For the second time in three presidential elections, a Republican in the running is visiting Worth & Co., a non-union Bucks County manufacturer in Pipersville whose president and CEO has given tens of thousands to Republican campaigns over the last two decades.
Donald Trump's running mate, Gov. Mike Pence, is following in the footsteps of Sen. John McCain, who visited the company headquarters in 2008.
The AFL-CIO, a national labor organization representing 12.5 million workers, said the campaign stop for Pence "falls in line with his anti-worker legacy as Governor of Indiana, where he worked hard to repeal the state's 80-year-old law that ensured fair wages for construction workers."
Worth & Co.'s president and CEO, Stephen Worth, touts his business as "the largest merit shop mechanical systems provider in the tri-state area."
Pence will tour the facility on Applebutter Road in the afternoon and give a short speech, according to the Trump campaign. Earlier in the afternoon, Pence will take a private tour of Tech Tube, a Montgomery County manufacturer of specialty tubing and fabricated parts for industries like aerospace and medical supply.
Tickets for 4 p.m. public event at Worth & Co. are still available. They are on a first-come, first-serve basis, according to the campaign.
In June 2008, McCain came as the Republican presidential nominee to the Pipersville business, which employs more than 600 people in Bucks County and Delaware.
Worth, a longtime donor to GOP candidates according to federal campaign finance records, has also given thousands to a political action committee called Associated Builders and Contractors, also known as the ABC PAC. The PAC advocates for a "free enterprise approach that awards contracts based solely on merit, regardless of labor affiliation." Worth has also given occasionally to Bucks County Democrats running for office. In total, Worth has given $73,000 to federal candidates and PACs since 1997.
In welcoming Pence, Worth said in a press release, "We look forward to hosting Gov. Mike Pence tomorrow and are privileged to have the opportunity to showcase our company (the largest merit shop mechanical systems provider in the tri-state area), promote the power of free enterprise, highlight career opportunities in the construction trade and support our local community.”
You can WATCH Pence's town hall meeting LIVE on this page at 4 p.m.
A judge set bail at $1 million cash for a man accused of beating his girlfriend's toddler son to death, crushing the boy's liver, in South Jersey over the weekend in a fight that allegedly stemmed from the boy's mother buying the wrong groceries.
Judge Edward McBride arraigned Zachary Tricoche, 24, in the defendant's first court appearance Tuesday afternoon in Jamil "JB" Baskerville Jr.'s death.
Authorities said the 2-year-old boy's mother called 9-1-1 Saturday night when she realized JB was unresponsive in the Pennsauken apartment on Mansion Boulevard near Frosthoffer Avenue where they live. But it was too late: Doctors at Cooper University Hospital pronounced the little boy dead shortly after midnight Sunday. Authorities said JB suffered injuries including severe blunt-force trauma to his organs and torso area, along with internal bleeding.
The medical examiner ruled that JB bled to death internally after having his liver crushed.
Tricoche faces charges including first-degree murder.
In court, prosecutors mentioned an affidavit of probable cause that states Tricoche began arguing with the boy's mother and shoved her Saturday night when she returned home with groceries but hadn't purchased the food that Tricoche likes.
JB became upset at seeing his mother shoved that the 29-pound boy stepped in to intervene. Tricoche, enrage, shoved the boy so hard that Jamil hit the wall and struck his head, said prosecutors.
Tricoche then struck the boy again while telling JB to put his hands up and fight like a grown man.
Police investigated and quickly arrested Tricoche, who has past charges/convictions including drug trafficking and hindering apprehension, said prosecutors. Due to the flight risk, the judge set the bail at $1 million. Tricoche had no public defender in court Tuesday.
A source told NBC10 two of JB's siblings were also injured by Tricoche and more charges could be on the way.
Neighbors told NBC10 the family moved in only a month ago and mostly kept to themselves.
"It breaks my heart," said Mabel Stevenson. "I can't even imagine what the parent, the family, feel like."
Emergency crews rescued a man who became trapped between two buildings in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, reportedly after trying to jump from one rooftop to another to impress a woman he had just met.
The man, whose name wasn't immediately released, was freed about 6 a.m. Tuesday. He'd been trapped about four hours after falling awkwardly into the narrow, debris-filled space between the buildings. Police say the man reported an ankle injury; he was bleeding, but waved to TV news cameras as he was wheeled on a gurney to an ambulance.
At one point, crews broke a hole through a Qdoba restaurant in an unsuccessful effort to reach him. A medic was eventually lowered on a rope to reach the man.
Authorities say the man and woman reached the roof by climbing a fire escape.
THIS IS WHERE THE “REAL” DEBATE IS
Ask just about any climate scientist and they’ll tell you that the climate is warming, and most of that warming is due to human activity. Period. But ask if a record flood, or hurricane, or blizzard, or wildfire, or drought has been made worse due to climate change (or global warming, depending on which term you choose). You’ll probably get a lot of different answers. THIS is where debate among climate scientists is REAL.
It’s called “Attribution Science," and it is a rather recent development. For decades, climate scientists and meteorologists kept quoting the same line after each weather disaster: “No single extreme event can be blamed on global warming” (or something close to that). It quickly closed any debate environmental activists tried to start. It was easy. But it’s not easy anymore.
Computer models of future climate have long shown that the future will include:
*more (and worse) heat waves
*more (and worse) droughts
*more (and worse) floods
*more (and worse) wildfires
But the question always was: “How far in the future do we expect this increase to start? “ Many of us talked about how all these above things would happen in decades to come. But a series of incredible record events got some thinking differently. Had the expected future changes already started?
THE BLIZZARD OF ’96: THE TALK BEGINS
I remember questions about the possible effect of global warming on the Blizzard of ’96 in Philadelphia, when we broke our all-time snowstorm record by an amazing amount. The old record: 21.3”. The new record: 30.7”. How can a place with detailed records going back 120+ years break a record by so much? There were a lot of articles about the possible connection, even in our local papers:
http://www.newsweek.com/global-warming-176896
….and many more….
But most scientists (including me) repeated the established line: “No single storm can be blamed on global warming.” We even did an in-depth special report on the possible connection. I got the chance to interview the late Dr. Jerry Mahlman, Director of the GFDL, a top government research organization. Even though he said, “The debate is over,” when it came to whether global warming was real (1996!), he scoffed at the idea that the blizzard was caused (or even significantly aided) by global warming.
MORE STORMS, MORE RECORDS, MORE MINDS CHANGED
As the 90s came to a close and the new century began, we started noticing more and more extreme weather-from heat waves and drought to record snowstorms-and incredible floods. With each event, our “defenses” got a bit lower.
All of the below happened in the U.S. There were obviously many others in different parts of the world (info from NCDC-National Climatic Data Center):
1998: severe drought/heat wave- kills 200
1999: severely dry and hot-kills 500
2000: drought/heat wave-kills 140
2001: remnants of Tropical Storm produce 30-40 inches of rain
$11 billion damage-kills 43
2003: record 1-week total 400 tornadoes-kills 51
2004: series of hurricane strikes in Florida-kills more than 150
More than $70 Billion damage
2005: Katrina-kills 1800+. Damage $154 billion
2006: numerous wildfires-kills 28. Record area burned
2008: 2 separate tornado outbreaks-kills 70. Total 320+ tornadoes
2008: massive flooding in Midwest-kills 24. Damage $11 billion
2008: Hurricane Ike (largest on record)-kills 112. Damage $33 billion
2011: Blizzard Midwest to Northeast-kills 36
2011: 4 massive tornado outbreaks-kills 545. Total 746 tornadoes
2011: Drought/heat wave-kills 95. Damage $13 billion
2012: 6 separate outbreaks with 20+ tornadoes-Damage $17 billion
2012: Superstorm Sandy-kills 159. Damage $68 billion
2012: Drought/heat wave-kills 123. Damage $31 billion
2013: Drought/heat wave-kills 53. Damage $11 billion
This was a 15 year period that started getting more and more meteorologists and climate scientists wondering more and more about whether we can ATTRIBUTE at least some of those events to the changing climate.
We started hearing experts saying that “the dice are loaded” toward more extreme events, and that “it’s the atmosphere on steroids." And those who didn’t agree with those statements had to say it over and over. Every time a major disaster occurred, the debate rose up again.
ATTRIBUTION SCIENCE
But most of us needed something more than suspicions. We needed to see a concrete, specific reason for the extremes. What is the cause and effect relationship?
One of the first widely publicized studies was from Dr. Jennifer Francis of Rutgers. As you saw above, the year 2012 had numerous extreme events, and that was the year her research became known:
Her theory was that the rapid ice melt in the Arctic was causing:
1. Warming in the Arctic (more of the sun’s rays get absorbed in water than over ice)
2. This leads to less of a temperature contrast from the Arctic to the mid-latitudes and tropics
3. Since jet streams are related to temperature differences, they become “wavier," instead of more west to east
4. This leads to more cut-off LOWS in the upper atmosphere
5. Which leads to more intense and slow-moving storms
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/linking_weird_weather_to_rapid_warming_of_the_arctic/2501/
That seemed like a reasonable cause and effect, and later papers expanded on that theory. It even helped explain the unprecedented sharp left turn that Sandy took. Since her papers came out right around that time, they gained even more publicity. And, in time, other climate scientists either agreed with the theory or did their own research that agreed with it.
That seemed like a reasonable cause and effect, and later papers expanded on that theory. It even helped explain the unprecedented sharp left turn that Sandy took. Since her papers came out right around that time, they gained even more publicity. And, in time, other climate scientists either agreed with the theory or did their own research that agreed with it.
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MORE RECORD FLOODS, HEAT, WILDFIRES, TYPHOONS, ETC.
So now, every record-smashing event seems to be tied to climate change. Just recently, the devastating floods in Ellicott City, MD and Louisiana have been added to the list. And, at the same time, major wildfires were hitting California-again.
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IT’S NOT THAT SIMPLE
Yes, it would be easy to say that every record event in weather has been created, or made worse, by climate change. But we’ve seen extreme weather and record weather ever since the beginning of time. Weather is naturally variable, so how can we tell that any single one has an “unnatural” aid? Attribution Science is trying to answer those questions.
Below is one such attempt-from the National Academy of Sciences. Some types of extreme events have more obvious ties to climate change than others. Note how both extreme heat and extreme cold are at the top of the list.
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SO, WHAT WAS THE CLIMATE CHANGE IMPACT ON LOUISIANA FLOOD?
It will take months of research for respected scientific papers to come out and see how much of a tie there is to climate change. Attempts are being made for those attribution studies to come faster than they used to.
Was there more moisture in the atmosphere because of the increase in water vapor due to climate change? Yes. But was it enough to say that there wouldn’t have been devastating flooding without climate change? The added moisture probably made it worse, but was it 2% worse, 20% worse, or more? The science is still too primitive to say with confidence.
Below are a few articles related to this subject, if you’re interested in more detail.
These extremes of the past 15-20 years have me wondering if 15-20 years from now, scientists will be wondering how we missed such obvious changes in our climate. By then, the extremes of today may seem modest by comparison.
Glenn “Hurricane” Schwartz,
Chief Meteorologist, NBC10 Philadelphia
Fifteen of the 42 people hurt at a Snoop Dogg concert in Camden earlier this month have retained one of Philadelphia's top injury attorneys, who said Tuesday that he would provide an update on the possible class-action case.
The scary scene Aug. 5 inside BB&T Pavilion, the large music venue on the Delaware Riverfront, was captured in several cell phone videos. The surreal visuals show a sudden collapse of a railing and a mass of fans falling roughly eight feet down a wall to a concrete walkway below. One person suffered serious head injuries.
Snoop and another performer were rushed off the stage, which was set up in a location just feet from the walkway that normally separates the venue's seated area and the general admission lawn.
Attorney Robert Mongeluzzi, of Saltz, Mongeluzzi, Barrett & Bendesky, will give an update Wednesday morning on his firm's investigation into what caused the collapse, he said in a statement.
He did not say initially whether a lawsuit would be filed, but a day after the collapse, he urged the operator of BB&T, LiveNation, not to reopen until definite answers were known about the cause of the collapse.
“Railing collapses at concerts occur because they’ve either been: improperly designed, poorly maintained, or due to a lack of or lax security personnel," Mongeluzzi said.
The venue, which has previously been called Susquehanna Bank Center and Tweeter Center, was inspected hours after the incident and cleared by Camden county and city officials to host a concert the next night.
LiveNation went ahead with the scheduled show, though the entertainment company did issue condolences to the injured fans.
"We were saddened that several dozen people, including Live Nation employees, sustained injuries resulting from a railing section collapse during the Snoop Dogg & Wiz Khalifa concert at Camden's BB&T Pavilion on Friday night," company spokesman Victor Trevino said in a statement Aug. 6. "Live Nation is closely following the recovery of the injured fans and employees as well as actively working with authorities and structural engineers to determine the cause of the collapse."
Several videos shared with NBC10 shows dozens of people tumbling on top of each other. Snoop and Wiz were ushered off the stage as security moved in to help the fans.
A Philadelphia Highway Patrol officer was taken to the hospital following a car crash on Roosevelt Boulevard.
The officer was driving in a marked police vehicle southbound in the inner lanes of the Boulevard at Red Lion Road at 5:24 p.m. Tuesday when he was struck by another car.
The officer was taken to Aria-Torresdale where he is expected to be treated and released. The driver of the other vehicle was not injured.
The first sight -- and more notably, sound -- of Montgomery County's $36 million upgrade to its emergency dispatch system will be some of its 4,700 new radios Wednesday.
The Norristown police department are receiving the initial batch of radios, which will eventually be distributed to the county's police, fire and EMS departments before the system upgrade comes online in 2017, county officials said Tuesday.
A cloud still hangs over the system, however, in the form of a holdout town that county officials have been unable to persuade to install a 180-foot antenna needed to complete the system's radio coverage.
That town is Upper Merion, which County Commissioner Josh Shapiro and some staff called out last week during a monthly board meeting.
Assistant County Solicitor Josh Stein suggested Upper Merion's elected board of supervisors were obstructing the installation of a county antenna on Hughes Road. The location, he said, is owned by the state police and already has a 150-foot antenna.
Stein and a county spokeswoman pointed to a local ordinance enacted by Upper Merion in November 2015 -- months after the county first approached the town about a new, taller antenna -- that restricted installation of any new "communications towers" throughout the entire town.
Without the antenna, parts of Upper Merion, Bridgeport, West Conshohocken and Lower Merion could have spotty coverage within the emergency dispatch system.
"They're having a negative impact on their surrounding communities," Shapiro said of Upper Merion.
The network of antennas are an integral part of the upgraded system, expected to significantly improve the ability of county dispatchers to communicate with emergency personnel like firefighters and police.
"More towers are needed to increase coverage and increased capacity (number of channels) is needed because the system gets bogged by the volume of use during major events," according to a county report on the project.
Upper Merion Manager David Kraynick disputed the notion that the ordinance restricting new towers and antennas was put in place specifically to stymie the county.
"It was not site specific and had nothing to do with them," Kraynick said Friday of the ordinance. "We've had other communications companies come in and put up these [antennas]. Communities throughout southeast Pennsylvania are having the same issue. This is a very common thing that’s happened as these telecommunication companies have been putting in these antennas."
He reiterated what he said earlier last week after hearing about the county's public protestations.
"I think they're either confused or raising an issue that is not specific to the heart of the issue," Kraynick said. "They have to go before the zoning board and seek a variance."
He said one of the main issues remains: Eight households along Hughes Road are close to the antenna site.
County spokeswoman Lorie Slass dismissed the claim that other towns have enacted similar restrictions.
"If other townships in the region have enacted similar restrictions, they did not impede our ability to build or improve the towers like Upper Merion has," Slass said. "At this point it is about ensuring the radios work and protecting public safety. We believe there is a simple path forward – by creating an exception only in support of public safety uses – that will accomplish that goal and we want to work with Upper Merion to move it forward. The Commissioners will be reaching out to them this week asking them to join us in making this happen."
Friends and family are mourning a man who was shot and killed in front of his grandmother’s home in Darby Borough.
Police say Darryl Curry, 27, was visiting his grandmother’s apartment on North 6th and Fern streets Tuesday around 2 a.m. when he was approached by a group of men. After speaking with Curry the suspects pulled out weapons and opened fire. Curry was struck several times in the torso and other parts of his body as he fled to the front door of his grandmother’s apartment. He then collapsed to the ground.
Responding officers tried to perform CPR on Curry but he died from his injuries.
No arrests have been made and police have not yet released a description of any suspects. Police say they believe the motive was robbery. They also believe Curry was specifically targeted.
Curry’s death marks the first homicide of the year in Darby. Police have stepped up their patrols in the area where the deadly shooting took place. They are also asking anyone who saw Curry between midnight and 2 a.m. Tuesday to come forward.
A Bucks County family is taking on the U.S. Navy over chemicals that bled off local military bases and into their drinking water as well as water used by close to 70,000 other people who live and work nearby.
Toxic chemicals, called PFCs, were used for decades in firefighting foam at the Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Willow Grove and Naval Air Warfare Center in Warminster. PFCs have been linked to cancers and numerous other ailments.
The Giovanni family, who declined an interview, has lived virtually across the street from Willow Grove, since 2003. Test results of their well water showed PFC levels 40 times higher than what's considered safe over a lifetime by the Environmental Protection Agency. The suit does not say if any family member is suffering health-wise from exposure to PFCs, but no one really knows the long term effects of these unregulated chemicals.
In the complaint, filed Tuesday, the family asks the Navy to cover the cost of monitoring the future health of the parents and three children. But the big ask is for the Navy to pay for a health assessment and/or study that includes blood testing not just for the Giovannis, but for the close to 70K others exposed in Warrington, Warminster and Horsham Townships where both the public and private water supplies have been contaminated with PFCs.
To date, the Navy has rejected calls by lawmakers, including Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf, to test the blood of community members and have not responded to NBC10's recent requests to discuss the issue. In late May, however, the director of Base Closure Management Office, Greg Preston said the Navy wasn't prepared to pay for blood tests because they'd hadn't found any value in the testing. "Because we're not really sure, the experts are not really sure what to do with those results at this point in time -- what they really mean and how they translate," Preston said.
A young girl and a woman who were struck by foul balls in back to back Philadelphia Phillies games are speaking out for the first time.
Siena Eden, 9, of Margate, New Jersey, was with her family Saturday night sitting behind the visitor's dugout during the Phillies game against the St. Louis Cardinals. During the bottom of the eighth inning, Phillies shortstop Freddy Galvis hit a foul ball that went into the stands and struck Siena in the face. Galvis, the players and spectators looked on in anguish as the girl was carried out of the stadium and eventually to the hospital.
"I thought like, about how sad he probably was to hurt me," Siena told NBC10. "I thought if I were him I wouldn't be able to sleep at night."
Siena suffered swollen lips and broken teeth after being struck.
Less than 24 hours later during Sunday's game, Erin Neyer of Eagleswood Township was struck by a foul ball hit by St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Mike Leake in the sixth inning. Neyer was sitting with her 6-year-old daughter in an area near where Eden was sitting Saturday.
"I saw it coming right at us so I pushed her out of the way and I literally saw it come and it smacked me right in the face," Neyer told NBC10. "My bottom teeth are all chipped here. And I have a crack through the top of my front tooth."
Neyer said the foul ball that hit her was actually the second one that went towards her during the game. She said she reacted fast enough to the first one and was able to slap it away with her hand.
Galvis said before Sunday's game that the team should extend the netting from behind home plate all the way to left field.
"The fans give you the money, so you should protect them, right?" Galvis said. "We're worried about speeding up the game. Why don't you put up a net and protect all the fans?"
The incidents have raised concerns regarding whether there’s enough netting to protect fans during baseball games.
“It’s hard to dodge a ball coming that fast and it’s kind of coming so fast in a big group of people,” said Phillies pitcher Aaron Nola. “Some people are trying to catch it I guess and some people are trying to dodge it.”
Mike Stiles, the Phillies Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer released a statement on netting Sunday.
“The Phillies expanded our netting this season to the sides of the dugout near home plate, as was suggested by Major League Baseball,” he wrote. “We decided earlier this season to consider the possibility of further expansion next season. In making that determination at the conclusion of the 2016 season, we will take into account a number of factors including the opinion of our uniformed personnel and, most importantly, the wishes and safety of our fans.”
Siena Eden's mother Christine Eden believes something more needs to be done to protect fans.
"My challenge would be for them to do more," Christine Eden said. "If netting isn't the answer, what is?"
The Eden family told NBC10 they haven't decided yet whether they would go to another game in light of the incident. Neyer said she'll go to another Phillies game, though she won't sit in the same area of the stadium unless safety nets are extended.
"It's evident right there that that is a problem in that section so without a doubt I think that needs to be extended," Neyer said. "Now with sports comes hazards, there definitely is. But in this case I really feel like there's something we can do about it to make it better but still make it fun."
