Statues, education center honor Neil Armstrong at museum
WAPAKONETA, Ohio (AP) — New statues of astronaut Neil Armstrong were unveiled and an education center was dedicated in his name on Sunday as his Ohio hometown continued celebrating its native son’s history-making moon mission 50 years ago this month.
Republican Gov. Mike DeWine and other officials gathered at the Armstrong Air and Space Museum in Wapakoneta for the unveiling Sunday of a bronze life-sized statue of Armstrong as a test pilot. Another statue of him outside the museum as a boy sitting on a bench while holding a model airplane also was unveiled Sunday.
There was also a ribbon-cutting to dedicate the Armstrong STEM Inspiration Center at the museum. That center is intended to promote science, technology, engineering and math learning.
The governor told those gathered at the museum that they were there to honor a courageous Ohioan “who inspired us 50 years ago and a man who continues to really inspire us today.”
DeWine said the events were not only about honoring the past, but also about looking to the future.
He said the hope and belief is that the new education center “will inspire young people, maybe future Neil Armstrongs, young people who have an interest in science and math, and maybe that will spark something special in them when they come in here.”
One of Armstrong’s sons, Mark Armstrong, also talked of the importance of inspiring young people.
“You’re just looking to make one connection with someone, a little boy or a little girl that starts to dream, and those dreams carry them throughout their entire lives.”
Armstrong stepped on the moon’s surface on July 20, 1969. A celebration of the moon landing which had already begun continues through July 21 in the western Ohio city of about 10,000.
___
Follow AP’s full coverage of the Apollo 11 anniversary at: https://apnews.com/Apollo11moonlanding

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Lawyers for Philadelphia rapper Meek Mill are asking an appeals court to overturn a 2008 drug and gun conviction that’s kept the Philadelphia rapper on probation for a decade. They say the city judge who oversees the case and sent him to prison in 2017 on a parole violation has a grudge against the performer. And city prosecutors agree. They’ve filed a motion supporting his bid to toss the conviction and be retried under a new judge.

UNIONTOWN, Pa. (AP) — A Pennsylvania man sought in the killing of his girlfriend’s infant daughter has been captured in Ohio. Derrick Bass was arrested Monday afternoon in Cleveland without incident. He’s charged with homicide and several other counts in the death of 11-month-old Niomie Rose Miller. Authorities say the 29-year-old Uniontown man was watching the girl and two of his own children at an apartment complex on Saturday while Niomie’s mother was at work. The couple had only been dating for a few days.

A 46 year old Venus Man was arrested in Meadville after a short standoff on the roof of a house late Saturday night. The unnamed man was the suspect in a hit and run that had taken place shortly before 1:30AM at the intersection between Route 19 and Highway 322. He was cornered by State Troopers and Meadville City Police in the attic of a house just off of water Street where he made his way up to the roof by breaking through a ventilation system. The suspect refused to leave the roof until he was talked down by officers on scene and was eventually retrieved with assistance from the Meadville Fire Department.

Apollo 11 astronauts returning to launch pad 50 years later
By MARCIA DUNN AP Aerospace Writer
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Apollo 11’s astronauts are returning to the exact spot from where they flew to the moon 50 years ago.
NASA has invited Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins to Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A on Tuesday. They will mark the precise moment — 9:32 a.m. on July 16, 1969 — that their Saturn V rocket departed on humanity’s first moon landing. Mission commander Neil Armstrong — who took the first lunar footsteps — died in 2012.
It kicks off eight days of golden anniversary celebrations for each day of Apollo 11’s voyage.
Also Tuesday morning, 5,000 model rockets are set to launch simultaneously at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. At the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, Armstrong’s newly restored spacesuit goes on display.

Officials are projecting it will take weeks to remove and properly dispose of the remaining chemicals at the former Pool Doctor-Beaver Alkali Products site which caught fire Friday evening.

Lauren Fraley, spokeswoman for DEP, said the department and its contractors will remain on site at 25 New York Avenue in Rochester through at least Wednesday but that the project to remove and properly dispose of the chemicals in the two buildings is expected to take weeks. Some parts of the building that caught fire are still inaccessible and work on the other building has not started.

According to Fraley contractors are also preparing to neutralize and dispose of the chemicals, water and building debris. Many of the chemicals in the buildings were unlabeled, and their containers were compromised. Both buildings are dilapidated, with collapsing roofs, and unsafe for entry.

No further reactions have occurred and air monitoring has detected no chlorine levels in the air or off-site odors.

The YMCA of Greater Pittsburgh confirming that a 15-year-old boy died after a fall at a wilderness camp in Somerset County.

The teen boy was attending Teen Wilderness Camp through YMCA Camp Kon-O-Kwee Spencer in Beaver County. Campers from that location were on an outing near YMCA Deer Valley Camp in Fort Hill, which is in Somerset County. It was near the Deer Valley Camp where the teen was critically injured.

He was airlifted to Conemaugh Meyersdale Medical Center where he died.

According to a statement: Officials from the YMCA of Greater Pittsburgh are on site, and staff from both Deer Valley Camp and Camp Kon-O-Kwee Spencer are working with authorities in their investigation.

The wilderness camp has been canceled for the rest of the week, and counseling was being offered to campers and staff, the officials said..

The identity of the camper was not disclosed and neither were details about what happened.

WEATHER FORECAST FOR TUESDAY, JULY 16TH, 2019

TODAY –
PARTLY TO MOSTLY CLOUDY WITH A STRAY SHOWER OR THUNDERSTORM POSSIBLE. HIGH – 87

TONIGHT –
SCATTERED THUNDERSTORMS. LOW – 72

TOMORROW –
THUNDERSTORMS. HIGH – 82

Trump abortion restrictions effective immediately
By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — Taxpayer-funded family planning clinics must stop referring women for abortions immediately, the Trump administration said Monday, declaring it will begin enforcing a new regulation hailed by religious conservatives and denounced by medical organizations and women’s rights groups.
The head of a national umbrella group representing the clinics said the administration is following “an ideological agenda” that could disrupt basic health care for many low-income women.
Ahead of a planned conference Tuesday with the clinics, the Health and Human Services Department formally notified them that it will begin enforcing the ban on abortion referrals, along with a requirement that clinics maintain separate finances from facilities that provide abortions. Another requirement that both kinds of facilities cannot be under the same roof would take effect next year.
The rule is widely seen as a blow against Planned Parenthood, which provides taxpayer-funded family planning and basic health care to low-income women, as well as abortions that must be paid for separately. The organization is a mainstay of the federally funded family planning program and it has threatened to quit over the issue.
Planned Parenthood President Leana Wen said in a statement that “our doors are still open” as her organization and other groups seek to overturn the regulations in federal court. “We will not stop fighting for all those across the country in need of essential care,” Wen said.
HHS said no judicial orders currently prevent it from enforcing the rule while the litigation proceeds.
Clare Coleman, president of the umbrella group National Family Planning & Reproductive Health Association, said “the administration’s actions show its intent is to further an ideological agenda.”
Abortion opponents welcomed the administration’s move. “Ending the connection between abortion and family planning is a victory for common-sense health care,” Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life, said in a statement.
Known as Title X, the family-planning program serves about 4 million women annually through independent clinics, many operated by Planned Parenthood affiliates, which serve about 40 percent of all clients. The program provides about $260 million a year in grants to clinics.
The family planning rule is part of a series of Trump administration efforts to remake government policy on reproductive health. Other regulations tangled up in court would allow employers to opt out of offering free birth control to women workers on the basis of religious or moral objections, and grant health care professionals wider leeway to opt out of procedures that offend their religious or moral scruples.
Abortion is a legal medical procedure, but federal laws prohibit the use of taxpayer funds to pay for abortions except in cases of rape, incest, or to save the life of the woman.
Under the administration’s rule, clinic staff would still be permitted to discuss abortion with clients, along with other options. However, that would no longer be required.
The American Medical Association is among the professional groups opposed to the administration’s policy, saying it could affect low-income women’s access to basic medical care, including birth control, cancer screenings and testing and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases. By law, the family planning program does not pay for abortions.
Religious conservatives see the regulation as a means to end what they call an indirect taxpayer subsidy of abortion providers.
Although abortion remains politically divisive, the U.S. abortion rate has dropped significantly, from about 29 per 1,000 women of reproductive age in 1980 to about 15 in 2014. Better contraception, fewer unintended pregnancies and state restrictions may have played a role, according to a recent scientific report. Polls show most Americans do not want the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that legalized abortion.
The Trump administration’s policy echoes a Reagan-era regulation that barred clinics from even discussing abortion with women. It never went into effect as written, although the Supreme Court ruled it was appropriate.
The policy was rescinded under President Bill Clinton, and a new rule took effect requiring “nondirective” counseling to include a full range of options for women. The Trump administration is now rolling back the Clinton requirement.

After teen is slain, photos of her corpse circulate online
By RYAN TARINELLI Associated Press
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — A 17-year-old girl with a small social media following in upstate New York was killed by a man she’d met recently on Instagram, who then posted photos of her corpse online, police said Monday.
The gory pictures were redistributed widely, including by online posters who made light of or celebrated the teen’s death.
Others urged people to stop circulating the images, which had appeared in online chat sites including 4chan and Discord.
Police identified the slain girl Monday as Bianca Devins, of Utica, New York.
Discord users who saw the photos Sunday morning alerted police. Officers were trying to find the teen when the suspect, Brandon Clark, 21, called 9-1-1 himself to report what he’d done, Utica’s public safety department said in a statement.
Officers who tracked the call found Clark stabbing himself in the neck.
Devins’ body was beneath a tarp nearby, police said.
Clark had emergency surgery but is expected to survive, police said. Charges would be filed later, authorities said.
In was unclear when Clark, who lived in Bridgewater, New York, would get a lawyer who could comment on his behalf.
Devins and Clark met on Instagram about two months ago, police said.
Initially, they were online acquaintances only, but the “relationship progressed into a personally intimate one,” police said. “They had spent time together, and were acquainted with each other’s families.”
The two attended a concert together Saturday night in New York City, where they got into an argument. They arrived back in Utica early Sunday and went to a spot on a dead-end street, according to the police statement.
There, they argued until Clark used a large knife to kill the teenager, police said. Authorities began receiving calls around 7:20 a.m. Sunday, reporting that a man posted on a social media site that he had killed a person.
After police encountered Clark stabbing himself, he laid down on a green tarp and took selfies lying across the dead teenager before officers took him into custody, police said. The case is being investigated as a murder and attempted suicide, Utica police Lt. Bryan Coromato said.
Devins’ family said in a written statement that the teen was “a talented artist” and “a wonderful young girl, taken from us all too soon.”
“Bianca’s smile brightened our lives,” the family wrote. “She will always be remembered as our Princess.”
The family statement said Devins graduated from high school last month and looked forward to attending a community college in the fall.
Utica police said they are working to address the sharing of the images with various social media platforms.
The Utica City School District issued a statement saying they “share our deepest heartfelt condolences with her family and loved ones.”
___
Ryan Tarinelli is a corps member for Report for America , a nonprofit organization that supports local news coverage in a partnership with The Associated Press for New York. The AP is solely responsible for all content.