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The student newspaper at Conestoga High School in Berwyn received one of two top state awards for its design and writing during the 2011-12 school year. The Spoke was given the Clyde F. Lytle Keystone All-State Award at the Pennsylvania School Press Association's annual meeting this month. The school's newspaper advisers are Susan Houseman and Cynthia Crothers-Hyatt. The other student newspaper honored was Catasauqua High School's Brown and White. In the literary magazine category, Merion Mercy Academy's Image Explosion received a top Lytle award.

The Inquirer will make every effort to print and deliver newspapers daily throughout Hurricane Sandy. Should that not be possible, please go to Philly.com for expanded coverage of the storm as well as our entire news report.

HARRISBURG - Attorneys representing the state and two newspapers argued in federal court over whether the constitutional rights of witnesses to an execution are violated if they are unable to view the entire process. The Inquirer and the Harrisburg Patriot-News filed suit against the commonwealth last month in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania in an effort to allow witnesses to see the lethal injection process from the moment the condemned enters the chamber to the moment he or she is pronounced dead.

Newspaper delivery drivers, clerks, dispatchers, security guards, and building services personnel represented by Teamsters Local 628 voted Sunday to authorize a strike against Interstate General Media, the company that owns The Inquirer, the Philadelphia Daily News, and Philly.com. Approximately 300 union members are working under the terms of their contract that expired Oct. 8. Talks are expected to continue this week, said the union president, John Laigaie.   - Jane M. Von Bergen  

Col. John McKee's vision of his legacy, meticulously recorded in his will, was breathtaking: A garrisonlike naval academy would grace the bank of the Delaware River in Bristol. A bronze replica of the colonel on horseback would survey the boys who traversed the integrated campus. Embossed on their brass buttons would be the name of McKee, said to be the richest African American at his death in 1902. History did not quite unfold according to McKee's plan. Today, McKee remains an obscure giant of Philadelphia history, a businessman whose achievements in life have been at least matched by his contribution in death.

PITTSBURGH - A federal judge has rejected a settlement between a newspaper and Allegheny County officials that would have let the media enter the county's polling places to observe and photograph how voters are made to sign in but not the actual voting process. Instead, U.S. District Judge Nora Barry Fischer on Friday scheduled arguments on the lawsuit for Monday. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette sued state and county elections officials in July, claiming a state law keeping anyone other than voters and elections officials at least 10 feet away from polling places was illegal as enforced.

The publisher of five daily newspapers in the Pennsylvania suburbs as well as the Trentonian careened into bankruptcy court on Wednesday for the second time since 2009. Journal Register Co., which has said it is transforming itself into an Internet-based media company, said a sustained downturn in print advertising and legacy costs forced the action. The company will publicly auction its assets in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, New York, and Connecticut in a bankruptcy-sale process that could take 90 days.

WE HAVE always thought Jets coach Rex Ryan was a clown. Now, it seems, so does the New York Post. The front page of Tuesday's edition featured an illustration of Ryan dressed like Bozo - he even has a bulbous red nose - while driving a clunker. To his right is Tim Tebow wearing a small Jets-green derby with a daisy sticking out the top and a polka-dot bow tie. To Ryan's left is Mark Sanchez wearing a hobo hat and a painted-on frown. Next to the Jets jalopy is a shiny convertible sporting the New York Giants logo.

IN THE REGION Construction values up here The value of residential construction in metropolitan Philadelphia in the first seven months of the year was 34 percent higher than in the same period in 2011, McGraw Hill reported. Residential building from January to July totaled $781.4 million, compared with $583.1 million in the first seven months of 2011. Nonresidential construction was 4 percent lower, while the total of the two was 6 percent above last year. - Alan J. Heavens   Pol asks for turnpike resignations Prompted by an Inquirer article Sunday on the mounting billions in debt at the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission , State Rep. Peter J. Daley of Fayette and Washington Counties is calling for the resignation of the commission's top two executives, chief executive officer Roger E. Nutt and chief operating officer Craig Shuey, in a letter dated Aug. 29. Daley, a Democrat, said in the letter that the commission is "destined to become the biggest boondoggle in the history of the state.

AMAR STANLEY made a living selling newspapers, including the Daily News , on the North Philadelphia street where he lived. But instead of selling papers today, he's inside their pages, for all the wrong reasons. Stanley, 63, was shot twice in the chest and once in his right hip in the second-floor apartment where he lived alone on Lehigh Avenue near 22nd Street about 4 a.m. Monday, police said. He was pronounced dead at Temple University Hospital at 4:23 a.m. Police don't know who shot Stanley but they said the motive was robbery.