Beaver County Radio’s Sandy Giordano has the latest on State Representative Rob Matzie’s plea to County citizens in regards to the 2020 census:

 

Joe Biden predicts Democratic convention delay until August
By BILL BARROW Associated Press
Prospective Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden says he thinks his party’s nominating convention will have to be pushed back from July into August because of coronavirus. The pandemic is forcing Democrats and Republicans to take a close look at at their summer conventions, which typically kick off the general election season. Biden made his statement in an interview Wednesday with late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel. Biden noted in a separate interview Tuesday that Democrats “have more time” to figure things out. Republicans are expressing confidence they can pull off their convention as scheduled in late August. But party Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel still allows for the possibility the pandemic could upend GOP plans.

Economic fallout mounts, along with competition for masks
By MICHAEL R. SISAK, LORI HINNANT and MARK SHERMAN Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) — The economic damage from the coronavirus crisis piled up as a record 6.6 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits, and the competition for masks and other protective gear intensified amid growing evidence that people who are infected but have no symptoms can spread the virus. The new unemployment claims announced Thursday, double those of last week’s previous record high, mean 10 million people have lost their jobs over two weeks because of the virus outbreak and also almost certainly signal the onset of a severe global recession.

A record 10 million sought US jobless aid in past 2 weeks
By CHRISTOPHER RUGABER AP Economics Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) — More than 6.6 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week, far exceeding a record high set just last week, a sign that layoffs are accelerating in the midst of the coronavirus. The job cuts are mounting against the backdrop of economies in the United States and abroad that have almost certainly sunk into a severe recession as businesses close across the world. Last week’s figure is much higher than the previous record of 3.3 million reported for the previous week. The surging layoffs have led many economists to envision as many as 20 million lost jobs by the end of April.

(Beaver, Pa.) Pennsylvania municipalities and counties will receive nearly $171 million under CARES Act that was passed by Congress, while Beaver County should get almost $3 million U.S. Sen. Bob Casey said in a statement sent out yesterday.

Beaver County will receive just under $2 million in CDBG funding and nearly $1 million in ESG funding.

In the statement Sen Casey said the money would “help provide shelter to homeless individuals, increase affordable housing options, develop infrastructure and maintain crucial public services, among other uses.”

Senator Casey said that CDBG funding “plays an instrumental role” in helping local projects that create jobs and contribute to economic growth.”

Trump resists national shutdown, leaving it up to states
By AAMER MADHANI, ZEKE MILLER and ALAN FRAM Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is resisting calls to issue a national stay-at-home order to stem the spread of the new coronavirus. This is despite his administration’s projections that tens of thousands of Americans are likely to be killed by the disease. One by one, though, states are increasingly pushing shutdown orders of their own. On Wednesday alone, three more states — Florida, Nevada, and Pennsylvania — added or expanded their stay-at-home orders. The resistance to a more robust federal response comes even as Vice President Mike Pence says White House models for the coronavirus toll show the country on a trajectory akin to hard-hit Italy.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Ellis Marsalis Jr., the jazz pianist, teacher and patriarch of a New Orleans musical clan, has died after battling pneumonia brought on by the new coronavirus, one of his six sons said late Wednesday. He was 85.
“Pneumonia was the actual thing that caused his demise. But it was pneumonia brought on by COVID-19,” Ellis Marsalis III confirmed in an Associated Press phone interview.
He said he drove Sunday from Baltimore to be with his father as he was hospitalized in Louisiana, which has been hit hard by the outbreak. Others in the family spent time with him, too.
Four of the jazz patriarch’s six sons are musicians: Wynton, trumpeter, is America’s most prominent jazz spokesman as artistic director of jazz at New York’s Lincoln Center. Branford, saxophonist, led The Tonight Show band and toured with Sting. Delfeayo, a trombonist, is a prominent recording producer and performer. And Jason, a percussionist, has made a name for himself with his own band and as an accompanist. Ellis III, who decided music wasn’t his gig, is a photographer-poet in Baltimore.
“He went out the way he lived: embracing reality,” Wynton Marsalis tweeted, alongside pictures of his father.
In a statement, Mayor LaToya Cantrell said of the man who continued to perform regularly until December: “Ellis Marsalis was a legend. He was the prototype of what we mean when we talk about New Orleans jazz. He was a teacher, a father, and an icon — and words aren’t sufficient to describe the art, the joy and the wonder he showed the world.”
Because Marsalis opted to stay in New Orleans for most of his career, his reputation was limited until his sons became famous and brought him the spotlight, along with new recording contracts and headliner performances on television and tour.
“He was like the coach of jazz. He put on the sweatshirt, blew the whistle and made these guys work,” said Nick Spitzer, host of public radio’s American Routes and a Tulane University anthropology professor.
The Marsalis “family band” seldom played together when the boys were younger but went on tour in 2003 in a spinoff of a family celebration, which became a PBS special when the elder Marsalis retired from teaching at the University of New Orleans.
Harry Connick Jr., one of his students at the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts, was a guest. He’s one of many now-famous jazz musicians who passed through Marsalis’ classrooms. Others include trumpeters Nicholas Payton and Terence Blanchard, saxophonists Donald Harrison and Victor Goines, and bassist Reginald Veal.
Marsalis was born in New Orleans, son of the operator of a hotel where he met touring black musicians who couldn’t stay at the segregated downtown hotels where they performed. He played saxophone in high school; he also played piano by the time he went to Dillard University.
Although New Orleans was steeped in traditional jazz, and rock ‘n’ roll was the new sound in the 1950s, Marsalis preferred bebop and modern jazz.
Spitzer described Marsalis as a “modernist in a town of traditionalists.”
“His great love was jazz a la bebop — he was a lover of Thelonious Monk and the idea that bebop was a music of freedom. But when he had to feed his family, he played R&B and soul and rock ‘n’ roll on Bourbon Street,” Spitzer said.
The musician’s college quartet included drummer Ed Blackwell, clarinetist Alvin Batiste and saxophonist Harold Battiste, playing modern.
Ornette Coleman was in town at the time. In 1956, when Coleman headed to California, Marsalis and the others went along, but after a few months Marsalis returned home. He told the New Orleans Times-Picayune years later, when he and Coleman were old men, that he never figured out what a pianist could do behind the free form of Coleman’s jazz.
Back in New Orleans, Marsalis joined the Marine Corps and was assigned to accompany soloists on the service’s weekly TV programs on CBS in New York. There, he said, he learned to handle all kinds of music styles.
Returning home, he worked at the Playboy Club and ventured into running his own club, which went bust. In 1967 trumpeter Al Hirt hired him. When not on Bourbon Street, Hirt’s band appeared on national TV — headline shows on The Tonight Show and The Ed Sullivan Show, among others.
Marsalis got into education about the same time, teaching improvisation at Xavier University in New Orleans. In the mid-1970s, he joined the faculty at the New Orleans magnet high school and influenced a new generation of jazz musicians.
When asked how he could teach something as free-wheeling as jazz improvisation, Marsalis once said, “We don’t teach jazz, we teach students.”
In 1986 he moved to Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. In 1989, the University of New Orleans lured him back to set up a jazz studies program.
Marsalis retired from UNO in 2001 but continued performing, particularly at Snug Harbor, a small club that anchored the city’s contemporary jazz scene — frequently backing young promising musicians.
His melodic style, with running improvisations in the right hand, has been described variously as romantic, contemporary, or simply “Louisiana jazz.” He was always on acoustic piano, never electric, and even in interpreting old standards there’s a clear link to the driving bebop chords and rhythms of his early years.
He founded a record company, ELM, but his recording was limited until his sons became famous. After that he joined them and others on mainstream labels and headlined his own releases, many full of his own compositions.
He often played at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. And for more than three decades he played two 75-minute sets every Friday night at Snug Harbor until he decided it was exhausting. Even then, he still performed on occasion as a special guest.
On Wednesday night, Ellis III recalled how his father taught him the meaning of integrity before he even knew the word.
He and Delfeayo, neither of them yet 10, had gone to hear their father play at a club. Only one man — sleeping and drunk — was in the audience for the second set. The boys asked why they couldn’t leave.
“He looked at us and said, ‘I can’t leave. I have a gig.’ While he’s playing, he said, ‘A gig is a deal. I’m paid to play this set. I’m going to play this set. It doesn’t matter that nobody’s here.’ ”
Marsalis’ wife, Dolores, died in 2017. He is survived by his sons Branford, Wynton, Ellis III, Delfeayo, Mboya and Jason.
___
This story has been corrected to fix the spelling of the last name of New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell.

Pittsburgh, PA  (April 2, 2020) –  Allegheny Health Network (AHN)  will take an important new step today in the system’s efforts to prepare for the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic surge that is expected to hit the western Pennsylvania region in the coming weeks.  AHN will transform the Highmark Health Penn Avenue Place auditorium into a COVID-19 test kit production center with a goal of creating 6,000 new kits by the end of this week, and thousands more in the weeks ahead.  The effort is another example of AHN thinking out-of-the box in its pandemic response strategy to meet the community’s health needs at this challenging time, including the increasing demand for more COVID-19 test kits on the front lines.

Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board Resumes Limited E-commerce Sales, Deliveries through www.FineWineAndGoodSpirits.com

Harrisburg – Beginning today, the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board resumed limited sales from www.FineWineAndGoodSpirits.com, accepting a controlled number of orders per day with plans to increase order capacity as fulfillment capacity increases.

Customers will be limited to purchasing up to six bottles per transaction from a reduced catalogue of about 1,000 top-selling wines and spirits.  All orders must be shipped to home or non-store addresses, and only one order per address will be fulfilled per day.

“We understand the public wants to have access to wines and spirits during these unprecedented times, but we have a responsibility to mitigate community spread of this virus to every extent possible and make sure our employees and our customers are as safe as they can be,” said Board Chairman Tim Holden. “We believe that re-opening FineWineAndGoodSpirits.com in a controlled manner will allow us to provide access to consumers while also protecting our employees and consumers from unnecessary risk.”

Access to www.FineWineAndGoodSpirits.com will be randomized to avoid overwhelming the site with high traffic, prevent order abuse and prolong access throughout the day, so that order availability isn’t exhausted in seconds or minutes each day.

“We expect consumer interest and site traffic to exceed what we’ll be able to fulfill, at least initially, so we ask that customers be patient and understand that the PLCB Is doing the best it can under extraordinary circumstances to balance consumer demand and public health,” said Holden.

The PLCB will be fulfilling orders from various facilities and is implementing public health best practices like facility sanitation, social distancing, and limiting the numbers of employees working in any facility at a time in an effort to protect its employees. As order fulfillment capacity increases, the PLCB will consider increasing the number of orders it takes each day.

The PLCB is not considering reopening stores at this time, although the agency continues to monitor the situation in consultation with the Wolf Administration and public health officials.

Consumers are reminded that the sale of alcoholic beverages without a license is strictly prohibited under Pennsylvania law.

The PLCB regulates the distribution of beverage alcohol in Pennsylvania, operates nearly 600 wine and spirits stores statewide, and licenses 20,000 alcohol producers, retailers, and handlers. The PLCB also works to reduce and prevent dangerous and underage drinking through partnerships with schools, community groups, and licensees. Taxes and store profits – totaling nearly $18.5 billion since the agency’s inception – are returned to Pennsylvania’s General Fund, which finances Pennsylvania’s schools, health and human services programs, law enforcement, and public safety initiatives, among other important public services. The PLCB also provides financial support for the Pennsylvania State Police Bureau of Liquor Control Enforcement, the Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs, other state agencies, and local municipalities across the state. For more information about the PLCB, visit lcb.pa.gov.