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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 ...

Suit claims trucker in crash had worn noise- canceling headphones

HARRISBURG (AP) — Victims of a crash on the Pennsylvania Turnpike that killed five people and hurt nearly all the dozens of passengers on a bus nearly two years ago claim in a lawsuit that one of the drivers was wearing noise-canceling headphones. The wrongful death and negligence lawsuit filed last week in Philadelphia claims FedEx driver Brandon Stowers’ use of the headphones prevented him from hearing warnings that he was about to crash into the scene of the bus wreck near Mount Pleasant. The complaint includes a photo of the driver in the cab wearing headphones. The FedEx ...

Bill outlines rules when district attorneys lose their law license

HARRISBURG (AP) — Procedures for a district attorney’s office to operate when the district attorney’s law license has been suspended or revoked passed the Pennsylvania House unanimously on Tuesday. The bill was amended since its unanimous Senate passage in April, so it must be approved again by that chamber to go to the governor’s desk. It would deem the office of district attorney vacant if the incumbent district attorney is disbarred. If his or her law license is only suspended, they would also be suspended from office until the license is restored or their term expires. ...