By MARC LEVY and MARK SCOLFORO, Associated Press
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf will not submit a new Republican-drawn map of Pennsylvania’s congressional districts to the state’s high court, saying Tuesday that it uses the same unconstitutionally partisan tactics as the 6-year-old boundaries struck down in a gerrymandering case.
Wolf’s move came six days before the deadline set by the Democratic-majority state Supreme Court to impose new boundaries for Pennsylvania’s 18 congressional districts. However, Wolf’s office did not immediately say whether he would submit his own map to the court, and he has not publicly released his own proposed map.
Redrawing the map of Pennsylvania districts could boost Democrats nationally in their quest to take control of the U.S. House, and leaves district boundaries up in the air barely three months before May’s primary election.
The governor said his office’s analysis of the plan put forward Friday night by leaders of the Republican-controlled Legislature concluded that it was clearly designed to help their own candidates.
“There is basically no chance it wasn’t drawn in a way to benefit Republicans,” Wolf press secretary J.J. Abbott said.
The governor’s office retained a mathematician with an expertise in redistricting, Moon Duchin of Tufts University, to review the GOP-drawn map. In a one-page summary released Tuesday by the governor’s office, Duchin called the GOP’s revised plan “extremely, and unnecessarily, partisan.”
Republicans who drew the proposal said it adhered to the court’s line-drawing benchmarks, eliminating dozens of municipal and county divisions and creating more compact districts. It also kept nearly 70 percent of residents — and every incumbent congressman — in their old districts.
The governor was notifying lawmakers of his specific problems with the Republican leaders’ proposal, but is also leaving open the possibility of working with the Legislature to submit a consensus map by Monday’s deadline, Abbott said.
The court ruling Jan. 22 said a Republican-drawn map created in 2011 put partisan interests above other line-drawing criteria, giving GOP candidates an unfair edge.
In the three elections under that map, Republicans have maintained a 13-5 advantage in the state’s congressional delegation.
Pennsylvania is politically divided — Republican Donald Trump beat Democrat Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania by less than 1 percentage point in the state. Democrats have more registered voters than Republicans, and hold the governorship and three elected statewide row offices, as well as the high court majority.

President Donald Trump returns to Beaver County later this month for a campaign rally. The President will be at the Ambridge Area Senior High School Gymnasium in Ambridge on Feb. 21. The event is scheduled to take place at 7 p.m. According to Trump officials, this is his twentieth rally in Pennsylvania and fifth in the Pittsburgh area since June 2015.

THE HOPEWEL AREA SCHOOL DISTRICT ELEMENTARY SECRETARY HAS ANNOUNCED SHE WILL RETIRE. BEAVER COUNTY RADIO NEWS CORRESPONDENT SANDY GIORDANO HAS THE STORY. Click on ‘play’ to hear Sandy’s report…

WEATHER FORECAST FOR TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 13TH, 2018

TODAY – SUNSHINE THIS MORNING FOLLOWED BY CLOUDY
SKIES THIS AFTERNOON. HIGH – 43.

TONIGHT – CLOUDY SKIES DURING THE EVENING WITH
AREAS OF FOG DEVELOPING AFTER MIDNIGHT.
SLIGHT CHANCE OF A RAIN SHOWER. LOW – 36.

WEDNESDAY – FOGGY DURING THE MORNING HOURS
FOLLOWED BY OCCASIONAL SHOWERS IN
THE AFTERNOON. HIGH NEAR 50.

Markets Right Now: Stocks surge; Dow industrials gain 400
NEW YORK (AP) — The latest on developments in financial markets (all times local):
4 p.m.
Stocks are surging on Wall Street as the market claws back some of its massive losses from last week. The Dow Jones industrials climbed 400 points.
The gains Monday came after the market slumped into a ‘correction’ last week for the first time in two years.
Technology companies and banks, some of the biggest winners over the past year, rose up the most. Apple jumped 4 percent and Bank of America rose 2.6 percent.
Amazon rose 3.5 percent.
The Dow rose 410 points, or 1.7 percent, to 24,601. It was up as much as 574 points earlier.
The broader Standard & Poor’s 500, which many index funds track, rose 36 points, or 1.4 percent, to 2,656. The Nasdaq composite gained 107 points, or 1.6 percent, to 6,981.
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2 p.m.
Stocks are surging on Wall Street as the market claws back some of its massive losses last week. The Dow Jones industrials were up more than 500 points.
The gains in afternoon trading Monday came after the market slumped into a ‘correction’ for the first time in two years last week.
Technology companies and banks, some of the biggest winners on the market over the past year, are up the most. European markets also rose.
The Dow was up 488 points, or 2 percent, to 24,678. It was up as much as 548 earlier.
The broader Standard & Poor’s 500, which many index funds track, rose 43 points, or 1.7 percent, to 2,663. The Nasdaq composite gained 118 points, or 1.7 percent, to 6,992.
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11:45 a.m.
U.S. stocks are posting solid gains in midday trading as the market recovers from its worst week in two years.
Technology and industrial companies and retailers were leading the market higher Monday. Apple rose 3.3 percent, Boeing climbed 2.7 percent and Amazon also rose 2.7 percent.
European markets are also higher.
The market is coming off two weeks of steep losses that put stocks into a “correction” — a decline of 10 percent from a peak — for the first time in two years.
The Dow industrials were up 279 points, or 1.2 percent, to 24,471.
The broader Standard & Poor’s 500, which many index funds track, rose 25 points, or 1 percent, to 2,645. The Nasdaq composite gained 87 points, or 1.3 percent, to 6,962.
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9:35 a.m.
Stocks are surging in early trading on Wall Street, sending the Dow Jones industrial average up as much as 300 points.
Technology companies and banks are posting some of the biggest gains Monday. Cisco Systems rose 2.9 percent and Citigroup climbed 2 percent.
The market is coming off a turbulent week that left major indexes with their biggest weekly losses in two years.
The Dow industrials were up 270 points, or 1.1 percent, to 24,461.
The broader Standard & Poor’s 500, which many index funds track, rose 30 points, or 1.1 percent, to 2,648. The Nasdaq composite gained 74 points, or 1.1 percent, to 6,948.
Bond prices didn’t move much. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note held steady at 2.86 percent.

PITTSBURGH (AP) — Authorities have released the name of a man shot by a Pittsburgh police officer after officials allege he and another officer were fired upon over the weekend.
Allegheny County police said two Pittsburgh officers on foot patrol in the Homewood neighborhood shortly after 1 a.m. Sunday were fired upon by a man who emerged from behind a building. An officer returned fire then and when they found the suspect again.
Officials said the officers followed a blood trail with a police dog and found the suspect bleeding behind a home. They began CPR, but he died at a hospital. The county medical examiner’s office identified him Monday as 39-year-old Mark Daniels.
Police said a 40 caliber semi-automatic pistol was recovered and is being tested. The officers weren’t wearing body cameras.

PITTSBURGH (AP) — The city of Pittsburgh is getting out of a state program that helps financially distressed governments.
The Wolf administration said Monday that improving finances mean Pittsburgh no longer qualifies, becoming the second city and 14th municipality in the state to emerge from distressed status.
Pittsburgh was plagued by debt, pension demands and budget problems when it entered into the Municipalities Financial Recovery Act program in 2003.
At that time, the city’s credit was junk-bond status. It had spent more than it collected for at least three years and had run a 5 percent deficit for two successive years.
Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf’s secretary of community and economic development made the decision after a hearing in late December on the current status of Pittsburgh’s finances.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on President Donald Trump’s proposed 2019 budget (all times local):
1:50 p.m.
The first stage of President Donald Trump’s proposed border wall in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley would be 65 miles (or 104 kilometers) long, costing an average of $24.6 million a mile. That’s according to administration budget documents for 2019.
The administration had previously disclosed the amount of money it wanted to spend on the wall but hadn’t said where it would be built or how long it would be.
Walls currently cover about one-third of the border with Mexico, and the administration wants to eventually spend up to $18 billion to extend the wall to nearly half the border. Trump has insisted Mexico pay for it; Mexico says that’s a non-starter.
The proposal sets aside $782 million to hire about 2,000 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and 750 more Border Patrol agents.
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1:40 p.m.
President Donald Trump’s infrastructure plan is receiving a frosty response from Democratic members of Congress.
The president’s plan would use $200 billion in federal money to leverage local and state investments. It also would change the permitting process to get projects underway more quickly.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California says the president’s play would raise tolls on commuters, increase the burden on cities and states, and sell essential infrastructure to the whims of Wall Street.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York says Trump’s plan would put unsustainable burdens on local government and calls it a “plan to appease his political allies, not to rebuild the country.”
Democrats have proposed an infrastructure plan that would entail $1 trillion in additional federal spending to jumpstart new projects around the country.
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1:25 p.m.
The Trump administration’s 2019 budget is renewing calls for repealing and replacing former President Barack Obama’s health care law. But there’s little evidence that Republican leaders have the appetite for another battle over “Obamacare.”
Repeal of the Affordable Care Act should happen “as soon as possible,” say the budget documents.
The Obama health law would be replaced with legislation modeled after an ill-fated GOP bill whose lead authors were Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said the legislation would leave millions more uninsured.
The budget calls for a program of block grants that states could use to set up their own programs for covering the uninsured.
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1:10 p.m.
Climate change research is on the Environmental Protection Agency’s chopping block.
Trump’s proposed 2019 budget calls for slashing funding for the Environmental Protection Agency by more than one third, including ending the Climate Change Research and Partnership Programs.
The president’s budget would also make deep cuts to funding for cleaning up the nation’s most polluted sites, even as EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt says that’s one of his top priorities. Trump’s budget would allocate just $762 million for the Hazardous Substance Superfund Account, a reduction of more than 30 percent.
Current spending for Superfund is down to about half of what it was in the 1990s. Despite the cut, the White House says the administration plans to “accelerate” site cleanups by bringing “more private funding to the table for redevelopment.”
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1:05 p.m.
School choice advocates will find something to cheer about in President Donald Trump’s budget for 2019.
Fulfilling a campaign promise, Trump is proposing to put “more decision-making power in the hands of parents and families” in choosing schools for their children with a $1.5 billion investment for the coming year. The budget would expand both private and public school choice.
A new Opportunity Grants program would provide money for states to give scholarships to low-income students to attend private schools, as well as expand charter schools across the nation. Charters are financed by taxpayer dollars but usually run independently of school district requirements.
The budget also calls for increased spending to expand the number of magnet schools that offer specialized instruction usually focused on specific curricula.
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12:20 p.m.
President Donald Trump’s budget for 2019 shows the administration’s concern about the threat from North Korea and its missile program.
The Pentagon is proposing to spend hundreds of millions more in 2019 on missile defense.
The budget calls for increasing the number of strategic missile interceptors from 44 to 64. The additional 20 interceptors would be based at Fort Greely, Alaska. Critics question the reliability of the interceptors, arguing that years of testing have yet to prove them effective against sophisticated threats.
The Pentagon also would invest more heavily in the ship-based Aegis system and the Army’s Patriot air and missile defense system. Both are designed to defend against missiles with ranges shorter than the intercontinental ballistic missile that is of greatest U.S. concern in the context of North Korea.
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11:30 a.m.
President Donald Trump is sending Congress a $4.4 trillion spending plan that provides a huge increase in defense spending while cutting taxes by $1.5 trillion over the next decade. The result is soaring budget deficits.
Trump’s first budget last year projected that the government would achieve a small surplus by 2027. But the new budget never gets to balance. It proposes $7.1 trillion in red ink over the next decade, basically doubling last year’s forecast.
The new plan, for the 2019 budget year, seeks increases in such areas as building the border wall and fighting the opioid epidemic. Complicating matters, Trump last week signed a $300 billion measure to boost defense and domestic spending, negating many of the cuts in his new budget plan.
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1:23 a.m.
President Donald Trump is proposing a $4 trillion-plus budget that projects a $1 trillion or so federal deficit.
Unlike the plan Trump released last year, the 2019 budget never comes close to promising a balanced federal ledger even after 10 years.
And that’s before last week’s agreement for $300 billion is added this year and next, a deal that showers both the Pentagon and domestic agencies with big budget increases.
The spending spree, along with last year’s tax cuts, has the deficit moving sharply higher with Republicans in control of Washington.
The original plan was for Trump’s new budget to slash domestic agencies even further than last year’s proposal, but instead it will land in Congress three days after he signed a two-year spending agreement that wholly rewrites both.