July 12, 2021 4:18 am
WASHINGTON (AP) – U.S. health officials say Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine may pose a “small possible risk” of a rare but potentially dangerous neurological reaction. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday that it has received reports of 100 people who got the shot developing an immune system disorder that can causes muscle weakness and occasionally paralysis. The reports represent a tiny fraction of the nearly 13 million Americans who have received the one-dose vaccine. The government said the vaccines most used in the U.S., made by Pfizer and Moderna, show no risk of the disorder.
July 12, 2021 4:16 am
Firefighters working in searing heat struggled to contain the largest wildfire in California this year while state power operators urged people to conserve energy after a huge wildfire in neighboring Oregon disrupted the flow of electricity from three major transmission lines. A large swath of the West baked during the weekend in triple-digit temperatures that were expected to continue into the start of the work week. Managers of California’s power grid issued a five-hour “flex alert” starting at 4 p.m. Monday and asked consumers to “conserve as much electricity as possible” to avoid outages. California’s largest fire is burning near the Nevada border north of Lake Tahoe and grew by a third on Sunday.
July 12, 2021 4:13 am
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) – President Joe Biden will speak in Philadelphia on Tuesday to discuss voting rights. The visit comes as fights over the 2020 presidential election and election laws roil state and U.S. capitols. The White House’s announcement Friday says only that Biden’s remarks will be on “actions to protect the sacred, constitutional right to vote.” Pennsylvania is one of the battleground states buffeted by former President Donald Trump’s baseless conspiracy theories that attribute his loss to Biden in last year’s election to widespread election fraud. In Congress last month, Democrats’ sweeping attempt to rewrite U.S. election and voting law was blocked by a Republican filibuster.
July 12, 2021 4:12 am
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) – With just a year and a half left in office, Gov. Tom Wolf’s primary focus will be convincing the Republican-controlled Legislature to modernize how state aid is distributed to Pennsylvania’s public schools. Doing so would direct more money to Pennsylvania’s poorest school districts as well as to growing districts. In an interview Thursday, Wolf told The Associated Press he remains dedicated to two initiatives that have drawn stiff resistance from many Republicans. That’s adding tolls to nine major interstate bridges in need of upgrades and forcing fossil fuel-fired power plants to pay a price for the carbon dioxide they emit. The 72-year-old Democrat is term-limited.
July 12, 2021 4:10 am
A Mt. Morris woman has died from injuries suffered last week in a head-on collision with a tractor-trailer on Interstate 79 in Greene County near the Welcome Center in Whitely Township. State Police say 45-year-old Donna Philips was driving south on the interstate just before five o’clock on Wednesday when she apparently lost control of her vehicle and crossed the median. She crashed into a tractor-trailer traveling in the northbound lanes. She and a sixteen-year-old girl in the vehicle were taken to Ruby Memorial Hospital in Morgantown, West Virginia. There’s been no word on the identity of the teen or her condition. The driver of the truck and a passenger, both from Florida, were not injured.
July 12, 2021 4:09 am
BETHEL PARK, Pa. — (WPXI) – The Bethel Park Police Department took to social media to ask for the public’s help in searching for a man caught on video wandering around and knocking on doors of multiple homes on Sarah Street. The video is of a man ringing a doorbell at a home on Sarah Street just after 5 a.m. According to investigators, he didn’t only ring the doorbell at this house, but at another one too, before going around to the back of the house. Police say none of the neighbors recognize the man.
July 11, 2021 7:56 am
SURFSIDE, Fla. (AP) — The mangled concrete and twisted rebar from the collapsed high-rise near Miami triggered flashbacks for retired Oklahoma City Fire Chief Greg Marrs, who spent weeks with his crew digging through the rubble of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in 1995. From afar, Marrs empathized with the Florida teams searching the debris that was once the 12-story Champlain Tower South condominium complex. The scenes in Surfside brought back memories of the urgent search for survivors after the Oklahoma City bombing, followed by the heartbreak of pulling out nothing but bodies, he said. It was the same for other rescuers who responded to past tragedies. They say the crews in Surfside will carry on with the same commitment and care, even though authorities this past week officially gave up on finding any survivors. Joseph Pfeifer, former counterterrorism and emergency preparedness chief for the New York Fire Department, was one of the first commanders on the scene after the World Trade Center towers came down in 2001. He said the Florida crews will preserve any human remains and separate any building pieces that provide clues to the cause of the collapse. When Marrs first saw photos of the Florida collapse, he said, the images were reminiscent of the destruction at the federal building after a truck filled with explosives was detonated outside. The blast killed 168 people.
July 11, 2021 7:55 am
ROME (AP) — Pope Francis on Sunday made his first public appearance since major intestinal surgery last week, greeting well-wishers as he stood for 10 minutes on a hospital balcony, offering hearty thanks for all the prayers for his recovery and calling health care for all a “precious” good. Francis, 84, has been steadily on the mend, according to the Vatican, following his July 4 scheduled surgery to remove a portion of his colon which had narrowed due to inflammation. But it hasn’t said just when he might be discharged. On the morning after his surgery, a Holy See spokesperson said his hospital stay was expected to last seven days, “barring complications.” At first the pontiff’s voice sounded on the weak side as he began his remarks after stepping onto a balcony outside his special suite at Gemelli Polyclinic at noon (1000 GMT; 6 a.m. EST). That is the hour when traditionally he would have appeared from a window at the Vatican overlooking St. Peter’s Square. Exactly a week earlier, in his noon remarks he had given no hint that in a few hours he would have entered the hospital for surgery that same night.
July 11, 2021 7:54 am
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The North Korean and Chinese leaders expressed their desire Sunday to further strengthen their ties as they exchanged messages marking the 60th anniversary of their countries’ defense treaty. In a message to Chinese President Xi Jinping, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said it is “the fixed stand” of his government to “ceaselessly develop the friendly and cooperative relations” between the countries, the state-run Korean Central News Agency said. Xi said in his message that China and North Korea have “unswervingly supported each other,” according to China’s official Xinhua News Agency. North Korea has been expected to seek greater support from China, its major ally and aid benefactor, as it grapples with economic hardship exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic and crippling U.S.-led sanctions over its nuclear weapons program. China, for its part, sees preventing a North Korean collapse as crucial to its security interests and would need to boost ties with North Korea and other traditional allies amid fierce rivalry with the United States, some experts say.
July 11, 2021 7:52 am
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — With just a year and a half left in office, Gov. Tom Wolf’s primary focus will be convincing the Republican-controlled Legislature to modernize how state aid is distributed to Pennsylvania’s public schools — a shift that could carry a price tag of $1 billion. Doing so would direct more money to Pennsylvania’s poorest school districts — including districts with the state’s biggest proportions of Black students — as well as to growing suburban districts whose share of state aid reflects early 1990s demographics or political compromises in the Legislature. In an interview Thursday with The Associated Press, the Democratic governor also said he remains dedicated to two initiatives opposed by many Republicans: adding tolls to nine major interstate bridges in need of upgrades and forcing fossil fuel-fired power plants to pay a price for the carbon dioxide they emit. On the proposed bridge tolls, Wolf said he hasn’t seen a better idea to fill the growing highway construction-funding gap worsened by stagnating gasoline tax revenues. On the other, the centerpiece of his agenda to fight climate change, Pennsylvania’s coal-fired power plants have been closing anyway, Wolf said, and his plan at least promises aid to coal communities that lose plants in the future. Wolf, 72, is term-limited and must leave office in January 2023.
