January 11, 2022 4:19 am
WASHINGTON (AP) – President Joe Biden in recent days has singled out the protection of voting rights in the U.S. as a top priority. He’s heading to Georgia with the vice president on Tuesday afternoon to help cement that point. But civil rights activists are afraid it may already be too late. While in Atlanta, Biden will visit Ebenezer Baptist Church, where the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once held forth from the pulpit. Biden isn’t expected to announce new executive action on voting rights, and major civil rights groups say they need action, not another speech.
January 11, 2022 4:17 am
BOSTON (AP) – The U.S. Northeast is girding for extreme cold that was expected to reach a wind chill value of minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit in some northern areas and closed some schools elsewhere. The largest public school district in Massachusetts announced Monday that schools will not open Tuesday because of expected extremely cold temperatures. Low temperatures below zero, not including the wind chill, are also expected in Burlington, Vermont, and Concord, New Hampshire. Forecasters said Providence, Rhode Island, should expect a wind chill value of as low as minus 1 degree Fahrenheit. And New York City also is in for subzero temperatures when wind chill is factored in.
January 11, 2022 4:15 am
CHICAGO (AP) – Students in the nation’s third-largest school district will resume classes this week after leaders of the Chicago Teachers Union accepted a proposal with the district over COVID-19 safety protocols. Both sides had been locked in an increasingly bitter standoff that canceled classes for five days in the nation’s third-largest district. The full deal still requires approval by the union’s full 25,000 members, but students are expected back in class Wednesday with teachers returning a day earlier. Issues on the table have been metrics to close schools and expanded COVID-19 testing. The union voted last week to revert to online instruction and told teachers not to show up in person at schools as negotiations continued amid a surge in COVID-19 infections.
January 11, 2022 4:08 am
PITTSBURGH — (WPXI) – A number of Pittsburgh area schools are impacted by COVID-19 starting Tuesday. In the Diocese of Pittsburgh, Saint Therese School (Munhall) will be closed for in-person instruction Today and Wednesday. In-person classes are scheduled to resume on Thursday, January 13, 2022. Principal Jon Cuniak sent a message to parents informing them about the need for the closure, and detailing procedures for virtual learning. All athletic events (home and away) and extra-curricular activities are also cancelled. Serra Catholic High School (McKeesport) is also experiencing COVID-related staffing shortages, and has moved to online learning for Tuesday and Wednesday. Practices and extracurricular activities will continue. Pittsburgh Public Schools have announced that five schools: Pittsburgh Carrick High School, Pittsburgh Liberty PreK-5, Pittsburgh Lincoln PreK-5, Pittsburgh South Hills 6-8, and Pittsburgh Whittier PreK-5 will reopen Tuesday for in-person learning while six other sites have been added to the District’s rolling building closures. Staff and students at 21 locations will work and learn remotely Tuesday.
January 10, 2022 5:26 pm
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) – A Pennsylvania court won’t block an entire subpoena to state election officials in what Republican state lawmakers call a “forensic investigation” of 2020’s presidential election, fueled by former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims that Democrats stole the election. But the statewide Commonwealth Court that issued the seven-page order Monday also did not appear to immediately greenlight the release of some information that Democratic state Attorney General Josh Shapiro challenged as being protected by privacy laws. In the unsigned order, the court said state officials did not persuade it that the subpoena issued in September by a Republican-controlled Senate committee had no legitimate legislative purpose.
January 10, 2022 4:42 pm
UNDATED (AP) – U.S. doctors have transplanted a pig heart into a patient in a last-ditch effort to save his life – a first for medical science. Doctors at the University of Maryland School of Medicine said Monday the patient is doing well three days after surgery. The patient is 57-year-old David Bennett, a Maryland handyman too sick to get a human heart. Bennett said before the surgery: “I want to live. I know it’s a shot in the dark, but it’s my last choice.” Friday’s surgery showed for the first time that a gene-edited animal heart can function in the human body without immediate rejection.
January 10, 2022 2:25 pm
LOS ANGELES (AP) – Robert Durst, the New York real estate heir sentenced to life in prison for killing his best friend, has died. He was 78. Durst was convicted of the 2000 killing of Susan Berman in September. Durst’s lawyer said he died Monday in a state prison hospital facility in Stockton, California. Attorney Chip Lewis said it was from natural causes due to a number of ailments. Durst was facing trial in New York for the killing his wife, who disappeared in 1982. He was acquitted in 2003 in the death of a Texas man. (Photo: AP)
January 10, 2022 12:50 pm
(WPXI) – Police say a man has been arrested after a woman’s body was found Saturday in a shed behind a home in Pittsburgh’s Knoxville neighborhood. Montel Reed, 26, is charged with homicide, tampering with evidence and abuse of a corpse in the death of 38-year-old Crystal Leschner. At about 4:30 p.m. Saturday, police responded to a call that someone who lives on Reifert Street had found a body, later identified as Leschner, in their shed. Leschner’s body, which had been wrapped in plastic, was found inside a suitcase in the shed. After talking with Leschner’s family, investigators learned that she had been in a relationship with Reed, who was arrested four times in 2021 for assaulting her. Police said Leschner had paid to rent out a living space above a detached garage behind the home next to the shed where her body was found. Reed lived in the basement of that home. Reed had been released from jail on Dec. 17, 2021, police said. He was arrested again on Jan. 6th. When police questioned Reed, he admitted to stabbing Leschner multiple times in the neck during a dispute on Dec. 27 inside the living space she rented out, according to the complaint. He told police he left and returned early the next morning, at which point he put her body in a wall storage area.
January 10, 2022 4:40 am
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) – Comedian and actor Bob Saget was found dead lying face up on his bed in a luxury hotel room in Florida with no signs of trauma. That’s according to a sheriff’s office report released Monday. The Orange County Sheriff’s Office report says there were no signs of foul play, and the room itself was in order. Saget’s left arm was across his chest and his right arm was resting on his bed when deputies and paramedics arrived Sunday at his room at the Ritz Carlton in Orlando and pronounced him dead. Saget was best known for his role as beloved single dad Danny Tanner on the sitcom “Full House.”
January 10, 2022 4:22 am
NEW YORK (AP) – Doctors are racing to save the lives of people who were knocked out or trapped in their apartments by a fire that sent smoke billowing through a New York City high-rise. Seventeen people, including eight children, died Sunday in the blaze in the Bronx. Dozens of people were in the hospital Monday, and as many as 13 were in critical condition. The fire is already the city’s deadliest in three decades. Investigators determined that a malfunctioning electric space heater was to blame. The flames damaged only a small part of the 19-story building, but smoke poured through an open door and turned stairwells into dark, ash-choked horrors.
