August 20, 2022 3:48 am
MCCANDLESS TOWNSHIP, Pa. (WPXI) — Police said a woman’s body was driven around Pittsburgh for hours before being left in a car outside her home for two days. Patrick McCurry is charged with abuse of a corpse. Nicole Dull’s body was found in the passenger seat of her car about two months ago, in the parking lot of a McCandless apartment building. Investigators said McCurry gave her Narcan after an overdose and drove her around the city. Police believe the victim was already deceased before she ended up in the car. “I was surprised by the police cars here,” a witness said. “They were still here whenever I came back around 45 minutes later. It looked like detectives were on the scene with the flip books that everything you see.” Police say traffic cameras spotted McCurry driving the car that night with Dull in a reclined position.
August 20, 2022 3:35 am
The Pennsylvania Trolley Museum announced on Friday, the acquisition and restoration of a full size horse model for display with its historic 1870s vintage horsecar. Museum officials say the full-sized fiberglass horse had become a landmark and was displayed for over 45 years as part of a sign for Lowry’s Western Shop near the Museum on Henderson Avenue in Washington. They said the popular road side sign was badly damaged in January after being knocked over by a delivery truck, so Gail Cecchetti and Bill Litman, Co-Owners of Lowry’s Western Shop, generously donated the horse to the Museum and then Prime Collision Center stepped in to restore it. Gary Flannery, Prime Collision Center’s Executive Manager, said “although unusual, Prime Collision Center accepted the challenge since it performs fiberglass repairs on vehicles.” Gary’s wife Rose got into the act by doing the detailed painting of the horse. Ed Morasyczk, President of the Trolley Museum and one of the owners of Prime Collision Center thought it was a worthy project and donated Prime’s services to make the repairs and painting. Sarah Wells, a long-time PTM volunteer found and donated the correct harness to outfit the horse so it can be properly displayed with the horsecar. Scott Becker, Executive Director & CEO said that: “The horse really helps to better tell the story of animal powered transit in the 19th Century. Horsecars were the first “all weather” public transit in places like Pittsburgh since they ran on steel rails and got people out of the mud. Pittsburgh’s Sarah Street line ran until 1923 and was one of the last horsecar lines in the United States.
August 19, 2022 3:32 pm
(AP) – A Pittsburgh grandmother needed hundreds of stitches after she was bitten on the arm by a shark in Myrtle Beach, one of two attacks that day. On Monday, Karen Sites and her 8-year-old grandson, Brian Sites, were wading in the ocean at South Carolina’s most famous beach when an unidentified shark grabbed Karen Sites’ arm. “I just felt something, I guess, bite me and there was a shark on my arm,” Sites told The Associated Press. According to WPDE, Brian Sites witnessed the attack just a few feet away. “I couldn’t even see the shark coming up, but all I saw was the shark jumped up, and it didn’t even bite all the way, like I saw the movement of the tail go to the side, and then she screamed a little bit, and as soon as she touched it, it fell into the water,” he told WPDE. Karen Sites was taken to a nearby hospital for surgery, where she received hundreds of stitches. While shark attacks are considered rare, a second shark attack was reported later that day, about a half-mile from where Karen Sites was bitten.
August 19, 2022 7:53 am
FARGO, N.D. (AP) – The school board in North Dakota’s most populous city has reversed course on its decision to stop reciting the Pledge of Allegiance at its monthly meetings. The group decided to reconsider at a special meeting Thursday following complaints from conservative lawmakers and widespread bashing from citizens. Seven of the nine members of the Fargo Board of Education, including four newcomers who took office in June, had voted last week to cancel a previous board edict to recite the pledge that passed a couple of months before the election. The new board said the oath did not align with the district’s diversity and inclusion code. All but one of the board members voted to reinstate the pledge, saying the controversy was a distraction to the district.
August 19, 2022 4:14 am
LVIV, Ukraine (AP) – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has met the U.N. chief and Turkey’s leader in Ukraine. Little progress was reported on expanding Ukraine’s grain exports, the volatile situation at a Russian-occupied nuclear power plant and efforts to help end the war. It was Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s first visit to Ukraine since the outbreak of the war, and the second by U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres. The leaders also discussed exchanges of prisoners of war and a proposed U.N. fact-finding mission to a prison in Russian-occupied Ukraine where 53 POWs were killed last month.
August 19, 2022 4:11 am
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) – Dire consequences could result if states, cities and farms across the American West cannot agree on how to cut the amount of water they draw from the Colorado River. Hydroelectric turbines may stop turning. Las Vegas and Phoenix may be forced to restrict water usage or growth. Farmers may have to stop planting some crops. Yet for years, seven states that depend on the river have allowed more water to be taken from it than nature can replenish. Despite widespread recognition of the crisis, the states missed a deadline this week to propose cuts. And the government stopped short of imposing cuts on its own.
August 19, 2022 4:10 am
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) – A federal judge has ordered the Justice Department to put forward proposed redactions as he committed to making public at least part of the affidavit supporting the search warrant for former President Donald Trump’s estate in Florida. U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart on Thursday gave prosecutors a week to submit a copy of the affidavit with proposed redactions for the information it wants to keep secret. It comes a little more than a week after the FBI seized classified and top secret information during a search at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate last week. A prosecutor said the investigation into whether Trump illegally stored classified records is still “in its early stages.”
August 19, 2022 4:03 am
Washington County Commissioners voted to approve the acceptance of a grant from the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development for the purpose of helping with election integrity. The grant will total more than $733,000 and was funded by state legislature through Act 88 of 2022. Commissioner Diana Irey-Vaughn is pleased to be getting the funding and looks for it to help the county elections office greatly. Director of Elections Melanie Ostrander says that there are qualifications on how the money is to be used. She states that the monies are to be used to help counties obtain resources to count mail-in and absentee ballots beginning on Election Day. According to Ostrander there are 9 categories that monies from the grant may be used. Some of them are paying workers to help tabulate mail in and absentee ballots, purchase of equipment to help tabulate those ballots, pay for poll workers, and help with the payment of printing and postage for the office to comply with a national registration of voters and the printing of ballots. The grant is designed to be an ongoing funding source and the monies are to be used during the fiscal year that the grant is issued.
August 18, 2022 1:56 pm
(AP) – A person familiar with the situation tells The Associated Press that Deshaun Watson has reached a settlement with the NFL and will serve an 11-game suspension and pay a $5 million fine rather than risk missing his first season as quarterback of the Cleveland Browns. Watson was accused of sexual misconduct by two dozen women while he played for the Houston Texans. The person spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity Thursday in disclosing the settlement between Watson and the league, which had sought to ban him for at least one year for violating its personal conduct policy. As part of the settlement, Watson may return for the Browns’ game on Dec. 4 in Houston.
August 18, 2022 8:58 am
WASHINGTON (AP) – Slightly fewer Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week as the labor market continues to be the strongest segment of the U.S. economy. Applications for jobless aid for the week ending August 13 fell by 2,000 to 250,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday. Last week’s number, which raised some eyebrows, was revised down by 10,000. The four-week average for claims, which evens out some of the week-to-week volatility, fell by 2,750 to 246,750. Unemployment applications generally reflect layoffs and are often seen as an early indicator of where the job market is headed.
