Scales

When someone asks you whether a pound of feathers weighs more than a pound of nails, it's not a trick question. In Gloucester County, where local branches of two nationwide home center chains have paid $900 in fines this year for selling short-weighted boxes of nails, a pound of feathers can weigh as much as 15 percent more than a pound of nails, according to Joseph Silvestro, the county superintendent of weights and measures. Responsible for checking the weights of animals, vegetables and minerals offered for sale in his county, Silvestro goes into the field armed with a portable digital scale and visits 800 businesses a year.

The Newtown Township Board of Supervisors accepted the sole bid it received Monday night for six portable hydraulic scales to be used to weigh trucks. The $19,500 bid was submitted by Loadometer Corp. of Baltimore. Eighteen thousand dollars had been budgeted for the scales. Each scale can measure up to 20,000 pounds, according to Larry Comunale, township manager. The scales are a continuation of Newtown's effort to increase traffic safety and decrease accidents. Previously, Newtown police officials had borrowed scales from Radnor Township, Comunale said.

Adding scales to monitor truck weights in Uwchlan Township could help the state enforce truck safety, a state trooper told the township Board of Supervisors. At the board's meeting Monday, Pennsylvania State Trooper Karl Mehn gave a detailed presentation of the federal Motor Carrier Safety Program. Under the program, 23 states monitor trucks for equipment and operator violations. Pennsylvania joined the program in 1983. Mehn asked the board to consider using scales to monitor trucks traveling within Uwchlan Township.

If the scales are to be believed, North Philadelphia junior middleweight Eric Holland brought more than sunscreen with him when he returned home from California a few days ago. At yesterday morning's official weigh-in, Holland checked in at 159 pounds, 6 more than the contract limit for his scheduled 10-round bout with James Hughes last night at the Blue Horizon. Holland sweated off the extra poundage in the sauna, but the effort might have sapped him of some strength and led to sluggishness in the later rounds.

Ron Perlstein tested the scales of justice yesterday and found them weighted against him. Perlstein, who is charged with defrauding customers, appeared in court trying to convince a judge to return 90 items seized from his store on Sansom Street near 8th. He got back two. The jeweler says he can't open up shop again if things such as his scales, magnifying glass, polishing cloth and diamond graders are kept by the district attorney's office....

Samuel Asbell had the idea a few weeks ago. "I get these strange impulses sometimes," said the Camden County prosecutor. One of those impulses was to have his officers sweep through three major head shops in Camden County last month and seize $150,000 worth of illegal drug paraphernalia. And once Asbell got a look at the loot - particularly the triple-beam and electronic scales prized by drug dealers for their sensitivity in weighing cocaine and marijuana - his next impulse was to turn criminal property into educational materials.

Fining overweight tractor-trailers that pass through the town limits is just one way Parkesburg officials are hoping to balance next year's borough budget. The Parkesburg Borough Council gave preliminary approval last week to a 1992 budget that includes spending $15,000 on scales to weigh trucks driving through the western Chester County borough. With the new scales, borough officials said they expected to take in at least $35,000 in fines from trucks that are operating over their legal weight.

When Faye Felgoise died in 1999, her niece Andrea Levin and other relatives decided to close the family's 80-year-old scale-manufacturing business in North Philadelphia. Word got out, and orders for cast-iron baker's scales - and pleas for the company to stay open - started coming in from bakeries and distributors nationwide. Those calls made Levin hesitate. As a special-education teacher in Philadelphia for 30 years, she was not sure what to do with Penn Scale Manufacturing Co. Inc., which was moribund from a decade of neglect by Felgoise and her brother, Sidney Black - who had died in 1998.

The Delaware River Port Authority has decided to increase the wage scales for its nonunion workers, ending a three-year freeze that was aimed at taking the DRPA out of the ranks of the region's highest-paying employers. In 1996, the Hay Group, a consulting firm, determined that the bistate agency's compensation program ranked the DRPA in the 75th percentile, meaning its salary packages surpassed comparable ones offered by three-quarters of the Philadelphia region's employers. On Jan. 15, 1997, the agency board decided the ranking was too high and voted to move the DRPA toward the middle, to the 50th percentile.

As the typical American family sits around the typical American Passover Seder table, this fearsome thought goes through the mind of every attendee: Are those matzo balls going to be edible? "I've faced that dilemma many times," said bioscience philosopher Arthur L. Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, with an uncomfortable chuckle. "Let's face it, there are many, many nonedible matzo balls. " David Auspitz, owner of the Famous 4th Street Delicatessen, said it's never been a problem for him. "This is a tradition handed down many generations.

Italy takes steps in face of threats ROME - Italian officials have increased security at 14,000 potential targets over the shooting of a nuclear-energy company official and letter bombs directed at the Italian tax-collection agency. The Interior Ministry on Thursday announced the enhanced measures, which include assigning bodyguards to 550 people and deploying 16,000 law enforcement officers. The Informal Anarchist Federation claimed responsibility for shooting Roberto Adinolfi, CEO of Ansaldo Nucleare, in the leg and pledged further actions against the parent company, state-controlled Finmeccanica.

WHEN DISTRICT, city and charter officials signed the Great Schools Compact last year, they signaled the direction that public education was going in - closing seats in low-performing schools, and expanding high-performing ones. Labels - whether a school is run by the district or by a charter - matter much less now. Officials said that they want to continue expanding charters, and expect that by 2017, 40 percent of the city's roughly 200,000 students will be enrolled in a charter school.

If Pennsylvania Democrats ever hope to elect a state attorney general, this would be the year, with two well-qualified candidates seeking the party's nomination in the April 24 primary. Former U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy of Bucks County and Kathleen Kane, a former Lackawanna County assistant district attorney, offer impressive legal resumes, and possess the skill and passion to excel as the state's top law-enforcement official. The winner will face the unopposed Republican, Cumberland County District Attorney David Freed.

NEW YORK - The agency that owns the World Trade Center, New York City's airports, and several bridges and tunnels will scale back benefits for its nonunion employees in a move expected to save $41 million over 18 months. The governing board of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey approved the cuts Thursday in response to an audit of the agency released last month. It also approved a reorganization of the authority's police force. The audit ordered by the governors of New York and New Jersey had criticized the agency's organization and called its management "dysfunctional.

WASHINGTON - President Obama likes to talk about his children. What parent doesn't? But Obama is not just another father shooting the breeze about his children's antics in last night's soccer game. He is the president, and he brings up his daughters to explain his thinking on all sorts of combustible national issues. He has cited Sasha and Malia, now 10 and 13, in discussing everything from the rescue of an American aid worker from Somalian pirates to the touchy subject of public access to emergency contraception.

Life at the Occupy Philadelphia encampment continued unabated Monday - although on a much smaller scale - despite the passing of Mayor Nutter's deadline for the protesters to evacuate the plaza in front of City Hall more than 24 hours earlier. The protesters had been told to leave by 5 p.m. Sunday so construction could begin on a $50 million renovation of Dilworth Plaza, real estate the Occupy movement has turned into a tent city of political activism. The city, after negotiating with segments of protesters, issued a permit that allows them to demonstrate across the street at Thomas Paine Plaza from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. but prohibits overnight camping.

Life at the Occupy Philadelphia encampment continued unabated Monday - although on a much smaller scale - despite the passing of Mayor Nutter's deadline for the protesters to evacuate the plaza in front of City Hall more than 24 hours earlier. The protesters had been told to leave by 5 p.m. Sunday so construction could begin on a $50 million renovation of Dilworth Plaza, real estate the Occupy movement has turned into a tent city of political activism. The city, after negotiating with segments of protesters, issued a permit that allows them to demonstrate across the street at Thomas Paine Plaza from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. but prohibits overnight camping.

The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission on Thursday approved a scaled-back rate increase for Pennsylvania American Water Co. that will add about $3 a month to a typical residential customer's bill. The PUC says that the bill for a customer using 4,150 gallons per month will increase from $48.45 to $51.52, a 6.3 percent increase. The statewide company, which has about 90,000 customers Montgomery, Bucks, Chester and Berks counties, had sought a 13.25 percent increase. The Commission voted 5-0 to approve the joint settlement that was reached among the company, the Office of Consumer Advocate, the Office of Small Business Advocate, the Commission's Bureau of Investigation and Enforcement, the Pennsylvania American Water Large Users Group, and AK Steel Corp.

Antionette Reed is in stealth mode as she walks among the used dining-room tables and chairs at Philadelphia's newest salvage and thrift store. Reed, 55, takes photos on her cellphone of dining sets at the Philadelphia Habitat for Humanity's ReStore warehouse in Kensington, and sends the pictures to her daughter, who is about to move to a new home. She calls the young woman, who shuns thrift shops, and asks what she thinks of the tables and chairs. Evidently, her daughter's mind is on a single issue.

The house is nestled on a quiet street on the east side of Moorestown, the same neighborhood Randall Cunningham once called home. With its weathered shingles and simple contours, it might fit perfectly into the landscape of the New England seashore. Step inside, and New England disappears; it's suddenly Europe on a grand scale. Stately tradition reigns from the grand hall through the first floor of this 5,300-square-foot home that was lovingly built in 1990 by Pasquale "Pat" Procacci and his wife, Mary, and has been constantly refined since then.