Elevator

FUKUSHIMA, Japan - In the first sign that contamination from Japan's stricken nuclear complex had seeped into the food chain, officials said Saturday that radiation levels in spinach and milk from farms near the tsunami-crippled facility exceeded government safety limits. Minuscule amounts of radioactive iodine also were found in tap water Friday in Tokyo and elsewhere in Japan - although experts said none of those tests showed any health risks. The Health Ministry also said that radioactive iodine slightly above government safety limits was found in drinking water at one point Thursday in a sampling from Fukushima prefecture, the site of the nuclear plant, but later tests showed the level had fallen again.

Amid the Philadelphia coffee wars that have been brewing to ego-scalding temperatures, it was a moment of high latte drama. Steam wands in hand and milk pitchers at the ready, 32 baristas were battling cup-to-cup for foam-art supremacy at Shot Tower cafe in Queen Village, where the Lamborghiniesque machine zoomed into espresso high gear. A well-caffeinated crowd of 80 jostled as competitors met in round-robin pairs to feather cups with foamy white-on-brown hearts and fernlike rosettas.

SEPTA must build two elevators near City Hall to provide better access for disabled riders to the Market-Frankford and Broad Street subways, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit upheld a 2009 U.S. District Court ruling, which SEPTA had appealed. The ruling requires SEPTA to build one elevator at 15th and Market Streets and another in the courtyard of City Hall. SEPTA had no comment other than to say it is reviewing the decision, spokesman Richard Maloney said Wednesday.

Watching an emerging soloist burn up the stage in the most standard of repertoire is more than just a momentary thrill - it's something that reminds you how renewable classical music should always be. And what took Elena Urioste's performance of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto a step beyond that Sunday with the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia was the kind of collaboration you can't count on with busier musicians on a subscription treadmill....

Never underestimate the power of a good man in a young boy's life. Three years ago, Andre Washington's world included no male role model. Though he survived the cuts for Paul Robeson High's basketball varsity, he then disappeared. "The workouts were too hard," he said. "After I did it, I was mad at myself, but it was done. There wasn't any man in my life. No one to make me follow through. " Washington, now a senior, is a 6-2, 215-pound power forward, and yesterday he bulled his way to 23 points and 20 rebounds as the Huskies downed visiting Parkway West, 77-72, in a first-round Public League playoff that also served as a Class A quarterfinal.

The lilt of Sister Evelyn McCarthy's brogue lifts the spirits even as she utters the word standstill . For weeks, that's been the status of the elevator construction project at St. Francis de Sales Convent in Bellmawr, where 11 retired teaching nuns had hoped for a November ribbon-cutting. Mind you, Sister Evelyn is "very, very grateful" that 100 professionals, tradespeople, and former students raised the money, built the three-story exterior tower, and installed the mechanism itself.

Paula Marantz Cohen is a distinguished professor of English at Drexel University and author of the novel What Alice Knew: A Most Curious Tale of Henry James and Jack the Ripper This is an excerpt from the speech delivered by Queen Elizabeth II welcoming Pope Benedict XVI to Scotland during his recent visit to the United Kingdom: "Religion has always been a crucial element in national identity and historical self-consciousness. This has made the relationship between the different faiths a fundamental factor in the necessary cooperation within and between nation states.

When a 93-year-old Center City mugging victim yesterday was asked in court what medications she takes, the woman chuckled lightly and replied that she could not name them all. But she did recall Michael Crump, the burly career criminal arrested and charged in August for allegedly attacking her in the elevator of her apartment building at 15th and Locust streets. "I hope that's him," she said during a preliminary hearing, when Assistant District Attorney Vince Regan asked if she saw her attacker in the courtroom.

Devil , the superior, super-creepy supernatural thriller from producer M. Night Shyamalan, opens with a gorgeous aerial shot of the Philly skyline. Gorgeous, but also superbly unsettling: The city is upside down. Skyscrapers, churches, apartment blocks - William Penn's statue atop City Hall - jut out and down above us as the camera sweeps across the city to the intense swells of Fernando Velázquez's score. "The time," to quote the poet, "is out of joint. " And the devil walks among us. That's the scrumptious premise behind Devil , a tight, imaginative little flick about three men and two women stuck in a Center City elevator who are murdered - one by one - in inventive, gruesome ways.

The Sun Also Rises (The Select). Ernest Hemingway?s first novel marks the third of Elevator Repair Service?s 20th-century American literary adaptations. They tackled The Great Gatsby in Gat z, which was part of the Live Arts Festival in 2007, as well as The Sound and the Fury . While Gatz was a 6-hour word-for-word retelling of Fitzgerald's classic, this is a mere three-hour tour of the plot and post-WWI alcohol-dispensing establishments between Paris and Pamplona.