(File Photo of the UPMC logo)
Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News
(Pittsburgh, PA) A financial report states an employee at UPMC who was paid the most in 2024 retired in 2021, a couple of years before getting paid that much money. The former CEO of UPMC, Jeffrey Romoff had a fiscal amount of $12.1 million paid by UPMC that concluded in July, according to tax records. A 2024 report confirms that over $1 million was earned by 59 employees at UPMC. Romoff retired from UPMC in July of 2021.
(File Photo of the Duquesne Light Company logo)
Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News
(Fox Chapel, PA) A Pennsylvania lawmaker had a public hearing on Wednesday to address the storms that occurred in Western Pennsylvania that caused power outages on April 29th, 2025. Representative Mandy Steele called the meeting “After the Storm: Preparing for the Future,” which had testimonies from representatives from Duquesne Light and West Penn Power. These people are addressing concerns and applying lessons so they can prepare for when these next storms occur.
(File Photo of the Beaver Area School District logo)
Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News
(Beaver, PA) Beaver Area High School senior Elias Kazas is about to graduate despite getting a diagnosis for cancer on the stem of his brain when he was twelve years old. Kazas went through some treatment at St. Jude’s Hospital and 1,134 chemotherapy doses. After the treatment caused damage to his kidney and liver, he got forced to stop treatment. Kazas came back to play basketball and received the John Challis Memorial Award this year.
(File Photo: Source for Photo: FILE – A sign with the company’s logo stands outside a Rite Aid store in Salem, N.H., on Wednesday, May 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File)
Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News
(Beaver County, PA) As Rite-Aid continues to struggle with bankruptcy, the Rite-Aid stores in Aliquippa and Beaver will be closing after a recent filing on May 16th, 2025 that confirmed the closures. It is not determined yet what will happen to the Rite-Aid stores in Ambridge, Beaver Falls, Conway, Midland and New Brighton. However, closures will be occurring in the future at the Rite Aid stores in Coraopolis, Cranberry Township, Sewickley and the Pittsburgh International Airport.
James H. “Jim” Shahen, 63, of South Beaver Township, passed away unexpectedly on May 19th, 2025.
He was born in Aliquippa on August 18th, 1961, a son of the late John “Jim” and Maxine (Close) Shahen. He is survived by his loving wife of nearly 39 years, Dana (Chiodo) Shahen, his sons, Nicholas Shahen, Andre Shahen and Daniel Shahen, his brother, “Hab” Shahen, his sister, Mary Jean (Monicah) Shahen, his sisters-in-law, Beverly (Gary) Shields, Ellen (Rob) Goehring and Julia (Tom) Kerr, a special cousin, Dawn Marie, as well as numerous aunts, uncles, cousins, in-laws, nieces, nephews, and friends.
James Shahen was a man of exceptional strength, wisdom and compassion, who lived a life defined by hard work, dedication, and a deep commitment to his family and those around him. He was a successful electrician and entrepreneur who built multiple businesses, one being Silver Shine Car Wash, which his close friend (Rich) made his dream of owning a wash come true. His work ethic was unmatched not only running businesses, but around the house. He never stopped creating new projects and staying busy with work even when he was retired. Everything he built in his life was dedicated to his family and he always had others in his mind when doing any task in life.
Beyond his accomplishments in business, it was his faith that he had in God that made him the great father and husband that he was. James was very open to talking about his strong faith and beliefs to others. His faith made him into the loving hard working man that he was. Every thought James ever had was about helping others. Whether it was helping a family member, a stranger, or even an animal, he was always there to help in any situation.
Some of his main enjoyments in life include: hiking, biking, working on cars, shooting at the range with his boys, going with family & friends to wineries and breweries and cutting the grass on his John Deere.
He never stopped staying busy, even in his final moments, in which he had to finish his pickle ball court for his wife. Although he had many unfinished projects in life, he had left a detailed plan for his family to get through any situation and continue to further his legacy.
James dedicated his support to others and mainly his family, and to his children, he was a role model of strength and kindness, and of course love. He taught people everything they needed to know, mainly how to prep and protect the family. Jim prepped for any situation in life. Even with his own passing, he has set a foundation for his family and friends to continue life the way he would have wanted. With all of his hard work, and the power of kindness, his legacy will live on in the lives he touched and the lessons he passed on.
Friends will be received on Thursday, May 22nd from 1 P.M. until the time of services at 4 P.M. in the GABAUER-LUTTON FUNERAL HOME & CREMATION SERVICES, INC., 117 Blackhawk Road, Beaver Falls.
Interment will be private at the Beaver Cemetery.
(File Photo: Source for Photo: FILE – A member of the Army visits Section 60 of Arlington National Cemetery, in Arlington, Va., Monday, May 27, 2024, on Memorial Day. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)
NORFOLK, Va. (AP) — Memorial Day is a U.S. holiday that’s supposed to be about mourning the nation’s fallen service members, but it’s come to anchor the unofficial start of summer and a long weekend of travel and discounts on anything from mattresses to lawn mowers.
Iraq War veteran Edmundo Eugenio Martinez Jr. said the day has lost so much meaning that many Americans “conflate and mix up Veterans Day, Memorial Day, Armed Forces Day, July Fourth.” Social media posts pay tribute to “everyone” who has served, when Memorial Day is about those who died.
For him, it’s about honoring 17 U.S. service members he knew who lost their lives.
“I was either there when they died or they were soldiers of mine, buddies of mine,” said Martinez, 48, an Army veteran who lives in Katy, Texas, west of Houston. “Some of them lost the battle after the war.”
Here is a look at the holiday and how it has evolved:
It falls on the last Monday of May. This year, it’s on May 26.
It’s a day of reflection and remembrance of those who died while serving in the U.S. military, according to the Congressional Research Service. The holiday is observed in part by the National Moment of Remembrance, which encourages all Americans to pause at 3 p.m. for a moment of silence.
The holiday’s origins can be traced to the American Civil War, which killed more than 600,000 service members — both Union and Confederate — between 1861 and 1865.
The first national observance of what was then called Decoration Day occurred on May 30, 1868, after an organization of Union veterans called for decorating war graves with flowers, which were in bloom.
The practice was already widespread. Waterloo, New York, began a formal observance on May 5, 1866, and was later proclaimed to be the holiday’s birthplace.
Yet Boalsburg, Pennsylvania, traced its first observance to October 1864, according to the Library of Congress. And women in some Confederate states were decorating graves before the war’s end.
David Blight, a Yale history professor, points to May 1, 1865, when as many as 10,000 people, many of them Black, held a parade, heard speeches and dedicated the graves of Union dead in Charleston, South Carolina.
A total of 267 Union troops had died at a Confederate prison and were buried in a mass grave. After the war, members of Black churches buried them in individual graves.
“What happened in Charleston does have the right to claim to be first, if that matters,” Blight told The Associated Press in 2011.
As early as 1869, The New York Times wrote that the holiday could become “sacrilegious” and no longer “sacred” if it focused more on pomp, dinners and oratory.
In an 1871 Decoration Day speech at Arlington National Cemetery abolitionist Frederick Douglass said he feared Americans were forgetting the Civil War’s impetus: enslavement.
“We must never forget that the loyal soldiers who rest beneath this sod flung themselves between the nation and the nation’s destroyers,” Douglass said.
His concerns were well-founded, said Ben Railton, a professor of English and American studies at Fitchburg State University in Massachusetts. Although roughly 180,000 Black men served in the Union Army, the holiday in many communities would essentially become “white Memorial Day,” especially after the rise of the Jim Crow South, Railton told the AP in 2023.
In the 1880s, then-President Grover Cleveland was said to have spent the holiday going fishing — and “people were appalled,” Matthew Dennis, an emeritus history professor at the University of Oregon, previously told the AP.
But when the Indianapolis 500 held its inaugural race on May 30, 1911, a report from the AP made no mention of the holiday — or any controversy.
Dennis said Memorial Day’s potency diminished somewhat with the addition of Armistice Day, which marked World War I’s end on Nov. 11, 1918. Armistice Day became a national holiday by 1938 and was renamed Veterans Day in 1954.
In 1971, Congress changed Memorial Day from every May 30 to the last Monday in May. Dennis said the creation of the three-day weekend recognized that Memorial Day had long been transformed into a more generic remembrance of the dead, as well as a day of leisure.
Just a year later, Time Magazine wrote that the holiday had become “a three-day nationwide hootenanny that seems to have lost much of its original purpose.”
Even in the 19th century, grave ceremonies were followed by leisure activities such as picnicking and foot races, Dennis said.
The holiday also evolved alongside baseball and the automobile, the five-day work week and summer vacation, according to the 2002 book “A History of Memorial Day: Unity, Discord and the Pursuit of Happiness.”
In the mid-20th century, a small number of businesses began to open defiantly on the holiday.
Once the holiday moved to Monday, “the traditional barriers against doing business began to crumble,” authors Richard Harmond and Thomas Curran wrote.
These days, Memorial Day sales and traveling are deeply woven into the nation’s muscle memory.
But Martinez, the Iraq War veteran in Texas, is posting photos and stories on social media about the service members he knows who died.
“I’m not trying to be a Debbie Downer and tell you not to have your hotdogs and your burgers. But give them at least a couple minutes,” he said. “Give them some silence. Say a little prayer. Give them a nod. There’s a bunch of families out there that don’t have loved ones.”
(File Photo: Source for Photo: Pope Leo XIV waves as he arrives for his first weekly general audience in St. Peter’s Square at The Vatican, Wednesday, May 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Leo XIV called Wednesday for humanitarian aid to reach the Gaza Strip and for an end to the “heartbreaking” toll on its people, as he presided over his first general audience in St. Peter’s Square.
The Vatican said that around 40,000 people were on hand for the audience, which came just days after an estimated 200,000 people attended the inaugural Mass on Sunday for history’s first American pope.
Leo, the former Cardinal Robert Prevost of Chicago, began the audience with a tour through the piazza in the popemobile and stopped to bless several babies. In addressing specific greetings to different groups of pilgrims, Leo spoke in his native English, his fluent Spanish as well as the traditional Italian of the papacy.
“I renew my heartfelt appeal to allow the entrance of dignified humanitarian aid to Gaza and to put an end to the hostilities whose heartbreaking price is being paid by children, the elderly and sick people,” he said.
The general audience on Wednesdays is a weekly appointment that popes have kept for decades to allow ordinary faithful to have a face-to-face encounter with the pontiff. It features the pope delivering a brief reflection on a theme or Scripture passage, with summaries provided by others in different languages and the pope directing specific messages to particular faith groups.
The encounter, which lasts more than an hour, usually ends with a brief topical appeal by the pope about a current issue or upcoming event. Leo began it with his now-frequent mantra “Peace be with you.”
To that end, Leo on Tuesday reaffirmed the Vatican’s willingness to host the next round of ceasefire talks between Russia and Ukraine during a phone call with Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni, the Italian leader’s office said.
Meloni made the call after speaking with U.S. President Donald Trump and other European leaders, who asked her to verify the Holy See’s offer.
“Finding in the Holy Father the confirmation of the willingness to welcome the next talks between the parties, the premier expressed profound gratitude for Pope Leo XIV’s willingness and his incessant commitment in favor of peace,” Meloni’s office said in a statement late Tuesday.
Trump had referred to the Vatican’s longstanding offer to host talks in reporting on his phone call Monday with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
While low-level talks could take place in Rome, Italy would be hard-pressed to allow Putin to fly into Rome for any higher-level negotiation. Putin is subject to an international arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court, of which Italy is a founding member and therefore obliged to execute its warrants.
(File Photo: Source for Photo: Law enforcement work the scene after two staff members of the Israeli Embassy in Washington were shot and killed outside the Capital Jewish Museum, Thursday, May 22, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Rod Lamkey, Jr.)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Two staff members of the Israeli Embassy in Washington were shot and killed Wednesday evening while leaving an event at a Jewish museum, and the suspect yelled, “Free, free Palestine” after he was arrested, police said.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar identified the victims as Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim. Lischinsky was a research assistant, and Milgrim organized visits and missions to Israel.
They were leaving an event at the Capital Jewish Museum when the suspect approached a group of four people and opened fire, Metropolitan Police Chief Pamela Smith said at a news conference.
The suspect, identified as Elias Rodriguez, 30, of Chicago, was observed pacing outside the museum before the shooting, walked into the museum after the shooting and was detained by event security, Smith said.
When he was taken into custody, the suspect began chanting, “Free, free Palestine,” Smith said. She said law enforcement did not believe there was an ongoing threat to the community.
The stunning attack prompted Israeli missions to beef up their security. The shooting comes as Israel has launched another major offensive in the Gaza Strip in a war with Hamas that has heightened tensions across the Middle East and internationally.
“These horrible D.C. killings, based obviously on antisemitism, must end, NOW!” President Donald Trump posted on social media early Thursday. “Hatred and Radicalism have no place in the USA.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ’s office said Thursday that he was “shocked” by the “horrific, antisemitic” shooting.
“We are witnessing the terrible price of antisemitism and wild incitement against Israel,” he said in a statement.
Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter said the two people killed were a young couple about to be engaged, saying the man had purchased a ring this week with the intent to propose next week in Jerusalem.
Former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Mike Herzog told Israeli Army Radio that the woman killed was an American employee of the embassy and the man was Israeli.
Attorney General Pam Bondi said she was at the scene with former judge Jeanine Pirro, who serves as the U.S. attorney in Washington and whose office would prosecute the case.
The statement from Netanyahu’s office said he spoke to Bondi, who told him Trump was “involved in managing the incident” and the U.S. would bring the perpetrator to justice.
It was not immediately clear whether Rodriguez had an attorney who could comment on his behalf. A telephone number listed in public records rang unanswered.
Dan Bongino, deputy director of the FBI, wrote in a post on social media that “early indicators are that this is an act of targeted violence.”
The influential pan-Arab satellite channel Al Jazeera aired on a loop what appeared to be mobile phone footage of the alleged gunman, wearing a suit jacket and slacks, being pulled away after the shooting, his hands behind his back.
The war in the Gaza Strip began with the Palestinian militant group Hamas coming out of Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023, to kill 1,200 people and take some 250 hostages back to the coastal enclave.
In the time since, Israel’s devastating campaign in Gaza has killed more than 53,000 people, mostly women and children, according to local health authorities, whose count doesn’t differentiate between combatants and civilians. The fighting has displaced 90% of the territory’s roughly 2 million population, sparked a hunger crisis and obliterated vast swaths of Gaza’s urban landscape.
The violence occurred following the American Jewish Committee’s annual Young Diplomats reception at the museum.
“This is a shocking act of violence and our community is holding each other tighter tonight,” Ted Deutch, American Jewish Committee’s chief executive, said in a statement early Thursday. “At this painful moment, we mourn with the victims’ families, loved ones, and all of Israel. May their memories be for a blessing.”
Yoni Kalin and Katie Kalisher were inside the museum when they heard gunshots and a man came inside looking distressed, they said. Kalin said people came to his aid and brought him water, thinking he needed help, without realizing he was the suspect. When police arrived, he pulled out a red keffiyeh and repeatedly yelled, “Free Palestine,’” Kalin said.
“This event was about humanitarian aid,” Kalin said. “How can we actually help both the people in Gaza and the people in Israel? How can we bring together Muslims and Jews and Christians to work together to actually help innocent people? And then here he is just murdering two people in cold blood.”
Last week, the Capital Jewish Museum was one of the local nonprofits in Washington awarded funding from a $500,000 grant program to increase its security. The museum’s leaders were concerned because it is a Jewish organization and due to its new LGBTQ exhibit, according to NBC4 Washington.
“We recognize that there are threats associated with this as well,” Executive Director Beatrice Gurwitz told the TV station. “And again, we want to ensure that our space is as welcoming and secure for everybody who comes here while we are exploring these stories.”
In response to the shooting, the museum said in a statement that they are “deeply saddened and horrified by the senseless violence outside the Museum this evening.”
The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington CEO Gil Preuss said in a statement that he was horrified by the shooting and mourned the loss of the two people killed.
“Our hearts are with their families and loved ones, and with all of those who are impacted by this tragic act of antisemitic violence,” he said.
Israeli diplomats in the past have been targeted by violence, both by state-backed assailants and Palestinian militants over the decades of the wider Israeli-Palestinian conflict that grew out of the founding of Israel in 1948. The Palestinians seek Gaza and the West Bank for a future state, with east Jerusalem as its capital — lands Israel captured in the 1967 war. However, the peace process between the sides has been stalled for years.
(File Photo of the Transportation Security Administration Logo)
Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News
(Washington, D.C) According to a release from the Transportation Security Administration, TSA expects to screen about 18 million passengers and crew from Thursday, May 22nd until Wednesday, May 28th. Those that are currently or over the age of eighteen need to present an identification at TSA checkpoints that is accepted by TSA which includes items like a passport. According to a release from TSA, here are tips that the company also recommends for flyers. A link to the TSA website for more information can also be found below:
(File Photo of the PennDOT logo)
Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News
(Harrisburg, PA) PennDOT announced that all of their centers for photos and driver’s licenses will be closed from Saturday, May 24th through Monday, May 26th to observe the holiday of Memorial Day. PennDOT’s Driver and Vehicle Services website is still available at any time for services and products for both vehicles and drivers. The link to this website can be found below: