(File Photo of the United States Flag)

Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News

(York, PA) Governor Josh Shapiro ordered on Saturday that all United States and Commonwealth of Pennsylvania flags would fly at half-staff that day after a police officer was killed at UPMC Memorial Hospital in York. According to a release from Governor Shapiro’s office, West York Borough Police Officer Andrew Duarte died in the line of duty. All Pennsylvanians are invited to participate in the tribute by lowering their flags to half-staff until Duarte’s interment date, which has yet to be determined.

(File Photo of Police Lights)

Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News

(Raccoon Township, PA) Pennsylvania State Police in Beaver report that a suspect was apprehended on Thursday after strangling a victim in Raccoon Township. The domestic violence incident occurred on Brittain Lane at 6:57 a.m. The names of both the arrestee and the victim were both withheld. Charges were filed against the suspect who is now in jail.

(Photo Courtesy of the City of Aliquippa Police Department)

(Reported by Beaver County Radio News Correspondent Sandy Giordano)

(Aliquippa, PA) An arrest warrant was given to the third person responsible for the alleged attack of Preston Coleman that occurred at an Aliquippa VFW bar on January 5th, 2025. Twenty-one-year-old Ireland Brown of Ambridge was identified as the third offender of the incident and was the bartender on duty when Coleman was assaulted. Brown refused to turn herself in on Friday and one misdemeanor charge and three felony charges have been filed against her. If you know where she is, please call 724-378-8000. The other two suspects who were accused of allegedly assaulting Coleman are both in the Beaver County Jail. They are Brett Ours of Aliquippa and Ronald Brown of Ambridge.

(File Photo: Source for Photo: President Donald Trump arrives at the White House after speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference, CPAC, Saturday, Feb. 22, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/John McDonnell)

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s fifth week in office included a dramatic shift in U.S. policy toward Russia, firing the country’s senior military officer, sitting for a chummy interview alongside bureaucracy-buster Elon Musk and seeking greater authority over independent regulatory agencies.

Trump also said “inflation is back,” but said his short time back in the White House meant he had “nothing to do” with prices remaining high. That deflection can only work for so long, unless the economic outlook changes. Consumer sentiment suggests that isn’t happening.

A look at where things stand after the first month of Trump’s second term:

Russian policy shift

Trump dispatched top foreign policy advisers to Saudi Arabia for direct talks with Russian officials that were aimed at ending Moscow’s war against Ukraine. Those meetings did not include Ukrainian or European officials, a matter that has increased tensions between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Trump.

For much of the time since Russia invaded in February 2022, the United States, under the Democratic Biden administration, held to the basic tenet of “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.” The new Republican administration has dispensed with that notion as Trump has accelerated his push to find an endgame to the war.

Zelenskyy said Trump was living in a Russian-made “disinformation space.” Trump called Zelenskyy a “dictator” and falsely suggested that Ukraine started the war, though on Friday he acknowledged that Moscow had attacked its neighbor.

Trump has said he hopes to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin soon — preparations are underway, a Kremlin official said Saturday — and has said the war has cost too many, in lives lost and U.S. money spent equipping Ukraine.

“I’m not trying to make Putin nicer or better,” Trump said during a Fox News Radio interview. “I’m just telling you the fact that war should have never happened” if Trump had been reelected president in 2020.

Trump’s comments have alarmed European leaders and could make for some awkward moments when French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer visit the White House in the week ahead.

Pentagon shakeup as DOGE remains undaunted

In an extraordinary move, Trump fired Air Force Gen. CQ Brown Jr, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The dismissal of the history-making fighter pilot and respected officer was part of a push to rid the military of leaders who support diversity and equity in the ranks.

In an online post announcing the move, the president called Brown, only the second Black general to serve in that post, “a fine gentleman and an outstanding leader.” But his ouster sent shockwaves through the Pentagon and was part of a larger wave of dismissals at the Defense Department.

Meanwhile, federal firings continued to accumulate as Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency team pursued more spending cuts. On Saturday, Musk gave hundreds of thousands of federal workers a deadline of Monday at 11:59 p.m. EST to explain what they accomplished over the past week. In an X post, he said failure to respond to an email going out to employees with that request “will be taken as a resignation.”

DOGE had some wins in court and posted a savings tracker meant to show taxpayer money being recovered by canceled contracts and other cuts.

The amounts listed were sometimes misattributed or erroneous, however, and the totals often didn’t add up.

Trump nonetheless floated the idea of returning as much as 20% of any savings produced by DOGE to taxpayers. Musk suggested $5,000 rebate checks might be in the offing, even though generating that much money might require cuts to big-ticket government items such as Social Security.

Trump and Musk gushed with mutual admiration during a joint, nationally televised interview. Musk also used an appearance at conference of conservatives to wave around a chainsaw meant highlight his leading role in cost-cutting efforts. Yet the White House suggested in a court filing that Musk wasn’t heading DOGE, a notion undercut by Trump himself, who said he had “put a man named Elon Musk in charge.”

On Saturday, the president posted on his social media site, “ELON IS DOING A GREAT JOB, BUT I WOULD LIKE TO SEE HIM GET MORE AGGRESSIVE.”

Americans aren’t feeling great about the economy

Trump signed an executive order seeking to give the White House control of independent regulatory agencies created by Congress, including the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Trade Commission.

He and his aides say the economy is ready to roar. But the public is increasingly pessimistic. Trump’s constant tariff threats, mass federal layoffs and broader uncertainty about spending cuts and taxes have spooked many consumers.

The University of Michigan said its consumer index in February dropped roughly 10% on a monthly basis. Predictably, Republicans feel better about the economy than Democrats. But even Republicans’ index reading of 86.7 points was lower than it was in June 2016 when Democrat Barack Obama was president, and Trump built momentum for his election win on economic discontent.

In recent days, Walmart’s stock has fallen nearly 10% as its latest earnings report suggested slower growth ahead due to possible tariffs.

“There’s clearly something that’s still nagging consumers,” economist Ryan Cummings said in an email. “Whether that’s elevated price levels, uncertainty surrounding policy, or consumers projecting their feelings about the direction of the country (and world) onto the economy itself.”

It’s hard to tell what will pique the president’s interest next

He’s already suggested invading Panama and Greenland, making Canada the 51st state and reinventing Gaza as a “Riviera” resort.

But there’s more.

Last week, the president ordered his administration to take a closer look at Fort Knox, the United States Bullion Depository, “to make sure the gold is there.” That directive came after Musk posted about the site, which has stored precious metal bullion reserves for the U.S. since 1937, potentially having been emptied of gold.

Trump also mused about the federal government taking back control of the nation’s capital, which would reverse more than 50 years of home rule in the District of Columbia.

And he renewed his ideas about the U.S. sending humans to Mars, suggesting that task could fall to Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX.

Trump’s agenda begins advancing in Congress

The president has long advocating for one “big, beautiful bill” allowing Congress to address his budget priorities, from funding for the U.S.-Mexico border to extending tax cuts approved during his first term.

But there are signs he may be wavering.

“As long as we get to the same point, you know, two bills,” Trump told Fox News Radio. “I guess you could make the case you could do three. You could do 10.”

That came after Senate Republicans made the first tangible progress on Trump’s funding goals, advancing a budget blueprint that would provide $342 billion for border security and defense. It’s an approach that would leave the president’s prized tax cuts to be dealt with later.

House Republicans, however, aren’t onboard. Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is trying to generate support for a more ambitious plan that would also extend the tax cuts.

But doing so would increase federal deficits by more than $4.5 trillion over the next decade. Trump’s desire to add new tax breaks by exempting tips, Social Security benefits and overtime from income taxes only boosts the price tag.

That’s creating a difficult balancing act. Johnson has almost no votes to spare with a narrow 218-215 majority for Republicans in the House. Budget hawks back the more than $2 trillion in spending cuts over 10 years that are in the blueprint.

But lawmakers from more divided congressional districts worry their constituents will be harmed in the tradeoff. First-term Republican Rep. Rob Bresnahan of Pennsylvania posted on X that if a bill is put in front of him that “guts the benefits my neighbors rely on, I will not vote for it.”

If the House plan falters, then pressure will build to give Trump an early win and take up the Senate approach.

(File Photo: Source for Photo: Leah Fauth places flowers in front of the West York Police Department after a police officer was killed responding to a shooting at UPMC Memorial Hospital in York, Pa. on Saturday, Feb. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

(AP) A man who took hostages in a Pennsylvania hospital during a shooting that killed a police officer and wounded five other people highlights the rising violence against U.S. healthcare workers and the challenge of protecting them.

Diogenes Archangel-Ortiz, 49, carried a pistol and zip ties into the intensive care unit at UPMC Memorial Hospital in southern Pennsylvania’s York County and took staff members hostage Saturday before he was killed in a shootout with police, officials said. The attack also left a doctor, nurse, custodian and two other officers wounded.

Officers opened fire as Archangel-Ortiz held at gunpoint a female staff member whose hands had been zip-tied, police said.

The man apparently intentionally targeted the hospital after he was in contact with the intensive care unit earlier in the week for medical care involving someone else, according to the York County district attorney.

Such violence at hospitals is on the rise, often in emergency departments but also maternity wards and intensive care units, hospital security consultant Dick Sem said.

“Many people are more confrontational, quicker to become angry, quicker to become threatening,” Sem said. “I interview thousands of nurses and hear all the time about how they’re being abused every day.”

Archangel-Ortiz’s motives remained unclear but nurses report increasing harassment from the public, especially following the coronavirus pandemic, said Sem, former director of security and crisis management for Waste Management and vice president at Pinkerton/Securitas.

In hospital attacks, unlike random mass shootings elsewhere, the shooter is often targeting somebody, sometimes resentful about the care given a relative who died, Sem noted.

“It tends to be someone who’s mad at somebody,” Sem said. “It might be a domestic violence situation or employees, ex-employees. There’s all kinds of variables.”

At WellSpan Health, a nearby hospital where some of the victims were taken, Megan Foltz said she has been worried about violence since she began working as a nurse nearly 20 years ago.

“In the critical care environment, of course there’s going to be heightened emotions. People are losing loved ones. There can be gang violence, domestic violence. Inebriated individuals,” Foltz said.

Besides the fear of being hurt themselves, nurses fear leaving their patients unguarded.

“If you step away from a bedside to run, to hide, to keep safe, you’re leaving your patient vulnerable,” she said.

Healthcare and social assistance employees suffered almost three-quarters of nonfatal attacks on workers in the private sector in 2021 and 2022 for a rate more than five times the national average, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Other recent attacks on U.S. healthcare workers include:

— Last year, a man shot two corrections officers in the ambulance bay of an Idaho hospital while freeing a white supremacist gang member before he could be returned to prison. They were caught less than two days later.

— In 2023, a gunman killed a security guard and wounded a hospital worker in a Portland, Oregon, hospital’s maternity unit before being killed by police in a confrontation elsewhere. Also in 2023, a man opened fire in a medical center waiting room in Atlanta, killing one woman and wounding four.

— In 2022, a gunman killed his surgeon and three other people at a Tulsa, Oklahoma, medical office because he blamed the doctor for his continuing pain after an operation. Later that year, a man killed two workers at a Dallas hospital while there to watch his child’s birth.

The shooting is part of a wave of gun violence in recent years that has swept through U.S. hospitals and medical centers, which have struggled to adapt to the growing threats.

With rising violence, more hospitals are using metal detectors and screening visitors for threats at hospital entrances including emergency departments.

Many hospital workers say after an attack that they never expected to be targeted.

Sem said training can be critical in helping medical staff identify those who might become violent.

“More than half of these incidents I’m aware of showed some early warning signs from early indicators that this person is problematic. They’re threatening, they’re angry. And so that needs to be reported. That needs to be managed,” he said.

“If nobody reports it, then you don’t know until the gun appears.”