May 26, 2022 4:13 am
BETHEL PARK, Pa. — (WPXI) – Bethel Park School District is mourning the loss of a history teacher who died in a tragic kayaking accident. The school district called Jon Gentile, a teacher for the last 15 years, an incredibly well-respected and beloved member of the high school and middle school staff. His colleagues say Gentile was the kind of teacher who made students want to go into teaching. Gentile was an avid outdoorsman who died Tuesday after a tragic kayaking accident. Many of his students paid tribute to him by showing up to school wearing plaid and flannel — his signature teaching outfit.
May 26, 2022 4:09 am
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) – Pennsylvania’s top election official says the margin between the top two candidates in last week’s Republican primary for U.S. Senate is tight enough to trigger a recount. The state’s acting secretary of state, Leigh Chapman, said the vote totals for celebrity heart surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz and former hedge fund CEO David McCormick fall within the recount margin in state law. Oz, who is endorsed by former President Donald Trump, led McCormick by 902 votes out of more than 1.3 million ballots counted as of Wednesday. The separation between the candidates is well within the the recount law’s 0.5% margin. A recount could take until June 8.
May 26, 2022 4:08 am
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) – An effort by Democratic lawmakers in Pennsylvania to ban owning, selling or making high-capacity, semi-automatic firearms isn’t going to be taken up by state lawmakers. Pennsylvania House Republicans on Wednesday again displayed their firm opposition to gun restriction proposals. The House voted 111 to 87 against the effort to take up the bill. Republican floor leader Kerry Benninghoff argued it should have to go through a committee first. The bill has spent more than a year in the Judiciary Committee, where the Republican chairman has bottled up most proposals to regulate or restrict firearms. Just one Republican and one Democrat crossed party lines in the vote against considering the bill.
May 25, 2022 4:25 pm
Officials from 9-1-1 say that a SWAT situation that occurred in Smith Township has come to a close. A man allegedly shot another man on Loffert Road and State Police and several local police departments took to the scene. The standoff ended with the alleged shooter surrendering to police peacefully. The victim was injured but officials state that they do not believe he was transported from the scene by ambulance. Details about the event are still evolving.
May 25, 2022 3:39 pm
UVALDE, Texas (AP) – The governor of Texas says the gunman who killed 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school had warned on social media minutes before the attack that he was going to shoot up a school. Gov. Greg Abbott says the shooter, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, used an AR-15 in the attack Tuesday at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde. About 30 minutes before the shooting, Ramos made three social media posts. According to the governor, Ramos posted that he was going to shoot his grandmother, then that he had shot the woman, and finally that he was going to shoot an elementary school. Abbott says Ramos had no known criminal or mental health history. “Evil swept across Uvalde yesterday,” Abbott said.
May 25, 2022 3:37 pm
WOODSTOCK, Ga. (AP) – Donald Trump began May with a decisive win for a favored candidate in Ohio, catapulting a Senate hopeful to a primary victory. But the month ended in stinging defeat for Trump as one of his top targets for retribution walloped the Trump-endorsed challenger by more than 50 percentage points in the Georgia governor’s GOP primary. As the first round of primaries comes to a close, the month has laid bare Trump’s diminished grip on the Republican Party. But the races have also made clear the extent to which the party has been transformed in Trump’s image. And they’ve shown that his “MAGA” movement isn’t going anywhere, whether he decided to run again or not.
May 25, 2022 3:30 pm
WASHINGTON (AP) – The Congressional Budget Office says that high inflation will persist into next year. This will likely cause the federal government to pay higher interest rates on its debt. The nonpartisan agency expects that the consumer price index will rise 6.1% this year and 3.1% in 2023. This forecast suggests that inflation will slow from current annual levels of 8.3%, yet it would still be dramatically above a long term baseline of 2.3%. The 10-year estimates do contain positive news as this year’s annual budget deficit will be $118 billion lower than forecast last year. That’s a byproduct of the end of pandemic-related spending and the solid job growth it helped to spur.
May 25, 2022 3:28 pm
WASHINGTON (AP) – Federal Reserve officials agreed when they met earlier this month that they might have to raise interest rates to levels that would weaken the economy as part of their drive to curb inflation, which has reached a four-decade high. At the same time, many of the policymakers also agreed that after a rapid series of rate increases in the coming months, they could á”assess the effects” of their rate hikes and, depending on the economy’s health, adjust their policies. According to minutes from the Fed’s May 3-4 meeting, most of the officials agreed that half-point increases to the Fed’s benchmark short-term rate “would likely be appropriate” at the central bank’s next two meetings, in June and July.
May 25, 2022 4:25 am
WASHINGTON (AP) – An anguished and angry President Joe Biden is calling for new restrictions on firearms after a gunman massacred 18 children at a Texas elementary school. “We have to act,” Biden told the nation Tuesday night from the White House, after years of failure to pass new laws. He spoke after arriving home from a five-day trip to Asia that was bookended by “horrific” mass tragedy. Just two days before he left on his trip, he met with victims’ families after a hate-motivated shooter killed 10 Black people at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York.
May 25, 2022 4:24 am
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) – Alabama’s Republican primary for U.S. Senate is going to a June runoff between Katie Britt and U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks. The Republicans are seeking the nomination for the Senate seat now held by U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby who is retiring. Britt is Shelby’s former chief of staff and the former leader of the Business Council of Alabama. Brooks overcame a feud with former President Donald Trump to secure a runoff spot. Trump initially endorsed Brooks in the race but withdrew that endorsement in March. The two edged out businessman Mike Durant, who is best known as the helicopter pilot held captive in the events chronicled in “Black Hawk Down.”
