Kane officially heading for jail: AP PA Headlines, Features, Scores & Skeds

AP PA Headlines 11/27/18

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania’s former top state prosecutor is likely to soon find herself behind bars, more than two years after being convicted and sentenced for leaking grand jury information and lying about it.  The state Supreme Court announced Monday it will not review former state Attorney General Kathleen Kane’s conviction, and the Montgomery County district attorney’s office said it will ask a judge Tuesday morning to revoke her bail.

The justices will not reconsider Kane’s claims she was not properly convicted of two counts of felony perjury and seven misdemeanor charges, including obstruction and conspiracy.  Kane, 52, a Democrat, has been out on $75,000 bail since her October 2016 sentencing to 10 to 23 months in jail.  A spokeswoman for the prosecutors’ office in suburban Philadelphia said the defense and prosecution could agree on when she should report to the county lockup, or the judge could set a date or order her to report immediately.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, fresh off winning a third term in office, is floating the idea of running for president and saying he is battle-tested in a state critical for him and his fellow Democrats in 2020.  Casey’s campaign bolstered the approach Monday, releasing a memo that makes the case for electoral effectiveness in Pennsylvania, which was a stepping stone in President Donald Trump’s path to the White House.

Casey said that he won his race on the issues he believes will be most prominent in a presidential campaign — health care and the middle class among them — and that he won in a state that is a must-win for Democrats running for president.  “For a Democrat, if you lose Pennsylvania, it’s game over, you can’t win, the math doesn’t work,” he said in an interview Monday. “And I want to make sure that our nominee can win this state.”

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — A judge is dismissing an absentee-ballot lawsuit in a state Senate contest in suburban Philadelphia where the six-term Republican incumbent leads a Democratic challenger by about 75 votes.  A Bucks County judge on Monday threw out the lawsuit filed by Democrat Tina Davis in a bid to force county officials to count what her lawsuit says are at least 216 absentee ballots received after the legal deadline.

The judge’s one-page order didn’t explain the dismissal, and Davis’ campaign says it hasn’t decided whether to appeal.  Davis’ lawsuit had contended that absentee voters in Pennsylvania can receive a ballot too late to return it before the deadline.  Republican Sen. Robert Tomlinson was seeking a seventh four-year term in office in the Nov. 6 election. Davis is a state representative.

Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Features

NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump is raising the possibility of starting “our own Worldwide Network” to counter news spread internationally by CNN.  Trump said via Twitter on Monday that CNN “has a powerful voice portraying the United States in an unfair and false way. Something has to be done.”

It wasn’t immediately clear what he meant. The U.S. government already operates Voice of America, which last year reached some 275 million people worldwide with news reports from the United States available on television, radio, online and social media.

CNN had no immediate comment about the new criticism by the president.  The president has frequently criticized CNN and its reporters. His administration recently backed down from its effort to ban reporter Jim Acosta from the White House.  It wasn’t known why he was focusing on CNN’s worldwide reach. CNN International is the most widely distributed television news network overseas, with BBC World News second.

Trump said he wanted a worldwide network “to show the World the way we really are. GREAT!”

The president’s favorite news network, Fox News Channel, is available in nearly 100 countries, although not distributed as widely as CNN. The president has complained about being in hotel rooms abroad and having no alternative to CNN.

DETROIT (AP) — Patricia Hall went to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum in 2016 hoping to learn more about the music performed by prisoners in World War II death camps.   The University of Michigan music theory professor heard there were manuscripts, but she was “completely thrown” by what she found in the card catalogs: Unexpectedly upbeat and popular songs titles that translated to “The Most Beautiful Time of Life” and “Sing a Song When You’re Sad,” among others. More detective work during subsequent trips to the Polish museum over the next two years led her to several handwritten manuscripts arranged and performed by the prisoners, and ultimately, the first performance of one of those manuscripts since the war.

“I’ve used the expression, ‘giving life,’ to this manuscript that’s been sitting somewhere for 75 years,” Hall told The Associated Press on Monday. “Researching one of these manuscripts is just the beginning — you want people to be able to hear what these pieces sound like. … I think one of the messages I’ve taken from this is the fact that even in a horrendous situation like a concentration camp, that these men were able to produce this beautiful music.”

NEW YORK (AP) — Misinformation, as opposed to disinformation, was chosen Monday as Dictionary.com’s word of the year on the tattered coattails of “toxic,” picked earlier this month for the same honor by Oxford Dictionaries in these tumultuous times. Jane Solomon, a linguist-in-residence at Dictionary, said in a recent interview that her site’s choice of “mis” over “dis” was deliberate, intended to serve as a “call to action” to be vigilant in the battle against fake news, flat earthers and anti-vaxxers, among other conduits.

It’s the idea of intent, whether to inadvertently mislead or to do it on purpose, that the Oakland, California-based company wanted to highlight. The company decided it would go high when others have spent much of 2018 going low.  “The rampant spread of misinformation is really providing new challenges for navigating life in 2018,” Solomon told The Associated Press ahead of the word of the year announcement. “Misinformation has been around for a long time, but over the last decade or so the rise of social media has really, really changed how information is shared. We believe that understanding the concept of misinformation is vital to identifying misinformation as we encounter it in the wild, and that could ultimately help curb its impact.”

In studying lookups on the site that trended this year, Dictionary noticed “our relationship with truth is something that came up again and again,” she said.

BRANDON, S.D. (AP) — A South Dakota man has his lost wallet back with some extra cash thanks to a stranger.   Hunter Shamatt thought he’d never seen the wallet again when he lost it on a flight to Las Vegas for his sister’s wedding. Inside was $60 cash and a check for about $400.

Shamatt tells KSFY-TV he received a package a few days later along with the wallet and a letter. The stranger wrote he found the wallet wedged between a seat and a wall on a flight from Omaha, Nebraska, to Denver. He added $40 so Shamatt would have “an even $100” to celebrate the wallet’s return. The stranger only signed the letter with initials. Shamatt’s was able to thank the man after tracking down his return address in Omaha.

Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved

Scores & Skeds

Penn State men’s basketball is back on the air tonight on WKOK and WKOK.com, as the Nittany Lions host Virginia Tech. Tip-off is at 7, and we will join our coverage already in progress after Talk to Santa.

Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.