April 29, 2021 4:16 am
WASHINGTON (AP) – South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott has used the Republican response to President Joe Biden’s address to Congress to vow that “America is not a racist country.” Scott, the only Black Republican senator, seized on Biden’s calls earlier in the evening that passage of major police reform could help stamp out institutional racism nationwide. Scott countered that “today, kids are being taught the color of their skin defines them again. If they look a certain way, they’re the oppressor.” He said Biden and other top Democrats have begun crying racism too frequently when it comes to unrelated policy disputes, saying “race is not a political weapon to settle every issue.”
April 29, 2021 2:31 am
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) – Republicans in Pennsylvania’s Senate are trying to make Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration start over on its plans to toll up to nine major bridges. They approved a bill Tuesday to require PennDOT to first secure approval from the Legislature. The bill passed 28-19, with the backing of every Republican and one Democrat. Republicans contend that the process leading to PennDOT’s announcement in February has lacked transparency and was never envisioned by lawmakers when they created the Public-Private Transportation Partnership Board in 2012. Democrats say Republicans are failing their obligations to fund transportation needs and say PennDOT’s initiative was squarely within the scope of 2012’s law. Wolf’s administration opposes the bill.
April 28, 2021 4:56 pm
UNDATED (AP) – Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins has died at age 90. He orbited the moon alone while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin made their historic first steps on the moon in 1969. Collins’ family said in a statement that the astronaut died Wednesday from cancer. While Collins traveled some 238,000 miles to the moon and came within 69 miles, he never set foot on the surface. áCollins spent the eight-day mission piloting the command module, Columbia. While Armstrong and Aldrin descended to the moon’s surface in the lunar lander Eagle, Collins remained alone for nearly 28 hours.
April 28, 2021 2:08 pm
NEW YORK (AP) – A law enforcement official tells the Associated Press that federal investigators have executed search warrants at Rudy Giuliani’s Manhattan residence and office. The former New York City mayor has been under investigation for several years over his business dealings in Ukraine. Details of the reasons for Wednesday’s searches were not immediately available. The officials who confirmed the execution of the search warrants did not have approval to speak publicly about an ongoing investigation and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity. A message left for Giuliani’s lawyer wasn’t immediately returned.
April 28, 2021 4:19 am
NEW YORK (AP) – One of the world’s most honored musical producers and engineers has died. Twenty-time Grammy winner Al Schmitt, who worked with everyone from Sam Cooke to Steely Dan to Frank Sinatra, was 91. His family says he died Monday in California. Schmitt worked on more than 150 gold records, in a wide range of styles. Schmitt engineered such classic records as Cooke’s “Another Saturday Night” and George Benson’s live cover of “On Broadway.” He produced Jefferson Airplane’s “Volunteers” album and Ray Charles’ “Genius Loves Company,” winner of five Grammys in 2005. He also worked on albums by Bob Dylan and Paul McCartney.
April 28, 2021 4:18 am
WASHINGTON (AP) – Congressional Democrats are moving to reinstate regulations designed to limit potent greenhouse gas emissions from oil and gas fields. It’s part of a broader effort by the Biden administration to combat climate change. The Senate is set to take up a resolution Wednesday that would undo an environmental rollback by President Donald Trump. The rule relaxed requirements of a 2016 Obama administration rule targeting methane emissions from oil and gas drilling. Democrats and environmentalists called the rollback egregious, noting that methane is a potent greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming.
April 28, 2021 4:17 am
WASHINGTON (AP) – President Joe Biden will call for free preschool for all three- and four-year-old children as part of his American Families Plan. That’s according to White House officials, who say the $200 billion investment is to be unveiled Wednesday in Biden’s address to Congress. The $1 trillion-plus package focuses on so-called human infrastructure – child care, health care, education and other core aspects of everyday life. It would be paid for by hiking taxes on very high-income households – those making more than $400,000 a year. With details still in flux, members of Congress are spending the final hours before Wednesday night’s address trying to ensure their priorities are included.
April 28, 2021 4:16 am
NEW DELHI (AP) – The COVID-19 death toll in India has topped 200,000 as the country endures its darkest chapter of the pandemic yet. The health ministry on Wednesday reported 3,293 deaths in the last 24 hours, bringing India’s total fatalities to 201,187. India has the fourth most deaths, behind the United States, Brazil and Mexico. Experts, however, believe the numbers are an undercount. India thought it had weathered the worst of the pandemic last year, but the current surge is sending its health systems toward collapse. Hospitalizations and deaths have reached record highs. Patients are suffocating because hospitals’ oxygen supplies have run out. Fires at overwhelmed crematoriums are lighting up night skies.
April 28, 2021 4:14 am
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) – The board of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education is advancing a plan to merge six of its 14 universities into two new institutions, as the system struggles with sinking enrollment and stagnant state aid. Wednesday’s nearly unanimous board vote launches a 60-day public comment period. A final vote could be scheduled for July, with implementation in time for the 2022-23 school year. Under the plans, Bloomsburg, Mansfield and Lock Haven universities in northern Pennsylvania would merge into one institution and California, Clarion and Edinboro in western Pennsylvania would merge to become another. All six campuses would remain open, with integrated faculty, curriculum and enrollment strategies.
April 28, 2021 4:10 am
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) – Republicans in Pennsylvania’s Senate are trying to make Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration start over on its plans to toll up to nine major bridges. They approved a bill Tuesday to require PennDOT to first secure approval from the Legislature. The bill passed 28-19, with the backing of every Republican and one Democrat. Republicans contend that the process leading to PennDOT’s announcement in February has lacked transparency and was never envisioned by lawmakers when they created the Public-Private Transportation Partnership Board in 2012. Democrats say Republicans are failing their obligations to fund transportation needs and say PennDOT’s initiative was squarely within the scope of 2012’s law. Wolf’s administration opposes the bill.
