(File Photo of a Sign for the United States Department of Health and Human Services Food and Drug Administration)

Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News

(Indianapolis, IN) According to the Food and Drug Administration, a company based in Indiana is recalling some vine tomatoes over concerns about salmonella contaminations. Gordon Food Service stores in Pennsylvania and ten other states received recalled tomatoes from Ray & Mascari, Inc., which is based in Indianapolis. The FDA confirmed that there were no reported illnesses, and the customers should not eat the tomatoes and throw them away instead. 

(File Photo of Transportation Security Administration Logo)

Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News

(Pittsburgh, PA) According to TSA, starting today, people at the Pittsburgh International Airport without TSA PreCheck will use its alternative checkpoint. That checkpoint is on the third floor and signs will indicate the change. Those with TSA PreCheck will still use the checkpoint for main security on the second floor. This week also begins the period when from 10:30 p.m. to 2:30 a.m., checkpoints for passenger screening at the airport will also close.

(File Photo of Gavel)

Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News

(Pittsburgh, PA) Acting U.S. Attorney Troy Revetti announced Friday that a man from Butler was indicted for threatening to murder President Donald Trump, some U.S. officials and ICE agents. Thirty-two-year-old Shawn Monper made threats to these people as the user “Mr. Satan” on YouTube before he was arrested on April 9th, 2025. According to Revetti, Monper was detained and could get a maximum of up to ten years in jail, an up to a $250,000 fine, or both, provided by the law.

(File Photo of the Duquesne Light Company Logo)

Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News

(Pittsburgh, PA) Duquesne Light Company has been working hard to restore power outages from the western Pennsylvania storms that occurred on Tuesday. According to Duquesne Light Company, as of Sunday morning, 93% of customers got their power back in their houses. A news release from Duquesne Light Company confirms that at 11 p.m. on Tuesday, May 6th or sooner, those that are still without power should have it back.

 

(File Photo of Police Lights)

Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News

(Beaver County, PA) Pennsylvania State Police in Beaver report that a two-vehicle crash occurred on I-376 West on Saturday. An unidentified driver was tailgating behind another unidentified driver on the Chippewa Township road to cause the crash at 9:38 a.m. The driver that caused the crash was not charged and there were no reported injuries. That is all the information that we have at this time. 

 

(File Photo: Source for Photo: A fan is carted off the field at PNC Park after falling out of the stands during the seventh inning of a baseball game between the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Chicago Cubs in Pittsburgh, Wednesday, April 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News

(Pittsburgh, PA) The Pittsburgh Pirates fan who fell from the stands onto PNC Park on Wednesday during the Pirates’ game against the Chicago Cubs is making progress in his recovery. According to the family of the man, he is able to speak and is both awake and alert. He also fractured his skull after the fall. A Pirates spokesperson confirms he was part of a group of four people at the game and one of them bought alcohol. A belief from the Pirates is that he drank two beers at the game. 

 

 

Allegheny County announced the 2025 Summer Concert Series lineup, featuring more than two dozen free performances across South Park and Hartwood Acres amphitheaters. With chart-topping headliners, homegrown talent, and returning cultural staples, this season promises music for every taste.

“This summer, we’re bringing world-class music to our county parks for everyone to enjoy – for free,” said County Executive Sara Innamorato. “Whether you’re dancing to funk legends, discovering your new favorite singer-songwriter, or enjoying a glass of local wine under the stars, these concerts celebrate the joy of coming together as a community.”

Returning cultural mainstays include the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (South Park on 7/5 and Hartwood on 7/6), Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre (8/24 at Hartwood), and the Pittsburgh Opera (South Park on 5/30.)

Concertgoers can enjoy offerings from local food trucks, Hop Farm Brewing Company, and Black Dog Wine Company at every performance.

South Park highlights include: 

• Joe Grushecky and the Houserockers (6/6) – Local legends

• BPM: Brian Bromberg, Paul Brown, and Michael Paulo (6/13) – Jazz supergroup

• American Authors (7/11) – Platinum-selling pop-rockers behind the smash hit “Best Day of My Life”

• Chuck Prophet and His Cumbia Shoes (7/18) – A roots-rock rebel bringing soul and swagger

• Ashley Cooke (7/25) – Modern country’s rising star with the #1 hit “Your Place”

• Herman’s Hermits Starring Peter Noone (8/1) – British Invasion icons with over 60 million records sold

Hartwood Acres highlights include:

• 25th Annual Allegheny County Music Festival (6/29) – Randall Baumann’s Ramble: A Celebration of Levon Helm’s Midnight Rambles. Proceeds benefit the Allegheny County Music Festival Fund, which supports life-enriching items and experiences for children and youth served by the Department of Human Services and Juvenile Court.

• The Family Stone (7/20) – Original members of Sly & The Family Stone bring the funk

• Mat Kearney (7/27) – Platinum-selling singer-songwriter with a heart for indie-pop storytelling

• Nick Lowe & Los Straitjackets (8/3) – A rock ’n’ roll dream team full of retro cool

• KT Tunstall (8/10) – Grammy-nominated hitmaker and loop-pedal wizard

• Smash Mouth (8/17) – 90s favorites with mega-hits like “All Star” and “Walkin’ on the Sun”

• Monty Alexander (8/31) – Jamaican jazz pioneer known for fusing bebop and reggae.

FULL LINEUPS:

SOUTH PARK

HARTWOOD

June 1	River City Brass
June 8	The Skyliners
June 15	No concert due to U.S. Open
June 22	Easy Star All-Stars: performing a full Dub Side of the Moon along with songs from Radiodread, Ziggy Stardub and more!
June 29	25th Annual Allegheny County Music Festival Randall Baumann’s Ramble: A Celebration of Levon Helm’s Midnight Rambles $20.00 per vehicle suggested donation Benefits the Allegheny County Music Festival Fund
July 6	Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (starts at 8:15 pm)
July 13	Mo Lowda & the Humble
July 20	The Family Stone
July 27	Mat Kearney
August 3	Nick Lowe & Los Straitjackets
August 10	KT Tunstall
August 17	Smash Mouth
August 24	Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre
August 31	Monty Alexander

(File Photo: Source for Photo: A bird flies above Alcatraz Island on Sunday, May 4, 2025, in the San Francisco Bay, Calif. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)

NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump says he is directing his government to reopen and expand Alcatraz, the notorious former prison on a hard-to-reach California island off San Francisco that has been closed for more than 60 years.

In a post on his Truth Social site Sunday evening, Trump wrote that, “For too long, America has been plagued by vicious, violent, and repeat Criminal Offenders, the dregs of society, who will never contribute anything other than Misery and Suffering. When we were a more serious Nation, in times past, we did not hesitate to lock up the most dangerous criminals, and keep them far away from anyone they could harm. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.”

“That is why, today,” he said, “I am directing the Bureau of Prisons, together with the Department of Justice, FBI, and Homeland Security, to reopen a substantially enlarged and rebuilt ALCATRAZ, to house America’s most ruthless and violent Offenders.”

Trump’s directive to rebuild and reopen the long-shuttered penitentiary was the latest salvo in his effort to overhaul how and where federal prisoners and immigration detainees are locked up. But such a move would likely be an expensive and challenging proposition. The prison was closed in 1963 due to crumbling infrastructure and the high costs of repairing and supplying the island facility, because everything from fuel to food had to be brought by boat.

Bringing the facility up to modern-day standards would require massive investments at a time when the Bureau of Prisons has been shuttering prisons for similar infrastructure issues.

The prison — infamously inescapable due to the strong ocean currents and cold Pacific waters that surround it — was known as the “The Rock” and housed some of the nation’s most notorious criminals, including gangster Al Capone and George “Machine Gun” Kelly.

It has long been part of the cultural imagination and has been the subject of numerous movies, including “The Rock” starring Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage.

Still in the 29 years it was open, 36 men attempted 14 separate escapes, according to the FBI. Nearly all were caught or didn’t survive the attempt.

The fate of three particular inmates — John Anglin, his brother Clarence and Frank Morris — is of some debate and was dramatized in the 1979 film “Escape from Alcatraz” starring Clint Eastwood.

Alcatraz Island is now a major tourist site that is operate by the National Park Service and is a designated National Historic Landmark.

Trump, returning to the White House on Sunday night after a weekend in Florida, said he’d come up with the idea because of frustrations with “radicalized judges” who have insisted those being deported receive due process. Alcatraz, he said, has long been a “symbol of law and order. You know, it’s got quite a history.”

A spokesperson for the Bureau of Prisons said in a statement that the agency “will comply with all Presidential Orders.” The spokesperson did not immediately answer questions from The Associated Press regarding the practicality and feasibility of reopening Alcatraz or the agency’s role in the future of the former prison given the National Park Service’s control of the island.

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat whose district includes the island, questioned the feasibility of reopening the prison after so many years. “It is now a very popular national park and major tourist attraction. The President’s proposal is not a serious one,” she wrote on X.

The island serves as a veritable time machine to a bygone era of corrections. The Bureau of Prisons currently has 16 penitentiaries performing the same high-security functions as Alcatraz, including its maximum security facility in Florence, Colorado, and the U.S. penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, which is home to the federal death chamber.

The order comes as Trump has been clashing with the courts as he tries to send accused gang members to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador, without due process. Trump has also floated the legally dubious idea of sending some federal U.S. prisoners to the Terrorism Confinement Center, known as CECOT.

Trump has also directed the opening of a detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to hold up to 30,000 of what he has labeled the “worst criminal aliens.”

The Bureau of Prisons has faced myriad crises in recent years and has been subjected to increased scrutiny after Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide at a federal jail in New York City in 2019. An AP investigation uncovered deep, previously unreported flaws within the Bureau of Prisons. AP reporting has disclosed widespread criminal activity by employees, dozens of escapes, chronic violence, deaths and severe staffing shortages that have hampered responses to emergencies, including assaults and suicides.

The AP’s investigation also exposed rampant sexual abuse at a federal women’s prison in Dublin, California. Last year, President Joe Biden signed a law strengthening oversight of the agency after AP reporting spotlighted its many flaws.

At the same time, the Bureau of Prisons is operating in a state of flux — with a recently installed new director and a redefined mission that includes taking in thousands of immigration detainees at some of its prisons and jails under an agreement with the Department of Homeland Security. The agency last year closed several facilities, in part to cut costs, but is also in the process of building a new prison in Kentucky.

(File Photo: Source for Photo: Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro speaks during a news conference at the governor’s official residence about a suspected arson fire that forced him, his family and guests to flee in the middle of the night on the Jewish holiday of Passover, Sunday, April 13, 2025, in Harrisburg, Pa. (AP Photo/Marc Levy)

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — A consultant paid to review security at the official residence of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro after it was firebombed by a late-night intruder said Friday that his team’s findings will not be made public.

Retired state police Col. Jeffrey Miller said in a statement that the “sensitive nature” of the findings he has given to Shapiro and state police “precludes their release to the public for obvious reasons.”

The dangerous breakdown in protection has raised questions about how the intruder was able to elude state police security as he climbed a 7-foot (2-meter) fence and smashed two windows, then crawled inside and ignited destructive fires with two gasoline-filled beer bottles.

“I am confident that if fully implemented, the key recommendations that we have made will prevent an attack of this nature from succeeding in the future,” Miller said. His San Diego-based security consulting firm is being paid more than $35,000 for the work.

Paula Knudsen Burke, the Pennsylvania lawyer with the nonprofit Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said portions of the report could be released even if the full report isn’t.

“It seems we’re spending taxpayer dollars to review taxpayer paid employees working in a taxpayer owned building,” Burke said. “It seems taxpayers should have some visibility into what their money is used for.”

Review assessed gaps in security

Miller and his team assessed security at Shapiro’s official residence and has recommended how to “mitigate the gaps discovered,” as Miller put it in a contract document filed with the state. They interviewed state police employees about duty assignments the night of the attack and about security monitoring systems that were in place.

They also looked into fire suppression, the outer and inner perimeters, training and other factors.

State Police Col. Christopher Paris said some of Miller’s recommendations have already been implemented.

“The State Police value the trust of the people we serve, and I believe that this review by an independent examiner with first-hand knowledge of our Commonwealth government will help us continue to earn that trust,” Paris said in a release.

Myles Snyder, the state police’s communications director, said Friday that Paris agrees with Miller that the report should not be made public, and Shapiro press secretary Manuel Bonder deferred to state police about disclosing the details. The Associated Press has filed a request that state police release the document under the Pennsylvania Right-to-Know Law.

Shapiro has thanked police and firefighters for rescuing him and his family, but also said there were security failures at the three-story brick Georgian-style residence that sits along the Susquehanna River more than a mile (1.6 kilometers) north of the Capitol.

Pennsylvania House Minority Leader Jesse Topper, a Bedford County Republican, has pressured the administration to give parts of the report to lawmakers that show what went wrong with the governor’s security. He has said, however, that he understands that plans to enhance the security shouldn’t be made public if it compromises the governor’s safety.

“However, in terms of the accountability of what happened and how it happened, I think that is a question that needs to be answered and that those answers need to be provided to the people’s representatives here in the House and the Senate,” Topper said Thursday in his Capitol office.

Topper said Friday that he had not received a response to an inquiry about whether lawmakers — who may be called upon to approve more money for enhanced security — will be allowed to read parts of the report.

Miller was named to lead the state police in 2003 by then-Gov. Ed Rendell, a Democrat, and spent nearly six years in the top job. He has also been a senior security official with the National Football League and held other security related posts.

Mansion attacked in early morning hours

A Harrisburg man, Cody Balmer, 38, has been charged with attempted homicide, arson and other offenses for the attack on the state-owned Harrisburg residence about 2 a.m. on Sunday, April 13. The fire caused an estimated millions of dollars in damage but no one was hurt.

Shapiro fled the residence along with his wife and their kids — he has since clarified that only three of their four children were home — after being awakened by police. They and their guests had participated in a Passover Seder the previous evening. A message seeking comment was left for Shapiro.

Dauphin County District Attorney Fran Chardo has said investigators are assessing whether religious or political bias could explain why Balmer expressed “hatred” for Shapiro, who is Jewish.

Balmer, who denied having a mental illness despite his family’s comments to the contrary, is accused of breaking into the residence in Harrisburg in the dead of night early Sunday and starting the fire.

“As bad as the outcome of the attack was, we are grateful that the actions of members of the Executive Services Office in immediately evacuating the Governor and his family to safety prevented any injuries or loss of life,” Miller said in the statement.

Shapiro splits his time between the Harrisburg mansion built in the 1960s and the family home in Abington, a Philadelphia suburb. The Democrat is seen as a potential White House contender in 2028.

In a 911 call less than an hour after the fire, Balmer said, “Gov. Josh Shapiro needs to know that Cody Balmer will not take part in his plans for what he wants to do to the Palestinian people,” according a recording released by Dauphin County. When asked what he might have done had he encountered Shapiro, Balmer said he would have hit the governor with a sledgehammer, police said.

Balmer subsequently turned himself in at the state police’s headquarters in Harrisburg and remains jailed without bond.

Balmer’s family has said he has a history of mental illness, which Balmer denied at a brief court appearance. Proceedings in the criminal case are on hold while he is evaluated to see if he is mentally competent to stand trial.