Berks County

"My father and I began going down Fire Hill, the longer, and less steep, of the two hills on the road to Olinger and Alton. About halfway down, the embankment foliage fell away, and a wonderful view opened up. I saw across a little valley like the background of a Durer. Lording it over a few acres of knolls and undulations draped with gray fences and dotted with rocks like brown sheep, there was a small house that seemed to have grown from the land. " - John Updike, The Centaur, 1962 Sixty years after that fictional drive took place and 47 years after the words were published, those inanimate sheep still graze in the rocky valley along Route 10, midway between Morgantown and Reading.

HARRISBURG - A sailor from Sinking Spring in Berks County, Pa., was killed in waters off the coast of Bahrain when his inflatable boat struck a moored barge, the Defense Department said. Master-at-Arms Seaman Apprentice Joshua Seitz, 19, died Thursday. Two other sailors riding with Seitz survived and were in stable condition. Lt. Laura Stegherr, a Navy spokeswoman, said yesterday that the three sailors were on a routine patrol when they hit the barge near the Mina Salman pier in Bahrain.

Two Berks County kennel operators killed nearly their entire kennel population - 80 dogs - after wardens ordered veterinary exams on dozens of their animals. After receiving a poor inspection report on July 24, Elmer Zimmerman of Kutztown shot his 70 small-breed dogs and threw them onto a compost pile on his property, according to officials with the state Bureau of Dog Law Enforcement. His brother, Ammon Zimmerman, who operated A & J Kennel next door, shot 10 dogs about the same time, they said.

READING - The state is testing soil at Muhlenberg High School in Berks County to see whether it contains anything that might cause cancer. State environmental officials spent the week looking for metals, arsenic, or other harmful chemicals. Last year, the Reading Eagle reported that cancer had been diagnosed in more than a dozen residents of Muhlenberg younger than 30. All but one reportedly attended the high school. - AP

The all-star teams representing Chester County, and the Suburban One League's National Conference and Bicentennial League advanced to the semifinals of the Carpenter Cup yesterday with victories at Penn's Meiklejohn Stadium. SOL National/Bicentennial will be the visiting team against Chester County in one semifinal of the regional high school baseball tournament at Citizens Bank Park on June 23, at 10 a.m. Lehigh Valley will meet Jersey Shore, and Burlington County will face SOL American/Continental to determine the other semifinalists today at Meiklejohn Stadium.

Pennsylvania's attorney general yesterday filed a consumer-protection lawsuit in Berks County against the alleged perpetrators of a mortgage and investment scheme that cost 800 consumers nearly $40 million before it collapsed last year. Attorney General Tom Corbett's 88-page complaint in the Berks County Court of Common Pleas is at least the fourth lawsuit seeking restitution for victims of Wesley A. Snyder and his Berks County companies. Other lawsuits in federal and state court are trying to tap 21 banks that lent money through Snyder's mortgage brokerage, including some of the nation's largest, for restitution.

Mystery surrounds the weekend killing of a supermarket executive in Berks County. Police have said only that Gary W. Redner, 55, was killed between 7 p.m. Saturday and 6 a.m. Sunday at his home on Rebers Bridge Road in Lower Heidelberg Township. He was vice president of the 39-store chain established by his father, who was stunned by the death of his son. "To my knowledge, everyone liked Gary," said Earl Redner, 82, the founder of Redner's, which has stores in three states.

BOYERTOWN, Pa. - Authorities have captured the second alligator in two weeks in a Douglass Township creek. "I have no idea where they are coming from," Harry D. Brown III, executive director of the Animal Rescue League of Berks County, said Tuesday. A woman jogging Tuesday afternoon spotted the three-foot alligator on a rock in Ironstone Creek, near where one was captured July 17, and called police. "I poked him a few times to get him to lift his head, and then I used a catch pole to put a line around his neck so he wouldn't get away," Brown said.

Defending champion Lehigh Valley won three games in lopsided fashion yesterday on the first day of the third annual Softball Carpenter Cup Classic at FDR Park. Alison Hartzell and Alex Maclean combined to toss a four-hitter in Lehigh Valley's 9-1 win over the Berks County all-stars. Maclean also had a double and drove in three runs. Lehigh Valley downed Mercer County, 8-1, and Delaware County, 10-0. Kelly Muth went 3 for 3 in the rout of Delco. Chester County beat South Jersey's Olympic and Colonial Conference stars, 7-2, behind triples by Danielle Long, Maria Dispenziere and Lauren Booz.

Forget the war in Iraq, the problems with Medicare, and high gas prices. Of all the issues swirling around the red-hot congressional race between Republican incumbent Jim Gerlach and his Democratic challenger, Lois Murphy, it may all come down to one ballot question in one city in one county: Who will pick up the trash in Reading? Gerlach, who is seeking a third term, and Murphy, who ran against him in 2004, are locked in a tight contest to represent the Sixth District that spans parts of Montgomery, Chester and Berks Counties, and a single precinct in Lehigh County.