Democrats Launch Nationwide Voter Registration Blitz Across 27 States with 50 Events

(File Photo: Source for Photo: Voters line up outside the Bucks County Administration Building during early voting in the general election, Friday, Nov. 1, 2024, in Doylestown, Pa. (AP Photo/Michael Rubinkam)

Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News

(Washington, D.C.) According to a release from the Democratic National Committee, this week, Democrats are hosting over 50 voter registration events across 27 states and territories as part of their National Voter Registration Week of Action programming: marking a renewed and expanded commitment by the Democratic National Committee to engage voters early and everywhere. Colleges hosting these events this week include the University of Pennsylvania and over twenty-four others across the United States to bring voters that are new into the cycle of voters. Some other colleges hosting events to support efforts for voter registration for National Voter Registration Day, to meet voters where they are and to work closely with College Democrats, state parties, and grassroots organizers for the first time in years include the University of Arizona, Morehouse College, Florida State University, in a range from Michigan State University to Virginia Commonwealth University. The Democratic National Committee and their strategy to support leaders who are local that drive change in their respective communities as well as for both deeper organization and earlier investment can be accomplished by these efforts from these voter registration events this week.

Aliquippa woman jailed for assaulting a woman inside a residence in Aliquippa

(File Photo: Caption for Photo: police car lights at night in city with selective focus and bokeh background blur, Credit for Photo: Courtesy of Getty Images/iStockphoto/z1b)

Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News

(Aliquippa, PA) The City of Aliquippa Police Department got dispatched to the 1800 block of Davidson Street in Aliquippa after getting an assault report on the night of Friday. The female victim there noted that twenty-six-year-old Cera Baker of Aliquippa entered a residence there without her permission and assaulted her. Baker was also possessing marijuana at the time of this incident. Baker resisted arrest from Aliquippa police officers and got subsequently taken into custody. Baker is in the Beaver County Jail with misdemeanor charges for criminal trespass, possession of marijuana, resisting arrest, and simple assault and a summary charge of harassment.

Robert Redford, Oscar-winning actor, director and indie patriarch, dies at 89

(File Photo: Source for Photo: FILE – Robert Redford attends the premiere of “The Old Man and the Gun” at the Paris Theater on Thursday, Sept. 20, 2018, in New York. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP, File)

(AP) Robert Redford, the Hollywood golden boy who became an Oscar-winning director, liberal activist and godfather for independent cinema under the name of one of his best-loved characters, died Tuesday at 89.

Redford died “at his home at Sundance in the mountains of Utah — the place he loved, surrounded by those he loved,” publicist Cindi Berger said in a statement. No cause of death was provided.

After rising to stardom in the 1960s, Redford was one of the biggest stars of the ’70s with such films as “The Candidate,” “All the President’s Men” and “The Way We Were,” capping that decade with the best director Oscar for 1980’s “Ordinary People,” which also won best picture in 1980. His wavy blond hair and boyish grin made him the most desired of leading men, but he worked hard to transcend his looks — whether through his political advocacy, his willingness to take on unglamorous roles or his dedication to providing a platform for low-budget movies.

His roles ranged from Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward to a mountain man in “Jeremiah Johnson” to a double agent in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and his co-stars included Jane Fonda, Meryl Streep and Tom Cruise. But his most famous screen partner was his old friend and fellow activist and practical joker Paul Newman, their films a variation of their warm, teasing relationship off screen. Redford played the wily outlaw opposite Newman in 1969’s “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” a box-office smash from which Redford’s Sundance Institute and festival got its name. He also teamed with Newman on 1973’s best picture Oscar winner, “The Sting,” which earned Redford a best-actor nomination as a young con artist in 1930s Chicago.

Film roles after the ’70s became more sporadic as Redford concentrated on directing and producing, and his new role as patriarch of the independent-film movement in the 1980s and ’90s through his Sundance Institute. But he starred in 1985’s best picture champion “Out of Africa” and in 2013 received some of the best reviews of his career as a shipwrecked sailor in “All is Lost,” in which he was the film’s only performer. In 2018, he was praised again in what he called his farewell movie, “The Old Man and the Gun.”

“I just figure that I’ve had a long career that I’m very pleased with. It’s been so long, ever since I was 21,” he told The Associated Press shortly before the film came out. “I figure now as I’m getting into my 80s, it’s maybe time to move toward retirement and spend more time with my wife and family.”

Sundance is born

Redford had watched Hollywood grow more cautious and controlling during the 1970s and wanted to recapture the creative spirit of the early part of the decade. Sundance was created to nurture new talent away from the pressures of Hollywood, the institute providing a training ground and the festival, based in Park City, Utah, where Redford had purchased land with the initial hope of opening a ski resort. Instead, Park City became a place of discovery for such previously unknown filmmakers as Quentin Tarantino, Steven Soderbergh, Paul Thomas Anderson and Darren Aronofsky.

“For me, the word to be underscored is ‘independence,’” Redford told the AP in 2018. “I’ve always believed in that word. That’s what led to me eventually wanting to create a category that supported independent artists who weren’t given a chance to be heard.

“The industry was pretty well controlled by the mainstream, which I was a part of. But I saw other stories out there that weren’t having a chance to be told and I thought, ‘Well, maybe I can commit my energies to giving those people a chance.’ As I look back on it, I feel very good about that.”

Sundance was even criticized as buyers swarmed in looking for potential hits and celebrities overran the town each winter.

“We have never, ever changed our policies for how we program our festival. It’s always been built on diversity,” Redford told the AP in 2004. “The fact is that the diversity has become commercial. Because independent films have achieved their own success, Hollywood, being just a business, is going to grab them. So when Hollywood grabs your films, they go, ‘Oh, it’s gone Hollywood.’”

By 2025, the festival had become so prominent that organizers decided they had outgrown Park City and approved relocating to Boulder, Colorado, starting in 2027. Redford, who had attended the University of Colorado Boulder, issued a statement saying that “change is inevitable, we must always evolve and grow, which has been at the core of our survival.”

Redford’s affinity for the outdoors was well captured in “A River Runs Through It” and other films and through his decades of advocacy for the environment, inspired in part by witnessing the transformation of Los Angeles into a city of smog and freeways. His activities ranged from lobbying for such legislation as the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act to pushing for land conservation in Utah to serving on the board of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Redford was married twice, most recently to Sibylle Szaggars. He had four children, two of whom have died — Scott Anthony, who died in infancy, in 1959; and James Redford, an activist and filmmaker who died in 2020.

Redford’s early life

Robert Redford was born Charles Robert Redford Jr. on Aug. 18, 1936, in Santa Monica, a California boy whose blond good looks eased his way over an apprenticeship in television and live theater that eventually led to the big screen.

Redford attended college on a baseball scholarship and would later star as a middle-aged slugger in 1984’s “The Natural,” the adaptation of Bernard Malamud’s baseball novel. He had an early interest in drawing and painting, then went on to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, debuting on Broadway in the late 1950s and moving into television on such shows as “The Twilight Zone,” “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” and “The Untouchables.”

After scoring a Broadway lead in “Sunday in New York,” Redford was cast by director Mike Nichols in a production of Neil Simon’s “Barefoot in the Park,” later starring with Fonda in the film version. Redford did miss out on one of Nichols’ greatest successes, “The Graduate,” released in 1967. Nichols had considered casting Redford in the part eventually played by Dustin Hoffman, but Redford seemed unable to relate to the socially awkward young man who ends up having an affair with one of his parents’ friends.

“I said, ‘You can’t play it. You can never play a loser,’” Nichols said during a 2003 screening of the film in New York. “And Redford said, ‘What do you mean? Of course I can play a loser.’ And I said, ‘OK, have you ever struck out with a girl?’ and he said, ‘What do you mean?’ And he wasn’t joking.”

Indie champion, mainstream star

Even as Redford championed low-budget independent filmmaking, he continued to star in mainstream Hollywood productions himself, scoring the occasional hit such as 2001’s “Spy Game,” which co-starred Brad Pitt, an heir apparent to Redford’s handsome legacy whom he had directed in “A River Runs Through It.”

Ironically, “The Blair Witch Project,” “Garden State,” “Napoleon Dynamite” and other scrappy films that came out of Sundance sometimes made bigger waves — and more money — than some Redford-starring box-office duds like “Havana,” “The Last Castle” and “An Unfinished Life.”

Redford also appeared in several political narratives. He satirized campaigning as an idealist running for U.S. senator in 1972’s “The Candidate” and uttered one of the more memorable closing lines, “What do we do now?” after his character manages to win. He starred as Woodward to Hoffman’s Carl Bernstein in 1976’s “All the President’s Men,” the story of the Washington Post reporters whose Watergate investigation helped bring down President Richard Nixon.

With 2007’s “Lions for Lambs,” Redford returned to directing in a saga of a congressman (Tom Cruise), a journalist (Meryl Streep) and an academic (Redford) whose lives intersect over the war on terrorism in Afghanistan.

His biggest filmmaking triumph came with his directing debut on “Ordinary People,” which beat Martin Scorsese’s classic “Raging Bull” at the Oscars. The film starred Donald Sutherland and Mary Tyler Moore as the repressed parents of a troubled young man, played by Timothy Hutton, in his big screen debut. Redford was praised for casting Moore in an unexpectedly serious role and for his even-handed treatment of the characters, a quality that Roger Ebert believed set “the film apart from the sophisticated suburban soap opera it could easily have become.”

Redford’s other directing efforts included “The Horse Whisperer,” “The Milagro Beanfield War” and 1994’s “Quiz Show,” the last of which also earned best picture and director Oscar nominations. In 2002, Redford received an honorary Oscar, with academy organizers citing him as “actor, director, producer, creator of Sundance, inspiration to independent and innovative filmmakers everywhere.”

“The idea of the outlaw has always been very appealing to me. If you look at some of the films, it’s usually having to do with the outlaw sensibility, which I think has probably been my sensibility. I think I was just born with it,” Redford said in 2018. “From the time I was just a kid, I was always trying to break free of the bounds that I was stuck with, and always wanted to go outside.”

Go Fund Me Started for Rochester Family Who Lost Everything In Sunday Fire.

(Photo Courtesy of Gavin Thunberg)

(Rochester, Pa.) A Go Fund Me has been started for a family that’s home was destroyed in a Sunday fire in Rochester. The fire started on the back porch of a home in the 400 block of New York Avenue. The families house was destroyed and a neighboring house sustained damage. 

You can donate to the family by clicking on the link below:

https://www.gofundme.com/f/sokolovich-family-recovering-from-a-house-fire?attribution_id=sl%3Ade625734-849c-45d4-b88d-b28b07c2487f&lang=en_US&ts=1757900503&utm_campaign=fp_sharesheet&utm_content=amp13_c-amp17_te&utm_medium=customer&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwdGRjcAM1K45jbGNrAzUriGV4dG4DYWVtAjExAAEesjrbfq0XWNIbbKnbko2D6sliTqTOHAnzHi-8rbRhCHt7wEx6p4bXpocpduc_aem_BVZkNk39N95zWvypLcuY9g

Aliquippa man issued a warrant for his arrest after his girlfriend is assaulted at Valley Terrace D Building in Aliquippa

(File Photo of a City of Aliquippa Police Department Car)

Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News

(Aliquippa, PA) The City of Aliquippa Police Department got dispatched to Valley Terrace D Building in Aliquippa after they got a domestic disturbance report on Thursday evening. A female victim told officers that her boyfriend, forty-one-year-old David Strickland of Aliquippa, punched her in her right eye after he got upset with her. Officers noticed swelling and redness to the right eye of the female victim. Strickland escaped before the arrival of officers to Valley Terrace D Building. A warrant got issued for the arrest of Strickland for a summary charge of harassment and a misdemeanor charge of assault.

Aliquippa man jailed for performing sexual act on himself in his vehicle that was publicly seen at the Marathon gas station in Aliquippa

(File Photo of Police Siren Lights)

Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News

(Aliquippa, PA) Twenty-year-old Roccio Vespaziani of Aliquippa was a suspect who performed a sexual act on himself in his vehicle which the public saw at the Marathon Gas Station on Broadhead Road in Aliquippa on September 6th, 2025. The report of Vespaziani doing this act was given to the City of Aliquippa Police Department that evening. Vespaziani was taken into custody and is in the Beaver County Jail with misdemeanor charges of open lewdness and indecent exposure filed against him.

AAA East Central’s gas price report states that gas prices drop by eight cents in Western Pennsylvania this week

(Photo Provided with Release Courtesy of AAA East Central)

Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News

(Pittsubrgh, PA) Gas prices are eight cents lower in Western Pennsylvania this week at $3.46 per gallon, according to AAA East Central’s Gas Price Report. The national average for a regular gallon of gasoline is $3.17, down two cents from the previous week. The report states that at this time a year ago, the average price for a gallon of gas in Western Pennsylvania was about $3.58. The report also notes that the average price that you can expect for a gallon of unleaded gas here in Beaver County is around $3.61. According to a release from AAA East Central and AAA East Central’s Gas Price Report, here are the average prices of unleaded self-serve gasoline this week in various Pennsylvania areas:

$3.464      Altoona
$3.611      Beaver
$3.578      Bradford
$3.068      Brookville
$3.497      Butler
$3.089      Clarion
$3.305      DuBois
$3.462      Erie
$3.431      Greensburg
$3.501      Indiana
$3.519      Jeannette
$3.526      Kittanning
$3.305      Latrobe
$3.484      Meadville
$3.527      Mercer
$3.467      New Castle
$3.488      New Kensington
$3.594      Oil City
$3.522      Pittsburgh
$3.409      Sharon
$3.599      Uniontown
$3.595      Warren
$3.536      Washington

Massive fire at the Jefferson Apartments in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh on Septmber 9th, 2025 was accidental and was an electrical fire

(Photo Courtesy of Pittsburgh Public Safety)

Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News

(Pittsubrgh, PA) According to officials from Pittsburgh Public Safety, the massive fire that started in the Jefferson Apartments in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh last Tuesday started in the basement utility room and was electrical in nature. This fire caused about thirty people to be displaced and Pittsburgh Public Safety officials also confirmed that the Jefferson Apartments fire last Tuesday was accidental. All of the residents that escaped that fire are safe. Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey declared a local disaster emergency because of this fire on Thursday and Sunday was when the demolition process for the Jefferson Apartments began.

PennDOT hosting a job fair in Rochester for the public to learn about positions that are available for the PennDOT Beaver County winter maintenance program

(File Photo of the PennDOT logo)

Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News

(Rochester, PA) PennDOT will host a job fair today from 11 A.M. to 5 P.M. at the PennDOT Beaver County Maintenance Building at 155 Stewart Avenue in Rochester for the public to learn about positions that are available for the PennDOT Beaver County winter maintenance program. The positions for this job fair include seasonal tradesman helpers, Seasonal (Temp-to-Permanent) Commercial Driver’s License (CDL) Operators, diesel mechanics and winter dispatchers. CDL positions require a driver’s license and a medical examiner’s certificate that is current to apply, while all other positions need an appropriate form of identification to apply. Conditional job offers for select positions, interviews that are on-the-spot, application completion onsite and driving skills testing will also occur while on-hand recruitment staff from Pennsylvania will be at the PennDOT job fair today in Rochester to talk about the current openings for jobs in PennDOT winter maintenance in Beaver County.

Vice President JD Vance says national unity is impossible with those celebrating Charlie Kirk’s killing

(File Photo: Source for Photo: Vice President JD Vance hosts an episode of “The Charlie Kirk Show” at the White House, following the assassination of the show’s namesake, Monday, Sept., 15, 2025, in Washington. (Doug Mills/The New York Times via AP, Pool)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President JD Vance said Monday while hosting Charlie Kirk’s radio show that he is “desperate” for national unity after the conservative political activist’s killing but that finding common ground with people who celebrated the assassination of his friend is impossible.

The Republican vice president filled in as host of “The Charlie Kirk Show” from his ceremonial office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House. The livestream of the two-hour program was broadcast in the White House press briefing room and featured a series of appearances by White House and administration officials who knew the 31-year-old Kirk.

Vance, who transported Kirk’s body home from Utah to Arizona aboard Air Force Two last week, opened by saying he was “filling in for somebody who cannot be filled in for, but I’ll do my best.” He recounted his conversations with Kirk’s widow, Erika, and her remembrances of him as a kind, loving husband.

In his closing remarks, Vance criticized what he said were lies about Kirk that he blamed for the killing. He also promised that the Trump administration will act to stop anyone who would kill another person because of their words. Kirk made comments over the years that some Democrats and others said were anti-immigrant, racist, misogynistic or offensive in other ways.

“I’m desperate for our country to be united in condemnation of the actions and the ideas that killed my friend,” Vance said on the program. “I want it so badly that I will tell you a difficult truth. We can only have it with people who acknowledge that political violence is unacceptable.”

Kirk’s influence with Trump and Vance

Vance’s self-described “moonlighting” as substitute radio host, as well as the broadcasting of the program from the White House complex, served as a powerful reminder of Kirk’s close relationship with the Trump-Vance team and the valuable role Kirk’s operation boosting youth voter turnout played on the campaign.

The Republican vice president, 41, was especially close to Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, one of the nation’s largest political organizations with chapters on high school and college campuses. The two began a friendship nearly a decade ago, and Kirk advocated for Vance to be Republican Donald Trump’s choice for vice president last year. Kirk also was someone who had Trump’s ear.

Vance spoke in the show’s opening segment Monday about being at a loss for words as he sat with Erika Kirk last week. But he said she told him something he’ll never forget, which was that the father of their two young children had never raised his voice to her and was never “cross or mean-spirited to her.”

Vance allowed that he could not say the same about himself.

“I took from that moment that I needed to be a better husband and I needed to be a better father,” the vice president said on the program, which airs on Rumble, a streaming platform. “That is the way I’m going to honor my friend.”

White House and administration officials mourn Kirk

Others who joined Vance on Kirk’s program were White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., press secretary Karoline Leavitt and deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller.

The conversation turned toward fighting what Vance described as “festering violence on the far left” with Miller, the first guest.

“With God as my witness, we’re going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks,” Miller said. “It will happen, and we will do it in Charlie’s name.”

Law enforcement officials have said they believe the suspect accused of killing Kirk acted alone.

The relationship between Vance and Kirk

Vance, who said, “I owe so much to Charlie,” elaborated on his close friendship with Kirk in a lengthy social media post late on the night of the conservative activist’s killing. Vance said it started randomly around 2017 after he appeared on program by conservative host Tucker Carlson. Kirk sent Vance a private message through social media telling Vance he’d done a “great job.”

“And that moment of kindness began a friendship that lasted until today,” the vice president wrote.

Vance said he and Kirk both initially were “skeptical” of Donald Trump during his 2016 presidential campaign but had come around to support the now-two-time president.

Kirk was among the first people to hear from Vance in early 2021 when the Ohio Republican was “interested but skeptical” about running for a U.S. Senate seat, the vice president said in a testimony to Kirk’s role in his political rise.

“We talked through everything, from the strategy to the fundraising to the grassroots of the movement he knew so well,” Vance said. “He introduced me to some of the people who would run my campaign and also to Donald Trump Jr., who “took a call from me because Charlie asked him too.”

Vance said Kirk arranged for him to speak to Kirk’s donors at a Turning Point USA event when he had no reason to help someone polling as low as he was at the time, “but he did it because we were friends, and because he was a good man.”

Vance and others credit Kirk’s efforts and influence with helping Trump win reelection.

“So much of the success we’ve had in this administration traces directly to Charlie’s ability to organize and convene,” Vance said in the post. “He didn’t just help us win in 2024, he helped us staff the entire government.

He added on the program, “If it weren’t for Charlie Kirk, I would not be the vice president of the United States … it’s one of the reasons why I feel so indebted to him.”

Vance as radio show host

Jody Baumgartner, a political science professor at East Carolina University in North Carolina, said Vance’s hosting duty likely was possible because vice presidents have more free time than presidents.

“If President Trump had time to do something like this, don’t you think he would?” Baumgartner asked. “It’s an interesting question with respect to resources and time, but a vice president has the time that a president doesn’t.”

After Kirk’s assassination

After Kirk was fatally shot last Wednesday at Utah Valley University, Vance tore up his schedule for the next day — he was scheduled Thursday to attend the 24th annual observance in New York of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks — to fly instead to Orem, Utah, with his wife, second lady Usha Vance.

The couple accompanied Erika Kirk and Charlie Kirk’s casket to Arizona aboard Air Force Two.