July 7, 2023 1:55 pm
NEWARK, N.J. (AP) — A cargo ship burned for a third day and will likely smolder for several more days at a New Jersey port after two firefighters died in the blaze. The fire exposed gaps in the ability of fire crews to respond to emergencies on hulking container ships. Newark Public Safety Director Fritz Frage said Friday that the city has an agreement with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey covering their response to fires and that they continue to have conversations “today and going forward in terms of training.” Crews have been shooting jets of water into the Italian-flagged Grande Costa d’Avorio docked in Newark as flames flared periodically from decks where hundreds of vehicles were loaded.
July 7, 2023 5:02 am
NEW YORK (AP) — Twitter has threatened legal action against Meta over its new, text-based app called Threads, according to a letter obtained by Semafor. In the Wednesday letter addressed to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter attorney Alex Spiro accused Meta of unlawfully using Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property by hiring former Twitter employees to create a “copycat” app. Threads, which was launched Wednesday night, arrives at a time when many are looking for Twitter alternatives to escape Elon Musk’s raucous oversight of the platform. Meta spokesperson Andy Stone responded to the report of Spiro’s letter on Threads Thursday afternoon, writing, “no one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee — that’s just not a thing.”
July 7, 2023 5:01 am
NEW YORK (AP) — Seven weeks before the premiere debate of the 2024 GOP primary, anxiety is building that the event could prove messy and divisive for the party. Some candidates, like former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, are struggling to meet fundraising and polling requirements to make it onstage. He and others are pushing back on a loyalty pledge the Republican Party is insisting candidates sign to participate. And the race’s frontrunner, former President Donald Trump, is flirting with boycotting and holding his own competing event instead. That’s turning what is typically the highly anticipated opener of the election season into a source of uncertainty.
July 7, 2023 5:00 am
EL PASO, Texas (AP) — A white gunman who killed 23 people in a racist attack on Hispanic shoppers at a Walmart in Texas has been sentenced to 90 consecutive life sentences in federal prison. Patrick Crusius pleaded guilty earlier this year to nearly 50 federal hate crime charges in the 2019 mass shooting in the border city of El Paso. The 24-year-old’s sentencing Friday came nearly four years after he drove more than 700 miles from his home near Dallas and targeted Hispanic shoppers with an AK-style rifle inside and outside the store. Texas prosecutors want Crusius to get the death penalty when he stands trial in state court. That trial date has not yet been set.
July 7, 2023 4:58 am
BEIJING (AP) — Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has criticized China’s treatment of U.S. companies and new export controls on metals used in semiconductors during a visit to Beijing to try to revive strained relations. Speaking with businesspeople, Yellen defended U.S. controls on technology exports that irk Beijing, saying they’re necessary for national security. She rejected suggestions Washington is trying to decouple the U.S. economy from China’s. Yellen cited what she said was China’s use of subsidies to state-owned industries and barriers for foreign competitors. U.S.-Chinese relations are at their lowest level in decades due to disputes over technology, security, Beijing’s military expansion and other irritants. Treasury officials said no major breakthroughs were expected.
July 7, 2023 4:56 am
Earth’s average temperature set a new unofficial record high on Thursday, the third such milestone in a week that already rated as the hottest on record.The planetary average hit 63 degrees Fahrenheit (17.23 degrees Celsius), surpassing the 62.9-degree mark (17.18 Celsius) set Tuesday and equaled Wednesday, according to data from the University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer, a tool that uses satellite data and computer simulations to measure the world’s condition. That average includes places that are sweltering under dangerous heat — like Jingxing, China, which checked in almost 110 degrees Fahrenheit — and the merely unusually warm, like Antarctica, where temperatures across much of the continent were as much as 8 degrees Fahrenheit above normal this week.
July 7, 2023 4:53 am
ROSTRAVER TOWNSHIP, Pa. — (WPXI) – A 4-year-old boy was flown to the hospital after he was found shot inside a home in Rostraver Township. Police were called to Gauido Drive after the child was found shot in the head, according to the Westmoreland County District Attorney’s Office. The child was flown to Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh. Rostraver Chief of Police, John Christner, says the shooting appears to be accidental. They are still investigating. Christner said his officer at Children’s Hospital is waiting for an update on the boy’s condition, but he did make it through surgery. Rostraver Township police and Westmoreland County detectives are investigating.
July 7, 2023 4:50 am
State Police are investigating the death of a Nemacolin man Thursday night. The Washington County Coroner’s Office says 53 year old Timothy Shook was found unresponsive in his vehicle that was stopped against a guide rail on the shoulder of Interstate 79 North near mile-marker 25 in Amwell Township. A passing motorist observed that the operator was unresponsive and called 9-1-1 around 8 p.m. Officials say there was no evidence of a collision and the death is not considered suspicious. A cause and manner of death are pending autopsy and investigation.
July 7, 2023 1:16 am
A Hanover Township man will face trial in the death of his wife. Stewart Wilson, 47 waived felony homicide by vehicle while dui, homicide by vehicle and misdemeanor involuntary manslaughter charges to court on Thursday. Wilson is accused of not seeing a car making a turn, then serving his car into an oncoming vehicle, sideswiping it, overcorrecting his steering into a guardrail on Stuebenville Pike in April of 2022. Stewart and his wife Denise Pierce-Wilson were ejected from the vehicle. Both were flown to hospitals. Pierce-Wilson died at the hospital from her injuries. Wilson will be formally arraigned on August 24.
July 7, 2023 1:12 am
WASHINGTON, Pa.-(WPXI)-A Washington man is in jail after allegedly ramming his ex-girlfriend’s vehicle repeatedly in the Trinity Point Wal-Mart parking lot, while her she and her child were trying to drive away. Police say Dametric Medlen had a PFA against him. Medlen reportedly rammed the vehicle multiple times, pushing it through the lot until his vehicle broke down. Medlen then ran to the McDonalds, where officers say he hid in the bathroom with a loaded gun. The incident happened at around noon on the Fourth of July.
