Yo, Philly in the News

• "Common Pleas Judge Jane Cutler Greenspan yesterday ordered the city to temporarily halt enforcement of five gun-control laws passed by City Council last week and signed by Mayor Nutter. The city must stop writing police rules for enforcing the laws and training officers about them." Meanwhile, Philadelphia police officers confiscated 113 firearms in two separate incidents this week.
• West Philadelphia High School's Automotive and Technology Academy has become the first program of its kind in the school district and one of 47 nationally to receive a special certification called the National Automotive Technicians Education Foundation Training. School officials will celebrate the certification today at district headquarters from 1PM to 4PM.
• A man was keeping a bunch of barnyard animals in the backyard of a house on Indiana Avenue near Fourth Street. When agents from the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals arrived at the house yesterday, a man was running out and down the street leading a bull tied by the neck with a 25-foot extension cord. Agents confiscated the bull, a lamb, two goats, three chickens, three geese and two ducks. But another man got away with what witnesses described as anything from a tiger to a cougar, and which SPCA director of law enforcement George Bengal suspects may have been an ocelot.
• East Falls community leaders, students and residents will rally tomorrow outside Mifflin School, where vandals last week painted racist graffiti over a mural celebrating the school district's diversity. They will take part in a "Hands Around the School Unity Celebration," painting their hands and leaving handprints on the old mural.
• There's a lot of controversy over how ABC, and especially Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos, handled the presidential campaign debate in Philly Wednesday night. Keep in mind that absentee ballots for Tuesday's Pennsylvania primary must be received by the voter's county board of elections by 5PM today. The Daily News encourages you to pick Obama; apparently they agree with Phillyist readers.
• In the wake of a drinking binge that ended in the horrific rape and death of a young teen, the Daily News examines a national trend in binge drinking among teens.

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