Yo, Philly in the News

• Warm up your Tivos, because some exciting television program is coming your way this Saturday! And by exciting, we mean boring and pointless. It's a televised debate between the Philadelphia mayoral candidates!
• The city has ordered Judge Rayford A. Means to fix the two rooming houses he owns in Southwest Philadelphia, which are apparently infested with rodents, have faulty plumbing, sagging floors and broken ceilings, and are also overcrowded.
• In response to a grand jury investigation earlier this year that revealed secret government bonuses being given to legislative aides, the state Senate voted unanimously yesterday to ban the practice. Leaders from both parties had already voluntarily ended all year-end cash payments of this sort, but putting the ban into law was seen as a necessary step. Rendell, however, doesn't support a blanket ban on all bonuses, saying that modest bonuses should be allowed.
• The 2008 selection for the annual citywide reading collaboration known as "One Book, One Philadelphia" has been made, and it's What Is the What, a novel by David Eggers that focuses on the situation in Darfur.
• Witnesses in what's being called the "dirt-bike murder trial" are afraid to testify in the case.
• Two Philadelphia-area congressmen - U.S. Reps. James Saxton (R., N.J.) and Joseph Pitts (R., Pa.) - are being pressured to defect from President Bush and override his veto of a major children's health insurance bill.
• The $800 million Cira Centre South project was approved by a City Council committee yesterday and could be cleared for development by the end of the month.

Image Credit: Flickr user pwbaker