January 18, 2025 4:06 am
CAIRO (AP) — Qatar’s foreign ministry says the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas will go into effect at 8:30 a.m. (0630 GMT) on Sunday. Early Saturday morning Israel’s Cabinet approved the deal for a ceasefire in Gaza that would release dozens of hostages and pause the 15-month war with Hamas, bringing the sides a step closer to ending their deadliest and most destructive fighting ever. Under the deal, 33 hostages are set to be released over the next six weeks, in exchange for hundreds of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel. The remainder, including male soldiers, are to be released in a second phase that will be negotiated during the first.
January 18, 2025 3:59 am
Freedom Transit is announcing that its Washington Transit Center will be closed on Monday, January 20, 2025, in observance of the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday. All fixed route and shared ride services will operate on a normal schedule.
January 18, 2025 1:54 am
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — The Pennsylvania Supreme Court will again consider whether voters should have to write the accurate date by hand on return envelopes used to send their completed mail-in ballots to be counted. The justices said Friday they will decide whether the dating rule for absentee and mail ballot return envelopes violates a state constitutional provision that elections must be free and equal. The exterior envelope dates aren’t used to verify whether a ballot has been received before the deadline. The case involves 69 mail-in ballots from two state House special elections that a Philadelphia judge had said should be counted even though they lacked the handwritten return envelope dates.
January 18, 2025 1:46 am
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — When Democrat John Fetterman got elected to the U.S. Senate from Pennsylvania, many backers had hoped he’d challenge the status quo. He has — just not in the way many had expected. Fetterman has warmed to President-elect Donald Trump, a man he bashed on the 2024 campaign trail, and recently became the first Senate Democrat to meet with Trump since the election. Fetterman has also met with many of Trump’s Cabinet picks and staked out positions on policy and legislation that break with his party. Fetterman says his meeting with Trump “was a positive experience,” while Trump has called it “fascinating.”
January 18, 2025 1:38 am
Washington County’s Recorder of Deeds has announced plans to seek re-election. Republican Carrie Perrell of Nottingham Township says she plans to seek the nomination in the May Primary Election. This is the fourth year of her first term. Perrell says she is honored to have served as an elected official these past few years and if re-elected, she will continue to serve Washington County taxpayers with integrity while seeking additional ways to modernize and improve services. Perrell says key improvements made during her first term include: direct deposit of local real estate transfer taxes for all municipalities and school districts, increased hours for recording documents, new public computers, a dedicated backup server, and a completed pilot project for indexing historical documents.
January 17, 2025 12:54 pm
WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump will take the oath of office from inside the Capitol Rotunda on Monday due to forecasts of intense cold weather. The Republican president-elect says the weather forecast for Washington, D.C., with the windchill factor, could take temperatures into severe record lows. Trump says there’s an Arctic blast sweeping the country and he doesn’t want to see people hurt. The Rotunda is prepared as an alternative for each inauguration in the event of inclement weather. The swearing-in was last moved indoors in 1985, when President Ronald Reagan began his second term. Monday’s forecast calls for the lowest inauguration day temperatures since that day. (Photo: AP)
January 17, 2025 10:16 am
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is commuting the sentences of almost 2,500 people convicted of nonviolent drug offenses. Friday’s clemency actions give Biden the presidential record for most individual pardons and commutations issued. The Democrat says he’s seeking to undo “disproportionately long sentences compared to the sentences they would receive today.” Biden also says he’ll use the time before President-elect Donald Trump is inaugurated on Monday to “continue to review additional commutations and pardons.” That could potentially include preemptive pardons for officials and allies who the White House fears could be unjustly targeted by Trump’s Republican administration. Advocates cheer the prisoners’ clemencies, saying Biden is leaving a “lasting legacy on criminal justice reform.”
January 17, 2025 5:02 am
The super-rich have long played a role in U.S. politics but have an unusually prominent spot in incoming President Donald Trump’s new administration. President Joe Biden’s farewell warning about a tech-fueled “oligarchy” is due to that. Biden and his fellow Democrats have also long been supported by billionaires, but not in the same direct way or with the same dynamics of threats and demands for loyalty that come from Trump. The use of the term “oligarchy” harkens to Russian politics.
January 17, 2025 4:59 am
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has upheld the federal law banning TikTok beginning Sunday unless it’s sold by its China-based parent company, holding the risk to national security posed by its ties to China overcomes concerns about limiting speech by the app or its 170 million users in the U.S. A sale does not appear imminent. The court’s decision Friday means new users won’t be able to download the app and updates won’t be available, but it won’t disappear from users’ phones. President-elect Donald Trump had called on the court to keep the ban on hold until after he takes office Monday. The Republican has said he’ll “save” TikTok, but it’s unclear what he’d do.
January 17, 2025 4:58 am
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Los Angeles wildfires have forced thousands of students to relocate to other schools. Students from two elementary schools that burned down in the Palisades Fire arrived Wednesday for their first day of class at two other Los Angeles campuses where their classes are being held temporarily. Seven other Los Angeles Unified School District schools in evacuation zones that have been closed since the fire are also relocating. Meanwhile, Palisades Charter High School has asked the community for help finding temporary classrooms for its 3,000 students. And in the nearby Pasadena Unified School District, thousands of other students are still home from school. Five school sites there were severely impacted by the Eaton Fire.
