The U.S. Forest Service is taking comments on a proposal to exempt a national forest in Alaska from what’s known as the Roadless Rule. In Pennsylvania, it’s the same rule that protects some 25,000 acres in the Allegheny National Forest. Opponents of rolling back the rule warn that what starts in Alaska’s Tongass (TAWN-gus) National Forest could have a domino effect on other public lands. Andrea Sears reports from Harrisburg…

One Beaver County municipality has made the list of the top 50 safest cities in Pennsylvania. Brighton Township placed eighth on a recent Security Baron report ranking the state’s safest cities. The report looked at violent crime, property crime and other factors and Brighton Township was #8 in the report. Some of the other notable finds…Findlay Township was 39th…in second place was O’Hara Township in Allegheny County…and the safest city in Pennsylvania is Upper Yoder Township in Cambria County.

The Pennsylvania State Association of Township Supervisors has named a local secretary to its Hall of Fame. 65-year-old Marilyn Zona – who has served as Marion Township’s secretary/ treasurer for 40 years – was named to the group’s secretary wing of its Hall of Fame. She joins Sandy Wright of Greene Township, who was enshrined in 2013, as the only other honoree from Beaver County. There are no secretaries included from Lawrence or Allegheny Counties.

In their first post-election work session, the Board of Commissioners got the latest update on the 2019 budget…an update that indicates a move in the right direction. Matt Drzik has more from the courthouse:

A $500,000 state grant from the Commonwealth Financing Authority will fund streetscape renovations to a portion of Pennsylvania Avenue in Monaca. State Rep. Rob Matzie, D-Beaver/Allegheny made the announcement. Matzie said the renovations are needed because overhead utilities are being relocated to underground as part of the Monaca Gateway Initiative project – a major infrastructure overhaul designed to enhance traffic flow to and from the new Shell cracker plant under construction…

Matzie says the grant from the CFA Multimodal Transportation Fund will finance the following:

– the construction of 29-hundred linear feet of sidewalks.
– 12 crosswalks.
– 26 ADA-complaint curb ramps.
– the restoration of 14-hundred linear feet of roadway.
– stormwater management.
– installation of 18 streetlights.
– and streetscape amenities such as plantings, trash receptables and bike racks.

Monaca Borough is requesting a waiver to the local match requirement. The total project cost is approximately $2.3 million.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — The FBI is investigating how Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration came to issue permits for construction on a multibillion-dollar pipeline to carry natural gas liquids across Pennsylvania, The Associated Press has learned. FBI agents have interviewed current or former state employees in recent weeks about the Mariner East pipelines, according to three people who spoke on condition of anonymity. Wolf’s administration has said in the past that the permits contained strong environmental protections.

PITTSBURGH (AP) — A jury has convicted a man of first-degree murder in the shooting death of a New Kensington police officer almost two years ago. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against 31-year-old Rahmael Sal Holt in the November 2017 slaying of officer Brian Shaw. Prosecutors contend Holt was an armed drug dealer who had planned to rob the driver of the SUV that Shaw attempted to stop in New Kensington on the night of the shooting. Holt has maintained that he wasn’t the person who fired.

BREAKING NEWS: Crews are working to repair a water line break in Aliquippa this afternoon. Beaver County Radio News Correspondent Sandy Giordano has more. Click on ‘play’ to hear Sandy’s report…

WEATHER FORECAST FOR WEDNESDAY, NOV. 13TH, 2019

TODAY – MOSTLY CLOUDY. HIGH – 32.

TONIGHT – CLOUDY SKIES. LOW – 25.

THURSDAY – CLOUDY IN THE MORNING. BECOMING
MOSTLY SUNNY IN THE AFTERNOON.
HIGH – 43.

Sanford suspends GOP presidential primary challenge to Trump
By HUNTER WOODALL Associated Press
CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — Mark Sanford dropped his challenge to President Donald Trump for the Republican presidential nomination on Tuesday, saying the focus on impeachment has made it difficult for his campaign to gain traction.
“You’ve got to be a realist,” Sanford said outside the New Hampshire statehouse. “What I did not anticipate is an impeachment.”
The former South Carolina governor and congressman announced his decision to suspend his campaign on the eve of televised impeachment hearings in the U.S. House. He centered his campaign on warnings about the national debt but emphasized that the impeachment effort hurt his 2020 bid.
“It was a long shot, but we wanted to try and interject this issue, how much we’re spending, into the national debate which comes along once every four years,” Sanford said. “I don’t think on the Republican side there is any appetite for a nuanced conversation on issues when there’s an impeachment overhead.”
Sanford’s departure from the race is the latest blow to the struggling “Never Trump” movement that has failed to attract a marquee GOP challenge for Trump this cycle. The only major options available for Never Trump Republican primary voters are now former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld and former Illinois Rep. Joe Walsh. Sanford did not commit to supporting either of the challengers’ campaigns Tuesday.
“I give him credit for taking a shot, for trying really,” said Bill Kristol, a director of Defending Democracy Together, a 501(c)(4) anti-Trump conservative group. “So few Republicans have had the nerve to step up at all.”
Weld, in a statement, said Sanford’s “voice in the primaries will be missed.” In an interview, Walsh said he never understood why Sanford entered the race.
“This isn’t about the debt and this isn’t about tariffs and it’s not about any issue,” Walsh said. “Trump’s unfit. It’s an emergency, and that’s the only reason you get into a primary against a sitting president.”
When Sanford floated a bid over the summer, some people who have known and worked with him for decades questioned whether the whole campaign was a publicity stunt. Joel Sawyer, Sanford’s longtime gubernatorial spokesman and press secretary, said in July that while Sanford’s commitment to fiscal restraint is deeply engrained in his persona, it was matched by his desire for publicity and limelight.
The 59-year-old Sanford won three terms for U.S. House in the 1990s, then two four-year terms as governor before an extramarital affair marred the end of his second term. But Sanford’s secret 2009 rendezvous to Argentina to visit his paramour while his in-the-dark gubernatorial staff told reporters he was hiking the Appalachian Trail however did not end his ability to win elections.
After a brief hiatus and a divorce, he returned to politics and won a special election to his old U.S. House seat in 2013, holding on twice more before his criticism of Trump led to a 2018 primary loss.
Sanford had carried over about $1.3 million from his U.S. House days to his presidential primary challenge to Trump, but Sanford’s presidential fundraising had been lackluster without the help of the prominent Republicans who boosted his past campaign efforts.
Sanford was less critical of Trump than the other primary competitors, though he warned voters in New Hampshire that Trump could become the modern-day Herbert Hoover, who was president when the Great Depression began. The point of his campaign, Sanford emphasized, was not to “bash Trump.”
Impeachment aside, Sanford’s campaign faced other hurdles as a handful of state parties canceled their primaries and other nominating contests, including in Sanford’s home state of South Carolina, to show their support for Trump’s reelection.
But the noise of impeachment, not an election, is what drove Sanford from the race.
“Again, our campaign may be a casualty of this process, but there’s a much bigger casualty out there,” Sanford said Tuesday. “That’s debate on any subject out there other than impeachment.”
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Associated Press writer Meg Kinnard in Columbia, S.C., contributed to this report.