After lengthy public comment, the Catasauqua School Board decided to table a vote on ending the high school's annual football game against Northampton High. Catasauqua football players, including Chris Wellington, presented the board with a petition signed by 1300 people to keep the game on Thanksgiving morning. "I love this town. I love my community and I love this school," Wellington told the board. Supporters of eliminating the Thanksgiving game, including Catasauqua head coach Joe Henrich, cite Northampton's student body outnumbering Catty's by four-to-one, Northampton's current ten game winning streak in the rivalry and player safety concerns. "Tradition is powerful, but it should never outweigh our responsibility to ensure student safety. We believe it's time to take this proactive approach," Henrich says. The board voted 8-1 in favor of tabling the issue until its May meeting. The game has been played 101 times.
A retired Bethlehem police sergeant who was once the police chief of DeSales University has been killed in a South Carolina crash. Retired Sgt. Steven Marshall died after a motorcycle crash Friday afternoon in North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Marshall was with the Bethlehem Police Department July 1988 until July 2010, when he retired. He was then named police chief at DeSales University in 2013, and had since retired. “His dedication, professionalism, and commitment during his more than two decades of service left an indelible mark on our department and all who had the privilege of working alongside him,” Bethlehem’s post reads in part.
A property tax hike could be coming in the Nazareth Area School District. The school board is looking at a $117 million budget for the 2025-2026 school year. That includes a 2.75-percent tax increase on property owners, which would mean a $118 increase for the average school district property owner. A final vote on the budget is scheduled for June.
Drivers in both the Lehigh Valley and across the state continue to pay considerably higher gas prices in recent weeks. According to AAA East Central, the average price for a gallon of gas in Pennsylvania sits at $3.40, up a dime from one week earlier, but 28 cents less than in 2024. In the Lehigh Valley, the price of gas jumped up by 11 cents over the past seven days to $3.28, a quarter less than one year earlier.
A Grammy award-winning Latin singer known as “The Gentleman of Salsa” is the final headliner to be announced for Musikfest 2025. Gilberto Santa Rosa will be at the Wind Creek Steel Stage the night of August 7. Tickets, which cost $25 to $139, go on sale Wednesday for ArtsQuest members and Friday for the general public.
More than two years after an explosion killed seven workers at the RM Palmer chocolate factory in West Reading, the National Transportation Safety Board has released its final report on the tragedy. Kim West headed the investigation and says a lot of things came together to create the blast. "You take out one factor or another and the accident wouldn't' have occurred or have been so severe. But combined, it creates a perfect storm for this type of accident," West says. The report confirms the 2023 explosion was caused by a degraded service tee that allowed a natural gas leak, and also identified several other safety issues that led to the blast. West hopes the report isn't about pointing fingers, but rather prompting change that will prevent another accident from happening.
The Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office is suing a Monroe County home improvement contractor who they say regularly performed subpar work. Dave Sunday's office reports that Jeffrey Romansky was paid large sums of money by consumers who then received substandard results on their home improvement jobs. The suit also claims that Romansky has a history of theft convictions that he failed to disclose to consumers before they signed contracts with him.
A movie about the life of Milton Hershey is in the works, according to The Hershey Company. The movie will be shot at locations across Pennsylvania beginning in May, and will be released next year. It will tell the story behind the rise of Hershey's candy empire, which powered the Hersheys' philanthropic legacy. It will star Finn Wittrock as Milton Hershey and Alexandra Daddario as his wife, Catherine. The movie will be directed by Mark Waters, who has directed "Mean Girls" and "Freaky Friday." Waters says, "I'm excited to portray these two visionaries, who believed in leaving the world a better place than they found it, the kind of wonderful, true story that audiences are hungry for right now.”
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy says he has now granted clemency to 130 criminals, more than any New Jersey governor has done in at least 30 years. "That means a century of family get togethers, holidays and memories. It means parents reunited with their children and lives being changed at a fundamental level for the better," the governor says. He says clemency is an ongoing process and he plans to grant more in his administration's final nine months and he's urging anyone who wants a sentence to be reviewed to apply online. Murphy commuted the sentences of six individuals, five of whom were in jail for murder convictions. His 87 pardons were handed out to people convicted of everything from shoplifting to drug charges to arson.