Ruling on Spanier conviction could open the door to renewed defamation suit against Louis Freeh
A federal judge’s order dismissing a child endangerment conviction against former Penn State President Graham Spanier if it stands could open the door to another civil suit in the long-running legal imbroglio stemming from the Jerry Sandusky child sexual abuse scandal. Spanier, 70, was scheduled to report to jail this...
No beer with karaoke in UtahVideo
Adding beer to an evening of karaoke is a recipe for trouble in Utah. The Utah Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission has denied a request from Heart & Seoul Karaoke to offer beer alongside their musical entertainment, reports FOX-13 in Salt Lake City. Utah’s strict liquor laws will change...
Chinese fossil sheds light on mysterious Neanderthal kin
NEW YORK — Nearly 40 years after it was found by a monk in a Chinese cave, a fossilized chunk of jawbone has been revealed as coming from a mysterious relative of the Neanderthals. Until now, the only known remains of these Denisovans were a few scraps of bone and...
House Democrats consider holding Barr in contempt of Congress
WASHINGTON — Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee are discussing holding Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress, according to several lawmakers and officials familiar with the plan. During a pair of closed-door meetings Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning, the committee decided that it would likely make a push...
First parents plead guilty in college admissions scandal
A California couple became the first parents to plead guilty in the national college admissions scandal, after the United States accused them of paying at least $600,000 in bribes to get their daughters into school. Bruce and Davina Isackson entered their pleas Wednesday in federal court in Boston. They’re among...
Suspicions grow as Baltimore mayor’s leave drags on
BALTIMORE — Viewers of Baltimore newscasts are getting used to seeing images of embattled Mayor Catherine Pugh’s lawyer pulling up to her three-story house and vanishing inside. He later insists that her health is too fragile for her to think clearly enough to make decisions about the future. But after...
Rare conviction of officer in Minneapolis shooting spurs race concerns
MINNEAPOLIS — After three weeks of testimony, a jury needed little more than a day to convict a black Minneapolis police officer of murder in the fatal shooting of an unarmed white woman who had called 911 to report a possible crime, delivering a guilty verdict that immediately sparked questions...
2 people killed in UNC Charlotte shooting identified as investigation continues
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The two UNC Charlotte students killed in a campus shooting Tuesday evening were Ellis Parlier, 19, of Midland, N.C., and Riley Howell, 21, of Waynesville, N.C., university Chancellor Philip Dubois said on WBT radio Wednesday morning. With a suspect in custody following the shooting at UNC Charlotte,...
Pennsylvania teacher salaries rank 10th in the nation
Pennsylvania teachers average the 10th-highest salaries in the nation, according to a National Education Association annual pay analysis. While Pennsylvania teachers ranked below colleagues in New York, New Jersey and Maryland, they were well above teachers in West Virginia (who ranked next to last) and the bordering states of Ohio...
Report: 1 in 4 U.S. homes now powered only by electricity
One in four homes in the United States are now powered only by electricity, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The share of all-electric homes has risen in each census region over the past decade, particularly in the Midwest and South, according to the EIA’s 2015 Residential Energy Consumption...
Swarthmore College fraternities disband amid protests
SWARTHMORE, Pa. — The only two fraternities at Swarthmore College have opted to disband amid outrage over years-old documents containing derogatory comments about women and the LGBTQ community and jokes about sexual assault. Delta Upsilon and Phi Psi announced their decisions in separate Facebook posts Tuesday night. “We cannot in...
U.S. military stops releasing Afghanistan war information
WASHINGTON — Amid a battlefield stalemate in Afghanistan , the U.S. military has stopped releasing information often cited to measure progress in America’s longest war, calling it of little value in fighting the Taliban insurgency. The move fits a trend of less information being released about the war in recent...
Attorney General William Barr grilled over his differences with MuellerVideo
WASHINGTON — Private tensions between Justice Department leaders and special counsel Robert Mueller’s team broke into public view in extraordinary fashion Wednesday as Attorney General William Barr pushed back at the special counsel’s “snitty” complaints over his handling of the Trump-Russia investigation report. Testifying for the first time since releasing...
Seagulls photobomb London traffic camera
A pair of seagulls photobombed traffic cameras in London to the delight of the internet. “Graeme” and “Steve,” as they have been named, have appeared in several posts on the Transport for London Twitter feed. TfL kicked off the week with a “Happy Monday …” post that included a photo...
Study: Elder fraud costs Pennsylvanians an estimated $1.2 billion per year
Elderly Pennsylvanians are being defrauded to the tune of an estimated $1.2 billion per year, according to a recent study, and when it happens, many do not report it to the authorities. Research company Comparitech released a study that ranks Pennsylvania among the top 10 states in the nation in...
Trump retweets people taking issue with firefighters union’s endorsement of Biden
WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump took to Twitter early Wednesday morning to retweet dozens of posts from purported firefighters and friends and relatives of firefighters who had taken issue with an endorsement this week of Democrat Joe Biden by a major firefighters union. Trump began a spate of Twitter activity...
Mueller complained that Barr’s letter did not capture ‘context’ of Trump probeVideo
WASHINGTON — Special counsel Robert Mueller wrote a letter in late March complaining to Attorney General William Barr that a four-page memo to Congress describing the principal conclusions of the investigation into President Trump “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance” of Mueller’s work, according to a copy...
2 killed at UNC Charlotte, 4 others injured; suspect in custodyVideo
CHARLOTTE — A shooting on a North Carolina university campus left two people dead and four wounded Tuesday, prompting a lockdown and chaotic scene in the state’s largest city. UNC Charlotte issued a campus lockdown late Tuesday afternoon, saying shots had been fired. Later in the evening, the campus was...
Judge throws out ex-Penn State president Graham Spanier’s conviction
HARRISBURG — A federal judge threw out former Penn State President Graham Spanier’s misdemeanor child-endangerment conviction on Tuesday, less than a day before he was due to turn himself in to begin serving a jail sentence. The decision by U.S. Magistrate Judge Karoline Mehalchick in Scranton gave state prosecutors three...
Minneapolis officer Mohamed Noor convicted of murder in 911 caller death
MINNEAPOLIS — A Minneapolis police officer was convicted of murder Tuesday in the fatal shooting of an unarmed woman who approached his squad car minutes after calling 911 to report a possible rape behind her home. Mohamed Noor was convicted of third-degree murder as well as manslaughter in the July...
College student says Trump backers recruited him for Pete Buttigieg smear
A Michigan college student says pro-Trump agitators recruited him to falsely claim he was raped by Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, then published the smear without his permission. Hunter Kelly, a 21-year-old gay Trump supporter, said conservative activists Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman sought to use him for the “despicable...
Schiff says House will make a criminal referral of Trump ally Erik Prince for possible perjuryVideo
WASHINGTON — House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said Tuesday that his panel would make a criminal referral to the Justice Department regarding potential false testimony by Erik Prince, the billionaire founder of the private military contractor Blackwater and an ally of President Trump. “The evidence is so weighty...
Hemp-growing permit deadline passes for Pennsylvania farmers
Tuesday was the deadline for Pennsylvania farmers to apply for a permit to grow industrial hemp. Farmers already in the application process have until May 21 to sign a final agreement with the state Department of Agriculture. Although legalized by the 2018 Farm Bill, hemp is still a regulated crop...
EPA reaffirms weed killer safe for users as court cases grow
WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency reaffirmed Tuesday that a popular weed killer is safe for people, as legal claims mount from Americans who blame the herbicide for their cancer. The EPA’s draft conclusion Tuesday came in a periodic review of glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup. The agency found...
Police: Franklin County man took 4-year-old, bound her, stuffed her in trunkVideo
WAYNESBORO — A 20-year-old man entered a home’s unlocked front door, snatched a 4-year-old girl from her bed and bound and stuffed her into a wooden trunk at his grandparents’ house, telling police he’d been scoping out children who he thought lived in “deplorable conditions,” according to a criminal complaint....
