Category: News

Penguins end Bruins’ 19-game point streak in 4-2 win

PITTSBURGH (AP) — Jared McCann scored twice, Matt Murray finished with 39 saves and the Pittsburgh Penguins handed the Boston Bruins their first regulation loss since January with a 4-2 victory on Sunday night.

Nick Bjugstad and Jake Guentzel also scored for the Penguins, who survived another late push by the Bruins.

David Krejci picked up his 19th of the season and John Moore got Boston within one when he scored with just over a minute to go. But the Bruins couldn’t complete the comeback, ending their 19-game point streak.

It was the first regulation loss for Krejci and company since Jan. 19 against the New York Rangers.

Jaroslav Halak made 33 stops, but Boston remained winless in Pittsburgh since December 2015.

The Bruins used the franchise’s longest point streak since the 1940-41 season to rise above the muddled portion of the Eastern Conference playoff race. Their six-week stretch included flashes of dominance and a flair for the dramatic. Boston arrived in Pittsburgh coming off a 6-0 homestand, one that culminated with last-minute victories over Florida and Ottawa.

Boston’s run came to an end against a team that seems to be gaining some momentum late in a bumpy and wildly uneven season, at least by Pittsburgh standards. Just 24 hours removed from a draining split with Columbus during a home-and-home series, the Penguins rode the legs of two of their newest acquisitions, a dash of brilliance from Sidney Crosby and Guentzel and another steady performance by Murray to their fifth win in their last seven games.

Bjugstad and McCann have been revelations since their arrival in a trade with Florida on Feb. 1, their presence giving Pittsburgh a jolt of both size and — in the 22-year-old McCann — youth.

Bjugstad needed just 93 seconds to give the Penguins the lead, fighting for position at the far post and redirecting a centering pass from Zach Aston-Reese by Halak for his fifth goal in 18 games with Pittsburgh, matching the total he put up in 32 games with the Panthers earlier this year.

McCann made it 2-0 at 13:54 when he took a lead pass from Teddy Blueger and broke in alone on Halak before deking from his forehand to his backhand. Halak could only stretch out his glove in vain as McCann slipped home Pittsburgh’s 10th short-handed goal of the season.

Krejci got Boston on the board early in the second when the puck emerged from a scrum in front of the Pittsburgh net and ended up on his stick in the left circle. He flipped it over a sprawled Murray for his 19th of the season.

Pittsburgh’s potent power play has been a bit of a mess of late — just as likely to give up a goal as score one — and was a lifeless 0 for 4 until Crosby and Guentzel hooked up for Guentzel’s team-leading 34th of the season with 3:28 to go in the second. Crosby raced into the zone down the left side and sent a perfect cross-ice pass to Guentzel, who quickly went backhand to forehand and lifted it by Halak to restore the two-goal cushion.

Murray, who was spectacular at times in Saturday’s loss to Columbus, made sure the lead stood up. Moore’s blast from the point with 1:01 to play gave the Bruins an outside shot at another dramatic victory, but McCann’s long shot from center ice into the empty net with 21 seconds to go closed it out.

NOTES: Boston D Matt Grzelcyk left in the second period after his right arm was pinned awkwardly against the boards when he got hit by Pittsburgh F Patric Hornqvist. … Penguins D Kris Letang missed his seventh straight game with an upper-body injury. … Both teams went 1 for 5 on the power play. … Pittsburgh C Evgeni Malkin did not score and remains two points shy of 1,000 for his career.

UP NEXT

Bruins: Will face the Blue Jackets for the first time this season on Tuesday in Columbus.

Penguins: Host Washington on Tuesday. Pittsburgh is 2-1 against the reigning Stanley Cup champions this season.

AP source: Raiders acquire WR Antonio Brown from Steelers

AP source: Raiders acquire WR Antonio Brown from Steelers
By JOSH DUBOW AP Pro Football Writer
ALAMEDA, Calif. (AP) — The Oakland Raiders agreed on a deal Saturday night to acquire prolific but disgruntled receiver Antonio Brown from the Pittsburgh Steelers and will give him the lucrative new contract he wanted.
A person with direct knowledge of the trade told The Associated Press that the Raiders finalized the deal with the Steelers and will give Brown a new three-year contract worth $50.125 million instead of the $38.925 million he was owed by Pittsburgh. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the deal can’t be completed until the new league year starts Wednesday.
Pro Football Talk first reported the deal and says Pittsburgh will get third and fifth-round draft picks from Oakland.
The trade makes final what became a very messy and very public divorce between Brown and the team that helped turn the sixth-round pick into arguably the greatest wide receiver of his generation.
It also gives the Raiders a high-profile addition for second-year coach Jon Gruden after trading away two of the team’s biggest stars last year in edge rusher Khalil Mack and receiver Amari Cooper.
Oakland got extra first-round picks in those trades but didn’t need to give up any of its four picks in the top 35 in the upcoming draft to acquire Brown, who has topped 100 receptions and 1,200 yards receiving in each of the past six seasons. The Raiders have had only one player reach those marks in a single season in franchise history, with Hall of Famer Tim Brown accomplishing the feat in 1997.
Brown now gives quarterback Derek Carr his biggest offensive weapon since entering the league in 2014 and the Raiders a legitimate star before they move to Las Vegas for the 2020 season.
The Raiders’ top wide receiver last season was Jordy Nelson, who had just 63 catches for 739 yards.
Gruden has always admired Brown from his time as a broadcaster and had nothing but praise for the receiver before the teams played last December.
“He’s the hardest working man, I think, in football,” Gruden said. “Hardest working player I’ve ever seen practice. I’ve seen Jerry Rice, I’ve seen a lot of good ones, but I put Antonio Brown at the top. If there are any young wideouts out there, I’d go watch him practice. You figure out yourself why he’s such a good player.”
Brown was obviously pleased with the development, posting a picture of himself in a Raiders uniform and a video with Carr at a Pro Bowl with the caption “Love at first sight ” on his Twitter account.
Brown is no stranger to drawing headlines for both his prolific on-field production and his off-the-field antics, including livestreaming from the locker room after a playoff win over Kansas City in January 2017 and getting pulled over for doing 100 mph in the northern Pittsburgh suburbs last fall.
The sometimes tumultuous relationship between the only player in NFL history with six straight 100-catch seasons and the franchise that made him the highest-paid player at his position in the spring of 2017 reached a breaking point in late December.
Steelers coach Mike Tomlin benched Brown during the regular-season finale against Cincinnati after the wide receiver went radio silent in the final 48 hours before the game. Brown arrived in a fur coat, hung out for a half and then disappeared from view until well after his teammates had cleaned out their lockers following a 9-6-1 finish that left Pittsburgh on the outside of the playoffs for the first time since 2013.
When Brown did resurface, he began engaging in a series of increasingly antagonistic acts designed to expedite his departure. He went on Instagram with former Steelers linebacker James Harrison during Tomlin’s season wrap-up press conference. He decried quarterback Ben Roethlisberger’s “owner’s mentality” and chastised Tomlin for disciplining him in Week 17, no matter that Tomlin and the rest of the organization had spent years downplaying Brown’s off-the-field eccentricities.
Brown officially requested a trade last month, but not before photo-shopping his familiar No. 84 onto a San Francisco 49ers jersey or using his hyperactive social media feeds to indicate not only his displeasure with the Steelers but also his interest in signing a new deal with whomever should acquire his services.
Even with his benching in the finale, Brown caught 104 passes for 1,297 yards and a franchise-record and NFL-high 15 touchdowns. His last performance in a Pittsburgh uniform might have been one of his best, a 14-reception, 185-yard, two-touchdown masterpiece in a road loss to New Orleans.
A week later, the player who once said he wanted to retire a Steeler didn’t even suit up against the Bengals. Just over two months later, he now finds himself heading to the second act of a career that’s on a Hall of Fame trajectory and the Steelers have a hole at receiver and more than $21 million in dead money on their salary cap.
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AP Sports Writer Will Graves in Pittsburgh contributed to this report
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More AP NFL: https://apnews.com/NFL and https://twitter.com/AP_NFL

As newspapers close, role of government watchdog disappears

As newspapers close, role of government watchdog disappears
By MICHAEL CASEY Associated Press
One of the last investigations Jim Boren oversaw before he retired as executive editor of The Fresno Bee was a four-month examination of substandard housing in the city at the heart of California’s Central Valley.
The multimedia project revealed the living conditions imposed on many of the city’s low-income renters, many of them immigrants: apartments filled with mold, mice and cockroaches, to name some of the more glaring problems. Local housing advocates compared it to the tainted water crisis in Flint, Michigan.
The investigation got immediate results.
“We made people’s lives better. We changed laws,” said Boren, who retired in 2017 and is now director of the Institute for Media and Public Trust at Fresno State University.
Among other things, the city responded by requiring property owners to make repairs when it found violations, rather than just levy fines.
“Those are the kinds of things that journalists do,” Boren said.
It’s the kind of journalism — holding local government officials accountable for problems that affect the lives of real people — that is in danger of being lost in many communities around the country.
Newspapers are closing or being consolidated at an astounding rate, often leaving behind what researchers label as news deserts — towns and even entire counties that have no consistent local media coverage.
According to an Associated Press analysis of data compiled by the University of North Carolina, more than 1,400 towns and cities in the U.S. have lost a newspaper over the past 15 years. Many of those are in rural and lower-income areas, often with an aging population.
The loss of a reliable local news source has many consequences for the community. One of them is the inability to watchdog the actions of government agencies and elected officials.
Newspapers typically have played the lead role in their communities in holding local officials accountable. That includes filing requests to get public records that shine a light on government action — or inaction — or even filing lawsuits to promote transparency.
“Strong newspapers have been good for democracy, and both educators and informers of a citizenry and its governing officials. They have been problem-solvers,” said Penelope Muse Abernathy, a University of North Carolina professor who studies news industry trends and oversaw the “news desert” report released last fall.
“That is what you are missing when you don’t have someone covering you and bringing transparency or sunlight onto government decisions and giving people a say in how those government decisions are made.”
The absence of a local newspaper playing a watchdog role also can translate into real costs to a community and its taxpayers.
Researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Notre Dame found that municipal borrowing costs increase after a newspaper ceases publication. They found the increase had nothing to do with the economy. Rather, the demise of a paper leaves readers in the dark and emboldens elected officials to sign off on higher wages, larger payrolls and ballooning budget deficits, their study found.
“Our evidence suggests that a local government is more likely to engage in wasteful spending when there is no local newspaper to report on that government,” said University of Illinois Chicago’s Dermot Murphy, one of the study’s authors. “Investors find it riskier to lend money to wasteful governments, and thus the costs of financing public infrastructure projects, such as schools, hospitals, and roadways, for a local government are higher.”
Stanford University’s James Hamilton applies a wider lens to the problem of newspaper closures, examining the benefits that come with investigative journalism — and what is lost when it disappears.
In his book “Democracy’s Detective,” he examined several case studies of newspaper investigations, including police shootings of civilians, and found that each dollar spent by the news organization generated hundreds of dollars in benefits to society.
“When investigative scrutiny declines, stories go untold, which means waste, fraud, and abuse will be less likely to be discovered,” said Hamilton, director of the Stanford Journalism Program. “News outlets will still have stories about a bad doctor, identified through court cases or patient complaints. The story about a bad hospital, which would require more resources and analysis to document, will be less likely to be told.”
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Follow Michael Casey at https://twitter.com/mcasey1

No survivors on crashed Ethiopian Airlines flight

No survivors on crashed Ethiopian Airlines flight: state TV

By ELIAS MESERET Associated Press
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) — An Ethiopian Airlines flight crashed shortly after takeoff from Ethiopia’s capital on Sunday morning, killing all 157 people thought to be on board, the airline and state broadcaster said, as anxious families rushed to airports in Addis Ababa and the destination, Nairobi.
It was not immediately clear what caused the crash of the Boeing 737-8 MAX plane, which was new and had been delivered to the airline in November, records show.
The state-owned Ethiopian Airlines, widely considered the best-managed airline in Africa, calls itself Africa’s largest carrier and has ambitions of becoming the gateway to the continent.
It said 149 passengers and eight crew members were thought to be on the plane that crashed six minutes after departing Addis Ababa on its way to Kenya’s capital. The crash occurred around Bishoftu, or Debre Zeit, some 50 kilometers (31 miles) south of Addis Ababa, at 8:44 a.m.
The airline later published a photo that appeared to show its CEO standing in the wreckage. Little of the plane could be seen in the freshly churned earth, under a blue sky.
“Tewolde Gebremariam, who is at the accident scene now, regrets to confirm that there are no survivors,” the post on social media said. “He expresses his profound sympathy and condolences to the families and loved ones of passengers and crew who lost their lives in this tragic accident.”
The plane had showed unstable vertical speed after takeoff, air traffic monitor Flightradar 24 said in a Twitter post. Visibility was clear.
State broadcaster EBC reported all passengers were dead and that they included 33 nationalities. An Ethiopian Airlines spokesman said 32 Kenyans and 17 Ethiopians were among the victims.
The Ethiopian prime minister’s office offered its “deepest condolences” to families.
The Addis Ababa-Nairobi route links East Africa’s two largest economic powers and is popular with tourists making their way to safari and other destinations. Sunburned travelers and tour groups crowd the Addis Ababa airport’s waiting areas, along with businessmen from China and elsewhere.
At the airport in Nairobi, worried families gathered.
“I came to the airport to receive my brother but I have been told there is a problem,” Agnes Muilu said. “I just pray that he is safe or he was not on it.”
“Why are they taking us round and round, it is all over the news that the plane crashed,” said Edwin Ong’undi, who had been waiting for his sister. “All we are asking for is information to know about their fate.”
Kenya’s transport minister, James Macharia, told reporters that authorities had not yet received the passenger manifest. He said an emergency response had been set up for family and friends.
“My prayers go to all the families and associates of those on board,” Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta said.
Records show that the plane was new. The Planespotters civil aviation database shows that the Boeing 737-8 MAX was delivered to Ethiopian Airlines in mid-November.
In a statement, Boeing said it was “deeply saddened” to hear of the crash and that a technical team was ready to provide assistance at the request of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board.
In October, another Boeing 737-8 MAX plunged into the Java Sea just minutes after taking off from Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital, killing all 189 people on board the plane Lion Air flight. The cockpit data recorder showed that the jet’s airspeed indicator had malfunctioned on its last four flights, though Lion Air initially claimed that problems with the aircraft had been fixed.
The last deadly crash of an Ethiopian Airlines passenger plane was in 2010, when the plane crashed minutes after takeoff from Beirut killing all 90 people on board.
Sunday’s crash comes as the country’s reformist prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, has vowed to open up the airline and other sectors to foreign investment in a major transformation of the state-centered economy.
Ethiopian Airlines has been expanding assertively, recently opening a route to Moscow and in January inaugurating a new passenger terminal in Addis Ababa to triple capacity.
Speaking at the inauguration, the prime minister challenged the airline to build a new “Airport City” terminal in Bishoftu — where Sunday’s crash occurred.
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Follow Africa news at https://twitter.com/AP_Africa

Atkinson scores twice to lift Blue Jackets over Penguins

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Cam Atkinson had two goals, Sergei Bobrovsky stopped 28 shots and the Columbus Blue Jackets broke an eight-game losing streak against the Pittsburgh Penguins with a 4-1 victory Saturday night.

Boone Jenner and Oliver Bjorkstrand also scored for the Blue Jackets. They had lost four of their last six — including a 3-0 loss to the Penguins on Thursday night — and desperately needed a win to stay in the mix for an Eastern Conference wild-card playoff spot. Columbus started the day two points below the wild-card line.

Zach Aston-Reese scored for Pittsburgh in the second period and Matt Murray, starting his seventh straight game, had 29 saves.

Bobrovsky, who was a healthy scratch Thursday, bounced back with an exceptional game against the Penguins, who were 4-0-2 in their last six and started the day in third place in the Metropolitan Division.

Jenner went into the box for slashing 20 seconds into the game, then made up for it by taking a feed from Josh Anderson on a rush and beating Murray to give the Blue Jackets the lead 2:31 into the game.

Atkinson scored a short-handed goal early in the second when Pittsburgh’s Phil Kessel went sprawling and the Columbus winger found himself with a loose puck and an open net. He snapped it in over Murray for his team-leading 37th goal of the season.

Pittsburgh pulled it back to a one-goal game at 6:39 of the second when Zach Aston-Reese took Evgeni Malkin’s pass on the doorstep and beat Bobrovsky.

Bjorkstrand tapped in the insurance goal off a short pass from Ryan Dzingel with 3:01 left, and Atkinson got his 38th of the season when he added an empty-netter at the 1:49 mark.

NOTES: Kessel played in 314th straight game for Pittsburgh, the second-longest streak in franchise history. Craig Adams holds the record with 319. … Anderson got his 100th career NHL point. … Atkinson has 12 career short-handed goal, two short of the franchise record. … Columbus last beat Pittsburgh in the regular season on Feb. 17, 2017 (2-1 in overtime). … Malkin has a nine-game points streak against the Blue Jackets. … Columbus is 27-5-2 this season when scoring the first goal.

UP NEXT

Pittsburgh: At Boston on Sunday night.

Columbus: At New York Islanders on Monday night.

PA Lottery machines spent most of the day down due to outage

 

PA Lottery machines spent most of the day down due to outage
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Lottery officials say many machines around Pennsylvania had been offline for most of the day due to a service outage.
Department of Revenue spokesman Jeffrey Johnson said the outage Friday was due to connectivity issues with Verizon’s cellular service at some terminals throughout the state. It only affected machines that use Verizon as their service.
Johnson said that all machines were back up and running as of 4 p.m.
The department got word of the outages around 8 a.m. Around 3 p.m., Johnson said the issue was almost resolved entirely.
The outage came the same day Pennsylvania Lottery officials announced Friday’s Cash 5 jackpot was the highest it’s ever been at $2.4 million.

Matzie Bill Would Implement Paper Ballots Statewide

A BILL INTRODUCED YESTERDAY BY STATE REPRESENTATIVE ROB MATZIE WOULD IMPLEMENT PAPER BALLOTS STATEWIDE. AS BEAVER COUNTY RADIO NEWS CORRESPONDENT SANDY GIORDANO REPORTS, HOUSE BILL 765 WOULD SAFEGUARD ELECTIONS BY ELIMINATING A HACKING RISK. Click on ‘play’ to hear Sandy’s report…

Press Conference To Be Held In Pittsburgh Today On Opioid Epidemic

A PRESS CONFERENCE WILL BE HELD IN PITTSBURGH THIS AFTERNOON TO UPDATE THE NUMBERS IN THE ONGOING OPIOID EPIDEMIC IN BEAVER, ALLEGHENY AND SURROUNDING COUNTIES. BEAVER COUNTY RADIO NEWS CORRESPONDENT SANDY GIORDANO HAS A PREVIEW. Click on ‘play’ to hear Sandy’s report…

 

Aliquippa Senior Girl Wins Scholarship

AN ALIQUIPPA SENIOR GIRL HAS WON A SCHOLARSHIP. BEAVER COUNTY RADIO NEWS CORRESPONDENT SANDY GIORDANO HAS DETAILS. Click on ‘play’ to hear Sandy’s report…

PA House Adopts ‘Charter Day’ Resolution

THE PENNSYLVANIA HOUSE HAS ADOPTED A RESOLUTION NAMING MARCH 10TH, 2019 AS ‘CHARTER DAY’. BEAVER COUNTY RADIO NEWS CORRESPONDENT SANDY GIORDANO HAS MORE. Click on ‘play’ to hear Sandy’s report…