March 16, 2023 8:41 am
TOPOCK, Ariz. (AP) — BNSF Railway says a freight train carrying corn syrup, not hazardous material, derailed in western Arizona, near the state’s border with California and Nevada. BNSF spokesperson Lena Kent says in a statement that “preliminarily reports indicate there are no hazardous materials involved” in the Wednesday evening derailment. A Mohave County sheriff’s official had earlier said the train was carrying hazardous materials when it derailed near the town of Topock and that there were no apparent spills or leaks. The derailment occurred in a rural, non-residential area about 20 miles north of Lake Havasu City. No injuries were reported. The derailment comes amid heightened attention to rail safety nationwide following a fiery derailment last month in Ohio.
March 16, 2023 4:25 am
NEW YORK (AP) — New data suggests U.S. deaths of pregnant women dropped significantly in 2022. It comes after a year when the maternal death rate was the highest in nearly six decades. According to a final tally released Thursday, more than 1,200 U.S. women died in 2021 during pregnancy or shortly after childbirth. That was the highest maternal death rate since 1964. Government health officials are still compiling data for 2022, but it appears last year the rate dropped back down to pre-pandemic levels. But that’s not great either: The rate before COVID-19 was the highest it had been in decades. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tracks the data.
March 16, 2023 4:24 am
AMARILLO, Texas (AP) — A conservative judge in Texas has raised questions about an effort to overturn the decades-old approval of a leading abortion drug, in a case that could threaten the country’s most common method to end pregnancies. Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk heard hours of arguments Wednesday on a Christian conservative group’s request to revoke or suspend the U.S. approval of mifepristone. Such a step would be an unprecedented challenge to the FDA. The judge said he would rule “as soon as possible,” without giving any clear indication of how he might rule. Mifepristone, when combined with a second pill, was approved in 2000 and the standard method for medication abortion in the U.S.
March 16, 2023 4:23 am
GENEVA (AP) — Swiss bank Credit Suisse says it will move to shore up its finances, borrowing up to $54 billion from the central bank after its shares plunged, dragging down other major European lenders in the wake of bank failures in the United States. Globally connected Credit Suisse’s shares lost more than a quarter of their value at one point Wednesday. The stock price hit a record low after the bank’s biggest shareholder — the Saudi National Bank — told news outlets that it would not invest more money into the Swiss lender. Credit Suisse was beset by problems long before the U.S. banks collapsed.
March 16, 2023 4:11 am
Tuesday was the first day that challenges to petitions to appear on the ballot for the May primary election could be filed. On Tuesday three challenges were filed in Washington County Republican races for commissioner and prothonotary. Commissioner candidate Ashley Duff had her petition challenged regarding employment information. The challenge states that her position as “Home Economist” is misleading and does not qualify as an occupation under Pennsylvania Law. A second candidate for commissioner had his petition challenged due to the lack of required signature totals. Kevin Redford obtained 415 signatures, 244 of them were being challenged leaving him with 171 valid signatures, short of the necessary 250. In a third county race, incumbent prothonotary Laura Hough challenged her opponent, Kevin Hill on his employment description. The plaintiffs in the Redford and Hill challenges were represented by attorney and Washington County Republican Party Chairman Sean Logue. According to County Elections Director Melanie Ostrander, common pleas judges are to have challenge hearings scheduled by March 17.
March 16, 2023 4:09 am
A Pittsburgh man waived possession with intent to deliver drug charges to court on Wednesday. Breyonne Hooks, 34 faces two felony possession charges and two misdemeanor possession of controlled substance charges. Hooks was stopped by Washington City Police at the request of the Washington County Drug Task Force who were conducting an investigation in November. According to the criminal complaint, the officer detected a furtive movement by Hooks during questioning outside the car. A search of Hooks produced drug paraphernalia and suspected crack cocaine. Hooks consented to a vehicle search where a backpack next to a female passenger was found to contain large quantities of suspected cocaine, crack cocaine and heroin and $5000 in cash. Hooks is being held in the Washington County Jail on $50,000 bond. He will be formally arraigned on April 27.
March 16, 2023 4:08 am
The final defendant in a case where police accused two Romanian nationals of an area wide scheme of attaching information skimmers on credit card terminals has been decided. Constantin Colceag, 42 pleaded guilty on Wednesday to felony use of a device to record, read or obtain encoded information and felony conspiracy of the same charge. Colceag will spend 9-23 months in jail and then serve a 3 year probation sentence. He and his accomplice Raul-Mihai Cojocaru were found on video recordings placing credit card skimmers at check out lines in the Sam’s Club in South Strabane Township and other locations in western Pennsylvania in May of 2022. Cojocaru pleaded guilty to similar charges in December.
March 16, 2023 4:07 am
CANONSBURG, Pa. — (WPXI) – While Sarris Candies has a boundless number of Easter candies and chocolates for the season, customers won’t be able to purchase their jelly beans this year. The unique recipe contains both pectin and starch, which come from Ukraine, according to President/CEO Bill Sarris. The Canonsburg-based company makes all of its chocolates in-house, but the jelly beans are produced by an outside supplier. With pectin and starch in short supply, the supplier has been using its machinery for different purposes. Sarris said the issue has been ongoing for quite some time. Last year, they tried to sell a different type.“The repercussions were so bad!” he said. They didn’t want to let people down with an alternative this year, so they decided not to sell jelly beans at all. Sarris said that they sampled other jelly beans, even some imported from Europe, but they just didn’t have the special taste that longtime Sarris customers have come to expect. Prior to the issues, Sarris sold hundreds of thousands of jelly beans each year. Not being able to sell them has impacted their bottom line, he said.
March 15, 2023 2:53 pm
A former Uniontown man was sentenced to nearly 18 years in prison and lifetime supervised release for molesting a child in live videos and pictures. According to the Department of Justice, Zachary Bosh, 39, was sentenced in a federal court to 210 months behind bars and lifetime supervision on his conviction of production of visual depictions of a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct. On April 12, 2019, an undercover officer entered a public chat group called #parentstoys using an internet-based and free mobile app. A user by the handle “ascott55055? initiated a private chat with the officer, sending the officer around seven videos and/or images of a minor, one of which shows the sexual exploitation of the victim. The user was later identified as Bosh. “This defendant will spend the next 17.5 years in prison for preying upon, exploiting and abusing a young girl who was under the defendant’s care for his own sexual gratification,” said Acting United States Attorney Rivetti. “This sentence sends a clear message that predatory crimes, such as child exploitation offenses, will continue to be vigorously prosecuted by this office.”
March 15, 2023 12:21 pm
(WPXI) – A mistrial has been declared in the case of 34-year-old Christian Bey, the man accused of shooting and killing an off-duty Pittsburgh police officer in 2019. A witness for the commonwealth mentioned they knew Bey because he had been in and out of jail. One of the stipulations was that Bey’s prior convictions could not be brought into this trial. Bey was accused of shooting and killing off-duty Pittsburgh Police officer Calvin Hall at a street party in Homewood in 2019. Bey will face a retrial. No date has been set. The mistrial was declared just one day after the trial began. The prosecution and defense made their opening statements to the jury Tuesday morning.
