October 9, 2022 7:51 am
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea says North Korea has fired two ballistic missiles toward its eastern waters, the latest in a barrage of weapons tests in recent days. South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff says the launches were conducted from its eastern coastal area early Sunday. The Japanese government also says it detected the suspected North Korean launches. The launches were the North’s seventh round of weapons tests in two weeks and came hours after the U.S. and South Korea wrapped a new round of naval drills off the Korean Peninsula’s east coast.
October 9, 2022 7:50 am
PARIS (AP) — The families of the 228 people killed in 2009 when their storm-tossed Air France flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris slammed into the Atlantic finally have a chance at justice. Aviation industry heavyweights Airbus and Air France are charged with manslaughter in a trial that opens Monday over the crash in 2009 of Flight 447. The worst plane crash in Air France history killed people of 33 nationalities and had lasting impact. It led to changes in air safety regulations, how pilots are trained and the use of airspeed sensors. But it almost didn’t come to trial. The companies insist they are not criminally responsible.
October 9, 2022 7:49 am
SULIMANIYAH, Iraq (AP) — Anger among civilians is rising in a majority Kurdish district in northwestern Iran that has become one of the hotspots of protests. The Associated Press spoke to six activists in the northern city of Sanandaj, 300 miles (500 kilometers) from the capital Tehran. They described an evolving protest movement that has shifted from mass gatherings to more scattered protests and other signs of civil disobedience amid a harsh government crackdown. Protests erupted after the burial of a 22-year-old woman who died in Iranian police custody and have persisted with protests in neighborhoods, schools, with burning tires and commercial strikes.
October 9, 2022 7:48 am
PITTSBURGH (WPXI) — A University of Pittsburgh basketball player is facing aggravated assault charges after an incident at an apartment building near the university’s campus, court documents say. According to Pittsburgh police, Dior Johnson, 18, slapped, punched and pushed a woman’s face into a bed. Police were called to the apartment building in early September. Court documents say Johnson became angry with a woman who had gotten his phone wet and slapped her “full force” across the face. The victim told police Johnson left her apartment after slapping her but returned later in the night. The two began to argue and court documents say it escalated to the point where Johnson allegedly began punching the victim in her arms, stomach and head multiple times. The victim told police she called 911, but Johnson chased her with scissors, took the phone and hung it up. Court documents say Johnson then took the woman’s head and shoved it into the bed, making it hard for her to breathe. She said Johnson used the scissors to cut himself and said, “I’ll make them think you did this.” Court documents say Johnson attempted to call off from basketball practice because he did not want to leave the victim alone for fear she would leave the apartment and call 911. The victim allegedly waited until Johnson left and sent emails to detectives. Pitt Athletics said that Johnson has been indefinitely suspended from all team activities. The athletic department declined further comment until the legal process has reached a resolution.
October 9, 2022 3:32 am
The Washington County District Attorney and Washington County Coroner held a joint press conference on Friday, regarding a deadly officer-involved shooting that happened in Monongahela over the summer. During the statement, District Attorney Jason Walsh said the shooting was a justifiable homicide. On July 24, Cody Bennett was shot and killed by a police officer. Bennett was reportedly at a kids’ birthday party when he was asked to leave. Walsh said witnesses told police Bennett returned to the party and told the people there to go in the house because he did not want to kill them. He later tried kicking the door of the house down and fired two shots through it. Officers who arrived at the scene said they commanded Bennett several times to not pick up an object at his feet, which they later discovered was a handgun. Bennett allegedly fired two shots at the officers and fled. Authorities say that at one point Bennett, pointed a gun at a woman in her front yard. Officers told him to lower his weapon multiple times but shot him after he did not. The coroner, Tim Warco, said Bennett had a .21 blood alcohol level and marijuana in his system.
October 9, 2022 1:32 am
LOUDON COUNTY, Va.-(WPXI)-A man charged with concealment of a dead body in Virginia could be in southwestern Pennsylvania, according to a post from Allegheny County police. The Loudon County Sheriff’s Department posted that 25-year-old Stone Colburn was released from jail Thursday after murder charges against him were dropped. Friday morning, charges were obtained for Colburn for concealment of a dead body. According to an NBC affiliate in Washington, D.C., Colburn’s charges are related to the murder of his brother’s girlfriend. They report Colburn’s release was a mistake, and he should have been held on the new charge. Colburn is a white male, is 5 feet, 10 inches tall and weighs 160 pounds. He was last seen wearing a gray and black flannel shirt over a black sweatshirt, a maroon hat, gray sweatpants, and black shoes. Anyone with information on his whereabouts is asked to call 911 immediately.
October 8, 2022 8:50 am
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) – North Korea has warned the U.S. redeployment of an aircraft carrier near the Korean Peninsula is causing a “considerably huge negative splash” in regional security. The North Korean Defense Ministry statement on Saturday came a day after the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan began a new round of naval drills with South Korean warships off the peninsula’s east coast. The Reagan and its battle group returned to the area in response to the North’s test of a powerful missile. A North Korean Defense Ministry spokesman says the North’s military “is seriously approaching the extremely worrisome development of the present situation.”
October 8, 2022 8:46 am
LYMAN, Ukraine (AP) – Ukrainian authorities are just beginning to sift through the wreckage of the devastated city of Lyman in eastern Ukraine. They are assessing the humanitarian toll and possibility of war crimes from a months-long Russian occupation. It’s still unclear how many died in the city since it was overrun by Russian forces in May. But authorities say Lyman has become a “humanitarian crisis” which could still hold further grim discoveries. The Donetsk governor on Friday said that two burial sites had been found in Lyman including around 200 individual civilian graves and a mass grave with an unknown number of bodies.
October 8, 2022 8:44 am
EMERSON, Ga. (AP) – Herschel Walker pitches himself as a politician who can bridge America’s racial and cultural divides. “I don’t care what color you are,” Georgia’s Republican Senate nominee, who is Black, tells his overwhelmingly white crowds. “This is a good place,” Walker says of the U.S., “and a way we make it better is by coming together.” Yet the former University of Georgia football star has staked out familiar conservative ground on America’s most glaring societal fissures, seemingly contradicting his promises of unity. Walker says those who don’t share his vision of the country can leave, and he blasts his opponent, Sen. Raphael Warnock, and the Democratic Party as the real purveyors of division.
October 8, 2022 8:43 am
KHARKIV, Ukraine (AP) – Russian authorities say a truck bomb has caused a fire and the collapse of a section of a bridge linking Russia-annexed Crimea with Russia. The bridge is a key supply artery for Moscow’s faltering war effort in southern Ukraine. The speaker of Crimea’s Kremlin-backed regional parliament immediately accused Ukraine, though the Kremlin didn’t apportion blame. Ukrainian officials have repeatedly threatened to strike the bridge and some celebrated the explosion, but Kyiv stopped short of claiming responsibility. Saturday’s attack on the bridge comes a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin turned 70. It deals him a humiliating blow that could lead him to up the ante in his war on Ukraine.
