October 1, 2022 3:49 am
A Washington County man is accused of making and possessing 500 files of child porn. Fifty-six-year-old Dennis Shrader of North Bethlehem Township, a bus driver for the Bentworth School District was arrested after state police searched his house Tuesday. State police say they received multiple tips from a software company called Synchronoss, saying someone was uploading child porn to its account. Synchronoss was able to give the uploaded files to the police for an investigation. Court documents said the account contained files of toddlers and toddlers being abused. Police also found explicit photos of females between the ages of 8 and 15 years old and said the phone number attached to the account belonged to Shrader. After receiving a subpoena, authorities conducted a search of his house. During the search, a laptop was found, which contained the files attached to the Synchronoss tips. Police said Shrader admitted to possessing child pornography and to taking photographs and videos of an underage female. They say Shrader told them he was the only person who used the laptop. Shrader is currently being held at the Washington County Jail and is expected to have a preliminary hearing on Oct. 5.
September 30, 2022 1:53 pm
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (AP) – A West Virginia University fraternity has been cleared of hazing allegations but will be sanctioned separately on other violations. The school said Thursday that Pi Kappa Phi and the school agreed to end the fraternity’s interim suspension related to alleged hazing. The chapter will be on deferred suspension through February and lose some privileges through June. Office of Student Rights and Responsibilities Director Jill Gibson says no evidence of hazing was found but the investigation did find recruitment and alcohol violations of the Student Conduct Code. WVU says the fraternity agreed to participate in education, training and harm reduction programs.
September 30, 2022 4:15 am
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) – A Taliban-appointed spokesman for the Kabul police chief says a suicide bomber has killed 19 people and wounded 27 at an education center in a Shiite area of the Afghan capital. Khalid Zadran, the spokesman, says the explosion in the Dashti Barchi neighborhood of Kabul took place on Friday morning. The area is populated mostly by members of Afghanistan’s minority Shiite community. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack. The Islamic State group – the chief rival áof the Taliban since their takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021 – has in the past targeted the Hazara community.
September 30, 2022 4:13 am
HAVANA (AP) – A few hundred Cubans have taken to the streets in Havana demanding the restoration of electricity, protesting more than two days after a blackout hit the entire island following the passage of Hurricane Ian. An Associated Press journalist saw a total of about 400 people gathered in at least two spots Thursday night shouting, “We want light, we want light!” It was the first public outpouring of anger after electricity problems spread from western Cuba. Ian hit Tuesday night and knocked out all of the island’s power grid, leaving its 11 million people in the dark. Authorities have not said what percentage of the population remains without electricity. But the Electric Union says only 10% of Havana’s 2 million people had power Thursday.
September 30, 2022 4:13 am
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) – South Korea, U.S. and Japanese warships have launched their first anti-submarine drills in five years, after North Korea renewed ballistic missile tests this week. South Korea says Friday’s one-day trilateral training off the Korean Peninsula’s east coast is meant to cope with a North Korean push to advance its ability to fire missile from submarines. North Korea has been building bigger submarines including a nuclear-powered one and testing sophisticated missiles that can be fired from them in recent years. The North’s recent five missiles launches, the first such tests in a month, also came before and after U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris visited South Korea.
Small protests appear in Havana over islandwide blackout
September 30, 2022 4:11 am
CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) – A revived Hurricane Ian made landfall on coastal South Carolina on Friday. It’s threatening the historic city of Charleston with severe flooding after the deadly storm caused catastrophic damage in Florida and trapped thousands in their homes. The U.S. National Hurricane Center says Ian’s center came ashore near Georgetown on Friday afternoon, with much weaker winds than when it crossed Florida’s Gulf Coast on Wednesday as one of the strongest storms to ever hit the U.S. Sheets of rain whipped trees and power lines and left many areas on Charleston’s downtown peninsula under water even before the hurricane made landfall. áAt least nine people were confirmed dead in the U.S., but that number is expected to increase.
September 30, 2022 4:09 am
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) – A Russian strike on the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia killed at least 23 people and wounded dozens, an official said Friday, just hours before Moscow planned to annex more of Ukraine in an escalation of the seven-month war. Zaporizhzhia Regional Governor Oleksandr Starukh made the announcement in an online statement Friday. He said there were at least 28 wounded when Russian forces targeted a humanitarian convoy heading to Russian-occupied territory.
September 30, 2022 4:07 am
WESTMORELAND COUNTY, Pa. — (WPXI) – A few cats are still left roaming outside of a trailer affiliated with the Cat Aid Network — a rescue group now left in limbo after humane officers discovered a horrid situation inside a Derry Township trailer. “I didn’t even know that there was a trailer, let alone what was happening in the trailer,” foster Missy Lamonaca said. As many as 70 cats were saved by surrounding rescue groups like Ninth Life Rescue, Cat Rangers and Frankie’s Friends. “We saw conditions that were, of course, not suitable for the cats to be living in. There was typical of hoarding situations, a lot of fecal material, urine and kitties that needed some veterinary care,” Dr. Becky Morrow of Frankie’s Friends said. There are still over 160 cats in the rescue’s foster homes. Lamonaca fosters 13 cats for the rescue. She said she feels left in the dark by those who ran the organization. “They are unresponsive to any text messages, Facebook messages, any phone calls, anything like that,” Lamonaca said. The rescue’s founder and treasurer have since resigned. No criminal charges have been filed, but a humane officer with Frankie’s Friends is actively investigating the Cat Aid Network. Meanwhile, the surrounding agencies that responded are nursing these cats back to good health.
September 30, 2022 4:04 am
FAYETTE COUNTY, Pa. — (WPXI) – A Fayette County landlord and bar owner has been charged with sexually assaulting a tenant. According to the criminal complaint, James Delansky told the woman to come to his bar, The Brass Rail in Point Marion, back in May. After the woman had a few drinks, police said Delansky took her to his house. A witness told police that the woman did not seem intoxicated when she left the bar with Delansky. Once she was in his house, the woman told police that Delansky had handed her a drink. Delansky then allegedly told the woman he wanted to show her his home. The woman told police she remembered walking onto the back deck. The woman told police she couldn’t remember what happened after that. According to lab results, the victim’s blood alcohol concentration was 0.069. Police said that the sexual assault test kit results matched Delansky’s DNA. The criminal complaint said that Delansky denied any sexual intercourse and claimed the woman asked him to engage in intercourse with her. Delansky has been charged with raping an unconscious victim, raping a substantially impaired person, sexual assault, aggravated indecent assault, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse of an unconscious person and involuntary deviate sexual intercourse of a substantially impared person. He will go before a judge in a preliminary hearing on Oct. 13, 2022.
September 30, 2022 2:09 am
PITTSBURGH (AP) – Judah Samet, a Holocaust survivor who narrowly escaped a shooting rampage at a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018, has died. Samet died Tuesday at age 84. He was in the parking lot of Tree of Life synagogue during a rampage inside that killed 11 people. It was the deadliest attack on Jewish people in U.S. history. Born in Hungary, Samet and his family spent 10 months at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany during World War II. He moved to Pittsburgh in the 1960s and spoke about his Holocaust experience to tens of thousands of people at schools and other settings.
