Generation

More than 50 students were taken to hospitals Tuesday morning after being sickened by exhaust fumes from a broken generator at a school in the city's Holmesburg section, a Philadelphia School District spokesman said. About 9 a.m., students at Joseph H. Brown Elementary School reported feeling ill and the Philadelphia Fire Department was called, said spokesman Fernando Gallard. The building was evacuated and the children were taken to a nearby church that serves as an emergency shelter for the school, at Stanwood Street and Frankford Avenue, Gallard said.

Arts and cultural organizations have a multibillion-dollar impact on the Philadelphia region's economy, and are among the nation's most productive in creation of jobs and stirring up economic activity. Only those in the Washington area generate more per-capita expenditures, and in terms of jobs, no region comes close to Southeastern Pennsylvania. Cultural activity generates nearly $170 million in state and local taxes annually and supports 44,000 jobs within the city and its four suburban Pennsylvania counties, according to a study set for release Monday by the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance.

In another sign that natural gas is supplanting coal in the energy landscape, EmberClear Corp., a Canadian power developer, announced Wednesday it plans to build a 300-megawatt generation plant in Schuylkill County on a site where it had once envisioned a plant fueled by coal. EmberClear, which is based in Calgary, said it had selected SK E&C USA to build the Good Spring Natural Gas Combined Cycle power plant. The project, which EmberClear chief executive Albert Lin estimated would cost up to $400 million to build, will employ 500 construction workers.

The Zaslow brothers are at that rowdy age. They bicker. They tease. They talk over one another. They are Exhibits A, B and C that boys, indeed, will be boys - even when they're in their 80s. But each day doesn't end until Jerome, Spencer, and Arnold Zaslow make peace if anything is amiss - a routine insisted on by their parents. It has been the underpinning of a business relationship among the brothers that endures after more than 60 years of working together. Besides their bloodline, their bond is ATD-American Co., a furniture and textile distributor in Wyncote that in earlier days had a much more diverse sales portfolio that included broccoli, straitjackets, Jamaican beef patties, pencils, and condoms.

Two family-owned nurseries that have been around for generations in the Philadelphia suburbs are wishing the summer hadn't brought unexpected financial heat in the form of the Waterloo Gardens bankruptcy. Both are entangled in the Chapter 11 case filed June 26 by the debt-soaked gardening center that closed its renowned Devon store. Both landed on an unenviable list: creditors holding the 20 largest unsecured claims. And both longtime suppliers of poinsettias, annuals, and other earthly wares to the region's onetime preeminent gardening center are coming to understand the exquisite frustration of being a little guy in a big, old bankruptcy case.

Bill Lyon is a retired Inquirer columnist and the author of "Deadlines and Overtimes: Collected Writings on Sports and Life" And so, because, well, because they are determined to do it until they get it right - and no snide remarks about aerial porcines and figure skating in Hades - they are presented once again for your viewing pleasure, the professional football team of Philadelphia, whose fans, resolute and loyal beyond all reason, prepare yet...

So my friend - let's call him Ceisler - and I were leaving the Har Zion synagogue a few weeks ago. We were there for the funeral of Joe Smukler, 84, a Philadelphia trial lawyer who, along with his wife, Connie, had dedicated his life to saving oppressed Jews from the Soviet Union. As speaker after speaker attested to Joe's transformative good deeds, just as stunning were his small acts of kindness. For weeks I heard of his mentoring and generosity. When I ran into Montgomery County Commissioner Josh Shapiro, I learned that, at age 12, he was singled out by Joe for his pen-pal efforts to connect with young Jews trapped in the Soviet Union.

All We Know Three Lives By Lisa Cohen Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 429 pp. $30   Three women who blazed with the passions of their generation but who are now forgotten. Three women who carved out what it means to be contemporary, independent, free. Three women who reached for success - but didn't always know, as the daughters of Victorians, what their ambitions even were or could be. In her triptych biography of Esther Murphy, Mercedes de Acosta, and Madge Garland - all born in the 1890s - Lisa Cohen brings us a gossipy yet deeply intellectual account of the first generation of women who considered themselves "modern.

LONDON - The rivalry with those varmints north of the border was finally on. The U.S. against Canada: Yuengling vs. Molson, states vs. provinces, the Red, White, and Blue vs. the Great White North. That was the feeling Monday night, as the Americans and Canadians waged a soccer war for the ages. It was physical, it was intense, it was emotional. It took a goal by Alex Morgan in injury time of overtime for the U.S. women to advance to the gold-medal game. Just 14 hours later, it was time for Round 2: the United States and Canada in the quarterfinals of the Olympic women's basketball tournament.

SANTA RITA DO SAPUCAI, Brazil - Brazilian inmate Ronaldo da Silva hops on a bicycle and pedals furiously, clocking up several miles before slowing down and jumping off. Silva hasn't gotten far, in fact not an inch. He's still inside the medium-security prison where he's serving a 51/2-year sentence for holding up a bakery, standing next to a stationary bike. But he did move a bit closer to freedom. Silva is part of an innovative program that allows inmates at a prison in Brazil's southeastern Minas Gerais state to reduce their sentences in exchange for generating power to help illuminate the town at night.