Cars

A police officer was dragged three blocks around 7:20 Sunday night when a man in a Grand Marquis slammed on the gas after the officer had responded to the sound of a person screaming near G Street and Westmoreland. The officer suffered scrapes and cuts to his left hand and reported lower back pain. He was transported to Episcopal Hospital and was expected to be treated and released. Police say the male driver and female passenger have been taken into custody.

World War II veteran Ray White thought he was being assisted by a friend. Over the course of a year, White and Melvin Mcilwaine talked about cars and ate lunch together regularly. White, who has no known living relatives, trusted Mcilwaine with his life and property. Mcilwaine betrayed that trust, police said, using the companionship as a tool to steal more than $380,000 worth of property from White. "He took everything," White told The Inquirer. The 88-year-old Army Air Corps combat vet lost his vintage automobiles, a Bentley and Cadillac.

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration will unveil a proposal Friday to clean up gasoline and automobile emissions, a step that officials say will result in cleaner air across the nation and slightly higher prices at the pump. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that the rule to reduce sulfur in gasoline and tighten emissions standards on cars beginning in 2017 could increase gas prices by less than a penny per gallon and add $130 to the cost of a vehicle in 2025. But the agency says it will yield billions of dollars in health benefits by slashing smog- and soot-forming pollution come 2030.

At East Ridge Pizzeria & Restaurant, an employee was mopping the floor late Friday with the door ajar when screams from the Willingboro shopping center's parking lot caught his attention. Even as he called 911, he heard that someone was run over. "There was a white car parked sideways and there was a person underneath," he said he saw after police arrived. The person who was struck was 17-year-old Willingboro High School senior De'Jour Benson, police said Tuesday. Benson, a member of the school football team, was taken to Cooper University Hospital in Camden, where he died.

A NEW JERSEY woman has been charged with kidnapping a young girl at the Jersey Shore after police say the victim - who had been forced at gunpoint to drive to Philadelphia - crashed the car into a police cruiser on the Ben Franklin Bridge. Shortly before noon Friday, according to authorities, a Delaware River Port Authority cop was assisting a driver on the bridge when the juvenile victim purposely crashed into his cruiser. The girl then jumped out of the car and told the cop that her passenger, identified as Floribert Nava, 45, of Wildwood, N.J., had kidnapped her at gunpoint in Wildwood earlier that morning and forced her to drive to Philadelphia.

BEIRUT - A rebel military leader who was among the first to call openly for armed insurrection against President Bashar al-Assad was wounded by a bomb planted in his car in eastern Syria, rebels and activists said Monday. Col. Riad al-Asaad, leader of a now-sidelined rebel umbrella group known as the Free Syrian Army, had his right foot amputated after the blast late on Sunday, according to an activist in the town of Mayadeen where the attack took place. Louay Almokdad, a rebel spokesman, confirmed the attack to the Associated Press by phone and said the extent of the injury meant that amputation was likely, though he had not received confirmation it had been carried out. He said the colonel was in stable condition in Turkey.

Six cars of a CSX freight train derailed early Sunday afternoon in the company's Greenwich Yard in South Philadelphia between the sports stadiums and the new GlaxoSmithKline building at the Navy Yard. Three of the cars fell on their sides; one contained vinyl acetate, but there were no leaks or injuries, according to CSX spokesman Robert Sullivan. Vinyl acetate is a colorless liquid with a pungent odor used in a number of products, including latex paints, paper coatings, adhesives, textiles, and safety glass.

In his early years as a neurosurgeon, after a long day of operating, Jim Lowe would come home grumpy and irritable. The former running back at Cardinal O'Hara and Harvard was out of shape and overweight and missed the adrenaline rush of competitive sports. One day in the mid-1990s, Lowe saw an ad for an auto racing school in California. He signed up and enjoyed the experience so much that he took the advanced course. Then he learned of the Skip Barber Racing School in Connecticut, which sponsors amateur races at storied tracks across the country.

Running outside can be a risky endeavor, but one some of us take on every day, and will continue to take on unless we want to run on a treadmill. I'm seeing more people running outside now that race season is returning. Here are a few things you can do to keep yourself safe:   Run against traffic. Bikes must go in the same direction as cars because bikes are subject to many traffic rules. Run opposite the flow of traffic so you can see cars coming. But also use common sense.