Lifting of COVID-19 mitigation orders in Pa. welcomed, but GOP says it’s overdue
Updated May 04, 2021;
Lawmakers generally cheered Gov. Tom Wolf’s announcement on Tuesday that virtually all of Pennsylvania’s COVID-19 mitigation rules will end on Memorial Day, but some said it’s long overdue.
Republicans and Democrats alike welcomed this long-awaited development that will lift restrictions on seating restrictions in restaurant and bars, capacity limits on public gatherings, and more at 12:01 a.m. on Memorial Day. However, the state’s mask order will remain in place until 70% of Pennsylvania adults are fully vaccinated, Wolf’s office said.
Apr 30, 2021
Successive grand jury investigations dating to the early 2000s exposed the scale of child sexual abuse and cover-up in Pennsylvania’s Roman Catholic Church. The most recent panel of jurors pored over the evidence, then outlined searing findings in a 2018 report: More than 300 priests and had abused more than 1,000 children over a 70-year period in six Roman Catholic dioceses.
It’s advice to right these wrongs? Change laws to protect children and give victims long timed-out of the justice system a temporary window to seek civil damages.
The grand jury, overseen by Attorney General Josh Shapiro, said victims who reported abuse were often blamed, cowed and sometimes silenced with settlements that prohibited them from reporting abusers to law enforcement. And too often, church leaders handled wrongdoing not with a call to police, but in-house with ineffective treatment, then redeployed the predators to offend again.
By the Editorial Board
USA TODAY NETWORK - PENNSYLVANIA
Successive grand jury investigations dating back to the early 2000s exposed the scale of child sexual abuse and cover-up in Pennsylvania’s Roman Catholic Church. The most recent panel of jurors pored over the evidence, then outlined searing findings in a 2018 report: More than 300 priests and had abused more than 1,000 children over a 70-year period in six Roman Catholic dioceses.
It’s advice to right these wrongs? Change laws to protect children and give victims long timed-out of the justice system a temporary window to seek civil damages.
The grand jury, overseen by Attorney General Josh Shapiro, said victims who reported abuse were often blamed, cowed and sometimes silenced with settlements that prohibited them from reporting abusers to law enforcement. And too often, church leaders handled wrongdoing not with a call to police, but in-house with ineffective treatment, then redeployed the predators to offend again.
With three Pennsylvania disaster declarations underway and voters about to weigh in on who controls them, talk of who is best suited to do the job is becoming a high-profile topic in Harrisburg.
Apr 20, 2021
Nike will lease a 1 million square-foot warehouse in Bethlehem, a move that is expected to bring hundreds of jobs to the city. The warehouse, which will be in the Majestic Bethlehem Center on old Bethlehem Steel land on Commerce Center Boulevard, is expected to open in mid-summer, according to city Mayor Bob Donchez, who says the warehouse will bring at least 250 jobs to the city.
The Pennsylvania Department of Health added 5675 new cases of coronavirus to the state s overall total, which now sits at 1,109,291. Those new cases are over a two-day span. During those two days, 29 new COVID-related deaths were also reported, leaving Pennsylvania with 25,690 since the pandemic began. Statewide percent positivity for the seven days ending April 15th stood at 9.6-percent.