May 7, 2024 4:51 am
Cecil Township Supervisors worked quickly through an agenda filled with contract payments and land subdivisions on Monday night. Supervisor Chairman Tom Casciola indicated that the public hearing for updates to the township’s oil and gas ordinance will reconvene on Wednesday. The hearing will be held at the municipal building and begin at 6:00 PM. According to Casciola, supervisors will present proposed changes based on the previous public hearing. They will also take further testimony for possible additional changes. Casciola said that an additional meeting will be scheduled to present the ordinance in its final draft.
May 7, 2024 4:56 am
PITTSBURGH — (WPXI) – TSA stopped a loaded gun from getting on a plane at Pittsburgh International Airport on Friday. Officials say a Greensburg woman was stopped at a TSA checkpoint when officers caught her with gun that was loaded with six bullets, plus one in the chamber. This is the 12th gun stopped at the airport so far in 2024. “I would like to acknowledge my appreciation to the TSA officers who acted to ensure that the woman did not maintain control of her loaded weapon inside the terminal,” said Karen Keys-Turner, TSA’s federal security director for the airport. “The fact that there was a bullet in the chamber is an accident waiting to happen. Responsible gun owners know where their firearms are at all times and they know not to bring one in their carry-on bags.” Civil penalties for bringing a weapon into a checkpoint can reach up to $15,000, depending on the specific weapon and the circumstances. TSA prevented 44 guns from getting on planes at Pittsburgh International Airport in 2023, which is the most ever recorded for the airport.
May 6, 2024 4:59 am
NORTH BRADDOCK, Pa. — A man is dead after a shooting in North Braddock. Allegheny County dispatchers say police were called to the 500 block of Stokes Avenue at 8:15 p.m. on Sunday. When police arrived they found a man who had been shot dead inside a house. He was later identified as Derek Polite, 56, by the medical examiner’s office. Police say witnesses told them that Bernard Junior Polite lives in the house with a family member. Polite was taken into custody Sunday afternoon after state police say he tried to shoot a pastor during a sermon in North Braddock. Anyone with information is asked to call the Allegheny County Tip Line at 1-833-ALL-TIPS.
May 7, 2024 5:06 am
CAIRO (AP) — An Israeli tank brigade has seized control of the Gaza Strip side of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, moving ahead with an offensive in the southern city even as cease-fire negotiations with Hamas remain on a knife’s edge. The development on Tuesday comes after hours of whiplash in the Israel-Hamas war. The militant group on Monday said it accepted an Egyptian-Qatari mediated cease-fire proposal. Israel, meanwhile, insisted the deal did not meet its core demands. The high-stakes diplomatic moves and military brinkmanship left a glimmer of hope alive — but only barely — for an accord that could bring at least a pause in the 7-month-old war that has devastated the Gaza Strip.
May 7, 2024 5:08 am
NEW YORK (AP) — Pro-Palestinian demonstrators at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology retook a barricaded encampment, those at the Rhode Island School of Design occupied a building, and Columbia University said its university-wide commencement ceremony will not happen following weeks of protests. At MIT, protesters were given an afternoon deadline in which to voluntarily leave the protest site or face suspension. An MIT spokesperson said many left but protesters breached fencing after the arrival of demonstrators from outside the university. Officials at Columbia said it will focus on smaller school-level graduation ceremonies. Campus protests have sprung up across the U.S. in recent weeks stemming from the conflict that started when Hamas militants attacked southern Israel in October.
May 7, 2024 1:15 pm
(AP) – TikTok and its Chinese parent company ByteDance are suing the U.S. federal government over a law that would ban the popular video-sharing app unless it’s sold to another company. The lawsuit filed on Tuesday may be setting up what could be a protracted legal fight over its future in the United States. The popular social video company alleged the law, which President Joe Biden signed as part of a larger $95 billion foreign aid package, is so “obviously unconstitutional” that the sponsors of The Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act are trying to portray the law not as a ban, but as a regulation of TikTok’s ownership. (Photo: AP)
May 6, 2024 5:09 am
WASHINGTON (AP) — Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden share a bond that was forged through a hard-fought Democratic presidential primary in 2020 and fortified through policy achievements over the last three years. Now, Sanders will be Biden’s most powerful emissary to progressives and to younger voters this election year. The 82-year-old senator is determined to do what he can to prevent Donald Trump from returning to the Oval Office even as he bluntly warns that the crisis in Gaza could be Biden’s “Vietnam” and criticizes the president for his handling of the Israel-Hamas war.
May 7, 2024 5:07 am
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Powerful storms have erupted in the central United States, bringing tornadoes to rural Oklahoma and large hail in parts of Kansas. Forecasters are warning that the storms could stretch into the early hours of Tuesday. Tornadoes were spotted skirting northern Oklahoma, including one that caused extensive damage north of Tulsa in the small town of Barnsdall. The Osage County sheriff says there are no confirmed deaths. Homes were destroyed and trees and power lines were toppled by the tornado. In Kansas, some areas were pelted by apple-sized hail. The severe weather follows heavy rainfall in Houston, where floodwaters began to recede Monday.
May 7, 2024 5:04 am
PITTSBURGH — (WPXI) – At a time when new COVID-19 infections are considered low, new variations, called FLiRT variants are now starting to spread. Doctor Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease expert with Johns Hopkins, who is based out of Pittsburgh, says they evolved from Omicron. “The most recent variants that are becoming dominant are called FLiRT variants. The word FLiRT has to do with technical ways of describing the mutations that are present in it,” Adalja explained. “The virus that causes COVID-19 is going to continue to mutate in perpetuity, forever. That’s what viruses do, so there’s always going to be a new variant, whether that’s today, tomorrow, thirty years from now, there’s always going to be one variant rising, one variant falling, that’s how evolution occurs,” Adalja said. According to Adalja, FLiRT will have similar symptoms to all previous versions of COVID-19 — cough, cold-like-symptoms, muscle aches and pains, fevers, headaches, and sore throat — but most people will have some level of protection from vaccines and/or previous infections. For the general public, Adalja says new variants do not pose too much concern but he warns high-risk people need to take them very seriously. When it comes to COVID-19 vaccines, Adalja says they will continue to evolve to handle new strains of the virus. He says talks are happening now about what should be included in the next version of the vaccine.
May 6, 2024 2:56 pm
JERUSALEM (AP) — The Hamas militant group says it has accepted an Egyptian-Qatari cease-fire proposal to halt the seven-month war with Israel. An official familiar with Israeli thinking says Israeli officials are examining the cease-fire proposal approved by Hamas. But the official warns that the plan “is not the framework Israel proposed.” It remained uncertain whether a deal would be sealed to bring a halt to the war and avert an Israeli attack on Rafah. Hours earlier, Israel ordered some 100,000 Palestinians to begin evacuating the southern Gaza town of Rafah, signaling that an attack was imminent.
