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Activity on and around the Rose Tree Tavern site in Upper Providence is in preparation for the move about 200 feet towards the county's Rose Tree Park from Rose Tree Road and Route 252. The historic building has long been a cause of a bottleneck at the intersection. According to township officials, the building is in the process of being stabilized.

A few days ago, an editorial cartoon appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer that made lovers of truth blink and gasp. The cartoon, by Tony Auth, showed Palestinian Arabs fenced in by a giant Star of David. The outcry (essentially, no terrorism, no fence) came by way of numerous letters to the editor, but an eye-popping response appeared in David Horowitz's FrontPageMag.com. In an article titled "Nazi Imagery Goes Mainstream", authors Ricki Hollander and Cynthia Lttleman prove that there is indeed nothing new under the yellow sun of journalism. One frame in this article shows Auth's 2003 rendition of Arabs trapped...

Poll shows good odds for Specter re-election bid Thursday, August 07, 2003The Associated Press HARRISBURG, Pa. -- Fifteen months before the 2004 election, Republican U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter is favored nearly 2-1 over prospective Democratic challenger U.S. Rep. Joseph Hoeffel, according to poll results released today. In a hypothetical two-way race, Specter would win 53 percent of the vote and Hoeffel would get 29 percent, the survey by the Connecticut-based Quinnipiac University Polling Institute showed. Specter's approval rating dipped slightly to 57 percent, compared to 60 percent in a similar poll in February, but the institute's assistant director, Clay...

The United Way of the Greater Lehigh Valley will not withdraw its support of local Boy Scout programs, despite a decision by the United Way of Southeastern Pennsylvania to do so. "It's our policy that all of our agencies that we fund be compliant with federal, state and local laws," said Steve Andrews, spokesman for the United Way of the Greater Lehigh Valley. The Minsi Trails Council of the Boy Scouts of America meets those standards, Andrews said. The United Way of Southeastern Pennsylvania announced Thursday it would no longer provide funding to its local Boy Scout councils because of...

<p>HARRISBURG -- An overwhelming majority of Pennsylvanians believes vacationing members of the state Legislature should return to the Capitol and end a budget stalemate that has left the commonwealth's finances in disarray and some of its neediest citizens without services.</p>

I GOT A CALL early Monday from a local politician, one who devotes at least a piece of every day trying to make Mayor Street miserable.He promised that if the Daily News scratched just beneath the surface, we'd discover that the real force behind the sudden appearance of third party mayoral candidate John McDermott is the Street campaign."Trust me, this won't be hard," the pol said. "These guys aren't slick enough to do this and not leave tracks." I had a feeling he was right.After a day of dusting by reporter Chris Brennan, the fingerprints of Street partisans were all...

GETTYSBURG, Pa. -- The Confederate and Union forces that clashed here 140 years ago were dust-covered and weary from a long, hot march. The trip will have been more comfortable for the soldiers arriving Friday morning. But once they reach the 1,200-acre site of this weekend's anniversary event they will go to great lengths to recreate 1863 conditions.Fifty dump truck loads of wood will fuel their cooking fires. Most will spend the night under period-authentic canvas tents. All will have to answer to men acting as generals George Gordon Meade and Robert E. Lee.An extremely wet spring forced organizers to...

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Mayor Tom Murphy announced yesterday that he is laying off 731 city workers, closing a police station and spending nearly all of the city's $28 million savings account to hold off bankruptcy for the rest of the year. Murphy said he hated making those decisions, but was forced to because of the state Legislature's inaction on his proposals to offset a $60 million budget deficit with new taxes and state aid. "While I believe these cuts are necessary, I hate doing this," Murphy said, his voice breaking and his eyes moist during a news conference in his office yesterday. "I...

<p>Most officers don't learn how to wrestle an alligator at the police academy.</p> <p>A task like that takes special training, like watching the Crocodile Hunter's "Croc Files" on the Discovery Channel.</p> <p>That's how Wilkinsburg police officers knew what to do when they received a complaint about an alligator yesterday afternoon.</p>

<p>A Fayette County man who believes he will be the next president of the United States was found guilty but mentally ill for harassing the staff of Fayette County Children and Youth Services.</p> <p>Ronald P. West Sr., 41, of Perryopolis, said Tuesday that he believes the verdict against him was fair.</p>

The amenities missed by service men and women abroad must read like a list of everything we take for granted at home: the latest entertainment releases, personal preference toiletries, the convenience of going to the fridge at any time. But according to all the informal reports of families and friends, the biggest void is contact with loved ones back home. To that end, several communication and technology companies have put together a program to link stateside folks with military and support personnel stationed abroad or another posting away from home. "Project Video Connect: We're Here Until They're Home" gives military...

The raw numbers are frightening -- no, shocking -- no, chilling. Whatever word you use, the barebones conclusion is that in some areas and some medical disciplines, you will not be able to find a doctor to provide medical care, even if you are in life-threatening distress. Why? The State Federation of Medical Boards reports that Pennsylvania lost 1,071 "actively practicing" physicians from 2001 to 2002. Broken down, 669 physicians have relocated to other states; 129 have retired earlier than planned; 107 were forced to close their offices, and 296 have curtailed services by eliminating obstetrics or surgery. The actual...

Mark Shay, a board member of the embattled Voyager Charter School, has announced that he will run independently as a Libertarian for Garnet Valley School Board in the Nov. 4 general election. Shay will run against five incumbents -- Michael Hanlon, George Patti, Loretta Scuderi, Daniel Van Wyk and William Wilkinson -- who are cross-filed on the Democratic and Republican ballots. The five candidates who gain the most total votes will win seats on the school board.

Mine Ener was worried. She was having trouble feeding her 6-month-old daughter, and she knew that the baby -- who had Down syndrome -- might have to go back on a feeding tube.For several days, the new mother was concerned that she might even harm her baby, Raya Donagi.On Monday morning, she told police that she wanted to ease her daughter's suffering. So Ener laid the girl on a bathroom floor, pressed a kitchen knife against her throat and cut her twice, according to a second-degree murder charge filed Tuesday in Ramsey County. She told paramedics who arrived Monday: "I...

A teenager blew off one of his hands yesterday while mixing a dangerous cocktail of petric acid and other bombmaking chemicals, authorities said. At 11:30 a.m., the quiet, tree-lined block of Witler Street near Hoff in the Northeast was converged upon by law-enforcement officers, the bomb squad and counterterrorism units, police said. Agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms said Andre Kolyada, 18, was in the process of making some sort of bomb in his second-floor bedroom when the chemicals exploded. No one else was injured and police said he was alone when his handiwork detonated. Police said...

A New York City man became annoyed with a theme park worker dressed as Telly from "Sesame Street" and shoved an umbrella into the worker's stomach, police said. Hiram Cruz, of the Bronx, was cited for disorderly conduct for poking the 17-year-old employee Friday during a visit to Sesame Place outside Philadelphia, police said. The teen complained of minor stomach pain and was taken to a hospital as a precaution, Middletown Sgt. Ken Mellus said. "He felt that Telly was bothering him in some way," Mellus said. "I don't think he was trying to hurt the kid. He thought the...

35-year-old woman reportedly slit the throat of her 6-month-old daughter in St. Paul this morning, killing the baby, police said. Mine An Ener, who had apparently been suffering from depression, confessed to the slaying inside a home in the Desnoyer Park neighborhood on St. Paul’s western edge, police said. About 9 a.m., Ener reportedly finished feeding the infant in a relative’s house in the 500 block of Desnoyer Avenue. She carried the baby into the bathroom and, moments later, walked out and told a relative in the house: "I think I killed the baby," said St. Paul police Sgt. Bruce...

I should have listened to my father; "you shouldn't discuss politics at work". But being the political junkie that I am, I just couldn't help it. Dave and Todd are 2 of my liberal co-workers; I can debate rationally with Dave, but there just isn't much hope for Todd... It all started with Todd sarcastically asking me "when is your buddy Bush going to find his WMD's?" Of course, I explained to him the need to exercise patience, and that they will be found, but this just pi**ed him off even more. Dave started jumping in just to get me...