December 11, 2019 4:08 am
SCOTTDALE, Pa.(WPXI)- Crews battled a fire Tuesday night at the Scottdale Manor senior apartment building on Pearl Street. The call came in around 7:50 p.m. after a mattress caught fire on the second floor of the five-story building. The fire was contained in one apartment, but smoke had to be ventilated from the building. Some residents were evacuated from their apartments. One resident was taken to a hospital and at least five were displaced, according to Scottdale Fire Department assistant fire chief Ben Savanick. Residents will be allowed back into the top three stories of the building. The Red Cross confirmed they are assisting people who have been affected by the fire.
December 11, 2019 3:48 am
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (AP) – West Virginia University’s president has announced he’ll be undergoing hip surgery this week. Dr. E. Gordon Gee will have the hip replacement surgery on Thursday, the university said in a statement. Doctors diagnosed the 75-year-old with a deteriorating hip joint following years of pain in his back. Gee said he hopes to be back soon “better than new,” but the university didn’t provide a timeline for when he may return. He did say that he will be missing the school’s winter commencement ceremony on Dec. 21 for the first time in 40 years
December 10, 2019 4:24 pm
Shares of exercise bike company Peloton are under pressure from a scathing research report. The selling comes on the heels of blowback from the company’s widely mocked ad. Andrew Left of Citron Research is well known on Wall Street for targeting companies he thinks have flawed business models. He places bets that their stocks will fall. And he’s now taking aim at Peloton Interactive Inc. The stock took a hit last week after Peloton aired an ad in which a husband gifts one of its stationary bikes to his wife for the holidays. Critics called the ad sexist and tone deaf.
December 10, 2019 4:15 pm
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) – A report from a national watchdog group says a cut to the tax that coal companies pay to fund a trust for sick miners will cost taxpayers billions of dollars. The Washington-based group Taxpayers for Common Sense released a report that says the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund’s debt could be at least $15 billion by 2050. The excise tax on mined coal expired at the beginning of 2019 due to inaction by Congress. That led to a reduction in the amount coal companies pay into the fund. The fund pays benefits and medical bills for miners diagnosed with black lung disease.
December 10, 2019 2:56 pm
JERSEY CITY, N.J. (AP) – A police officer and multiple others have been killed in a shooting in Jersey City that authorities say is not believed to have been a terrorism attack. Mayor Steven Fulop says one officer was pronounced dead at a hospital and multiple other people were found dead at the scene. He says a second officer was struck in the shoulder by gunfire, and two others were injured by shrapnel. A statement from the Archdiocese of Newark says the nearby Sacred Heart School was put on lockdown, but all staff and students were safe. SWAT teams, state police and federal agents responded to the scene. (Photo: AP)
December 10, 2019 12:44 pm
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) – Vice President Mike Pence has made another trip to the presidential battleground state of Pennsylvania this year, this time in a campaign swing. Pence appeared Tuesday in Rochester, near Pittsburgh, to speak to a Veterans for Trump group before joining the president later in the day at a campaign rally at the Giant Center in Hershey. Pence has already made three trips to Pennsylvania this year to visit manufacturers and make the case for Congress to pass the Trump administration’s rewrite of a trade pact with Canada and Mexico. Tonight’s rally is Trump’s fourth visit to Pennsylvania this year. (Photo: WPXI)
December 10, 2019 10:57 am
WASHINGTON (AP) – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has announced agreement on a modified North American trade pact, handing President Donald Trump a major Capitol Hill win. This comes on the same day that Democrats announced their impeachment charges against the president. Just before Pelosi announced her support, Trump said the revamped U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement will “be great” for the U.S. Pelosi says the revamped U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement is a significant improvement over the original North American Free Trade Agreement. In Mexico City, Mexican Foreign Relations Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said that there would be a meeting of the three countries’ negotiating teams Tuesday “to announce the advances achieved” on the trade agreement.
December 10, 2019 8:48 am
STOCKHOLM (AP) – Marie Fredriksson, the female half of the Swedish pop duo Roxette, has died at age 61. The singer’s management agency said Tuesday that Fredriksson died a day earlier “of the consequences of a long illness.” Fredriksson formed Roxette with Per Gessle in 1986. The two went on to achieve international success in the late 1980s and 1990s, including with the songs “The Look” and “It Must Have Been Love.” Fredriksson had aggressive radiation treatment after she was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2002 and was left with long-term health problems.
December 10, 2019 4:10 am
WHAKATANE, New Zealand (AP) – Police say a person injured in a volcanic eruption in New Zealand has died in an Auckland hospital, bringing the death toll to six. About 30 people remain hospitalized after Monday’s eruption, many of them suffering severe burns. Authorities believe another eight bodies remain on White Island but they say it’s too dangerous to recover them. Survivors of a powerful volcanic eruption in New Zealand ran into the sea to escape the scalding steam and ash and emerged covered in burns, say those who first helped them.
December 10, 2019 4:08 am
WASHINGTON (AP) – The Justice Department’s internal watchdog has declared that the FBI was justified in opening its investigation into ties between the Trump presidential campaign and Russia. President Donald Trump has insisted he was merely the target of a “witch hunt,”” but the inspector general’s report undercuts that claim. The report on Monday does identify “serious performance failures” up the bureau’s chain of command. But it rules out political bias in the decision to investigate Trump’s campaign. Trump’s attorney general, William Barr, quickly rejected the main conclusions by his inspector general, who was in place when Barr was appointed by the president.
