(File Photo of Open Sign on Door)
Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News
(Ambridge, PA) A new restaurant has opened in Ambridge called Kagura Sushi. Kagura Sushi is on 1400 Duss Avenue and offers freshly made Japanese cuisine including both poke and sushi bowls as well as California rolls. The restaurant is open seven days a week from 10:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. for both carryout or dining inside. GrubHub and Doordash can also provide food orders from Kagura Sushi.
(File Photo of a boy drinking water out of a water fountain)
(Reported by Danielle Smith of Keystone News Service)
(Harrisburg, PA) Pennsylvania is working to eliminate lead pipes under the EPA’s Lead and Copper Rule Improvements, which require most lead pipes to be removed within ten years. The EPA estimates that ten to twenty percent of human exposure to lead may come from drinking water. Mora McLaughlin with Pittsburgh Water says it aims to meet benchmarks such as replacing lead service lines and improving corrosion control, using a prioritization model to allocate resources effectively, especially in neighborhoods that are most at need or at risk for lead contamination. McLaughlin notes that Pennsylvania has received more than 90 million dollars in low-interest loans through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act for replacing lead pipes with copper, achieving an average of fifteen hundred replacements annually.
(File Photo of the Dome at CCBC)
(Reported by Beaver County Radio News Correspondent Sandy Giordano)
(Aliquippa, PA) The Aliquippa School District will host a Youth Ambassadors Event at the Community College of Beaver County. The event will take place at the Dome at CCBC from 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. on Wednesday, February 12th. Sixth through twelfth grade students will learn about mental health awareness and resources available for those having mental health issues.
(File Photo of the Beaver County Maple Syrup Festival Logo)
Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News
(Beaver County, PA) The Beaver County Maple Syrup and Music Festival will return to the Lodge at Brady’s Run Park on Saturday, April 12th and Sunday, April 13th from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. There will be activities for children, live music, craft sales, food drives and more. Visitors can also have pancakes that are all-you-can-eat with Pennsylvania maple syrup. The prices to eat are $15 for It is $12 for seniors, first responders and military veterans and $10 for kids 4 to 12 years old. The admission to eat is free for kids three years old or younger. You can contact these emails for more information if you want to help at the festival. Adults have their choice of pancakes, three links of sausage and a drink. Kids have their choice of a drink, two pancakes, and two sausage links.
You can also speak with the organizers of the festival by voicemail by calling 855-787-4221.
(File Photo of Pennsylvania State Police Trooper Badge)
Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News
(Hanover Township, PA) Pennsylvania State Police in Beaver report that a man from Pittsburgh was arrested for driving under the influence in Hanover Township on January 25th, 2025. At around 11:30 p.m., twenty-seven-year-old Eric Rattenni of Pittsburgh was found by police walking on U.S. Route 30. Police discovered that Rattenni was intoxicated. Rattenni took chemical testing and his results showed that he took marijuana and had a blood alcohol level of 0.20% during the incident.
(File Photo of Congressman Chris Deluzio)
Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News
(Washington, D.C.) Congressman Chris Deluzio made an announcement on Friday that he is a co-sponsor of the Taxpayer Data Protection Act. Deluzio noted that Elon Musk and DOGE are working to invade the privacy of Americans. The act will help people that either do not have a security clearance or have interesting conflicts to avoid getting into the payment system of the Treasury Department, which has benefits for both Medicare and Social Security.
(File Photo: Source for Photo: President Donald Trump answers questions during a news conference with Japan’s Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba at the White House, Friday, Feb. 7, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Friday suggested that Nippon Steel would no longer buy U.S. Steel as planned, but the Japanese company would instead invest in the symbolically important American business.
The U.S. president mistakenly referred to Nippon Steel as “Nissan,” the Japanese automaker. But it’s Nippon Steel’s bid that generated controversy as both Trump and his predecessor in the White House, Joe Biden, vowed to block the merger.
Nippon Steel “is going to be doing something very exciting about U.S. Steel,” Trump said at a news conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba. “They’ll be looking at an investment rather than a purchase.”
It was unclear what the details of the investment would be, but Trump said he would meet with the head of Nippon Steel next week and he would be involved “to mediate and arbitrate.”
Ishiba described the investment as mutually beneficial and said Japanese technology would be provided to U.S. Steel mills.
Nippon Steel in December 2023 made what was a nearly $15 billion bid to buy U.S. Steel, creating a sudden political issue in the 2024 presidential election as the Pittsburgh-headquartered steelmaker was key to the identity of the political swing state of Pennsylvania. Biden agreed with the United Steelworkers, the labor union, in seeking to block the merger, while Trump as a candidate said outright he opposed the purchase.
In December, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, known as CFIUS, sent its long-awaited report on national security concerns about the merger to Biden.
But the government panel failed to reach a consensus as to whether there were national security issues. The Biden administration extended a deadline for Nippon Steel to abandon the deal, essentially giving Trump the choice on what step to take next.
(File Photo: Source for Photo: Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro arrives to deliver his budget address for the 2025-26 fiscal year to a joint session of the state House and Senate at the Capitol, Tuesday, Feb. 4, 2025, in Harrisburg, Pa. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — States are absorbing substantial increases in health care costs for the poor, as they realize that the people remaining on Medicaid rolls after the COVID-19 pandemic are sicker than anticipated — and costlier to care for.
In Pennsylvania, state budget makers recently unveiled the scale of that miscalculation, with Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro proposing an increase of $2.5 billion in Medicaid spending in the next fiscal year.
That amounts to a roughly 5% increase in overall state spending, mostly driven by the cost to care for unexpectedly sick people remaining on the state’s Medicaid rolls.
Costs went up partly because some people put off medical treatment during the pandemic, Shapiro’s administration said. As a result, their conditions worsened and became costlier to treat.
“The delays in health care access have had a significant impact on this population — a lack of access to general and specialty care; delayed procedures; avoidable hospital stays and emergency department visits; development of comorbidities; and a lack of preventative medicine as a whole,” Shapiro’s administration said.
The Alliance of Community Health Plans last fall asked the federal government to review Medicaid reimbursement rates in Pennsylvania and a handful of other states that it said were unrealistically low and relying on outdated claims data that showed a relatively healthier population of Medicaid enrollees.
The alliance’s members — typically nonprofit insurers that have hospital systems and state Medicaid contracts — in several states were “facing an existential threat” from low reimbursement rates, said Dan Jones, the alliance’s senior vice president for federal affairs.
Analysts say that pandemic-era protections that prevented states from disenrolling people from Medicaid had helped to cloak the relative sickness of those who would remain enrolled after states began reevaluating recipients’ eligibility.
Federal pandemic aid ended just as the average cost per recipient began rising.
“Over the course of last year, I heard that from states and from Medicaid directors and others that they were worried about it,” said Edwin Park, a research professor for the Center for Children and Families at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy.
All states are seeing higher-than-expected per-Medicaid beneficiary costs, Park said.
Surveys from KFF last fall found that most responding states expected a Medicaid budget shortfall — a big change from prior surveys — and that most states reported seeking federal approval to increase reimbursement rates because enrollees were sicker than anticipated.
In Indiana, lawmakers last year imposed cutbacks after the state found that it had underestimated its Medicaid costs by nearly $1 billion.
In Pennsylvania, the $2.5 billion projected Medicaid cost increase will be a big pill to swallow in a state with a slow-growing economy and a shrinking workforce that is delivering relatively meager gains in tax collections.
Tax collections are projected to rise by less than $800 million in the 2025-26 fiscal year, and Republican lawmakers are wary about spending down the state’s roughly $10.5 billion surplus for fear of depleting it within a few years.
Pennsylvania’s Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Scott Martin, R-Lancaster, said the pandemic amounted to a “pause button” on improving the efficiency of the state’s Medicaid program because billions in federal aid helped pay for it.
President Donald Trump’s first administration reshaped Medicaid by allowing states to introduce work requirements for recipients. Martin said he’ll be interested to see whether the new Trump administration will give states more flexibility to put cost-saving limits on the program.
“These are big chunks of the budget that have impacts on your ability to do everything else on both sides, the federal side and the state side,” Martin said.
(File Photo of the Moon Township Police Logo)
Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News
(Moon Township, PA) After a police chase that went close to 100 miles per hour occurred in Moon Township at around 4 p.m. on Wednesday, a man faces charges for allegedly disobeying traffic laws in Moon Crest. Police found a vehicle Wednesday that had its rear break lights out on Tuesday. Police tried to pull that car over on Tuesday. On Wednesday, police followed the car and the driver took them on a high-speed chase. According to a criminal complaint, eighteen-year-old Kristoff Jerland Bailey went through some stop signs and traffic lights and drove on the wrong side of the road at some points. Officers noted that Bailey had identifications with several addresses. Bailey’s car was also searched by police and they discovered a handgun and a few license plates from Pennsylvania and Coloardo. Police also performed an immigration query and discovered that Bailey did not return to Jamaica after he had to do so in January.
FILE – A view from inside Croke Park in Dublin, Ireland, Thursday, Aug. 24, 2023. (AP Photo/Ken Maguire, File)