(Sandy Giordano/Beaver County Radio)

At Wednesday night’s work session, the Central Valley School Board learned that ABC Transit is eight drivers short of their mark.

According to Superintendent Dr. Nick Perry.  some candidates that were hired, decided not to take the positions offered to them, which has led to a driver shortage. Any qualified drivers are urged to apply.

Harrisburg, PA – The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT), Pennsylvania State Police (PSP), and Pennsylvania Traffic Injury Prevention Project (PA TIPP) are encouraging drivers to take advantage of free car seat checks across the state as the agencies mark National Child Passenger Safety Week (CPSW) from September 17 through September 23. Additionally, Saturday, September 23 has been designated as “National Seat Check Saturday.”

“Seat belts are your best defense in a crash, but they were created for adults,” said PennDOT Secretary Mike Carroll. “It’s important that parents and caregivers take time this week to ensure they are using the right car seat or booster seat for their child’s size and age.”

Car seat checks will be held across the state the week of Child Passenger Safety Week. Visit PA TIPP’s webpage for a list of events.

PSP personnel certified as Child Passenger Safety (CPS) technicians will be conducting free child seat fitting events across the state. Caregivers can have their car seats checked for suitability, receive instruction on the proper installation, have seat(s) installed, learn to properly harness a child in a seat and check seats for recalls. A full list of local free car seat fitting events is available on PSP’s website.

“Properly installed child safety seats save lives, and it’s vital that Pennsylvania’s youngest passengers are safe when traveling,” said PSP Commissioner Colonel Christopher Paris. “We encourage parents and caregivers to have their seats checked by a certified child passenger seat technician to ensure proper installation.”

According to national statistics, car seats can reduce the risk of fatal injury by up to 71 percent for infants and 54 percent for toddlers; however,46 percent of car seats and booster seats are installed or used incorrectly. From January through June 2023, PSP members conducted 525 child safety seat inspections and discovered 207 incidents of misuse. PSP completed more than 1,000 checks in both 2021 and 2022 and found misuse rates of up to 40 percent.

To advance their public safety missions, PennDOT and PSP invest in community resources across the state. PennDOT funds resources such as training and educational materials for more than 200 fitting stations across Pennsylvania. In coordination with CPSW and Seat Check Saturday, local police will focus on proper child seat usage during a statewide CIOT Child Passenger Safety enforcement running from September 10 through September 23. In addition, each PSP Troop has designated walk in days where drivers can have their child safety seats checked free of charge year-round.

Pennsylvania’s primary seat belt law requires all occupants younger than 18 to wear a seat belt when riding anywhere in a vehicle. Children under the age of two must be secured in a rear-facing car seat, and children under the age of four must be restrained in an approved child safety seat. Children must ride in a booster seat until their eighth birthday.

A secondary law also requires drivers and front-seat passengers 18 or older to buckle up. If motorists are stopped for a traffic violation and are not wearing their seat belt, they can receive a second ticket and second fine.

Because of the potential dangers associated with air bag deployment, children 12 and younger should always ride buckled in a vehicle’s back seat.

“Car seats come in many shapes and sizes. The best way to protect your child is to select the right car seat for their age and size and to use the car seat correctly on every trip,” said PA TIPP Director Angela Osterhuber. “Child passenger safety technicians are available to help parents learn how to keep their children safe and secure in their car seat.”

PA TIPP also offers the following tips:

• Select a car seat that is right for the child’s age and size.
• Fill out and return the registration card for your seat so you’ll know if it is recalled because of a problem.
• Read and follow the car seat instructions and the vehicle owner’s manual for information on correctly installing the car seat in the vehicle.
• Use the car’s seat belt or the LATCH system when installing the car seat.
• Make sure the car seat’s harness is correctly adjusted and fits snugly.
• Use a tether strap when installing a forward-facing car seat, following manufacturer’s instructions.

For more information on how to keep passengers safe, or if you are unable to afford a car seat, call 1-800-CAR-BELT or visit www.PAKidsTravelSafe.org to find the nearest car seat loan program. Information on Child Safety Seat Inspection Stations and Community Car Seat Checkup Events is also available on the website.

For a list of state police car seat safety inspection locations and dates, visit the PSP Public Safety webpage.

For more information on child passenger safety, visit PennDOT’s Safety Page.

Pittsburgh, PA – PennDOT District 11 is announcing base repair operations on Route 30 (Lincoln Highway) in Hanover and Independence townships, Beaver County will begin Monday, September 18 weather permitting.

NEW YORK (AP) — Three artworks believed stolen during the Holocaust from a Jewish art collector and entertainer have been seized from museums in three different states by New York law enforcement authorities.

The artworks by Austrian Expressionist Egon Schiele were all previously owned by Fritz Grünbaum, a cabaret performer and songwriter who died at the Dachau concentration camp in 1941.

The art was seized Wednesday from the Art Institute of Chicago, the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh and the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College in Ohio.

Warrants issued by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office say there’s reasonable cause to believe the three artworks are stolen property.

The three works and several others from the collection, which Grünbaum began assembling in the 1920s, are already the subject of civil litigation on behalf of his heirs. They believe the entertainer was forced to cede ownership of his artworks under duress.

Manhattan prosecutors believe they have jurisdiction in all of the cases because the artworks were bought and sold by Manhattan art dealers at some point.

The son of a Jewish art dealer in what was then Moravia, Grünbaum studied law but began performing in cabarets in Vienna in 1906.

A well-known performer in Vienna and Berlin by the time Adolf Hitler rose to power, Grünbaum challenged the Nazi authorities in his work. He once quipped from a darkened stage, “I can’t see a thing, not a single thing; I must have stumbled into National Socialist culture.”

Grünbaum was arrested and sent to Dachau in 1938. He gave his final performance for fellow inmates on New Year’s Eve 1940 while gravely ill, then died on Jan. 14, 1941.

The three pieces seized by Bragg’s office are: “Russian War Prisoner,” a watercolor and pencil on paper piece valued at $1.25 million, which was seized from the Art Institute; “Portrait of a Man,” a pencil on paper drawing valued at $1 million and seized from the Carnegie Museum of Art; and “Girl With Black Hair,” a watercolor and pencil on paper work valued at $1.5 million and taken from Oberlin.

The works will remain at the museums until they can be transported to the district attorney’s office at a later date.

The Art Institute said in a statement Thursday, “We are confident in our legal acquisition and lawful possession of this work. The piece is the subject of civil litigation in federal court, where this dispute is being properly litigated and where we are also defending our legal ownership.”

The Carnegie Museum said it was committed to “acting in accordance with ethical, legal, and professional requirements and norms” and would cooperate with the authorities.

In a statement, Oberlin said it was cooperating with investigators and was “confident that Oberlin College legally acquired Egon Schiele’s Girl with Black Hair in 1958, and that we lawfully possess it.

“We believe that Oberlin is not the target of the Manhattan DA’s criminal investigation into this matter,” the statement added.

Before the warrants were issued Wednesday, the Grünbaum heirs had filed civil claims against the three museums and several other defendants seeking the return of artworks that they say were looted from Grünbaum.

They won a victory in 2018 when a New York judge ruled that two works by Schiele had to be turned over to Grünbaum’s heirs under the Holocaust Expropriated Recovery Act, passed by Congress in 2016.

In that case, the attorney for London art dealer of Richard Nagy said Nagy was the rightful owner of the works because Grünbaum’s sister-in-law, Mathilde Lukacs, had sold them after his death.

But Judge Charles Ramos ruled that there was no evidence that Grünbaum had voluntarily transferred the artworks to Lukacs. “A signature at gunpoint cannot lead to a valid conveyance,” he wrote.

Raymond Dowd, the attorney for the heirs in their civil proceedings, referred questions about the seizure of the three works on Wednesday to the district attorney’s office.

The actions taken by the Bragg’s office follow the seizures of what investigators said were looted antiquities from museums in Cleveland and Worcester, Massachusetts.

Douglas Cohen, a spokesperson for the district attorney, said he could not comment on the artworks seized except to say that they are part of an ongoing investigation.