Pennsylvania

Crystal Weimer’s nightmare began in 2004, when she was arrested for a crime she didn’t commit.

“When you go to jail, your whole family goes to jail,” Weimer said. “It’s just like a ripple effect — it’s just not you.”

She was charged with the murder of Curtis Haith, a 21-year-old who dreamed of becoming a chef.  Haith was shot in the face and beaten to death in front of his home in Fayette County, about 50 miles south of Pittsburgh.

The state senate majority policy committee hosted a school safety discussion on Friday in Philipsburg. It’s the seventh out of ten sessions planned regarding the allocation of $60 million in state funding for schools. 

Over two dozen attendees met at the Philipsburg-Osceola Middle School, including representatives from eight school districts in Central Pennsylvania.

Dr. John Zesiger is the superintendent of the Moshannon Valley School District. He said the school district will most likely use the funding to improve their mental health resources.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Former President Barack Obama's stops on the mid-term campaign trail will run through Philadelphia.
The state Democratic Party said Obama will headline a Sept. 21 rally in Philadelphia to boost the re-election campaigns of Democratic U.S. Sen. Bob Casey and Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf, but also other down-ballot races that Democrats are contesting.
In the Philadelphia area alone, Democrats are hoping to flip four U.S. House seats and more than a dozen state legislative seats that will be on the Nov. 6 general election ballots.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is marking 17 years since the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil by visiting the Pennsylvania field that became a Sept. 11 memorial.
Trump and his wife, Melania, were participating in Tuesday's somber remembrance in Shanksville. It's where a California-bound commercial airliner crashed on Sept. 11, 2001, after the 40 passengers and crew members learned what was happening and attempted to regain control of the aircraft. Everyone on board was killed.

Dozens of roads are closed across southwestern and northcentral Pennsylvania due to heavy rainfall and flooding. The state Department of Transportation said more closures may be expected on Tuesday.

In five counties in the southwestern part of the state, the closures impacted roads including U.S. 22, which connects Blair and Huntingdon Counties. But PennDOT press officer Tara Callahan-Henry said the majority of the roads closed are not major arteries.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania's state prisons are on lockdown after staff members at a fourth prison required treatment in recent weeks from exposure to a yet-unidentified substance described as a liquid synthetic drug.

The Department of Corrections announced the step Wednesday, a couple hours after it reported that two guards and three nurses at Albion state prison reported feeling sick and required medical attention.

The department didn't say how long the lockdown will last.

Following the grand jury report on the alleged widespread clergy abuse in Pennsylvania’s Catholic Church, state lawmakers are pushing for reforms. State Representative Scott Conklin, D-Centre, introduced two new bills on Monday, which would demand greater accountability from religious organizations.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — A report on safety threats and security concerns in Pennsylvania schools concludes there is a need for better access to mental health services.
The task force led by the governor and elected auditor general released a 46-page report Monday that recommends expanded use of existing mental health programs and better ways to inform parents and students about what is currently available.
The broad findings of the report were made public in June, but the full document was just released and posted online.

A U.S. judge in Seattle blocked the Trump administration Monday from allowing a Texas company to post online plans for making untraceable 3D guns. The judge  agreed with 19 states (including Pennsylvania) and the District of Columbia that such access to the plastic guns would pose a security risk.
The states sued to stop an agreement that the government had reached with Austin, Texas-based Defense Distributed, saying guidelines on how to print undetectable plastic guns could be acquired by felons or terrorists.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — A spokesman for U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey says Google alerted the Pennsylvania Republican's office that hackers with ties to a "nation-state" had sent phishing emails to old campaign email accounts.
Steve Kelly says Google alerted Toomey's office earlier this week about the attempt to infiltrate email accounts. Kelly says the accounts hadn't been used since the end of the 2016 campaign, and the nation-state wasn't identified.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf is agreeing to participate in just one debate before the Nov. 6 election with his Republican rival Scott Wagner, an event to be moderated by "Jeopardy!" host Alex Trebek.
Wolf's campaign said this week that will be his only debate, and gave no explanation as to why. That prompted Wagner's campaign to accuse Wolf of being "afraid to defend himself in front of Pennsylvanians."

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A lawsuit that claims Pennsylvania is failing to provide students with an adequate education will likely head to trial.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reports the Commonwealth Court rejected Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati's request for a dismissal Monday. The 2014 suit filed by the Education Law Center and Public Interest Center claims the state is violating its constitution and that low-wealth districts are hurt by the formula.
Scarnati had argued Pennsylvania's school funding formula was satisfactory.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Wagner said he will not release a tax return because his income is nobody else's business and he suggested that labor unions will use it to try to organize workers at the non-union waste-hauling business he owns.
Wagner made the comments in response to a questioner at a Monday night question-and-answer session in Erie in video captured by the Democratic Party.

More than 300 “predator priests” allegedly sexually abused over one thousand victims in six Pennsylvania Catholic dioceses for decades, while bishops and other high-ranking church officials covered it up and urged victims not to go to the police.

That is according to a lengthy Pennsylvania grand jury report released Tuesday, which had been in the making for two years. It faced several legal challenges by priests and others named in its pages who claimed the report would violate their right to reputation as guaranteed by the Pa. constitution.

Updated: 5:52 p.m.

A long-awaited grand jury investigation into clergy sexual abuse in Pennsylvania was released Tuesday in an interim, redacted form — detailing decades of alleged misconduct and cover-ups in six of the state’s eight Roman Catholic dioceses.

In his office on Penn State’s main campus, Sascha Meinrath, a professor of telecommunications, tested his internet speed.

With an upload speed of 200 megabits and a download speed of 80 megabits per second, it blew past the federal definition of broadband.

“That’s way over the FCC definition,” said Meinrath.

But many in Pennsylvania aren’t so lucky.

A study by Bucknell University’s Institute For Public Policy counts Pennsylvania as one of the states where residents are most skeptical of free trade agreements.

The study found especially negative attitudes in states where voters supported President Barack Obama in 2012 and flipped to President Donald Trump in 2016: Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and Iowa.

WILKES-BARRE, Pa. (AP) — Colored bulbs cast an eerie blue glow in the restroom of a convenience store where people who inject heroin and other drugs have been seeking the relative privacy of the stalls to shoot up.

The blue lights are meant to discourage people from using drugs in store bathrooms by making it more difficult for them to see their veins. It's an idea that's been around for years but is getting a fresh look as a result of the nation's opioid epidemic.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — The Latest on Pennsylvania's budget legislation (all times local):
8:50 p.m.
Pennsylvania has budget peace, for now, and spending authorization intact a week early for the upcoming fiscal year.
Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf on Friday signed a $32.7 billion budget package, avoiding the partisan acrimony and protracted budget fights of his first three years in office.

 (Harrisburg) -- Efforts to overhaul the state’s redistricting process are faltering.

Earlier this month, the legislature looked like it might be on track to approve a sweeping plan to establish a citizen’s commission to draw the maps — plus change how Pennsylvania elects judges.

The U.S. Supreme Court was expected to make a defining decision on extreme partisan gerrymandering this term. It took up two cases, one from Wisconsin, and the other from Maryland. But, in unanimous decisions, the court avoided the key constitutional question at stake in these cases: How much politics is too much when determining voting districts?

Instead, it ruled on technicalities.

Should private schools that benefit from Pennsylvania’s tax credit programs adhere to the rules of the public system?

That debate often revolves around school accountability because the state does not require private schools to administer and publish the results of standardized tests.

But the question has also cropped up in recent weeks around an entirely different issue — employee discrimination.

Pennsylvania’s population is on the rise again, after declining in 2016 — but growth remains concentrated in certain spots, and most communities keep losing residents.

The U.S. Census Bureau’s population estimates show the state lost people during 2016, but added more than 18,000 last year, the most since 2012, according to a Keystone Crossroads analysis of the latest statistics.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — The Latest on the Pennsylvania primary election (all times local):

10:19 p.m.

John Fetterman has won a five-way Democratic Party primary race for lieutenant governor, making Lt. Gov. Mike Stack the first holder of the office to lose in a primary election.

The Braddock mayor's victory in Tuesday's primary election means he will run on a ticket with Gov. Tom Wolf in the fall. Pennsylvania first started allowing lieutenant governors to serve a second term in the 1970s.

Braddock had made a failed bid in 2016 for the U.S. Senate.