Hurricane Dorian comes ashore at North Carolina’s Outer Banks
WILMINGTON, N.C. — Hurricane Dorian has come ashore at Cape Hatteras on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, marking its first U.S. landfall since it slammed into the Bahamas days ago. Dorian sideswiped most of the Southeast seaboard from Florida to Carolinas in recent days before its eye made landfall Friday morning....
Dorian grazes Carolina coast, aims for Outer Banks
CHARLESTON, S.C. — Hurricane Dorian sideswiped the Carolinas with shrieking winds, tornadoes and sideways rain Thursday as it closed in for a possible direct hit on the dangerously exposed Outer Banks. At least four deaths in the Southeast were blamed on the storm. Twisters spun off by Dorian peeled away...
Iowa Rep. Steve King says he drank from toilet at migrant detention facility and it was ‘pretty good’Video
Republican Rep. Steve King said that he drank from a toilet that also serves as a water fountain during a recent visit to a migrant detention facility and the water was “actually pretty good.” “I actually went into that cell where it was reported that they were advised they had...
U.S. investigators eye possible causes of California boat fire
LOS ANGELES — U.S. investigators on Thursday were examining potential ignition sources of a deadly fire on a scuba diving boat, including electronics aboard the vessel where 34 people were killed off the coast of Southern California. Investigators know photography equipment, batteries and other electronics were stored and plugged in...
Officials target Vitamin E as cause for vaping illnesses
The security of safeness of vaping has taken another hit. Federal and state health officials have targeted Vitamin E as the cause of vaping-related illnesses that have affected people across the country. Public health officials said a person who recently died of a severe respiratory illness had used an e-cigarette...
New Florence professor had a deep love of model railroads
When Merwin Weed built a train layout, he didn’t mess around — and there was no such thing as a miniature train layout. “That was always a passion for him and his brother,” Bonnie Chovanec, of Blairsville, said of her father. “They shared a bedroom, and they built a train...
Sen. Ward appointed to Veterans’ Center Advisory Council
State Sen. Kim Ward, R-Hempfield, has been appointed to the Advisory Council for the Southwestern Pennsylvania Veterans’ Center in Pittsburgh. Ward, in her third term, was elected to the state Senate in 2008. She said she is anxious to learn more about the center and will tour the facility in...
Michigan State faces record federal fine in Nassar sexual abuse scandal
Federal regulators Thursday slapped Michigan State University with a $4.5 million fine stemming from the Larry Nassar sexual abuse scandal. The fine is the largest on record against a university charged with failure to protect students from sexual abuse. The largest fine prior to this was $2.4 million the U.S....
Iran poised for faster centrifuges as nuclear deal collapses
TEHRAN, Iran — Iran was poised Thursday to begin work on advanced centrifuges that will enrich uranium faster as the 2015 nuclear deal unravels further and a last-minute French proposal offering a $15 billion line of credit to compensate Iran for not being able to sell its crude oil abroad...
Hurricane Dorian rakes Carolinas as it moves up the coast
CHARLESTON, S.C. — Hurricane Dorian raked the Carolina coast with howling, window-rattling winds and sideways rain Thursday, spinning off tornadoes and knocking out power to more than 200,000 homes and businesses as it pushed northward toward the dangerously exposed Outer Banks. Leaving at least 20 people dead in its wake...
U.S. investigation of priest sex abuse produces first charges
PHILADELPHIA — Federal prosecutors in Philadelphia have charged a former Roman Catholic priest with lying to the FBI about whether he knew an accuser and his family. The charges against 81-year-old Robert Brennan are the first from a sweeping Justice Department investigation into child sexual abuse by priests in Pennsylvania....
Maryland police: Man who threatened co-workers had gun stash
PASADENA, Md. — Authorities in Maryland say they found an arsenal of nearly 150 guns in the home of a man whose colleagues said he threatened to shoot them at work. News outlets report Anne Arundel County police charged Mark Edward Rutkowski on Tuesday with one count of making a...
Couple who spent $450 for an iPhone instead got 2 bars of soap
A couple who saved money to buy their 14-year-old daughter an iPhone were left with a dud. And suds. Fox 2 Detroit reported the Michigan couple had bought an iPhone for $450 on the Letgo app and scheduled to meet the 18-year-old seller. At the exchange in the parking lot...
All soda — even diet — linked to risk of early death, study says
In researchers’ continuing mission to ruin everything fun, a new expansive study shows that sodas — even diet ones — could be deadly. And it’s not like the study was quick and dirty. Published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, researchers looked at more than 450,000 people in 10 European...
Dorian creeps up U.S. coast; near-record storm surge fearedVideo
CHARLESTON, S.C. — A weakened but still deadly Hurricane Dorian crept up the Southeastern seaboard Wednesday, and millions were ordered to evacuate as forecasters said near-record levels of seawater and rain could swamp the coasts of Georgia and the Carolinas. The storm, which ravaged the Bahamas with more than a...
Tampa apartment complex was built atop segregation-era graveyard
Residents of Tampa’s Robles Park Village were brought to tears when they learned that their homes were built on the site of an all-black cemetery that from the segregation era. The Tampa Bay Times reported that ground-penetrating radar has detected at least 120 coffins of the long-lost Zion Cemetery below...
Florida man buys, sends 100 generators to Bahamas
If society has you thinking otherwise, just remember: “There are still good people left in the world!” Jacksonville, Fla., resident Alec Sprague wrote that in a Facebook post about witnessing an extremely generous and much needed act of kindness while visiting his local Costco store. Sprague said that while he...
California becomes first state to ban fur trapping
SACRAMENTO — California on Wednesday became the first state to ban commercial fur trapping, ending the practice nearly 200 years after animals like beavers and otters introduced the American West to international trade. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom said Wednesday he had signed a bill into law making it illegal to...
Investigation to determine if charges filed in California boat fire
LOS ANGELES — The captain and crew who leapt from a burning dive boat off Southern California saved themselves as 34 people perished below deck. Whether their escape from the Conception before dawn Monday was the only viable option, an act of cowardice or even a crime has yet to...
Veteran Wisconsin GOP Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner says he’ll retire
WASHINGTON — Veteran Wisconsin Republican Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner announced his retirement from Congress on Wednesday, making the former House Judiciary Committee chairman the 15th GOP lawmaker to say he will step aside before next year’s elections. Sensenbrenner, 76, was first elected in 1978 and is the second-longest serving current member...
Mt. Pleasant woman helped organize girls softball
As Title IX was leveling the playing field for girls in athletics, Florence DeSimone was doing her part for equality in athletics in Mt. Pleasant by helping to organize a softball league for girls in the 1970s. “She played softball, and so did her sister and her daughters,” said her...
Trump administration switches off rule for thriftier light bulbs
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration turned its deregulatory focus Wednesday to light bulbs, scrapping a rule that would have phased out less energy efficient incandescent bulbs. The move slows a years-long push by Congress and past administrations to switch Americans to LED bulbs and other lighting using less electricity. President...
State prison at Retreat could close
Pennsylvania, which has shuttered state prisons in Hempfield, Pittsburgh and Cresson over the last six years, may be on the verge of closing yet another massive state lock-up. Faced with a $140 million budget deficit and declining prison population, Department of Corrections Secretary John Wetzel has proposed closing the State...
Ohio students accused of serving crepes tainted with body fluids face charges
POWELL, Ohio — Seven Ohio middle school students accused of being involved in serving teachers crepes tainted with bodily fluids face juvenile felony charges. The Columbus Dispatch reports several teachers at Olentangy Hyatts Middle School in Powell ate crepes reportedly laced with semen and urine during a cooking class May...
Trump offers altered hurricane chart, appearing to double down on ‘Alabama’ warningVideo
President Trump presented a doctored Hurricane Dorian map to possibly justify the fact he had warned that the state of Alabama was in direct path of the storm. The President of the United States altered a National Hurricane Center map with a sharpie to falsely extend the official forecast toward...
