National and State News-Wednesday, June 27th

LONDON (AP) - Tony Blair's decade as Britain's prime minister ends today with remarks to Parliament, a lunch with the queen and then his replacement by former treasury chief Gordon Brown. Blair is said to have been tapped to be the new peacemaking envoy to the
Middle East.

MEYERS, Calif. (AP) - Authorities fear the winds will pick up around Lake Tahoe, California, today, making it even harder for firefighters to contain what is now a more than three-thousand-acre fire. The blaze jumped a fireline yesterday and officials had to order more evacuations.

UNDATED (AP) - The rescue of 16-year-old twin sisters from floodwaters in Oklahoma is just one of a number carried out there and in Texas over the last day. Rain has fallen daily in Oklahoma City since June 13th. Several motorists needed rescuing in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

KARACHI, Pakistan (AP) - Thousands of people are stuck on rooftops and in trees along the southeast coast of Pakistan, as flood waters whipped up by a cyclone surge through towns and
villages. Navy warships and helicopters are searching for fishing boats missing in the Arabian Sea.

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - As Iranians lined up to fill gas tanks before fuel rationing kicked in, two Tehran gas stations were set on fire early today. The oil ministry says there's no proof that
the fires were caused by angry consumers. It says some stations were attacked by "vandals."

PHILADELPHIA (AP) - One person is dead and three wounded after an argument on a Philadelphia basketball court turned into a fistfight, followed by gunshots. Police say it began when two carloads of men drove across the grass to the basketball courts last night and started arguing with a group playing ball. Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson says investigators aren't sure what the orginial argument was about, but it could have been "over a girl."
No arrests were immediately made.

STROUDSBURG, Pa. (AP) - A Poconos developer accused of defrauding as many as 170 home buyers will pay a quarter of a (m) million dollars and stop dealing in mortgages. Gene Percudani has agreed to do so as part of a settlement with the state. Homeowners won't get restitution and Percudani can remain a home builder and contractor. Percudani's lawyer says the state Attorney General's Office couldn't find anything wrong after five years of investigation. He says the case was settled for the state's costs. Percudani and others were accused of employing deceptive advertising and faked appraisals to rope in unwary omebuyers.
The money from Percudani will be used for consumer protection campaigns and other efforts by the state Attorney General's Office.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) - Police responding to a disturbance call in Philadelphia's Kensington neighborhood found a fugitive hiding in a crawl space in the basement. The suspect, 19-year-old Gerald Camp, is charged in the April slaying of 16-year-old Appollonia Tucker. Police say Camp shot Tucker in the head at the home of Tucker's boyfriend after a seemingly minor argument in April. Tucker was the mother of an infant and police say she was at the
home so the baby could see her father.

EDDYSTONE, Pa. (AP) - The former assistant manager of a Wal-Mart store in suburban Philadelphia is accused of robbing the store on Thanksgiving and New Year's Day.
Court papers say 33-year-old Vincent Lowe of Philadelphia used his management position to conspire with several others to rob the store in Eddystone. Lowe told police a gunman entered the store on Thanksgiving morning, took his cell phone and forced him to reveal the
combination of the safe before he fled on a bicycle. On January First, police were called to the store at about 5:30 a-m, shortly after a manager arrived. The manager reported that he
was told to open the safe. Lowe's preliminary hearing is set for Monday.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) - The state Senate has approved a bill to ban smoking in most public and work places in Pennsylvania. The Senate defied a veto threat by Governor Ed Rendell and
opposition by a coalition of health associations that say the bill leaves too many workers exposed to cancer-causing second-hand smoke. Rendell threatened a veto over a provision added on Monday that he said would allow smoking in small home-based child-care
settings. The bill also would upend a stricter ban enacted in Philadelphia last year. Places where smoking would be banned include arenas, stores, restaurants, convention halls, shopping malls and more.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) - Pennsylvania hospitals say they made serious operating-room mistakes 174 times during a two-and-a-half year period. These included using the wrong procedure, operating on the wrong body part or even the wrong patient, according to a report issued by the state Patient Safety Authority. The agency released its report on so-called "wrong-site" surgeries as part of an effort to eliminate them. The report says that between June 2004 and December 2006, the authority also received reports of 253 incidents that could have resulted in wrong-site errors but were corrected before an operation began. The agency says officials plan to visit selected hospitals and gather information on strategies they are using to prevent wrong site surgeries. The information will be used to provide guidance to all hospitals.

AKRON, Ohio (AP) - The star prosecution witness in the murder-for-hire trial of a Hermitage (Pennsylvania) woman has acknowledged that he'd lied under oath in previous court cases.
Damian Bradford of Monaca says 48-year-old Donna Moonda hired him to kill her husband. Moonda's lawyer has portrayed Bradford as a liar who acted alone. Bradford was Donna Moonda's boyfriend at the time he shot her husband along the Ohio Turnpike. He testified on Monday that she was dissatisfied with a one (m) million dollar divorce offer and promised him half of her husband's estate as payment to kill him. The doctor's estate is estimated between three (m) million and six (m) million dollars. Bradford is to serve a 17 year prison sentence in exchange for cooperating with authorities.

BENSALEM, Pa. (AP) - People are flocking to places like Philadelphia Park Casino and Racetrack, which offer horse racing and slots gambling. As the horse racing industry's attendance and revenues decline, New Jersey is mulling whether or not to allow slots gambling at its racetracks. But New Jersey faces pressure from Atlantic City's casinos, who have already seen revenues decline since slots were introduced at racetracks in Pennsylvania and New York.
New Jersey's treasury department is studying the potential impact of racetrack slots and is scheduled to release a report later this summer.

PITTSBURGH (AP) - A 49-year-old McKeesport man who took in a 14-year-old runaway in 1996 has pleaded guilty to all charges related to her staying with him. Thomas John Hose is getting five to 15 years in prison for his crimes against Tanya Nicole Kach, who's now 25.
Kach was a student at a school where Hose worked as a security guard. She has said she had a crush on him and went to live with him. Prosecutors say for a decade, Hose kept her from leaving the tiny home he shared with his parents and son. The Associated Press normally does not name victims of suspected sex crimes, but Kach has spoken with reporters about her
experience.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) - A federal magistrate in Harrisburg says a man who allegedly confessed to murdering at least ten women in Mexico doesn't have to be extradited just yet.
The judge is giving the lawyer for 29-year-old Jose Francisco Granados de la Paz until July 31st to build a case against being returned to Mexico to stand trial. Granados de la Paz is a Mexican citizen who is serving time in Lewisburg Federal Prison on immigration charges. U-S prosecutors says he confessed to Mexican and Texas authorities last year that he had been involved in killing at least ten women in Mexico as "offerings to Satan."

PITTSBURGH (AP) - The University of Pittsburgh has released a report that says black men in Pittsburgh are nearly twice as likely as white men to be unemployed. The report says Pittsburgh's black population is one of the poorest in the nation. The report is touted as the most comprehensive ever done on multiple races in Pittsburgh. It brings to light the vast
disparities in wealth, income and quality of life between blacks and whites in the city and its suburbs. Only about one-quarter of black women in the region are married, leaving about 70 percent of children to grow up in single-family homes. Researchers also believe the highly segregated region compounds the problems.

JOHNSTOWN, Pa. (AP) - A Cambria County priest accused of sex abuse has killed himself.
The Reverend William Rosensteel jumped from a bridge in Richland Township Sunday afternoon. It was two days after the bishop said abuse claims against him dating back to 1972 would be reported to civil authorities. Rosensteel served in several parishes throughout the
Altoona-Johnstown Diocese. Most recently, he had served at Holy Rosary in Altoona, but had
resigned after being placed on administrative leave in March.

BETHLEHEM, Pa. (AP) - The last wishes of a Civil War veteran are being fulfilled almost 80 years after his death. Three Lehigh Valley nonprofits are splitting a nest egg now worth nearly 10 (m) million dollars. It's from the estate of Adam Brinker, who amassed a small fortune after the war as a harness maker in South Bethlehem. His will left his descendants a portion of the interest from his estate. But when the last one died, the money went to "residual beneficiaries" including the three charities. That happened two years ago, leaving trustees to sort out a complex trail. One charity was identified in Brinker's will as "the Children's Home in Salisbury Township." That group, now called KidsPeace, serves more than ten-thousand troubled children and teens.