PUNXSUTAWNEY, Pa. (AP) — A Pennsylvania doctor stands accused of over-prescribing opioids that authorities say caused two siblings he was treating to overdose, including one who died. State authorities say Henry Dela Torre is charged with violations of the controlled substances act, Medicaid fraud and related offenses. It wasn’t known Sunday if the 68-year-old Du Bois resident has retained an attorney.
Authorities say the probe into Dela Torre started in August 2016 after a female patient fatally overdosed. Punxsutawney police found multiple bottles of prescription opioids in the woman’s name, which police say were prescribed by Dela Torre. The woman’s brother overdosed the following month on opioids prescribed by Dela Torre, authorities said, but he was revived by emergency responders..
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Features
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Americans say they’re increasingly confused and concerned about who can be trusted to tell them the truth about what’s happening in Washington these days. That’s according to interviews and polling over President Donald Trump’s first year in office, when he’s repeated falsehoods and attacked what he calls the “fake news” media.
Americans report they’re scanning various outlets of information, including Trump’s Twitter feed, and that they trust no outlet in particular. Many say they began consuming news about Washington differently since Trump won the presidency in 2016. A Pew Research Center survey last month found that about 2 in 3 American adults say fabricated news stories cause a great deal of confusion about the basic facts of current affairs.
HONOLULU (AP) — The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission says it appears the government of Hawaii didn’t have reasonable safeguards in place that would have prevented the transmission of a false alert about an imminent missile strike. Ajit Pai said in a statement Sunday an FCC investigation is well under way into the false alert that sounded on hundreds of thousands of cellphones across Hawaii.
Officials are gathering facts about how Saturday’s false alert was issued. Pai says information collected so far shows it appears Hawaii didn’t have safeguards or process controls in place. Hawaii’s emergency management agency’s administrator said he took responsibility for the mistake. The state adjutant general said a written report would be prepared. State lawmakers announced they would hold a hearing next Friday.
DETROIT (AP) — Ford Motor Co. says it’s doubling its investment in electric and hybrid vehicles and plans to introduce 40 by 2022. Among them: A hybrid version of the F-150 pickup truck that is due out in 2020. In 2015, Ford pledged to invest $4.5 billion to develop 13 electric and hybrid vehicles by 2020. At the Detroit auto show Sunday, the company says it’s doubling that to $11 billion.
It plans to bring out 24 hybrids and 16 electric vehicles by 2022. Ford’s global markets chief says many current Ford vehicles, like its best-selling F-150, will get hybrid or electric versions. “We want to make a statement about the company that we’re electrifying our iconic vehicles,” Farley says.
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — President Donald Trump defended himself Sunday in the wake of recent disparaging comments about Haiti and African nations, declaring that “I am not a racist.” Trump addressed the issue briefly as he arrived for dinner at his private golf club with House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California.
Asked what he thinks about people who think he is racist, Trump said, “No, No. I am not a racist.” He told reporters: “I am the least racist person you have ever interviewed. That I can tell you.” Trump also denied making the statements attributed to him, but avoided specifics about what he did or did not say. “Did you see what various senators in the room said about my comments?” he asked. “They weren’t made.”
NEW YORK (AP) — Meryl Streep, Liam Neeson, Taraji P. Henson and Paddington Bear and all rushed into movie theaters over Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, but “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle” still roared the loudest with an estimated $27 million in ticket sales, Friday to Sunday.
“Jumanji” easily remained the no. 1 film in North America despite an onslaught of new challengers, according to studio estimates Sunday.” The Sony Pictures release is now approaching $300 million domestically and, after grossing $40 million in China this weekend, a worldwide total of $667 million.
Coming closest was Steven Spielberg’s Pentagon Papers drama “The Post,” starring Streep as Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham and Tom Hanks as editor Ben Bradlee. Twentieth Century Fox is forecasting $18.6 million for the weekend and $22.2 million for the four-day holiday.
BOSTON (AP) — Police say a slow-speed chase in Massachusetts ended when a truck driver ran out of gasoline. The Republican newspaper reports police tried to stop a pickup truck in Ludlow, Massachusetts, on Sunday. Ludlow police trailed the truck into Springfield and Springfield police began assisting in the chase.
The truck pulled over at an intersection. Ludlow police say 37-year-old Corey Moreau told them that he only stopped because he ran out of gas. Police say Moreau had five arrest warrants and was charged with failure to stop for police and other violations.
Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved
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Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — The federal government says grass and guns don’t mix, and that is putting gun owners who use marijuana — and the strongly pro-gun-rights administration of President Donald Trump — in a potentially uncomfortable position.
As gun-loving Pennsylvania becomes the latest state to operate a medical marijuana program, with the first dispensary on track to begin sales next month, authorities are warning patients that federal law bars marijuana users from having guns or ammunition.
“They’re going to have to make a choice,” said John T. Adams, president of the Pennsylvania District Attorneys Association. “They can have their guns or their marijuana, but not both.”
That’s the official line, but the reality of how the policy might be enforced in Pennsylvania and other states is a little muddier. That includes the question of whether people who already own guns might have to surrender them, instead of just being prohibited from making new purchases.
The political sensitivity was underscored Friday when Pennsylvania regulators reversed themselves and announced its registry of medical-pot patients will not be available, as was previously planned, through the state’s law enforcement computer network.
Phil Gruver, a professional auto detailer from Emmaus who received a state medical marijuana card in mid-December, is weighing what to do with his .22-caliber rifle and a handgun he keeps for home defense.
“It’s a violation of my Second Amendment rights,” Gruver said. “I don’t know of any time anyone’s been using marijuana and going out and committing acts of violence with a gun. Most of the time they just sit on their couch and eat pizza.”
State laws allowing medical or, more recently, recreational use of pot have long been at odds with the federal prohibition on gun ownership by those using marijuana. But the government has traditionally taken a hands-off approach. Since 2014, Congress has forbidden the Department of Justice from spending money to prosecute people who grow, sell and use medical pot.
The picture has become murkier under Trump, a Republican whose attorney general, Jeff Sessions, has long denounced the drug. Sessions recently rescinded a Barack Obama-era policy that was deferential to states’ permissive marijuana laws. Now, federal prosecutors in states that allow drug sales must decide whether to crack down on the marijuana trade.
It’s not clear what impact the new policy will have on gun owners who use cannabis as medicine, or even how many people fit the bill. Nor is it clear whether any people who use legally obtained medical marijuana have been prosecuted for owning a gun, although the existence of medical marijuana registries in some states, including Pennsylvania, has some patients concerned.
More than 800,000 guns are sold or transferred in Pennsylvania annually, and more than 10,000 people in the state have signed up for medical marijuana. The registry change on Friday makes it much less likely the state’s medical marijuana users will be flagged when going through a federal gun sales background check.
A spokeswoman for Dave Freed, the new U.S. attorney in Harrisburg, said only that criminal investigations and prosecutions “will be based on a fair and transparent fact-intensive inquiry of individual cases.” State police said it’s up to prosecutors to decide when to bring a case.
The Justice Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has left no doubt where it stands. Last year, the ATF spelled out the marijuana prohibition in boldface type on gun purchase forms.
“Any person who uses or is addicted to marijuana, regardless of whether his or her state has passed legislation authorizing marijuana use for medical purposes … is prohibited by federal law from possessing firearms or ammunition,” ATF spokeswoman Janice L. Kemp said in an email to The Associated Press.
A spokeswoman for the Justice Department referred questions about medical marijuana and guns enforcement to local federal prosecutors and a recent memo from Sessions that does not specifically address the issue.
In Ohio, which has authorized a medical marijuana program, the office of the U.S. attorney for the northern part of the state, Justin Herdman, has said Sessions’ guidance won’t change his case-by-case approach.
The gun-ownership ban has withstood at least one legal challenge. An appeals court in San Francisco, rejecting a challenge on Second Amendment grounds, said in 2016 that Congress reasonably concluded marijuana and other drugs raise the risk of unpredictable behavior.
Meanwhile, some state and local officials, particularly in law enforcement, have sought to crack down.
William Bryson, chairman of the Delaware Police Chiefs’ Council, told state lawmakers in December that people who use marijuana for medical or recreational purposes should be required to have a designation on their driver’s licenses. That would make it easier, he said, for police to enforce the ban.
And last month, a police chief in Hawaii publicized and then quickly rescinded a directive that medical marijuana patients had to give up their handguns. Two people turned in their weapons.
But marijuana activists predict a backlash should federal prosecutors begin going after gun owners who use legally obtained medical marijuana.
The issue has been largely theoretical, but there would be quick pushback if the federal government took a more aggressive stance, said Paul Armentano, deputy director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.
Between 1998 and 2014, nearly 100,000 prospective gun purchasers went home empty-handed because they were flagged as using illegal drugs, according to the ATF. But the agency could not say how many of those used medical or recreational marijuana.
Dean Hazen, an Urbana, Illinois, businessman who helps broker online gun purchases, said a 75-year-old client with a medical marijuana card was turned down when his state firearm-owner identification card was run through the federal background check system.
“He’s got a collection of guns at home,” Hazen said, “and he’s a model citizen.”
Even before his administration took the medical marijuana registry off the Pennsylvania law-enforcement computer network, Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, sought to assure people the state has no plans to take their guns. And last week, state House Republican Leader Dave Reed urged residents to call their congressional representative and “urge them to make gun ownership legal for medical marijuana card holders.”
Kim Stolfer, head of the Pennsylvania organization Firearms Owners Against Crime, pointed out that people who drink heavily or use potent but legal drugs such as opioids or antidepressants can still own a gun.
“You have people that are advancing up in age that need medical marijuana and might have, say, 50 firearms and just realized they sacrificed all of those,” Stolfer said. “Where are they going to turn them in and how are they going to get rid of them?”
