January 11, 2021 4:14 am
PITTSBURGH (AP) – A Port Authority bus driver has been placed on probation for three years after pleading guilty to involuntary manslaughter in the death of a University of Pittsburgh student struck by the bus she was driving a year ago. Thirty-four-year-old Shavonne James also pleaded guilty Monday in Allegheny County Court to recklessly endangering another person in the death of 20-year-old Barbara Como of Chester Springs. Other charges of reckless driving, failure to yield to pedestrians in crosswalks and operating an improperly equipped vehicle were withdrawn. Authorities said James was driving in Pittsburgh’s Oakland neighborhood in January 2020 when she turned and hit Como, a senior studying anthropology and psychology.
January 11, 2021 4:13 am
WASHINGTON (AP) – The violent mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol last week was overwhelmingly made up of longtime Trump supporters. The Associated Press reviewed social media posts, voter registrations, court files and other public records for more than 120 people connected to the rioting. They include Republican Party officials, GOP political donors, far-right militants, white supremacists and adherents of the QAnon conspiracy theory. The evidence gives lie to claims that the violence at the Capitol was perpetrated by left-wing antifa thugs rather than supporters of the president. An FBI official says investigators have seen “no indication” antifa activists were disguised as Trump supporters during the Capitol riot.
January 11, 2021 4:11 am
BETHLEHEM, Pa. (AP) – Lehigh University’s board is stripping President Donald Trump of an honorary degree it granted to him more than three decades ago. The executive committee of the private university in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, moved to rescind the 1988 honor a day after a violent mob stormed the U.S. Capitol shortly after Trump made a speech nearby. The Lehigh Board of Trustees affirmed that decision on Friday but didn’t elaborate on its reasoning. Wagner College in Staten Island, New York, said Friday it also rescinded an honorary degree it gave Trump in 2004.
January 11, 2021 2:47 am
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) – Pennsylvania will soon begin vaccinating people 75 years and older and “essential workers” like police officers, grocery store clerks and teachers. That’s according to the state health secretary. Dr. Rachel Levine said Monday that the state remains focused on giving the COVID-19 vaccine to health workers and residents of long-term care facilities. But she says the state is making plans to move to the next stage of its vaccination plan. Levine says this group, which also includes clergy, postal employees and factory workers, will be eligible to receive the vaccine before everyone in the first group has been inoculated.
January 11, 2021 2:03 am
PITTSBURGH (WPXI) — Pittsburgh public safety officials said they are monitoring social media reports of possible protests in the city ahead of the Presidential inauguration in Washington, D.C. According to a statement, officials said if any city employees participated in “Wednesday’s deadly insurrection” on Capitol Hill, they would be disciplined. Inauguration Day takes place on Wednesday, Jan. 20, where President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will be sworn into office. According to the Washington Post, Pittsburgh was included in social media posts among possible sites where violence could occur. A case study from the Alethea Group said posts about the city included pictures of stockpiles of ammunition. The report said specific locations included the U.S. Capitol and the Mall in Washington, the Utah Capitol in Salt Lake City, Pittsburgh and Columbus, Ohio.
January 10, 2021 8:14 am
BEIJING (AP) — China’s state media lashed out at the latest move on Taiwan by the departing Trump administration, accusing U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo of “seeking to maliciously inflict a long-lasting scar on China-U.S. ties.” A writer for the official Xinhua News Agency also said in a commentary Sunday that the lifting of longstanding restrictions on U.S. government contacts with Taiwanese counterparts proves that Pompeo “is only interested in stoking unwarranted confrontations, and has no interest in world peace.” Another commentary posted online by CGTN, the English-language channel of state broadcaster CCTV, called Pompeo’s announcement “a cowardly act of sabotage” of the next U.S. administration. “The Trump administration, in its continuing efforts to burn the house down before leaving office, has crossed a dangerous red line with China days before incoming President Joe Biden takes office,” the commentary read in part. Biden takes office on Jan. 20.
January 10, 2021 8:12 am
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Authorities said they determined the location of the crash site and black boxes of a Boeing 737-500 on Sunday, a day after the aircraft crashed into the Java Sea with 62 people on board shortly after taking off from Indonesia’s capital. The head of Indonesia’s National Search and Rescue Agency, Bagus Puruhito, said officials believe they identified the location of the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder — the so-called black boxes — because emergency signals transmitted by the devices were detected by a navy ship’s sonar system. “Hopefully we can lift the black boxes in short time to determine the cause of the crash,” military chief Hadi Tjahjanto said. Earlier Sunday, search and rescue operations resulted in parts of the plane being found in the sea at a depth of 23 meters (75 feet), leading rescuers to continue searching the area.
January 10, 2021 8:12 am
BOSTON (AP) — One Twitter wag joked about lights flickering on and off at the White House being Donald Trump signaling to his followers in Morse code after Twitter and Facebook squelched the president for inciting rebellion. Though deprived of his big online megaphones, Trump does have alternative options of much smaller reach. The far right-friendly Parler may be the leading candidate, though Google and Apple have both removed it from their app stores and Amazon decided to boot it off its web hosting service. That could knock it offline for a week, Parler’s CEO said. Trump may launch his own platform. But that won’t happen overnight, and free speech experts anticipate growing pressure on all social media platforms to curb incendiary speech as Americans take stock of Wednesday’s violent takeover of the U.S. Capitol by a Trump-incited mob. Twitter ended Trump’s nearly 12-year run on Friday. In shuttering his account it cited a tweet to his 89 million followers that he planned to skip President-elect Joe Biden’s Jan. 20 inauguration that it said gave rioters license to converge on Washington once again. Facebook and Instagram have suspended Trump at least until Inauguration Day. Twitch and Snapchat also have disabled Trump’s accounts, while Shopify took down online stores affiliated with the president and Reddit removed a Trump subgroup. Twitter also banned Trump loyalists including former national security advisor Michael Flynn in a sweeping purge of accounts promoting the QAnon conspiracy theory and the Capitol insurrection. Some had hundreds of thousands of followers.
January 10, 2021 8:09 am
WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats’ momentum for a fresh drive to quickly impeach outgoing President Donald Trump has gained support, and a top Republican said the president’s role in the deadly riot at the Capitol by a violent mob of Trump supporters was worthy of rebuke. Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., said Saturday he believed Trump had committed “impeachable offenses.” But he did not explicitly say whether he would vote to remove the president from office at the conclusion of a Senate trial if the House sent over articles of impeachment. Late Saturday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent a letter to her Democratic colleagues reiterating that Trump must be held accountable — but stopped short of committing to an impeachment vote. Still, she told her caucus, “I urge you to be prepared to return to Washington this week.”
January 10, 2021 8:07 am
Pennsylvania on Friday released an updated coronavirus vaccine plan that makes more people eligible for shots in the initial phases of the rollout. Health care workers and nursing home residents remain at the front of the line, followed by people 75 years and older and “essential workers” like police officers, grocery store clerks and teachers. With COVID-19 continuing to rage throughout Pennsylvania, health officials cautioned the state is still months away from having enough doses of the two approved vaccines to inoculate the general public. To date, the federal government has allocated to Pennsylvania more than 827,000 doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. More than 235,000 shots have been given, though Levine said the actual number is certain to be higher because reporting by hospitals and pharmacies lags by one to three days. Doctors, nurses and other health workers, and residents and staff at nursing homes and long-term care facilities — a group that numbers about 1 million — are rolling up their sleeves first. State officials have not offered a timeline for when that initial phase of the vaccination campaign, which began last month, will be completed.
