MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Two former Minneapolis police officers charged in George Floyd’s killing told a judge that they have rejected plea deals that would have resulted in three-year prison sentences. The statements from Tou Thao and J. Alexander Kueng on Monday at a brief hearing in Minneapolis set the stage for trial in October. The pair are charged with aiding and abetting both second-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter in Floyd’s death. They and Thomas Lane were working with Derek Chauvin when he pinned Floyd’s neck with his knee for more than nine minutes as the 46-year-old Black man said he couldn’t breathe and eventually grew still. Thao said “it would be lying” for him to accept a plea deal.

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — China has announced more military drills around Taiwan as the self-governing island’s president met with members of a new U.S. congressional delegation. The announcement threatened to renew tensions between Beijing and Washington just days after a similar visit by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi angered China. Pelosi was the highest-level member of the U.S. government to visit Taiwan in 25 years, and her trip prompted nearly two weeks of threatening military exercises by China. Beijing claims Taiwan as its own. In those drills, it fired missiles over the island and into the Taiwan Strait and sent warplanes and navy ships across the waterway’s midline. The two sides split amid civil war in 1949.

PA State Police File Photo
Story by Sandy Giordano – Beaver County Radio. Published August 15, 2022 8:59 A.M.

(Aliquippa, PA) Ronald Hallas,45, of Elizabeth, PA was arrested for DUI by PA State Police on Friday, August 12 at 10;32 a.m. after they received a report of a man passed out behind the wheel of his vehicle. Charges are pending against Hallas.

BERWICK, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania state police say a man drove into a crowd at a fundraiser for victims of a recent deadly house fire. One person was killed and 17 others were injured Saturday. He then returned home and beat his mother to death. Police said 24-year-old Adrian Oswaldo Sura Reyes was arraigned early Sunday on two counts of criminal homicide. They allege that he told them he was upset about an argument with his mother, saw the crowd in Berwick and drove through it. Court documents don’t list an attorney for him. State police say Sura Reyes is not currently a suspect in the fire, which killed seven adults and three children.

(PA State Police File Photo)
Story by Sandy Giordano – Beaver County Radio. Published August 15, 2022 8:55 A.M.

(Aliquippa, PA) PA State Police reported that they stopped a Monaca man  for suspicion of DUI  last Saturday morning in Aliquippa at the Kennedy Boulevard and Upland Street intersection. According to the report Scott Reynolds, 35, of Monaca will be charged through district court.

MOSCOW (AP) — Lawyers for American basketball star Brittney Griner have filed an appeal against her nine-year Russian prison sentence for drugs possession. Griner is a center for the Phoenix Mercury and a two-time Olympic gold medalist. She was convicted on Aug. 4. Griner was arrested in February at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport after vape canisters containing cannabis oil were found in her luggage. Griner played for a women’s basketball team in Yekaterinburg during the WNBA offseason.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — A major economic bill headed to the president has “game-changing” incentives for the nuclear energy industry, experts say, and those tax credits are even more substantial if a facility is sited in a community with a coal plant that’s closing. Among the many things the transformative bill could do, nuclear energy experts say, is spur more nuclear reactor projects like one Bill Gates is planning in Kemmerer, Wyoming. Companies designing and building the next generation of nuclear reactors could pick one of two new tax credits available to carbon-free electricity generators. Both include a 10-percentage point bonus for facilities sited in fossil fuel communities.

BETHLEHEM, Pa. (AP) — An annual 10-day music festival in eastern Pennsylvania resumed Sunday after a reported shooting sent participants scrambling for safety just before the conclusion of Saturday night’s concert. Bethlehem police converged on the area just before the Musikfest entertainment was to end for the night at 11 p.m. Saturday after people reported hearing a gunshot. Sgt. Brad Jones told WLVR that there had been a shooting but did not provide other details. There was no immediate word on whether anyone was injured. Police called it “an isolated incident” and said “the festival was shut down for the safety of patrons.” The city had authorized the festival to resume at noon Sunday,

WASHINGTON (AP) — Police say a man drove his car into a barricade near the U.S. Capitol and then began firing gunshots in the air before fatally shooting himself. Police say the man didn’t seem to be targeting any member of Congress. The incident happened just before 4 a.m. at a vehicle barricade set on Capitol Hill. Authorities say that as the man was getting out of the car, the vehicle became engulfed in flames. Police say he then opened fire, shooting several bullets into the air as police approached. The man’s identity hasn’t been released, but investigators have located addresses for him in Delaware and Pennsylvania and have learned he had a criminal history in the past decade.