Today's News-Thursday, January 29, 2009

WATCH FOR BLACK ICE

Many area schools have opted for a late start today in the aftermath of the storm that dumped nearly a half foot of snow and ice. The big travel issue today is black ice, since temperatures dipped into the low 20's overnight, freezing any slush and standing water. The good news is that we'll have partly cloudy skies today, and forecasters are predicting a warm up this coming weekend. A little extra time is the order of the day this Thursday.

ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER PLANT CLOSING

A direct mail company is shuttering one facility in northern Schuylkill County. The Republican and Herald indicates that Transcontinental Direct USA is closing their Frackville site, located on the Morea Road. Reports say that 18 layoffs will be permanent, with the remaining employees being offered positions at their Hamburg plant. The company cites reduced demand for direct mail from the financial industry.

ICY ROADS LEAD TO CRASHES

Wednesday's storm kept state and local police busy with crashes on area roadways. 43 year old Dotsy Melvin of New Ringgold was injured when she lost control of her car on snow and ice covered Route 895 in East Brunswick Township. The car went down an embankment. Melvin's head hit the steering wheel. She was taken to Schuylkill Medical Center-South for treatment. In a two vehicle accident on Route 61 in West Brunswick Township, David Moon of Hamburg and Kenneth Moser of Reading collided head on after Moon lost control on the snow covered road Wednesday morning. Moser was taken to the hospital for treatment of moderate injuries. Two crashes took place within hours of each other on Route 901, the Gordon Nagle Trail as well, but details of those accidents are not yet available.

ARK HOUSE CLOSES

A homeless shelter in Pottsville has shut its doors. Ark House, which used city churches to provide a temporary place for people in need to go, has closed. The Republican and Herald reports that the loss of tax exempt status and lack of volunteers forced the closing. Most recently, the United Presbyterian Church in Pottsville offered shelter to the needy. Other agencies are offering some help, but funds are in short supply to continue serving the need.

BOSCOV'S MAKES PLEA FOR PARTICIPATION IN BAILOUT PROGRAM

Officials of Boscov's have gone back to Butler County to pitch the loan program to help bring the company from bankruptcy. Butler is one of two counties that said no to participating in the complex financing package totaling $35 million dollars. The counties, including Schuylkill, have been asked to act as a pass-through with CDBG monies to aid Albert Boscov and his brother, Edwin Lakin, buy the company and bring it back from bankruptcy. Five counties have already agreed to the plan, and would be made whole if Boscov's defaults. Schuylkill's share stands at $5.8 million dollars right now.

TWO ROBBERIES IN GRATZ

GRATZ - A masked man robs two businesses minutes apart Tuesday night. The man armed with a handgun robbed Lisi's Shell Convenience store on Market Street in Gratz just after eight p.m. He then robbed the Subway restaurant on North Market Street in Elizabethville about 15 minutes later. In both robberies the bandit got away with cash. He's described as a white man in his late teens or early twenties, standing about five foot eight inches tall, wearing a black and white polka-dot bandanna over his face. He drove away in a dark colored Jeep Grand Cherokee. Anyone with information on the suspect is asked to call state police, Lykens.

SCOUTS TO COMMEMORATE 100TH ANNIVERSARY

Calling all current and former cub and boy scouts! The Boy Scouts of America are celebrating a big birthday, and are working on a project to commemorate the anniversary. Sally Trump, Director of Camping for Hawk Mountain Council explains:

TRUMP 1

Trump says that anyone who has items to share for the book should come to the Mahanoy City
Public Library today from 4pm till 8pm. She tells us what they are looking for:

TRUMP 2

The library is located on West Mahanoy Street in Mahanoy City. For information, call the scout service center in Berks County at 610-926-3406.

Philadelphia counts its homeless

PHILADELPHIA (AP) - Volunteers and outreach workers are searching the streets of Philadelphia for homeless people. The census of the homeless began at midnight and is to last into Thursday's pre-dawn hours. The city counts the number of people staying in shelters, but the outreach program of a nonprofit group called Project HOME coordinates the count of those living on the street. Outreach worker Sam Santiago says counts of the homeless are always done in the last week of the month. Santiago says homelessness is highest then because many who can afford cheap rooms at the beginning of the month run out of money at the end. He
says that's often the case with people getting government benefits such as disability checks.
The count is part of a federally mandated national count of the homeless.

NY man convicted in rural Pa. triple killing

TOWANDA, Pa. (AP) - A jury has convicted an upstate New York man of three counts of first-degree murder for killing his parents and a brother in rural northeastern Pennsylvania. The Bradford County jury convicted 32-year-old Steven Colegrove of Deposit, N.Y., on Wednesday night. District Attorney Daniel Barrett is seeking the death penalty. The same jury must make that decision after hearing witnesses in a penalty phase. Colegrove automatically gets life without parole if the jury does not agree he deserves death. The victims of the Aug. 8, 2007, shotgun slaying are Colegrove's father, Joseph; his mother, Marlene, and his brother Michael.
Earlier Wednesday, the defense lawyer argued that his client's surviving brother and that man's wife might have killed the victims.

NRC: Pa. nuclear plant workers fear retaliation

ALLENTOWN, Pa. (AP) - The Susquehanna nuclear plant in northeastern Pennnsylvania is the nation's leader in anonymous allegations made by employees to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The agency says it believes some workers at the plant near Berwick are afraid to raise safety issues with their bosses because they fear retaliation. Regulators have issued a warning letter to Allentown-based PPL saying the company must take steps to preclude a "chilled" work environment at the power plant. The plant's community relations manager says workers are encouraged to speak up about safety concerns. He says they company also has its own system in place to submit concerns anonymously.

Pa. Supreme Court removes implicated county judges

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) - The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has removed from the bench two Luzerne County judges charged in a $2.6 million kickback scheme. The high court took action Wednesday against Luzerne County Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan. The judges were charged in federal court Monday with taking kickbacks in return for guaranteeing the placement of juvenile offenders into two privately owned detention facilities. The Supreme Court suspended Ciavarella with pay. The justices stripped Conahan of his senior judge certification and said he will no longer receive payment. Conahan retired as a full-time judge
more than a year ago but continued to hear cases as a senior judge. Both judges have agreed to plead guilty to fraud charges. The plea agreements call for sentences of more than seven years in federal prison.

Deadly winter storm disrupts power, travel

PHILADELPHIA (AP) - PHILADELPHIA (AP) - Delays and cancellations are plaguing air travelers throughout the Northeast, after a snow and ice storm that's knocked out power to more than a million people. The storm is also blamed for at least 23 deaths. It's brought a glaze of ice and snow from the Southern Plains to New England. Hundreds of thousands are in the dark in Arkansas, and nearly a half million homes and businesses in Kentucky are without power. It could be a week before some communities have electricity again. Warming temperatures turned the snow and ice to rain in the mid-Atlantic region, but the storm is bringing a lot of snow further north. Some parts of Vermont could get 16 inches.

Rendell notifies Pa. unions of intent to furlough

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) - The leader of a union that represents 45,000 state workers says Gov. Ed Rendell's budget demands are unacceptable. David Fillman says the state shouldn't be threatening layoffs until it's exhausted other sources of revenue. He's the head of Council 13 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. Among other things, Rendell's negotiators have told union leaders that the state may institute "rolling furloughs." If that happens, large parts of state government would be shuttered on certain days, while the workers would go without pay. A spokesman for Rendell says the 30-day furlough notice was
issued as a legal requirement but doesn't mean furloughs are more imminent or inevitable.

Pa. auditor general: Welfare Dept. overpaid Medicaid $3M for ineligible recipients

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) - A new report says Pennsylvania's public welfare agency overpaid Medicaid by more than $3 million over a hree-year period because it didn't properly determine recipients' eligibility. Auditor General Jack Wagner said Wednesday auditors found errors
in more than 1,600 of nearly 12,000 selected cases between January 2005 and March 2008.
The cases represent a random sample of more than half a million cases handled by 79 county assistance offices. Wagner says the department's errors included failure to promptly review recipients' financial eligibility. Department of Public Welfare spokeswoman Stacey Witalec
says Wagner is overestimating the problem and isn't considering other factors that determine Medicaid eligibility, such as whether a recipient is caring for disabled children.

Penn State prez: Vacant jobs likely to be left open

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (AP) - The head of Penn State University is preparing his faculty for potentially more bad budget news. President Graham Spanier told a Faculty Senate gathering Tuesday that vacant jobs would likely be left open, and raised the possibility of layoffs. Spanier stressed the school is looking first at other ways to save money. The school had its state appropriations slashed in the middle of this academic year. Spanier says he expects similar bad news when Gov. Ed Rendell offers his latest state budget proposal next week. Separately, Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center in Hershey has announced it will cut 260 jobs by September. The cuts would be achieved through attrition.

Pa. joins mortgage-aid settlement with Countrywide

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) - A spokesman for Countrywide Financial's parent company says Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett is taking credit for a mortgage-aid program that already existed. Bank of America spokesman Rick Simon says more than $8 billion in mortgage aid is available to qualified borrowers in all 50 states. He says that's true regardless of whether the states join the settlement. Pennsylvania and 30 other states have signed the settlement with Countrywide over allegedly deceptive mortgage practices before Bank of America acquired it. Corbett's spokesman says until the settlement with Pennsylvania prosecutors announced Wednesday, there was no legally binding agreement for mortgage aid.

Multistate prostitution ring leader gets 25 years

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) - The lawyer for a man sentenced to 25 years in prison for helping run a multistate prostitution ring says his client will appeal the sentence. A federal judge in Harrisburg sentenced 39-year-old Franklin Robinson of Toledo, Ohio. Defense lawyer Stephen Becker says sentencing guidelines call for less than three and a half years. Becker says both Robinson and the women who worked with him were raised in areas where prostitution and selling drugs were the norm. Becker acknowledges there was some violence between his client
and the women who worked for him. But he says there was never any credible evidence that any woman suffered serious injuries. Prosecutors say at least nine of the ring's prostitutes were
underage girls when they were brought into the world of prostitution. One was 12 years old.

WASHINGTON (AP) - The latest weekly report on first-time jobless claims is expected to be down from the previous week but still near a 26-year-high. Economists forecast that about 575,000 initial claims were filed. That's just under the mark set last November. Many corporations are still announcing layoffs.

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama says the $819 billion economic recovery package passed by the House will "save or create more than three million new jobs over the next few years." All House Republicans were joined by 11 mostly conservative Democrats
in voting no.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Labor and women's groups get some of their due from President Barack Obama today. He'll sign an equal-pay bill hat is expected to make it easier for workers to sue for
decades-old discrimination.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) - President Barack Obama has signed disaster declarations for Kentucky and Arkansas in the wake of a major winter snow and ice storm. It left 23 dead from the southern plains to the Northeast and more than a million people stranded in the dark.

SAN DIEGO, Calif. (AP) - No damage or injuries are reported after a small earthquake off the California coast. The U.S. Geological Survey says the magnitude-4.2 earthquake was centered
about 40 miles south of Catalina island and about 60 miles off the coast of San Diego.