Story by Curtis Walsh – Beaver County Radio News Director. Published July 4, 2023 6:19 P.M.

(Midland, PA) Midland hosted their annual 4th of July celebration Tuesday. The day started with a heavily attended parade that stretched through town and all around. The parade featured numerous local organizations, businesses, first responders, and more.  An all day festival took place in the park behind Lincoln Park Performing Arts Charter School which featured carnival rides, food and drinks, live music, and other various vendors. Musical acts included Fistful of Ballers, and Casanova, among others. Straight Outta Midland cookbooks were also being sold. Beaver County Radio’s Mike Romigh and Curtis Walsh had the prize caddy and personality prize wheel in the park, giving lucky winners a variety of prizes. The yearly event leads up to the grand finale of the night, the fireworks show. The celebration in Midland is a sure sign that it’s summertime in Beaver County.
Photos and videos from the event can be viewed below: 

Philadelphia police stand at the intersection of 56th Street and Kingsessing Avenue after multiple people were shot in Southwest Philadelphia, late Monday, July 3, 2023. (Yong Kim/The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP)

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A 40-year-old man with a rifle, a pistol, a bulletproof vest, extra magazines and a police scanner fatally shot four men on the streets of a Philadelphia neighborhood and chased and killed a fifth man inside a home, police say. Two boys, ages 2 and 13, were also wounded in the Monday night shooting spree that made the city the site of the nation’s worst violence around the July 4 holiday. The gunman fired at police as they chased him for blocks. When they caught up, he surrendered in an alley, Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw says. The shooter had no prior connection to the victims, she says.

Marni Larsen and her son, Damon Rasmussen of Holladay, Utah, wait their turn in line hoping to snag her son’s passport outside the Los Angeles Passport Agency at the Federal Building in Los Angeles on Wednesday, June 14, 2023. Larsen applied for her son’s passport two months earlier and spent weeks checking for updates online or through a frustrating call system. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

WASHINGTON (AP) — A much-feared backup of U.S. passport applications has snarled summer plans for would-be travelers around the world. Somewhere around March, people who thought they were renewing or applying for new passports in plenty of time for their summer trips flooded what the State Department says is a system still short-staffed from cuts during the pandemic. Some 500,000 applications are submitted a week, setting the process up to issue more than the 22 million passports issued last year. That’s created a mini-nation of people with family dreams and big money at stake holding the phone, refreshing the screen, queuing up, spending more money and fuming online — before any of them set foot near an airport.

HOMER CITY, Pa. (AP) — Two men were fatally shot by law enforcement officers in Pennsylvania over the weekend. Authorities said a state police trooper shot and killed a driver following a chase that began late Sunday night in Indiana County. That person’s name hasn’t been released. In Westmoreland County, regional police shot and killed a man armed with machete at a home in Ligonier Township on Sunday afternoon. Both shootings are being investigated.

Story by Sandy Giordano – Beaver County Radio. Published July 4, 2023 6:59 P.M.

(Center Township, PA) Detective Sergeant Aldo Legge was promoted as the new police chief at the township’s work session Monday night.

FILE – President Joe Biden delivers remarks on the economy, Wednesday, June 28, 2023, at the Old Post Office in Chicago. Biden has long struggled to neatly summarize his sprawling economic vision. On Wednesday, the president gave a speech on “Bidenomics” in the hopes that the term will lodge in voters’ brains ahead of the 2024 elections. But what is Bidenomics? Let’s just say the White House definition is different from the Republican one — evidence that catchphrases can be double-edged. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden has long struggled to neatly summarize his sprawling economic vision. It’s been hard for voters to digest the mix of infrastructure spending, tax hikes on companies, tax credits for parents, tax breaks for renewable energy, grants to build computer chip factories, insulin price caps and slogans like “Build Back Better.” Last week, the president gave a speech on “Bidenomics” in hopes that the term will lodge in voters’ brains ahead of the 2024 elections. That term joins Nixonomics, Carternomics, Reaganomics and other similar phrases meant to link policies with the man in the Oval Office.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — The “parental rights” group Moms for Liberty is looking to expand its efforts to elect school board candidates in 2024 and beyond, as well as get involved in other education races. The group’s co-founder said during its annual summit in Philadelphia that Moms for Liberty will use its political action committee to engage in school board races, state board of education races and elected superintendent races. These efforts will face opposition from teachers’ unions and others on the left who view the group as a toxic presence in public education. Even with a presidential race in 2024, school board elections will remain some of the most contentious political fights next year.

FILE – A sign at Twitter headquarters is shown in San Francisco, Dec. 8, 2022. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Elon Musk has limited the number of tweets that Twitter users can view each day. He described the restrictions as an attempt to prevent unauthorized scraping of potentially valuable data from the social media platform. The site is now requiring people to log on to view tweets and profiles. That’s a change in its longtime practice to allow everyone to peruse the chatter. The restrictions could result in users being locked out of Twitter for the day after scrolling through several hundred tweets. Thousands of users complained Saturday of not being able to access the site. Musk said after facing backlash that he would raise the thresholds on how many tweets accounts can read per day.

SCRANTON, Pa. (AP) — Three of nine people have pleaded guilty to federal charges in a burglary ring that authorities in northeastern Pennsylvania say stole art, sports memorabilia and other items from museums and other institutions over two decades. Federal prosecutors in Pennsylvania announced charges in June against nine Lackawanna County residents in 18 heists across six states between 1999 and 2019. The thefts included Andy Warhol and Jackson Pollock art taken from one museum. Other artwork, antique weapons and gems and gold nuggets were taken from other institutions along with valuable sports championship rings, belts and trophies.