Examiner

The independent examiner who chaired SEPTA's 1997 capital budget hearings said he has no choice but to recommend that the SEPTA board adopt a budget he fears is "flirting with disaster. " It's a $268 million plan that will force SEPTA commuters to make do - or do without well into the 21st century, warned examiner Robert B. Johnston. It "will substantially reduce replacement and/or expansion of SEPTA facilities, thereby reducing SEPTA's ability to serve the region," Johnston said.

Lee Franczyk expected to have a license to drive when he walked out of the state troopers' barracks in Trevose last month. But the only ride he got was out the door - allegedly on the foot of an irate license examiner who was unable to put on the brakes during a verbal dispute. Yesterday, state police filed assault charges against John J. Simons, an examiner for eight years, in the July 20 attack on Franczyk, 20, of Hellerman Street in Philadelphia. "He literally kicked the kid out," said David Zellis, senior deputy district attorney in Bucks County.

Ilio Alessandrini, 87, of Buena Vista, former chief postal systems and finance examiner of Southeastern Pennsylvania, died of congestive heart failure Sunday, Sept. 26, at the New Jersey Veterans Memorial Home in Vineland. After returning home from World War II, Mr. Alessandrini took the postal service exam and became a mail carrier in his native South Philadelphia. He rose through the ranks and became superintendent of Post Office Station D in South Philadelphia before taking the promotion of chief postal systems and finance examiner of Southeastern Pennsylvania, which covered Philadelphia.

BALTIMORE - Former Cy Young Award winner Mike Flanagan died of a self-inflicted shotgun wound to the head, the Maryland medical examiner ruled Thursday. A police investigation revealed that the 59-year-old pitcher was upset about financial issues. He left no note. Flanagan's body was found Wednesday afternoon about 250 feet behind his home. An investigation showed he was home alone. Flanagan won the AL Cy Young Award in 1979 and helped the Baltimore Orioles win the 1983 World Series.

Reputed mob boss Ralph Natale should spend 16 months in jail on parole violations for meeting with his underboss, other mobsters and convicted felons, a federal hearing examiner told the U.S. Parole Commission last week. The commission is expected make a final determination on the violations shortly. Natale's lawyers, Marc Neff and Carmen C. Nasuti, vowed to appeal the ruling if it means jail time for their client. Patricia Denton, the examiner, made her recommendation after a 4 1/2-hour hearing on Sept.

At 4:05 p.m. yesterday, Yvette Green, her mother and an aunt threw their arms in the air and let out cries of relief. "Oh, thank God!" Green screamed, tears sliding down her tired face. "Thank God! "It is not my fault. I would never, ever neglect my children. " The three women, seated in Green's third-floor apartment above a North Philadelphia corner bar, had just found what little silver lining there was in the death Tuesday of Green's 4-month-old daughter, Shareena: The medical examiner's office ruled the child had died of natural causes.

The other shoe SEPTA was waiting for just dropped! Hearing examiner John Miller has warned if SEPTA attempts to resolve a $75 million deficit in its 1997 operating budget through layoffs and service cuts, it will create a "death spiral" for its riders. "I would recommend that the SEPTA board vote against the 1997 operating budget, realizing that such a vote may be purely symbolic and, perhaps, like tilting at windmills," Miller wrote. SEPTA needs $748 million to fund its 1997 operating budget.

With better management, St. Mary Hospital could stay open and turn a profit, an examiner who studied the hospital's records said yesterday. "The decision to close the hospital was based on inadequate information . . . based more on the moral judgment of the Sisters (of St. Francis, founders of the hospital) rather than the best interest of the bankrupt estate," court-appointed examiner George L. Miller said. Still, the court should move to close the hospital and liquidate its assets - unless funding is found to subsidize its operation until a buyer comes forward, Miller's report concluded.

Blond beauty Valerie Sheridan - stoned on cocaine and booze - dozed off and accidentally slipped beneath the waters of socialite Harry Jay Katz's hot tub, the medical examiner's office has concluded. The cause of death for the 35-year-old Roxborough woman was declared to be drowning due to multiple drug and alcohol intoxication, said Barry Dickman, a medical examiner's spokesman. The death was an accident, he said. The drugs included an assortment of prescription medicines and cocaine, a source said.

A Bucks County lender hid losses on its books in "almost comical proportions," according to a report by the company's court-appointed examiner. The report, filed last week in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware, is the first accounting of a baffling standoff last year between DVI Inc., of Jamison, and Deloitte & Touche, its auditing firm. The auditor resigned in June, withholding its approval of DVI's quarterly financial report. The company said Deloitte wanted more information on a financial transaction.

WASHINGTON - Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Tuesday defended the Justice Department's secret examination of Associated Press phone records though he declared he had played no role in it, saying it was justified as part of an investigation into a grave national security leak. The government's wide-ranging information gathering from the news cooperative has created a bipartisan political headache for President Obama, with prominent Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill expressing outrage, along with press freedom groups.

In a way, she's been working on the play all her life. From the day her parents landed in China to adopt her, to the stares directed at her family as she grew, to present-day conversations where strangers ask where she's from and refuse to accept "Philadelphia" as an answer. On Saturday, the playwright and director Sarah Mitteldorf brings the new Many Ways to the stage of the Asian Arts Initiative in Center City. It is one of the first serious works by a Chinese adoptee to examine the Chinese adoption experience.

What were our Founders thinking when they gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 for the Constitutional Convention? According to Peter Sagal, who hosts PBS's consistently lively four-part series, Constitution USA (premiering at 9 p.m. Tuesday on WHYY TV12), the distinguished delegates had both short- and long-term goals. "The Founders came to Philadelphia to fix the Articles of Confederation," Sagal says in the first segment, "A More Perfect Union. " "Also, to make sure that 200 years later, this city would enjoy a booming constitutionally themed tourist trade.

THIS SEPTEMBER will mark the 50th anniversary of the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala. The church, which was a hub of civil-rights activities on the part of such figures as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and Rev. Ralph Abernathy , was blown up by white supremacists. Because the victims included four young, innocent girls, the event remains a particularly heinous crime, even by terror-event standards. Tomorrow, "Countdown to 'BOOM' We All Fall Down," which takes a different look at the bombing and its aftermath, has its world premiere at Lew Klein Hall at the Temple Performing Arts Center on North Broad Street.

Funny and gritty and deeply troubling, Bruce Graham's courageous new play, North of the Boulevard , continues the Philadelphia playwright's dramatic examination of the really tough issues of our times. In this play, being given its world premiere by Theatre Exile, he tackles nothing less than Right and Wrong and the shifting ethical ground underfoot. Act I plunges us right into a world, a beat-up auto-body shop with a partially dismantled car taking up much of the floor space and a branch growing through the plaster wall ("Last tree in the neighborhood and it's got to come through my wall")

The bomb blasts during the Boston Marathon shook up and saddened Americans across the country but the sorrow was particularly felt in the running community, a tight-knit family that enjoys competing and forming friendships that last a lifetime. "To me, it's a sanctuary of sorts," Villanova track and field coach Marcus O'Sullivan, a former world-class runner and Olympian, said Wednesday. "People go there because it's time to come together in a joyous moment and a joyous time. So when something like this happens, it really is very tragic.

Upon encountering Thomas Gibbons' play Permanent Collection by InterAct Theatre Company, you're likely to think: "Didn't this play start here?" "Didn't we live this drama?" "Do we have to go through it again?" The answers are yes, certainly, and indeed. The play premiered at InterAct in 2003 and went on to tell the world about the Barnes Foundation's agonized journey into the real world, focusing not on the move from Merion to Philadelphia but on the first stages of undoing Albert C. Barnes' wishes by Richard Glanton, the foundation's African American president in the 1990s.

The Philadelphia murder trial of abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell ended its second week of testimony today with a city medical examiner defending his decision to change the death certificate of a Gosnell patient from accidental to homicide. Gosnell defense attorney Jack McMahon questioned Assistant Medical Examiner Gary Collins at length about his decision to change the death certificate of Karnamaya Mongar, 41, a Virginia woman who died Nov. 19, 2009 undergoing an abortion at Gosnell's West Philadelphia clinic.

THE DEATH of New Hope bartender Sarah Majoras has been ruled an accidental drowning, the Hunterdon County Prosecutor's Office announced Monday. Majoras' body was found Jan. 30 in the Delaware and Raritan Canal, which separates New Hope from Lambertville, N.J., following an intense four-day search. Majoras, 39, was last seen leaving the bar where she worked in New Hope, John and Pete's. Officials said Monday that toxicology results indicated a high level of alcohol in Majoras' blood at the time of her death.

Dodgers outfielder Carl Crawford could miss the April 1 opener against San Francisco after leaving spring training in Glendale, Ariz., to have his elbow examined in Los Angeles. Recovering from elbow ligament-replacement surgery on Aug. 23, Crawford felt nerve irritation in his left arm. The Dodgers said Friday he was examined a day earlier and was prescribed anti-inflammatory medication and told to rest. Crawford was back in camp Friday and will not take batting practice or throw for about seven days, according to Dodgers manager Don Mattingly.