February 25, 2020 5:24 pm
WASHINGTON (AP) – The National Transportation Safety Board says the driver of a Tesla SUV who died in a Silicon Valley crash two years ago was playing a video game on his smartphone while his vehicle was being controlled by a partially automated driving system. Chairman Robert Sumwalt said at the start of a hearing Tuesday that systems like Tesla’s Autopilot cannot drive themselves. Yet he says drivers continue to use them without paying attention. The board will determine a cause of the crash at the hearing and make recommendations to prevent it from happening again.
February 25, 2020 8:49 am
PITTSBURGH — (WPXI) – The man investigators said kidnapped and killed a Bethel Park woman in the Nevada desert is now facing federal charges. 40 year old John Chapman is now charged with kidnapping resulting in death, among other charges. In court documents, FBI agents said neighbors told them they had not seen Jaime Feden or her special access van in months. But they did see Chapman coming and going from her apartment. Feden was last seen by her family and friends Sept. 15 before she took a trip to Las Vegas with Chapman. He lured her into the desert outside Las Vegas under the pretext of conducting a photoshoot, investigators said. According to court documents, once Chapman got to the desert, he bound her hands and feet with zip ties and tied her to a signpost. He allegedly put duct tape on her mouth and nose until she couldn’t breathe and watched her as she died from asphyxiation. Investigators said that once he came back to Bethel Park. Chapman stayed at Feden’s house, passing it off as his own. In addition to the federal charges, local law enforcement in Nevada said they were filing murder charges against Chapman there.
February 25, 2020 8:42 am
CAIRO (AP) – Egypt’s state TV says former President Hosni Mubarak, who was ousted in the 2011 Arab Spring uprising, has died at 91. It says he died at a Cairo hospital where he had recently undergone surgery. The report said he had health complications but offered no other details. Mubarak ruled the most populous Arab country for nearly three decades, serving as a loyal U.S. ally against Islamic militancy and assisting regional peace efforts. But his autocratic rule grew increasingly unpopular in his later years, and he was forced to resign on Feb. 11, 2011, after 18 days of mass protests.
February 25, 2020 4:16 am
CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) – The State newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, is endorsing Democrat Pete Buttigieg for president. The editors of South Carolina’s largest newspaper write in an editorial posted late Monday that the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, is “the energetic, disciplined candidate who can offer voters a powerful yet pragmatic vision.” The piece notes Democrats’ past success with younger outsiders such as Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. At 38, Buttigieg is younger than any of them. Buttigieg has struggled to attract support from African Americans, but the editors credit him for accepting “responsibility to build trust with African American voters.”
February 25, 2020 4:15 am
DETROIT (AP) – Ford is recalling more than 217,000 pickup trucks mainly in North America to fix a problem with the daytime running lights. The recall covers certain F-150 trucks with LED headlights from the 2018 through 2020 model years. The Dearborn, Michigan, automaker says the running lights will keep working if the driver moves the headlight switch from auto to the low beam position. U.S. safety standards require vehicles to change to parking lights in that case. The problem could reduce visibility to other drivers, but Ford says it doesn’t know of any crashes. Dealers will update software to fix the problem.
February 25, 2020 4:12 am
WASHINGTON (AP) – The White House has sent lawmakers a $2.5 billion urgent budget plan to address the deadly coronavirus outbreak, whose rapid spread is spooking financial markets and restricting international travel. That’s according to the White House budget office, which says the funds are for vaccines, treatment and protective equipment. The request could advance quickly through Congress. It comes as coronavirus fears are credited with a 1,000-plus point drop in the Dow Jones index and are increasingly seen as a potential political threat to President Donald Trump.
February 25, 2020 4:11 am
(AP) – Stocks slumped and bond prices soared for the second day in a row as fears spread that the widening virus outbreak will put the brakes on the global economy. The losses came a day after the market’s biggest drop in two years. Investors plowed money into bonds, sending the yield on the 10-year Treasury to a record low. Mastercard joined a growing list of companies warning that the outbreak would hurt its finances. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 878 points, or 3.1%, to 27,081. The S&P 500 fell 97 points, or 3%, to 3,128. The Nasdaq lost 255 points, or 2.8%, to 8,965.
February 25, 2020 4:06 am
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) – A top Pennsylvania lawmaker says the Legislature may change Pennsylvania’s sweeping 4-month-old election law in an effort to avoid a logjam of mail-in ballots that could extend vote-counting in the presidential race for days afterward. Republican House Majority Leader Bryan Cutler says the law may be changed to let county election officials open envelopes that contain mail-in ballots before the polls close at 8 p.m. The new voting law lets any voter mail in a ballot for any reason, where the state had previously restricted mail-in ballots to “absentee” voters who met a narrow set of reasons.
February 25, 2020 4:03 am
Peters Township Council continues to move along with the development of Rolling Hills Park. Township Manager Paul Lauer delivered to council good news on bids for a portion of the paving project set to take place later this year. Council and the Peters Township School District budgeted $4,000,000 dollars to build Rolling Hills Drive. A. Liberoni, Inc. bid the project at $2,379,000, saving 1.6 million on the project. Council also approved change orders to HRG Engineering to cover costs of unforeseen design issues during the initial phases of road construction. Those figures totaled $42,900 dollars shared equally with the school district. Council was also updated on recycling efforts in the township. Ninety tons of hazardous and electronic waste was collected by Waste Management as part of the residential trash contract. Additional recycling in the township for cardboard yielded 35 tons of cardboard recycled with the compactor being emptied 8 times. The newest recycling effort is that of glass. A 30 yard container was placed on January 13 of 2020 and it has yielded 13 tons of glass and has been emptied 4 times this year.
February 24, 2020 4:56 pm
CHICAGO (AP) – Former “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett has plead not guilty to restored charges that accuse him of staging a racist, homophobic attack against himself and falsely reporting it to police. The 37-year-old entered a Chicago courthouse Monday wearing sunglasses and sporting a beard. He faces six counts of felony disorderly conduct. Smollett was initially charged shortly after he said he was attacked in downtown Chicago last year. But the county prosecutor’s office dropped the charges weeks later, angering police and city officials. A special prosecutor tasked with looking into the decision recently announced that Smollett had been indicted for a second time.
