Porsche

Porsche couldn't resist the smells. First trained as a seeing-eye dog, the black Labrador got so distracted by all the delectable odors that the world had to offer that she flunked her certification. But the vision-impaired community's loss was the Philadelphia Fire Department's gain. Agents from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives trained her in accelerant detection, and Porsche went to work as an arson dog with city firefighters about five years ago. "She just can't stop sniffing - that's the trait that breaks her [as a seeing-eye dog]

  Curtis E. Yeske packed a lot into 79 years, making and remaking himself as a reporter, jazz columnist, college public-relations man, musician, scuba operator, furniture refinisher. His stories would have filled an ample memoir - had he not been so busy writing about everything and everyone else. Over the last 20 years, the byline "Curt Yeske" was a fixture in the Times of Trenton and, later, the Bucks County Herald. He was as likely to discourse on trumpet great Maynard Ferguson as to chronicle a town's war on barking dogs or find an improbably new angle on Washington crossing the Delaware.

A red Porsche 930 Turbo missed a curve at 5:41 a.m. A sports star at the top of his game slammed into a concrete wall in front of an elementary school in Camden County. The Flyers kept winning hockey games, but life was never exactly the same. It's been a quarter-century since Pelle Lindbergh was taken off life support in a South Jersey hospital on Nov. 11, 1985. His name still resonates, images still flicker, a tragic chapter in local sports folklore is still discussed. Virtually all sports fans living here at the time can remember getting the news of the car crash and the details that soon filtered out. The Flyers goalie had been drinking at an after-hours place with teammates.

The parents of a man killed while riding in a Porsche driven by Jackass star Ryan Dunn last year are suing Dunn's estate and a local bar that served him alcohol. Dunn, 34, and Zachary Hartwell, 30, of West Chester, died in the crash just before 3 a.m. June 20, 2011, when the Porsche 911 GT3 veered off the westbound lanes of the Route 322 bypass in West Goshen Township, Chester County. Hartwell, 30, of West Chester, was a recently married Iraq War veteran. His parents, George and Arma Hartwell of Melbourne, Fla., are suing Dunn's estate and the tavern owner, Barnaby's West Chester Inc. The wrongful-death suit, first reported by Courthouse News, was filed in Common Pleas Court.

Stuffed into a shirt and tie and sitting before a partially eaten sandwich oozing with gobs of chicken cheesesteak, Dave Nast recounted what he hopes is his rise to pre-stardom. "This is going to sound corny," the singer-songwriter-guitarist warned as he began telling of his quest to launch a musical career. This from a guy whose debut CD jacket is an ode to his tank-topped chest and bulging muscles, backed by a hologram blonde and a white Porsche? He's the same guy who drives around town in a Camaro with a vanity plate that reads "D-Nasty," the one who counts as his influences the unlikely combination of Richard Marx, Bon Jovi, Sting and Prince.

When the Jaguar XJ6 and Porsche 944 came racing up Interstate 495 near Edgemoor, Del., on Thursday afternoon, police figured it was another case of fancy sports cars getting the best of the owners' sensibilities. "They were just driving recklessly," said Cpl. David L. Baylor of the Delaware State Police. "They were making lane changes, cutting in and out of traffic. They were speeding and also had tags not belonging to the vehicles. " After a Delaware State Police officer stopped the cars about 1:45 p.m., he learned that both had been stolen from the same auto dealership.

WILL PULL-TAB OYSTERS BE ALL THE RAGE OF PARIS? A French inventor has found a way to fit oysters with pop-open tabs. A French company called Read has swung into production with the shellfish self-shuckers and says it expects 50 million "ringed" oysters to be sold in France this winter. "The process could change the habits of daily life," inventor Yves Renaut, an unemployed engineer, told the Paris newspaper Liberation. "You can go home and eat oysters straightaway, just as you would serve yourself a slice of salmon.

As a smart kid growing up in West Oak Lane, he was known as "Reds" for his hair and "the menace," after the mischievous Dennis of the comic strips. Years later, as a roguish Philadelphia defense lawyer, Dennis H. Eisman said the first nickname kept him out of trouble: "I could never do anything crazy. They'd know I did it - the kid with the red hair. " The second nickname, "I don't know if I've lived up to," he said. Yesterday when word of his apparent suicide traveled like electricity through the city's legal community - and in some cases across the country - many friends found it impossible to believe for so spirited a man. "That's not the Dennis I knew," associates said over and over about the incident in which police said Eisman apparently shot himself with his gun inside his silver Porsche in a Center City parking garage.

To Joey Houlne, age 9, it's just a shiny red car. Enter Mom, always ready to volunteer another fact of life. "This is a real Porsche," said Donna Houlne, 33, waving a soda cup toward the Porsche 930 turbo convertible as they walk past. The car is one of the 1988 models on display at the 1988 Philadelphia International Auto Show, at the Civic Center till Jan. 18. For the price of a $5 ticket, dreamers and shoppers can check out the new domestic and import models of nearly 40 car manufacturers.

A Feasterville man, who damaged an expensive Porsche he mistakenly thought belonged to a man who was dating his girlfriend, pleaded guilty in Bucks County court to driving under the influence of alcohol and to criminal mischief. Dennis A. Shepherd, 29, of Meadowbrook Rd., told President Judge Isaac S. Garb, "If I had known it wasn't his car, I wouldn't have damaged it. " Shepherd was charged with driving his pickup into the side of a 1976 Porsche 935 in a New Hope parking lot on Jan. 21. Shepherd then smashed the windshield and windows of the $100,000 car with a piece of pipe and fled the scene as a neighbor called police.