Cher, left, and Dua Lipa perform during the 39th Annual Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony on Saturday, Oct. 19, 2024, at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse in Cleveland. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

CLEVELAND (AP) — Hollywood stars Julia Roberts and Zendaya bookended Saturday’s inductions into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, giving a little stardust to an eclectic lineup that included pop icon Cher, heavy metal’s Ozzy Osbourne, hip-hop soul queen Mary J. Blige, soft rockers Foreigner and 83-year-old soul icon Dionne Warwick.

It was a five-hour-plus show that also honored hip-hop trailblazers A Tribe Called Quest, punk pioneers the MC5, the effortless dance music of Kool & the Gang, the soft rock of Foreigner, the beach bum tunes of Jimmy Buffett and the jam band fusion of Dave Matthews Band.

Dua Lipa opened the show singing Cher’s “Believe” before the 78-year-old icon joined her onstage, giving way to Zendaya who noted that Cher is the only woman to have a No. 1 hit on a Billboard chart in each of the past seven decades. “Cher has got the goods,” Zendaya said before Cher performed a rocking version of “If I Could Turn Back Time.”

In her speech, Cher thanked her mother for instilling in her to always get back up after defeat. “I never give up,” she said. “I’m talking to the women — down and out, we keep going.”

Roberts helped induct Dave Matthews Band — she’s a self-avowed superfan and she appeared in the band’s video for the 2005 single, “Dreamgirl.” Roberts, wearing a band T-shirt, said the appeal of the group is “spontaneous abandon,” adding the first time she danced with her husband was to one ofn their songs.

The jam band, with their mix of funk, folk-rock, jazz, blues and pop, then played “Ants Marching” — asking the crowd to sing the chorus — “Crash” and “So Much to Say.” The arena was still full when they hit the stage after midnight, with the crowd singing along and swaying.

Matthews hugged Roberts, handed out the trophies to his bandmates, and called the class of 2024 impressive. “We’re swimming in very deep water here,” he said. He thanked the current and former band members and the bar owner who gave them a home in Charlottesville, Virginia. When he thanked the fans, they roared back.

Dr Dre inducted Blige, who is credited with creating a completely new category of music — hip-hop soul. The nine-time Grammy-winner’s best-known song is ”Family Affair″ from her triple-platinum 2001 album “No More Drama.” “When you listen to Mary, you understand you’re not alone in heartbreak,” Dre said.

Blige, wearing shiny black hat, a sparkly dress and long black gloves and boots, sang a mix of her hits, including “Love No Limit,” “Be Happy” and “Family Affair.” At the end of her set, a dancer brought up a cloak to wrap around her, in an echo of James Brown. “Move with grace. Trust the journey,” she advised. “You are worthy.”

Chuck D inducted Kool & the Gang, saying “This is a long-due celebration.” The band had 12 Top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 including the 1980 chart-topper “Celebration” as well as “Cherish,” “Get Down On It,” “Jungle Boogie,” “Ladies Night” and “Joanna.” They’ve been eligible for the hall since 1994.

The Roots helped the band do a medley of hits that got the crowd grooving led by Robert “Kool” Bell — bass guitarist, co-founder and last original member — and longtime singer James “JT” Taylor. Confetti shot into the arena and Taylor asked the crowd to use their cellphone lights as he read off the names of 10 members who were critical to the band’s success.

Warwick arrived at the ceremony only a few days after attending a memorial to her longtime friend and collaborator, Cissy Houston. Teyana Taylor called her “truly one of a kind” as well as telling off the teleprompter operator for not putting “Ms.” before her name. Jennifer Hudson sang “I’ll Never Love This Way Again” and was joined by Warwick, who also sang “Walk On By.”

Warwick said this year was the third time she was nominated for the Hall. “I am so pleased to be here,” she said. “I’m just going to say this and get off the stage: Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

Dave Chappelle helped induct A Tribe Called Quest — Q-Tip, Jarobi, Ali Shaheed Muhammad and the late Phife Dawg — the lone hip-hop group to make the cut this year. Chappelle said the group incorporated “jazz and soul in a way hip-hop had never seen.” Queen Latifah, Busta Rhymes, Common, The Roots and De La Soul were on hand to perform a medley of Tribe hits, including “Bonita Applebum,” “Scenario” and “Can I Kick It?”

Sammy Hagar introduced Foreigner, and thanked their fans for their tenacity to demand inclusion. The English-American rockers — with hits like “Cold as Ice,” and “Waiting for a Girl Like You” — topped the charts in the 1970s and ’80s but never made it into the Hall — much less a ballot — until last year, despite being eligible for more than 20 years.

Hagar noted that Foreigner currently tours without any original members. “That’s how good the songs are,” he said. “Who deserves this more than Foreigner?” Demi Lovato and Slash joined the touring Foreigner for “Feels Like the First Time” and Hagar then took lead for “Hot Blooded.” Kelly Clarkson thrilled with a powerful “I Want to Know What Love Is” but the arena erupted when original singer Lou Gramm joined her.

Saturday’s induction ceremony was at the Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse in Cleveland, where the Hall has promised to return to every few years. A TV special with performance highlights will air on ABC on Jan. 1.

Roger Daltrey of The Who inducted Frampton. “It’s about bloody time!” he said. “Peter has had the most amazing career of all time. It’s probably easier to name the people he hasn’t worked with than the people he has,” Daltrey said.

Frampton earned his way into the Hall in large part on the strength of his 1976 live double album “Frampton Comes Alive!,” buoyed by the hit songs “Show Me the Way” and ″Baby, I Love Your Way.” Daltrey noted Frampton has always played with a wide smile.

A fittingly grinning Frampton — who played at last year’s ceremony to honor Sheryl Crow — brought on Keith Urban to trade licks on “Do You Feel Like I Do” and showed why he is considered one of rock’s great guitarists. He hooked up his famous talk box effect and the crowd roared.

Dave Matthews — before his band’s inducement — helped honor Buffett with an acoustic version of the late singer-songwriter’s “A Pirate Looks at Forty.” James Taylor then came out to call Buffett — who popularized beach bum soft rock with the escapist song “Margaritaville” — “larger-than-life but at the same time right-sized and always authentic.” Taylor, Kenny Chesney and Mac McAnally then performed Buffett’s “Come Monday.”

Musician-actor Jack Black toasted Osbourne, saying that “heaven opened up above me” when he first listened to the album “Blizzard of Ozz.” Black called Osbourne “the Jack Nicholson of rock” and joked that his reality TV show “The Osbournes“ was possibly “the most evil thing he ever did.”

Osbourne, seated in a throne, credited the late guitarist Randy Rhoads and his wife, Sharon, for his career and life. This is the second time Ozzy has entered the Hall, the first time being in 2006 with the seminal metal band Black Sabbath. A tribute band to the Prince of Darkness — including Jelly Roll, Billy Idol, Maynard James Keenan, Wolfgang Van Halen, Steve Stevens and Robert Trujillo — played “Crazy Train,” “Mama, I’m Coming Home” and “No More Tears.”

The In Memoriam section included tributes, among others, to Kris Kristofferson, Cissy Houston, David Sanborn and Liam Payne. Dave Matthews Band performed “Burning Down the House” from the Talking Heads as fans filled out.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center says there is a 60% chance that a weak La Nina event will develop this autumn and could last until March.

La Nina is part of a natural climate cycle that can cause extreme weather across the planet — and its effects vary from place to place.

Although there is no guarantee how this La Nina will play out, there are some general trends. Experts say northern parts of South America could see more rain than usual. Southern regions of the U.S. and parts of Mexico could be drier than average. The northern tier of the U.S. and southern Canada could be wetter than average.

La Nina is the cool phase of the El Nino-Southern Oscillation, a naturally occurring global climate pattern that involves changes in wind and ocean temperatures in the Pacific and can cause extreme weather across the planet.

El Nino is the warm phase and happens when trade winds that typically blow across the Pacific toward Asia weaken, allowing warm ocean waters to pile up along the western edge of South America. But during La Nina, the trade winds intensify and cold water from the depths of the sea rises up, resulting in cooler than average ocean temperatures in the eastern Pacific.

These cold ocean temperatures and changes in the atmosphere affect the position of the jet stream — a narrow band of fast moving air flowing from west to east around the planet — by bumping it northward. The jet stream sits over the ocean and can tap into its moisture, influence the path storms take and boost precipitation.

Just recently Earth experienced a “triple-dip” La Nina event from 2020 to 2023. “We had three back to back winters where we had La Nina conditions, which was unusual because the only other case of that happening was back in 1973 to 1976,” said Michelle L’Heureux, a climate scientist at NOAA. L’Heureux said that La Nina’s tend to last longer and be more recurrent than El Nino events.

“It’s unusual although it’s not unprecedented,” said Ben Cook, climate scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies affiliated with Columbia University, about the forecast for a possible La Nina this year.

Cook noted that the frequency of La Nina events can be stressful for regions that have been dealing with drought lately, such as East Africa. “If we’re moving into another La Nina event, it means kind of a continuation of those really bad conditions.”

La Nina weather impacts

The influence La Nina has on the weather varies based on location and the season, said L’Heureux. Parts of South America, such as eastern Argentina, can be drier than average while Colombia, Venezuela and northern parts of Brazil can be wetter than normal.

“It depends exactly where you are. Part of that is because there’s a monsoon cycle, wet and dry season, that goes through Central America and South America, so La Nina is basically modifying the intensity and placement of those monsoon cycles,” explained L’Heureux.

In the U.S., the Northeast and Ohio Valley typically see wetter than normal conditions with an active storm track due to the position of the jet stream, said Samantha Borisoff, climate scientist at NOAA’s Northeast Regional Climate Center based at Cornell University.

The waviness of the jet stream can also cause more frequent cold outbreaks, particularly in the central U.S. Borisoff said snowfall is difficult to predict and highly dependent on the storm and path it takes, but noted that New England, New York and the Great Lakes region tend to be snowier during La Nina winters, but that is never a guarantee. The southern and southeastern regions of the U.S. are farther away from the active storm track and tend to be drier and warmer than normal.

La Nina, El Nino and climate change

Scientists say the link between climate change and La Nina and El Nino is not entirely clear.

Paul Roundy, climate scientist at the University at Albany, said climate models tend to indicate more frequent El Ninos and less frequent La Ninas, but not all models agree. Computer models also struggle to separate normal variation in the El Nino and La Nina phases from climate change’s warming influence on the oceans and atmosphere.

“I would not infer from that that climate change isn’t actually causing more El Nino emergence,” Roundy said. “It’s just that nature itself has such strong swings on its own. So we can get multiple La Nina events, and maybe in 40 or 50 years we’ll be seeing the opposite.”

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The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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This story was first published on Oct. 16, 2024. It was updated on Oct. 17, 2024 to correct a scientist’s name. It is L’Heureux. The AP also misinterpreted a scientist’s comments about cold outbreaks. These are expected in the central United States, not the southern. The name of the University at Albany, State University of New York was also misstated.

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris, left, is greeted by former Congresswoman Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., during a campaign event at Ripon College in Ripon, Wis., Thursday, Oct. 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Democrat Kamala Harris is out to win over suburban voters uneasy about Republican Donald Trump as she touches down in three Midwestern battleground states on Monday to hold moderated conversations with Republican Liz Cheney.

The vice president will make appearances in three suburban counties won by Republican Nikki Haley before she dropped out of the race for the GOP nomination: Chester County, Pennsylvania; Oakland County, Michigan; and Waukesha County, Wisconsin.

Harris’ travel companion, Cheney, is a former GOP congresswoman from Wyoming and a fierce critic of Trump. Their conversations will be moderated by a conservative radio host and a GOP strategist.

With just over two weeks to go before the presidential election and the race a dead heat, the Democratic nominee is looking for support from every possible voter. Her campaign is hoping to persuade those who haven’t made up their minds, mobilize any Democrats considering sitting this one out, and pick off voters in areas where support for Trump may be fading.

A few votes here and there could add up to an overall win. In Waukesha County, for example, Haley won more than 9,000 primary votes even after she dropped out of the race. Overall, Wisconsin was decided for President Joe Biden in 2020 by just 20,000 votes. In-person early voting in the state starts Tuesday.

Cheney and Harris will be joined at the events by Charles Sykes, a conservative radio host and editor-in-chief of the website The Bulwark, and GOP strategist Sarah Longwell.

Cheney has endorsed Harris because of her concerns about Trump. She lost her House seat after she co-chaired a congressional committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. That’s when a violent mob of Trump supporters broke into the building and beat and bloodied law enforcement in a failed effort to stop the certification of Biden’s 2020 presidential win.

Cheney is not the only Republican to back Harris. More than 100 former GOP officeholders and officials joined Harris last week in Washington Crossing, Pennsylvania, not far from where Gen. George Washington led hundreds of troops across the Delaware River to a major victory in the Revolutionary War.

At a rally there, she told GOP voters the patriotic choice was to vote for the Democrats.

As the election draws near, the vice president has increasingly focused on Trump’s lies around the 2020 election and his role in the violent mob’s failed efforts. She says Trump is “unstable” and “unhinged” and would eviscerate democratic norms if given a second White House term.

“I do believe that Donald Trump is an unserious man,” she says at her rallies, “and the consequences of him ever getting back into the White House are brutally serious.”

Trump has been trying to minimize the violent Jan. 6 confrontation as he campaigns, claiming it was “a day of love from the standpoint of the millions.”

Harris will be back in Pennsylvania on Wednesday for a CNN town hall in Delaware County, where she will take voter questions.

FILE – A Tesla logo is seen at the company’s store in Denver’s Cherry Creek Mall on Feb. 9, 2019. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski, File)

DETROIT (AP) — The U.S. government’s road safety agency is investigating Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” system after getting reports of crashes in low-visibility conditions, including one that killed a pedestrian.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said in documents that it opened the probe on Thursday after the company reported four crashes when Teslas encountered sun glare, fog and airborne dust.

In addition to the pedestrian’s death, another crash involved an injury, the agency said.

Investigators will look into the ability of “Full Self-Driving” to “detect and respond appropriately to reduced roadway visibility conditions, and if so, the contributing circumstances for these crashes.”

The investigation covers roughly 2.4 million Teslas from the 2016 through 2024 model years.

A message was left Friday seeking comment from Tesla, which has repeatedly said the system cannot drive itself and human drivers must be ready to intervene at all times.

Last week Tesla held an event at a Hollywood studio to unveil a fully autonomous robotaxi without a steering wheel or pedals. Musk, who has promised autonomous vehicles before, said the company plans to have autonomous Models Y and 3 running without human drivers next year. Robotaxis without steering wheels would be available in 2026 starting in California and Texas, he said.

The investigation’s impact on Tesla’s self-driving ambitions isn’t clear. NHTSA would have to approve any robotaxi without pedals or a steering wheel, and it’s unlikely that would happen while the investigation is in progress. But if the company tries to deploy autonomous vehicles in its existing models, that likely would fall to state regulations. There are no federal regulations specifically focused on autonomous vehicles, although they must meet broader safety rules.

NHTSA also said it would look into whether any other similar crashes involving “Full Self-Driving” have happened in low visibility conditions, and it will seek information from the company on whether any updates affected the system’s performance in those conditions.

“In particular, this review will assess the timing, purpose and capabilities of any such updates, as well as Tesla’s assessment of their safety impact,” the documents said.

Tesla reported the four crashes to NHTSA under an order from the agency covering all automakers. An agency database says the pedestrian was killed in Rimrock, Arizona, in November of 2023 after being hit by a 2021 Tesla Model Y. Rimrock is about 100 miles (161 kilometers) north of Phoenix.

The Arizona Department of Public Safety said in a statement that the crash happened just after 5 p.m. Nov. 27 on Interstate 17. Two vehicles collided on the freeway, blocking the left lane. A Toyota 4Runner stopped, and two people got out to help with traffic control. A red Tesla Model Y then hit the 4Runner and one of the people who exited from it. A 71-year-old woman from Mesa, Arizona, was pronounced dead at the scene.

The collision happened because the sun was in the Tesla driver’s eyes, so the Tesla driver was not charged, said Raul Garcia, public information officer for the department. Sun glare also was a contributing factor in the first collision, he added.

Tesla has twice recalled “Full Self-Driving” under pressure from NHTSA, which in July sought information from law enforcement and the company after a Tesla using the system struck and killed a motorcyclist near Seattle.

The recalls were issued because the system was programmed to run stop signs at slow speeds and because the system disobeyed other traffic laws. Both problems were to be fixed with online software updates.

Critics have said that Tesla’s system, which uses only cameras to spot hazards, doesn’t have proper sensors to be fully self driving. Nearly all other companies working on autonomous vehicles use radar and laser sensors in addition to cameras to see better in the dark or poor visibility conditions.

Musk has said that humans drive with only eyesight, so cars should be able to drive with just cameras. He has called lidar (light detection and ranging), which uses lasers to detect objects, a “fool’s errand.”

The “Full Self-Driving” recalls arrived after a three-year investigation into Tesla’s less-sophisticated Autopilot system crashing into emergency and other vehicles parked on highways, many with warning lights flashing.

That investigation was closed last April after the agency pressured Tesla into recalling its vehicles to bolster a weak system that made sure drivers are paying attention. A few weeks after the recall, NHTSA began investigating whether the recall was working.

NHTSA began its Autopilot crash investigation in 2021, after receiving 11 reports that Teslas that were using Autopilot struck parked emergency vehicles. In documents explaining why the investigation was ended, NHTSA said it ultimately found 467 crashes involving Autopilot resulting in 54 injuries and 14 deaths. Autopilot is a fancy version of cruise control, while “Full Self-Driving” has been billed by Musk as capable of driving without human intervention.

The investigation that was opened Thursday enters new territory for NHTSA, which previously had viewed Tesla’s systems as assisting drivers rather than driving themselves. With the new probe, the agency is focusing on the capabilities of “Full Self-Driving” rather than simply making sure drivers are paying attention.

Michael Brooks, executive director of the nonprofit Center for Auto Safety, said the previous investigation of Autopilot didn’t look at why the Teslas weren’t seeing and stopping for emergency vehicles.

“Before they were kind of putting the onus on the driver rather than the car,” he said. “Here they’re saying these systems are not capable of appropriately detecting safety hazards whether the drivers are paying attention or not.”

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump, left, hands off an order of fries after working alongside an employee during a visit to McDonald’s in Feasterville-Trevose, Pa., Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024. (Doug Mills/The New York Times via AP, Pool)

FEASTERVILLE-TREVOSE, Pa. (AP) — Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump manned the fry station at a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania on Sunday before staging an impromptu news conference, answering questions through the drive-thru window.

As reporters and aides watched, an employee showed Trump how to dunk baskets of fries in oil, salt the fries and put them into boxes using a scoop. Trump, a well-known fan of fast food and a notorious germophobe, expressed amazement that he didn’t have to touch the fries with his hands.

“It requires great expertise, actually, to do it right and to do it fast,” Trump said with a grin, putting away his suit jacket and wearing an apron over his shirt and tie.

The visit came as he’s tried to counter Democratic nominee Kamala Harris’ accounts on the campaign of working at the fast-food chain while in college, an experience that Trump has claimed — without offering evidence — never happened.

A large crowd lined the street outside the restaurant in Feasterville-Trevose, which is part of Bucks County, a key swing voter area north of Philadelphia. The restaurant itself was closed to the public for Trump’s visit. The former president later attended an evening town hall in Lancaster and the Pittsburgh Steelers home game against the New York Jets.

After serving bags of takeout to people in the drive-thru lane, Trump leaned out of the window, still wearing the apron, to take questions from the media staged outside. The former president, who has constantly promoted falsehoods about his 2020 election loss, said he would respect the results of next month’s vote “if it’s a fair election.”

He joked about getting one reporter ice cream and when another asked what message he had for Harris on her 60th birthday on Sunday, Trump said, “I would say, ‘Happy Birthday, Kamala,’” adding, “I think I’ll get her some flowers.”

Trump did not directly answer a question of whether he might support increased minimum wages after seeing McDonald’s employees in action but said, “These people work hard. They’re great.”

He added that “I just saw something … a process that’s beautiful.”

When aides finally urged him to wrap things up so he could hit the road to his next event, Trump offered, “Wasn’t that a strange place to do a news conference?”

Trump has long questioned Harris’ story of working at McDonald’s

Trump has fixated in recent weeks on the summer job Harris said she held in college, working the cash register and making fries at McDonald’s while in college. Trump says the vice president has “lied about working” there, but not offered evidence for claiming that.

Representatives for McDonald’s did not respond to a message about whether the company had employment records for one of its restaurants 40 years ago. But Harris spokesman Joseph Costello said the former president’s McDonald’s visit “showed exactly what we would see in a second Trump term: exploiting working people for his own personal gain.”

“Trump doesn’t understand what it’s like to work for a living, no matter how many staged photo ops he does, and his entire second term plan is to give himself, his wealthy buddies, and giant corporations another massive tax cut,” Costello said in a statement.

In an interview last month on MSNBC, the vice president pushed back on Trump’s claims, saying she did work at the fast-food chain four decades ago when she was in college.

“Part of the reason I even talk about having worked at McDonald’s is because there are people who work at McDonald’s in our country who are trying to raise a family,” she said. “I worked there as a student.”

Harris also said: “I think part of the difference between me and my opponent includes our perspective on the needs of the American people and what our responsibility, then, is to meet those needs.”

Trump has long spread groundless claims about his opponents based on their personal history, particularly women and racial minorities.

Before he ran for president, Trump was a leading voice of the “birther” conspiracy that baselessly claimed President Barack Obama was from Africa, was not an American citizen and therefore was ineligible to be president. Trump used it to raise his own political profile, demanding to see Obama’s birth certificate and five years after Obama did so, Trump finally admitted that Obama was born in the United States.

During his first run for president, Trump repeated a tabloid’s claims that Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s father, who was born in Cuba, had links to President John F. Kennedy’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. Cruz and Trump competed for the party’s 2016 nomination.

In January of this year, when Trump was facing Nikki Haley, his former U.N. ambassador, in the Republican primary, he shared on his social media network a post with false claims that Haley’s parents were not citizens when she was born, therefore making her ineligible to be president.

Haley is the South Carolina-born daughter of Indian immigrants, making her automatically a native-born citizen and meeting the constitutional requirement to run for president.

And Trump has continued to promote baseless claims during this campaign. Trump said during his presidential debate with Harris that immigrants who had settled in Springfield, Ohio, were eating residents’ pets — a claim he suggested in an interview Saturday was still true even though he could provide no confirmation.

Trump’s visit created a spectacle in Pennsylvania

“It is a fundamental value of my organization that we proudly open our doors to everyone who visits the Feasterville community,” the McDonald’s location’s owner, Derek Giacomantonio, said in a statement. “That’s why I accepted former President Trump’s request to observe the transformative working experience that 1 in 8 Americans have had: a job at McDonald’s.”

Police closed the busy streets around the McDonald’s during Trump’s visit. Authorities cordoned off the restaurant as a crowd a couple blocks long gathered, sometimes 10- to 15-deep, across the street straining to catch a glimpse of Trump. Horns honked and music blared as Trump supporters waved flags, held signs and took pictures.

John Waters, of nearby Fairless Hills, had never been to a Trump rally and had hoped to see the former president so close to his house after missing other nearby rallies.

“When I drove up, all the cars, unbelievable, I was like, ‘He’s here’s, he’s coming, he’s definitely coming with this all traffic,’” Waters said.

Trump is especially partial to McDonald’s Big Macs and Filet-o-Fish sandwiches. He’s talked often about how he trusts big chains more than smaller restaurants since they have big reputations to maintain, and the former president’s staff often pick up McDonald’s and serve it on his plane.

Jim Worthington, a Trump supporter and fundraiser who owns a nearby athletic complex and chaired Pennsylvania’s delegation to the Republican National Convention, said he arranged Trump’s visit to the locally owned McDonald’s franchise.

The campaign contacted him looking for a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania and Worthington started looking for one. He got in touch with Giacomantonio through a friend and talked the franchise owner through some initial nervousness.

Giacomantonio needed to know that McDonald’s corporate offices would be OK with it, first. Second, he was concerned that being seen as a Trump supporter would hurt his business or a spark boycott, Worthington said.

“He certainly had concerns, but I eased his mind, and talked to him about the benefits,” Worthington said.

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Associated Press writer Will Weissert in Washington contributed to this report.

(Harrisburg, PA) The Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry (L&I) today released its preliminary employment situation report for September 2024.

According to this report, Pennsylvania’s unemployment rate was unchanged over the month at 3.4% in September. This was the 12^th consecutive month with an identical rate – the longest streak on record (back to 1976). The rate remained well under the U.S. unemployment rate which fell by one-tenth of a percentage point from its August level to 4.1%.

The Commonwealth’s unemployment rate was one-tenth of a percentage point above its September 2023 level of 3.3%, while the national rate was up three-tenths of a percentage point over the year.

Pennsylvania’s civilian labor force – the estimated number of residents working or looking for work – was down 24,000 over the month to 6,556,000 in September. Resident employment (-23,000) accounted for most of the labor force decline.

Pennsylvania’s total nonfarm jobs were up 6,800 over the month to a record high of 6,205,000, setting the 14^th consecutive record high for Pennsylvania’s jobs count. Jobs increased from August in five of the 11 industry supersectors. The largest supersector movement was a gain of 6,100 in leisure & hospitality which reached a record high. Education & health services reached a record high for the 16^th consecutive month.

Over the year, total nonfarm jobs were up 102,700 with gains in six of the 11 supersectors. Education & health services (+59,800) had the largest volume over-the-year gain.

Source for Photo: FILE—In this file photo from May 5, 2021, a vehicle speeds by a hiring sign offering a $500 bonus outside a McDonalds restaurant, in Cranberry Township, Butler County, Pa. Pennsylvania will resume work search requirements in July for hundreds of thousands of people receiving unemployment compensation, a top Wolf administration official said Monday, May 24, 2021. (AP Photo/Keith Srakocic, File)