Sentencing has been handed down for Donovan McFrazier of Beaver Falls was caught with unspecified amounts of cocaine and over 40 grams of fentanyl July 9th, 2018.

McFrazier was sentenced to 5 years in federal prison on his conviction. According to US Attorney Scott Brady’s office, McFrazier will serve four years on supervised release after he is out of prison.

Pennsylvania’s casinos have lost a bid to shut down online lottery games that they say are too much like casino gambling, just days before the state’s first casinos launch their own online gambling portals. Friday’s decision in Commonwealth Court is a victory for the state lottery, although the casino owners’ 9-month-old lawsuit will continue. Lottery officials say the games are in accordance with the 2017 state law that authorized them, but the casinos argue that some online lottery games violate it because they simulate slot machines and casino-style gambling.

Pennsylvania State Police say they’ve seized eleven-million-dollars’ worth of illegal drugs in the second quarter of 2019. Troopers announced over the weekend that from April 1st to June 30th, 84 pounds of heroin and around 33 pounds of fentanyl were confiscated, which alone has a combined street value of more than three million dollars. More than 500-thousand-dollars’ worth of cocaine was also seized, but marijuana was by far the largest capture, with more than four million in processed pot impounded. Over two-million dollars in narcotic pills were also confiscated by troopers over that time period.

A woman is facing charges in two states today –  after Rochester police say she stole an officer’s police cruiser. Police arrested Monica Christian this past weekend on a warrant from Texas when she climbed into the front seat of the cruiser and drove off. Christian ditched the car after a short drive, but was caught in a foot chase after police got tips from witnesses.

Police are calling the deaths in Neshannock Township Thursday a murder-suicide. A mother and daughter were found dead after a house fire on Old Plank Road Thursday morning. The victims are 48-year-old Melanie Keller and 12-year-old Jazmyn Keller. Police Chief John Rand said both victims died of a single gunshot wound to the head before the fire. He said the mother shot herself. The home was a total loss.

Koppel officials were informed this week that Penn DOT plans to close the Koppel Bridge for 72 days beginning August 13th and is planned to reopen on October 24th.

The project began in 2017, with crews having built a new bridge to connect Koppel and North Sewickley Township on Route 351 over the Beaver River.

Crews will do some demolition to the current bridge as well as constructing a retaining wall and roadway grading, drainage, paving, guide rails, and line painting – as well as some planting and seeding work during the project.

The $31.5 million project involves replacing the 102-year-old bridge with a new structure directly downstream. The existing bridge has been subject to flooding for several years.

Residents in a five-mile radius of Rochester were advised to stay indoors for more than eight hours Friday night and again Saturday morning after a chemical fire at a former industrial site along the Ohio River. The initial call was received just after 9pm Friday that the former Beaver Alkali Products property on New York Ave was on fire and emitting yellow smoke.

Rochester Fire Chief Michael Mamone III said six dumpsters adjacent to the site, which is part of a project overseen by the state Department of Environmental Protection, could cause additional chemical releases if the chlorine tablets inside spontaneously combust again.

The first advisory was lifted just before 5 a.m. Saturday but was reissued mid-morning. The second advisory was lifted at noon.

Mamone added – if residents sense a strong smell of chlorine, they should stay indoors and close their windows.

WEATHER FORECAST FOR MONDAY, JULY15TH, 2019

TODAY –
SUNNY – HIGH 88

TONIGHT-
PARTLY CLOUDY – LOW 68

TOMORROW –
SCATTERED THUNDERSTORMS IN THE MORNING, THEN MAINLY CLOUDY IN THE AFTERNOON – HIGH AROUND 85

Road improvement work on Brighton and Massachusetts avenues and Pleasant and West Madison streets in Rochester begins Monday and continues through Saturday, PennDOT announced. Single-lane, alternating traffic controlled by flaggers will occur from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. each day in the following locations:

• Brighton Avenue between the Rochester Roundabout and Pleasant Street.

• Pleasant Street and Massachusetts Avenue between Rhode Island Avenue and Adams Street.

• Brighton Avenue and West Madison Street between the Rochester Roundabout and Delaware Avenue.

Crews will conduct milling and paving operations as part of the $10.07 million Route 18 improvement project.

Gulisek Construction LLC is the prime contractor.

Biden promises to end ‘forever wars’ as president
By BILL BARROW Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) — Joe Biden promised on Thursday his White House would end “forever wars” and reassert American leadership to combat authoritarianism and global instability, which he says are proliferating under President Donald Trump.
“The world’s democracies look to America to stand for the values that unite us. … Donald Trump seems to be on the other team,” Biden said during a foreign policy speech in New York, hammering the president for “embracing dictators who appeal to his vanity” and emboldening a worldwide rise of nationalism, xenophobia and isolationism.
The remarks offered Biden a chance to ignore his Democratic rivals and instead return to the issues he’s most comfortable talking about: foreign policy and the dangers posed by Trump. The decision to make the speech reflects Biden’s belief that his experience as a longtime senator and former chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee combined with his eight years as vice president distinguish him in the crowded Democratic field.
But that long record also subjects the 76-year-old to criticism, particularly from progressives who cast Biden as someone who enabled a more hawkish foreign policy establishment.
Acknowledging those forces, Biden promised to “end the forever wars in Afghanistan and the Middle East” and terminate U.S. involvement in the Yemen civil war. He did not mention his support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq under President George W. Bush, a vote that hampered Biden’s brief 2007 presidential campaign and continues to draw criticism from 2020 rivals, including Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who both voted against the action as House members.
Republicans, meanwhile, have gleefully noted that Biden opposed the 1991 U.S. military actions to drive Iraq out of Kuwait and that he was an outlier in the Obama administration in warning against the raid that ultimately killed Osama bin Laden, the mastermind behind the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Biden said on Thursday that military force will always be an option, but must be a “last resort” with a “defined” and “achievable mission.” He also pledged to “elevate diplomacy as the principle tool of our foreign policy” and said he’d rebuild expertise in the State Department after an exodus of diplomats under Trump.
His promise to stop “endless wars” also came with qualification; he called for removing most combat troops from Afghanistan in favor of “narrowly focusing our mission” in the region.
Biden envisioned not just a return to the traditional U.S. role in the post-World War II international order, but to use that power and influence to take on 21st century problems. He emphasized the urgency for U.S-led global alliances to combat the climate crisis, forge new trade agreements to create a more even international economy and to recommit to nuclear proliferation.
Biden said in the first year of his presidency, he would convene a global summit of democracy, bringing together political and civic leaders, along with those from the private sector. He singled out “tech companies and social media giants” as necessary partners.
“I believe they have a duty to make sure their algorithms and platforms are not used to sow division here at home,” he said, referring to U.S. intelligence findings that Russian actors have used social media platforms like Facebook to influence American politics.
Biden’s speech comes at a time of trade tensions with China; increasing tensions with Iran, with Tehran announcing that it is enriching uranium beyond the levels allowed by a 2015 nuclear deal that Trump had abandoned; and after Trump again met with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, with the Republican president saying he wants to restart negotiations for a nuclear agreement.
As president, Biden said he’d re-engage with Iran if it returns to the limits of the 2015 deal. He also promised to immediately rejoin the Paris climate agreements and urge the world’s leading economies — principally China — to commit to aggressively curtail carbon emissions.
He noted Beijing is investing heavily in cleaner energy technologies but still financing traditional fossil fuel projects with trillions of dollars in infrastructure development across Asia.
Biden’s commitment to ending longtime wars stopped short of pledges by more liberal rivals like Sanders and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who link military conflict to a world economy dominated by multinational corporations, including those that have benefited from the trillions of dollars the U.S. has spent on foreign wars in recent decades.
Though he didn’t nod to that military-industrial complex, Biden argued that economic conditions play a fundamental role in global stability. He criticized Trump’s reliance on tariffs but tacitly agreed with the president’s notions that some economic rivals have taken advantage of the U.S., specifically China.
Biden said he’d push for trade agreements that don’t hamper the international exchange of goods but don’t disadvantage American consumers or business, while also holding China accountable for intellectual property abuses.
“There’s not going to be a back to business-as-usual on trade,” he said. “We need new rules. We need new processes.”
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Follow Bill Barrow on Twitter at https://twitter.com/BillBarrowAP