Gap

Republican women are rallying to Mitt Romney - boosting him to his best-ever showing on a fundamental measure of personal popularity, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. Overall, Romney's favorability rating still trails President Obama's, but the gap is far more narrow than it has been. In the new poll, 41 percent of all Americans express positive views of Romney; 52 percent do so for Obama. Just over a month ago, the president had a 56 to 35 percent advantage on this score.

Cara Fiala drove in three runs and caught the final out in deep center field with a runner on third base to preserve Philadelphia Academy Charter's 11-10 victory over Bishop McDevitt in the District 12 Class AA softball championship game Wednesday at La Salle University. PAC built a 10-2 lead before McDevitt rallied within 10-7 entering the seventh inning. The Chargers added the winning run in the top of the seventh when Casey Fratella singled and scored on a hit by Chealsey Cashman.

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.