WASHINGTON — An armed assailant charged toward the Democratic candidate for Ohio governor, Amy Acton, on Sunday during a campaign stop at the Canfield Fair, injuring several people before he was stopped by troopers, the Ohio State Highway Patrol said.
The Ohio State Highway Patrol said in a statement that a man it identified as Patrick Havas, 38, forced his way through a crowd, knocking over multiple members of the audience as he moved toward Acton, the state’s former public health director. He had a taser and two pistols, the statement said.
The Mahoning County Sheriff’s Office said two handguns and a set of brass knuckles were recovered after his arrest, and “no weapons were ever brandished or even removed from their holsters.”
Havas was taken to the county jail and booked on charges of disorderly conduct and two counts of assault, the highway patrol statement said, adding that no other details were available pending an investigation. Online court records didn’t yet list the case, and it wasn’t clear as of Sunday night whether Havas has an attorney.
Republican Gov. Mike DeWine said in a statement.that the man “tried to forcefully push himself” toward Acton as she was speaking at the fair in Canfield, in northeastern Ohio. “Violence or the threat of violence at political or public events is always unacceptable,” he added.
The attempted attack is the latest political violence to roil the United States. And the Ohio gubernatorial race is one of the most high-profile races this year as the campaigns enter the final six weeks of campaigning before the election in November.
Acton is facing Republican Vivek Ramaswamy, who has parlayed his national name recognition, tech industry connections, and alliance with President Donald Trump into a record fundraising haul that he is tapping for advertising spots aimed at the November election. He is using campaign rallies and advertising to criticize Acton.
Ramaswamy’s campaign called the incident Sunday unacceptable.
“Candidates should be able to meet with voters without having to worry about threats or violence. What happened today is completely unacceptable and has no place in politics, and we hope that no one was hurt,” Ramaswamy’s communications director, Connie Luck, said in a statement.
Addie Bullock, communications director for Acton’s campaign, said in a statement that the suspect “lunged” at Acton. She said the Democratic candidate “will always stand up to the chaos, hate, and vitriol that pits us against one another.”
The incident brought condemnation from Ohio Republican Sen. Jon Husted, who said on X that he and his wife were “disturbed by the attempted attack on Amy Acton today at the Canfield Fair. We are grateful for law enforcement’s quick response. There is no place for this kind of behavior, and it must never be tolerated.”
Federal political committees spent more than $40 million on expenses labeled as security during the 2023-24 campaign cycle, the most recent one for which data is publicly available, according a report released in April from the Public Service Alliance, a nonpartisan group that focuses on security for public officials.
Before running for governor, Acton was recruited by DeWine in 2019 to lead the Ohio Department of Health while serving as an associate professor of public health at Ohio State University. As the COVID-19 pandemic ramped up in early 2020, she was thrown into the state and national spotlight — becoming a source of comfort to many viewers of the governor’s daily news conferences.
For her service as health director, Acton earned the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation’s Profile in COVID Courage Award, the Columbus Foundation’s Spirit of Columbus Award, and Ohio State’s highest alumni honor, the Alumni Medalist Award.
Her position as the face of the DeWine administration’s aggressive stance against the virus also earned Acton many enemies, among them statehouse Republicans and average Ohioans who opposed pandemic restrictions.
MIAMI — The five people killed when an Amazon cargo jet ran off a runway at Miami International Airport were all inside a van carrying seven people from a cleaning company and an SUV hit outside of airport property, National Transportation Safety Board Chairperson Jennifer Homendy said Monday.
Homendy called the scene of Sunday’s crash “utter devastation.” She didn’t detail how many people were in the SUV or where the dead were located.
Homendy walked the route the Boeing 767 followed, noting tire marks from the pavement into the grass, the destroyed van carrying the cleaning crew, torn fencing, navigational equipment, and the crushed SUV outside airport property.
The debris included vehicle air bags, equipment from the vehicles, the airplane, and the airport, and “fencing everywhere,” Homendy said.
“It’s pretty extensive. Hard to see and I’m sure it must have been very difficult for the responders as well,” Homendy said.
The airline, all told, traveled about 1,300 feet past the paved surface. Debris was everywhere, she said.
“I would describe it in one word as devastating, utter devastation,” Homendy said.
The van with seven people inside was “torn apart. It certainly must have been devastating,” she said. The van was owned by Professional Ocean Service Corp., an airline cleaning contractor.
Homendy said the NTSB would issue more information on Tuesday, including possibly information on speed that is confirmed by the flight data recorder.
Federal investigators examining cause
Federal investigators examining the crash spent Monday determining whether the plane touched down too late to stop safely.
Video of Sunday’s landing appears to show the Boeing 767 remaining airborne well down the runway before touching down. Aviation experts said investigators will seek to determine exactly where the plane landed, whether it was beyond the normal touchdown zone, and why the pilots did not abandon the landing.
Investigators will also examine the plane’s speed and braking, weather and wind conditions, the aircraft’s mechanical condition, and other factors that could have contributed to the deadly overrun.
The aircraft on Sunday flew from Cincinnati to Miami and then to San Juan, Puerto Rico. It was returning to Miami when it overran the runway around 2 p.m. and plowed across a road used by warehouse workers and other businesses that surround the airport.
Aside from the five who died, three people were critically injured and two others were hospitalized with less severe injuries, officials said.
The crash, which sent thick black smoke billowing into the sky, trapped the pilot and copilot in the cockpit and some occupants in cars, said Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Chief Ray Jadallah. The agency said crews also had to extricate a person who was trapped under a vehicle.
The typical landing zone for a plane is within the first 3,000 feet of a runway, experts said. If the cargo jet was beyond that area, it should have aborted the landing and gone around for another try, aviation safety expert Steve Arroyo said.
Mary Schiavo, who is a pilot and former Inspector General of the Transportation Department, said video posted online shows the Amazon plane floating above the runway for an extended period without flaring the nose upward to force the main landing gear onto the ground.
It wasn’t raining at the time, but dark storm clouds loomed and strong winds were reported. Schiavo said that if the plane had a tail wind, that could have contributed to it floating further down the runway.
“A tail wind would certainly add to your troubles if you’ve already given up a good chunk of the runway by not touching down and landing right away,” Schiavo said.
Airport appears compliant without updated system
The Miami airport is not equipped with arresting systems that the FAA says have been installed at more than 120 airports nationwide to safely stop planes that do go past the end of a runway. Those beds of lightweight, crushable material at the end of a runway have been credited by the FAA with helping save at least 497 lives aboard planes that overran runways.
Miami’s airport appears to be in compliance and wasn’t required to have an arresting system because it has a 1,000-foot safety buffer at the end of its runways, said Mike O’Donnell, the FAA’s former director of airport safety and accident investigations.
The requirement was prompted by American Airlines Flight 1420 overrunning a runway at Little Rock National Airport in Arkansas in 1999, killing nine.
The Prime Air plane came to rest beside a roadway near two semitrucks, images showed. The aircraft appeared to be resting on its belly and was largely intact despite the fire.
The flight had been operated by 21 Air, a cargo carrier based in North Carolina. The 32-year-old Boeing 767 was originally built to carry passengers and flew for several airlines for more than two decades before being converted to a cargo plane in 2015, according to flight-tracking site Flightradar24.
Schiavo said the NTSB will also closely examine the maintenance history of this plane — particularly since it has a history of foreign ownership, including by a Russian company.
The crash halted flights at the busy travel hub for much of Sunday afternoon and continued to hamper air travel into Monday.
Miami International Airport said that two of its four runways remained closed Monday and that operations were to be affected throughout the day because of aircraft and flight crews not arriving there due to Sunday’s cancellations after the crash.
An airport spokesperson said there were 160 cancellations and more than 300 delayed flights Sunday, plus another 69 canceled flights Monday through mid-afternoon. Flight tracking sites were reporting widespread delays at the airport.
Amazon said in a statement that it would cooperate with any investigation.
“We’re heartbroken to learn that five people lost their lives in today’s incident at Miami International Airport,” the company said. “Our deepest sympathies go out to the families, loved ones, and all those affected by this devastating loss.”
Last year, a UPS plane crashed after losing its engine while accelerating down the runway at Louisville’s Muhammad Ali International Airport. The crash killed all three pilots and 12 people on the ground. Twenty-three more were injured.
NEW YORK — Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor who shepherded New York City through the Sept. 11 attacks, said on Sunday that he did not think Mayor Zohran Mamdani should attend upcoming memorial ceremonies to mark the 25th anniversary of the attacks.
“It offends me,” Giuliani said in an anti-Muslim diatribe on the far-right news outlet Newsmax, regarding Mamdani plans to attend the New York memorial. Giuliani also compared Mamdani to the Sept. 11 hijackers, who he said had hostility to America and “they weren’t hiding it like Mamdani is trying to hide it.”
Giuliani’s tirade also included baseless claims, including that Mamdani is a supporter of a Muslim plot that aimed at “taking over certain parts of America and certain parts of Europe,” a right-wing conspiracy theory he has endorsed in the past.
His comments on Sunday made him the most prominent person to endorse a call from some conservatives for Mamdani to skip the upcoming memorial ceremonies.
That demand has also been the subject of an online petition, which by Sunday had drawn almost 100,000 signatures.
Mamdani’s office declined on Sunday to directly address Giuliani’s comments, but directed reporters to his response to that online petition.
“I will proudly honor the families, the survivors, the first responders forever impacted by that horrific terror attack by standing alongside them at this year’s 9/11 commemoration, reaffirming that we will never forget the solemn day felt by all of us who call this city home and, frankly, by all of us who call this country home,” the mayor’s statement said.
The mayor’s office also pointed to two executive orders he signed this past week to establish Sept. 11 as an annual “Citywide Day of Remembrance and Service” and to take steps to modernize the city’s emergency preparedness procedures.
According to his schedule, Mamdani has already attended or plans to attend roughly a dozen Sept. 11 memorial events, primarily at firehouses across the city that had been the home stations for firefighters who died in the attack or developed illnesses in its aftermath.
Giuliani is expected to attend the ceremonies. Earlier this year, he was hospitalized with a serious case of pneumonia and said he believed his health problems stemmed in part from exposure to airborne toxins that blanketed parts of the city after the collapse of the World Trade Center.
Giuliani was two blocks away from the first tower when it collapsed, and his head and shoulders were dusted with ash from the disaster as he joined the throngs of people fleeing north through lower Manhattan.
Mamdani was 9 years old and in class at his Upper West Side elementary school when the attacks took place. He has spoken about the attacks as a formative experience for him as a child.
In an interview with the New York Times last year, he spoke of how important it is “to honor the memories of those that were killed” and described “learning their stories over the many years that I’ve been a New Yorker, the deep sorrow, that continues to this day, of futures that were stolen from so many and families that continue to live with that.”
He also talked about how Islamophobic backlash to the attacks had made anti-Muslim prejudice “a fact of life” for Muslim Americans.
“It was this horrific day that was also for many New Yorkers the moment at which they were marked an ‘other,’” he said.
Giuliani was widely praised and seen as a unifying figure after Sept. 11 for his stoic response to the attacks, which killed more than 2,700 people in New York City and left parts of Manhattan devastated for years.
But in the years since, Giuliani has politically drifted far to the right, serving as a high-profile surrogate and personal attorney for President Donald Trump. Last year, Trump pardoned Giuliani and several others who had been accused of trying to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Nearly a decade ago, when U.S. District Judge Paul S. Diamond was asked to determine the fate of a prosecutor who admitted breaking the law, he did not hold back.
Just moments after then-Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams pleaded guilty in a public corruption case, Diamond had Williams handcuffed and hauled off to jail to await sentencing.
Then, a few months later, Diamond imposed the maximum prison term allowed by law — five years. And he upbraided Williams as a “criminal” who surrounded himself with “parasites” and “fed his face at the trough” of public money.
Then-District Attorney Seth Williams leaves the federal courthouse in 2017.DAVID MAIALETTI / Staff Photographer
Now, Diamond is overseeing a new case with a new set of accusations against a different district attorney.
The allegations against top prosecutor Larry Krasner have come as part of a dispute with staffers over how to handle a case, and Diamond has already made clear that he views the assertions as serious — suggesting in a hearing last month that he believed some could amount to federal crimes.
“If what they say is true, potential wrongdoing abounds,” Diamond said, listing off offenses including perjury, conspiracy, and obstruction of justice.
To some area legal observers, the pointed remarks were reflective of Diamond’s reputation as a stern, no-nonsense jurist — particularly when it comes to assessing the conduct of fellow lawyers.
Then-Assistant District Attorney Paul George (back left) was disbarred in federal court in 2025.JESSICA GRIFFIN / Staff Photographer
In 2017, while the case against Williams was still pending, he ordered it to proceed to trial just months after the indictment was unsealed — a highly unusual timetable for a federal case, but one the judge said was necessary because of its “obvious and possibly calamitous effect on the city’s criminal justice system as well as the city itself.”
And even in a comparably trivial legal dispute in 2014, Diamond was unabashedly critical of a lawyer who sued over the rights to a song by the R&B artist Usher, writing: “It is difficult to convey the poisonous atmosphere created by [the lawyer’s] continual belligerence.” The lawyer was ultimately suspended from practicing in the region’s federal courts for three months.
Samuel Stretton, a veteran defense lawyer who often handles legal ethics cases, said Diamond “has high standards. And if someone violates, in his mind, those high standards, he takes a very tough position on them and voices that opinion quickly.”
Still, Stretton said he thinks Diamond’s principled views are sometimes expressed in overly harsh ways.
“He has a strong belief in ethics, and lawyers having those especially, and he feels he must enforce them,” Stretton said. “But sometimes his manner of enforcing them is overstated, and he’s abrupt and a little bit of a bully.”
The question now facing Krasner is what actions Diamond might take in the post-conviction case pending in his courtroom — and whether any could lead to consequences for the city’s DA.
District Attorney Larry Krasner in a file photo from 2023.Allie Ippolito / Staff Photographer
Who is Paul Diamond?
Diamond, 73, was appointed to the region’s federal bench in 2004 by then-President George W. Bush. He was unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
Before his judicial nomination, he spent nearly two decades in private practice. He began his career as an assistant district attorney in Philadelphia in the late 1970s, and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania law school and Columbia University.
While he worked in private practice, Diamond focused on civil litigation, white-collar criminal cases, and disciplinary matters, according to an online biography. And his clients were sometimes unique.
In 1994, he represented a South Philadelphia candy making company that pleaded guilty to safety violations after an unguarded taffy-pulling machine killed one of its workers.
A few years later, he represented Lower Merion Township when the Barnes Foundation sued and accused township officials of using racism and discrimination to try to hurt the foundation. The suit was dismissed, and a defiant Diamond was later quoted in The Inquirer saying he planned to bill the Barnes around $1 million to cover the township’s legal fees.
“This is a claim that should never have been filed; it’s outrageous that it was ever filed, and now the Barnes is going to see the mother of all fee petitions,’’ he said.
A consistently exacting judge
Like all federal court judges, Diamond oversees a mix of criminal and civil cases. And even though not all receive significant public scrutiny, Diamond is viewed by some as a consistently exacting judge.
In 2012, for example, he ordered a 60-year-old grandmother jailed for using her dead mother’s Social Security checks to support her grandchildren.
“Did it ever occur to you to go out and get a job?” Diamond asked the woman. “Did it ever occur to you that the way to help your grandchildren is not to commit a series of endless federal frauds?”
The federal courthouse in Philadelphia.TYGER WILLIAMS / Staff Photographer
Last year, he was subtly critical of the Trump administration in court documents, writing that it was using competing interpretations of the law to try to justify its policy to detain nearly all undocumented immigrants.
It is “difficult to credit the Government’s squarely contradictory position here,” Diamond wrote.
The Krasner matter that ended up in his courtroom arrived as a routine post-conviction case: Dennis Johnson, who was found guilty of second-degree murder in state court in 2009, filed a petition in federal court seeking to have his conviction overturned.
The petition was filed more than 10 years ago, but it wasn’t until 2022 that the origins of the current controversy would begin to take shape.
A frenzy within the DA’s office
That year, after the district attorney’s office had spent years opposing Johnson’s bid for relief, prosecutors changed course.
Then-Assistant District Attorney Jaclyn Mason filed a brief agreeing with Johnson’s lawyers that his trial counsel had been ineffective. And she said her office had discovered problems or inconsistencies with testimony from key witnesses, leading her to recommend that the conviction be overturned.
The case was first sent to a federal magistrate to review, and Judge Lynne A. Sitarski — relying on Mason’s brief — agreed with her position.
But Sitarski’s recommendation was not binding — the final call would fall to Diamond. And this spring, Diamond signaled he was not inclined to accept the assertions in Mason’s brief. He scheduled an evidentiary hearing to hear testimony that could corroborate — or undercut — the office’s conclusion.
That triggered a frenzied sequence of events inside the DA’s office, prosecutors have since testified.
District Attorney Larry Krasner speaks at a news conference while flanked by two prosecutors who have since testified about actions he took in a controversial post-conviction case: David Napiorski (left) and Peter Andrews.Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
To prepare for the hearing, Mason’s supervisors in the law division reviewed her brief and found a series of what they called “material misstatements.” They decided they needed to try to withdraw Mason’s filing and apologize to Diamond for the mistakes. And they asked that Mason sign on to the new filing with them.
But Mason declined and resigned. She’s since said she only filed her brief at the urging of her then-boss, Matthew Stiegler, who she said had done nothing to review the case himself but instead was “colluding” with Johnson’s defense attorneys to secure his release from prison.
Mason said she didn’t want to become a scapegoat for Stiegler or the office. And she accused her colleagues of attempting to force her to lie to protect the institution.
Her former supervisors have denied that, saying that once they noticed the errors in her brief, they were ethically obligated to correct the record in front of Diamond.
But as they strategized their approach, they said, they encountered consistent resistance from an unusual source: Krasner.
In their telling, Krasner was ardently opposed to asking the state attorney general’s office to take over the case — something the supervisors generally agreed was appropriate because of the drama surrounding the matter within their office.
Assistant District Attorney David Napiorski, head of the office’s law division.Alejandro A. Alvarez / Staff Photographer
And according to the supervisors — Katherine Ernst, Steven Wildberger, David Napiorski, and Peter Andrews — Krasner made a series of notable statements during their discussions, including that he wanted to handle the case in a way that would “protect the office,” that those who didn’t follow his orders would face “consequences,” and that he wanted to keep the matter from the attorney general’s office because he viewed its staffers as “Nazis.”
Several potential paths forward
All of those assertions were aired in Diamond’s courtroom in recent weeks, after the judge decided the evidentiary hearing in Johnson’s case would, for now, focus on the conduct of the prosecutors involved, rather than the merits of his petition. The judge said he’ll evaluate that aspect of the case later.
The attorney conduct portion of the hearing concluded last month, leaving Diamond with several choices about what to do with their startling testimony, legal observers said.
The most immediate issue is whether he’ll allow the DA’s office to continue handling Johnson’s case. Given the dysfunction prosecutors testified to, he could ask the attorney general’s office to take over instead.
But Krasner — who was not called to testify and who has said he can’t comment on the case while it’s pending — will likely have the opportunity to propose his own solution in court documents. In earlier filings, he said he engaged an outside lawyer to handle the matter on the office’s behalf — which, in his view, would insulate the case from the issues roiling his office, and preclude the need to involve state prosecutors.
Beyond that question, however, the testimony about conduct by the DA’s office could, in theory, lead to other consequences.
District Attorney Larry Kranser was not called to testify in front of U.S. District Judge Paul S. Diamond in the post-conviction case that Diamond is overseeing.Heather Khalifa / Staff Photographer
Stretton, the defense lawyer and ethics expert, said Diamond could refer the matter to the federal court’s disciplinary committee. There, a panel of judges could seek to determine if any of the prosecutors involved — including Krasner — behaved in a way that might warrant disciplinary action, such as a suspension or disbarment from practicing in federal court.
That process, which is largely confidential, would also likely be lengthy: In an earlier federal case that led to sanctions for two supervisors in Krasner’s office, a federal judge said he was seeking to initiate the disciplinary process in 2022, and punishments were not decided for another three years.
After that, Stretton said, if discipline is imposed in federal court, the matter would likely be forwarded to the state’s disciplinary board, which would make its own determination of possible penalties. That could also be an extended process.
And in what would likely be the most serious scenario, Stretton said, Diamond could refer the matter to federal or state prosecutors — or prosecutors could decide to pursue it themselves — to determine if crimes were committed. That, too, would almost certainly not be resolved quickly.
Stretton said any of those processes — and any potential outcomes — could also be further delayed or complicated because of inevitable disputes or competing interpretations over what lawyers did. In his view, for example, ethical rules generally allow a supervisor such as Krasner to pursue a legal strategy opposed by his subordinates as long as he had a “reasonable” argument for doing so.
And the testimony that unfolded before Diamond has already demonstrated that different lawyers had different recollections of what occurred: Mason accused her bosses of encouraging her to participate in a cover-up, but the supervisors said that wasn’t true.
The supervisors, meanwhile, accused Krasner of trying to get them to violate their ethical obligations, a contention he has similarly denied.
For now, the case remains on hold as Diamond weighs how to move forward. He has asked lawyers in the case to file additional briefings by Tuesday about how they believe the case should proceed.
Beyond that, Diamond has not indicated how quickly he might rule on the matter.
By the time state and local law enforcement in Northumberland County, Pa.,connected a device stealing people’s food assistance benefits from a 7-Eleven to Patricia Bogdan and George Lazar, the pair had already fled to New Jersey.
Authorities allege Bogdan and Lazar placed the contraption on a point-of-sale terminal in February, which went undiscovered for days. Bogdan and Lazar then allegedly retrieved the stolen electronic benefit transfer card data in a process known as skimming and spent people’s benefits at BJ’s and Sam’s Club locations in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
Authorities would later learn Bogdan had multiple aliases and fake passports, while Lazar had a warrant out for an attempted murder charge in Belgium.
“It illustrates how quickly they’re moving, the type of individuals that are involved in this, and just their ability to get in and out, that makes these really complex cases,” said State Inspector General Michelle Henry, whose office investigates EBT thefts in Pennsylvania.
With the help of authorities in New Jersey and North Carolina, Henry’s office was able to find Bogdan and Lazar in March and later bring them back to Pennsylvania, where the cases are ongoing. A small win in what victim advocates argue has risen to a nationwide crisis because the federal government has failed to invest in more secure card technology. The magnetic strips on the cards are too easy to exploit.
Still, a seismic disruption to these scam operations is slated to come to Pennsylvania before Jan. 1, 2028.
The latest state budget appropriated $7 million in funds that would pay for chip-enabled EBT cards, giving the outdated magnetic stripe technology, which the federal government required states to use until 2024, a sorely needed upgrade.
The chip cards are not invulnerable to scammers but exploiting them requires more sophisticated technology, according to the Secret Service. Early adopters of the chip technology, such as California and Alabama, have reported significant drops in thefts already.
To the victims of this sort of fraud, scarred by the memories of an unexpected zero balance while trying to pay for groceries, the change is long overdue. There are countless stories of families learning about how the scam works and having to scrape meals together with the aid of food pantries.Benefits were reimbursed between October 2022 and December 2024, but that ended when Congress did not extend funding.
For now, law enforcement in Pennsylvania continues to confiscate skimming devices and prosecute perpetrators, even when it can feel like a high-stakes game of whack-a-mole, while preparing for the next iteration of scammers.
An ever-evolving scheme that knows no borders
Much of the skimming scam — from recruiting to reselling the goods purchased with EBT data— happens online through the dark web and social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.
Transnational criminals, more recently from Eastern European countries, will send already assembled skimmers to partners stateside or provide instructions on how they can piece together the devices themselves. The local partners stick the contraptions onto a point-of-sale machine, steal data, and use the stolen benefits to purchase high-ticket items such as baby formula, which is then offloaded by word of mouth or on social media networks like Facebook and Instagram.
Michael Ross, special agent in charge of the Philadelphia field office for the United States Secret Service, said the advent of Bluetooth technology has made it much harder to catch people in the act since they can digitally collect the stolen data, instead of taking back the physical machine where police might be waiting for them.
Combating these crimes requires a multipronged approach, from the use of digital forensics to old-school public awareness efforts.
“We will send out a small group, not necessarily a formal task force, with state and local law enforcement representatives, and we will go to businesses,” Ross said. “We will go in, we’ll educate, we’ll show what some of these devices look like, things that can be done to make sure that the EBT fraud is mitigated.”
Various states have responded in a similar fashion, educating businesses and placing the onus of protecting food assistance benefits on recipients, who are encouraged to download apps on their phones that allow them to lock their cards until they’re ready to pay for groceries.
Still, Pennsylvania has aimed to be more aggressive in its fight against skimming.
The Office of State Inspector General piloted “Skimmer Response Teams” last year. Since its inception, the six- to eight-person group that works with the broader office on cases, seized more than 55 of these devices before scammers could come back and drain more than $20.5 million in benefits from more than 40,000 accounts.
Despite these strides in prevention, the state reported more than 5,100 skimming incidents that accounted for more than $2.5 million in stolen food assistance benefits in the first five months of the year.
It’s one of the reasons the task force pilot is now permanent and is expected to stay even as the EBT cards switch to chips.
“In my experience as a longtime prosecutor, anything that makes it more difficult to complete the crime is a deterrent,” said Henry. “If it’s super easy, you’re going to have more of it.”
And Pennsylvania wants to make stealing people’s food assistance benefits as difficult as possible.
SPS Technologies and its parent company reached a multimillion-dollar agreement last week to settle a class-action lawsuit stemming from the massive 2025 factory fire in Montgomery County that shuttered schools, halted SEPTA trains, and forced scores of nearby residents to evacuate.
The proposed agreement was announced on Friday by Kroll Settlement Administration, the firm handling the legal deal, which is pending before the county’s Court of Common Pleas.
If approved by the court, SPS Technologies and its owner, Precision Castparts Corp., would create a $5 million fund to provide cash payments to those impacted by the four-alarm blaze that erupted on Feb. 17, 2025, prompting officials to declare a disaster emergency.
“The plaintiffs allege that individuals and businesses were impacted, injured, or damaged by the fire,” Kroll Settlement Administration wrote in a news release. “SPS and PCC deny any wrongdoing.”
Under the proposed settlement, business owners, employees of impacted businesses, and homeowners within a 1-mile radius of the former factory in Abington Township could be eligible for payouts. The amounts would cover unreimbursed business losses of up to $5,000, unreimbursed property damage losses of up to $300, and unreimbursed hourly wage losses of up to $200, according to Kroll. Claim forms must be filed by Dec. 3.
Pending court approval, the proposed $5 million fund would also provide a maximum $1.75 million in “reasonable attorneys’ fees, costs, and expenses” and an extra payment of $2,500, known as a ”service award,” to lead plaintiffs in the class-action suit.
Last year, a judge agreed to consolidate three lawsuits into a single class-action suit. The lawsuits were brought against the aerospace parts manufacturer by a school bus driver for Abington School District, co-ownersof an auto service business that is less than a mile from the SPS facility, and a resident in neighboring Jenkintown whose apartment was engulfed in smoke and has experienced coughing and chest pain.
“The fire and explosion was caused by the defendant’s failures to inspect, properly maintain, and/or operate its facility, including the location of the origin of the fire,” according to the lawsuit. It also states that SPS “failed to uphold industry standards” in facility operations and as a result “hundreds if not thousands of persons have been damaged.”
The bus driver declined to comment on Sunday evening. The other class members did not return phone calls from a reporter, and their lawyers did not immediately respond to an email.
After a series of explosions at the Highland Avenue factory, fire engulfed the complex, drawing emergency responders from nearly 80 fire companies. Local officials ordered residents within a mile of the facility to shelter in place. A voluntary evacuation order for about 250 homes, mostly in neighboring Jenkintown, came soon after.
It took firefighters five days to extinguish the conflagration, while plumes of smoke drifted over the neighborhood, and residents worried about air quality because of the types of chemicals stored at the factory.
WASHINGTON — An armed assailant lunged at the Democratic candidate for Ohio governor, Amy Acton, on Sunday during a campaign stop at the Canfield Fair, injuring several people, campaign officials said.
The suspect knocked volunteers to the ground and was arrested with “multiple weapons,” Mahoning County Democratic Party chairperson Chris Anderson said in a statement.
Acton, the state’s former public health director, was not injured, but her campaign said multiple people were hurt.
“Dr. Acton will always stand up to the chaos, hate, and vitriol that pits us against one another,” said Addie Bullock, communications director for the campaign.
Ohio State Highway Patrol and other authorities at the fair quickly responded “when a man tried to forcefully push himself toward Dr. Acton as she was speaking and injured other attendees at the Mahoning County Democrat booth,” Republican Gov. Mike DeWine said in a statement.
“Violence or the threat of violence at political or public events is always unacceptable,” he added.
The attempted attack is the latest political violence to roil the United States. And the Ohio gubernatorial race is one of the most high-profile races this year as the campaigns enter the final six weeks of campaigning before the election in November.
Acton is facing Republican Vivek Ramaswamy, who has parlayed his national name recognition, tech industry connections, and alliance with President Donald Trump into a record fundraising haul that he is tapping for advertising spots aimed at the November election. He is using campaign rallies and advertising to criticize Acton.
Ramaswamy’s campaign called the incident Sunday unacceptable.
“Candidates should be able to meet with voters without having to worry about threats or violence. What happened today is completely unacceptable and has no place in politics, and we hope that no one was hurt,” Ramaswamy’s communications director, Connie Luck, said in a statement.
The fairground’s police department referred inquiries to the Mahoning County Sheriff’s Department, which didn’t immediately return a message seeking comment. The Ohio State Highway Patrol didn’t immediately respond to a request for information.
The incident brought condemnation from Ohio Republican Sen. John Husted, who said on X that he and his wife were “disturbed by the attempted attack on Amy Acton today at the Canfield Fair. We are grateful for law enforcement’s quick response. There is no place for this kind of behavior, and it must never be tolerated.”
Federal political committees spent more than $40 million on expenses labeled as security during the 2023-24 campaign cycle, the most recent one for which data is publicly available, according a report released in April from the Public Service Alliance, a nonpartisan group that focuses on security for public officials.
Before running for governor, Acton had been recruited by DeWine in 2019 to lead the Ohio Department of Health while serving as an associate professor of public health at Ohio State University. As the COVID-19 pandemic ramped up in early 2020, she was thrown into the state and national spotlight — becoming a source of comfort to many viewers of the governor’s daily news conferences.
For her service as health director, Acton earned the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation’s Profile in COVID Courage Award, the Columbus Foundation’s Spirit of Columbus Award and Ohio State’s highest alumni honor, the Alumni Medalist Award.
Her position as the face of the DeWine administration’s aggressive stance against the virus also earned Acton many enemies, among them Statehouse Republicans and average Ohioans who opposed pandemic restrictions.
Villanova University’s campus was briefly under a lockdown Sunday evening as police searched for an attacker wanted in connection with a stabbing.
The lockdown was lifted at 6:41 p.m. after the suspect was apprehended off campus, according to the university’s alert system. The school issued the lockdown at 6:10 as a “precautionary measure due to the proximity of the search,” the alert said.
Authorities took the suspect into custody “without incident” in the 1000 block of East Lancaster Avenue, according to the post. An earlier alert from Villanova University said the person was armed.
“There is no threat to the community at this time, and all involved parties have been placed in custody,” Radnor police said on Facebook. “Our thoughts are with the victim and their family.”
The victim’s condition was not immediately known, and police did not identity the person in custody.
A driver of a Volkswagen Beetle was making a right turn in suburban Philadelphia when he collided with an e-bike rider on the shoulder of a road.
The driver jumped out of his car and ran to the passenger side, but only the woman’s legs were visible. He tried to lift the roughly 2,000-pound car, but it was too heavy.
Chrissy Vollmer, who owns a sign shop near the crash site in Prospect Park, said she heard the woman yell: “Get this car off of me.”
“It’s a sound that you can’t really ignore,” said Vollmer, 47, who called 911.
In the ensuing seconds Monday morning, Vollmer and other bystanders rushed to the car to help, which local police called “courageous, selfless, and potentially lifesaving.”
The driver and Vollmer tried lifting the car to no avail. Amelia Cannon, who works at a homecare agency next to the crash site, heard the woman cry for help and rushed from her office to assist. A FedEx delivery driver ran over a few seconds later, followed by another man.
The group counted down from three and tipped the side of the car a few inches off the street — just as a police officer arrived on the scene. In a video of the rescue, more people seemed to show up out of nowhere to keep the car in place and to pull the bike rider out from underneath.
The rider, who police identified as a 44-year-old woman from Ridley Park, was free within a minute of the crash, Prospect Park Police Chief David Madonna said.
The woman was transported to a local hospital with upper body injuries but is in stable condition and expected to recover, Madonna said.
“When you’re dealing with a trauma patient, every second counts,” Madonna said. “If we would have had to wait for some type of heavy equipment to remove that vehicle, or use other means to extricate her from that position, things could’ve certainly been worse for her.”
Madonna said he doesn’t expect anyone will be charged. He said the driver, whom he identified as a 66-year-old man from Prospect Park, made a legal turn and wasn’t at fault.
After the e-bike rider was free, she thanked the people around her, Vollmer said. Vollmer and Cannon said they returned to their jobs after the rescue but struggled to focus because their adrenaline was flowing.
A few days later, they said they were surprised that people were commending them on social media after local news outlets covered the story.
“It’s kind of normal if someone’s in need of help,” Vollmer said, “you want to help them.”
Still, in his three decades working in law enforcement, Madonna said he has rarely seen people make as much of an effort to help a neighbor as they did Monday.
“When you put yourself in potentially harm’s way, and you don’t stop to consider the risks that you’re exposing yourself to, how can you not be impressed by that?” Madonna said. “That is humanity at its finest.”
MIAMI — An Amazon cargo plane barreled off a runway at Miami International Airport on Sunday, killing at least five people as it struck vehicles and burst into flames, authorities said.
The aircraft overran the runway around 2 p.m. after arriving from San Juan, Puerto Rico. Five people were killed, three critically injured, and two others hospitalized with less severe injuries, Miami-Dade County officials told a news conference.
More than 60 Miami-Dade Fire Rescue units responded to the crash, arriving to find the aircraft on fire as crews worked to extinguish the flames and assess patients.
The Prime Air plane came to rest beside a roadway near two semi-trucks, according to images from the scene. The aircraft appeared to be resting on its belly and was largely intact despite the fire.
The flight had been operated by 21 Air, a cargo carrier based in North Carolina. The 32-year-old Boeing 767 was originally built to carry passengers and flew for several airlines for more than two decades before being converted to a cargo plane in 2015, according to flight-tracking site Flightradar24.
About 250 flights were delayed at the airport late afternoon Sunday, according to FlightAware, a website that tracks flight disruptions.
The National Transportation Safety Board said it was gathering information about the crash.
“We’re working closely with local authorities and officials to understand exactly what happened,” Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel said in a social media post. “Right now, our absolute priority is the safety, well-being, and care of everyone involved.”
