"Two bills aimed at cleaning up commercial breeding kennels in Pennsylvania are slated for committee votes in Harrisburg today." A new veterans cemetery to be known as Washington Crossing National Cemetery is scheduled to start construction in Bucks County next year, with the first burials starting toward the end of the year. The plans for the new cemetery will be available for review tonight during a public briefing by the Department of Veterans Affairs at......

Lots of people are talking about Obama's speech in Philly yesterday, including the Daily News and the Inquirer (and us, of course). Hillary Clinton's response was sort of an "isn't that nice for him" kind of thing. Somehow the story of the twin gay porn star burglars keeps getting better. Now it's come out through court testimony that their mother served as a lookout during their rooftop break-ins. The Inquirer tells the story of......

The Daily News suggests strongly that if the city made use of private ambulances when Fire Department medic units are swamped with calls, it could make the difference between life and death for certain patients. Philadelphia doesn't use nonmunicipal ambulances because of legal issues. Also in the Daily News this morning is an article providing more details on the case of the three North Philadelphia teenagers killed in a car accident on Saturday. Last......

The Inquirer has an article about the Philadelphia Community Cats Council, a group of folks trying to manage and reduce the city's huge feral cat population, estimated to be at least 250,000. They do this by trapping feral cats, neutering them, and then returning them where they were found. Both the Daily News and the Inquirer have articles about Sharon Hill native John Patrick Foley and his elevation this weekend to the status of Cardinal......

Rendell is now supporting the idea, spearheaded by outgoing Philadelphia School Reform Commission Chairman James Nevels, of trying to bring a major league soccer franchise to the city of Chester. While the court battle still rages over whether SEPTA will be able to eliminate transfers or not, Rendell and Fumo announced Tuesday that all seventh-through-12th graders who live more than 1 1/2 miles from their schools will ride for free with a new weekly transit......

A veteran Philly cop got drunk off-duty, jumped in his car early Sunday, and promptly rammed it into a marked police car in West Philly, injuring a fellow officer. He's been "charged with aggravated assault, driving under the influence, recklessly endangering another person and related offenses." An abandoned warehouse in West Kensington was the site of the start of a 7-alarm fire Wednesday morning that led to the evacuation of people within a two-block......

The city's eighth annual "Report Card on the Well-Being of Children and Youth in Philadelphia" has been released, and the news is not good. The city got its worst rating - 5 for "problematic" and "very troubling" - in the category of child safety. D'oh. The city will be spending $1.3 million dollars to fix a mistake made years ago that violates the contract with the firefighters union. The contract states, reasonably enough, that......

Christoph Eschenbach, who won't be renewing his contract with the Philadelphia Orchestra after this season, was surprised to hear that he won't have a job in Paris, either. The Orchestre de Paris announced late Wednesday that they'd be replacing him. Eschenbach, however, seems perfectly happy with the news. He says he has plenty of other jobs lined up, and besides, "The management in both cases [Paris and Philadelphia], I'm sorry to say, is amateurish..........

A mother who had been barred from contact with her son for being physically abusive towards him managed to sign him out of his elementary school on Tuesday and police are now searching for her and the boy. The boy is seven years old and asthmatic. Call Southwest Detectives at 215-686-3183 if you have any information. "A recently completed 'citizens' inspection' of a third of the 140 parks operated by the Fairmount Park Commission and......

Some depressing news: the first eagle's nest in Philadelphia in two centuries, which was located in the Navy Yard, has failed. Wildlife officials believe the eaglet or eaglets were eaten by predators soon after the eggs hatched. To cheer us up, how about some news of a hometown hero getting honored? "Rabbi Philip Warmflash, executive director of the Jewish Outreach Partnership in Philadelphia, is one of three Jewish educators nationwide selected to receive a......

Holy crud! Well, this Phillyist's prediction about how the whole casino thing was going to go has just been totally shot to hell: yesterday the City council unanimously approved putting that referendum about casinos on the May 15 primary ballot, which "would change the city charter to ban casinos within 1,500 feet of any residential neighborhood." We'll be jiggered! All the Brady news that's fit to print! First of all, he and his legal......

Daniel Whelan made his the final meeting of his five-year term on the Philadelphia School Reform Commission a doozie by proposing two controversial resolutions that hadn't been presented before: one to bar school employees from engaging in political activity (rejected), and another calling for the sale of valuable artworks to raise money for the schools (postponed), which brought to mind the whole Eakins "Gross Clinic" dust-up. Children's Scholarship Fund Philadelphia has doubled the number......