Pennsylvania to drop its lawsuit against a proposed crime victims’ rights amendment to the state constitution after unofficial election results showed voters approved it 3-1 Tuesday. The amendment, which passed the General Assembly twice in the last two years, was scheduled to become...
High-tech chestnuts: U.S. to consider genetically altered treeVideo
SYRACUSE, N.Y. — Chestnuts harvested from high branches on a chilly fall morning look typical: they’re marble sized, russet colored and nestled in prickly burs. But many are like no other nuts in nature. In a feat of genetic engineering, about half the chestnuts collected at this college experiment station...
Voters in U.S. states decide on sanctuary city, Airbnb rentals
Voters in the West took a dim view of taxes, while New Yorkers backed a new way to elect some of their leaders and a New Jersey city cracked down on Airbnb. Tucson voters seemed uninterested in becoming a sanctuary city, and those in Washington weighed whether to roll back...
Beshear claims victory in Kentucky governor race; Bevin refuses to concedeVideo
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Kentucky’s bitter race for governor went into overtime as Democrat Andy Beshear declared victory while Republican Gov. Matt Bevin, a close ally of President Donald Trump, refused to concede with results showing he trailed by a few thousand votes. Kentucky has some sorting out to do before...
Democrats promise swift action after win in VirginiaVideo
RICHMOND, Va. — Virginia Democrats promised swift action on a host of liberal policy proposals now that they’ve won full control of state government for the first time in more than two decades. Democratic leaders said Virginians should expect a higher minimum wage, new gun restrictions and greater abortion rights...
Police: Man using racist slurs killed in Waffle House fight
JACKSON, Ga. — The Georgia Bureau of Investigation says a man was shot to death at a Waffle House as a result of calling other patrons racist slurs and starting a fight. The GBI says Butts County deputies responded Halloween night to three 911 calls that were minutes apart. The...
Democrats win full control of Virginia statehouse
RICHMOND, Va. — Virginia Democrats continued their winning streak under President Trump on Tuesday and took full control of the statehouse for the first time in more than two decades. Democrats won majorities in both the state House and Senate in the marquee warmup for next year’s presidential election, the...
Dem leads Kentucky governor’s race that’s too close to callVideo
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The hotly contested race governor’s race in Kentucky was too close to call Tuesday night, with Democratic Attorney General Andy Beshear holding a narrow lead over Republican Gov. Matt Bevin. With 100 percent of precincts reporting, Beshear had a lead of 4,658 votes out of more than...
Chester County woman charged with faking cancer in fund-raiser scam
PHILADELPHIA — A Chester Springs woman has been charged with netting more than $10,000 in a fund-raising scam in which she falsely claimed she had cancer and needed money. In a criminal complaint, Uwchlan Township Police detectives laid out a months-long investigation of increasingly escalating lies that ended in the...
Most Republicans on impeachment committees aren’t showing up, transcripts revealVideo
WASHINGTON — Republicans have for weeks blasted the closed-door impeachment process, but transcripts released this week of private depositions show most GOP lawmakers on the three panels at the center of the probe have simply not shown up. The low attendance for most committee Republicans paints a very different picture...
