November 18, 2019 4:19 am
WASHINGTON (AP) – Impeachment hearings are entering a crucial second week as Democrats are set to hear from eight witnesses about President Donald Trump’s dealings with Ukraine. Three State Department officials have already testified about their concerns as Trump pushed Ukraine to investigate Democrats and withheld military aid. In an interview aired on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Trump would be welcome to appear before investigators or answer questions in writing. Trump has said the impeachment process is stacked against him and is nothing more than a “witch hunt.” The week’s most anticipated witness may be Ambassador Gordon Sondland, set to appear Wednesday. Sondland spoke multiple times to Trump about Ukraine policy. Other witnesses have said the two discussed efforts to push for the investigations of Democrats.
November 18, 2019 4:17 am
FRESNO, Calif. (AP) – Police in central California say 10 people were shot at a backyard party, and four them died. Fresno police say the shooting took place about 6 p.m. Sunday on the city’s southeast side. Fresno Police Deputy Chief Michael Reid tells the Fresno Bee and the KSEE/KGPE TV stations that 10 people were shot, and three people were found dead in the backyard. A fourth victim died at the hospital. Police say six others are expected to survive and are recovering at the hospital. It was at least the second fatal gun attack Sunday in southeast Fresno. A man in his 20s was shot to death early Sunday at a home in another part of the city. Police have not said whether the incidents could be connected.
November 18, 2019 4:13 am
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) – Discussions toward raising Pennsylvania’s minimum wage for the first time since 2009 are heating up, in part to get Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf to abandon an effort to extend overtime pay eligibility to thousands of workers. Leaders of the Senate’s Republican majority said Friday that negotiators must compromise for a bill to pass the chamber. Any bill would still have to pass the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. Being discussed is an increase from the $7.25 federal minimum to around $9.50 an hour in steps over 18 months or so, more modest than what Wolf proposed in January. Negotiators are up against a Thursday deadline, when a state rule-making board is voting on Wolf’s overtime regulation. The Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry is pushing a minimum wage increase in exchange for Wolf dropping the overtime regulation.
November 18, 2019 4:12 am
PITTSBURGH (AP) – An American Airlines flight was forced to land at Pittsburgh International Airport due to a mechanical issue. The airline says Flight 2244 had departed about 7:30 a.m. Saturday from Chicago and was bound for Washington with 72 passengers and six crew members aboard. The Boeing 737-800 landed in Pittsburgh at 9:30 a.m. without incident and soon taxied to a gate.
No injuries were reported in the incident, and there was no disruption to air traffic in Pittsburgh. American says all the passengers were rebooked on other flights to Washington. Specific details about the mechanical problem were not disclosed.
November 18, 2019 4:12 am
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) – The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections has suspended 13 employees while authorities investigate an inmate’s death. A Saturday release says 29-year-old Tyrone Briggs died “following an inmate-on-inmate assault” Nov. 11 at the State Correctional Institution at Mahanoy. The release says department secretary John Wetzel on Friday suspended the employees without pay during the criminal and administrative investigations. They include medical and security staff, but the department won’t release names. The release quotes Wetzel as saying “this incident should not serve to tarnish the reputation” of the department and its employees. An earlier release says Briggs became unresponsive while waiting to be processed into the restrictive housing unit after the altercation. He had been at the prison since 2011 and was serving a 15-to-30-year sentence for child rape out of Philadelphia County.
November 18, 2019 4:10 am
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) – Teachers and coaches in Pennsylvania’s state-owned university system are giving their approval to a new four-year union contract. Faculty at the State System of Higher Education voted overwhelmingly this week to ratify the contract. Details haven’t been made public but will be posted online once ratification is complete. The tally from the balloting now goes to the State System of Higher Education’s Board of Governors for its approval. The Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties union represents about 5,500 faculty and coaches at the 14 state system universities.
November 17, 2019 8:26 am
LONDON (AP) – A senior Labour party official says leaks from a report on Russian interference in British politics raises serious questions about the security of next month’s election. The Sunday Times says the report from Parliament’s intelligence committee concludes that Russian interference may have affected Britain’s 2016 Brexit referendum, though the impact was “unquantifiable.” The Times says the report discusses the impact of articles posted by Russian new sites that were widely disseminated on social media. Emily Thornberry, Labour’s foreign affairs spokeswoman, told the newspaper that Prime Minister Boris Johnson must “clear up the confusion, spin and speculation around this ISC report by publishing it in full at the earliest opportunity.” She says if the Conservative leader does not, “people will rightly continue to ask: what is he trying to hide from the British public and why?”
November 17, 2019 8:24 am
NEW YORK (AP) – Some statisticians and scientists are renewing calls to get rid of a statistical concept that holds huge sway over how scientific results are appraised, which studies get published, and what medicines make it to drugstores. The concept is called statistical significance, and it’s expressed using a number called a p-value. It’s an all-or-nothing thing. Results are either significant, meaning they are reliable, or not significant, indicating an unacceptably high chance that they were just a fluke. The concept has been used for decades, but this year has brought two high-profile calls from critics, including from inside the world of statistics, to get rid of it. One call to abolish the practice published this year in a scientific journal attracted more than 800 co-signers.
November 17, 2019 8:23 am
WAVERLY, Iowa (AP) – Elizabeth Warren pushed back against critics of her newly-released plan to phase in implementation of a single-payer health care system, insisting Saturday that she is “fully committed” to Medicare for All and that she plans to first build on existing health care programs because “people need help right now.” Warren said her commitment to Medicare for All is all the way.” She was responding to critics who’ve questioned the timing behind the release of her implementation plan. Asked after a campaign event in Iowa if her decision to delay passage of a single-payer plan until the third year of her presidency was an acknowledgement of the political challenge she’ll face in enacting such a plan, Warren insisted “I don’t see it that way at all.”
November 17, 2019 8:22 am
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) – Iranian state TV says the country’s supreme leader supports the government’s decision to increase gasoline prices and calls those setting fire to public property “bandits” backed by the enemies of Iran. The comments by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei were reported by the state TV on Sunday, a day after protesters angered by Iran raising government-set gasoline prices by 50% had blocked traffic in major cities and occasionally clashed with police. That came after a night of demonstrations punctuated by gunfire, in violence that reportedly killed at least one person.
