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May 10, 2012

Your Daily digest for Philly.com News

Philly.com News
News from the Inquirer and Daily News.
Recent college graduates face educational second thoughts
May 10th 2012, 08:05

College graduates encountering today's tough job market often wish they could hit the rewind button, a new study from Rutgers University finds.

Corbett willing to negotiate on Pennsylvania budget, but...
May 10th 2012, 08:03

HARRISBURG — Arguing that no Pennsylvanians — not even schoolteachers and their pupils — are recessionproof, Gov. Corbett said Wednesday that despite a recent uptick in revenue, his administration will think long and hard before rushing to restore steep cuts proposed in next year’s state budget. Corbett said that he understands some people are unhappy with the $27.1 billion budget he proposed for the fiscal year that starts July 1, which calls for slicing millions of dollars for higher education and sharply scaling back programs for the poor, elderly, and disabled. He said he, too, dislikes making such cuts.

In the end, say BYOB opponents, tradition won out
May 10th 2012, 08:00

OCEAN CITY, N.J. — It had been a quiet victory celebration, with no popping of champagne corks or rousing cheers. Yet Andrew Fasy said he felt a little hung over Wednesday, the morning after residents of this Cape May County resort took a stand in a historic referendum against allowing alcohol to be consumed at local restaurants. The proposal, rejected by a more than 2-1 ratio, would have allowed diners to bring in their own bottles of beer or wine.

$17 million settlement in Delaware River duck-boat deaths
May 10th 2012, 07:58

After nearly two years of litigation, the families of the two Hungarian tourists killed in the July 2010 accident between a barge and a duck boat on the Delaware River will receive $15 million from the companies that owned the vessels.

Bucks tourism grants surpass $1 million mark
May 10th 2012, 06:00

Bucks County’s museums are bringing in traveling exhibits, events at its historic sites are being publicized, and other attractions are getting much-needed funding, thanks to a tourism grant program that since 2008 has handed out more than $1 million. This week, 23 recipients of spring grants were announced, among them the Mercer Museum, which will use its $15,000 “for the fees for the Apron Chronicles Exhibit, and for promotion inside and beyond Bucks County,” executive vice president Molly W. Lowell said.

Louis Pollak, federal judge, dies at 89
May 10th 2012, 06:00

U.S. District Judge Louis Pollak, a former dean of the Yale and University of Pennsylvania Law Schools and a seminal figure in the litigation emerging from the early civil rights movement, died Tuesday at his home in West Mount Airy after a long illness.

Reactions here, from cynical to celebratory
May 10th 2012, 05:25

Courageous. Historic. Inspiring. Misguided. Immoral. Out of touch. Reactions ranged widely in the Philadelphia region to President Obama's unequivocal statement Wednesday in support of gay marriage rights, an issue that has elicited strong feelings across the country about morality, religion, and constitutional rights.

Obama throws backing to gay marriage
May 10th 2012, 05:25

President Obama ended nearly two years of "evolving" by declaring his support for legalizing same-sex marriage Wednesday, a historic step that is sure to raise the profile of a divisive social issue in the 2012 campaign for the White House.

Woman, 52, beaten to death in North Philly
May 10th 2012, 04:50

?1? Woman, 52, beaten to death in N. Philly Gratz Street near Susquehanna Avenue

Carlton Williams is new L&I commish
May 10th 2012, 04:45

MAYOR NUTTER announced Wednesday that Carlton Williams, a deputy commissioner in the Streets Department, will be the new commissioner of the Department of Licenses & Inspections. Williams, who oversees the Streets Department’s sanitation division and the city’s recycling efforts, recently won the city’s Richardson Dilworth Award for Distinguished Public Service. He has worked for the city for 12 years, in both the streets and recreation departments.

Rapper gets 15 to 30 in PHA worker’s murder
May 10th 2012, 04:45

JAMAAL SIMMONS, a North Philadelphia-based gangsta rapper known as Steel, has plenty to say on YouTube, where his homemade videos feature him celebrating guns, violence, even murder. In one video Simmons, 28, boasts: “Where I’m from it’s either go hard or go to the morgue.” In another, Simmons threatens a fellow rapper: “Your life’s on the line; I’m gonna put the hit out.”

Worker shot to death at Port Richmond Jiffy Lube
May 10th 2012, 04:45

RUSH-HOUR TRAFFIC on Aramingo Avenue came to a crawl in Port Richmond Wednesday as drivers paused to watch police place yellow evidence markers on a Jiffy Lube driveway where bullet casings landed after a shooting that left a 40-year-old employee dead. The unidentified victim was moving a Ford Focus into the service bay at the shop on Aramingo Avenue near Venango about 5:30 p.m. when a man approached him and the two got into a heated argument, police said.

O’Donnell’s killer will spend life in prison
May 10th 2012, 04:40

EVEN AFTER THE jury foreman announced Wednesday that Donte Johnson was guilty of the first-degree murder and rape of Sabina Rose O’Donnell, and even after the young woman’s mother and other relatives told the court of the anguish of losing her to his senseless brutality, Johnson slouched forward in his chair and maintained his innocence. Johnson’s shocking statement came after Common Pleas Judge Glenn Bronson had lambasted the defendant as “an extreme danger to the public” and lacking “any normal sense of decency.”

When it comes to organs, Philly is most generous
May 10th 2012, 04:40

IT WAS ONE of those letters that made me throw my hands in the air. “Please help my son get a kidney,” the woman wrote in shaky script. “I am elderly, and he takes care of me. He has bad kidney disease and is getting sicker. He needs a kidney.”

The real Black Panthers
May 10th 2012, 04:40

BEFORE THERE WAS a New Black Panther Party, there was an old Black Panther Party. Launched on the streets of Oakland, Calif., in 1966 in response to complaints of widespread police brutality against African-Americans, the Black Panthers become an icon of the turbulent 1960s in a remarkably short time.

Report: New Jersey taxes spent on pay for union business
May 10th 2012, 04:30

New Jersey taxpayers pay millions in salaries and benefits every year for government employees who take leave to do union business, according to a report released Wednesday. Government and union officials cited in the report responded that the findings were incomplete and politicized, and that such arrangements were commonplace, legal, and collectively bargained.

Weedman to be retried on pot distribution charge after deadlock
May 10th 2012, 04:25

A Burlington County jury deadlocked Wednesday over whether to convict a Los Angeles man on charges he planned to deal marijuana that he said was intended to relieve pain he suffers as the result of bone tumors. Ed Forchion, a longtime marijuana activist and former New Jerseyan who calls himself NJ Weedman, will be retried this month for allegedly planning to distribute a pound of pot that police found in the trunk of his car in 2010.

Lawnside mourns a titan of the community
May 10th 2012, 04:23

Lawnside’s Peter Mott House will be closed to visitors Saturday, as a beloved civic leader who saved the structure from demolition is laid to rest in the borough whose history he championed. Clarence Still Jr., patriarch of an illustrious African American family whose annual reunions he organized for decades, died Friday at age 83. Funeral services are set for 11 a.m. at Mount Zion United Methodist Church in Lawnside, with burial to follow in the church cemetery.

Bank sues Norristown over condos
May 10th 2012, 04:18

The Rittenhouse Club, a 26-unit condominium project in Norristown, was so shoddily built that it was deemed unsafe for human habitation. The fallout from the project has included criminal charges against the developer and a court order in 2010 requiring Norristown to itself fix up the buildings — at a taxpayer cost of more than $1 million, so far.

Dead Sea Scrolls come to the Franklin Institute
May 10th 2012, 04:18

One of history’s greatest archaeological finds was so improbable that it borders on the miraculous. In 1947, a young Palestinian goatherd discovered a narrow cave entrance by the shores of the Dead Sea, in what is now Israel.

Man shot 7 times in his Upper Darby driveway
May 10th 2012, 04:14

A 25-year-old man was ambushed and shot multiple times in his driveway as he approached his Upper Darby, Delaware County, residence early this morning, according to Police Superintendent Michael Chitwood. Police say Khayree Reidhad just arrived at the home on the 7000 block of Parkview Road about 12:30 a.m. today when a lone gunman emerged from hiding. Reid suffered several wounds below the waist and was rushed to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and was listed in critical condition.

Court to Greene: Pay fine, file reports
May 10th 2012, 04:09

Court to Greene: Pay fine, file reports Commonwealth Court has ordered former Philadelphia Housing Authority Executive Director Carl R. Greene to pay a $1,653 fine to the state Ethics Commission and to file missing reports on his income and expenses.

Budget woes can’t stop city’s best young musicians
May 10th 2012, 04:00

Despite the Philadelphia School District’s ongoing budget turmoil, the show will go on Thursday night as more than 200 of the most talented middle-school musicians take the stage for the annual All Philadelphia Middle School Music Festival. This year’s concert features musicians selected through auditions from 50 city schools. They’ll play classical and contemporary pieces, including a Vivaldi concerto and a tribute to Ray Charles, at South Philly’s Girard Academic Music Program, according to Virginia Lam, the district’s content specialist for music education.

Upper Darby man, 25, wounded in ambush
May 10th 2012, 03:45

It occurred in front of a stone twin along a tranquil street with the pastoral name Parkview Road, but this was not a typical suburban crime. A 25-year-old man was ambushed shortly after midnight by someone who lay in wait in the bushes, shot him seven times, and left him to fight for his life. His 4-year-old daughter and her mother were in the house at the time.

Guilty verdict, life sentence plus, in Sabina O’Donnell murder
May 10th 2012, 03:43

Moments after a jury convicted 20-year-old Donte Johnson on all charges in the rape and murder of Sabina Rose O’Donnell, a judge sentenced him to life in prison plus 40 to 80 years, ensuring that Johnson will live out the rest of his life behind bars. “Frankly, based on these facts, it’s better than you deserve,” Common Pleas Court Judge Glenn Bronson said Wednesday.

Fewer Philly racers sign up for Komen’s annual run
May 10th 2012, 03:25

The Philadelphia chapter of the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure says registration for its annual race on Mother’s Day is down by about 18 percent over last year, reflecting lingering displeasure over the national organization’s blunder in February. Komen, the powerful breast-cancer philanthropy based in Dallas, was forced to reverse a ban on funding to Planned Parenthood’s breast-health programs after blistering outrage from people who buy pink-ribbon products and run in Komen’s fund-raisers.

Chester Upland pleads case in federal court
May 10th 2012, 03:25

Chester Upland School District officials, in federal court Wednesday hoping to receive assurances that they will have enough money to educate 700 special-education students this fall, painted a grim picture of the district’s finances. District officials told U.S. District Judge Michael Baylson that Chester Upland will end up the year owing charter schools, vendors, and special-education providers about $29 million that it cannot pay. The district, they said, will receive only $17 million to $18 million this school year from the state. The rest of the aid it would otherwise receive will go to charter schools and to pay back money the district owes the state and vendors.

Cathedral parish houses face demolition
May 10th 2012, 03:25

The Philadelphia Episcopal Cathedral, a decade after withering criticism of what many viewed as a destructive renovation of its own ornate Victorian interior, is planning to demolish two historically certified brownstone structures in the 3800 block of Chestnut Street to make way for a 25-story apartment tower. The project, which goes before the Philadelphia Historical Commission Friday, would obliterate the cathedral’s parish houses, designed by the noted ecclesiastical architect Charles M. Burns, and connect the proposed tower and administrative offices to the church itself via glass-enclosed walkways cut into the cathedral’s façade.

Priest’s personnel file had no hints of sexual wrongdoing
May 10th 2012, 03:19

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia’s file on the Rev. James J. Brennan had dozens of documents bluntly detailing what the archbishop, nuns, pastors, and even Brennan himself thought of his strengths, flaws, and potential. Missing from those records were words like sex abuse, molestation, and accusation, a detective acknowledged Wednesday.

Unions, parents blast school austerity plans
May 10th 2012, 03:19

A coalition led by parent groups and Philadelphia school employee unions Wednesday blasted the district’s proposal to make drastic cuts and structural changes to balance its budget, saying they were shortsighted financial decisions that would ultimately hurt students. “Nowhere does it speak about improving the education of youngsters,” said Delores Solomon, president of the Philadelphia Home and School Council. “It’s a business plan.”

Obama stance draws cheers, jeers in Phila. area
May 10th 2012, 02:51

Courageous. Historic. Inspiring. Misguided. Immoral. Out of touch.

Obama: I support gay marriage
May 10th 2012, 02:41

President Obama ended nearly two years of "evolving" by declaring his support for legalizing same-sex marriage Wednesday, a historic step that is sure to raise the profile of a divisive social issue in the 2012 campaign for the White House.

U.S. District Judge Lewis H. Pollack dies at 89
May 10th 2012, 00:38

U.S. DISTRICT JUDGE Lewis H. Pollak, 89, a highly respected jurist who had a hand in a landmark school-desegregation case while working on behalf of the NAACP in the 1950s, died at his Mount Airy home Tuesday afternoon, court officials said. Pollak, who died of heart failure, had been in ill health for about a year, said Michael Kunz, the clerk of federal district court here. Kunz said Pollak was a “giant” in the legal community and had been working as late as Friday in his chambers on the 16th floor of the U.S. Courthouse in Center City, signing orders, memoranda and judicial opinions.

New Black Panthers: Noisy but small
May 9th 2012, 22:50

FOR A POLITICAL movement that serves as a 50,000-watt boogeyman for conservative talk radio in America, finding your local representative of the New Black Panther Party is not easy. There’s no party headquarters and no membership roll — just a doorbell at a modest brick home in the lawn-checkered, rebuilt stretch of North Philadelphia between the Temple campus and Center City.

Duck boat victims’ families to receive $15 million settlement
May 9th 2012, 22:35

The two companies operating the watercraft involved in the July 2010 duck-boat accident that killed two Hungarian tourists will pay their families a combined $15 million as part of a legal settlement reached this afternoon.

Building tensions over nonunion workers
May 9th 2012, 17:44

Matthew and Michael Pestronk, two young real-estate developers who came here from Virginia to attend Drexel, are trying to shake up the city's construction business by hiring nonunion labor at two huge apartment complexes they're renovating.

Corbett too dislikes cuts, but doesn't see clear way out
May 9th 2012, 17:31

HARRISBURG — Gov. Corbett on Wednesday said that no one — not even state government — is recession proof, and that despite a smaller budget shortfall this year, his administration is going to think hard before it begins restoring cuts to education, social services and other programs taking hits in next year’s proposed state budget.

Crash kills father, son, critically injures daughter
May 9th 2012, 15:45

A father and his 5-year-old son were killed, and a 3-year-old daughter was critically injured in a morning crash in South Jersey. Shortly after 7 a.m., their Pontiac Grand Prix collided with a tractor-trailer carrying a load of paper products on Route 40 near Buck Road in Pittsgrove Township, Salem County, according to state police.

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