State News-Wednesday, Dec. 27th

PITTSBURGH (AP) - Unusually warm weather is forcing many Pennsylvania ski resorts to scale back operations or postpone opening for the season. Blue Knob Ski Resort in Blair County was scheduled to open
today. Now, it expects to make snow tonight and tomorrow and open some of its slopes on Thursday.
Other ski resorts have scaled back their operations. Seven Springs Mountain Resort has nine of 32 trails open. Bear Creek Mountain Resort in Macungie opened three of its 22 trails on December 14th, but closed four days later because the cold weather didn't stick around and it was too warm to make snow. To appease the weather gods, Bear Creek plans toss some skis into a bonfire on Friday as part of a Sacrifice to the Snow Gods
party.

JOHNSTOWN, Pa. (AP) - A small plane has crashed at an airport near Johnstown. The Federal Aviation Administration says the twin engine, propeller-driven Cessna 414 crashed at John Murtha Johnstown-Cambria County Airport at about 3:55 p-m. The F-A-A says the plane was en route from Morgantown, West
Virginia, to Teterboro, New Jersey.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) - The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission plans to ask for public comment on a five-year-old petition by an activist group that wants the agency to require nuclear power plants to station guards at plant entrances. Members of the nuclear watchdog group Three Mile Island Alert developed the petition as a deterrent to terrorists who think an unmanned entrance gate is a sign that a successful attack is
possible. Since the terrorist attacks, Three Mile Island has beefed up security, adding concrete barriers, fencing, guard towers and more security officers. Last January, Three Mile Island's operator, AmerGen Energy Company, moved its armed guards posted at the entrance a few hundred yards back to a vehicle checkpoint. It said the move would consolidate security at a crucial entryway and prevent the guards from being isolated along Route 441, which runs past the plant on the Susquehanna River. Critics, however, said the move would leave unprotected two bridges to the island.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) - Thousands of Pennsylvania doctors may be eligible to join a lawsuit over a Blue Cross health plan's reimbursement rates. That's because a federal judge has granted the plaintiffs class-action status. The suit charges that Keystone Health Plan Central systematically lowered its reimbursement rates to doctors through various practices. It says the plan by bundled or changed procedure codes, failed to pay legitimate claims on time and undercounted the number of patients assigned to doctors in the managed-care plan. The plaintiffs accuse the health maintenance organization of fraud and racketeering. Lawyers for Keystone haven't returned phone calls seeking comment today.

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) - Republican Senator Arlen Specter Syria's president wants to resume peace negotiations with Israel. After meeting with Bashar Assad today in Damascus, Specter said,
"Assad stated an interest in negotiating with Israel to try to bring a peaceful settlement to the Syrian-Israeli dispute under the U-N doctrine of land-for-peace." Specter visited Syria despite loud objections from the Bush administration. He did not say what conditions Assad gave for restarting talks with the Israelis.
Peace negotiations between the neighbors broke down in 2000. Syria has said it would resume negotiations but only within the framework of a comprehensive peace process. Damascus wants the return of the entire Golan Heights, occupied by Israel in the 1967 war.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) - The Pennsylvania State Police says its troopers investigated more than nine hundred crashes over the four-day Christmas holiday weekend in which eight people were killed.
There were more than three hundred injuries, and about 10 percent of the crashes - including three fatals - were deemed alcohol-related. Troopers handed out nearly 13-hundred speeding tickets and made
more than 250 drunken-driving arrests. The figures pertain only to state-police investigations, not to crashes investigated by other Pennsylvania police agencies. Last year, over a three-day Christmas driving period, two people were killed in about 600 crashes in Pennsylvania.

STROUDSBURG, Pa. (AP) - The annual foreclosure rate in Monroe County appears to be on the rise again for the first time in three years. Figures released by county Prothonotary George Warden show 806
home foreclosure filings in 2006 through December 19th. That's 266 more than (the 540) in 2005 and 188 more than (the 618) in 2004. Warden notes that the 806 filings represent only the foreclosures for which lien holders have initiated action against home buyers. Some parties reach agreements before buyers lose their
homes. A record-setting 941 foreclosures were filed in 2003. Some have cited predatory lending and deceptive sales practices as culprits. Other factors include a slowing housing market and steep terms of the record-high number of mortgages issued by subprime lenders.

CLEVELAND (AP) - Striking union members in Cleveland, Ohio, are scheduled to vote tomorrow on a new contract with Alcoa. The Pittsburgh-based aluminum company and United Auto Workers Local 1050 announced on Christmas Eve that they'd reached a tentative deal on a contract covering 830 workers.
A statement from the two sides says if union members give their approval, they'll return to work one week from today. The strike at Alcoa's Cleveland Works began November Sixth. Details of the new contract have not been disclosed.

CHICAGO (AP) - A University of Pennsylvania researcher says popular heartburn drugs as Nexium, Prevacid or Prilosec are often used when patients don't really need them -- and that can be dangerous. Doctor Yu-Xiao Yang is the co-author of a large study published today. It found that taking such drugs for a year or more can raise the risk of a broken hip markedly in people over 50. Yang says doctors should make sure patients have good reason to stay on heartburn drugs long term. A spokeswoman for the company that markets Prevacid says the safety of such drugs have been well established by rigorous studies. She says the new study doesn't prove or disprove a connection to hip fractures. The study is published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.