Wiretapped conversations being used as part of an investigation into organized crime in North Jersey could help federal authorities build their case against mobster Nicodemo S. Scarfo and Elkins Park businessman Salvatore Pelullo in an unrelated financial fraud probe that stretches from Philadelphia to Texas. Jocelyn Kirsch is scheduled to plead guilty this morning in U.S. District Court. Four more murders took place in the city this past weekend. In honor of the fact......

The Phlash Center City trolley will have special hours this Friday and Saturday to accommodate Independence Day celebrations. The Phlash will operate until 7PM on Friday and until 11PM on Saturday. (Via RJ) The Inquirer tells the story of how a plan to convert an empty convent in Germantown into apartments for formerly homeless men went south, in order to underscore the problems Mayor Nutter is likely to face with his initiative to fight......

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......

Philadelphia public and parochial schools plan to maintain regular hours today, but some schools in the surrounding area are closing or having early dismissals due to the excessive heat. Click through for the full list. A bunch of insane people actually had a bike race in Manayunk this past weekend, and other insane people actually went outside to watch it. Uh, whatever. We were inside keeping cool. The Inquirer discusses Mayor Street's already fading legacy.......

Lynnise Burnett, a 14-year-old freshman at Germantown High School, had been missing since Thursday, and had sent distressing text messages over the weekend, one saying that "she was in a dark room and she was hungry and that someone was going to kill her." Apparently she was able to sneak back into her home recently, as police found her on the roof of the house Saturday night threatening to jump. She was taken to......

The Inquirer has an interesting article about Boys' Latin of Philadelphia Charter School - its popular summer sessions, and its position as "the first single-sex charter approved in Pennsylvania," "the first publicly funded school in Philadelphia that requires students to take Latin," and "the first charter in the region modeled after the rigorous Boston Latin School." The enormous amounts of traffic and congestion on the bridge across the Schuylkill linking Conshohocken with I-76 and......

Philadelphia politicians corrupt? A lot of potential jurors at the Mariano trial sure think so. Looks like the region's flu season for this year is going to be a mild one, but the CDC warns it's not over yet. Fifteen inmates and three guards at the House of Correction in the Northeast (the city's oldest prison) were hurt last Friday when the ceiling of one of the facility's 14 shower rooms collapsed. To make......