July 30, 2026 5:02 am
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump says he may withdraw and delay Todd Blanche’s nomination as attorney general until Republican senators who are seeking concessions from the top prosecutor leave office. Trump doubled down Thursday on choosing his former personal lawyer as the nation’s top lawman, calling him “a STAR” and saying he will keep him in the role as acting attorney general until Republican Sens. John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina leave office next year. Cornyn and Tillis have sought additional assurances in writing that the Justice Department will not revive an “Anti-Weaponization Fund” created to resolve Trump’s lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service.
July 31, 2026 5:01 am
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump says a deal has been reached for Hamas to disarm and Israel to withdraw its forces from Gaza. But many hurdles, conditions and long timelines remain to wind down the war in the Palestinian territory. On Friday, a Hamas official said they have reached an agreement on disarmament. The White House announcement comes nine months after a U.S.-brokered ceasefire was signed. Negotiations between Israel and Hamas had largely deadlocked over the implementation of its second phase, including the disarmament of Hamas and the reconstruction of Gaza.
August 1, 2026 5:06 am
NEW YORK (AP) — Analysts are expecting major oil companies to report large profits while fighting between Iran and the U.S. impeded petroleum shipments. Prices for Brent crude soared above $100 a barrel for much of the spring. Constrained supplies meant consumers around the world paid more for fuel and confronted shortages. But higher prices resulted in elevated profits for some of the biggest publicly traded oil companies. American oil and gas giants Exxon Mobil and Chevron are set to announce their earnings from April through June on Friday. They are among the companies positioned to benefit because they own refineries as well as extract oil and gas. Democrats in Congress have proposed taxing oil producers for war-related windfalls.
July 31, 2026 4:59 am
Anthropic says its AI models hacked into three organizations during testing. This comes just days after OpenAI said its AI models went rogue and hacked into another company. Anthropic, based in San Francisco, posted on its website that it discovered the incidents after reviewing over 141,000 evaluation runs. The company says it launched the large-scale cybersecurity review in response to the OpenAI incident. The models involved were Claude Opus 4.7, Claude Mythos 5 and an internal research test model. Anthropic says it reached out to the affected organizations, with two confirming they were unaware of the activity beforehand. The incidents highlight the vulnerabilities in AI security and controls, and raise questions over how AI can used safely.
July 30, 2026 5:03 am
NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon said it will be increasing this year’s capital spending on technology, mostly artificial intelligence, by an additional 10% after the tech and e-commerce giant delivered strong profits and net sales during for fiscal second quarter, helped by surging growth in its prominent cloud computing unit. The e-commerce and technology company said Thursday that sales in its cloud computing unit called AWS were up 37% during the April-June period, faster than the 28% clip in the previous quarter and marking the fastest growth rate in 18 quarters. Amazon reported net income of $62.65 billion or $5.75 per share, in the three-month period ended June 30.
July 30, 2026 12:44 pm
Two Delta Air Lines planes were involved in a near miss at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport on Monday evening. The FAA says it has launched an investigation into the incident involving a flight arriving from Pittsburgh, and a flight departing for Rochester. The Pittsburgh flight, which was scheduled to land in Atlanta, had been diverted to Chattanooga, Tennessee, for several hours due to bad weather. In air traffic control recordings, the pilot of the Pittsburgh flight said he saw the departing flight on the runway and was going to circle around. At the same time, the departing flight took off from a parallel runway. Initially, both planes were told to turn right, and anti-collision alarms went off in both aircraft almost immediately. The controller was able to get both planes to fly away from each other but they were at one point about 1,800 feet and 600 feet in altitude from each other. Authorities say the Pittsburgh flight landed safely and there were no reported injuries.
July 30, 2026 8:51 am
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. economy expanded at a sluggish 1.5% pace from April through June as rising imports weighed on growth. But consumer spending rose. And the Federal Reserve’s favored measure of inflation grew more slowly last month, but remained above the central bank’s 2% target.
July 30, 2026 8:50 am
WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits rose last week but layoffs remain in the historically healthy range of the past few years. U.S. filings for jobless aid in the week ending July 25 rose by 9,000 to 197,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday. Analysts surveyed by the data firm FactSet forecast 207,000 new applications. Weekly filings for unemployment benefits are considered representative of layoffs and are close to a real-time indicator of the health of the U.S. job market. The total number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits for the previous week ending July 18 was 1.78 million.
July 29, 2026 4:55 am
BURGETTSTOWN, Pa. — A 19-year-old remains in critical condition and is on a ventilator after she was run over by a pickup truck at a field party in Burgettstown over the weekend. Ayla Reynolds was flown to UPMC Presbyterian Hospital early Saturday morning after she was struck at a party in the woods along Creek Road, according to her grandmother, Rebecca. According to our news partners at WPXI, doctors are working to save Reynolds’ leg, but her grandmother said they now believe it will likely need to be amputated below the knee. Rebecca said Reynolds was one of three people struck when a pickup truck lost control while driving people up a steep hill to the party. She identified the driver as Reynolds’ ex-boyfriend. According to Rebecca, Reynolds was pulled underneath the truck and suffered the most serious injuries. Friends and the driver placed her in the truck and rushed her to Weirton Medical Center because they feared it would take too long for an ambulance to reach the remote location. She was later flown to UPMC Presbyterian Hospital in Pittsburgh. Rebecca said Reynolds suffered multiple spinal fractures, a broken pelvis, spleen injuries, internal bleeding and severe injuries to her leg. She said the other two people who were struck suffered minor injuries.
July 29, 2026 2:18 am
Uniontown, PA— PennDOT announced on Wednesday that daytime single-lane restrictions will be in place in both directions of Interstate 70 between the Bentleyville Interchange (Exit 32) and Route 481 Interchange (Exit 35) in Fallowfield Township, Washington County beginning Monday, August 3rd through Thursday, August 27th. Single-lane restrictions will occur on Eastbound I-70 Monday through Friday from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. and on Westbound I-70 Sunday through Thursday from 7:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. Crews from Armstrong Drilling, Inc. will drill geotechnical test borings for the I-70 Belle Vernon Bridge to Bentleyville project, which is currently in design. All work depends on weather and operations.
