Today's News-Thursday, September 4th, 2008

Schuylkill County to implement flex heating system and lighting

The Schuylkill County Commissioners Wednesday approved a $1.9 Million dollar heating and lighting plan for four county owned buildings. County Engineer Lisa Mahall received approval for the county to enter into a performance-based energy savings agreement with McClure Company of Harrisburg, a subsidiary of PPL Energy Services. Mahall explains:

MAHALL

The plan also includes retrofitting the lighting systems to save electricity. Total savings over a 15-year period are estimated at between $3.2 and $3.6 Million Dollars. The county had been negotiating with Honeywell International to change the heating systems and lighting but coal was not part of their plan. Honeywell has since pulled its proposal.

Piekarsky's mother wants more education for her son

A lawsuit demanding more education for one of the Shenandoah Valley students accused in the beating death of a Mexican illegal immigrant has been filed in county court. 16-year-old Brandon Piekarsky's mother is asking for more educational time for her son, after the district said that he and Colin Walsh could not return to school and would be given homebound instruction. According to the suit, Piekarsky's mother says the amount of education offered, in this case 5 hours a week, is not enough to give him a complete education. They are not requesting that he be returned to the classroom. Piekarsky, Walsh and 18-year-old Derrick Donchak are charged in the beating death of Luis Ramirez.

Zehner found guilty of arson and related counts

An Orwigsburg man faces time in state prison for arson and related charges. A jury found 51-year-old Carl Zehner guilty yesterday for setting fire to Orwigsburg borough manager Michael Lonergan's home in July, 2007, after the borough cut off Zehner's water service. The Republican and Herald reports that Zehner's attorney Robert Lipkin may appeal the verdict.

New lighting coming to Tamaqua borough

Who would have thought that a box of Crispy Creme donuts could result in a contract-and a half million dollar savings?

COUNCIL VOTE

In a unanimous vote from borough council Tamaqua is moving forward with the financing portion of the street lighting performance project as proposed by Municipal Energy Managers. A representative from M-E-M explains two benefits to council members:

M-E-M

The borough is looking to borrow from Jim Thorpe National Bank payable over 20-years with over a 500-thousand-dollar-savings. The borough should start to see its first savings by 2010.

Junior council member continues service on Tamaqua council

The Tamaqua borough council members voted to reinstate high school senior Justin Startzel as their junior council member for a second term. Startzel says its up to young people to make the decision to get involved:

STARTZEL

After graduation Startzel plans on attending college and majoring in political science with a career in politics.

Obama brings campaign back to Pa.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) - Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama is returning to Pennsylvania for the second time in less than a week. Obama plans to spend two days campaigning in this battleground state. The Illinois senator is slated to appear at a rally at a park in Lancaster on Thursday afternoon. On Friday, running mate Joe Biden is to appear in the Philadelphia suburb of Langhorne with his wife. Jill Biden grew up in nearby Willow Grove.
Obama and Joe Biden visited Beaver in western Pennsylvania on Friday night, drawing several thousand people.

ACLU: Pa. ex-felons wrongly told they can't vote

PITTSBURGH (AP) - The American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania says some parole and probation officers are incorrectly telling ex-offenders they don't have the right to vote. The ACLU says some parolees were allegedly threatened with a parole violation if they registered to vote. The ACLU has asked the Pennsylvania Board of Parole and Probation and all county boards to inform ex-offenders of their voting rights. The ACLU says some county Web sites still erroneously state that former offenders must wait five years before they can register to vote.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court struck down the five-year waiting period in 2000. State law permits felons who have been released from prison or who will be freed by the time of the election to vote.

AP: Mom, free after killings: 'I am not a monster'

LANCASTER, Pa. (AP) - A Pennsylvania woman who was found not guilty by reason of insanity for drowning her 2-year-old son and suffocating her 4-month-old son says she'll spend the rest of her life living with the guilt. Meghan Lippiatt told The Associated Press on Wednesday that she was suffering from mental illness and post-partum depression when she felt compelled to kill the boys and attempt suicide four years ago. Earlier Wednesday, the same Lancaster County judge who found her not guilty by reason of insanity in December ruled that she doesn't
need court-ordered psychiatric treatment. In her only public comments on the case, she told the AP that she's speaking out because she wants to be understood. She says she's "not a monster."

Phila. man charged in noose threat against co-worker

PHILADELPHIA (AP) - A white electrician accused of placing a hangman's noose in work space shared with a black colleague at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia is free on bail. Prosecutors say 62-year-old William Gould of Philadelphia was angry that his the co-worker had been accepted into a management training program for minorities. He is charged with interfering
with employment by threat of violence. If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of one year in prison and a $100,000 fine. Prosecutors say the victim, also an electrician, associated the
noose with the lynching of blacks and began fearing for his safety.

Pa. senator's aide accused of misusing funds

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) - A state senator's aide has been suspended without pay because she allegedly made unauthorized credit card purchases in his name and misused his checking account. The Senate's chief clerk said Wednesday that 42-year-old Pamela Barnhart was suspended as an administrative assistant in Sen. Bob Regola's Harrisburg office. Barnhart was responsible for overseeing office accounts for the Westmoreland County Republican. Chief clerk Russ Faber says Capitol Police are investigating more than $40,000 in credit card charges and withdrawals from a checking account. Faber said the case involves Regola's personal funds, not taxpayers' money. No home telephone listing for Barnhart could be immediately found.

Defendant in Pa. collar-bomb case pleads guilty

ERIE, Pa. (AP) - An Erie man has admitted he helped plan a bizarre 2003 bank robbery that ended with the death of a pizza deliveryman with a collar-bomb strapped to his neck. Kenneth Barnes pleaded guilty Wednesday to conspiring to rob a bank and to aiding and abetting. He could be sentenced to life in prison. The pizza deliveryman, Brian Wells, told police he had been
forced at gunpoint to lock the bomb onto his neck and rob the bank. He was killed when the device exploded as police waited for a bomb squad. Barnes' co-defendant, Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong, is accused of masterminding the plot. A federal judge recently ruled she's not
mentally competent to stand trial.

Pittsburgh man gets 80 years in prison for 4 rapes

PITTSBURGH (AP) - A Pittsburgh man convicted of being the so-called "East End rapist" has been sentenced to 80 to 160 years in prison. At his sentencing Wednesday, 51-year-old Keith Wood said he was sorry for what happened to the victims, but said he was not the rapist.
A jury in June convicted Wood of raping four women in 2000 and 2001 in the city's East End communities. Jurors deadlocked on whether Wood raped a fifth woman in 2007. Prosecutors say DNA evidence overwhelmingly linked Wood as the attacker in four of the cases. They say there's only one chance in 56 quintillion the DNA belongs to someone else. There was no DNA
evidence in the fifth rape. Wood has accused police of illegally obtaining his DNA.

Former suburban Philly official charged with theft

MEDIA, Pa. (AP) - A former township official in suburban Philadelphia is accused of skimming $250,000 over an eight-year period. Fifty-one-year-old Deborah Perry, of Ridley Park, was
secretary-treasurer of Thornbury Township. She turned herself in Wednesday to face hundreds of felony theft counts. Delaware County District Attorney Michael Green says Perry was able to conceal the thefts by writing checks and making charges for relatively small amounts of money that were not detected by the township's auditors. Green says Perry spent the money on personal items and gave at least $40,000 to her former boyfriend, 47-year-old Robert Hance, of
Chester. Authorities say the two had a falling out last Christmas and he went to the township solicitor. Hance currently is on the lam.

Republicans nominate McCain for president

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) - Republicans have nominated Senator John McCain for president, handing the senator the prize that eluded him eight years ago. By a roll call vote, the Arizona senator clinched his party's nod. The late-night vote was conducted after vice presidential
candidate Sarah Palin addressed the Republican National Convention. McCain is scheduled to accept the nomination in a speech Thursday night. He heads into a competitive fall campaign against Democratic nominee Barack Obama. If elected, the 72-year-old McCain would be the oldest first-term president.

Palin casts herself as Washington outsider, slaps at Obama

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) - The self-described "hockey mom" has come out slashing. Alaska Governor Sarah Palin told delegates at the Republican National Convention that she's an outsider ready to join John McCain in helping to bring real change fo Washington. But Palin also unleashed a smiling attack on Barack Obama. She accused Obama of wanting to forfeit the victory in Iraq that "is finally in sight." Palin said that "Al-Qaida terrorists" want to cause
"catastrophic harm on America" and that Obama is "worried that someone won't read them their rights." Palin was joined after the speech by her family and John McCain. He asked roaring delegates "Don't you think we made the right choice" for vice president? It was an apparent reference to the convention-week controversy that has greeted Palin, including the dislocusre that her 17-year-old unmarried daughter is pregnant.

Palin's hometown crowd crams into bar to watch speech

WASILLA, Alaska (AP) - Dozens of Wasilla, Alaska, residents say they loved every minute of hometown girl Sarah Palin's speech. More than 100 people packed a sports bar to watch John McCain's choice for vice president deliver her acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention. She got a loud laugh when she joked that the only difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull is lipstick, but her biggest roars at home came early on when she was introducing her family to the convention crowd. In Wasilla, the McCain-Palin shirts being worn around town have been dubbed "Sarah wear," and wear them they did. After the speech, one woman admonished the pundits who expect Democrat Joe Biden to overwhelm Palin in the debates, saying she thinks "the opposite" will happen.

At least 85 arrested after protest group concert

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - Police arrested more than 80 protesters in downtown Minneapolis early today following a concert by the political rock group Rage Against the Machine. Lisa Kiava, a spokeswoman for the Hennepin County sheriff's office, says at least 85 people had been arrested, but final figures weren't immediately available. She says most of the charges are expected to be misdemeanors. Police had expressed concern Wednesday about the possibility of
trouble after the concert. At least 320 people had been arrested in Minneapolis and St. Paul since Saturday in pre-emptive raids and at protests that were marred by violence from people hoping to interfere with the Republican National Convention.

Cheney arrives in Georgia

TBILISI, Georgia (AP) - Vice President Dick Cheney has arrived in Georgia, in a show of support for the South Caucasus nation and its pro-Western president. The visit comes a day after the White House announced a US$1 billion economic aid package for the country, ravaged by last month's war with Russia. The trip and his meetings with President Mikhail Saakashvili
Thursday have raised speculation that a U.S. military aid package might be announced soon.
The Kremlin is unhappy with Cheney's visit and other rhetoric from Washington. Any decision by the U.S. to rebuild Georgia's shattered military would further provoke Moscow. Cheney arrives after a trip to neighboring Azerbaijan, which is the starting point for a major oil pipeline that crosses Georgia and ends in Turkey.

Obama: economic issues will decide election

NEW PHILADELPHIA, Ohio (AP) - Barack Obama is accusing his opponent of trying to run away from his party's economic record. Campaigning in eastern Ohio, the Democratic residential nominee disputed the claim by John McCain's campaign manager that the election will be decided largely on voters' perceptions of the candidates' personalities. Noting that McCain has been a supporter of President Bush's policies, the Illinois senator said, "if you've got George Bush's track record...then you probably don't want to talk about issues." Obama is concentrating this week on Ohio, which Bush narrowly carried in 2004.

Hurricane Ike strengthens to Category 4 storm

MIAMI (AP) - Forecasters say Hurricane Ike has strengthened to a dangerous Category 4 storm in the Atlantic with maximum sustained winds near 135 mph. Earlier, Ike became a Category 3 storm and the third major hurricane of the Atlantic season. Ike's center was located about 620 miles northwest of the Leeward Islands and was moving west-northwest at about 17 mph. Forecasters at the National Hurricane Center in Miami say the storm is expected to continue on its current track Thursday before turning more to the west.It's too soon to tell which land areas could be threatened. The storm is following behind Tropical Storm Hanna, which could threaten the southeastern coast of the U.S. by the weekend. Tropical Storm Josephine is following behind Ike.

New Orleans reluctantly opens doors after Gustav

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Thousands of residents have been returning to New Orleans to assess the damage to their own homes now that Hurricane Gustav has passed. Most residents returned to houses with no power, and officials say it could could take as long as a month to fully restore. Governor Bobby Jindal doesn't want to hear it. He says there's "no excuse for the delay." Without electricity, gas stations can't pump fuel, and hospitals are running out of fuel for
generators. Torrential rains and the threat of tornadoes have been slowing crews working to rebuild Louisiana's broken transmission and distribution systems. Offshore oil and natural gas production resumed in limited volumes Wednesday.

Chinese report says 23 killed in mine accident

BEJING (AP) - A Chinese news agency has reported that 23 people have been killed in a gas explosion in a mine in the country's northeast. Xinhua News Agency says this morning's accident took place in a coal mine in Fuxin in northeast China's Liaoning province. It did not immediately give any other details. China's coal mines are the world's deadliest, with numerous
fires, floods and other disasters killing an average of 13 miners a day.

Boeing workers back strike; pact extended 2 days

SEATTLE (AP) - Boeing Co. aircraft assembly workers have voted to strike for an unprecedented second time in three years. But their contract has been extended 48 hours at the request of Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire and a federal mediator. The vote late Wednesday was 87 percent in favor of a strike as unanimously recommended by machinists union negotiators. Under union rules a strike requires at least two-thirds support from those voting.
In separate balloting, union members also voted 80 percent to reject Boeing's third and final three-year contract offer, which included pay raises averaging 11 percent. The walkout was to begin at 12:01 a.m. PDT Thursday, after the expiration of a contract covering more than 27,000 workers. Now that contract has a short extension.