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SEPTA workers reach contract agreement

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Members of Philadelphia’s largest transit workers union reached a tentative contract agreement early Friday, averting a possible strike that threatened to bring elevated trains, buses and trolleys to a halt and leave thousands of children and educators without a way to get to school next week. The current contract between the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority and the 5,000-member Transport Workers Union Local 234 was set to expire at 12:01 a.m. Monday. The tentative agreement announced by the union includes a two-year contract with a pay ...

New Jersey, Pa. collaborate in ghost gun case

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — A New Jersey man faces criminal charges after he purchased more than a dozen kits to make “ghost,” or untraceable, guns at a Pennsylvania exhibition, the top law enforcement officers from both states said Friday. New Jersey acting Attorney General Andrew Bruck and Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro said William Pillus of Lincoln Park, New Jersey, was indicted on five charges this week, including second-degree unlawful possession of an assault firearm, third-degree purchasing firearm parts to manufacture untraceable firearms, third-degree possession of ...

High court candidate alters campaign ad

HARRISBURG (AP) — The Republican candidate for the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has revised an ad attacking his opponent after the state bar association notified him it ran afoul of its judicial campaign advertising standards. A top campaign aide to Commonwealth Court Judge Kevin Brobson said Thursday the modified version of the ad critical of Brobson’s Democratic opponent, Superior Court Judge Maria McLaughlin, has begun to air. The adviser, Bob Branstetter, said it was changed in response to communication from the bar association’s Judicial Campaign Advertising Committee but ...

County botches Spanish-language ballot guide

Some Spanish-speaking voters in a Pennsylvania city where Hispanics account for nearly 70% of the population are at risk of being disenfranchised in next week’s general election because of an error in Spanish-language instructions that accompanied 17,000 mail-in ballots, activists and elected officials said Thursday. Berks County mailed erroneous Spanish-language instructions that said the ballots had to be returned by Nov. 18 — 16 days past the actual deadline of 8 p.m. on Election Day. Voters who got the botched instructions include those in Reading, population 95,000, a growing ...

Philadelphia settles in fatal shooting of Walter Wallace Jr.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Philadelphia has agreed to settle a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the family of Walter Wallace Jr., a Black man experiencing a mental health episode whose fatal shooting by police a year ago was recorded and led to protests, an attorney said Thursday. Neither the city nor attorneys for the family would disclose the amount of the monetary settlement. Attorney Shaka Johnson said during a news conference that it was “substantial” but stressed it included an injunctive agreement that resulted in the announcement this week that the city would spend $14 million ...

Shapiro breaks with Wolf on strategy over climate change

HARRISBURG (AP) — Josh Shapiro, the Democratic candidate for governor, is breaking with Gov. Tom Wolf on the centerpiece of Wolf’s plan to fight climate change amid the strong and sustained pushback it has received from building trades unions that have long backed the party’s candidates for governor. Wolf — a fellow Democrat who has endorsed Shapiro, the state’s two-term attorney general — has worked for two years to finalize regulations to make Pennsylvania the first major fossil fuel state to adopt a carbon pricing policy by imposing a price on carbon dioxide emissions ...