Etan Patz. It's a name that few of us who lived in New York in 1979 will ever forget. So when reports surfaced last month that police were excavating the basement of a building near the spot where the 6-year-old boy vanished, we remembered his story instantly. We recognized his soft face, the new front teeth, the shaggy blond bangs, and the nascent impishness in his eyes. We knew the two blocks he had to cross between his parents' last kiss goodbye and the school bus he would never reach. And we realized that small distance would be measured forever after in a grief so immense, a darkness so profound, that no parent could ever cross it. On Thursday - the day before the 33d ... Continue reading →
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Facebook’s share price climbed more than a dollar Thursday, rising above $33, but the sharp drop since last week’s high-profile initial public offering continued to cause headaches for the social-networking company, its Wall Street underwriters, and investors. Even brokerages and the NASDAQ stock exchange — blamed for long delays last Friday, the first day the stock was openly traded — are suffering fallout. Facebook and a group of early investors who chose to cash out received more than $16 billion last week from IPO participants who bought shares for the opening $38 price. But investors who bought Facebook through the IPO, or who bought in Friday while the investment bank Morgan Stanley buoyed up the share price, have lost more than $2 billion in market ... Continue reading →
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Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney brought his plan to improve the American educational system to a West Philadelphia charter school Thursday, and suggested class size mattered little to pupils' achievement. Whereupon the teachers in the room immediately questioned his stance. Calling the gap in education performance between black and white students "the civil rights issue of our time," Romney said quality teaching and parental involvement were the keys to classroom success. He made his comments during a roundtable discussion in the library at Universal Bluford Charter School, an elementary school named for astronaut Guion Bluford, one of five schools run by a nonprofit founded by music mogul Kenny Gamble. To a group of a dozen or so listeners that included Gamble, school administrators, and two ... Continue reading →
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Midway through his cross-examination Thursday, Msgr. William J. Lynn sat deflated on the witness stand. Assistant District Attorney Patrick Blessington had spent a second day battering Lynn over his handling of complaints of clergy sex abuse. Lynn tried to press back. Blessington, he said, was "wordsmithing," twisting his statements, ignoring his replies, and being unfair. But the prosecutor was relentless. As the church official responsible for investigating accused priests, Blessington said, Lynn had lied, lied, and lied some more - to victims, police, and parishioners across the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. When Blessington said Lynn intentionally misled a grand jury, the monsignor shook his head, exasperated. "No," Lynn sighed quietly, dropping his gaze and letting the word linger, as the prosecutor loaded another round. The questions ... Continue reading →
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hER Neighbors instantly recognized the Frankford woman accused of setting 10 fires in the community in recent weeks. “That’s Noelle,” gasped one 30-year resident of the area, who gave her name only as Toni, when she saw a mugshot of Noelle Bilbrough, 35. Bilbrough was arrested Tuesday and charged Wednesday in a string of alleged arsons that began in mid-April and occurred up until the day of her arrest, when police say she lit a fire near Frankford Avenue and Unity Street. “I wouldn’t expect that out of anybody,” Toni said, adding that a house around the corner from hers burned two weeks ago. “I just don’t understand it. It makes no sense.” Bilbrough, of Pratt Street near Frankford Avenue, was charged with several counts ... Continue reading →
THIS COLUMN was originally intended to be a mild defense of the dad who stuck his baby boy in a washing machine in Camden, but then I found out he wasn’t the kid’s dad and I kept picturing my daughter stuck in a spin cycle, soapy tears stinging her pretty blue eyes. It sort of evolved into something more complicated after that. I do “dumb” things with my boys all the time — 100 feet in the air on a zip line in Mexico, where safety was lost in translation, or in my basement where we hunt crickets with the Red Ryder BB gun (yes, with goggles), and out back, where a hump of dirt and too much throttle sent my 5-year-old son flying off ... Continue reading →
