U.S. police assess rise in threat tips after 3 mass killings
LOS ANGELES — It had all the makings of a massacre. Six guns, including a Colt AR-15 rifle. About 1,000 rounds of ammunition. A bulletproof vest. And an angry Southern California man who threated to kill his co-workers at a hotel and its guests. But a concerned colleague intervened, alerting...
Youth leaders at UN demand bold climate change action
UNITED NATIONS — Fresh off the climate strike that took hundreds of thousands of young people out of classrooms and into the streets globally, youth leaders gathered at the United Nations Saturday to demand radical moves to fight climate change. “We showed that we are united and that we, young...
Trial to start for Georgia cop who shot naked, unarmed man
DECATUR, Ga. — A police officer responding to a call of a naked man behaving erratically at an Atlanta-area apartment complex arrived on the scene, exited his vehicle and shot the man almost immediately. Now a jury must decide if he’s guilty of murder. Robert “Chip” Olsen, then a DeKalb...
Rep. Joe Kennedy formally announces US Senate campaign
BOSTON — U.S. Rep. Joe Kennedy III formally declared his candidacy for the U.S. Senate on Saturday, becoming the first member of the Kennedy political dynasty to bid for the upper chamber of Congress since Edward M. Kennedy in 1962. The Massachusetts Democrat spoke to supporters gathered in a community...
History buff finds ships that sank in 1878 in Lake Michigan
DETROIT — A diver and maritime history buff has found two schooners that collided and sank into the cold depths of northern Lake Michigan more than 140 years ago. Bernie Hellstrom, of Boyne City, Michigan, said he was looking for shipwrecks about 10 years ago when a depth sounder on...
Civil rights group: Airline forced girl, 12, to remove hijab
SAN FRANCISCO — A Muslim civil rights advocacy group is demanding changes at Air Canada after a 12-year-old U.S. Squash Team player says she was forced to remove her hijab while boarding at San Francisco International Airport. The San Francisco Bay Area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said...
Local U.S. Attorney Scott Brady appointed to federal advisory committee
U.S. Attorney Scott Brady of the Western District of Pennsylvania has been named to the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee, one of nine U.S. attorneys to be appointed by U.S. Attorney General William Barr. “The U.S. Attorneys who comprise the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee play a critical role in carrying out...
Sheriff: 1 officer dead, 1 injured in Louisiana shooting
MANDEVILLE, La. — One police officer was fatally shot and another wounded Friday after a vehicle chase north of New Orleans. At a news conference, Mandeville Police Chief Gerald Sticker confirmed one officer’s death and the other’s injury from gunfire in his community on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain,...
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey begins treatment for cancerous spot on lung
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey underwent a scheduled outpatient procedure on Friday as she gets set for specialized radiation treatment for cancer, her office said. Ivey announced Thursday that doctors had discovered a malignant spot on her lung. She described the cancer as having been caught early and...
U.S. air defense forces are being deployed to Saudi Arabia
WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Mark Esper announced Friday that U.S. air defense forces will be sent to Saudi Arabia. “The president has approved the deployment of U.S. forces, which will be defensive in nature,” Esper said at the Pentagon. The announcement is a response to the Sept. 14 attack on...
Surviving Three Mile Island nuclear reactor shuts down
HARRISBURG — The money-losing Three Mile Island, site of the United States’ worst commercial nuclear power accident, has been shut down by its energy giant owner. Friday’s end to the 45-year electricity-producing career of Three Mile Island Unit 1 came after Chicago-based Exelon Corp. tried and failed to get financial...
Pa. bill dangles student loan forgiveness for volunteer firefightersVideo
A year after a lengthy report documented growing holes in Pennsylvania’s network of volunteer firefighters, advocates hope a package of bills designed to help recruitment and retention gains traction in Harrisburg this fall. Citing SR 6, a report that found the number of active volunteer firefighters had declined from more...
Child dials 911 to report ‘drunk’ school bus driverVideo
A boy suspected that his school bus driver was drunk so he called the police to turn her in. A student in Longview, Washington, told police his regular bus driver was behaving oddly, reports KING-5 News. Besides her unusually laid back attitude toward seating on Sept. 12, the driver allegedly...
Officials: Tour bus crash near national park in Utah kills 4
SALT LAKE CITY — A tour bus carrying Chinese-speaking tourists crashed near a national park in southern Utah, killing at least four people and critically injuring up to 15 others, authorities said Friday. The morning wreck near Bryce Canyon National Park, known for its distinctive landscape of narrow red rock...
Imelda leaves 4 dead in Texas, others stranded and trapped
HOUSTON — Emergency crews in the Houston area took advantage of receding floodwaters Friday to begin to assess the damage from one of the wettest tropical cyclones in U.S. history, a storm that led to the deaths of four men and displaced hundreds of people from their homes. The aftermath...
Minibus bombing outside Iraq’s Karbala kills 12, injures 5
BAGHDAD — Iraqi security officials said the death toll in an explosion on a minibus Friday outside the Shiite holy city of Karbala has climbed to 12. According to the officials, five passengers were also wounded in the blast, which occurred as the bus was passing through an Iraqi army...
Hurricane Lorena nears Mexico’s resort-studded Los Cabos
CABO SAN LUCAS, Mexico — Hurricane Lorena neared Mexico’s resort-studded Los Cabos area Friday as owners pulled their boats from the water, tourists hunkered down in hotels, and police and soldiers went through low-lying, low-income neighborhoods urging people to evacuate. Lorena was forecast to pass over or near the southern...
Walmart to stop selling electronic cigarettes at its stores
NEW YORK — Walmart says it will stop selling electronic cigarettes at its namesake stores and Sam’s Clubs following a string illnesses and deaths related to vaping. The nation’s largest retailer said Friday that it will complete its exit from e-cigarettes after selling through current inventory. It cited growing federal,...
Penn State professor’s discovery sets off Shakespeare tweetstorm
William Shakespeare and John Milton collided in the Twitterverse this month in a bang-up that set off a trans-Atlantic tweetstorm over a 400-year-old book. The discovery that Milton — he of “Paradise Lost” fame — likely was the owner of a 1623 Shakespeare first folio and made extensive notes in...
Delta pilot accused of attempting to fly under the influence of alcoholVideo
A Delta Air Lines pilot is facing charges of attempting to fly an aircraft under the influence of alcohol. Gabriel Schroeder, 37, was charged Friday over a July 30 incident when Schroeder was due to fly from Minneapolis to San Diego, KARE 11 reported. According to the complaint, officials were...
Fort Ligonier Days celebrates 60th anniversary
Organizers of the 60th annual Fort Ligonier Days are rolling out the red carpet — or more specifically, the diamond bandstand — for the milestone anniversary. Revelers will note more than $3.5 million in renovations to Diamond Park, the central locale for the three-day event that commemorates the Battle of...
Greensburg restaurant owner kept family as priority
Frances Monteparte lived by the motto “The family that cooks together stays together.” Mrs. Monteparte and her late husband, James, operated two restaurants in Greensburg for two decades but didn’t let it get in the way of family life, said her son, Vincent. “We spent many hours in those restaurants,...
Music starts for Earthlings around Area 51 events in NevadaVideo
HIKO, Nev. — Sound checks echoed from a distant main stage while Daniel Martinez whirled and danced at dusty makeshift festival grounds just after sunset in Rachel, the Nevada town closest to the once-secret Area 51 military base. Martinez’s muse was the thumping beat from a satellite set-up pumping a...
From Australia to Europe, climate protesters hit the streetsVideo
BERLIN — Hundreds of thousands of protesters in Australia, many of them children who skipped school, kicked off a day of demonstrations around the world against climate change in the run-up to a U.N. summit in New York. Rallies to open the “Global Climate Strike” took place on Friday in...
Trump administration blocks ‘urgent’ whistleblower disclosure
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration plunged into an extraordinary showdown with Congress over access to a whistleblower’s complaint about reported incidents including a private conversation between President Donald Trump and a foreign leader. The blocked complaint is “serious” and “urgent,” the government’s intelligence watchdog said. The administration is keeping Congress...
