January 6, 2023 4:19 am
(AP) – Authorities say a key piece of evidence in the case of four University of Idaho students stabbed to death in November turned out to be surveillance footage showing a white sedan driving past the victims’ home. According to a police affidavit unsealed Thursday, the car drove past three times before the stabbings early on Nov. 13 and was recorded speeding away afterwards. Investigators said they later tracked the car – and eventually, DNA evidence – to Bryan Kohberger, a 28-year-old graduate student in criminology at Washington State University, just across the state border. Kohberger made an initial appearance in an Idaho courtroom Thursday after being extradited from Pennsylvania, where he was arrested last week.
January 6, 2023 4:17 am
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) – Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered his armed forces to observe a 36-hour unilateral cease-fire in Ukraine this weekend for the Orthodox Christmas holiday. Kyiv indicates it won’t follow suit. Putin does not appear to make his cease-fire order conditional on a Ukrainian acceptance. It isn’t clear whether hostilities would actually halt. Ukrainian officials have previously dismissed Russian peace moves as playing for time to regroup their forces. At various points in the war that started Feb. 24, Putin has ordered limited and local truces to allow evacuations of civilians or other humanitarian purposes. Thursday’s order was the first time Putin directed his troops to cease fire throughout Ukraine.
January 6, 2023 4:15 am
WASHINGTON (AP) – House leader Kevin McCarthy is getting closer to victory in the grueling, hard-fought struggle to become speaker of the new Congress. On the fourth day of voting, 15 of the 20 conservative holdouts switched to him on the 12th and 13th rounds of balloting. But he was still short of the majority he needs to win. McCarthy told reporters as he arrived at the Capitol, “We’re going to shock you.” The new effort is taking place against the backdrop of the second anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Republicans voted to adjourn, resuming at 10 p.m.
January 6, 2023 4:12 am
ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. (AP) – Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin’s agent says the player is breathing on his own and able to talk after having his breathing tube removed. It comes four days after he went into cardiac arrest and was resuscitated on the field. Hamlin also joined the team’s morning meeting by videoconference and told them “love you guys.” The 24-year-old Hamlin was listed Thursday in critical condition in the intensive care unit of the University of Cincinnati Medical Center.
January 6, 2023 2:20 am
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) – Pennsylvania’s newly minted state House speaker is moving to make his major policy goal regarding victims of child sexual abuse to be the chamber’s urgent priority. Speaker Mark Rozzi on Friday backed Gov. Tom Wolf’s announcement of an immediate special session to consider a constitutional amendment that would give victims of child sexual abuse a two-year window in which to file otherwise time-barred lawsuits. Rozzi says no other legislation will be considered until the proposal passes. House Republican Leader Bryan Cutler of Lancaster County says a special session devoted to that single topic isn’t warranted. Cutler says consideration of the amendment can be done as regular legislative business.
January 5, 2023 10:42 am
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) – Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered Moscow’s armed forces to hold a 36-hour cease-fire in Ukraine this weekend for the Russian Orthodox Christmas holiday. The order follows a proposal by the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill. Putin’s order said: “Based on the fact that a large number of citizens professing Orthodoxy live in the combat areas, we call on the Ukrainian side to declare a cease-fire and give them the opportunity to attend services on Christmas Eve, as well as on the Day of the Nativity of Christ.”
January 5, 2023 4:18 am
BOISE, Idaho (AP) – Authorities say the DNA of the man accused of killing four University of Idaho students was found on a knife sheath recovered at the crime scene. In court documents unsealed Thursday, Brett Payne, a police corporal in Moscow, Idaho, also says cellphone data shows that 28-year-old Bryan Kohberger had visited the area near the home where the Nov. 13 attack occurred about a dozen times since June. He says a woman who lived at the home and who wasn’t harmed awoke to the sound of crying that night to find a masked man in black clothing who walked past her and toward a sliding glass door. Kohberger is charged with four counts of first-degree murder and felony burglary.
January 5, 2023 4:16 am
ENOCH, Utah (AP) – A Utah man fatally shot his five children, his mother-in-law and his wife, then killed himself two weeks after the woman had filed for divorce, according to authorities and public records. Enoch Police Chief Jackson Ames said during a Thursday news conference that officers had been involved in investigations involving the 42-year-old man and his family a “couple of years prior.” He did not elaborate. The crime rocked Enoch, a small town in southern Utah about halfway between Salt Lake City and Las Vegas. It’s one of the fastest-growing areas of the country and communities of new homes are made up of large families that belong, like most of Utah, to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, known widely as the Mormon church.
January 5, 2023 4:15 am
VATICAN CITY (AP) – Bells tolled for the funeral of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, the German theologian who made history by retiring, as thousands of mourners packed St. Peter’s Square for a rare requiem Mass of a dead pontiff presided over by a living one. The faithful applauded as pallbearers carried Benedict’s cypress coffin out of the fog-shrouded St. Peter’s Basilica and rested it before the altar. With red-robed clergy looking on, Benedict’s longtime secretary bent down and kissed a book of the Gospels that was left open on the coffin. Heads of state and royalty, clergy from around the world and thousands of regular people flocked to the Vatican, despite Benedict’s requests for simplicity and official efforts to keep the first funeral for an pope emeritus in modern times low-key.
December 28, 2022 2:55 am
Fire crews were called to Roland’s Restaurant along West Chestnut Street in North Franklin Township Tuesday morning. North Franklin Fire Department Chief Dave Bane says the blaze broke out around seven-thirty in the freezer area behind the bar. Bane says they believe the blaze was accidental and electrical in nature. There were no injuries and Bane says that with the assistance of several local fire companies, they were able to put out the fire very quickly and with minimal damage.
