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Elkins Park's tiny downtown has not been the same since Ashbourne Market closed in 2002. Tucked into a commercial strip just a few blocks long, the market was more than a grocery with a big kosher section. For four decades, it was the convivial hub of the community, where neighbors gathered over bagels and lox on Sunday mornings. Having lost their anchor, however, nearby stores began to falter. Others moved in - including a tasty shawarma joint - only to fail, too. The strip was so barren, said Max Minkoff, that "you couldn't buy an apple" there.

The former finance manager of a Mount Airy food co-op has reached an agreement that will allow her to avoid jail time on charges that she stole money from the co-op. Andrea Sheaffer agreed last week to pay the Weaver's Way Co-op $30,000 in restitution and to issue an apology to the co-op, at 559 Carpenter Lane in Mount Airy, according to the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office. Sheaffer's financial dealings nearly forced the collapse of Weaver's Way in 2002, officials said.

What it is: Swarthmore Co-op, one of the oldest cooperative grocery stores in the country, offers locally grown produce and organic and natural foods, as well as fresh meats, prepared meals and bakery items. You don't have to be a member to shop there. What we like: It's a friendly, community-oriented store that deals with a lot of local suppliers for everything from fresh strawberries to raspberry jelly rolls. And if a customer really wants a certain item, general manager Jack Cavanaugh will try to stock it. The co-op gets some of its produce from Linvilla Orchards in Middletown and Pete's Produce in Westtown.

Maureen McGeehan graduated two years ago from Drexel University with on- the-job experience, eight job offers and money in her pocket instead of college debts. McGeehan was one of the nearly 175,000 students nationwide working annually in a cooperative education program, alternating semesters in class with semesters in the field. Such students earn as they learn how their studies apply in the world outside. "When I got sick of studying, it was time to go to work. And when I got tired of working, it was time to head back to class," says McGeehan.

THIS LETTER is to let you know that I have the back of all the Sixers fans (and all Philly fans for that matter) who were unjustifiably taken to task by Brad Geiger in his recent op-ed. How dare he call out Sixers fans because they didn't "rise to the moment" and fill the house for Game 4 of the recent playoff series. Sixers fans are so loyal, so passionate and so knowledgeable that I won't even dignify Mr. Geiger's incredible statements with any type of lengthy argument. None is necessary.

AS ONE OF THE plaintiffs in the recent successful verdict against the School District of Philadelphia, I take issue with some of the points that Rotan Lee made in his Dec. 28 op-ed, "In Defense of Carl and the Cracker Slur. " I have no problem with Mr. Lee's defense of Carl Singley's outburst as "venting. " What I do resent is his contention that there was "backslapping jocularity between the plaintiffs and the jurors. " First of all, Mr. Lee wasn't there in the courthouse and wouldn't know firsthand what transpired.

The holdup man fled when the cashier shot back - with a camera. Camden police said Sone Lin, 20, was tending the counter at the Happy Dragon Restaurant about 7 Thursday evening when a man came in with his hand placed in his jacket in a way that suggested he had a gun. "Give me $300 or I'll kill you," the man said. Instead of going to the cash register, Sone picked up a 35mm camera and clicked. The startled robber ran from the store and Sone, 20, called police. Investigators rode with Sone through the neighborhood, and they spotted Manuel Melandez, 19, of the 100 block of Eutaw Street.

THE OP-ED "Phony Drunken Driving stats" by Sarah Longwell was long overdue. In January 1994, I wrote that MADD's credibility was in question since its emphasis on arrest numbers seemingly overshadowed the real goal of highway safety. It seemed that MADD was upset because, in '92, there was reported a 12 percent drop in the number of "drunken driving offenders. " In an August column, I expressed outrage over MADD's campaign to lower the BAC from 0.10 to 0.08. I also condemned the MADD-supported and unconstitutional ALS (administrative license suspension)

I AM APPALLED at the op-ed you featured on the Special Olympics. Without even getting into my opinion on such segregated activities, ones in which people with disabilities are seen as pitiful and less than worthy of participation in society with the rest of the human race, you need to know that your language is offensive and demeaning. "Mentally handicapped"? "Emotionally retarded"? "Retarded"? These terms are as offensive as any racial or ethnic slur. And how comforting to know that the Special Olympics segregates individuals according to their IQ and so-called "ability levels.

"We're all mothers, we all work, we all enjoy being together, and we all love to garden," explains Jean Hunt as she describes the beginnings of the Philadelphia garden co-op she developed with Marilyn Wood, Pat Urevick and Pat MacFarland. Chatting one day last winter, they decided that to make light work of bed building and patio installation, they would pool their resources and work together. The system had worked for car pooling, babysitting and vacations. Why couldn't it work outside in the garden?

Angelina Jolie trended high among worldwide Twitter topics all day Tuesday. In a New York Times op-ed, she said she'd had a preventive double mastectomy after learning she carried a gene that carried with it an unusually high risk of breast cancer. The outpouring of support was unusual even for Twitter. Stars, especially, praised Jolie's resolve. Kristen Bell called her Times op-ed "admirable," and director Adam Shankman called it "beautiful. " Nia Vardalos called for "a moment of quiet respect for Angelina Jolie's candor and all women's bravery in facing this choice.

WASHINGTON - As the weakly protected U.S. diplomatic compound in eastern Libya came under attack the night of Sept. 11, 2012, the deputy head of the embassy in Tripoli sought in vain to get the Pentagon to scramble fighter jets over Benghazi in a show of force that might have averted a second attack on a nearby CIA complex. Hours later, according to excerpts of the account by the U.S. diplomat, Gregory Hicks, American officials in the Libyan capital sought permission to deploy four U.S. special operations troops to Benghazi aboard a Libyan military aircraft early the next morning.

HARRISBURG - Never leave anything unsaid is a lesson former Gov. Ed Rendell may have relearned the hard way this week. Two days ago, the usually loquacious Democrat had an op-ed piece published in the New York Daily News urging New York state to get over its fears and permit hydraulic fracturing - commonly known as fracking - to seek natural gas within its borders. In the piece, headlined "Why [Gov. Andrew] Cuomo Must Seize the Moment on Hydrofracking," Rendell listed the benefits of natural gas for the region's economic development as well as the nation's energy future.

KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghanistan's president on Wednesday relented in his demand for all U.S. special-operations forces to withdraw from a strategic province east of the capital, agreeing to a compromise calling for the pullout of one team implicated in abuse allegations that the Americans have rejected. The dispute underscores the fragile negotiations under way as Hamid Karzai seeks to redefine and expand control of his country and the United States and its allies prepare to end their combat missions by the end of 2014.

On-base plus slugging (OPS) is a statistic that adds a player's on-base percentage and slugging percentage. It values things such as walks and extra-base hits that batting average cannot measure. The major-league average in 2012 was .724. Baseball's best hitters will typically post an .850 OPS or higher. Miguel Cabrera led the majors with a .999 OPS in 2012.

CARACAS, Venezuela - Sixty-seven days after Venezuelans last saw him, President Hugo Chavez reappeared Friday, when government officials televised photographs of him recuperating in Cuba with two of his daughters at his side. The images were the first evidence presented to Venezuelans that Chavez, who was last seen Dec. 10 when he boarded a plane to Cuba for a fourth surgery to remove cancerous tissue, was alive and convalescing. In the photos, Chavez smiles from a hospital bed while flanked by daughters Maria Gabriela and Rosa Virginia.

For years, Elkins Park neighbors sadly viewed the building that was Ashbourne Market, a store and local hub across from the train station that closed in 2002. Snubbed by developers, it had for a time become an odd, little-used farmer's market. "It was a ghost town," said Max Minkoff, a local entrepreneur. "Tumbleweeds. " If a grocery would not take the location, perhaps a food co-op would work, the neighbors decided at a meeting five years ago at the local library. Co-ops operate by and for their members, and try simply to break even.

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon is stepping up aid for Mexico's bloody drug war with a new U.S.-based special-operations headquarters to teach Mexican security forces how to hunt drug cartels the same way special operations teams hunt al-Qaeda, according to documents and interviews with multiple U.S. officials. Such assistance could help newly elected Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto establish a military force to focus on drug criminal networks that have terrorized Mexico's northern states and threatened the Southwest border.

If you combed through the piano recital programs of the coming year and put the most forbidding pieces into one concert, you'd have Ieva Jokubaviciute's recital Thursday at Settlement Music School. In the program, titled " New Century, New Paths" and presented by the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, this fully matured Lithuanian pianist skillfully guided one's ears through Debussy, Schoenberg, Scriabin, Janacek, and Berg in performances that confidently created a trajectory from which all the composers benefited.

  KABUL, AFGHANISTAN - U.S. and Afghan military forces rescued an American doctor who had been kidnapped by the Taliban in eastern Afghanistan, military authorities said Sunday. Officials in Washington later confirmed that one of the rescuers was killed in the operation. The kidnapped doctor, identified as Dilip Joseph, a U.S. citizen working for a nonprofit group based in Colorado, was rescued along with two Afghan doctors and an Afghan driver, according to international forces and local Afghan officials.