Two Republican candidates in Allentown's mayoral race should not be permitted to run for office. That's the contention of two legal challenges filed Wednesday. One of the challenges targets Luiz Garcia. Allentown college student Jessica Pearse claims Garcia should not be on the ballot because he is currently a city employee. Garcia is an Allentown police officer and Pearse claims the city code prohibits anybody from running for political office while employed by the city. Pearse has also filed a challenge against Christopher Pez's campaign, claiming more than a third of Pez's 116 submitted signatures did not come from Allentown registered Republicans, which is required for them to be valid.
Police in Allentown are investigating a Wednesday night armed robbery of a city gas station. Police say a man entered the Speedway in the 1000 block of Lehigh Street just after 8 o'clock last night. His face was covered and he showed a handgun and got away with an undisclosed amount of cash. No one was hurt.
The Great Allentown Fair continues to fill out its Grandstand show lineup. Country superstars Rascal Flatts will be at the fair on Friday, September 1. It'll be their first fair appearance since 2004. Also booked for the Grandstand is a Grammy Award winning a cappella group making their first fair appearance. Pentatonix will be big draw on the night of Saturday, September 2. Tickets for both Pentatonix and Rascall Flatts go on sale March 24 at 10am.
The Lehigh Valley's unemployment rate dropped four-tenths-of-a-point in Janauary. The local 4.8 percent figure is identical to the latest national number and four-tenths-of-a-point lower than Pennsylvania's 5.2 percent figure.
Three people are dead in Schuylkill County following Tuesday's big snowstorm. The county coroner says two men in Ringtown and an elderly woman in Wayne Township all died while shoveling snow. Doctors say it looks like all three had heart attacks. The elderly woman may have died as soon as Monday, but they didn't find her until Wednesday, buried under several inches of snow.
A warning from Pennsylvania's Attorney General about potential scams related to the winter storms. AG Josh Shapiro says past complaints have involved fraudulent snow removal or home repair schemes and fake fundraising efforts. Shapiro says any suspicious activity should be reported to his office's Bureau of Consumer Protection.
U.S. Sen. Bob Casey is urging the Consumer Products Safety Commission to get to the bottom of a deadly house fire in Harrisburg. Casey sent an open letter to the commission this week asking for a determination as to whether a hover board caused the blaze. Casey is also asking the commission to "work with hover board manufacturers to increase recall compliance and educate consumers about the fire risk."
Pennsylvania isn't very dependent on the firearm industry. Financial website wallethub.com has released a list ranking the states and Washington, D.C. on how heavily their economies and citizens rely on the industry. Pennsylvania ranked 31st on the list. Alaska is the most reliant on the gun industry and Rhode Island is the least.
The New Jersey Senate is voting to give police and firefighters control over their retirement fund. The bill expands the board of trustees that would oversee the Police and Firemen's Retirement System. Currently 85,000 retired and active members use the system. Supporters claim the move would limit the influence politics and special interests have over the fund's investments. A chief concern for first responders is restarting cost-of-living adjustments which were suspended in 2011.