ALIQUIPPA’S MAYOR RECENTLY VISITED HEMPFIELD AREA HIGH SCHOOL…AS WE HEAR IN THIS REPORT FROM BEAVER COUNTY RADIO’S SANDY GIORDANO:

P&LE RAILROAD IN ALIQUIPPA HAS CONFIRMED THAT SOME INTERIOR RENOVATIONS ARE NOW IN PROGRESS. BEAVER COUNTY RADIO NEWS CORRESPONDENT SANDY GIORDANO HAS DETAILS…

Shell’s Pipeline plans for the area have ended up being a cause of concern for Ambridge officials. Beaver County Radio News Correspondent Sandy Giordano explains why….

WEATHER FORECAST FOR MONDAY, FEBRUARY 5TH, 2018

TODAY – SNOW SHOWERS THIS MORNING. REMAINING
PARTLY CLOUDY THROUGHOUT THE DAY.
HIGH – 27.

TONIGHT – MORE SNOW SHOWERS DEVELOPING TONIGHT.
ACCUMULATION LESS THAN AN INCH. LOW – 21.

TUESDAY – CLOUDY. HIGH AROUND 30.

Fire crews are on the scene of a fully engulfed structure fire on 9th Ave. in Beaver Falls. Crews were called to the scene mid morning today, Sunday Febuary 4, 2018. Upon arriving the structure was fully envolved to the point where eventually the structure collapsed. Tune into AM Beaver County with Matt Drzik and Pat Septak tomorrow morning for more on this story. We will also keep you up to date on Beaver county radio.com and our Facebook page.

By MESFIN FEKADU, AP Music Writer
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Jennifer Lopez raised money for Hurricane Maria victims in Puerto Rico, celebrated an anniversary with beau Alex Rodriguez and covered Prince songs at a pre-Super Bowl concert in Minneapolis.
Lopez headlined the DIRECTV NOW Super Saturday Night concert, working the stage with sizzling and sharp dance moves and singing hits like “I’m Real” and “Love Don’t Cost a Thing.”
She changed at least seven times during the nearly two-hour concert: She started in a body suit and then switched to a loose jersey that read “J LO” and the No. 13 — one of the many odes to A-Rod.
When she performed her new dance single “Us,” released on Friday, she said worked on the song a year ago — around the time she started dating the former New York Yankee player. Lopez also used a baseball bat as a prop during “Jenny from the Block.”
Though Super Bowl 52 is happening Sunday, when the New England Patriots take on the Philadelphia Eagles, Lopez said “the big show is tonight.”
“You get full time, you get over time … we can do whatever we want to do. There are no censors, ain’t no time delay. We came to play,” she said.
She sported a dramatic, long fur-like coat during a dance break for “If You Had My Love,” weaving in a bit of Sheila E’s “The Glamorous Life.”
Appropriately, she sang a medley of Prince songs for the Minneapolis crowd — including “When Doves Cry” and “Darling Nikki” — and even slide across the stage on her knees while a guitarist gave his best impression of The Purple One. It earned roars from the crowd.
Lopez, 48, also covered Aretha Franklin’s “Respect”; danced to Cardi B’s “Bodak Yellow” and Camila Cabello’s “Havana”; was joined by Ne-Yo for a duet of “All I Have”; and let DJ Khaled work the audience up while she changed outfits.
At one point she said, “We need something sexy for the sexy people from Minneapolis,” and was joined by shirtless male dancers. In a lingerie ensemble, she danced sensually on a chair as red lights shined onto the stage.
She closed the set with a festive vibe with “Let’s Get Loud,” as her dancers played congos and pyrotechnics burst in the air.
Saturday’s concert raised awareness for post-Hurricane Maria relief and recovery effort in Puerto Rico. AT&T said it would match charitable contributions up to $200K to the Hispanic Federation, and it would give a $1 donation to the Hispanic Federation for every tweet using the hashtag #JLoNOW.
Lopez said she wanted “to help all of our friends in Puerto Rico who are still trying to rebuild their lives.”
“Together we can do great things,” she told the audience.

By ERIC TUCKER, MARY CLARE JALONICK and CHAD DAY, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Saturday claimed complete vindication from a congressional memo that alleges the FBI abused its surveillance powers during the investigation into his campaign’s possible Russia ties. But the memo also includes revelations that might complicate efforts by Trump and his allies to undermine special counsel Robert Mueller’s inquiry.
The four-page document released Friday contends that the FBI, when it applied for a surveillance warrant on a onetime Trump campaign associate, relied excessively on an ex-British spy whose opposition research was funded by Democrats. At the same time, the memo confirms that the investigation into potential Trump links to Russia actually began several months earlier, and was “triggered” by information involving a different campaign aide.
Christopher Steele, the former spy who compiled the allegations, acknowledged having strong anti-Trump sentiments. But he also was a “longtime FBI source” with a credible track record, according to the memo from the House Intelligence Committee chairman, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., and his staff.
The warrant authorizing the FBI to monitor the communications of former campaign adviser Carter Page was not a one-time request, but was approved by a judge on four occasions, the memo says, and even signed off on by the second-ranking official at the Justice Department, Rod Rosenstein, whom Trump appointed as deputy attorney general.
Trump, however, tweeted from Florida, where he was spending the weekend, that the memo puts him in the clear.
“This memo totally vindicates ‘Trump’ in probe,” he said. “But the Russian Witch Hunt goes on and on. Their (sic) was no Collusion and there was no Obstruction (the word now used because, after one year of looking endlessly and finding NOTHING, collusion is dead). This is an American disgrace!”
The underlying materials that served as the basis for the warrant application were not made public in the memo. As a result, the document only further intensified a partisan battle over how to interpret the actions of the FBI and Justice Department during the early stages of the counterintelligence investigation that Mueller later inherited.
Some Republicans are citing the memo, released over the objections of the FBI and Justice Department, in their arguments that the Mueller investigation is politically tainted.
A closer read presents a far more nuanced picture.
“Having decided to cherry-pick, the Nunes team picked a bunch of the wrong cherries for its own narrative,” Matthew Waxman, a Columbia University professor and former Bush administration official, wrote in an email.
The memo’s central allegation is that agents and prosecutors, in applying in October 2016 to monitor Page’s communications, failed to tell a judge that the opposition research that provided grounds for the FBI’s suspicion had been partially funded by Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
Page had stopped advising the campaign sometime around the end of that summer.
Republicans say a judge should have known that “political actors” were involved in allegations that led the Justice Department to believe Page might be an agent of a foreign power — an accusation he has consistently and strenuously denied.
Steele’s research, according to the memo, “formed an essential part” of the warrant application. But it’s unclear how much or what information Steele collected made it into the application, or how much has been corroborated. Steele was working for Fusion GPS, a firm initially hired by the conservative Washington Free Beacon to do opposition research on Trump. Steele didn’t begin work on the project until after Democratic groups took over the funding.
The FBI this week expressed “grave concerns” about the memo and called it inaccurate and incomplete. Democrats said it was a set of cherry-picked claims aimed at smearing law enforcement and that releasing the memo would damage law enforcement and intelligence work.
For one, Democrats said Friday that it was misleading and incorrect to say a judge was not told of the potential political motivations of the people paying for Steele’s research.
Beyond that, though, the memo confirms the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign began in July 2016, months before the surveillance warrant was sought, and was “triggered” by information concerning campaign aide George Papadopoulos. He pleaded guilty last year to lying to the FBI and is cooperating with Mueller’s investigation.
The timing makes clear that other Trump associates beyond Page, who was part of the election effort for only a short period and was not in Trump’s inner circle, had generated law enforcement scrutiny. The memo also omits that Page had been on the FBI’s radar a few years earlier as part of a separate counterintelligence investigation into Russian influence.
The memo focuses on Page, but Democrats on the House committee said “this ignores the inconvenient fact that the investigation did not begin with, or arise from Christopher Steele or the dossier, and that the investigation would persist on the basis of wholly independent evidence had Christopher Steele never entered the picture.”
Other details in the memo could also challenge Republican claims of bias. The warrant requested was renewed on three additional occasions, meaning that judges approved it four times. One of the Justice Department officials who signed off on it was Rosenstein, a Trump appointee.
Trump, who lambasted the FBI and Justice Department on Twitter, was asked if he was more likely to fire Rosenstein and if he still had confidence in the official. The president simply said, “You figure that one out.”
The memo had been classified because it deals with warrants obtained from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The White House declassified it Friday and sent it to Nunes for immediate release.
That disclosure is extraordinary because it involves details about surveillance of Americans, national security information the government regards as among its most highly classified. The release is likely to further escalate the conflict between the White House and Trump’s law enforcement leaders.
Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray had personally lobbied against the memo’s disclosure, arguing it could set a dangerous precedent.
The memo’s release also comes amid an effort by Trump and congressional Republicans to discredit Mueller’s investigation. His probe focuses not only on whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia but also on whether the president sought to obstruct justice.
___
Associated Press writers Zeke Miller, Jill Colvin, Catherine Lucey, Matthew Daly, Desmond Butler and Jonathan Lemire contributed to this report.

By MICHAEL VIRTANEN, Associated Press
BETHEL PARK, Pa. (AP) — Vice President Mike Pence stumped on Friday for a Republican congressional candidate and slammed his Democratic opponent, trying to help the GOP keep the seat in its House majority in the first congressional race of the year.
The seat is open because the anti-abortion Republican who held it, Tim Murphy, quit after his hometown newspaper reported he had suggested a mistress get an abortion when they thought she might be pregnant.
Pence addressed about 150 supporters on Friday at a community center in Bethel Park, a borough of greater Pittsburgh. He said state legislator Rick Saccone stands with President Donald Trump’s agenda, including the recently passed tax bill, but ex-federal prosecutor Conor Lamb doesn’t stand with Trump or support those tax cuts.
“And, folks, that says everything you need to know,” Pence said.
He stood onstage with Saccone, who said Trump has put the U.S. “on the right path.”
Lamb’s campaign manager, Abby Murphy, said later: “Conor wants a tax cut where most of the benefits go to the hardworking families of the district instead of the richest 1 percent.”
Pence spoke later in Pittsburgh to a gathering hosted by the nonprofit group America First Policies, formed last year by his and Trump’s political advisers. His address to Republican supporters and his motorcade to the second gathering ran late after he held private meet-and-greet sessions and photo opportunities with supporters.
Saccone, 59, is an Air Force veteran who said his sons are in the Air Force now. Pence emphasized the Trump administration increases in defense spending and Saccone’s military record.
Lamb, 33, is a Marine Corps veteran.
The congressional district, won easily by Trump in the 2016 presidential election, includes parts of four counties mostly south of Pittsburgh. The special election to fill the seat, vacated by Murphy last fall, is March 13.
Millions of super political action committee dollars are pouring in from outside groups to help Saccone, Federal Election Commission filings show.
The Pennsylvania Republican Party chairman, Val DiGiorgio, told people at the Pence gathering the nation is watching and they can reverse the conventional wisdom that they should lose midterm elections.