Yo, Philly in the News

• Beginning at 3:30 a.m. tomorrow, Midshipmen and Cadets will board busses destined for Philadelphia and Lincoln Financial Field. The 109th Army-Navy football game starts at 12:00 p.m. Following a tradition which started in 1975, the service academies will hand off a football while running along side of a van escorting them in the "Running of the Game Balls." "There’s just nothing else like it," said Andrew Kerr, a Northeast Philadelphia native and Navy senior. "No other football rivalry comes close."




• A coalition of community groups led by the Philadelphia chapter of the NAACP strongly criticized CVS Pharmacies yesterday, accusing the chain of failing to provide customers equal access to stores and services in Philadelphia. As reported by a yearlong study sponsored by Change to Win, a labor coalition of 6 million workers from seven major unions, CVS operates 48 percent more stores in the wealthiest areas than in the least wealthy. There are one-third fewer CVS stores per person in communities with a majority of non-white residents than in communities that are mostly white, the report also concluded.
• Tolls on the Pennsylvania Turnpike will increase by about 25 percent on January 4th and will continue to go up by about 3 percent every January, according to turnpike officials. The additional money will be used for improvements to the road and to repay billions borrowed for highway, bridge, and mass-transit projects around the state. Travel from the Ohio border to the New Jersey border will now cost $28.45, up from the current $22.75. The same trip for a five-axle truck will be $92.50, up from the current $74.
• Angela Honeycutt, the Bucks County mother who hosted the all-boys sleepover, was acquitted by a Bucks County Court jury of statutory sexual assault, illegal contact with a minor an indecent assault. After four hours of deliberation, the six-man, six-woman panel convicted her only of two misdemeanor counts of corruption of minors. "I’m happy about it," Honeycutt said outside the courtroom. The jury was "correct in saying that I made bad judgments throughout the night. I apologize for that."
• A Manhattan attorney was pronounced dead at 4:52 a.m. on Thursday in the parking lot of Simon Pearce restaurant off of Route 52. As noted yesterday on Phillyist, Anthony Ottaviano was murdered by David Kreig amidst jealousy over Ottaviano’s relationship with Edythe Maa (a.k.a., Jade Vixen). Maa was abducted by Krieg and taken on a bizarre four-and-a-half hour car ride through Philadelphia, New Jersey and West Chester. He then dropped her off at his parents’ house in West Chester. Finally, Kreig turned the gun on himself after a nine-hour standoff with police in West Chester.

Image Credit: Flickr user Army.mil