Military says 16 Marines arrested in human smuggling probe
By JULIE WATSON Associated Press
SAN DIEGO (AP) — A human smuggling investigation by the military led to the arrest of 16 Marines Thursday while carrying out a battalion formation at California’s Camp Pendleton, a base about an hour’s drive from the U.S.-Mexico border.
None of the Marines were involved in helping to enforce border security, the Marine Corps said in a news release. Officials could not be immediately reached for comment.
The arrests come only weeks after two Marines were arrested near the border by a Border Patrol agent. The two Marines were accused of smuggling three Mexicans into the United States.
The Marine Corps said information gained from those arrests led to Thursday’s arrests.
Officials say the Marines are charged with various crimes ranging from human smuggling to drug-related offenses.
Another eight are being questioned about their alleged involvement in drug offenses as part of a separate investigation.
Camp Pendleton, the Marine Corps’ largest base on the West Coast, is about 55 miles (90 kilometers) from the U.S.-Mexico border.
Marines this year were brought in to help support the Department of Homeland Security in reinforcing the border by installing razor wire on top of existing barriers. Military troops are barred from making arrests of immigrants.

President Donald Trump, reacting to U.S. congressional testimony by former Special Counsel Robert Mueller, said on Wednesday the Republican Party had a good day and reiterated his attacks on the Russia probe as a hoax and witch hunt. Speaking to reporters as he departed the White House on a trip to West Virginia, Trump said Mueller, who told lawmakers his probe did not exonerate the president, did not perform well in testimony before two House of Representatives panels and would hurt the Democrats during the 2020 election campaign. Trump called it a “devastating day” for Democrats, saying: “I think they hurt themselves very badly for 2020.”

Jet-setter: Buttigieg leads 2020 Dems in private flights
By BRIAN SLODYSKO Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — Pete Buttigieg has spent roughly $300,000 on private jet travel this year, more than any other Democrat running for the White House, according to an analysis of campaign finance data.
The expenditures have enabled the South Bend, Indiana, mayor to keep up an aggressive schedule, shuttling from his campaign headquarters in his hometown to fundraisers and political events across the country. But his reliance on charter flights contrasts sharply with his image as a Rust Belt mayor who embodies frugality and Midwestern modesty.
That could prove to be a liability in a contest in which relatability to everyday people is often key.
“It’s a trade-off. The downside is that taking a private airplane can look very elitist,” said Dan Schnur, a University of Southern California political science professor and former press secretary for John McCain’s 2000 Republican presidential campaign. “On the other hand, it allows you to cover a lot more ground and talk to a much larger number of voters.”
Buttigieg’s campaign says the distance between its South Bend headquarters and major airports sometimes makes private jet travel necessary.
“We are careful with how we spend our money, and we fly commercial as often as possible,” Buttigieg spokesman Chris Meagher said Wednesday. “We only fly noncommercial when the schedule dictates.”
The spending could come up during the Democratic debates next week when Buttigieg shares a stage with Beto O’Rourke , who already took an apparent poke at him over the matter.
“No private planes for this campaign,” the former Texas congressman said in a video posted to social media on Monday that was filmed while O’Rourke was aboard a commercial plane waiting for takeoff. “We’re putting your $5, $10, $15 to use and making sure we make the most out of every penny that’s committed to this campaign.”
Few political observers predicted Buttigieg would be a leading contender when he entered the 2020 race this year. But he used breakout town hall performances, viral moments and his biography as a millennial, a gay military veteran and a former Rhodes scholar to catapult into the vanguard of Democratic candidates.
He led the field of Democratic candidates in fundraising during the second quarter, raking in $24.8 million .
Yet the charter flight expenses were only part of a number of large expenditures on travel and accommodation by Buttigieg in recent months.
His campaign spent about $110,000 at a Hilton hotel in downtown Miami during the first round of Democratic debates last month . Buttigieg’s campaign says the expenditures covered a large block of conference rooms and rooms for campaign staff, though records show it’s drastically more than any other top contender paid for lodging that week.
He also spent about $20,000 at other Hilton hotels, $14,000 on car and limousine services and $4,100 at the Avalon in Beverly Hills, which bills itself as a hotel that “sets the tone for hip repose.”
So far, the rate at which he is spending money is far less than most of the other candidates in the sprawling field. His campaign’s “burn rate” was about 35% of what it raised during the second quarter, records show.
When it comes to charter flight expenses, Buttigieg is followed by former Vice President Joe Biden, who spent $256,000, according to records. Biden’s campaign declined to discuss his use of charter flights in detail but said carbon offsets purchased to reduce environmental damage from combusted jet fuel contributed to the high cost.
The other top contenders spent far less.
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren has spent about $60,000 on private planes but regularly flies coach and often takes selfies with supporters in airports. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders spent about $18,000. And California Sen. Kamala Harris spent $17,000 on charters, records show.
“It’s never been that big of an issue for candidates in the past, except in those cases where the planes are funded by special interests,” said Schnur, the former McCain press secretary, who no longer identifies as a Republican. “But in this environment, where big-dollar fundraising is a highly sensitive issue, it could become fodder for another campaign.”
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Follow Slodysko on Twitter: https://twitter.com/BrianSlodysko

Booker takes on Biden in bid to break through crowded field
By ELANA SCHOR Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — In nearly six months as a Democratic presidential candidate, Cory Booker has billed himself as many things: He’s both an optimist leading with “radical love” and a fighter against political machines. He’s both a supporter of “Medicare for All” and an advocate for more incremental health care policies that preserve the private insurance industry.
As the New Jersey senator prepares for a pivotal turn in the spotlight at next week’s debate, he’s trying on a new role: Joe Biden’s chief antagonist.
Ahead of an expected showdown in Detroit, Booker is blasting the former vice president as “an architect of mass incarceration.” Speaking to the National Urban League on Thursday, he assailed rivals whom he portrayed as latecomers to the fight against “structural inequality and institutional racism” — implying, without mentioning Biden’s name, that his opponent had embraced criminal justice reform to further his presidential candidacy.
One of two black major candidates in the Democratic contest, Booker is homing in on racial justice as he struggles to emerge from the bottom tier of most national polls. He has yet to meet the donor qualifications to participate in this fall’s Democratic debate, when tougher rules are expected to winnow the crowded field. Democrats say Booker’s new approach to Biden could provide a moment to lift his campaign — or sack it with more baggage.
“There’s a path that still exists for Booker, but he needs a galvanizing moment that not only boosts his hopes but also eliminates one of the opponents in front of him,” said Democratic strategist Joel Payne, a veteran of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. “It’s possible, but it’s a tough path ahead.”
Booker’s aides see him as on track to qualify for the September debate regardless of what may take place in Detroit. His campaign remains focused on an early state strategy that takes him to Iowa on Friday for the seventh time since entering the race.
“Cory’s performance serves as a validation for the folks who have committed their early support to his campaign” in the Hawkeye State, said Mike Frosolone, Booker’s Iowa state director.
Booker’s organization is particularly strong in Iowa, where he counts nearly 50 staff members and has won a long list of potent local endorsements. Still, the campaign spent more money than it raised during the second quarter of the year, and Booker’s efforts are likely to mean little until he can get what Des Moines lawyer Grant Woodard called “his moment in the sun.”
“Something has to happen for him in the national narrative, I think, and he can really start to flex his muscle here,” said Woodard, a former Democratic operative in the state.
Booker faces several hurdles at this critical juncture. Biden’s camp has responded quickly to his potshots, suggesting the former vice president is more prepared to be hit next week than he was during the first presidential debate when he stammered in answering Kamala Harris.
And, unlike the first debate, he’ll have to share the stage with Harris, whose campaign gained ground after she took aim at Biden’s recent comments about working with segregationists and his past opposition to school busing. Her broadside was so successful in part because Harris is not known for sharing personal stories.
Booker, in contrast, has built a brand on a personal, uplifting approach to politics. Trying to replicate Harris could make him seem insincere.
Yvette Simpson, chief executive of the progressive group Democracy for America, urged Booker to “speak from a place that’s real to him,” warning that he has verged on “a stage where it’s more platitudes and less authentic.” On issues beyond criminal justice, she added, the debates could exert pressure on Booker to be more than “the guy in the middle” who neither directly courts the left nor actively alienates it.
Indeed, Booker has at times edged away from a full-bore liberal approach in his campaign’s first months. He has proposed an ambitious, progressive immigration agenda, decrying President Donald Trump as “worse than a racist,” but clarified last week that he would not use the term “concentration camps” to describe immigration detention facilities, as New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has.
Booker also hasn’t fully endorsed a push by activists on the left to eliminate the Senate filibuster to help a future Democratic president accomplish his or her agenda. And on health care, Booker has joined Harris in supporting Medicare for All legislation but edged away from it on the campaign trail as Biden runs as a sharp critic of single-payer health insurance.
No matter how he’s drawn into a clash with Biden on the debate stage, Booker appears firmly on track for one. And he’s taking a more pugnacious tone with Trump as well, telling NBC talk show host Seth Meyers this week that he sometimes has to resist the temptation to punch the “elderly, out-of-shape” president.
Penny Rosfjord, a member of the Iowa Democratic Party’s state central committee, said that combativeness among candidates “can get dangerous” but suggested that Booker has more room to get sharper given the love-first tone that he started his campaign on.
“I personally think it’s the right tone, but he will at times have to get a bit more . aggressive with people,” Rosfjord said. “He might have to throw some verbal punches here and there.”

(Photos taken by Sandy Giordano)

HOPEWELL TOWNSHIP’S CODE AND ZONING OFFICER IS SPEAKING OUT ABOUT THE FLOODING ON HEIGHTS ROAD. BEAVER COUNTY RADIO NEWS CORRESPONDENT SANDY GIORDANO HAS MORE. Click on ‘play’ to hear Sandy’s report…

US government will execute inmates for first time since 2003
By MICHAEL BALSAMO and COLLEEN LONG Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. government will execute federal death row inmates for the first time since 2003, the Justice Department announced Thursday, bringing back a seldom-used punishment pushed by President Donald Trump and escalating another divisive issue ahead of the 2020 presidential election.
Five inmates who have been sentenced to death are scheduled to be executed starting in December — all within a six-week period. By comparison, there have been only three executions since the federal death penalty was restored in 1988 and only 37 overall from 1927 to 2003.
In 2014, following a botched state execution in Oklahoma, then-President Barack Obama directed the department to conduct a review of capital punishment and issues surrounding lethal injection drugs.
That review has been completed, the department said, and it has cleared the way for executions to resume.
In a statement, Attorney General William Barr said the “Justice Department upholds the rule of law — and we owe it to the victims and their families to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system.”
Barr approved a new procedure for lethal injections that replaces the three-drug cocktail previously used in federal execution with a single drug, pentobarbital. This is similar to the procedure used in several states, including Georgia, Missouri and Texas.
Though there hasn’t been a federal execution since 2003, the Justice Department has continued to approve death penalty prosecutions and federal courts have sentenced defendants to death.
There are 61 people on the federal death row, according to Death Row USA, a quarterly report of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Some of the highest-profile inmates on federal death row include Dylann Roof, who killed nine black church members during a Bible study session in 2015 at a South Carolina church, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who set off bombs near the Boston Marathon’s finish line in 2013, killing three people and wounding more than 260.
The decision to resume carrying out the death penalty is likely to magnify an issue already debated in the Democratic primary and create a flashpoint between that party’s nominee and Trump in the general election.
Most Democrats oppose capital punishment. Former Vice President Joe Biden this week shifted to call for the elimination of the federal death penalty after years of supporting it. The lone Democratic White House hopeful who has publicly supported preserving capital punishment in certain circumstances is Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, who has said he would leave it open as an option for major crimes such as terrorism.
By contrast, Trump has spoken often — and sometimes wistfully — about capital punishment and his belief that executions serve as both an effective deterrent and appropriate punishment for some crimes, including mass shootings and the killings of police officers. All five scheduled to be executed starting in December were convicted of killing children.
“I think they should very much bring the death penalty into vogue,” Trump said last year after 11 people were gunned down in a Pittsburgh synagogue.
He’s suggested repeatedly that the U.S. might be better off it adopted the kind of harsh drug laws embraced by Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, under whom thousands of drug suspects have been killed by police.
Trump was a vocal proponent of the death penalty for decades before taking office, most notably in 1989 when he took out full-page advertisements in New York City newspapers urging elected officials to “BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY” following the rape of a jogger in Central Park. “If the punishment is strong,” he wrote then, “the attacks on innocent people will stop.”
Five Harlem teenagers were convicted in the Central Park case but had their convictions vacated years later after another man confessed to the rape. More than a decade after their exoneration, the city agreed to pay the so-called Central Park Five $41 million, a settlement Trump blasted as “outrageous.”
About 6 in 10 Americans favor the death penalty, according to the General Social Survey, a major trends survey conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago. While a majority continue to express support for the death penalty, the share has declined steadily since the 1990s, when nearly three-quarters were in favor.
The first inmate scheduled to be executed — on Dec. 9 — is Danny Lee, who was convicted of killing a family of three, including an 8-year-old girl, in 1996, and stealing guns and cash in a plot to establish a whites-only nation in the Pacific Northwest.
The others include Lezmond Mitchell, who prosecutors say stabbed a 63-year-old grandmother to death and then forced her 9-year-old granddaughter to sit beside her grandmother’s lifeless body as he drove about 40 miles, before slitting the girl’s throat. Their beheaded, mutilated bodies were found in a shallow grave on a Native reservation. He’s scheduled to be executed two days after Lee.
The Bureau of Prisons plans to execute Wesley Ira Purkey on Dec. 13. He was convicted of raping and killing a 16-year-old girl before dismembering, burning and then dumping the teen’s body in a septic pond. Prosecutors said he was also convicted in a state court in Kansas after using a claw hammer to kill an 80-year-old woman who suffered from polio.
Prosecutors say another one of the inmates, Alfred Bourgeois, tortured, molested and then beat his two-and-a-half-year-old daughter to death.
The final inmate scheduled to be executed, Dustin Lee Honken, was convicted in 2004 in connection with the killings of five people as part of a plan to thwart a federal investigation into his drug operation. They included two men who became informants and were going to testify against him, the girlfriend of one of the informants and her two young daughters.
All five will be executed at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana.
Attorneys for each of the men did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Thursday.
The federal government would join eight states that have executed inmates or are planning to do so this year, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Texas is far and away the leading state when it comes to using the death penalty, with 563 executions since capital punishment resumed in the U.S. in 1977 after a 10-year pause.
In the past 20 years, the Supreme Court has banned the execution of people who are intellectually disabled or were under 18 when they killed someone. But even as the number of people who are sentenced to death and are executed has declined steadily for two decades, the justices have resisted any wholesale reconsideration of the constitutionality of capital punishment.
The five-justice conservative majority that includes Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s two high court picks, has complained about delaying tactics employed by lawyers for death row inmates.
The most recent federal execution occurred in 2003, when Louis Jones was executed for the 1995 kidnapping, rape and murder of a female soldier.
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Associated Press writers Jill Colvin, Mark Sherman, Elana Schor and Hannah Fingerhut contributed to this report.
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For more of AP’s coverage of U.S. politics: https://www.apnews.com/apf-politics

Financier Jeffrey Epstein found injured in jail cell
By TOM HAYS Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) — Wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein was found on the floor of his jail cell with bruises on his neck early this week while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges, a person familiar with the matter said Thursday.
It was not clear whether the injuries were self-inflicted or from an assault, said the person, who was not authorized to discuss the case and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
Epstein, 66, was treated and, according to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, remains in custody at the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City. Jail records obtained by the AP show no indication he was taken to a hospital.
In a statement, the bureau gave no other details and would not comment on Epstein’s condition. An Epstein lawyer had no immediate response.
It was not clear whether Epstein had any cellmates or was being held by himself. The jail is famous for its tight security and notorious inmates, who have included terrorists, Wall Street schemers and, until recently, Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.
A lawyer for inmate Nicholas Tartaglione denied local news reports on Thursday that his client was a suspect in a possible assault on the financier. Tartaglione is a former suburban New York police officer awaiting trial on charges he was involved in the kidnapping and killing of four men in 2016.
The attorney, Bruce Barket, suggested that the allegations were leaked by someone “trying to embarrass Epstein and cast some shade on Nick.”
Epstein has been accused of sexually abusing dozens of underage girls in the early 2000s. A judge denied him bail last week, ruling that he might flee the country if released. The judge also said Epstein is a danger to the public because of his “uncontrollable” urges to engage in sexual conduct with underage girls.
Notorious inmates — and those accused of sex crimes against children — are often given extra protection against attacks from other prisoners. But it was not immediately clear what precautions, if any, were taken in Epstein’s case.
“It would have been an extremely poor decision to cell him with any other inmate. He’s too high-profile, a confirmed sex offender of underage females and suspected of human trafficking,” said Cameron Lindsay, a retired warden who ran three federal lockups. “In the subculture of jails and prisons, it’s a badge of honor to take a guy out like that.”
Jail officials would have had no reason to put him under closer supervision against suicide unless he seemed suicidal when he arrived, Lindsay said.
Epstein was indicted on federal charges in New York this month more than a decade after he secretly struck a deal with federal prosecutors in Florida to dispose of similar charges of sex trafficking. He pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting a minor for prostitution and served 13 months behind bars.
Federal prosecutors in New York reopened the probe after investigative reporting by The Miami Herald stirred outrage over the plea bargain.
Epstein’s lawyers said he hasn’t had any illicit contact with underage girls since serving his sentence in Florida. They said the current charges are improper because the government is reneging on the deal not to prosecute him.
U.S. Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta resigned this month after coming under fire for overseeing that deal when he was U.S. attorney in Miami.
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Associated Press writers Jim Mustian and Michael R. Sisak contributed to this report.
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This story has been corrected to show that the jail is the Metropolitan Correctional Center, not the Metropolitan Detention Center.

Police have charged four people with fighting at Kennywood Guest Relations Saturday night. Police say Jamar Terry and Eboni Harp began to argue with Jacob Haten and Emily Kosko over how one of the couples was looking at the other. Police say the argument turned physical, with Haten throwing a desk fan from guest relations. Police say Terry then picked up the fan and hit Kosko. According to court papers and video from the scene, several West Mifflin police officers and Kennywood public safety officers responded, taking Terry to the ground. Police say he resisted arrest and an officer’s nose was broken while trying to handcuff Terry. Kennywood says that the offending parties were detained and ejected from the park, and have been banned from Kennywood.

The Ambridge Area School District has added a 4th Pre-K program for the fall. Beaver County Radio News Correspondent Sandy Giordano has more…

WEATHER FORECAST FOR THURSDAY, JULY 25TH, 2019

 

TODAY – MOSTLY SUNNY. A STRAY SHOWER OR
THUNDERSTORM IS POSSIBLE. HIGH – 81.

TONIGHT – CLEAR SKIES. LOW NEAR 60.

FRIDAY – SUNNY. HIGH – 85.

SATURDAY – MOSTLY SUNNY. HIGH – 85.

SUNDAY – PARTLY SUNNY. HIGH – 86.