Yesterday former skinhead Thomas Gibison was sentenced to up to 25 years in prison by a Common Pleas Court judge for conspiring to commit a racial killing more than two decades ago. A Philadelphia police officer was responding to a call to assist another officer around 1AM this morning when his police car collided with another car at a downtown intersection. The officer is listed in critical condition, but his prognosis is good. Yesterday, the......

Dorrell Shaw, 26, who was wanted for questioning in the recent series of sexual assaults in Frankford, turned himself in to police yesterday. But authorities warn the case is by no means closed; Shaw was in prison during the first of the assaults, and it's quite possible he was not responsible for any of them. The rebuilding of the Market-Frankford El, a project that is now $300 million over budget and two years behind schedule,......

Philadelphia Media Holdings LLC, owner of the Daily News and the Inquirer, requested their union employees to forego a $25-a-week raise scheduled to begin September 1st, as a cost-cutting measure in the face of declining revenue that has afflicted newspapers nationwide. Members voted overwhelmingly to do so. Early this morning, someone called police to report a break-in at a South Philadelphia home. The homeowners were away at the Shore. While investigating, police critically wounded a......

Philadelphia rock musician and songwriter Robert Hazard died unexpectedly Tuesday night after surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Leonard Luchko, a computer technician and former aide of Senator Vincent Fumo, is accused of illegally destroying years' worth of state Senate computer records, apparently in an attempt to hide the data from the FBI during its investigation into Fumo. Luchko will plead guilty on Monday, marking the first plea in the corruption case against......

Yesterday afternoon in LOVE Park, two homeless women got into a fight over a homeless man's affections which ended in one woman stabbing the other to death. Perhaps not surprisingly, Mayor Nutter's recent press conference in which he angrily criticized DHS left some workers upset. He spent yesterday trying to placate them in a series of closed-door meetings. "A veteran Philadelphia-area Roman Catholic priest's transfer from Florida to Bucks County has been halted after......

The SEPTA R8 Fox Chase commuter train was on its last run of the day at 10:15 last night when it struck and killed a teenage girl just south of the Lawndale station. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton will be in Philadelphia today for a private meeting at a Center City law firm to say thank you to some of her major supporters. A 16-year-old Delaware County girl on her way to a slumber party......

Some updates on local criminal cases: the Bucks County mother accused of turning a sleepover into a sex party was ordered to stand trial yesterday. Andy Reid's son Garrett Reid was sentenced to two years in a relatively new state corrections program that combines incarceration and intensive drug treatment. Mumia Abu-Jamal lost his latest appeal for a new trial on Monday. Perhaps not surprisingly, the DRPA got an earful from angry commuters yesterday at......

Remember that $85 million Hollywood-style movie-production studio they were going to build in Delaware County? Well the studio's developers say they could be only days away from securing crucial tax breaks. And they already have a filmmaker excited about using the studio: M. Night Shyamalan. "Nine months after the 10,000 Men movement was launched with great fanfare, the organization that vowed to mount a massive campaign to retake Philadelphia's crime-ridden streets has fielded only four......

Yesterday, a South Philly cop was shot in the arm while pursuing a suspect in the murder of a young teacher. He kept chase, and caught the shooter despite his injuries. "I was just determined I was going to run him down," he told NBC10. The Phillies lost for the sixth time in a row, making this their longest losing streak since 2006. C'mon team. We can beat that record! Toilet pipe thefts are up......

Yesterday a Delaware County trade-school instructor mistakenly left his 14-month-old grandson in the backseat of his sweltering car in the Lawrence Park Shopping Center while he went to work for several hours in Broomall. Apparently he typically picks the child up in the morning and takes him to day care, but yesterday he forgot the boy was with him, and only realized his mistake when he came back in the afternoon to get something out......

Mayor Nutter is scheduled to tour the recently restored baseball field at Hancock Playground in Kensington today, where he'll announce initiatives for recreation-center safety, summer jobs for youth, and new rules for the city's summer camp programs. The Inquirer has some more details on how the FBI got involved in the case of Larry Mendte allegedly reading Alycia Lane's email. This week the the Sheriff's Office Bench Warrant Unit in Delaware County is holding......

Phillyist was just informed (thanks, Neal) that for years, public officials in the dry town of Colwyn (in Delaware County) used most of the area's firehouse as a makeshift bar, under the auspices of it being a "social club." The party ended at the beginning of May when the bar was raided after many investigations, and the mayor and several councilmen were caught off guard, cans in hand. On the same night, the entire volunteer......

As promised, yesterday Mayor Nutter announced his plan to combat homelessness. Click through for the details. The 14-year-old Lansdowne boy accused of stabbing his older brother to death over a video game has admitted to voluntary manslaughter. The judge will determine his sentence at a hearing on June 5th; he faces a maximum of seven years of supervision until he reaches age 21. The polo team from the acclaimed equestrian program on Chamounix Drive in......

Eric DeShawn Floyd, the third suspect in the murder of police Sgt. Stephen Liczbinski, was arrested last night when he was found sleeping in a boarded up rowhouse in Southwest Philadelphia at 11:10PM. He was unarmed and offered no resistance. Philadelphia police thus met their goal of capturing Floyd before Liczbinski's funeral. Meanwhile, the leadership of the Germantown Masjid has refused to conduct funeral services for Howard Cain, the bank robber who actually killed Liczbinski.......

"A man who was being evicted from his apartment in Yeadon, Delaware County, yesterday pulled a gun and shot the constable who served the eviction notice and the apartment manager, police said. The gunman fled into Southwest Philadelphia and hid in a rowhouse at 1846 Conestoga St, but a host of cops tracked him down and arrested him as he attempted to get away out the back door." The wounded men were listed in critical......

Yesterday, Governor Rendell requested that New York City release more water from its three brimming reservoirs in the Catskills, on the chance that the lowered levels will help protect residents along the Delaware River from flooding. Obama came to Philadelphia to talk to the state AFL-CIO convention yesterday, a day after Clinton had done the same. No word on whether he compared himself to Rocky—or Apollo Creed, for that matter. Meanwhile, Clinton was talking economics......

Ben Franklin and Betsy Ross are getting married! We're freaking out!! (Via Sarah) The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Building at 16th and Callowhill Streets was evacuated yesterday morning when a white, powdery substance was found in a third-floor office. The substance turned out to be foot powder. D'oh. (Via Sarah) An accident on the westbound Pennsylvania Turnpike between the Mid-County and Valley Forge interchanges led to the death of the driver of a FedEx......

Animal cruelty investigators raided some rowhouse stables on Fletcher Street yesterday, giving the owners 24 hours to relocate the 60 horses on the site. The Daily News paints a pretty horrific picture of the conditions the animals were living in. Chelsea Clinton was at Penn yesterday, stumping for her Mom, and said we should expect to see her and her family a lot in the near future. Which sounds like a threat to us. Beware,......

Mayor Nutter has cut taxpayer-funded nonprofit Philadelphia Safe and Sound's funding by $21 million, and City Council's majority leader said she would call today for hearings to look into how Safe and Sound conducts its business. The funding cuts will result in the closing of ten school-based community centers; the termination of a parent-truancy program; and the elimination of many after-school programs. As the head of one after-school program put it, "It's a fiasco."......

"A weekend Philadelphia police clash with partygoers at a Latina girl's 'Sweet 15' celebration ended with at least 20 people alleging they were beaten by officers, prompting the first major internal investigation of officer misconduct under new Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey." A woman 28 weeks pregnant was killed with a single shotgun blast to the back shortly after 1AM this morning on the 4600 block of Griscomb Street. She was found by police......

The Daily News checks in with Nicholas Yarris, the first man exonerated by DNA evidence from Pennsylvania's death row, on the occasion of his receiving the last installment of a recent $4 million cash settlement in a malicious-prosecution lawsuit against Delaware County. A 15-page report, put together by an independent technical firm and commissioned by the advocacy group Citizens for Pennsylvania's Future, states that two Montgomery County manufacturers in the Collegeville area whose emissions......

Hakim Glover, the cousin of the man who allegedly killed Officer Chuck Cassidy, pleaded guilty yesterday to charges of hindering apprehension and obstruction of justice. Glover is accused of helping his cousin flee to Florida. The Convention Center expansion project was halted on Christmas Eve when the Preservation Alliance of Greater Philadelphia obtained an injunction ordering wrecking crews to stop work. The preservationists want to save the two small but historic Broad Street buildings......

Lots of changes in local political leadership today. The judges in the Delaware County Court of Common Pleas will vote to elect a new president judge. In Montgomery County they'll be swearing in the winners of the November elections. And the same will be happening in Philadelphia today as Nutter comes in and Street goes out. The body of 50-year-old Cynthia Cometz of Woodstown was found inside a BMW that had been submerged in......

In the wake of the deadly tiger attack at the San Francisco Zoo, the Inquirer takes a look at the safety of the tiger exhibit at the Philadelphia Zoo. Seven state lawmakers, naming the city as the defendant, brought a lawsuit before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court yesterday asking that all construction of the proposed SugarHouse Casino be halted, "contending its license to build on submerged land beyond the river's edge is illegal." Chester Township......

If you still aren't bored of stories about Jocelyn S. Kirsch and Edward K. Anderton, then by all means, read on. Meanwhile, other rather more dangerous criminals are still on the loose. Police still have little to go on in the brutal November 25th murder of John Bartram High School sophomore Antonio Q. Clarke, who was last seen alive trying to catch a trolley in Southwest Philadelphia. Call police at 215-686-3334 or -3335 with......

Nutter's got an ad on TV again, this one designed to reintroduce himself to voters, and to hopefully increase what is threatening to be a very low voter turnout. Meanwhile, Delaware County Republicans have their own election problems, which include W., declining party registration, and the real chance that a Democrat might win a council seat for the first time in nearly 30 years. It's Fumo time! The good news for Fumo: his corruption trial......

Last night at about 6:30PM, a three-year-old boy, who was outside with his grandfather on the 400 block of Decatur Street in Holmesburg, ran into the street between parked cars and was struck and run over by a dark-colored SUV. The driver stopped, got out, said the child had run into his path, and then drove away. The child is now in critical but stable condition with numerous injuries. Anyone with any information about......

Laurel Hill Cemetery is haunted - according to South Jersey Paranormal Research, anyway. 2,350 unionized janitors and maintenance workers who clean Center City buildings could strike at midnight tonight when their contracts expire, unless they come to an agreement with management before then. Talks are continuing, so we'll see what happens... Around 12:50AM Saturday morning in Springfield Township, Delaware County, an 18-year-old recent Springfield High School graduate driving a 2004 Ford Mustang Cobra struck......

Today has been declared Phillies Day by Mayor Street, and the Inquirer has some Phillies fashion advice for you. 250 artists, prison officials and criminologists are coming together for the first-ever Arts in Criminal Justice National Conference, which is being held today through Friday at the Sheraton Center City hotel. The Philadelphia police officer who took a shotgun blast to the face last week left the hospital yesterday and says he's doing great, and......

A college student died in West Chester over the weekend from an unusual strain of meningitis called meningococcal meningitis, which is not one of the five or six strains covered by the vaccine recommended for college students. The death has prompted some fear and panic in the area, but only two people have been identified who had close enough contact with the student to warrant antibiotics. The source of the student's infection remains unknown. News......