January 11, 2025 4:07 am
PANAMA CITY (AP) — The administrator of the Panama Canal has responded to criticisms from U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, denying that there is any interference from China in the canal’s operations and saying giving special privileges to any nation would only cause problems. Ricaurte Vásquez said in an interview with The Associated Press Friday that no privileges are given to any nation, and Chinese companies are not meddling in its operations. Trump has gone so far as to suggest the U.S. should take back control of the canal and he would not rule out using military might to do so.
January 11, 2025 4:04 am
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was sworn in for a third six-year term after a reelection widely viewed as illegitimate and as his administration grows increasingly brazen in cracking down on its opponents. On Friday, the European Union imposed sanctions on 15 top Venezuelan officials who had a role in the country’s 2024 election, including the president and vice president of Venezuela’s Supreme Court. The U.S. and Canada also slapped a new round of sanctions on Venezuelan officials.
January 11, 2025 4:00 am
Interstate 70 Westbound was closed for several hours just after midnight on Saturday. According to Washington County 9-1-1 dispatchers, two tractor trailers collided. It was described as a sideswipe collision that happened in Fallowfield Township. No injuries were reported. Interstate 70 Westbound was reported to be open at 4:00 AM.
January 11, 2025 3:37 am
District Attorney Jason Walsh has announced that his office will be providing a state of the art drug testing machine to the Canonsburg and Peters Township Police Departments. The District Attorney’s office obtained grant funding to supply the MX908 mass spectrometer. In what is described as a game changing tool to fight illegal drugs through real time chemical detection and identification, officers are able to quickly identify narcotics on the scene and act accordingly. Earlier this month, the District Attorney’s Office delivered an MX908 to the Charleroi Regional Police Department.
January 10, 2025 12:48 pm
(WPXI) – The man accused in the shooting death of another man found inside an abandoned building on 11th Street in Beaver Falls was arrested Thursday. Daniel Felo II was captured by the U.S. Marshal Service task force in Connellsville, with the help of Beaver Falls police and Connellsville police. Felo is charged in the shooting death of Eric Mason. Mason was shot and killed and his body was discovered on the afternoon of Dec. 30. Witnesses have provided critical details to investigators. One witness overheard Felo discussing the murder, claiming Mason had “ratted” on his friend leading to a 15-year prison sentence. Another witness came forward saying Felo demonstrated how Mason fell after being shot.
January 10, 2025 12:43 pm
NEW YORK (AP) — Anita Bryant, a former Miss Oklahoma and popular singer who became known over the second half of her life for her outspoken opposition to gay rights, has died. She was 84. Starting in the early 1960s, she had several hit singles and had performed at the White House and the political conventions for both parties. But in the late 1970s, her life and career began a dramatically new path. Bryant led a successful campaign to repeal an ordinance in Florida’s Miami-Dade County that would have prohibited discrimination against gay people. Her career in entertainment soon declined. Supported by the Rev. Jerry Falwell among others, she continued to oppose gay rights around the country. The family did not list a cause of death. (Photo: AP)
January 10, 2025 5:09 am
Global temperatures in 2024 soared to yet another record level, but this time it was such a big jump that Earth temporarily passed a major symbolic climate threshold. Three government climate agencies in Europe and Japan say last year’s global average temperature easily passed 2023’s record heat and kept pushing even higher. It breaks the long-term warming limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since the late 1800s that was set as a target by the 2015 Paris climate pact. A European team calculated 1.6 degrees Celsius (2.89 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming. American agencies are expected to have similar results later Friday.
January 10, 2025 5:07 am
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal appeals court has denied a bid to block the public release of special counsel Jack Smith’s report on President-elect Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals turned down a emergency challenge aimed at keeping under wraps the report expected to detail unflattering revelations about Trump’s failed effort to cling to power in the election he lost to President Joe Biden. A separate volume of the same special counsel report — related to Trump’s hoarding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate — will not become public while the case against two co-defendants of the president-elect remains pending, the Justice Department has said.
January 10, 2025 5:05 am
DALLAS (AP) — Another blast of winter storms is closing schools, snarling flights and putting millions of residents on alert across parts of the Deep South and south-central U.S. The National Weather Service says heavy snowfall and icy conditions are likely Friday in Mississippi, Georgia, Kentucky and Tennessee. Schools have been closed in many places expecting nasty weather as far east as South Carolina. The storm started dumping a mix of sleet and heavy snow Thursday in north Texas and Oklahoma, where schools canceled classes for more than 1 million students. Closures also kept students home in Kansas City and Arkansas.
January 10, 2025 5:04 am
NEW YORK (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump has been formally sentenced in his New York hush money case, but the judge has declined to impose any punishment. The sentence pronounced Friday by Manhattan Judge Juan M. Merchan cements Trump’s conviction while freeing him to return to the White House unencumbered by the threat of a jail term or a fine. It caps a norm-smashing case that saw the Republican convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to a payment to bury affair allegations that threatened to cloud his 2016 presidential run. Yet it didn’t hurt him with voters. Trump denies wrongdoing and has vowed to appeal.
