Today's News-Friday, December 7th

Today is Pearl Harbor Day... the 66th anniversary of that fateful day that, in President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's words..."will live in infamy." Remember all of our veterans today.

A routine traffic stop by Pottsville police resulted in the arrest of a man wanted on a bench warrant in Bucks County. Wednesday night, city officers stopped a man driving on 21st Street, who identified himself as Douglas Jensen, and gave a false date of birth. Further investigation found that he was in fact Ian Nawn, who was wanted on a failure to appear warrant for burglary and other offenses in Bucks County. Nawn was charged with providing false identity, and was taken to Schuylkill County Prison to await extradition to Bucks County.

Schuylkill County will have to dip into its reserve account to pay $1-point-1 Million Dollars in employee health care costs. The cost overrun was brought to light during Wednesday’s commissioners work session when a request was made to transfer the money to a general fund account set up to cover hospitalization for county employees and retirees as part of their insurance benefit packages. According to the county controllers office $600,000 of that amount was budgeted for 2006 but not paid until January of 2007 because the county basically pays bills on a 13 month schedule rather than 12. The other $500,000 is for the county’s purchase of health insurance through an inter-county consortium which had been under estimated. The controller’s office indicated that the $600,000 was budgeted for 2006 but had not been used that year, so the money which was still available could have been reallocated to the 2007 budget and the payment made but office employees didn’t realize they could use it for 2006 costs. The $1-point-1 Million Dollars increased the 2007 health budget to almost $6-point-9 million Dollars. The projected health budget for 2008 is $7-point 26-million dollars. The transfer of the funds will come from the County’s 2007 surplus. This usually amounts to 10-percent of the total budget. Schuylkill County is a new participant in a nine county consortium which negotiates together for better insurance rates from Capitol Blue Cross having joined only last year.

Residents in Norwegian Township want to keep their police department, and are preparing to go door-to-door this Sunday to build additional support. Organizers of the campaign to keep long-time officer Sgt. John Zuratt on the job will begin canvassing homes on Sunday, according to a press release provided to WPPA/T102 News. We told you earlier this week that Norwegian Township supervisors are discontinuing police service, and turning that responsibility over to Pennsylvania State Police patrols. The supervisors stated after the vote that the move was not financially motivated, but rather, a matter of getting better coverage for the township’s residents. Reports indicate that it cost about $60-thousand-dollars a year to fund police coverage. The change to state police coverage is scheduled to take effect on January 1st.

Three projects in the 125th Legislative District received grant monies for recreational development. State Representative Tim Seip made the announcement yesterday, for nearly $155-thousand-dollars in Department of Conservation and Natural Resource grants. The Schuylkill River Heritage area received $23-thousand-five hundred dollars to study the use of space at the former Walk-In Shoe Company in Schuylkill Haven for development of a YMCA and a cultural art center. Schuylkill Haven's Island Park Project is getting $57-thousand-five hundred dollars. Seip comments on the progress of that project:

SEIP HAVEN

And Washington Township is getting two grants, totaling more than $74-thousand-dollars for purchase of 11 acres of land and development of a site plan for Washington Township Recreation Park.

Pit bull dogs who were involved in an attack of a Shenandoah woman will be put down today.
According to the Republican and Herald, four dogs, owned by Leo James, attacked Cindy Davidson on November 11th, causing severe injuries. Officials required that the dogs be quarantined for 10 days after the incident to determine if they were rabid. They did not have rabies. But, during that time, one of the dogs gave birth to 6 puppies. James had the option of keeping the animals, but would have been required to pay $200 for each dog to be registered as a dangerous animal, and carry a $50-thousand-dollar bond for the original dogs. James reportedly decided to have the animals euthanized at the Ruth Steinert SPCA.

In a surprising declaration, researchers say there is "significant evidence" that people living near the McAdoo Associates Superfund site face an extra risk of developing a rare blood cancer due to environmental factors. The Republican Herald reports those comments were posted on the American Society of Hematology Web site Thursday. The report by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry for the first time draws a link between the environment and polycythemia vera only six weeks after the same agency claimed no such link could be found.
The new report ruled out family relationships, work and recreational activities as being responsible for people living within 13 miles of the superfund site being 4½ times more likely to contract polycythemia vera than other residents of Schuylkill, Luzerne and Carbon counties.
The agency is scheduled to present the information at a meeting of the American Society of Hematology in Atlanta on Monday.

One of Ireland's premier entertainers is coming back to Pottsville for a holiday performance this evening. Tony Kenny's "Christmastime in Ireland", a celebration of music, song, dance and comedy, comes to the Wachter Auditorium at Pottsville High School at 7pm. The event is sponsored by Pottsville's Ancient Order of Hibernians, John F. Kennedy Division Number 2.
Kenny is a regional favorite, having sold out a performance earlier this year at Pottsville High.
There are still a few tickets remaining. Contact Hap Anthony at 621-4077.

WASHINGTON (AP) - The top aide to former Congressman Curt Weldon is due in court today.
Russell James Caso Junior is named in court documents accusing him of falsifying congressional financial disclosure reports. Caso is accused of covering up $19,000 in income his wife made for doing little work at a consulting firm that had ties to the family of the former representative from Delaware County. Court papers say Caso also argued in meetings with high-level Bush administration officials that the projects his wife was working on should get federal funding. Neither Weldon nor his family's firm is named in the court document. Weldon, a Republican, was defeated last year by Democratic challenger Joe Sestak.

CONVENTION CENTER-LABOR

PHILADELPHIA (AP) - Philadelphia's City Council has made a stunning proposal in a city dominated by union labor: to open a 700 million dollar Convention Center expansion job to nonunion workers. The council says it could not be sure of meeting minority hiring goals when a Building and Trades Council official declined to give statistics on minority workers in 42 local unions. The council offered Business Manager Patrick Gillespie use of an office to make
calls if necessary to get the information. Gillespie says opening up the project would endanger its labor agreement with the unions. Such a change in the state's largest public works project would need final approval by the council next Thursday -- and by Governor Ed Rendell.

DYSART, Pa. (AP) - Travelers on a rural Cambria county road are being sent on a 9-mile detour after the collapse of a 116-year-old bridge along the route. Officials say there are no injuries from the collapse of the single-lane steel-truss bridge on state Route 1012.
PennDOT officials say a news conference will be held at the site sometime today. Officials say the 103-foot-long bridge went down after a snow plow went over it after 9 o'clock last night. No vehicles were on the bridge. A locally based PennDOT engineer went to the site, and
additional engineers were en route from Harrisburg. PennDOT promises an immediate investigation. The bridge was built in 1891 and was used by about 270 vehicles a day.

SOUDERTON, Pa. (AP) - Environmental officials are investigating the second major fish kill this year in a creek near a meat rendering plant in Montgomery County. The Department of Environmental Protection says a representative of Moyer Packing Company reported on Wednesday afternoon that thousands of fish were dead in the Skippack Creek. A fish kill in August was found to have been caused by a malfunction at the company's wastewater treatment plant. DEP spokeswoman Lynda Rebarchak says the company representative
didn't think the latest fish kill was caused by a discharge from the plant. But she says the dead fish were found downstream from where the company discharges treated waste into the creek.
Most were minnows.

ALLENTOWN, Pa. (AP) - PPL's residential customers will see higher electric bills as of January 1st. But some industrial and commercial customers will get a rate reduction under the terms of a settlement approved by the state Public Utility Commission. Residential customers will pay an average of 4.7 percent more for electricity. PPL says some industrial and commercial customers will see an increase of less than 1 percent. Others will get a reduction of less than 1 percent, depending on their electricity usage. The settlement stems from a Commonwealth Court ruling last year that said a 222 million dollar annual rate increase granted to PPL
in late 2004 was unfair to industries and other commercial users.

PITTSBURGH (AP) - Allegheny County health officials have fined 37 gas stations a total of more than $46,000 for having broken pump parts that led to air pollution last summer.
The largest fine was levied against an Exxon station in Pittsburgh's Oakland neighborhood. That station was ordered to pay $3,375 after county health inspectors found 18 cracked or torn pump hoses and one dented pump nozzle. The county health department announced the violations today based on routine inspections in June and August. The violations have since been corrected. It was the county's first widespread inspection of gas stations. It was prompted by a survey of a dozen stations by the health department and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2005 that recorded 11 violations.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) - A Selinsgrove doctor and his wife facing deportation to the Philippines have some good news. Federal immigration officials have decided to delay deportation
indefinitely for Dr. Pedro Servano and his wife, Salvacion. The Servanos' lawyer says their best hope to remain in the United States is if Congress passes a bill just for them. The decision by immigration officials gives Congress time to do that. The Servanos exhausted all their appeals for what they say was an honest mistake in their paperwork. They had been accused of
lying about their marital status on visa applications. They were single when they applied for visas in 1978 but had gotten married by the time they were approved years later.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) - A defense lawyer says the young Philadelphia couple accused of ripping off thousands of dollars to fund their high-living ways will seek a plea bargain. But their troubles are far from over. Federal agents are investigating and they could face charges in federal court. Drexel University student Jocelyn Kirsch and her boyfriend, University of Pennsylvania graduate Edward Anderton, are accused of taking more that $100,000 in the past year alone. Philadelphia police believe the young jetsetters financed their $3,000-a-month condo and luxury trips to Paris, London, Hawaii and the Caribbean with other people's money.
Specifically, police say they stole the identity of neighbors in their upscale building -- and at least twice broke into their victims' units.

VERSAILLES, Pa. (AP) - There is no silver bullet to solve a decades-old methane problem in a western Pennsylvania town and the cost of minimizing the risk is unknown. Federal and state officials met in Versailles yesterday to discuss a report released October 31st by the U.S.
Department of Energy. The officials say the borough should install methane detectors
in several dozen residents' homes, begin repairing old gas vent pipes and research 12 locations pinpointed as especially problematic. But no cost estimate for remediation was provided.
Officials at the state Department of Environmental Protection say they are still calculating the cost and helping the borough identify possible funding sources.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) - State officials are winding down work on dozens of environmental cleanups and preparing to furlough as many as 130 employees. That's because the Legislature has been deadlocked since the summer over where to find new funding for the program.
Department of Environmental Protection press secretary Neil Weaver says the fund will be out of money in early January. He says that's when furloughs would go into effect and work will
stop. The Legislature is set to be in session next week before taking a monthlong break for the holidays. The cleanup fund needs about 18 million dollars to operate the
rest of the fiscal year.

NEW FREEDOM, Pa. (AP) - The state has closed two York County personal care homes after recent inspections found numerous violations -- including the alleged theft of painkillers at one
home and a lack of running water at the other. A Department of Public Welfare spokeswoman says the Always Better Care homes in New Freedom were shut down Wednesday, two days
after they were inspected. Officials are arranging for the 22 residents to lived in the
homes to receive care elswhere. Inspection reports say prescription painkillers were stolen from a terminally ill patient at one home on several occasions. They also say unpaid bills led to a shut-off of water service to the other home on November 26th. Southern York County Regional Police say they're investigating the drug thefts, but no arrests have been made.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) - Mayors, police officers and Governor Ed Rendell are expected to participate in a rally in the state Capitol on Monday to push for new legislation on guns.
The rally is being organized by CeaseFire PA, a group that favors enacting new measures to prevent gun violence. CeaseFire PA policy director Diane Edbril says the rally is designed to show support for better gun regulation and in particular measures to reduce the flow of illegal handguns. She says "this isn't a Philadelphia issue, it's a Pennsylvania issue."

WASHINGTON (AP) - The unemployment rate is holding steady at 4.7 percent. This, after employers added more than 90,000 jobs to their payrolls last month. The numbers are further evidence that the employment climate is holding up, amid the turbulence in the housing and credit markets.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) - Chilling recordings of 911 calls placed while a gunman was loose in a Nebraska mall offer more details about the attack that killed nine Wednesday, including the shooter. More than a dozen calls were placed by those inside the Omaha mall. One woman
described shooter Robert Hawkins getting off a mall elevator and opening fire.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Barry Bonds is expected to enter a not guilty plea on perjury and obstruction counts when he's arraigned in a San Francisco federal courthouse today. The slugger is accused of lying under oath about his steroid use. He could get more than
two years in prison if convicted.

LOS ANGELES (AP) - A fierce storm has moved into Southern California this morning, and officials are concerned it could trigger mudslides and flash floods. The recent wildfires have left
some areas clear of trees, making them vulnerable to heavy rains. Thousands have been evacuated in the region.

BAGHDAD (AP) - At least a dozen people are dead in a town north of Baghdad following a suicide blast. Police in the area have put the death toll at 15. Ten more people are dead in a separate attack at a checkpoint manned by Iraqi soldiers and an anti-al-Qaida group.