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Franklin Pierce University now has a “Safe Space Pledge” listed on a website dedicated to “student conduct and community standards.” According to the pledge, it is a student’s “responsibility to be an ally,” noting that “a Raven (the university’s mascot) demonstrates integrity and respect for the community.”

Apparently three Philadelphia-area schools have decided they can't wait until Labor Day to start molding and shaping the young minds attached to the students who enroll there. Swarthmore, Haverford and Bryn Mawr got together to offer a “Tri-College Identity, Equity, and Social Justice Summer Institute.” As Swarthmore's pr department explains in a press release: "The Tri-College Identity, Equity and Social Justice Summer Institute is designed to help students enhance both their leadership skills and their individual/group identity issues within the context of exploring issues of gender, race, sexuality, socio-economic class, spirituality, power, and privilege. To this end, intensive workshops on...

The resurrected feeling of American possibility came not from pontificating TV pundits or a radio host in a studio miles away. Optimism arrived here in Gillette, Wyo., because of what people were seeing: the unemployment lines getting shorter and their daily commutes getting longer. Tom Gorton, 41, drove through those increasingly congested streets in his Arnold Machinery truck late on a spring afternoon, under the watch of mountains covered in white from a spring snowstorm. As Gorton settled behind his desk, he was heartened to see how messy it was with orders, one year after hundreds of layoffs at two...

So it was clear to her how bad things had gotten two years ago, when young coal miners she'd sold brand new trucks to just a day or two earlier started bringing them back. At the time, it seemed like a new coal company was declaring bankruptcy every week and the laid-off miners weren't able to make the payments. But now, for the first time in roughly seven years, a brand new coal mine is opening in Somerset County - the Acosta deep mine, just three miles from Maurer's dealership. "We're hopeful - it means we're going to have things...

SOMERSET, Pa. - Coal has never been a dirty word around these parts. But even veteran miners can't remember holding a ribbon-cutting and a lavish grand opening for what amounts to a hole in the ground. That changes today. In a highly unusual move, Corsa Coal of Canonsburg, Pa., will fete its new Acosta Deep Mine, located 11 miles north of Somerset, with so much pomp and circumstance that even President Donald Trump was invited. "It's in the spotlight all right," says Corsa Senior Vice President Joseph Gallo, who's overseeing the mine's opening. "I don't quite understand it, but it...

A man who police say trapped and killed three co-workers inside a closed northeast Pennsylvania grocery store overnight Thursday left an online trail behind that includes praise for the 1999 Columbine High School shooters and expressions of deep frustration about the world around him.

An armed man pulled over after riding a dirt bike in North Philadelphia was shot and killed by a police officer during a confrontation Thursday evening, officials said, with surveillance video showing the officer shot the man while he was running away. "It was a very violent encounter," Police Commissioner Richard Ross said. The explosive scene evolved around 6:40 p.m. on the 4100 block of Whitaker Avenue near the southern edge of the Feltonville neighborhood when an officer transporting people to the Special Victims Unit saw the dirt bike rider driving erratically and stopped to tell the man to stop,...

SHENANGO TOWNSHIP (KDKA) — The proposed sale of the former New Castle Youth Development Center has raised alarms in Shenango Township, Lawrence County. Little is known about the highest bidder, HIRA Educational Services, and that’s the problem. Townspeople are suspicious. “I would hope the governor would say this is all null and void. We’re going to open this up to bidding again,” said Shirley Sallmen, a resident and critic of the state’s bidding process. Now, three state lawmakers – Sen. Elder Vogel, Rep. Chris Sainato and Rep. Aaron Bernstine – are asking the same. They have sent a letter to...

You could still see his mouth and his chin, but only the right side of his face from the nose up. The rest of the photo and the document on which it was printed -- except for the man's first and last name and a broken series of numbers -- was charred or burnt away. Investigators searching the area in Pennsylvania where United Airlines Flight 93 crashed on Sept. 11, 2001, found this telltale piece of evidence. It was the tourist visa that let Ziad Jarrah enter the United States from Germany. On the face of it, Jarrah was a...

Barred from placing a billboard on his property, one Windsor Township property owner decided to warn others of the township's "dictatorial" ways. A truck displaying a sign that reads "Caution Entering Dictatorial Windsor Township" first appeared Saturday parked in a lot at the corner of East Prospect and Cape Horn roads. A dictatorship is a form of government in which absolute power is exercised by a single person, known as a dictator. The truck is owned by J&K Salvage, which offers customers the ability to rent out its trucks as a form of mobile advertising. This particular truck was rented...

Just hours before his trial was set to begin, a desperate Bill Cosby sought an eleventh hour plea deal, RadarOnline.com can exclusively reveal. According to insiders, the disgraced comic begged for a deal that would include no admission of guilt. Meanwhile, prosecutors want the 79-year-old to face the music. A source inside the Montgomery County District Attorney’s office said D.A. Kevin Steele demanded “significant” jail time, a large fine and community service. “Bill Cosby wants Steele to agree to a deal in which an announcement would be made basically saying that the prosecution couldn’t prove its case and that the...

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — A Pittsburgh forensic pathologist says the investigation into the JFK assassination is far from over. On Nov. 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was murdered in broad daylight in Dallas, Texas. The Warren Commission concluded Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone when he shot the president from the 6th floor of the Texas Book Depository. For years, many have doubted those conclusions and believed it was a greater conspiracy. One of the most outspoken critics of the Warren Report is nationally-acclaimed forensic pathologist Dr. Cyril Wecht.

A shelter in place is in effect for Doylestown Township, Bucks County residents after a prisoner escaped Sunday night.

In response to misconceptions and some outrage on social media, Lower Merion police said Friday they were not involved in detaining a Honduran man outside his Haverford apartment last month. ---SNIP--- ICE agents said they were going to call Lower Merion police to break open one of the car’s windows since her husband wouldn’t get out. “They were using Lower Merion police as a threat tactic,” she said. “It was a very traumatic time for me. … They were putting a lot of resources into detaining someone who was trying to adjust his status and who had no criminal record,...

The man who had been sought this week in the stabbing of City Councilman David Oh turned himself in to police Saturday morning, according to multiple reports. Shawn Yarbray, 24, surrendered to Southwest Detectives and is set to be arraigned late Saturday night or early Sunday morning, Lt. John Walker told the Philadelphia Inquirer.

President Trump’s supporters plan to hold a “Pittsburgh Not Paris” rally Saturday in front of the White House to demonstrate support for his decision to pull out of the Paris climate change agreement, countering expected protests by Democrats and liberal activists. The rally, named after Mr. Trump’s remark about representing “citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris” when announcing he was ripping up the Obama-era agreement, was organized by the Republican Party of Fairfax Country, Virginia, in the D.C. suburbs. The Trump campaign urged the president’s supporters in the area to attend the event Saturday from 10 a.m. until noon across from...

Police say a Pennsylvania man was hosting a kindergarten graduation party for his son and several other children when he was fatally shot. Witnesses tell state police that a fight or rough play between the victim's 6-year-old son and another 6-year-old led to an argument between adults at a Wednesday evening party in Hanover Township, near Wilkes-Barre. Authorities say the argument ended with 27-year-old Tremaine Jamison, of New York City, shooting 29-year-old Devon Brown in the head.

Three former Penn State administrators are going to jail for their part in the Jerry Sandusky scandal at Penn State. [Snip] Former President Graham Spanier, 68, was sentenced to four to 12 months, with the first two in jail and the rest under house arrest. He was convicted of child endangerment. Former athletic director Tim Curley, 63, received a sentence of seven to 23 months, with three in jail. Former vice president Gary Schultz, 67, was given six to 23 months, with two months behind bars. They pleaded guilty to child endangerment. "It really sickens me to think I might...

A Philadelphia principal suffered serious injuries when he was struck in the face with a brick at dismissal — a symptom, some administrators say, of a larger problem at some city schools. The incident happened Wednesday outside Fitler Academics Plus School in Germantown, officials said.

A Pennsylvania doctor with an assault-style rifle and a handgun told an acquaintance that he was driving to see the president and that he had survival supplies, multiple cellphones and enough ammunition to make his car resemble Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh “on a camping trip,” according to charging documents filed Thursday. Bryan Moles, 43, was arrested at Trump International Hotel in downtown Washington on Wednesday and faces charges of unlawful possession and transportation of a firearm. He was not licensed to carry a gun in the District of Columbia, which has strict gun laws, authorities said. A District of...