EARL, Pa. (AP) — A Pennsylvania town official has given up a municipal job over online comments he made about a pregnant woman who died along with her 9-year-old son when her car was swept away by flash floodwaters. Earl Township Supervisor John Hetrick stepped down Monday from his appointed position as the town’s emergency management coordinator. In the now deleted post he made on the emergency management’s Facebook page, Hetrick wrote that almost everyone who dies in their car in flooding did so because they “made a very bad choice.” Critics called the post insensitive. Hetrick says he wasn’t trying to blame the woman, but wanted to spread the word about potential dangers in such situations.

WASHINGTON (AP) — With tweets and a vote, President Donald Trump and House Democrats established the sharp and emotionally wrought contours of the 2020 campaigns. They have created a fraught political frame: “racists” vs. “socialists.” Trump’s attacks on women of color left House Democrats to declare his actions “racist.” But pushing the House majority to embrace its squad of liberal freshmen, Trump linked them as “socialists.”

NEW YORK (AP) — The notorious Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman has been sentenced to life behind bars in a U.S. prison. A federal judge in Brooklyn handed down the sentence Wednesday. Guzman was convicted in February in an epic drug-trafficking case that triggered a mandatory sentence of life without parole. He spoke briefly before he was sentenced, saying he was denied a fair trial.

LONDON (AP) — British Prime Minister Theresa May has criticized the increasing intolerance and absolutism of world politics, in a message many will see as aimed at her successor as Britain’s leader and at President Donald Trump. May, who is due to leave office in a week after a three-year premiership dominated by Brexit, has condemned the “politics of division” and says “some are losing the ability to disagree without demeaning the views of others.”

A new report shows that repealing the Affordable Care Act would cost hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians their health insurance, raise health-care costs and do other serious damage in the state. Andrea Sears reports…

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Philadelphia’s top prosecutor and the state district attorneys’ association are staking out opposing positions in a case to determine if Pennsylvania’s death penalty will remain in effect. District Attorney Larry Krasner says the state’s death penalty runs afoul of the prohibition on cruel punishment and disproportionately applies to black defendants and the poor. The Pennsylvania District Attorneys Association argues the justices should respect the Legislature’s role in establishing state law.

WEATHER FORECAST FOR WEDNESDAY, JULY 17TH, 2019

TODAY – THUNDERSTORMS LIKELY. HEAVY RAINFALL
POSSIBLE. HIGH NEAR 80.

TONIGHT – SCATTERED THUNDERSTORMS THIS EVENING
WITH SOME FOG POSSIBLE OVERNIGHT.
LOW – 68.

THURSDAY – PARTLY CLOUDY AND WARMER. A STRAY
SHOWER OR THUNDERSTORM IS POSSIBLE.
HIGH – 87.

WILKINSBURG, Pa. (AP) — Two people have been sentenced to decades in prison after pleading guilty in the slaying of a young mother near Pittsburgh that authorities said was part of a scheme to rob her of her tax refund. Dane Taylor was sentenced to 30 to 60 years and Laya Whitley to 20 to 50 years after both pleaded guilty Tuesday to third-degree murder, robbery, and conspiracy. Authorities said 27-year-old Keiauna Davis was carrying $3,000 cash when she was killed in February 2018 in Wilkinsburg.

State Police in Lawrence County are investigating a double shooting early this morning that left one person dead in Shenango Township. According to police the shooting took place on Bryson Mill Road. There’s no word on the severity of the second person’s injuries or what led to the shooting.

A Beaver Falls woman is dead after a fire last Friday. Maria Amygdalos died in the blaze at her Sixth Avenue home in the College Hill neighborhood. The fire is believed to have started due to careless smoking catching a couch on fire.