At 5:00 AM EST, 1 ESE Birdsboro [Berks Co, PA] Public reports Snow of 4.80 Inch #pawx Link

At 7:00 AM EST, Shartlesville [Berks Co, PA] Trained Spotter reports Snow of 1.50 Inch #pawx Link

At 7:00 PM EST, Whitehall Twp [Lehigh Co, PA] Trained Spotter reports Snow of 2.20 Inch. Spotter reporting 1 inch per hour rates. #pawx Link

At 7:00 PM EST, Reading Regional Airpor [Berks Co, PA] ASOS reports Snow of 0.70 Inch. 00z Snow Observation. #pawx Link

"A single nasal spray vaccine could protect against all coughs, colds and flus, as well as bacterial lung infections, and may even ease allergies, say US researchers." www.bbc.com/news/article.... #medicine

This farmer is in Cumberland County people.com/farmer-86-re...

Local Catholic bishop issues statement on detention centers. www.ad-today.com/bishops-mess...?

An internal ICE memo claims facilities won’t burden communities like Upper Bern and Tremont townships, something local and PA officials have raised concerns about. https://www.spotlightpa.org/berks/2026/02/ice-detention-warehouses-berks-pennsylvania-reengineering-federal-government/

Canadian actors and musicians who were to perform a children’s show “Baobab” at Kutztown University in April had to cancel the performance because they could not obtain visas under a new US rule that took effect Jan.1. www.facebook.com/share/1NYXfh...

Today! Hear political reporters discuss what Gov. Josh Shapiro’s memoir “Where We Keep the Light” reveals and what it leaves out. Join us at 6 p.m.

The US civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, a pioneer of progressive Democratic politics, close ally of Martin Luther King Jr, and two-time candidate for the presidential nomination, has died at 84. See his life in pictures: bit.ly/3OxOT3f

Predicting the next economic crash or financial crisis has always been more art than science. Today there’s an added complication — the increasing shortage of information about what’s really going on in the economy and financial system. Read The Big Take: bloom.bg/4kJLf2u 🎨: Grace J. Kim

Looks like Meuser is coming to Berks. Will visit site and talk with officials. His congressional opponent held a town hall about the detention center at the end of Jan.

Updates from township meeting and documents

everyone shut UP it's gromit's birthday HAPPY BIRTHDAY GROMIT

Tomorrow is CPI for January. It's a month that has burned us repeatedly -- core CPI inflation tends to pick up in January. Consensus forecast has a pickup *but* we do not have a clear sense of the inflation late last year. No monthly inflation estimates in Oct. or Nov. due to govt shutdown.

With this data, @stlouisfed.bsky.social can return to update their unemployment flow analysis In short, Jan is a month more net effect of unemployed people finding job is larger than the net effect of people entering labor force but yet to find job www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-econo...

Court battle over surveillance footage at the Broadview ICE detention center reaches new levels of kafkaesque absurdity: The DOJ claimed it *couldn't afford* hard drives to put video footage on. Plaintiffs bought THE US GOVERNMENT hard drives. ICE "lost" them. www.404media.co/government-l...

The US continues losing blue-collar jobs—year-on-year job losses have hit 170k as manufacturing, transportation, & mining industries lose jobs at a rapid pace while growth in construction remains low

It is absolutely outrageous that Moderna’s flu vaccine was met with a “refusal-to-file” even after their approved their protocol with FDA and carried out the trial as agreed. This vaccine works better in older adults than the current flu vaccines. apnews.com/article/mode...

This WSJ piece does a great job of asking the question: "Are we going to talk about residual seasonality again after Friday's CPI report?"

The domino effect from the tech industry’s $700 billion AI spending spree is diverting resources and attention from other sectors of the economy, making finding an electrician or a reasonably priced smartphone increasingly difficult.

I asked Republican LG candidate Jason Richey how he'd handle overseeing the Board of Pardons. He pivoted, and talked about his priority of promoting natural gas extraction in Pennsylvania. www.witf.org/2026/02/07/l...

The American Gaming Association estimates a record $1.76 billion will be wagered on Super Bowl LX this Sunday. A new book looks at how sports betting has reshaped American newsrooms. www.niemanlab.org/2026/02/spor...

ICYMI: Asked about Trump's "nationalize" election remarks, Garrity said: “I would work with the Trump administration, obviously, because we need to turn our state around."

ICE cooperation debate in deep red Lancaster County, Pa.: lancasteronline.com/news/local/r...

A man taken into custody in Rochester Thursday by federal immigration agents and now held at the Whipple Federal Building in the Twin Cities is a recent organ transplant recipient who is without his needed anti-rejection medication, state Rep. Kim Hicks tells MPR News.

There were 108,000 job cuts in January in the U.S., the most to begin a year since the Great Recession in 2009, according to a new report.

+11% rise in new unemployment insurance claims in week ending (WE) Jan 31, driven by rises across a broad set of states (PA, NY, WI, MD, MO, IL...) That's a substantial rise. Keep an eye on it for signal of weakening of labor demand.

I spoke with Aliya Rahman, the autistic woman whom ICE ripped out of her car, about her experience of being in a viral video, what she experienced in detention and why she thinks we might be in bigger trouble in the future. www.independent.co.uk/news/world/a...

Who owns Pa.’s digitized history? We’re a step closer to an answer. https://www.spotlightpa.org/news/2026/02/ancestry-digital-records-commonwealth-courrt-capitol/

The disclosure that the Justice Department failed to alert a judge about a 1980 law protecting journalists when applying for a warrant to search a Washington Post reporter’s home last month is casting new scrutiny on the legal issues raised by the raid.

Exhibit of this ecosystem: Many local news pieces on ICE detention centers are referencing stories broken by the Post and Bloomberg.

The CIA just stopped publishing their World Factbook and took every page, including the archived copies of previous versions! This sucks. It was public domain, so I recovered the 2020 edition (the last one published as a zip file) and shared it to GitHub simonwillison.net/2026/Feb/5/t...

News: Gov. Josh Shapiro pitched a $53.3 billion spending plan Tuesday that puts more money into education and transit (in 2027) while asking policymakers to tackle housing and energy affordability in earnest. www.spotlightpa.org/news/2026/02...

Join us Thursday for a rally to #SaveThePost!! The rally will run from noon to 1 p.m. Thursday at 1301 K St. NW!! Bring friends! Bring gloves! Bring a love of journalism!

Shapiro’s new memoir doesn’t tell the full story about his time as attorney general https://www.spotlightpa.org/news/2026/02/josh-shapiro-memoir-attorney-general-pardons-criminal-justice-missing-details-josh-shapiro/

1//4 Updated. Schuylkill County warehouse also sold to ICE today. www.spotlightpa.org/berks/2026/0...

More to come www.spotlightpa.org/berks/2026/0...

Community members say the loss of Temporary Protected Status for Haitian workers is likely to ripple across the Berks economy, particularly in health care. https://ow.ly/RIil50Y5I3S

"Trump Picks Veteran Staffer to Head Bureau of Labor Statistics: Brett Matsumoto, the next chief, has worked as an economist at the BLS since 2015." Excellent choice! www.wsj.com/economy/trum...

I visited hotels all over Minneapolis, went into back rooms & talked to the staff. They're afraid. One told me she resents how her undocumented coworkers spend their days cleaning the rooms of agents who are “hunting down their family members.” @notus.com: www.notus.org/immigration/...

This arrest of @donlemonofficial.bsky.social is shocking but it is all in their heinous playbook — state run media and a quashing of those who will not comply. Masks off for them and gloves off for us www.nytimes.com/2026/01/30/u...

Seems like one of those issues that should greatly concern everyone regardless of their politics.

Scholars from around the world are gathering in Chicago this week to focus on Christian nationalism, which they say is growing in influence globally. religionnews.com/2026/01/28/c...