Free Republic

Charlie Dent, the Allentown congressman who has frequently clashed with President Trump and become one of the most prominent national voices for centrist Republicans, will not seek reelection next year, he announced Thursday night.

Allentown Mayor Ed Pawlowski, who is running for a fourth term leading Pennsylvania’s third-largest city, has been charged in federal court in a pay-to-play scheme, his lawyer said. The charges were filed Tuesday but sealed, said Jack McMahon, Pawlowski’s attorney, adding that they will be made public Wednesday morning. It is the culmination of a lengthy investigation that came to light with an FBI raid on Allentown City Hall on July 2, 2015, and has since cast a pall over the city at a critical time in its revitalization.

A Pennsylvania man used a homemade, high-pressure air gun to fatally shoot a neighbor with whom he had an affair, a prosecutor and police said. Josef Raszler, 35, was charged Wednesday with criminal homicide in the Sept. 13 shooting of 46-year-old Stephanie Roof. She was shot with a homemade metal projectile about 1 a.m. in the driveway of her home across the street from Raszler’s in Lower Macungie Township. Lehigh County District Attorney Jim Martin said investigators haven’t found the weapon Raszler allegedly used, but they have evidence he researched making it and practiced with it at his parents’ lake...

ALLENTOWN, Pa. — Hookah smoke drifted through the restaurant as Elias Shetayh and Aziz Wehbey spoke intently about their support for President Trump, whose temporary halt on immigration from war-torn Syria — their homeland — had touched off a political firestorm. Nearby, a waitress carried out several platters of Mediterranean food to a large Arab American family. Trump is right, in a way, to do what he’s doing,” Shetayh said, discussing the executive order banning certain immigrants from entry into the United States. “This country is going into a disaster. Allentown and surrounding Lehigh County have one of the country’s...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Delta Air Lines is apologizing for not removing a passenger from a flight to Pennsylvania who professed his support for President- elect Donald Trump, and insulted those who didn’t. The Allentown Morning Call first reported on a video posted on Facebook by a fellow passenger on the Tuesday flight from Atlanta to Allentown. The video shows the man standing in the aisle, yelling and insulting Hillary Clinton supporters. In the video, the man asks loudly: “We got some Hillary bitches on here?”

When Hispanic residents of downtown Allentown want to grab a bite, get their hair cut or shop for groceries, they often head to Seventh Street — but they don’t call it that. To them, it’s Calle Siete. A councilman wants to honor the city’s growing Hispanic population by installing decorative Spanish-language street signs on one of its main commercial thoroughfares, where a profusion of Latino-owned restaurants, barbershops and corner stores reflects the rapidly changing demographics of the state’s third-largest city. Hispanics now represent nearly half the population of 120,000. But where Democratic Councilman Julio Guridy and other residents and business...

AP November 20, 2015, 12:55 PM In America's Little Syria, a divide on accepting refugees ALLENTOWN, Pa. -- A few days ago, a pastor asked Syrian-born restaurant owner Marie Jarrah to donate food to a welcoming event for recently arrived Syrian refugees. Jarrah, who said she regularly helps people in need, declined. Like many of Allentown's establishment Syrians, she doesn't think it's a good idea to bring refugees to the city. She clung to that view even before last week's terrorist attacks in Paris. "Problems are going to happen," said Jarrah, co-owner of Damascus Restaurant in a heavily Syrian enclave....

Lehigh University engineering professor Yujie Ding and his wife, Yuliya Zotova, appeared to be talented researchers dedicated to advancing science, jurors in their federal fraud trial said. But the Upper Saucon Township couple's commitment to a $700,000 NASA research program turned fraudulent, jurors said, when Ding and Zotova failed to tell the space agency that Zotova's role in the project had ended. The jury Friday found Ding and Zotova guilty of six out of 10 counts of wire fraud for sending NASA fake invoices from the research company Ding owned and Zotova controlled.

ALLENTOWN, Pa. (AP) — A few days ago, a pastor asked Syrian-born restaurant owner Marie Jarrah to donate food to a welcoming event for recently arrived Syrian refugees. Jarrah, who said she regularly helps people in need, declined.

ALLENTOWN, Pa. - Four Allentown police officers are recovering after being injured in a school fight on Thursday. Police said it happened while police were responding to a student brawl outside of Allen High School. According to police, two officers suffered moderate injuries, two others had minor injuries.

Mayors from eighteen U.S. cities signed a letter to President Obama saying they are willing to take even more refugees than what has been proposed by the administration. “We will welcome the Syrian families to make homes and new lives in our cities,” wrote the mayors, all of whom are part of the Cities United for Immigration Action coalition. “Indeed, we are writing to say that we stand ready to work with your Administration to do much more and to urge you to increase still further the number of Syrian refugees the United States will accept for resettlement.” “This is...

Former professional wrestling star Jimmy "Superfly" Snuka was charged Tuesday with third-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter in the death of his mistress more than three decades ago. Prosecutors in Lehigh County announced the results of a grand jury investigation into the death of Nancy Argentino, 23, of New York. Snuka, who had been at a World Wrestling Federation taping at the Allentown Fairgrounds, told police shortly after Argentino's death that he had returned to the couple's Whitehall Township hotel room to find her unresponsive in bed. She was pronounced dead at a hospital several hours later. An autopsy determined she...

The family of Angela Steigerwalt burst into sobs Tuesday in a Lehigh County courtroom as jurors found an Allentown man guilty of strangling her and setting her body ablaze. The Lehigh County jury deliberated for more than 5 hours before convicting Anthony Heath of all the charges against him: murder in the first degree, abuse of a corpse, tampering with evidence, theft, receiving stolen property and access device fraud.

<p>ALLENTOWN, Pa (AP) — The city of Allentown is repealing sections of its gun ordinance in an effort to avoid being sued under a new Pennsylvania law. The Morning Call of Allentown reported that the city council last Wednesday voted unanimously to overturn a ban on weapons in parks, reverse a prohibition on weapons on city property and end a requirement that people report when their guns are lost or stolen. The city also is adding new language to protect the use of weapons in self-defense and to say the ordinance doesn't apply to lawful hunting and trapping. A state law passed last year gives the National Rifle Association and similar groups the ability to challenge illegal gun laws. Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and other cities have already been targeted for legal challenges.</p>

A-Treat Beverages has shut down operations after nearly a century of business in the Lehigh Valley. The company, headquartered at 2001 Union Boulevard in Allentown, notified its customers Friday afternoon that it had ceased operations, according to Eric White, a spokesman for Redner’s Warehouse Markets. A-Treat, a Lehigh Valley staple, had notified Redner’s chief operating officer, and White said he learned of the closing about 3:30 p.m. The A-Treat products currently on store shelves will be the only ones available to retailers, White said. A-Treat self-distributes, meaning each Redner’s branch was on its own delivery schedule, so White couldn’t say...

FULL TITLE Allentown woman charged after admitting leaving threatening messages for Rep. Mario Scavello An Allentown woman is awaiting a district court preliminary hearing, charged with leaving threatening, vulgar messages at state Rep. Mario Scavello's Pocono Township office last month. "With your backwards (expletive) views on abortion, you should be taken out back and shot," Sharon Marie Manning, 47, is accused of saying in one of two Sept. 18 voice mails to Scavello's office. "You're a (expletive) and an (expletive) and and you deserve to die." Manning allegedly left a followup voice mail minutes later, stating, "If your jackass self...

Katheryn Deprill has been dubbed “The Burger King Baby”. Deprill, who is now 27, was abandoned in the bathroom of an Allentown, Pennsylvania Burger King restaurant. Deprill knew that she was adopted, but did not know she was abandoned until she was twelve, when a school assignment prompted her to question her adoptive parents. Those parents, Brenda and Carl Hollis, showed her the newspaper clippings that detailed Katheryn’s abandonment in 1986. Katheryn read the clippings, and was astounded at the story.

An Allentown abortion clinic with connections to a controversial New Jersey abortion doctor has been ordered to close by the Pennsylvania Department of Health. Allentown Medical Services at 2200 Hamilton Street, Suite 200, had its registration revoked Tuesday night due to an "infrastructure failure" caused by the clinic's landlord, David A. Klein Real Estate, locking the tenant out of the facility, according to the department's letter to the abortion provider. The clinic's lease expired March 31 and has not been renewed. Bridget Wilson, a spokeswoman for American Women's Services, said the group is looking to re-establish a clinic in the...

In light of a lawsuit brought against Allentown by a builders and contractors association, city council voted Wednesday to repeal a previously approved law requiring contractors to hire union workers for major city projects. In December 2010, that same council passed a bill requiring contractors to sign project labor agreements, which would require bidders to hire employees from local unions on projects costing more than $250,000 that receive state or federal support. But that led to a federal lawsuit filed against the city in October by the eastern Pennsylvania chapter of the Associated Builders and Contractors, which said the bill...

To the Editor: A common image of Christ throughout Christianity is that of the "Good Shepherd." Christ compared Himself to a shepherd and stated that, "I know my sheep and my sheep know me." As Catholics, we believe that the bishop of a diocese acts in Christ's place as a shepherd for the people. This is symbolized by the bishop's crozier (a staff that resembles a shepherd's staff). This week the students in the Catholic schools of Schuylkill County have been able to witness the shepherding actions of their bishop, Bishop John Barres. On Monday, Bishop Barres visited St. Stephen...