Latest The Philadelphia Inquirer Stories
By Dan Hardy and Dylan Purcell, The Philadelphia Inquirer Aug. 6--Every school year, at hundreds of high schools across Pennsylvania and New Jersey, students are asked -- and sometimes required -- to take a vocational aptitude test with a strange-sounding name -- the ASVAB, which stands for Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery. Since Vietnam, the test has been a powerful peacetime recruiting tool for the Pentagon; hundreds of thousands of student scores have routinely been sent to...
By Larry Eichel, The Philadelphia Inquirer Aug. 5--Speaking in Montgomery County, Republican presidential candidate John McCain yesterday called on Congress to return from its summer recess to deal with the nation's energy crisis. And he urged his Democratic opponent, Barack Obama, to join him in that call. On Friday, the House and Senate, both controlled by the Democrats, adjourned for five weeks without passing energy legislation. "Congress should come back into session, and I'm...
PHILADELPHIA _ Vowing that the starvation death of 14-year-old Danieal Kelly would not be in vain, Philadelphia Mayor Nutter yesterday suspended seven more workers at the Department of Human Services and said "no child will again face the same fate." Speaking with obvious emotion, Nutter repeatedly excoriated the city workers involved in Kelly's case, and he apologized to Philadelphians for City Hall's failure to save the girl's life. Kelly, who used a wheelchair and suffered from cerebral...
By Larry Eichel, The Philadelphia Inquirer Aug. 4--Speaking in Montgomery County today, Republican presidential candidate John McCain called on Congress to return from its summer recess to deal with the nation's energy crisis. And he urged his Democratic opponent, Barack Obama, to join him in that call. On Friday, the House and the Senate, both of which are controlled by the Democrats, adjourned without taking up energy legislation. "Congress should come back in session, and I'm willing...
By Cynthia Burton, The Philadelphia Inquirer Aug. 4--The same energy issue splitting Democrats and Republicans in Washington -- whether to lift the offshore oil-drilling ban -- is dividing candidates in New Jersey's hottest federal races. U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D., N.J.) opposes President Bush's proposal to lift the ban, saying the debate "is not about producing more oil, it's really about producing more profits for Big Oil." He said oil companies should exploit the land and undersea...
By Kristen A. Graham, The Philadelphia Inquirer Aug. 4--Perhaps it happened when 16-year-old Liz Massele peered into a chest cavity and saw a muscled, beating heart. Or maybe it occurred when she probed a cadaver, or when she fitted a stethoscope into her ears and touched it gently to a patient's back. After spending her summer going on rounds, seeing patients and scrubbing in on operations, Massele knows she wants to be a doctor. And she's only about to enter her junior year in high...
By Cynthia Henry, The Philadelphia Inquirer Aug. 4--Lindenwold last week celebrated the transformation of its old sewer plant into affordable housing for senior citizens -- and a laboratory for energy efficiency. In many ways, the 82-unit Linden Lake Senior Apartments on Norcross Road looks like any new building -- but on its roof, behind its walls, and even in its sidewalk concrete, the developer incorporated the latest "green" techniques to stretch consumers' dollars and...
By Sally A. Downey, The Philadelphia Inquirer Aug. 4--William D. Valente, 83, formerly of Bryn Mawr, a professor at Villanova Law School for almost 30 years and an advocate for Catholic schools, died of complications from cancer Wednesday at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. Mr. Valente was the youngest of 12 children born to immigrant Italian parents. He graduated from Southeast Catholic High School, now St. John Neumann, and was a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of...
By David Patrick Stearns, The Philadelphia Inquirer Aug. 3--If cultural gods tell us more about us than about themselves, Van Cliburn holds a particularly warped and smoky mirror up to the classical-music world he intermittently dominated over the last half-century -- one that shows much about the strange price of being a folk hero. Cliburn has, in the words of classical piano maven David Dubal, "written one of the most spectacular pages in the history of his instrument." Yet the 50th...
By Michael Klein, The Philadelphia Inquirer Aug. 3--Larry Mendte's legal situation has reached the top echelons of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. NATAS is expected to give its 19 chapters the authority to disqualify someone from local Emmy consideration over his or her conduct -- even if the conduct had nothing to do with the Emmy entry. The rule is inspired by the morals clauses in most TV newsies' contracts. It won't affect this year's local Emmys, nominations...
