WEATHER FORECAST FOR THURSDAY, JUNE 28TH, 2018

TODAY – CLOUDY THIS MORNING WITH PEEKS OF
SUNSHINE THIS AFTERNOON. SLIGHT CHANCE OF
A RAIN SHOWER. HIGH – 82.

TONIGHT – A CLEAR SKY. LOW – 61.

FRIDAY – HAZY, HOT AND HUMID. HIGH NEAR 90.

SATURDAY – HAZY, HOT AND HUMID. HIGH – 93.

SUNDAY – HAZY, HOT AND HUMID. HIGH – 95.

Lawmakers leave state Capitol for summer with bills dangling
By MARC LEVY, Associated Press
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Of all the bills that stalled this week in Pennsylvania’s Capitol, perhaps the most remarkable is the derailing of a measure designed to force people with a domestic violence conviction or restraining order against them to forfeit their firearms more quickly.
Rep. Marguerite Quinn, R-Bucks, said she had never left the Capitol with tears of anger in her eyes until Monday. That was after House Republican leaders ended the session for the summer amid growing questions over provisions of her bill, tanking a floor vote until at least September.
On Sunday evening, a Pennsylvania-based gun rights group, Firearms Owners Against Crime, emailed lawmakers to announce its fresh opposition, citing various provisions of the bill in a letter that Quinn said was full of inaccuracies.
“There were a lot of things in the letter that are just not true,” Quinn said. “It was a well-timed letter to disrupt the voting process on the last day of session for the summer.”
House Republican leaders ended the session without giving Quinn time to settle questions about the bill and get it to a floor vote.
All bills die when the two-year legislative session ends Nov. 30, and both chambers are expected to schedule nine to 12 session days in September and October.
Other bills left hanging when lawmakers left for the summer include measures to amend the state constitution to shrink the number of seats in the House of Representatives and to create a citizens’ commission to draw legislative and congressional district boundaries.
Lawmakers say the Department of State told them July 6 is the deadline to approve a redistricting measure to meet constitutional guidelines if a commission is to be operating by 2022’s elections. That’s when states must redraw boundaries to adjust for decade-long population shifts identified in the census.
But House Republican support for a redistricting commission is shaky, while Democrats oppose a Senate-passed measure that includes provisions to change how appellate judges are elected and potentially undo the state Supreme Court’s Democratic majority.
The Senate left without voting on legislation that passed the House in April to prohibit abortions in Pennsylvania when the sole reason is that the fetus has or may have Down syndrome. The bill was championed by House Speaker Mike Turzai, R-Allegheny.
Meanwhile, the House did not take up Senate-passed legislation to combat sex trafficking or increase criminal penalties for hazing, a measure inspired by the death last year of a Penn State pledge after a night of heavy drinking.
Anti-domestic violence advocates have worked on the provisions in Quinn’s bill for four years and, in March, it passed the Senate unanimously, spurred in part by February’s Parkland, Florida, high school shooting that killed 17 people.
Law enforcement groups broadly supported it and Firearms Owners Against Crime and the National Rifle Association had dropped their opposition to the Senate’s bill after winning 11th-hour changes to it.
But it underwent a series of changes in the House last week after three months awaiting a committee vote. Kim Stolfer of Firearms Owners Against Crime viewed at least one of those changes as backtracking on a provision to which he had agreed in the Senate’s version.
Stolfer insisted he had not spread inaccuracies about the bill, but said he and his group’s lawyers had had to scramble to keep up with last week’s series of changes.
The process was confusing and chaotic and, in the end, his lawyers believed the bill was packed with poorly written and conflicting provisions, Stolfer said.
“We’re not the bad guys here, and we’re being painted as that,” Stolfer said. “And that’s not fair.”
House Majority Whip Brian Cutler, R-Lancaster, said the bill remains viable for the House’s fall session, although it will require finding out anew how much support the bill has.

Cases in which police officers were charged in shootings
By The Associated Press
A white police officer, Michael Rosfeld, was charged Wednesday with criminal homicide in the fatal shooting last week of an unarmed black teenager who fled a traffic stop in East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Investigators say Rosfeld gave inconsistent statements about whether he saw a gun in the teen’s hand. Authorities have said Antwon Rose Jr. and another teen fled after being pulled over on suspicion they were involved in a drive-by shooting. Rose was shot three times, leading to protests around Pittsburgh.
Some other high-profile cases in recent years in which police were charged with shootings of black people:
— Chicago: Marco Proano was sentenced to five years in prison for using excessive force after shooting at a stolen car in 2013, injuring two black teenagers.
— North Charleston, South Carolina: After killing 50-year-old Walter Scott in 2015, Officer Michael Slager was found guilty of second-degree murder and obstruction of justice. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison in December 2017.
— Cincinnati: University of Cincinnati Police Officer Raymond Tensing was tried twice for murder after killing Samuel DuBose, whom he pulled over for driving without a front license plate in 2015. The jury was hung both times, and the charges were dismissed. Tensing received $350,000 from the University of Cincinnati when he agreed to resign.
— Milwaukee: Officer Dominique Heaggan-Brown was acquitted in June 2017 of first-degree reckless homicide after shooting Sylville Smith, 23, during a foot chase in August 2016.
— Falcon Heights, Minnesota: Officer Jeronimo Yanez was charged with second-degree manslaughter and other counts after shooting Philando Castile, 32, in 2016. He was acquitted on all charges in June 2017.
— Tulsa, Oklahoma: Officer Betty Shelby was acquitted of manslaughter after shooting a 40-year-old unarmed black man, Terence Crutcher, in September 2016. A neighboring sheriff’s office then announced Shelby, who resigned from the Tulsa Police Department, would join his team.
— Miami: Prosecutors charged Officer Jonathan Aledda with four felonies and misdemeanors, including attempted manslaughter, after he shot an unarmed behavioral therapist, Charles Kinsey, in July 2016. Kinsey was supervising an patient with autism who was holding a silver toy truck, which a bystander mistook for a gun.
— Balch Springs, Texas: In April 2017, Officer Roy Oliver shot and killed 15-year-old Jordan Edwards, who was riding in a car with four other black teenagers. Oliver was indicted on a murder charge and is awaiting trial, scheduled for August.
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Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Claudia Lauer and Alexandra Villarreal in Philadelphia and AP News Researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York.

Top court: Unions can’t force government workers to pay fees
By MARK SHERMAN, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that government workers can’t be forced to contribute to labor unions that represent them in collective bargaining, dealing a serious financial blow to Democratic-leaning organized labor.
The court’s conservative majority, re-empowered by Justice Neil Gorsuch, scrapped a 41-year-old decision that had allowed states to require that public employees pay some fees to unions that represent them, even if the workers choose not to join.
The 5-4 decision not only will free non-union members in nearly two dozen states from any financial ties to unions, but also could encourage members to stop paying dues for services the court said Wednesday they can get for free.
Union leaders said in reaction to the ruling that they expect to suffer some loss of revenue and also predicted that the same anti-union forces that pushed to get rid of the so-called fair shares that nonmembers had to pay will try to persuade members to cut their ties.
“There are already plans,” said Lily Eskelsen García, president of the National Education Association. “They are going after our members.”
But American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said unions would not be dissuaded: “Don’t count us out.”
The labor leaders spoke after the court ruled that the laws requiring fair share fees violate the First Amendment by compelling workers to support unions they may disagree with.
“States and public-sector unions may no longer extract agency fees from nonconsenting employees,” Justice Samuel Alito said in his majority opinion in the latest case in which Gorsuch, an appointee of President Donald Trump, provided a key fifth vote for a conservative outcome.
Trump himself tweeted his approval of the decision while Alito still was reading a summary of it from the bench.
“Big loss for the coffers of the Democrats!” Trump said in the tweet.
In dissent, Justice Elena Kagan wrote of the big impact of the decision. “There is no sugarcoating today’s opinion. The majority overthrows a decision entrenched in this Nation’s law — and its economic life — for over 40 years. As a result, it prevents the American people, acting through their state and local officials, from making important choices about workplace governance. And it does so by weaponizing the First Amendment, in a way that unleashes judges, now and in the future, to intervene in economic and regulatory policy.”
The court’s three other liberal justices joined the dissent.
In one sense, Wednesday’s result was no surprise and merely delayed by the unexpected death of Justice Antonin Scalia in 2016. The court split 4-4, after Scalia’s death, when it considered the same issue in 2016.
When Trump was elected, opponents of the fees hurried a case back to the court. And fearing what would happen, unions strongly opposed Gorsuch’s nomination to the high court.
The unions say the outcome could affect more than 5 million government workers in about two dozen states and the District of Columbia.
The case decided Wednesday involved Illinois state government worker Mark Janus, who argued that everything unions do, including bargaining with the state, is political and employees should not be forced to pay for it.
The unions argued that fair share fees pay for collective bargaining and other work the union does on behalf of all employees, not just its members. More than half the states already have right-to-work laws banning mandatory fees, but most members of public-employee unions are concentrated in states that don’t, including California, New York and Illinois.
A recent study by Frank Manzo of the Illinois Economic Policy Institute and Robert Bruno of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign estimated that public-sector unions could lose more than 700,000 members over time as a result of the ruling and that unions also could suffer a loss of political influence that could depress wages as well.
Alito acknowledged that unions could “experience unpleasant transition costs in the short term.” But he said labor’s problems pale in comparison to “the considerable windfall that unions have received…for the past 41 years.”
Billions of dollars have been taken from workers who were not union members in that time, he said.
“Those unconstitutional exactions cannot be allowed to continue indefinitely,” Alito wrote.
Kagan, reading a summary of her dissent in the courtroom, said unions only could collect money for the costs of negotiating terms of employment. “But no part of those fees could go to any of the union’s political or ideological activities,” she said.
The court’s majority said public-sector unions aren’t entitled to any money from employees without their consent.

Joe Jackson, patriarch of musical Jackson family, dies at 89
By MESFIN FEKADU, AP Music Writer
NEW YORK (AP) — Joe Jackson, the fearsome stage dad of Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson and their talented siblings, who took his family from poverty and launched a musical dynasty, died Wednesday. He was 89.
Clark County Coroner John Fudenberg told The Associated Press that Joe Jackson died at Nathan Adelson Hospice in Las Vegas.
Fudenberg said he did not have full details, and a determination was not immediately made about whether his office would handle the case.
“We are reviewing the circumstances surrounding the death, but there is no reason to believe it’s anything other than a natural death,” the coroner said.
Jackson was a guitarist who put his own musical ambitions aside to work in the steel mills to support his wife and nine children in Gary, Indiana. But he far surpassed his own dreams through his children, particularly his exceptionally gifted seventh child, Michael. Fronted by the then-pint-sized wonder and brothers Jermaine, Marlon, Tito and Jackie, the Jackson 5 was an instant sensation in 1969 and became the first phase of superstardom for the Jackson family. Over the following decades, millions would listen to both group and solo recordings by the Jackson 5 (who later became known as The Jacksons) and Michael would become one of the most popular entertainers in history.
Joe Jackson died two days after the nine-year anniversary of Michael Jackson’s death.
The King of Pop’s estate released a statement mourning the death.
“We are deeply saddened by Mr. Jackson’s passing and extend our heartfelt condolences to Mrs. Katherine Jackson and the family. Joe was a strong man who acknowledged his own imperfections and heroically delivered his sons and daughters from the steel mills of Gary, Indiana, to worldwide pop superstardom,” said John Branca and John McClain, co-executors of the estate.
“Papa Joe,” as he would become known, ruled through his stern, intimidating and unflinching presence, which became so indelible it was part of black popular culture, even referenced in song and on TV.
“This is bad, real bad Michael Jackson, Now I’m mad, real mad Joe Jackson,” Kanye West rhymed in Keri Hilson’s 2009 hit, “Knock You Down.”
Michael and other siblings would allege physical abuse at their father’s hands.
“We’d perform for him and he’d critique us. If you messed up, you got hit, sometimes with a belt, sometimes with a switch. My father was real strict with us — real strict,” Michael Jackson wrote in his 1985 autobiography, “Moonwalk.”
La Toya Jackson would go as far as to accuse him of sexual abuse in the early 1990s, when she was estranged from her entire family, but she later recanted, saying her former husband had coerced her to make such claims. She and her father later reconciled.
By the time they were adults, most of the Jackson siblings had dismissed him as their manager; Michael and Joseph’s relationship was famously fractured; Michael Jackson revered his mother, Katherine, but kept his distance from Joseph.
However, during some of his son’s most difficult times, including his 2004 molestation trial, Joseph was by his side, and Michael acknowledged their complicated relationship in a 2001 speech about healthy relationships between parents and their children:
“I have begun to see that even my father’s harshness was a kind of love, an imperfect love, to be sure, but love nonetheless. He pushed me because he loved me. Because he wanted no man ever to look down at his offspring,” he said. “And now with time, rather than bitterness, I feel blessing. In the place of anger, I have found absolution. And in the place of revenge I have found reconciliation. And my initial fury has slowly given way to forgiveness.”
In his autobiography, Joseph Jackson acknowledged having been a stern parent, saying he believed it was the only way to prepare his children for the tough world of show business. However, he always denied physically abusing his children.
Joseph Walter Jackson was born in Fountain Hill, Arkansas, on July 26, 1928, the eldest of four children. His father, Samuel Jackson, was a high school teacher, and his mother, Crystal Lee King, was a housewife.
The couple split up when Jackson was 12. He moved with his father to Oakland, California, while his mother moved to East Chicago, Indiana. When he turned 18, he moved to Indiana to live near his mother. It was there that he met and married Katherine Scruse.
In the 1950s, he had tried to launch his own music career as a guitarist, but he came to realize the truly gifted musicians in his family were his children.
He launched a group in 1962 that featured his three eldest sons — Jackie, Tito and Jermaine — and two neighbors. He eventually replaced the neighbors with brothers Michael and Marlon, and the Jackson Five went professional in 1966. By 1969, they had signed to Motown, when their bubble gum soul-pop hybrid would create Beatle-like mania, with hits including “I Want You Back,” ”ABC” and “I’ll Be There.”
Michael, who joined the group at age 8, was its showstopper from the beginning. A bright-eyed bundle of energy with a soaring voice and dynamic dance moves, he quickly became the lead singer.
Joe Jackson literally drove his kids to success, taking them around the country looking for singing engagements and recording opportunities.
Randy, the youngest Jackson brother, replaced Jermaine in the mid-1970s when the group left Motown and became The Jacksons at CBS; Jermaine, then married to founder Berry Gordy’s daughter Hazel, stayed behind and launched a solo career.
While Michael’s success as a solo performer would eventually dwarf that of the rest of his family, Janet would become another multiplatinum superstar; Joe Jackson initially managed her career, too, putting her in the Jacksons’ variety show in the early 1970s, where she charmed with her Mae West routine, and shepherding her acting career on shows like “Good Times.” But soon after she put out “Control,” her breakthrough album at 19, she, too, would sever managerial ties with her father.
In a 2003 interview with Martin Bashir, Michael Jackson teared up when discussing the alleged abuse, saying he would sometimes vomit or faint at the sight of his father because he was so scared of him.
“We were terrified of him. Terrified, I can’t tell you I don’t think to this day he realizes how scared, scared,” said Jackson, who added that his father would only allow him to call him by his first name, not “daddy.”
The alleged abuse wasn’t just physical. Michael Jackson, who drastically changed his face with plastic surgery through the years, talked several times about how his father would mock the size of his once-broad nose, calling him “big nose.”
After Michael’s death, Joseph Jackson sued when it was disclosed that he wasn’t included in Michael’s will. Michael’s mother, Katherine, was given custody of Michael’s three children and the money to support them. But none of the siblings were named as heirs.
Father and son seemed to have reconciled for a time when Michael Jackson was on trial on child molestation charges. His father was in court to lend him support nearly every day, and Michael was acquitted of all counts in 2005. But he left the country and when he returned, they weren’t close.
Toward the end of his life, Michael did not allow his father to visit his Holmby Hills home. Bodyguards said they turned away Joseph Jackson when he appeared at the gate wanting to visit his grandchildren.
By 2005, no longer involved in his children’s careers, Joseph Jackson had launched a boot camp for aspiring hip-hop artists, promoting lyrics without vulgarity and sponsoring competitions for young artists from across the country. He spent most of his time at a home in Las Vegas and traveled the country auditioning talent for the competition.
For many years before that, he and his wife had lived in an estate they built in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley where he had hoped his children would remain with him at least until they were married and perhaps even afterward. But there were estrangements, and Jackson, a dandy who wore a pencil-thin mustache and huge diamond pinky ring, faced allegations by his wife of infidelity. She filed for divorce twice but never followed through.
“We just let our troubles die out,” Jackson said in 1988, following a reconciliation. “We survived. We love each other, and we have children. That’s why we’re together.”
When Dr. Conrad Murray went on trial in 2010, charged in Michael’s overdose death from propofol, Joseph and Katherine attended court with several of Michael’s siblings. Murray’s conviction of involuntary manslaughter provided some measure of comfort for the family.
Joe Jackson is survived by his wife, his children and more than two dozen grandchildren.
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This story has been corrected to show that Joe Jackson was born in 1928, not 1929.
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Former AP Special Correspondent Linda Deutsch, AP Entertainment Writer Nekesa Mumbi Moody and AP Writer Ken Ritter contributed to this report.

McGuire Memorial School will soon be able to take on more students, with funding secured by State Representative Jim Christiana. Beaver County Radio News Intern, Kaisha Jantsch, has more…

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THE B-F JONES MEMORIAL LIBRARY IS PARTNERING WITH WQED FOR AN UPCOMING PROGRAM. BEAVER COUNTY RADIO NEWS CORRESPONDENT SANDY GIORDANO HAS DETAILS. Click on ‘play’ to hear Sandy’s report…