Ah, love. Though we may not have an overflow of the brotherly variety, Philly is offering plenty of options for those happy couples looking to sanctify said happiness with boxes of chocolates and a night on the town. We’ll tackle the latter here; we've given you some chocolate-related goodness already. If you forget to get a card and all the Rite Aid has left are American Idol Valentines, take heart: you can make your own......

Hakim Glover, the cousin of the man who allegedly killed Officer Chuck Cassidy, pleaded guilty yesterday to charges of hindering apprehension and obstruction of justice. Glover is accused of helping his cousin flee to Florida. The Convention Center expansion project was halted on Christmas Eve when the Preservation Alliance of Greater Philadelphia obtained an injunction ordering wrecking crews to stop work. The preservationists want to save the two small but historic Broad Street buildings......

Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge Lisa Aversa Richette - a controversial advocate of society's disadvantaged - died of lung cancer this past Friday. She was 79. Here's an article about the complex planning going into tonight's Democratic presidential debates at Drexel. The Inquirer has the details on two local child-sex cases; a 52-year-old former scoutmaster from Mont Clare is looking at 16 to 40 years in prison after pleading guilty to having sex with a......

Remember earlier this year when Center City criminal defense lawyer Larry Charles was found naked with a partially dressed 14-year-old girl at the Criminal Justice Center? How could you forget, right? Well, his trial begins today at 9AM in Common Pleas Court. University of Pennsylvania sophomore "Anne Ryan, 19, was hospitalized Saturday afternoon in critical condition, and died early yesterday morning" of meningococcal meningitis. Penn has therefore issued a health alert for those who were......

Local homeowners struggling with mortgage payments might want to attend the Federal Housing Administration mortgage clinic being held from 10AM to 2PM tomorrow in the Temple University Student Center at 1755 N. 13th St. Call 1-800-225-5342 to register (registration is not required, but is encouraged). A shoot-out at a basketball game at the Athletic Recreation Center at 26th and Jefferson Streets in North Philadelphia left one young man dead and three others wounded, including the......

SEPTA had planned to cancel transfers today, but the judge in the Philadelphia Common Pleas Court case needed more time to decide whether to prevent the cancellation plans, and so issued a temporary injunction that will maintain the status quo until Monday. All of which means, transfers are not cancelled yet. A 16-year-old has been arrested in the case of the teen who was killed for his dirt bike. The suspect will be charged......

The Inquirer has a nice article about the Community College of Philadelphia's Gateway to College program, which helps dropouts earn high school diplomas and college credits at the same time. There were two car crashes last night involving police vehicles. A teenage girl accompanied by a 5-year-old stole a patrol car at around 5:40PM while the officer was interviewing a complainant on the 1200 block of Gilham Street. She dropped the child off with......

An anonymous, private donor has a challenge for the Philadelphia Free Library: if they can match every dollar with a dollar raised from another source, they'll get $15 million toward refurbishment and expansion of the Central Library on Logan Circle. Governor Corzine's car was doing 91 in a 65 MPH zone on the night of his recent accident, and although it slowed to 30 before the crash, the trooper driving now admits that his......

Philly.com has a couple of big articles about the illegal drug trade in Philly: one focusing on the dealers and how they're getting younger all the time (as young as 10, in fact) and another focusing more on narcotics officers, and the fact that city cops have seized more drugs in 2006 than in any other year (which is... good... we guess). The recent death of President Gerald Ford has Philly.com and Philadelphia Will......

In general, the Catholic Church has handled the priest sex abuse scandal pretty shamefully, but we have to respect what they did on Friday when Cardinal Justin Rigali and about 330 priests met at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Wynnewood to hear the stories of the abused from the victims themselves, and their families. The event was called Witness to the Sorrow, and indeed the Cardinal and the priests had to pay witness to......

We know, we know. It seems the only time Phillial rears its enviously sexy head is to censure wild and wacky local sex politics. Our editor has already told us to go sit spreadeagle in a corner. We think he’s playing “Bad Cop” in this dungeon. Handcuffs aside, we’d like to decompress the so-bad-it-should-be-on-Jerry real life drama of Signatures: the strip joint that just won’t go away. You probably first heard about the drama in......