There are no injuries reported in a fire that appears to have destroyed four row homes and damaged several others. It happened around 3 o'clock Tuesday afternoon in the 700 block of North Seventh Street in Allentown. Assistant Fire Chief Michael Zellin says it was a challenging fire to knock down. "The initial attack of the fire, it was in the rear of one of the buildings," he said. "To try and get different trucks in the right position was a little bit taxing," Zellin said. Also complicating matters was a thunderstorm that brought lightning that forced firefighters to take cover. The cause of the fire has not been determined yet.
A 27-year-old Philadelphia man was killed in an early Tuesday morning crash on Lehigh Street in Allentown. Police say Abeil Adilow was driving north on Lehigh Street at a high rate of speed when he went off the road and hit several parked cars at both the Bennett Toyota and Bennett Infiniti dealerships. Adilow was rushed to the hospital, where he died. Police are still investigating.
The Republican Party's efforts to get more party members to utilize the mail-in ballot option worked to a degree in last week's primary. The Pennsylvania Department of State says GOP voters accounted for 26% of the mail ballots counted last Tuesday. In the past three primary elections, Republican voters have requested about 22% of mail ballots. The executive director of the Win Again PAC, whose job it is is to convince Republicans to vote via the mail, calls the increase significant but says the party still has a long way to go.
Pennsylvania lawmakers are considering a plan to end credit checks for job interviews. Democrats at the Capitol in Harrisburg are pushing legislation that would stop businesses from running people's credit before they are hired. Philadelphia Democrat Jason Dawkins says there's no evidence that someone's credit history is tied to their job performance, but he says there is evidence that credit has been used to discriminate in the past.
Efforts to level the playing field regarding high school athletics in Pennsylvania were discussed in Harrisburg on Tuesday. Coaches and athletic directors joined Representative Scott Conklin to talk about boundary versus non-boundary school competition. They say this has allowed private schools that can attract the best players across districts to win state championships against overmatched challengers. Conklin has introduced legislation to change the playoff system and called on the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association to act and make the playoffs more competitive and fair.
New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin says the lawsuit that seeks to ban smoking in Atlantic City casinos should be dropped. In a brief filed this week, Platkin said the request by casino workers who want a preliminary injunction should be dismissed because it's not the way to make a change in a longstanding exemption that permits smoking in some areas of a casino. Casino workers allege the exemption is a violation of their constitutional right to safe working conditions because of the risk of smoking to their health.