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Monday, January 24, 2022 at 6:08 AM
(Darlington Township, Pa.) Pa State Police in Beaver are reporting that they were dispatched to a home in Darlington Twp. around 11:15 AM Friday, January 22, 2022 after Alan Irwin and his son found Alan’s brother, 63-year-old Gary Irwin dead in his residence.
Troopers said via release that Gary Irwin died from apparent natural causes as they continue to investigate.

Keystone State News Connection

Emily Scott

Interest in trade schools is growing across the country, and a new one in Pennsylvania aims to fill the nationwide workforce shortage of auto and diesel technicians.

New Village Institute Blairsville’s (NVI) inaugural cohort kicked off earlier this month in Indiana County on the former campus of transportation program WyoTech, which closed its Blairsville site in 2018.

Amy Mulligan, campus vice president, formerly worked at WyoTech Blairsville and recalls watching the student population grow from 30 to 1,500 in a few years. She expects the same for NVI, as an asset for the local economy.

“Bringing in students from other areas does also bring in revenue,” Mulligan pointed out. “And we’ve seen it in the past, and I feel like it’s going to be almost similar to where you’re going to see a lot of those younger folks that want to be in this area because there is still opportunity.”

Enrolled students will receive a fast-tracked six-month education to support the immediate need for technicians. There will be 228,000 diesel technician openings by 2025, according to data from the American Diesel Training Centers.

Enrollment in vocational schools has been on the rise over the last two decades, with enrollment numbers up to 16 million in 2014, compared with 9.6 million in 1996, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Chris Barton, campus director for NVI, thinks the affordability of the schooling plus competitive wages are bringing people, both young and career-changers, into the trades.

“People are realizing that you can have a really good career for yourself and really start at an early age making good money that provides for yourself, your family and the rest of your life,” Barton observed. “There are just really unlimited jobs, so you never have to worry about being out of work.”

Diesel technicians made an average of $24 an hour in 2020, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Barton added new cohorts will start each quarter, the next class beginning in April.

Support for this reporting was provided by Lumina Foundation.

DANVILLE, Pa. (AP) — Federal authorities say the last of the escaped monkeys from a Pennsylvania highway crash of a truck towing a trailer load of the animals has been accounted for. State police said several of the 100 cynomolgus macaque monkeys escaped after Friday’s collision between the pickup truck and a dump truck, prompting a search for the missing monkeys. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Saturday evening that all 100 monkeys have now been accounted for but three had to be euthanized. It didn’t elaborate. A CDC email said the monkeys were en route to a quarantine facility after arriving in the U.S. from Mauritius, an Indian Ocean island nation.

Pennsylvania payrolls grew in December amid labor shortage
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania’s payrolls are continuing to grow, but a persistent worker shortage is still keeping labor markets tight. The state Department of Labor and Industry said Friday that Pennsylvania’s unemployment rate dropped three-tenths of a percentage point to 5.4% in December. The national rate was 3.9% in December. In a survey of households, the labor force shrank for the seventh straight month, reflecting a worker shortage that some economists attribute partly to an increase in people who have recently gone to work for themselves. In a separate survey of employers, payrolls in Pennsylvania grew in December by more than 14,000, driven primarily by hiring in trucking and warehousing.

Pennsylvania set state record for gambling revenue in 2021
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania has set another annual record for gambling revenue in the era of online gambling and sports betting. State regulators say casinos and other operators won more than $4.7 billion from gamblers in calendar year 2021 in one of the nation’s largest commercial casino states. The rebound continues after pandemic-related shutdowns sapped casino revenue in 2020. The more than $4.7 billion came from 16 operating casinos, including three new mini-casinos in 2021, as well as fantasy sports operators and truck stops. That beat the $3.9 billion recorded in fiscal year 2021, as well as the previous calendar year high of $3.4 billion, two years ago.

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By LYNN ELBER AP Television Writer
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Louie Anderson, whose four-decade career as a comedian and actor included his unlikely and Emmy-winning performance as mom to twin adult sons in the TV series “Baskets,” has died at age 68. Anderson’s publicist Glenn Schwartz says the comedian died Friday in Las Vegas. The publicist had said earlier this week that Anderson was hospitalized for a type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. He’d been a familiar face elsewhere on TV, including as host of a revival of the game show “Family Feud” from 1999 to 2002, and on comedy specials and in frequent late-night talk show appearances.

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By MIKE STOBBE AP Medical Writer
NEW YORK (AP) — Three new U.S. studies offer more evidence that the COVID-19 vaccines are standing up to the omicron variant, at least among people who have gotten booster shots. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released the studies Friday. The results echo previous research — including studies in Germany, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. They found available vaccines are less effective against omicron than they were against earlier versions of the coronavirus. One of the papers found that two doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines offered no significant protection against omicron. Several studies have concluded a booster can significantly improve protection.

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Story by Sandy Giordano, Beaver County Radio News Correspondent

(Center Twp., Beaver County, Pa.) A representative of the firm  Crabtree, Rohrbach and Associates  presented the Central Valley School Board with information and updates  and  said the date for the Act 34 Public Hearing  would be in  February or March 2022. Bids could be released in early April  and adoption . 20 days prior to the hearing. The adoption could be awarded in May.

(AP Photo)
Friday, January 21, 2022 at 7:57 AM
By AAMER MADHANI and HANNAH FINGERHUT Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden ends his first year in the White House with a clear majority of Americans for the first time disapproving of his handling of the presidency in the face of an unrelenting pandemic and roaring inflation. That’s according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. More Americans disapprove than approve of how Biden is handling his job as president by a margin of 56% to 43%. As of now, just 28% of Americans say they want Biden to run for reelection in 2024, including only 48% of Democrats.