January 26, 2020 3:41 am
The Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh will be closing several schools at the end of the current school year. There are four local schools affected by the closures. Those schools are St. Anne School in Castle Shannon, St. Bernard School in Mt. Lebanon, St. Thomas More School in Bethel Park and Our Lady of Grace School in Scott Township. All four schools will merge into one unified school program with two sites. One site will be at St. Thomas More and the other site at St. Bernard. Bishop David Zubik acknowledged the sadness that comes with any merger or closing and praised the efforts of school leaders, parents and the parish communities that support the schools. Two other schools were permanently closed, St. Maria Goretti in Bloomfield and East Catholic School in Forest Hills.
January 25, 2020 11:54 am
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) – Officials say the death toll from a strong earthquake that rocked eastern Turkey has climbed to 22 as rescue teams continue searching the rubble of collapsed buildings for survivors. The country’s health minister said Saturday that some 1,103 people were injured in the Friday night quake centered near the town of Sivrice. Various earthquake monitoring centers gave magnitudes ranging from 6.5 to 6.8. for the earthquake. Turkey’s disaster and emergency preparedness agency says it was followed by 398 aftershocks. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan attended the funeral of a mother and son killed in the quake while visiting the hardest-hit areas Saturday afternoon. He warned people against repeating “negative” hearsay about the country being unprepared for earthquakes.
January 25, 2020 11:51 am
BEIJING (AP) – China’s leader has called the accelerating spread of a new virus a grave situation, as cities from the outbreak’s epicenter in central China to Hong Kong scrambled to stop the spread of an illness that has infected more than 1,200 people and killed 41. The city of Wuhan where the outbreak started is banning most vehicles from downtown to restrict people’s movement, while Hong Kong is closing schools for two weeks. The vast majority of the infections and all the deaths have been in mainland China, but fresh cases are popping up. Australia and Malaysia reported their first cases Saturday and Japan confirmed its third.
January 25, 2020 11:48 am
WASHINGTON (AP) – President Donald Trump’s lawyers have opened their impeachment trial defense by asserting that he “did absolutely nothing wrong” when he asked Ukraine to investigate a political rival, Joe Biden. They accused Democratic prosecutors of omitting key evidence when they presented their case. The president’s lawyers are pushing the Republican-led chamber for his impeachment acquittal on charges he abused his power and obstructed Congress. Trump’s legal team plans an aggressive defense that will assert an expansive view of presidential powers and portray him as besieged by opponents determined to undo the results of the 2016 election and to ensure his defeat this November
January 25, 2020 3:48 am
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) – A northern Pennsylvania woman who is a longtime executive for a powdered metals supplier and ran a detention center in Iraq as an Army reservist will seek the Republican nomination to run for state treasurer. Stacy Garrity announced her candidacy Thursday. The primary is April 28. Democrat Joe Torsella, elected in 2016, is seeking a second four-year term. The 55-year-old Garrity is trained as an accountant and is a vice president at Pennsylvania-based Global Tungsten & Powders Corp. She retired in 2016 from the Army Reserves. In Iraq, Garrity ran the detention center at Camp Bucca, as part of the 800th Military Police Brigade.
January 25, 2020 3:45 am
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) – Pennsylvania has paid off $2.8 billion in bonds it issued in 2012 to retire a post-recession unemployment compensation debt that businesses owed to the federal government. State officials said this week that the last installment was paid Jan. 1. That completed the repayment on one of the largest bond issuances in the state’s history, if not the largest. Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration says the total debt service was $3.4 billion and saved employers approximately $57 million. With the bond debt repaid, businesses will no longer pay a 1.1% interest factor assessed on their unemployment compensation taxes.
January 24, 2020 12:48 pm
A preliminary hearing for a Vestaburg woman accused of keeping her dependent sister in a wooden cage was held Friday in front of District Justice Joshua Kanalis. Fifty-one-year old Leona Biser faced one felony charge of neglect for the care of a dependent person and three misdemeanor charges of recklessly endangering another person, false imprisonment and unlawful restraint with bodily injury. Officials from the office of Adult Protective Services found that Biser was keeping her sister, 53-year-old Loretta Lancaster, in a wooden cage with a dirty mattress. Biser was charged on January 15th, by the state Attorney General’s Office. Deputy Attorney General Patrick Schulte stated that “The point of this prosecution is to show that if the vulnerable among us are neglected and no one is going to act, including their own family members, the Attorney General’s Office will.” Biser was not represented by an attorney. She waived her right to the preliminary hearing and her next court date will be on February 27th.
January 24, 2020 3:21 am
WASHINGTON (AP) – President Donald Trump vowed to stand with anti-abortion activists Friday as he became the first sitting president to speak at the March for Life. Trump called it his “profound honor” to appear at the event, which is one of the movement’s highest profile and most symbolic events. He told a crowd of thousands that, “Unborn children have never had a stronger defender in the White House.” He also used his speech to attack Democrats as embracing “radical and extreme positions.” Trump once described himself as “pro-choice in every respect.” But on Friday, he was hailed by speakers and on signs as “the most pro-life” president in American history.
January 24, 2020 3:20 am
WASHINGTON (AP) – Democratic House prosecutors are making their final arguments at Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, arguing the president’s destructive abuse of power will not end unless Congress intervenes to remove him from office. The Democrats also insisted the president only released congressionally approved military money to Ukraine because he had “gotten caught” withholding it. The president’s legal team is preparing its defense, expected to start Saturday. Trump bemoaned the schedule in a morning tweet, saying it “looks like my lawyers will be forced to start on Saturday, which is called Death Valley in T.V.”
January 24, 2020 3:19 am
BEIJING (AP) – China has moved to lock down at least three big cities in an unprecedented effort to contain the deadly new virus that has sickened hundreds of people and spread to other parts of the world. The open-ended lockdowns are unmatched in size, and their potential for success is uncertain. China’s National Health Commission confirmed 830 cases of the new coronavirus with 25 deaths. The first death has also been confirmed outside the central province of Hubei. The health commission in Hebei, a northern province bordering Beijing, said an 80-year-old man died after returning from a stay in Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak.
