January 29, 2022 9:33 am
HOUSTON (AP) – Two Houston police officers wounded in a Thursday shootout with a suspect have been discharged from the hospital. In a statement Friday, the Houston Police Department said one officer remains hospitalized in stable condition. The statement also identified the man suspected of exchanging gunfire with the officers. Thirty-one-year-old Roland Caballero, who is hospitalized with a gunshot wound to the neck, is charged with three counts of attempted capital murder of a police officer and an aggravated robbery count. It’s unclear from jail and court records if he has an attorney. The shootout came at the end of a police chase.
January 29, 2022 9:29 am
WASHINGTON (AP) – The House committee investigating the U.S. Capitol insurrection has subpoenaed more than a dozen individuals who it says falsely tried to declare Donald Trump the winner of the 2020 election. The panel is demanding information and testimony from 14 people who the panel says met and submitted false Electoral College certificates from Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. President Joe Biden won all seven states. The Justice Department has also received referrals from lawmakers regarding the fake certifications and prosecutors are reviewing them.
January 29, 2022 9:27 am
HOT SPRINGS, Ark. (AP) – Authorities say a house fire in central Arkansas left four people dead, including two children. Arkansas State Police say the fire was reported shortly after 10 a.m. Friday. First responders arrived to find the home, located about 3 miles northeast of Hot Springs, fully involved in flames. Firefighters found the bodies of 29-year-old Kayle Arriaga, her two children, 2-year-old Mattie Cummins and 4-year-old Wesley Cummins, and 31-year-old Kenneth Ingram after extinguishing the blaze. No cause has been determined. State Police and fire marshals of the three responding fire departments will investigate.
January 29, 2022 9:24 am
The highly contagious omicron variant of the coronavirus is driving the daily American death toll higher than during last fall’s delta wave. Deaths are likely to keep rising for days or even weeks. The seven-day rolling average for daily new COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. has been climbing since mid-November. It reached 2,267 on Thursday. That surpasses a September peak of 2,100 when delta was the dominant variant. Now omicron is estimated to account for nearly all the virus circulating in the nation. Andrew Noymer is a public health professor at the University of California, Irvine. He says omicron will push the U.S. over a million deaths.
January 29, 2022 9:21 am
BOSTON (AP) – People from New York City to Maine are awakening to deep snow and high winds as a powerful nor’easter kicks up blizzard conditions. There is potential with Saturday’s storm for widespread power outages and coastal flooding. Parts of 10 states and the population centers of Philadelphia, New York and Boston are in the path of the storm. Boston could get as much as 2 feet of snow. Airlines canceled more than 4,500 flights. Officials warned people to stay off the roads. The storm’s saving grace is its timing. It is hitting on a weekend when schools are closed and few people are commuting to work.
January 29, 2022 3:45 am
PITTSBURGH (AP) – Rescuers had to rappel nearly 150 feet down a Pittsburgh ravine and form a human chain to reach a few people after a bridge collapsed and took a municipal bus down with it. The collapse early Friday came hours before President Joe Biden visited the city to promote his $1 trillion infrastructure law. At least four people were injured, but there were no deaths. The bridge in a park over Fern Hollow Creek came down just before 7 a.m. The cause was being investigated. The bus driver told WPXI-TV that he believed the bridge was collapsing as soon as he reached it.
January 29, 2022 3:44 am
South Strabane Township will get what they need to formally dissolve the South Strabane Township Sanitary Authority (SSTSA). A hearing on Friday answered debt questions from the Washington-East Washington Joint Authority (WEWJA). In a hearing earlier this week WEWJA made it clear that any further expanded partnership with South Strabane Township would be dependent upon the pay off of all debts from the SSTSA. Township solicitor Dennis Makel presented testimony indicating that a nearly $22,000 loan to PennVest would be paid early next week. Another $600,000 listed as debt is actually two agreements to repay based on sewer tap in fees and not general obligation debts. Makel enlisted testimony from the Washington County Redevelopment Authority’s solicitor to back up that information. Judge Gary Gilman will be granting a permanent injunction against the SSTSA preventing it from any further operation.
January 29, 2022 3:09 am
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) – A statewide court says Pennsylvania’s expansive two-year-old mail-in voting law is unconstitutional, agreeing with challenges by Republicans who soured on mail-in voting after then-President Donald Trump began baselessly attacking it as rife with fraud in 2020’s campaign. Friday’s decision by a five-judge Commonwealth Court panel was deemed to on hold immediately by an appeal from Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration to the state Supreme Court. Still, the decision throws the state’s voting laws into doubt in a big election year. The three Republican judges agreed with Republican challengers. The two Democrats on the panel dissented. The state Supreme Court has a 5-2 Democratic majority.
January 28, 2022 4:17 am
MIAMI BEACH, Fla. (AP) – The Coast Guard says it has suspended its rescue operations in the search for dozens of migrants lost at sea off Florida. The maritime security agency called off its active search for survivors at sunset Thursday. Homeland Security Investigations officials say they are treating the case as a human smuggling operation. A lone survivor was found clinging to the hull of the overturned boat on Tuesday. He said the boat capsized late Saturday after he and 39 others had set out for Florida from Bimini, a chain of islands in the Bahamas. Authorities have now found a total of five bodies, leaving 34 missing five days after the vessel capsized.
January 28, 2022 4:16 am
HOUSTON (AP) – Authorities say a suspect led Houston police on a chase Thursday that ended with him wounding three officers in a shootout, hijacking a car and barricading himself inside a home for hours before surrendering. The incident began about 2:40 p.m. when a car police were pursuing crashed at a residential intersection on the southeastern edge of downtown Houston. Police said the suspect carjacked at gunpoint a white Mercedes and fled to a home several miles away. Police say the man surrendered about 7:30 p.m. Thursday. The officers are hospitalized in stable condition. The suspect surrendered about 7:45 p.m.
