"Authorities yesterday searched the Main Line home of a dentist who they believe may have been involved in dumping some of the syringes and other medical waste found on eight Jersey Shore beaches in the last two weeks." The Penn State football team is in trouble again. Coach Joe Paterno said last night that defensive end Maurice Evans, defensive tackle Abe Koroma, and tight end Andrew Quarless would not play tomorrow against Oregon State after......

"A Delaware County woman, who allegedly helped her boyfriend lure young victims to her babysitting service so he could secretly tape sexually explicit videos of them in what authorities have called the 'most horrific case' of child exploitation they have seen, pleaded guilty in a federal courtroom yesterday. " 29-year-old Anthony Derubeis of Upper Darby decided to barbecue some books on his grill yesterday morning. When firefighters arrived, he started throwing stuff at them,......

A 22-year-old New Jersey man found guilty of beating another man in the parking lot before a Phillies game last year, has been sentenced to at least a year of nonreporting probation, allowing him to be deployed to Iraq with the National Guard in just a few weeks. The military deployment is being considered part of his sentence. SEPTA bus schedule changes start tomorrow with Regional Rail changes following on September 7th. It's all part......

A new list, released yesterday by the Pennsylvania Department of Education, shows a 67 percent increase in Philadelphia schools that are deemed persistently dangerous. The Inquirer has both a simple list and a map of the schools The nationwide Million Father March—which consists of fathers taking their children to school, participating in home and school events, and signing a pledge of nonviolence—kicks off locally this Sunday night. A 15th District police officer suffered minor injuries......

Hey, we made it to the top of another good list, Philadelphia! Zagat says the citizens of our fine city are the most generous tippers in the nation. The Daily News talks to two Philadelphia area men about their experiences after being arrested and thrown into a Chinese prison. In an effort to cut costs and avoid layoffs, the Newspaper Guild of Greater Philadelphia voted last night to postpone until next August a $25-a-week......

"Police last night charged a Yellow Cab Co. driver with vehicular homicide in an early-morning hit-and-run in Logan that left a young mother clinging to life and her 5-year-old son dead." A couple of unrelated incidents involving firearms took place early yesterday morning in Philadelphia. In the first incident, a retired Philly cop working as a pizza delivery man was accosted by three teenagers, one of whom pointed a gun at him while the......

Yesterday morning, 20-year-old Community College of Philadelphia accounting student Fakhur Uddin was bound with duct tape and string, shot in the head, and left in the back room of the East Germantown gift and sundry store he was minding for his ailing father. Police believe he was killed during a robbery. Apparently one of the key witnesses against Vincent Fumo in his corruption trial will be his own son-in-law. In the hopes of keeping......

A lawsuit by the Philadelphia firm of Cozen O'Connor blaming the government of Saudi Arabia for the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks is probably dead in the water now after a federal appeals court ruled yesterday that Saudi Arabia could not be sued for acts of terrorism. A 1-year-old child was slashed in the neck yesterday afternoon at a North Philadelphia home. The suspect is believed to be the child's father, but police are withholding the......

The parents of Danieal Kelly have filed a lawsuit against their criminal co-defendants, blaming them for the girl's demise. Leonard P. Luchko, a top computer technician for State Sen. Vincent J. Fumo pleaded guilty yesterday and told a federal judge that he followed Fumo's orders to erase e-mails being sought by federal agents investigating the powerful Philadelphia Democrat. Apparently he failed to erase incriminating e-mails from his own devices, however. Police responded to reports......

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......

Undercover officers were standing in as prostitutes on Kensington Avenue yesterday afternoon and Wednesday, cracking down on prostitution. Some lucky schmuck bought the winning Powerball ticket last week at the Turkey Hill Minit Mart in Willow Street, PA, just south of Lancaster. This Phillyist can sadly report that it wasn't him. But whoever it was will be revealed at 10 this morning. A group of residents in Yorktown feel their community is being threatened because......

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......

Oh boy, just look at all the articles about the Larry Mendte case. Apparently Mendte hacked into the email of Alycia Lane 537 times in 146 days, and did so wherever he was around the clock, from home, his desk at work, his Shore home in Ocean City, and even the Union League. He then passed on the information he obtained to a Philadelphia Daily News gossip columnist, in order to undermine Lane's ongoing......

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......

Your traffic restriction updates for today: the northbound I-95 ramp to Broad Street is closed from 8AM to 4PM for structural steel repairs. There will also be lane closures this week on I-95, the Vine Street Expressway, and the Schuylkill Expressway. Due to the recent loss of $1.4 million in federal funding, and accreditation problems, the Berean Institute, a North Philadelphia landmark that has provided vocational and business education to African-Americans for 109 years, could......

Recently a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit upheld Mumia Abu-Jamal's conviction in the killing of Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner, but said a new jury should decide whether he deserved life in prison or the death sentence for the crime. But Abu-Jamal is asking the federal appeals court to reconsider, and is still seeking a new trial. Despite a threat from Senator Fumo that their tax breaks......

Philly International will not see a great reduction in number of flights this fall, unlike other major cities like Las Vegas and Chicago. If you're counting on that trip to Vegas paying the heating bill this winter, better head out there now. Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey will hold six town hall meetings in July. Each public meeting will focus on particular neighborhoods, and residents will be asked about local problems and suggestions on making......

Remember, Eagles fans: tickets go on sale this morning at 10AM. The Inquirer offers tips on how to score some for yourself. Today is Philadelphia City Council's last meeting before summer break, so they're going to try to make decisions on a lot of leftover items at the last minute, including proposals to hike fines for littering, privatize the city's sludge plant, take control of Fairmount Park, force contractors to keep sidewalks open during construction......

Well, we'll be damned. A group of local investors (including former mayoral candidate Tom Knox) got together and saved Philadelphia's city-wide WiFi program yesterday. They closed a deal with Earthlink to take over the existing network. The plan is to create a wired network for premium, paying customers, like hospitals, universities, companies and the city. This would be connected to the existing wireless system, which would be free to use anywhere the signal can be......

City Controller Alan Butkovitz will release an audit of the city's recreation centers and playgrounds in an 11:30AM press conference today. Charter schools in the city of Chester seem to be successful, but the school district is having a hard time coping with the drain they put on available resources. Meanwhile, the Philadelphia School Reform Commission will hold the first of two scheduled public hearings today on the proposed closing of two troubled city......

The 14-month-old boy mistakenly left in the backseat of a hot car by his grandfather died Saturday afternoon at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia after five days on life support. The mother of the child has forgiven her father for the mistake. Pretty soon Mayor Nutter will have to negotiate new contracts with Philadelphia's four municipal unions; the Daily News suspects the ordeal will be the end of Nutter's honeymoon. A four-alarm fire struck......

The Inquirer covers yesterday's early school closings due to heat, and points out that we'll see more of the same today. They also talk about the help and charity inspired by an article about a family struggling without air conditioning in the heat. A while back, state legislators increased pay for injured police officers and made it easier for them to resist returning to work. Now on any given day, roughly 250 Philadelphia police......

Well, Jocelyn Kirsch isn't going to jail, but she has been placed under house arrest, where she's to be under the custody of her parents or grandmother at all times. She'll also continue to wear an electronic monitoring ankle bracelet, and her bond has been increased from $50,000 to $100,000. Click through for some of the strange and goofy details of her various crimes in California. Two women were sitting in a van parked......

The Daily News has a profile of the new Recreation Department commissioner, Sue Slawson, and is also talking about what Slawson and the Department of Human Services, amongst other organizations, are trying to do to boost programs and security in order to halt violence at the city's rec centers and neighborhood parks. Every year when the University of Pennsylvania's students go home for the summer, they leave a shocking amount and variety of appliances,......

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......

"The jury in the second murder trial of Wilfredo Santiago in the execution-style slaying of Police Officer Thomas Trench in 1985 will resume deliberations today." "Pennsylvania is taking steps to make gifted education available to more students, but that has done little to quell long-standing tension between parents and school districts over how the state's brightest are educated." Some more road closures for you poor motorists: the left lane on southbound I-95 approaching Bartram Avenue......

"Lane closures are scheduled this weekend on northbound and southbound Interstate 95 near the Betsy Ross Bridge (Exit 26) for bridge deck repairs." Click through for the details. The three men whose arrest and beating was captured on video by a news helicopter have their preliminary hearing scheduled for this morning. They're accused of taking part in a May 5 shooting that wounded three people in Feltonville. Meanwhile, police officials have changed their account......

The Inquirer takes a look at local folks and aid organizations trying to send help to China in the wake of the earthquake. All U.S. and Pennsylvania flags at state facilities will be flown at half-staff today for Peace Officers Memorial Day. And since it was Governor Rendell who gave the order there shouldn't be any complaints... "The Philadelphia Orchestra leaves Monday for a three-week tour of China, Japan and Korea." Eric DeShawn Floyd......

Say goodbye to Wireless Philadelphia. EarthLink is giving up and pulling the plug next month. There's just no money in it for them. That Jocelyn Kirsch. She seems to be getting up to more trouble out there in California. It appears she made a fake 911 call and got her stepfather arrested. The latest update in the Marvin Harrison-related shooting case is that... there isn't any update. Although actually, this article does offer more details......

We previously posted about SEPTA's celebration this past weekend of the 100th anniversary of service for 69th Street Terminal and the Route 100 Norristown High Speed Line. What we didn't realize is that SEPTA was more than a year late with its celebration. Fresh news on the Bonnie and Clyde front! We know you're excited. Looks like Jocelyn Kirsch is nearing a federal plea deal. Prison time is still likely, however, given the scope of......