Gap

About 300 students protest state cuts in education at City Hall yesterday before marching to the State Building, at Broad and Spring Garden streets. School and teachers union officials say suburban kids have $1,500 more a year spent on their schooling. The march was sponsored by the Coalition to Close the Gap.

A gap in the testimony of a 22-year-old rape victim has helped acquit a Wynnefield man of the offense. The victim, a Temple University student, testified she recalled Craig Poles, 31, having a "big gap" between his upper front teeth when he abducted her from a parking lot of a Wynnefield apartment building while she was delivering pizza on Feb. 28, 1986. Defense attorney Thomas W. Moore Jr. told the jury that Poles "does not have a gap between his teeth. " He called the woman's testimony a case of "mistaken identity.

I'M SURE there's no credibility to the woman who has accused Bill Cosby of groping her. Why would anyone with a valid claim for sexual assault wait a year before filing a complaint? A valid complaint should have been made no later than two days after it had happened. What was she afraid of a year ago that she is not afraid to tell the world about it now? If she is after money, I hope she does not get one penny. Such a waste of the judicial system. Cheryl Gilbert Collingswood, N.J.

Matthew Miller is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress You can ask Americans to spend $166 billion to get the job done in Iraq and in Afghanistan (that's $79 billion so far, plus the President's new request for $87 billion). You can ask us to tolerate modest budget deficits while spending what's needed to meet a major national challenge. But President Bush can't ask us for $166 billion for Iraq while he runs record $500 billion budget deficits and doubles the national debt - all in order to give $300 billion a year in tax cuts over the next decade mostly to the best-off people in America.

LedgeRock Golf Club's Chip Lutz took the first-round lead in the Golf Association of Philadelphia's first major tournament of the season with a 67 at Philadelphia Cricket Club's Militia Hill Course in the Mid-Amateur Championship on Wednesday. Lutz, the 2007 Mid-Amateur champ, birdied holes seven through nine and took a 1-stroke lead over Bidermann's William Jeremiah into Thursday's final round. The Results Chip Lutz, LedgeRock. . . 33-34?67 William Jeremiah, Bidermann.

Philadelphia's two stadiums are another step closer to reality as Gov. Ridge yesterday provided an additional $10 million in state money, closing the funding gap in the $1 billion project to $43 million. City Council approved the city's commitment to the project Wednesday, but there was still a $53 million gap in financing for the stadiums in South Philadelphia. Mayor Street and the teams promised to look for other sources to make up the nut, and the state was an early target in the search.

In what it believes is a nod toward the future of the game, the Golf Association of Philadelphia has approved the use of laser distance-measuring devices in its competitions this year. "Our view is, since these devices are now allowed under the rules of golf and they're likely to become more prevalent in the future, players should be able to use them in GAP events," Mark Peterson, the association's executive director, said yesterday. Although many of the 115 state and local golf associations across the country have banned the devices or are taking a wait-and-see attitude, the GAP's executive committee saw no reason to wait, voting by 17-1 in favor of permitting them in its 56 competitions.

Market economies are not fair. They might be dynamic, creative and efficient. But it's not their job to be fair. It's their job to foster innovation and create wealth. In America, it is the society's job to be fair - with government playing a vital role. Thanks to global trends that are not within any politician's power to control, the American economy is distributing its rewards less evenly than it used to. What is within politicians' control is whether and how government acts to repair the damage and the injustice caused by these growing income gaps.

Oscar Mestre Jr. of Overbrook Golf Club has been selected as captain of the team from the Golf Association of Philadelphia in the 44th Compher Cup Matches against the rival team from New Jersey. Mestre, 45, of Berwyn, will make his seventh appearance in the Compher Cup, which is set for April 27 at Hollywood Golf Club in Deal, N.J. The 12-man team Mestre will lead against the New Jersey State Golf Association is a cast of familiar names among the top amateurs from the area: Brian Gillespie of St. Davids Golf Club (fifth appearance)

A sure sign it's finally spring? Those very pink-hued, (sometimes sickly) sweet musical ads for the Gap starring American darling Sarah Jessica Parker and her rendition of the Broadway tune "I Enjoy Being a Girl. " But the British press is reporting that S.J.P., who's done three Gap campaigns so far, will do no more. It appears that Gap's face and voice are to be replaced by English teen sensation Joss Stone, who's currently in negotiations with the khaki-maker. According to London's Sunday Times, the Gap, which had previously used Madonna and Demi Moore, wants to capture the teen market by using the 17-year-old soul singer, who scored a hit last year with "Fell in Love with a Boy," a reworking of the White Stripes' "Fell in Love with a Girl.

Quick: Name a raw material vital to national security and the American consumer lifestyle, prone to rising prices, and largely controlled by foreign interests thousands of miles away. Oil? Sure, but in a physics lab at the University of Delaware, another answer is the class of materials known as rare earths. Prized for their magnetic properties, rare earths are used to make almost any high-tech product you can name - computer screens, hard drives, cameras, smartphones, lasers.

They are young and he is not. That shouldn't matter, but eventually, inevitably, it does. If you have ever been a parent who survived those wonderful teen years, then you can relate. Doug Collins has been there, done that. Not only as a father, but as a grandfather. There is, on average, roughly 40 years distance between them, the children of the 76ers and their baby-sitter, the coach. They may find it difficult to fathom, but he knows more basketball than they do. Tons more.

Haileigh Stocks surveyed the Souderton defense and saw a drawn-in infield and a shallow outfield. Ahead in the count, 2-0, she looked for a pitch to drive into a gap or over the outfielders' heads. The pitch came down the middle of the plate, waist high - "where I like it," Stocks said afterward - and she ripped it exactly where she hoped: into the right-centerfield gap and over the outfielders' heads. The gusting Warrington wind took care of the rest. The ball cleared the fence by a few feet for a grand slam, propelling Central Bucks South to a 14-1, five-inning victory Tuesday in a Suburban One Continental softball game.

Maybe it sounded a little cryptic, but there was certainly some truth behind his words when Kingsway coach Sean Dunn laughed and noted: "I guess you could say the South is rising. " Every year, more South Jersey teams make more regular-season treks to more North Jersey schools, using one of the country's high school lacrosse hotbeds as something of a benchmark, a way for the South Jersey teams to find out where they are and how far they need to go. The Dragons became the latest South Jersey team to win one of those regular-season games when they knocked off perennially strong West Essex in a 9-7, opening-game victory on March 31. More than a feather in the Dragons' cap, the win highlights the ever-growing depth of South Jersey lacrosse.

Beyond the $26 million it must cut by June, the Philadelphia School District faces a $186 million shortfall for the 2012-13 budget year, and officials plan to plug it, in part, with more aggressive city tax collections. Presenting a preliminary $2.5 billion spending plan at Thursday night's marathon School Reform Commission meeting, officials said schools should see no further cuts to their budgets, and that they did not plan to lay off teachers. Chief Recovery Officer Thomas Knudsen also said he did not expect the SRC would have to resort to the nuclear option - using its state-given powers to impose terms on its five labor unions - to close the remainder of the 2012 gap. But, Knudsen said, for fiscal 2013, "there clearly has to be a discussion with labor" about ways to cut costs.

Philadelphia's pension board last week got what City Controller Alan Butkovitz called "surprise" good news: a small reduction in the very large gap between what the city owes future pensioners and what it has set aside to pay them. The estimates from pension consultants don't reverse Philadelphia's long-term pension problems: It still has more beneficiaries cashing checks than workers paying into the fund, the fund still suffers from years of over-promising and under-reserving, and well-paid private fund managers have for years produced investment profits far below the city's annual target, now 8.1 percent.

Tilden Middle School lost teachers to budget cuts this year. It lost a secretary, noontime aides, and money to pay staffers for before- and after-school programs. But the school at 66th and Elmwood in Southwest Philadelphia picked up a grief-counseling program. It maintained extracurriculars, mentoring and truancy-prevention programs, tutors, and a host of other "extras" that help teachers focus on instruction and keep students coming to school. The secret? Robust community partnerships.

The players always know first. They don't always say it as clearly as Kimmo Timonen did Saturday afternoon, but they always know whether their team has what it takes to compete for a championship. The Flyers' 5-2 loss to the New York Rangers signified more than two points for the Eastern Conference's top team. It was a game that underscored the gap between these two teams. More than that, this gap almost certainly means the Flyers, as constituted, are not contending for the Stanley Cup this year.

The Philadelphia School District's budget gap stands at $38.8 million, officials said Friday. The district announced in January that it had a $61 million shortfall to bridge by June 30. The district said Friday that the number actually had increased to $70.8 million, due to up-front costs related to early retirements and ongoing layoffs. Some cuts have been made, but $38.8 million remains to be cut, spokesman Fernando Gallard said in a statement. He said that the total gap had increased at one point by $9.7 million because of severance payments connected to continued layoffs and because more district employees than expected had taken advantage of an early retirement program the district offered last year.