(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.

…And yet another story about a bakery mix-up….A Missouri mother was in for a surprise when she picked up her 2-year-old daughter’s birthday cake and found a peculiar typo.

Melin Jones, of Bonne Terre, Missouri, says she rushed to pick up the celebratory creation for her daughter Elizabeth from a local Walmart last September. There, she asked the employee to use the little girl’s nickname, “Lizard.”

Jones quickly paid for the cake, and it wasn’t until she got home that the doting mom realized the icing read “Happy Birthday Loser.” The mother says she couldn’t stop laughing.

Luckily Elizabeth cannot yet read and she wasn’t told what the message actually said.

Melin says she initially shared the photo on Facebook but deleted the post because she did not want the Walmart employee to get in trouble.

So far no comment from Walmart.

Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, on Tuesday blasted Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., as unqualified to be president. In remarks on Outkick The Coverage, the former National Guard soldier who served in Iraq said she has seen firsthand what it is like to have presidents who lack foreign policy experience fall under the influence of the “foreign policy establishment” and the “military industrial complex.” Gabbard says Harris lacks the foreign policy credentials – and temperament – to lead America on the global stage.

Eighty-nine-year-old Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg says she is “very much alive” despite recent health scares that have fueled speculation about her ability to do her job. Ginsburg made the remarks during a wide-ranging interview with NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg that aired this morning. Ginsburg had colorectal cancer in 1999 and last year had two cancerous nodules removed from her lung. Last December, she fell and fractured three ribs. Ginsburg also told NPR she thinks it is a bad idea to pack the court with more justices because it could make the court look overtly partisan. Several Democratic presidential candidates have made the pitch. Asked what she thought about issues like women’s rights at a time with a conservative majority, Ginsburg responded: “I don’t think there’s going to be any turning back to old ways.”

Local lawmakers in Charlotte, N.C., the city hosting the 2020 Republican National Convention, voted to condemn President Donald Trump’s remarks aimed at four congresswomen, The Charlotte Observer is reporting. The city council voted to 9-2 on Monday to approve the resolution, citing Trump’s “racist and xenophobic” tweets and comments. All Democratic members voted in favor and the Republicans opposed it, according to the newspaper. Trump’s remarks were aimed at Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan.