Police charged two men with breaking into One Stop Shopper earlier this year and stealing cash and cigarettes in Darlington. 19 year old Nicholas Myers of Darlington Township and 18 year old Jarrod Westover of Lisbon, Ohio, were charged by Darlington Township police with burglary, conspiracy to commit burglary, criminal trespass, theft, receiving stolen property and criminal mischief. The incident took place back in January.
State Rep. Daryl Metcalfe is calling for Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto to be impeached…after Peduto signed the controversial gun legislation into law Tuesday. Metcalfe tweeted Tuesday afternoon, saying, “I just asked our attorney to have a resolution drafted to IMPEACH the Mayor of Pittsburgh for his illegal gun control ordinances!” Peduto fired back, pointing out multiple failed bills Metcalfe has supported in the past and asking “do you really want to go 0-5?”
A lawsuit backed by the National Rifle Association has been filed in opposition to Pittsburgh’s new gun-control laws. Four Pittsburgh residents are suing the city, Mayor Bill Peduto and the City Council. The suit says the legislation Peduto signed into law Tuesday infringes on the people’s right of self-defense and will do nothing to prevent mass shootings like the one that killed 11 at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue last fall. City officials say they’ll fight the suits.
Victims of the Pittsburgh synagogue attack that killed 11 people last year will be remembered during a memorial service in the Pennsylvania Capitol. The unusual joint session Wednesday will bring together the House and the Senate for prayers and speeches about the Oct. 27 shooting at the Tree of Life. Members of all three congregations that were holding services that day are expected to attend. A truck driver named Robert Bowers faces charges for the attack.
WEATHER FORECAST FOR WEDNESDAY, APRIL 10TH, 2019
TODAY – A MIX OF CLOUDS AND SUN. HIGH – 56.
TONIGHT – CLOUDY SKIES. LOW NEAR 40.
THURSDAY – MORE CLOUDS THAN SUN. HIGH – 68.
Deer hunting opening day moving to Saturday from Monday
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Deer hunting season in Pennsylvania will be starting on a Saturday rather than a Monday beginning next season.
The Pennsylvania Game Commission voted 5-3 Tuesday to move opening day of deer rifle season to the first Saturday after thanksgiving.
Rifle season for hunting deer in Pennsylvania has kicked off the Monday after Thanksgiving since 1963. The change expands the firearms season to 13-days, including three Saturdays rather than two.
Supporters hope a Saturday opening will bring back people struggling to find time to hunt and help high school and college hunters who don’t get opening day off from school. Opponents said the change would interfere with hunting camp traditions and complicate travel during the Thanksgiving weekend.
To accommodate the expanded deer season, the late November turkey hunting season has been reduced by two days.
The commission also approved:
— expanding the mid-October muzzleloader and special firearms deer seasons to include bears;
— an expanded two-week archery bear season;
— expanding the bear season from four to seven days in most wildlife management units;
—expanding the late archery and flintlock deer seasons by more than a week, to end on the Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday; and
— establishing a September archery season and a January antlerless season for elk hunters.
The board gave preliminary approval to the proposals in January.
Suit filed over gun controls inspired by synagogue shooting
By RAMESH SANTANAM and MICHAEL RUBINKAM Associated Press
PITTSBURGH (AP) — Gun rights groups sued Tuesday to block Pittsburgh from enforcing firearms legislation passed after a mass shooting at a synagogue, accusing city officials of blatantly defying the state’s prohibition on municipal gun regulation.
Democratic Mayor Bill Peduto signed the bills into law in a ceremony at the City-County Building, declaring the community had come together “to say enough is enough.” City officials said they had to act because the Republican-controlled Pennsylvania Legislature — which is planning to hold a memorial service for the victims this week — will not.
“We are going to take some action, we are going to do something positive and, yes, it is going to be everlasting,” said Peduto, surrounded by gun-control advocates and members of three congregations that were targeted in the shooting rampage at Tree of Life Synagogue. “Change only happens when you challenge the status quo.”
Minutes later, a coalition of gun rights groups sued to get the newly minted laws overturned, calling them “patently unenforceable, unconstitutional, illegal.” Shortly after that, a second lawsuit, this one backed by the National Rifle Association, declared that “Pittsburgh has violated the rights of its citizens.”
“Worse yet, Pittsburgh has committed this violation without any realistic prospect of diminishing the … incidence of horrific mass shootings,” said the suit, filed by four city residents. “All it will do is leave law-abiding citizens more vulnerable to attack from better-armed and more ruthless assailants.”
The new legislation restricts military-style assault weapons like the AR-15 rifle authorities say was used in the Oct. 27 massacre that killed 11 and wounded seven. It also bans most uses of armor-piercing ammunition and high-capacity magazines and allows the temporary seizure of guns from people who are determined to be a danger to themselves or others. The first two laws are due to take effect in 60 days, the imminent-danger law in 180 days.
Whether the city will be able to enforce them is an open question. State law has long prohibited municipalities from regulating the ownership or possession of guns or ammunition, and courts have thrown out other local firearms measures, including a 1990s-era assault weapons ban in Pittsburgh.
But city leaders said they were eager to take on the fight, given the Legislature’s traditional reluctance to pass gun legislation.
“This fantasy that somehow the state is going to step up and help us is simply not going to happen,” said Council President Bruce Kraus.
The bill signing took place as state lawmakers prepared to come together for a memorial service for the Tree of Life victims. The unusual joint session at the Capitol in Harrisburg on Wednesday will bring together the House and Senate for prayers and speeches about the attack. Peduto’s spokesman said the timing was coincidental.
The Pittsburgh bills — proposed not long after the deadliest attack on Jews in U.S. history — were weakened ahead of City Council passage in an effort to make them more likely to survive a court challenge. While one of the bills originally included an outright ban on assault weapons, the revised measure bars the “use” of assault weapons in public places.
A full ban on possession would take effect only if state lawmakers or the state Supreme Court give municipalities the right to regulate guns, which is seen as unlikely in a state where a majority of legislators are fiercely protective of gun rights.
The city will be represented in court by lawyers with Everytown for Gun Safety, a group backed by billionaire Michael Bloomberg.
In another legal filing Tuesday, the Allegheny County Sportsmen’s League asked a judge to hold the city, Peduto and six council members who voted for the gun-control legislation in contempt of court, contending they violated a 1995 legal settlement in which city officials dropped the earlier effort to ban assault weapons and agreed to “abide by and adhere to Pennsylvania law.”
“It is unfortunate that … taxpayers will be burdened by the city’s elected officials believing it is acceptable — and even gloating — that they are violating the Pennsylvania Constitution and Crimes Code,” Joshua Prince, a lawyer seeking to overturn the laws, wrote in a statement.
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Rubinkam reported from northeastern Pennsylvania.
Mike Lange, the radio voice of the Pittsburgh Penguins, will miss the start of the Stanley Cup playoffs after suffering an adverse reaction to medication for pneumonia.
The Hall of Fame broadcaster was briefly hospitalized last week and is now resting at home. He will phone in during the first intermission of Game 1 Wednesday to speak on the air with the Penguins’ radio intermission host, Brian Metzer.
“They’ve encouraged me to rest, but I’m looking forward to getting back in the booth with the ‘ol-29er’ Phil Bourque as soon as possible,” Lange said.
Josh Getzoff will handle radio play-by-play duties at the start of the playoffs with Bourque providing analysis. All games air on WXDX-FM (105.9) and the Penguins Radio Network.
Getzoff called radio play-by-play for most of the Penguins’ regular season road games, while Lange did most home games.
Paul Steigerwald will host the pre- and post-game radio shows.
Lange, who recently turned 71, is now in his 44th season as a Penguins broadcaster.
Complaints surfacing about former Vice President Joe Biden and his actions around women haven’t hurt his ratings among voters, who continue keep him at the top of the list of 2020 presidential race candidates even though he has not yet officially joined the race. According to a new Morning Consult poll, Biden topped the list of candidates, netting 32 percent of voters who say they intend to participate in a Democratic Party primary or caucus next year, reports Politico. His nearest contender was Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., at 23 percent. No other candidates came close to Biden and Sanders:
Biden’s score was down just one percentage point from a survey released last week
Was President Donald Trump’s victory lap after the conclusion of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation premature? With Mueller’s report expected to be released in redacted form in the coming days, Trump and his allies have unleashed a series of broadsides against Mueller’s team and the Democrats pushing for full release of the final report. Trump’s inner circle knows there could be further releases of embarrassing or politically damaging information. Attorney General William Barr is defending his decision to send a letter to Congress detailing Mueller’s principal conclusions. He says the public would not have tolerated waiting weeks for information. Mueller concluded his Russia probe last month and submitted a nearly 400-page confidential report to Barr. Barr sent his four-page letter to Congress two days later. Democrats are questioning how Barr was so quickly able to boil down Mueller’s report into four pages.