State News-Tuesday, Oct. 10th

BROWNSVILLE, Pa. (AP) - Authorities are trying to find out what caused a small plane to crash in a densely wooded area of Fayette County yesterday, killing two people. State police and the Federal Aviation Administration say the plane went down at 3:24 p-m about three miles from Brownsville. Authorities say it is unclear where the plane was headed or what caused it to crash. The identity of the victims was not immediately released. F-A-A spokeswoman Arlene Murray says the plane, a Mooney M-20-F made in 1967, was registered to two Pittsburgh men. Police had to use bulldozers and all-terrain vehicle to reach the crash site. The F-A-A and the National Traffic Safety Board are investigating the crash.

GREENSBURG, Pa. (AP) - A hearing is scheduled today in Westmoreland County Court in Greensburg on the case of a boy who was found shot dead near a gun belonging to state Senator Bob Regola. Judge Rita Hathaway will consider the temporary stay of an order to unseal the search warrant of the senator's home in Hempfield Township. She ruled last week that the warrant should be made public but then temporarily halted that order at a prosecutor's request.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) - Pennsylvania finds out the name of the teacher designated this year's best in the commonwealth today. The 2007 Pennsylvania Teacher of the Year will be selected from 12 finalists during a ceremony in Harrisburg. The winner will represent Pennsylvania in the National Teacher of the Year program. The national winner will be announced in April.

ERIE, Pa. (AP) - A northwestern Pennsylvania woman accused of using her baby to batter her boyfriend says she didn't realize what she was doing until it was too late. Twenty-seven-year-old Chyrotia Graham, of Erie, told police she had been drinking when an argument with her husband, the child's father, turned violent early Sunday morning. According to an affidavit, Graham told police she "snapped" and began grabbing things and throwing them at Deangelo Troop, and did not realize she had picked up her 4-week-old son, Jarron Troop. Police said she held the child by the legs and swung him at his father. Graham faces charges of aggravated assault, reckless endangerment and simple assault. She is being held in the Erie County Jail on 75-thousand dollars bond.

SOMERSET, Pa. (AP) - A new committee will decide how to preserve and display the thousand of mementos left by visitors to the temporary Flight 93 memorial site. The panel to be established by the Flight 93 Advisory Commission will also help plan future exhibits and displays at the Flight 93 Memorial. Congress passed the Flight 93 Memorial Act, which established a national park to honor the victims. The permanent memorial is being planned for a site in Shanksville at an estimated cost of 58 million dollars. The temporary memorial includes a 10-foot-tall chain-link fence stuffed with American flags, firefighters' helmets, yellow ribbons and drawings from children. It is erected near the crash site, which is not open to the public.

PITTSBURGH (AP) - University of Pittsburgh researchers say that new data confirms the existence of the nearest planet outside our solar system. They say observations from several ground-based observatories and data from the Hubble Space Telescope indicates the planet has a mass about 1-point-5 times that of Jupiter. The planet orbits the star Epsilon Eridani, which is 10-point-5 light-years away and may not be directly observable until late 2007. It was first detected in 1988 by Canadian researchers, and in 2000 further evidence of its existence was presented by a researchers at the University of Texas.