Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., is seen at the Senate Subway on Capitol Hill Wednesday, May 15, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman was treated at a hospital for a bruised shoulder after a car accident Sunday morning, according to a statement from his Senate office. He was released from the hospital Sunday afternoon.

Fetterman, a Democrat, and his wife Gisele were “involved in a car accident with another driver,” the statement said, and were both evaluated at a local hospital and discharged within hours. The senator returned to his home in Braddock, Pennsylvania, and is expected to be back in the Senate for votes this week.

A spokeswoman for Fetterman, Carrie Adams, said that the senator was driving the car and the accident was on Interstate 70 in Maryland. The condition of the other driver is unclear.

Fetterman, 54, suffered a stroke in May 2022 as he was campaigning for his seat. As a result, he still has some trouble speaking fluidly and quickly processing spoken conversation, and he often uses devices in congressional hearings and routine conversations to transcribe spoken words in real time.

FILE – President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden leaves after a court appearance, July 26, 2023, in Wilmington, Del. House Republicans plan to hold their first hearing next week in their impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden over his family’s business dealings. The Sept. 28 hearing is expected to focus on “constitutional and legal questions” that surround allegations of Biden’s involvement in his son Hunter’s overseas businesses. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez, File)

WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — Hunter Biden has been convicted of all three felony charges related to the purchase of a revolver in 2018 when, prosecutors argued, he lied on a mandatory gun-purchase form by saying he was not illegally using or addicted to drugs. Jurors found Hunter Biden guilty of lying to a federally licensed gun dealer, making a false claim on the application by saying he was not a drug user and illegally having the gun for 11 days. First lady Jill Biden arrived to the courthouse minutes after the jury delivered its verdict and was not in the courtroom when it was read. The judge did not set a sentencing date.

FILE – People shop at an Apple Store in Beijing, Tuesday, Sept. 28, 2021. Apple disclosed serious security vulnerabilities Wednesday, Aug. 17, 2022 for iPhones, iPads and Macs. The software flaws could potentially allow attackers to take complete control of these devices, Apple said. (AP Photo/Andy Wong, File)

CUPERTINO, Calif. (AP) — Apple’s annual World Wide Developers Conference on Monday is expected to herald the company’s move into generative artificial intelligence, marking its late arrival to a technological frontier that’s expected to be as revolutionary as the invention of the iPhone.

The widely anticipated display of AI to be embedded in the iPhone and other Apple products will be the marquee moment at an event that traditionally previews the next version of software that powers the company’s hardware lineup.

And Apple’s next generation of software is expected to be packed with an array of AI features likely to make its often-bumbling virtual assistant Siri smarter, and make photos, music, texting — and possibly even creating emojis on the fly — a more productive and entertaining experience.

True to its secretive nature, Apple hasn’t provided any advance details about Monday’s event being held at the company’s Cupertino, California, headquarters.

But CEO Tim Cook recently dropped strong hints that Apple is poised to reveal its grand plans to enter the AI race that has been fueling an industry boom during the past 18 months.

AI mania is the main reason that Nvidia, the dominant maker of the chips underlying the technology, has seen its market value rocket from about $300 billion at the end of 2022 to about $3 trillion. The meteoric ride allowed Nvidia to briefly surpass Apple last week as the second most valuable company in the U.S. Microsoft earlier this year also eclipsed the iPhone maker on the strength of its so-far successful push into AI.

But analysts have been have been getting increasingly worried that Apple may be falling too far behind in the rapidly changing AI space, a concern that has been compounded by an uncharacteristically extended slump in the company’s sales. Both Google and Samsung already have released smartphone models touting AI features as their main attractions.

That’s why analysts such as Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities view Monday’s conference as a potential springboard that catapults Apple into another robust phase of growth. Ives believes infusing more AI into the iPhone, iPad and Mac computer will translate into an additional $450 billon to $600 billion in market value for Apple.

Monday’s conference “represents the most important event for Apple in over a decade as the pressure to bring a generative AI stack of technology for developers and consumers is front and center,” Ives wrote in a research note.

Apple definitely could use the boost that AI may be able to provide, particularly for its 13-year-old assistant Siri, which Forrester Research Dipanjan Chatterjee now calls an “oddly unhelpful helper.”

Meanwhile, OpenAI’s ChatGPT is getting increasingly conversational — so much so that it recently sparked accusations of intentionally copying a piece of AI software voiced by Scarlett Johansson — and Google last month previewed an AI “agent” dubbed Astra that can seemingly see and remember things.

Besides using AI to spruce up Siri, Apple may also team up with OpenAI to bring some elements of ChatGPT to the iPhone, according to a wide range of unconfirmed reports leading up to Monday’s conference.

This will be the second straight year that Apple has created a stir at its developers conference by using it to usher in its entrance into a trendy form of technology that other companies already had been making inroads.

Last year, Apple provided an early look at its mixed-reality headset, the Vision Pro, which wasn’t released until early this year carrying a $3,500 price tag that has been a major impediment to gaining much traction. Nevertheless, Apple’s push into mixed reality, tweaked with a twist that it bills as “spatial computing,” has raised hopes that what is currently a niche technology will turn into a huge market.

Part of the optimism stems from Apple’s history of releasing technology later than others and then using sleek designs and services combined with slick marketing campaigns to overcome its tardy start to unleash new trends.

“Apple’s early reticence toward AI was entirely on brand,” Forrester’s Chatterjee wrote in a preview of the developers conference. “The company has always been famously obsessed with what its offerings did for its customers rather than how it did it.”

Bringing more AI into the iPhone, in particular, will likely raise privacy issues — a topic where Apple has gone to great lengths to assure its loyal customer base that it can be trusted not to peer too deeply into their personal lives.

One way Apple could reassure consumers that the iPhone won’t be used to spy on them is to leverage its own chip technology so most AI-powered features are handled on the device itself instead of remote data centers, often called “the cloud.” Going that route also would help protect Apple’s profit margins because AI technology through the cloud is far more expensive than when it is run solely on a device.

FILE – President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden leaves after a court appearance, July 26, 2023, in Wilmington, Del. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez, File)

WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — A prosecutor told jurors Monday that “no one is above the law” as he urged them to convict President Joe Biden’s son Hunter on charges that he lied about his drug use when he bought a gun in 2018.

In his closing argument, prosecutor Leo Wise told jurors to focus on the “overwhelming” evidence against Hunter Biden and pay no mind to members of the president’s family sitting in the courtroom, including first lady Jill Biden.

“All of this is not evidence,” Wise said, extending his hand and directing the jury to look at the gallery. “People sitting in the gallery are not evidence.”

The prosecutor pointed to deeply personal testimony, text messages, photos and Hunter Biden’s own words in his 2021 memoir to argue that the president’s son clearly knew he was in the throes of a crack addiction when he marked on mandatory gun-purchase form that he was not illegally using or addicted to drugs.

“The evidence was personal. It was ugly, and it was overwhelming,” Wise said. “It was also absolutely necessary.”

Defense attorney Abbe Lowell told jurors the prosecution did not meet its burden of proving its case beyond a reasonable doubt. The defense has argued there’s no evidence Hunter Biden was actually using drugs in the 11 days that he possessed the gun. What the president’s son later wrote in his memoir is irrelevant, Lowell argued.

“There was no actual witness to the drug use in this period of time,” Lowell told jurors.

The defense suggested Hunter Biden was lying about where he was in text messages to his brother Beau’s widow. The prosecution suggests those texts show drug use and drug deals in the days following the gun purchase.

“At any given time, he would lie to her about where he was,” Lowell said.

Closing arguments came shortly after the defense rested its case without calling Hunter Biden to the witness stand. He smiled as he chatted with members of his defense team and flashed a thumbs-up to one of his supporters in the gallery after the final witness — an FBI agent called by prosecutors in their rebuttal case.

The first lady, the president’s brother James and other family members sat in the first row of the Wilmington, Delaware, courtroom. At one point, Hunter Biden leaned over a railing to whisper in his mother’s ear. She has sat through most of the trial, missing only one day last week to attend D-Day anniversary events with the president in France.

Hunter Biden has pleaded not guilty to three felony charges stemming from the October 2018 purchase of a gun he had for about 11 days. He has accused the Justice Department of bending to political pressure from former President Donald Trump and other Republicans to bring the gun case and separate tax charges after a deal with prosecutors fell apart last year.

Hunter Biden’s lawyers last week called three witnesses — including his daughter Naomi — as they tried to show that he did not consider himself an “addict” when he filled out the form.

The case has put a spotlight on a turbulent time in Hunter Biden’s life after the death of his brother, Beau, in 2015.

Jurors have heard emotional testimony from Hunter Biden’s former romantic partners and read personal text messages. They’ve seen photos of him holding a crack pipe and partly clothed, and video from his phone of crack cocaine weighed on a scale.

His ex-wife and two former girlfriends testified for prosecutors about his habitual crack use and their failed efforts to help him get clean. One woman, who met Hunter Biden in 2017 at a strip club where she worked, described him smoking crack every 20 minutes or so while she stayed with him at a hotel.

Jurors have heard him describe at length his descent into addiction through audio excerpts played in court of his 2021 memoir, “Beautiful Things.” The book, written after he got sober, covers the period he had the gun but doesn’t mention it specifically.

A key witness for prosecutors was Beau’s widow, Hallie, who had a brief, troubled relationship with Hunter after his brother died of brain cancer. She found the unloaded gun in Hunter’s truck on Oct. 23, 2018, panicked and tossed it into a garbage can at a grocery store in Wilmington, where a man inadvertently fished it out of the trash.

From the time Hunter returned to Delaware from a 2018 trip to California until she threw his gun away, she did not see him using drugs, Hallie told jurors. That time period included the day he bought the weapon. But jurors also saw text messages Hunter sent to Hallie in October 2018 saying he was waiting for a dealer and smoking crack. The first message was sent the day after he bought the gun. The second was sent the following day.

The defense has suggested Hunter Biden had been trying to turn his life around at the time of the gun purchase, having completed a detoxification and rehabilitation program at the end of August 2018.

“It was only after the gun was thrown away and the ensuing stress … that the government was able to then find the same type of evidence of his use (e.g., photos, use of drug lingo) that he relapsed with drugs,” defense lawyer Abbe Lowell wrote in court papers filed Friday.

Joe Biden said last week that he would accept the jury’s verdict and has ruled out a presidential pardon for his son. After flying back from France, the president was at his home in Wilmington for the day and was expected in Washington in the evening for a Juneteenth concert. He was scheduled to travel to Italy later this week for the Group of Seven leaders conference.

Last summer, it looked as if Hunter Biden would avoid prosecution in the gun case altogether, but a deal with prosecutors imploded after the judge, who was nominated to the bench by Trump, raised concerns about it. Hunter Biden was subsequently indicted on three felony gun charges. He also faces a trial scheduled for September on felony charges alleging he failed to pay at least $1.4 million in taxes over four years.

If convicted in the gun case, he faces up to 25 years in prison, though first-time offenders do not get anywhere near the maximum, and it’s unclear whether the judge would give him time behind bars.

___

Richer reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Mike Catalini in Wilmington and Colleen Long in Washington contributed to this report.

Story by Sandy Giordano – Beaver County Radio. Published June 10, 2024 9:47 A.M.

(Center Township, Pa) 68 year old Reverend Myron Knox of 133 Radcliff Drive in Center Township was arrested early last Friday morning when police assisted by the DA’s Anti-Drug Task Force and the county’s ESU used flash bangs to enter the home. Knox was charged with several felony and misdemeanor narcotic and firearm charges. Among the drugs found was crack cocaine and marijuana. Police Chief Aldo Legge reported on Monday morning that trends in narcotic sales have changed, which include traffickers and dealers camouflaging within smaller, quiet communities so as to draw attention to their nefarious and dangerous activities. The chief said the police department is dedicated to providing and maintaining a safe environment for the community and its residents.

Story by Curtis Walsh – Beaver County Radio. Published June 10, 2024 9:21 A.M.

(Bridgewater, Pa) State Police report that they responded to a report of a vehicle being damaged on June 2nd. A man and a woman reportedly entered into a verbal argument at Kelly’s Riverside Saloon in Bridgewater after the man was seen at the bar with another woman. The woman proceeded to use a baseball bat to smash the rear lights of the mans vehicle. A charge of criminal mischief under $1000 was filed.

Story by Curtis Walsh – Beaver County Radio. Published June 10, 2024 9:14 A.M.

(Freedom, Pa) Emergency crews responded to a home in Freedom Saturday afternoon. A fire broke out on a porch of a residence on 4th Avenue. No injuries were reported and the fire was extinguished before making it to the rest of the house.

Story by Curtis Walsh – Beaver County Radio. Published June 8, 2024 11:40 P.M.

(New Brighton, Pa) A man and his dog escaped a crash with injuries Saturday evening in New Brighton. The crash took place near a small mobile home court on Blockhouse Run Road. Witnesses say the driver struck a bridge and a tree before being ejected from the vehicle as it went into the creek. Numerous emergency crews responded to the scene. We do not have word on the condition of the driver or dog. No further details are available at this time.

Pittsburgh, PA – PennDOT District 11 is announcing lane restrictions on Route 68 (Third Street) in Beaver Borough, Beaver County will start Monday, June 10 weather permitting.