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The family of Autumn Pasquale, the Clayton, Gloucester County, girl killed days shy of her 13th birthday, have filed a lawsuit claiming her death could have been avoided if the investigation into her abduction had been properly handled. The lawsuit was filed last week in Gloucester County against several townships that aided in the investigation as well as against the county Prosecutor's Office, said Gregg Zeff, the Mount Laurel lawyer who represents the girl's estate. "They didn't do the appropriate perimeter search," Zeff said Sunday. "They were told specifically by someone who came in where he believed the child was,...

The Department of Veterans Affairs is promoting an administrator who advised against publicly disclosing a deadly Legionnaires' outbreak at its Pittsburgh hospital system, the agency told Congress. David Cord, deputy director of VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System since June 2012, will become director of the Erie VA Medical Center within 60 days, the VA informed Congress. The VA disclosed the Legionnaires' outbreak that killed at least six and sickened at least 16 others on Nov. 16, 2012 — two days after Cord told a VA spokesman not to alert the public about it, according to an internal email from the spokesman...

A Haverford man has been charged with running a statewide counterfeit credit card ring, according to the state Attorney General’s Office. The ring is believed responsible for the theft of tens of thousands of dollars and purchases made with stolen bank account data used to make counterfeit credit cards, officials said.

Gov. Tom Corbett blasted the General Assembly and line-item vetoed more than $70 million from the budget but signed the rest of it into law Thursday. The line-item veto removed $65 million in proposed spending from the General Assembly's own funding, which he said was equivalent to the legislators' surplus, as well as $7.2 million from general appropriations. (snip) Corbett reserved more ire for the General Assembly in what he said was its failure to address the public-pension crisis, an issue he has campaigned for big changes including a move toward a 401(k)-style system for new state employee and public...

If elected governor, Tom Wolf plans to end the asset test, a measure that ties federal food stamp benefits to people's bank accounts and car ownership. The Democrat would also work to reestablish General Assistance (GA), which used to pay $205 a month to people who were both poor and disabled. Both moves would reverse initiatives by Gov. Corbett, who saw the asset test as a way to cut down on fraud and waste, and GA as an unnecessary institution from the 1930s whose elimination has saved the state $150 million a year. The Republican governor added the asset test...

The Central Bucks School District said Thursday that it had canceled the remainder of the football season for Central Bucks West High School because of hazing by its players. In a letter to parents, Superintendent David Weitzel said an investigation determined that rookies on the team had been required to grab the private parts of other players while fully clothed in front of the rest of the team. Most of the players took part in the pre-season initiation activities, which he called "offensive and disrespectful." Players who did not directly participate, but witnessed and failed to report the activities, were...

Same-sex marriage and Holy Communion for divorced and remarried Catholics "can't be a reality in our lives," Archbishop Charles J. Chaput told a gathering of conservative Catholics this week. His remarks seemed to signal that next year's World Meeting of Families here would send no mixed messages such as those coming from the Vatican's recent Extraordinary Synod on the Family. "The public message" from the synod, or bishops assembly, that ended Saturday in Rome "was confusion," Chaput told an New York audience Monday night. "Confusion is of the devil," he added. In September, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia will host the...

James Tully, of Candensis, does not own a car and walks to work through the search area. He has been stopped and questioned by authorities numerous times, eventually being forced to the ground at gunpoint. The man who has been stopped by police numerous times while walking to work through the manhunt search area has been overwhelmed by the public's response, according to his mother, Linda Waddington Tully. There have been offers of vehicles, a fundraiser, and lots of media attention. James Tully, 39, lives off Snow Hill Road in Canadensis, which has been a key area in the search...

(CN) - The Pennsylvania Supreme Court suspended Justice Seamus McCaffrey on Monday amid allegations that he sent or received hundreds of pornographic emails over a four-year period. In its order, the court cited a "compelling and immediate need to protect and preserve" the integrity of state's courts. Although McCaffrey has been suspended, with pay, on only an "interim basis," the justices also ordered the state's Judicial Conduct Board to determine within 30 days if there is probably cause to file formal judicial misconduct charges against the 64-year-old judge. According to published reports, the emails, which evidently were exchanged with members...

October 21, 2014Law Curbs Cop Killer's 'Obscene Celebrity' By Sky News US Team Pennsylvania's governor has signed into law a measure aimed at curbing the "obscene celebrity" cultivated by convicts at the expense of victims. Governor Tom Corbett signed the bill on Tuesday near the spot where Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner was shot dead by Mumia Abu-Jamal in 1981. The measure passed with unanimous approval after Abu-Jamal delivered a pre-recorded commencement address earlier this month to graduates of Goddard College in Vermont. It allows prosecutors or crime victims to seek an injunction when an offender's conduct "perpetuates the continuing...

James Tully of Canadensis, who has to walk to work in the heart of the Eric Frein search area, has been stopped by police more than 20 times, including an encounter Friday night when he says he was roughed by an officer. Police searching for Eric Frein have questioned James Tully so many times that he started carrying his driver’s license and work identification on a neck lanyard to prove his identity. But that wasn’t enough to keep him from being forced to the ground by gunpoint Friday on Route 447, and being held there, face down in the gravel,...

Two fresh sightings of alleged sniper Eric Frein has resulted in more closed public schools in northern Pennsylvania and a shift in a massive manhunt to near where Mr. Frein went to high school – and where he was a member of the high school rifle team. The pressing question of how a single man has outmaneuvered 1,000 trained law enforcement officers in the Pocono Mountains for over five weeks suggests that Frein has used a home-field advantage, long-term planning, and survival skills to resemble a “wilderness ninja,” a term some use to describe a rare breed of native scouts...

Atlanta — Two fresh sightings of alleged sniper Eric Frein has resulted in more closed public schools in northern Pennsylvania and a shift in a massive manhunt to near where Mr. Frein went to high school – and where he was a member of the high school rifle team.

Authorities say they might have spotted the suspect in a deadly Pennsylvania state police ambush. A law enforcement officer reported seeing Eric Frein on Monday near the Swiftwater Post Office in the Pocono Mountains. That's near Pocono Mountain East High School, where a woman out for a walk Friday night spotted a rifle-toting man police believe was Frein.

---SNIP--- What’s the draw at this Bensalem store? Cigarettes, some priced at under $6 a pack. No more than a mile away in Philadelphia, the same cigarettes cost more than $8. “We used to get between 300 and 400 cartons of cigarettes every other night. Now, we’re getting about 1,500 cartons. I would say sales have gone up from about 2,000 packs a day to between 4,000 and 4,500 packs daily,” inventory manager Jim Watson said. That adds up at least $24,000 a day in sales, an increase of $12,000-plus since nearby Philadelphia increased its tax on a pack of...

The search for a Pennsylvania state trooper’s accused killer took on new urgency Saturday after a woman told police she spotted the man in a wooded area with his face caked in mud and carrying a rifle. State police said the new sighting appears to be highly credible because it took place near the Pocono Mountain East High School where survivalist Eric Frein attended classes. The woman told authorities she saw Frein dressed all in black a little after 9 p.m. Friday and that the distance between them was only 15 or 20 feet.

A new survey shows Gov. Tom Corbett (R) trailing Democratic challenger Tom Wolf, 49 percent to 42 percent, the tightest margin between the two candidates in any public poll so far. The poll, released Friday by the news website Keystone Report, was conducted by Magellan Strategies, a GOP-leaning research firm based in Baton Rouge, La. It suggests a much closer race than other recent surveys, and is in line with what Pennsylvania Republicans say they have been seeing in private polls. A poll conducted between Sept. 30 and Oct. 5 by Quinnipiac University, for instance, found that Wolf was leading...

An Obama administration health official said Sunday that U.S. protocols on Ebola failed because they originally were intended for African field hospitals, while the White House came under another round of attacks for its refusal to restrict travel from nations suffering epidemic outbreaks. Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the original Centers for Disease Control and Prevention instructions for dealing with the virus were taken from the World Health Organization’s protocol for Africa, where conditions are much different from those in U.S. hospitals. Two nurses caring for an Ebola patient flown into...

FERGUSON, Missouri — It took seven University of Pennsylvania students piled into a rental van nearly 16 hours to drive to St. Louis. They had raised $600 in three days from a Go Fund Me account that was supposed to last them through the weekend. They slept wherever they could crash for free — the basement of a St. Louis couple’s home, or packed on the floor of a church at night. But once in Ferguson, it was nothing like the war zone they had seen splashed on their television screens exactly two months earlier. Instead of armored vehicles blocking...

The Talk Shows October 19th, 2014 Guests to be interviewed today on major television talk shows: FOX NEWS SUNDAY (Fox Network): Dr. Anthony Fauci, infectious disease chief at the National Institutes of Health; Reince Priebus, Republican National Committee chairman; Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., head of the Democratic National Committee; Tim Murphy, R-Pa.; and Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.MEET THE PRESS (NBC): Fauci; Sens. Bob Casey, D-Pa., and Roy Blunt, R-Mo. FACE THE NATION (CBS): Fauci; Richard Umbdenstock, president and CEO of the American Hospital Association; Dr. Robert...