May 12, 2022 4:13 am
Washington City Police are investigating the death of a Washington woman late Wednesday afternoon. The Washington County Coroner’s Office says 58 year old Kristin Barfield was shot in an incident on Ridge Avenue just after 5 p.m. The incident was reported to 9-1-1. She was transported to Washington Hospital and pronounced dead about thirty minutes later. The Coroner’s office says a cause and manner of death are pending. No other information is being released at this time.
May 12, 2022 4:06 am
The Ringgold School Board approved their preliminary budget for the 2022-2023 school year on Wednesday night. The budget amount adopted is $51,537,045. That amount will include a 4/10 mill increase in taxes for the residents of the Ringgold School District. What that means is that the average home assessed at $111,000 in the district will pay an additional $44.50 per year in taxes. Superintendent Randall Skrinjorich pointed to rising costs of energy as a big culprit in the increase of taxes. He also pointed out that they are one of the few school districts that do everything in house and those contractual obligations contributed as well. Skrinjorich also called out the commonwealth for being one of the states with the lowest dollar contribution per student causing the local school boards to force local residents to be the ones to foot the largest portion of the budget. The final budget will be approved at the June school board meeting.
May 11, 2022 5:22 pm
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) – U.S. coronavirus cases are up, leading a smattering of school districts, especially in the Northeast, to bring back mask recommendations and requirements. Their return comes for the first time since the omicron winter surge ebbed and as the United States approaches 1 million deaths from the virus. Districts in Maine, New Jersey and Pennsylvania have brought masks back in schools, with a few in Massachusetts also recommending them. The uptick in cases is a vast undercount because testing has dropped considerably and most tests are being taken at home and are not reported to health departments.
May 11, 2022 3:53 pm
(AP) – A veteran Al Jazeera correspondent who was shot dead while reporting on an Israeli raid in the West Bank was a highly respected and familiar face in the Middle East. Shireen Abu Akleh’s death reverberated across the region and set social media alight. Her unflinching coverage of the harsh realities of Israel’s military occupation was inextricably linked with her own identity as a Palestinian journalist on the front lines. Since 1997, the 51-year-old journalist had reported on forced home evictions, the killings of unarmed Palestinian youth, hundreds of Palestinians held without charge in Israeli prisons and expansion of Jewish settlements. Her death Wednesday underscores the heavy price the conflict continues to exact on Palestinians.
May 11, 2022 2:48 pm
FLORENCE, Ariz. (AP) – An Arizona man convicted of killing a college student in 1978 has been executed after a nearly eight-year hiatus in the state’s use of the death penalty brought on by a previous execution critics say was botched and the difficulty officials faced in finding lethal injection drugs. Officials say Clarence Dixon died by lethal injection Wednesday at the state prison in Florence for his murder conviction in the killing of Arizona State University student Deana Bowdoin. He was the the sixth person to be executed in the United States in 2022. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected a last-minute delay of Dixon’s execution less than an hour before he was killed.
May 11, 2022 12:42 pm
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) – Air traffic controllers in Florida got an urgent call from a passenger in a small plane. The man used cockpit radio to communicate after realizing the pilot was too sick to handle the controls. “I’ve got a serious situation here,” the man said. He said the pilot was incoherent and he had no idea how to fly a plane. Controllers kept the man calm. Asked for the plane’s position, he said he didn’t know. Eventually they spotted the Cessna 280 heading north over Boca Raton. Controllers then guided him Tuesday to a safe landing at Palm Beach International Airport, where a controller told him “Kudos to the new pilot.”
May 11, 2022 8:52 am
WASHINGTON (AP) – Inflation slowed in April after seven months of relentless gains, a tentative sign that price increases may be peaking while still imposing a financial strain on American households. Consumer prices jumped 8.3% last month from 12 months earlier. That was below the 8.5% year-over-year surge in March, which was the highest rate since 1981. On a month-to-month basis, prices rose 0.3% from March to April, a still-elevated rate but the smallest increase in eight months. Consumer prices had spiked 1.2% from February to March, mostly because of a sudden jump in gas prices triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
May 11, 2022 7:26 am
Two men facing multiple charges of access device fraud and identity theft will face trial. Two men with identifications from the Czech Republic had their preliminary hearings on Tuesday. One of the men, Filip Honza appeared via video in a nearly two hour hearing. He is facing 123 charges of access device fraud and possession of an instrument of crime and identity theft. He is accused of using fraudulent debit cards at Walgreens, CVS and a BP gas station to get cash from those ATMs in Peters Township. Police testified that they were alerted to several acts of fraudulent charges to credit cards on April 11. One week later they apprehended Honza and his accomplice Robert Pokorny while Pokorny was trying to withdraw cash from an ATM. Honza requested a hearing. Pokorny waived his charges directly to court. Charges for Honza were held for trial. The identity of both men is still in question. Additional identification was found that identify both men of being from Romania. Both men are in the Washington County Jail without bond. Both will be formally arraigned on June 30.
May 11, 2022 4:15 am
WASHINGTON (AP) – The Senate has failed in an effort toward enshrining Roe v. Wade abortion access into federal law. Wednesday’s 51-49 negative vote almost along party lines provided a stark display of the nation’s partisan divide over the landmark court decision and the limits of legislative action. The afternoon roll call promised to be the first of several efforts in Congress to preserve the nearly 50-year-old court ruling. President Joe Biden called on Congress to pass legislation that would guarantee the constitutional right to abortion services after the disclosure of a draft Supreme Court opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade. But Democrats in the split Senate lacked the votes to overcome a Republican-led filibuster. (Photo: ABC)
May 11, 2022 4:14 am
WASHINGTON (AP) – The House has emphatically approved a fresh $40 billion Ukraine aid package that beefs up President Joe Biden’s initial request. The measure signals a magnified U.S. commitment to thwart Russian President Vladimir Putin’s bloody three-month-old invasion. The bill won wide bipartisan support. It contains $7 billion more than Biden’s plan from last month, evenly divided between defense and humanitarian programs. The bill would give Ukraine military and economic assistance, help regional allies, replenish weapons the Pentagon has shipped overseas and provide $5 billion to address global food shortages caused by the war’s crippling of Ukraine’s normally robust crop production.
