STATE REPRESENTATIVE JOSH KAIL, OF BEAVER, JUST HAD HIS FIRST BILL PASSED INTO LAW. HOUSE BILL 384 WAS SIGNED BY GOVERNOR WOLF ON FRIDAY. BEAVER COUNTY RADIO NEWS INTERN, CHRISTINA SAINOVICH, HAS DETAILS…

BREAKING NEWS: THERE’S A STANDOFF UNDERWAY IN SOUTH HEIGHTS THIS MORNING. BEAVER COUNTY RADIO NEWS CORRESPONDENT SANDY GIORDANO HAS DETAILS. Click on ‘play’ to hear Sandy’s report…

WEATHER FORECAST FOR WEDNESDAY, JULY 3RD, 2019

 

TODAY – SCATTERED THUNDERSTORMS. HIGH – 84.

TONIGHT – SCATTERED THUNDERSTORMS. LOW NEAR 70.

INDEPENDENCE DAY – SCATTERED SHOWERS AND
THUNDERSTORMS. HIGH – 87.

FRIDAY – SCATTERED THUNDERSTORMS. HIGH – 87.

SATURDAY – SCATTERED THUNDERSTORMS. HIGH – 85.

SUNDAY – SHOWERS IN THE MORNING. REMAINING PARTLY
CLOUDY FOR THE AFTERNOON. HIGH – 83.

NASA opening moon rock samples sealed since Apollo missions
By MARCIA DUNN AP Aerospace Writer
HOUSTON (AP) — Inside a locked vault at Johnson Space Center is treasure few have seen and fewer have touched.
The restricted lab is home to hundreds of pounds of moon rocks collected by Apollo astronauts close to a half-century ago. And for the first time in decades, NASA is about to open some of the pristine samples and let geologists take a crack at them with 21st-century technology.
What better way to mark this summer’s 50th anniversary of humanity’s first footsteps on the moon than by sharing a bit of the lunar loot.
“It’s sort of a coincidence that we’re opening them in the year of the anniversary,” explained NASA’s Apollo sample curator Ryan Zeigler, covered head to toe in a white protective suit with matching fabric boots, gloves and hat.
“But certainly the anniversary increased the awareness and the fact that we’re going back to the moon.”
With the golden anniversary of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s feat fast approaching — their lunar module Eagle landed July 20, 1969, on the Sea of Tranquility — the moon is red-hot again.
After decades of flip-flopping between the moon and Mars as the next big astronaut destination, NASA aims to put astronauts on the lunar surface again by 2024 at the White House’s direction. President Donald Trump prefers talking up Mars. But the consensus is that the moon is a crucial proving ground given its relative proximity to home — 240,000 miles (386,000 kilometers) or two to three days away.
Zeigler’s job is to preserve what the 12 moonwalkers brought back from 1969 through 1972 — lunar samples totaling 842 pounds (382 kilograms) — and ensure scientists get the best possible samples for study.
Some of the soil and bits of rock were vacuum-packed on the moon — and never exposed to Earth’s atmosphere — or frozen or stored in gaseous helium following splashdown and then left untouched. The lab’s staff is now trying to figure out how best to remove the samples from their tubes and other containers without contaminating or spoiling anything. They’re practicing with mock-up equipment and pretend lunar dirt.
Compared with Apollo-era tech, today’s science instruments are much more sensitive, Zeigler noted.
“We can do more with a milligram than we could do with a gram back then. So it was really good planning on their part to wait,” he said.
The lunar sample lab has two side-by-side vaults: one for rocks still in straight-from-the-moon condition and a smaller vault for samples previously loaned out for study. About 70 percent of the original haul is in the pristine sample vault, which has two combinations and takes two people to unlock. About 15 percent is in safekeeping at White Sands in New Mexico. The rest is used for research or display.
Of the six manned moon landings, Apollo 11 yielded the fewest lunar samples: 48 pounds or 22 kilograms. It was the first landing by astronauts and NASA wanted to minimize their on-the-moon time and risk. What’s left from this mission — about three-quarters after scientific study, public displays and goodwill gifts to all countries and U.S. states in 1969 — is kept mostly here at room temperature.
Armstrong was the primary rock collector and photographer. Aldrin gathered two core samples just beneath the surface during the 2 1/2-hour moonwalk. All five subsequent Apollo moon landings had longer stays. The last three — Apollo 15, 16 and 17 — had rovers that significantly upped the sample collection and coverage area.
“Fifty years later, we’re still learning new things … incredible,” said the lab’s Charis Krysher, holding a clear acrylic marble embedded with chips of Apollo 11 moon rock in her gloved hand.
By studying the Apollo moon rocks, Zeigler said, scientists have determined the ages of the surfaces of Mars and Mercury, and established that Jupiter and the solar system’s other big outer planets likely formed closer to the sun and later migrated outward.
“So sample return from outer space is really powerful about learning about the whole solar system,” he said.
Andrea Mosie, who’s worked with the Apollo moon rocks for 44 years and was a high school intern at Johnson Space Center in July 1969, remembers the Polaroid photos and handwritten notes once accompanying each sample. She sometimes gets emotional when talking to children about the moonshots and does her best to dispel any notion that the rocks aren’t from the moon and the lunar landings never happened.
“The samples are right here and they’re still in a pristine state,” she assures young skeptics.
Most of the samples to be doled out over the next year were collected in 1972 during Apollo 17, the final moonshot and the only one to include a geologist, Harrison Schmitt. He occasionally visits the lunar sample lab and plans to help open the fresh specimens.
The nine U.S. research teams selected by NASA will receive varying amounts.
“Everything from the weight of a paperclip, down to basically so little mass you can barely measure it,” Zeigler said.
Especially tricky will be extracting the gases that were trapped in the vacuum-sealed sample tubes. The lab hasn’t opened one since the 1970s.
“If you goof that part up, the gas is gone. You only get one shot,” Zeigler said.
The lab’s collection is divided by mission, with each lunar landing getting its own cabinet with built-in gloves and stacks of stainless steel bins filled with pieces of the moon. Apollo 16 and 17, responsible for half the lunar haul, get two cabinets apiece.
The total Apollo inventory now exceeds 100,000 samples; some of the original 2,200 were broken into smaller pieces for study.
Sample processor Jeremy Kent is hopeful that “we will get some more samples here in the lab to work on.”
There’s space for plenty more.
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Follow AP’s full coverage of the Apollo 11 anniversary at: https://apnews.com/Apollo11moonlanding
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Former Chrysler CEO Lee Iacocca has died at age 94
By TOM KRISHER and DEE-ANN DURBIN AP Business Writers
DETROIT (AP) — Lee Iacocca, the auto executive and master pitchman who put the Mustang in Ford’s lineup in the 1960s and became a corporate folk hero when he resurrected Chrysler 20 years later, has died in Bel Air, California. He was 94.
Two former Chrysler executives who worked with him, Bud Liebler, the company’s former spokesman, and Bob Lutz, formerly its head of product development, said they were told of the death Tuesday by a close associate of Iacocca’s family.
In his 32-year career at Ford and then Chrysler, Iacocca helped launch some of Detroit’s best-selling and most significant vehicles, including the minivan, the Chrysler K-cars and the Ford Escort. He also spoke out against what he considered unfair trade practices by Japanese automakers.
The son of Italian immigrants, Iacocca reached a level of celebrity matched by few auto moguls. During the peak of his popularity in the ’80s, he was famous for his TV ads and catchy tagline: “If you can find a better car, buy it!” He wrote two best-selling books and was courted as a presidential candidate.
But he will be best remembered as the blunt-talking, cigar-chomping Chrysler chief who helped engineer a great corporate turnaround.
Liebler, who worked for Iacocca for a decade, said he had a larger-than-life presence that commanded attention. “He sucked the air out of the room whenever he walked into it,” Liebler said. “He always had something to say. He was a leader.”
In recent years Iacocca was battling Parkinson’s Disease, but Liebler was not sure what caused his death.
He remembers that Iacocca could condemn employees if they did something he didn’t like, but a few minutes later it would be like nothing had happened.
“He used to beat me up, sometimes in public,” Liebler remembered. When people asked how he could put up with that, Liebler would answer: “He’ll get over it.”
In 1979, Chrysler was floundering in $5 billion of debt. It had a bloated manufacturing system that was turning out gas-guzzlers that the public didn’t want.
When the banks turned him down, Iacocca and the United Auto Workers union helped persuade the government to approve $1.5 billion in loan guarantees that kept the No. 3 domestic automaker afloat.
Liebler said Iacocca is the last of an era of brash, charismatic executives who could produce results. “Lee made money. He went to Washington and made all these crazy promises, then he delivered on them,” Liebler said.
Iacocca wrung wage concessions from the union, closed or consolidated 20 plants, laid off thousands of workers and introduced new cars. In TV commercials, he admitted Chrysler’s mistakes but insisted the company had changed.
The strategy worked. The bland, basic Dodge Aries and Plymouth Reliant were affordable, fuel-efficient and had room for six. In 1981, they captured 20% of the market for compact cars. In 1983, Chrysler paid back its government loans, with interest, seven years early.
The following year, Iacocca introduced the minivan and created a new market.
The turnaround and Iacocca’s bravado made him a media star. His “Iacocca: An Autobiography,” released in 1984, and his “Talking Straight,” released in 1988, were best-sellers. He even appeared on “Miami Vice.”
A January 1987 Gallup Poll of potential Democratic presidential candidates for 1988 showed Iacocca was preferred by 14%, second only to Colorado Sen. Gary Hart. He continually said no to “draft Iacocca” talk.
Also during that time, he headed the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, presiding over the renovation of the statue, completed in 1986, and the reopening of nearby Ellis Island as a museum of immigration in 1990.
But in the years before his retirement in 1992, Chrysler’s earnings and Iacocca’s reputation faltered. Following the lead of Ford and General Motors, he undertook a risky diversification into the defense and aviation industries, but it failed to help the bottom line.
Still, he could take credit for such decisions as the 1987 purchase of American Motors Corp. Although the $1.5 billion acquisition was criticized at the time, AMC’s Jeep brand has become a gold mine for now Fiat Chrysler Automobiles as demand for SUVs surged.
Iacocca was born Lido Anthony Iacocca in 1924 in Allentown, Pennsylvania. His father, Nicola, became rich in real estate and other businesses, but the family lost nearly everything in the Depression.
After earning a master’s degree in mechanical engineering at Princeton University, Iacocca began his career as an engineering trainee with Ford in 1946. But the extrovert quickly became bored and took the unconventional step of switching to sales.
He said a turning point in his career came in 1956, when he was assistant sales manager of the Philadelphia district office ranked last in Ford sales nationwide. Iacocca’s devised a financing plan called “56 for 56,” under which customers could buy a 1956 Ford for 20% down and payments of $56 a month for three years. The district’s sales shot to the top, and Iacocca was quickly promoted to a national marketing job at company headquarters in Dearborn, Michigan.
By 1960, at age 36, Iacocca was vice president and general manager of the Ford division.
“We were young and cocky,” he recalled in his autobiography. “We saw ourselves as artists, about to produce the finest masterpieces the world had ever seen.”
Iacocca’s first burst of fame came with the debut of the Mustang in 1964. He had convinced his superiors that Ford needed the affordable, stylish coupe to take advantage of the growing youth market.
He broke from tradition by launching the car in April rather than the fall. Ford invited reporters to a 70-car Mustang rally from New York to Dearborn, which generated huge publicity. The car made the covers of Time and Newsweek the same week.
In 1970, Iacocca was named Ford president and immediately undertook a restructuring to cut costs as the company struggled with foreign competition and rising gas prices. Iacocca’s relationship with Chairman Henry Ford II became strained, and in 1978, Ford fired Iacocca. Henry Ford II later described Iacocca as “an extremely intelligent product man, a super salesman” who was “too conceited, too self-centered to be able to see the broad picture,” according to interview transcripts published by The Detroit News.
Iacocca got the last laugh. He was strongly courted by Chrysler, and he helped cement its turnaround in the 1980s by introducing the wildly successful Dodge Caravan and Plymouth Voyager minivans.
In July 2005, Iacocca returned to the airwaves as Chrysler’s pitchman, including a memorable ad in which he played golf with rapper Snoop Dogg.
Chrysler wasn’t faring well. In his 2007 book “Where Have All the Leaders Gone?” Iacocca criticized Chrysler’s 1998 sale to the Germany’s Daimler AG, which gutted much of Chrysler to cut costs.
As the recession began, sales worsened, and soon Chrysler was asking for a second government bailout. In April 2009, it filed for bankruptcy protection.
“It pains me to see my old company, which has meant so much to America, on the ropes,” Iacocca said.
Chrysler emerged from bankruptcy protection under the control of Italian automaker Fiat. In a 2009 interview with The Associated Press, he urged Chrysler executives to “take care of our customers. That’s the only solid thing you have.”
Iacocca was also active in later years in raising money to fight diabetes. His first wife, Mary, died of complications of the disease in 1983 after 27 years of marriage. The couple had two daughters, Kathryn and Lia.
Iacocca remarried twice, but both marriages ended in divorce.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign says it has raised $105 million during the second fundraising quarter. The campaign also says it has a whopping $100 million in cash on hand. Campaign manager Brad Parscale says the total shows the “overwhelming support” that exists for the president. The money was raised by the Trump campaign, Trump’s joint fundraising entities and the Republican National Committee.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A House committee has filed a lawsuit after being denied President Donald Trump’s tax returns. The lawsuit was filed Tuesday in federal court in Washington. The committee says it’s investigating tax law compliance by the president, among other things.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus disclosed stark video and photos of migrant women being held at a border facility in Texas. Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro posted the images after officials told lawmakers touring the station to leave their cell phones behind.

As Europe continues to roast under a heat wave, police were forced to pull over a German man who was riding a scooter wearing nothing but a helmet and sandals. The naked rider claimed he was trying to cool down and simply defended his nudity by telling the officer: ‘It’s too hot’. The officer told the man to ‘put some pants on’ and let him continue on with his trip.