Pennsylvania's 20 Electoral College members gather to vote in Harrisburg today. Donald Trump won the state by small margin, 0.73 percent, but the electors have been bombarded with messages asking them to dump Trump. "God bless people for expressing their opinions and caring," Peg Ferraro, a Northampton County Council member and assistant secretary of the state Republican Party. "I'm just amazed at how passions are crazy this time." Read more
Two portraits of former Mayor John F. Street have hung in Garth Herrick's Germantown art studio since he completed the paintings three years ago. Street didn't want the paintings hung while former Mayor Michael Nutter was in office, saying Nutter was a "petty micromanager" he neither liked nor respected. "I have longed for a resolution and closure," said Herrick, who was paid $33,000 for the paintings. "It's done, it's ready but he's never seen it in person and I've heard nothing about when it will go up." Read more
Two people were killed after their Mercedes rear-ended a school bus on Roosevelt Boulevard. The deadly crashed happened just before 9 p.m. Sunday near Woodward Street. The Mercedes slammed into the bus and then caught fire, killing the male driver and female passenger. No children were on the bus at the time. Read more
The host committee for the 2016 Democratic National Convention is donating $750,000 to put libraries in public-school classrooms across the Philadelphia. The donation is to the Fund for the School District of Philadelphia's Right Books Campaign, which aims to put nearly 80,000 books in the city's elementary schools. "It was like Christmas when we got these books," said Lynne Millard, principal of Kennedy Crossan Elementary School in Northeast Philadelphia, motioning to a classroom of 19 first graders independently reading. "The kids have a love of reading, a love of learning. Having these books really helps." Read more
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is sticking to an unsourced estimate for savings from a bill that would strip legal notices from newspapers while attacking the state's press. The governor contends that the bill, which would let legal notices be published on government websites instead of newspapers, would save taxpayers $80 million. In an op-ed published on Medium, Christie criticized the state press association, which has pegged legal notice costs as far lower, and said he used the self-publishing site because newspapers refused to publish his piece. The Bergen Record's editorial page editor said he hadn't been contacted about publishing the op-ed, while the Star-Ledger's editorial page editor said he would publish the piece only if the governor's office provided sources supporting its $80 million claim. Read more