Our very own state could actually be of key importance in the Democratic presidential primary, so the campaigns for both Clinton and Obama will be opening offices in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh in the coming days, and expanding their staff by recruiting local pros. The Inquirer takes a look at the battle going on over a proposed state-wide ban on smoking in Pennsylvania. A woman leaped from her third-floor apartment window on South Street near 2nd......

The president and board chairman of the city-funded nonprofit Philadelphia Safe and Sound testified yesterday that they were forced by Mayor Street and his senior aides to spend an extra $21 million that they knew did not exist in the city budget. It's those expenditures that have forced Safe and Sound to cancel dozens of programs in recent weeks. You can find copies of Safe and Sound's testimony online here and here. Insiders say......

One-time rap music impresario Alton "Ace Capone" Coles is on trial for using his record company as a front for a $25 million, Southwest Philadelphia-based cocaine trafficking network, and yesterday a former girlfriend, and the mother of his two children, testified against him. A man was walking north on Broad Street near Somerset in North Philadelphia, just before 5PM, when someone ran up to him from behind and, he thought, punched him in the......

One of the Philadelphia Zoo's former residents, Asian elephant Dulary, safely arrived yesterday at the sanctuary in rural Tennessee that's to be her new home. The union that represents faculty and coaches at the 14 state-owned universities in Pennsylvania has voted overwhelmingly to strike "if contract negotiations with the State System of Higher Education break down." Current contracts expire June 30, so the earliest strike date would be July 1. Here's hoping negotiations go well!......

Well, at least one representative of Philadelphia is doing well in sports - that being a guy named Tom Smith, who goes by the name Vertical Paper when competing in his sport of choice: Rock Paper Scissors. The International World Championships went down this past weekend in Toronto, and Smith won the bronze medal. He's one of only five Americans to ever place in the top 3 during the five-year history of the event, and......