(Photo of Jeffrey Lynn Thomas Provided with Release Courtesy of Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday’s Office)

(Harrisburg, PA) According to a release today from Attorney General Dave Sunday’s office, Sunday announced that Jeffrey Lynn Thomas, former Somerset County District Attorney, was denied review in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court regarding a 2023 conviction of sexual assault at a Windber home.

The state’s highest court recently declined to review Thomas’ case after the state Superior Court affirmed his conviction. The Superior Court panel agreed with the Office of Attorney General, who won the conviction, that the trial was fair and the jury’s verdict aligned with the evidence.

Thomas was convicted of six charges, including indecent assault and strangulation, and sentenced to 2½ to 7 years in state prison.

An investigation by the Office of Attorney General found that on the night of the incident, Thomas entered the victim’s home and refused to leave, ultimately beating and sexually assaulting her.

”We are pleased that the defendant’s latest attempt to evade accountability for this attack has failed,” Attorney General Sunday said. “Since his first post-conviction filing, we have argued — and courts have agreed — that the trial process in this case was proper and that the jury considered overwhelming evidence to convict.”

Thomas, 40, is currently serving his sentence in SCI Waymart. Upon release, he is required to register his whereabouts with police as a sex offender for 15 years.

Senior Deputy Attorney General Tracy Piatkowski has represented the Commonwealth on appeal. The case was prosecuted by Chief Deputy General Patrick Schulte and Senior Deputy Attorney General Tomm Mutschler.

Thomas later pleaded no contest to domestic abuse in Cambria County.

(File Photo)

(Harrisburg, Pa.)  Attorney General Dave Sunday announced charges against a Beaver County man in connection to an Aliquippa man’s fatal fentanyl-related overdose in 2023. The Office of Attorney General charged 43-year-old Donald J. Duncan with felony drug delivery resulting in death and related offenses, regarding the Nov. 20, 2023, death of a 24-year-old man. Duncan, of New Brighton, was arraigned Tuesday and bail was set at $75,000.

Duncan provided fentanyl pills to the victim, who was found unconscious outside an apartment building and later died at a hospital. “Fentanyl kills, and anyone who perpetrates the distribution and spread of this fatal poison will be held accountable for the death and heartbreak they cause,” Attorney General Sunday said. “I commend our partners at the Beaver County District Attorney’s Office for the collaboration on a high-priority issue in every Commonwealth community.”

“Thank you to the Attorney General’s Office for their hard work in making an arrest. Without their dedication, the family of the deceased may have never had the opportunity to see justice done,” Beaver County District Attorney Nathan Bible said. “My office stands by them in their continued fight to get poisons like fentanyl off the streets, and hold accountable those who supply it.”

Investigators used cellphone communications and other tactics to track the supply of fentanyl to Duncan.

The Beaver County District Attorney’s Office will prosecute the case. Criminal charges, and any discussion thereof, are merely allegations and all defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.

 

(File Photo of Handcuffs)

Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News

(Aliquippa, PA) A couple is now in jail after police say they kidnapped a woman and threatened to have her killed. The incident began in Aliquippa on Monday afternoon and went as far as the Allentown neighborhood of Pittsburgh. According to police, Ariel Harper and her boyfriend Tyrone Turner showed up at the victim’s house and forced her into a car at gunpoint. The duo accused the woman of stealing money from them. Police paperwork states that the victim actually rented that car for Harper and Turner and knew them through her job. Police confirm that the couple drove the victim to Pittsburgh. Turner allegedly told her they were going to “meet my people and I am going to pay them to kill you.” The car stopped eventually at a red light that was close to the Zone 3 police station of Pittsburgh. The victim jumped out of the car to find help and Pittsburgh Police drove her back to Beaver County. Harper and Turner were arrested in Aliquippa at their Linmar Terrace home without incident and are in the Beaver County Jail with a number of charges which include robbery and kidnapping. 

(File Photo: Source for Photo: FILE – At Constellation’s nuclear power plant on Three Mile Island, called the Crane Clean Energy Center, near Middletown, Pa., the cooling towers are reflected in the Susquehanna River at sunrise, June 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey, File)

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — The U.S. Department of Energy said Tuesday that it will loan $1 billion to help finance the restart of the nuclear power plant on Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island that is under contract to supply power to data centers for tech giant Microsoft.

The loan is in line with the priorities of President Donald Trump’s administration, including bolstering nuclear power and artificial intelligence.

For Constellation Energy, which owns Three Mile Island’s lone functioning nuclear power reactor, the federal loan will lower its financing cost to get the mothballed plant up and running again. The 835-megawatt reactor can power the equivalent of approximately 800,000 homes, the Department of Energy said.

The reactor had been out of operation for five years when Constellation Energy announced last year that it would spend $1.6 billion to restart it under a 20-year agreement with Microsoft to buy the power for its data centers.

Constellation Energy renamed the functioning unit the Crane Clean Energy Center as it works to restore equipment including the turbine, generator, main power transformer and cooling and control systems. It hopes to bring the plant back online in 2027.

The loan is being issued under an existing $250 billion energy infrastructure program initially authorized by Congress in 2022. Neither the department nor Constellation released terms of the loan.

The plant, on an island in the Susquehanna River just outside Harrisburg, was the site of the nation’s worst commercial nuclear power accident, in 1979. The accident destroyed one reactor, Unit 2, and left the plant with one functioning reactor, Unit 1.

In 2019, Constellation Energy’s then-parent company Exelon shut down the functioning reactor, saying it was losing money and Pennsylvania lawmakers had refused to subsidize it to keep it running.

The plan to restart the reactor comes amid something of a renaissance for nuclear power, as policymakers are increasingly looking to it to shore up the nation’s power supply, help avoid the worst effects of climate change and meet rising power demand driven by data centers.

(File Photo: Source for Photo: U.S. Treasurer Brandon Beach holds one of the last pennies pressed at the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia, Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — The U.S. ended production of the penny last Wednesday, abandoning the 1-cent coins that were embedded in American culture for more than 230 years but became nearly worthless.

When it was introduced in 1793, a penny could buy a biscuit, a candle or a piece of candy. Now most of them are cast aside to sit in jars or junk drawers, and each one costs nearly 4 cents to make.

“God bless America, and we’re going to save the taxpayers $56 million,” Treasurer Brandon Beach said at the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia before hitting a button to strike the final penny. The coins were then carefully placed on a tray for journalists to see. The last few pennies were to be auctioned off.

Billions of pennies are still in circulation and will remain legal tender, but new ones will no longer be made.

Other coins have been discontinued, but the half-penny in 1857 was the last U.S. coin to be discontinued because of its low value, according to the U.S. Treasury Department.

Most penny production ended over the summer, officials said. During the final pressing, workers at the mint stood quietly on the factory floor as if bidding farewell to an old friend. When the last coins emerged, the men and women broke into applause and cheered one another.

“It’s an emotional day,” said Clayton Crotty, who has worked at the mint for 15 years. “But it’s not unexpected.”

President Donald Trump ordered the penny’s demise as costs climbed and the 1-cent valuation became virtually obsolete.

“For far too long the United States has minted pennies which literally cost us more than 2 cents,” Trump wrote in an online post in February. “This is so wasteful!”

Still, many Americans have a nostalgia for them, seeing pennies as lucky or fun to collect. And some retailers voiced concerns in recent weeks as supplies ran low and the end of production drew near. They said the phaseout was abrupt and came with no government guidance on how to handle transactions.

Some businesses rounded prices down to avoid shortchanging shoppers. Others pleaded with customers to bring exact change. The more creative among them gave out prizes, such as a free drink, in exchange for a pile of pennies.

“We have been advocating abolition of the penny for 30 years. But this is not the way we wanted it to go,” Jeff Lenard of the National Association of Convenience Stores said last month.

Proponents of eliminating the coin cited cost savings, speedier checkouts at cash registers and the fact that some countries have already eliminated their 1-cent coins. Canada, for instance, stopped minting its penny in 2012.

Some banks began rationing supplies, a somewhat paradoxical result of the effort to address what many see as a glut of the coins. Over the last century, about half the coins made at mints in Philadelphia and Denver have been pennies.

But they cost far less to produce than the nickel, which costs nearly 14 cents to make. The diminutive dime, by comparison, costs less than 6 cents to produce, and the quarter nearly 15 cents.

No matter their face value, collectors and historians consider them an important historical record. Frank Holt, an emeritus professor at the University of Houston who has studied the history of coins, laments the loss.

“We put mottoes on them and self-identifiers, and we decide — in the case of the United States — which dead persons are most important to us and should be commemorated,” he said. “They reflect our politics, our religion, our art, our sense of ourselves, our ideals, our aspirations.”

(File Photo of Police Siren Lights)

Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News

(Pittsburgh, PA) A man was hospitalized and homes were damaged because of a shooting that occurred yesterday evening in the Homewood North area of Pittsburgh. According to Pittsburgh Police, officers were called to the 7000 block of Monticello Street at 6:30 p.m. yesterday after receiving an alert of eight rounds being fired in the area. Two homes were hit by the gunfire, and a man was taken to the hospital for treatment in stable condition after he was shot in the arm. Nobody else was injured, and police discovered a gun at the scene and recovered the shell casings there.

(File Photo of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Office of Attorney General Logo)

Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News

(Harrisburg, PA) According to a release from House Republican Leader Jesse Topper’s office in Harrisburg yesterday, the leaders of the Pennsylvania House Republican Caucus sent a letter to Attorney General Dave Sunday and Auditor General Tim DeFoor demanding an investigation of Pennsylvania’s driver’s license, REAL ID, and voter registration systems. This was sent yesterday because of an Uzbeki national illegal immigrant with ties to terrorism named Akhor Bozorov obtaining a Pennsylvania Commercial Driver’s License with a REAL ID indication. The letter was sent to find out how this incident occurred and to prevent it from happening again. 

(File Photo of the Fort Pitt Tunnel)

Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News

(Pittsburgh, PA) PennDOT District 11announced that tonight, weather permitting, a lane restriction in the eastbound (inbound) Fort Pitt Tunnel in the City of Pittsburgh will occur. From 10 p.m. tonight to 4 a.m. tomorrow morning, a single lane restriction will occur in the eastbound (inbound) Fort Pitt Tunnel as PennDOT crews will conduct electrical operations there.

(File Photo of a Pennsylvania State Police Trooper Badge)

Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News

(Chippewa Township, PA) Pennsylvania State Police in Beaver reported via release yesterday that forty-year-old Juan Guerrero Garcia of Beaver Falls caused a crash in Chippewa Township on the early morning of October 15th, 2025. Guerrero Garcia hit a deer while driving on I-376 East north of Achortown Road at 4:51 a.m. and he was not injured.