Category: News

Monday a plan to increase Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett’s spending proposal by half-billion dollars was passed by state Senate Republicans.   This increase would allow for greater spending on higher education. Part of this proposal has $147 million entailed for state-related Universities such as Temple,Pittsburgh, and Penn state. An additional $83 million will be given state owned universities such as Shippensburg and Millersville.

Without the additional money for education the cost of tuition is set to rise dramatically.

The real story is the in-fighting among the Republican party. Corbett ran off the strength of his “no new taxes” campaign, but now his own party is trying to pressure him into modifying his original  budget in order to incease funds for education that can help lower the looming costs of college.

The proposed plan will now make its it way to the House.  Corbett admits considering negotiation but is far from sold on the new budget,“I think we need to be very, very cautious,” he said.

The proposal totals about $500 million for spending inside Corbett’s budget, but it is unlikey that the entire $500 million will be restored, “Would I consider putting some of that money in? Yes, I would consider it,” he said. “But $500 million is a lot,” stated Corbett. He also added that that figure ($500 million) is a ” ceiling.”

A large GOP majority approved the measure 39-8 vote, a fairly definitive result.

The plan would technically keep Corbett’s campaign pledge.

“This plan does not create a single new program. It does not raise a single tax,” said Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi, R-Delaware. “This is a responsible, sustainable state budget.”

So where are these funds coming from?

While there will be no new taxes, the plan is contingent upon collecting $900 million in state taxes, much more than originally projected.

It appears that either way the money will be coming out the peoples’ pockets some way or another.

If the plan is not approved by the House some project that  tuiton could rise an astronomical  30 percent in some cases, making what is already a financial hardship for most families even harder.

The parents of Pennsylvania will have to wait while their kids college funds hang in the balance waiting for the lawmakers final results.

By Becca Hess –

From prisons in New Zealand to the homes of many U.S. teens, hand sanitizer has become a parent’s worst nightmare.

Hand sanitizer contains 62 percent ethyl alcohol, and many teens have found a way to separate the alcohol from the goo to make it even more potent.

Kids have even made how-to videos and posted them on internet sites, which show them separating the alcohol from the hand sanitizer making it 120 proof and life threatening.  Some videos depict the teens getting intoxicated which has made the dangerous practice more widespread.

“(Students) would be “foolish” if they did (consume the substance). There are other elements in there that they may not be able to separate out that could be poisonous,” said the school nurse Anne Butterfield.

According to the Los Angeles Times, within the past few months, six teenagers have shown up in two emergency rooms in the San Fernando Valley with alcohol poisoning after drinking hand sanitizer, 2600 cases have been reported since 2010.

“This is a rapidly emerging trend,” said Dr. Cyrus Rangan, a pediatric medical toxicologist with Children’s Hospital, who also is director of the county Department of Public Health’s Toxic Epidemiology Program.

He also said that it only takes a few swallows to get intoxicated.

Years ago, people drank rubbing alcohol, mouthwash, and imitation vanilla (all of which contain some amount of alcohol in them), as a way to get drunk during Prohibition.  Nowadays, eens keep finding a new way to get their buzz on and the methods keep proving to be dangerous, even fatal.  Take bath salts and synthetic marijuana.

“It is a very desperate, sad act,” said Butterfield. “And they need to seek help for their problem with alcohol.”

The availability and low cost of hand sanitizer makes it a serious threat. It is all over the place, school, work, home, everywhere and teens can buy it off the shelves for only a few bucks.

Where some take the time to distill or separate the alcohol using salt, some choose to just drink it straight from the bottle.

“Local teenagers are gulping down hand sanitizer to get drunk — and many are landing in emergency departments instead, health experts warned on Tuesday,” according to an article by the Denver Post.

By Brad Kruger and Alex Lombardo –

Technology is constantly evolving and new inventions are released all the time. With that, 2012 has already seen several new products that are changing the game. These new products range from excuse balls to tablets to cool new apps and are beneficial to people of all ages from kits to elders.

Teenagers these days are becoming addicted to technology and electronics and can’t seem to survive without them.

Here are five cool electronics for teens to try out.

“Jury Duty”  Ever need an excuse why you didn’t do your math homework? Well now you’re set because the new “Instant Excuse Ball” will provide you with the perfect excuse. The small window on the 3 inch ball will get you out of just about anything. At a list price of $9.99 the Instant Excuse Ball is very affordable.

Hate when your headphones get tangled up? Now you don’t have to worry about spending 20 minutes untangling them because Jay Johnson’s new Cord Cruncher headphones don’t tangle! With the use of a retractable sleeve that covers the length of the headphones, you can easily keep your cords parallel to avoid tangling. The Cord Cruncher headphones are a must have for consistent music listeners.

Hungry for some raspberry Pi? Because the rest of the world is. Raspberry Pi, a new, small, fully functional computer hit stores on February 29th 2012 and had over 100,000 orders from one store and sold out everywhere within days. The coaster sized computer sells for only $35 and is built around a 700MHz processor and features a whopping 256 MB of RAM according to Forbes.com. It also features 2 USB ports and an SD card reader used for media storage. For all your compatibility needs, you can also connect speakers to the computer and it offers an HDMI port for television connection. The more than portable computer doesn’t even have an exoskeleton just the raw necessities needed for a computer to operate.

New beverage cans have been coming out lately, but they’re not full of soda. These new cans are disguised as popular drinks such as Coca Cola and Rockstar Energy but they are actually miniature safes to hide your valuables. For under $10 these screw top cans are a cheap and useful way to protect your secrets.

New apps for smart phones and tablets come out everyday, but recently the new hit app Viddy hit the app store and its become very popular. A fast an easy way to share video’s on social networking websites is Viddy’s key to success. Users can create an edit videos with the app and even add captions and make posts about their videos.

A new day in age is here and technology is hot in pursuit.

The new products available are cheap and worthwhile to fill all of your technological needs.

Richard Schulz –

Once Mad Cow Disease was a pressing issue years ago but only recently splashed in the news again when a scare had sparked fear in South Korea over American beef.

Public health officials here have said that the chance of the disease being a risk to fellow Americans is low. They say the cow in question came from central California but was never sent entered to the food chain.

“It was never presented for slaughter for human consumption, so at no time presented a risk to the food supply or human health,” said John Clifford, the Agriculture Department’s chief veterinarian.

The cow also didn’t contract the disease from it’s feed. The same feed that’s given to all the cows.

Mad Cow Disease infects the central nervous system of cows and humans. Some symptoms of mad cow disease in humans include depression, insomnia and anxiety.

Students at Penn Manor High School do not seemed to be worried about the incident,

Josh Lefever, a junior at Penn Manor who works in  Darrenkamp’s deli department, said that he won’t stop eating beef.

“I work with meat all the time and I still go to McDonalds just to get a burger,” said Lefever.

Lefever, like others, doesn’t plan on an incident of Mad Cow Disease changing his eating habits.

“I doubt it’d spread to us or even get as big of a scare as last time. I’m not to0 worried about being infected or anything either,” said Lefever

Two major beef importers from South Korea have halted their imports because of the scare. America sends its beef to Korea, Japan, the European Union, Mexico and other countries and they all plan to continue importing the beef.

Canada, being the largest importer of US beef in 2011, announced they’ll continue their imports well.

It seems this is a minor scare compared to the incident six years ago. Students and importers worldwide are looking over this little thing.

By Chad Gates-

Last March, a powerful earthquake measuring 9.0 on the Richter Scale struck 43 miles off the coast of the Oshika Peninsula in the Tohoku region, the most northeastern area of Japan’s main island. This was the largest earthquake ever recorded to hit Japan, and one of the five strongest earthquakes in the world since modern record keeping began in the beginning of the 20th century.

However, the earthquake only indirectly caused the widespread destruction of the Japanese western coastline. By shifting the earth’s tectonic plates below the ocean, the tremendous movement generated great crests in the water which swelled and rose above the surface into tidal waves, or as the Japanese coined the term, tsunamis, with the biggest one reaching a height of 45 feet.

But, it wasn’t until a hour after the earthquake hit, that the tsunamis reached the coastline and pummeled it relentlessly, causing extensive damage and destruction to almost one million buildings and homes, and leaving more than 19,000 people dead according to the Japanese National Police Agency.

One year after this event, Japanese scientists now speculate the threat of a future earthquake which could generate tsunamis much more deadly then the previous ones. According to a panel of various experts, an earthquake in the future could produce tsunamis as high as 112 feet, crashing upon the already battered Japanese western coastline, possibly causing further death and destruction.

So far, Japan hasn’t done much to protect themselves from future tsunamis, except at the Hamaoka nuclear power plant where construction of a 59-foot high sea wall to shield the nuclear reactors has begun. Many of the power plants alongside Japan’s west coast were severely damaged by the aftermath of the earthquake, especially the Fukashima power plant. The waves’ destruction caused a massive meltdown leading to the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986. Due to the radiation that was released by the meltdown, the area primarily around Fukashima is now too dangerous to live in, and many residents will never be able to move back.

By Joey Jackson –

Saturday marked the beginning of another trout season here in Lancaster county and 17 other southeastern counties in Pennsylvania, practically a holiday for some Penn Manor students.

Almost 30,000 different types of trout were stocked into Lancaster county’s rivers and streams in the weeks leading up to the 8:00 a.m. start of the season last Saturday, exciting some students who are accustomed to catching almost nothing but catfish in the time since the end of last year’s trout season.

“Catties are fun to catch and all, but after a while you just get tired of pulling them out of the water every time,” said senior Chris Fleming. “Every once in a while you’d get a bass but you can’t keep them yet either so it’s not that much different.”

The state Fish Commission employees have put in work too, to end the days of catching only catfish, state biologists helped hand stock the trout dumped into the rivers, making sure to stock the rivers in areas that are easily accessible for local fisherman, either by stocking the rivers closer to opening day to avoid the fish moving to different parts of the rivers and predation by the local birds or change the species of the stocked trout entirely to a species that is less likely to migrate.

This work has paid off according to multiple student fisherman, who spent last Saturday reaping in the benefits of the biologists’ work.

“I caught my limit in about an hour,” said Penn Manor angler Sam Knisely.

The current limit set by Pennsylvania fishing regulations is that only trout greater than seven inches may be kept and each fisherman can only keep five fish per day.

The biologists attribute the success of the residency of fish in an interview with Lancaster Newspaper to the low levels of water in the rivers, since trout normally stick to areas of low water levels anyway.

Other students, however, have had a rougher start to the season than others. A few students jokingly suggest to fish in streams that weren’t stocked because they are more likely to have trout than the stocked rivers.

“I went to the spot that I always go to out by Letort Elementary on Saturday to the spot that is always the best each year and I caught one fish and it wasn’t even a trout. It was a little chub fish,” said Penn Manor sophomore Peter Lombardo. “But there was this guy next to me that was just pulling (trout) out of the water left and right. He kept catching fish and throwing them up onto the bank.”

Lombardo disagrees with the biologists though, claiming that the river was too deep and murky from the recent rain to have a good chance at catching the trout.

In fact, popular fishing spots all over the county have been problematic for fisherman, such as the widely popular Trout Run access — usually so full of fish that the 20 minute trek from Millersville is normally disregarded. But now, some students are second guessing their incentives.

By Blake Wales and Sam Valentin –

Imagine living life without a proper pair of shoes and having to worry about the hazardous and dangerous objects that could injure you or inflict diseases. Some people own five different pairs of shoes or maybe even more collecting dust in a closet. But those who are too poor for shoes walk in danger every single day.

This may be really irrelevant to many Americans who don’t worry about this simple luxury that most people take for granted every single day.

For children across the world who suffer from intense diseases that affect them in many ways, just from not wearing shoes, the matter is life and death.

People all around the world and here at Penn Manor are working towards change by joining an effort called One Day Without Shoes which is designed to raise money and bring awareness to the situation.

To join in the effort, people are actually going through a normal day with one little alteration – they will all be without shoes on April 10.

This whole concept was created by the TOMS shoe company but was really brought to Penn Manor by students in the Young Humanitarians Club.

One of the club members, Emily Peris, skipped this event last year but decided that it would be good to participate this year.

“We were originally going to try to make money off of it [for Honduras] but we could not do that. So we have the option to donate to our club,” said Peris.”There are just a lot of kids that are less fortunate.”

According to the One day Without Shoes website,  more than 4 million people suffer from Podoconiosis which is a debilitating and disfiguring soil-based disease that tampers with the immune system. This happens in countries like Mexico, the northern regions of South America, eastern Africa and even some parts of Europe.

There is another disease called Hookworm which is common in Mexico, southern regions in Africa, and also in Asia. Some 740 million people are affected by hookworm which can cause intestinal pain, weakness and cognitive impairment. More than 30,000 people live on one landfill in the Philippines, where many are without shoes and are exposed to broken glass, syringes and debris.

But that’s not all.  There are 1.8 million Kenyan children who are infected by jiggers, burrowing fleas that cause painful infection.

Penn Manor will not allow students to go barefoot but they will be allowed to wear flip flops.

“I really feel that a lot of students will participate and we will  get the awareness of this out,”  said Penn Manor Junior Mackenzie Payne.