Tabs

GET BUSY LIVING, or get busy dying. That line was uttered quite a bit in "The Shawshank Redemption," but it would have fit in just as well yesterday when Philadelphia Media Network, the company that owns the Daily News , Inquirer and Philly.com, announced that it would sell discounted tablet computers that feature digital versions of the papers. Some 5,000 of the Arnova 10 G2 tablets, which are powered by Google's Android operating system, are available beginning today for as little as $99. To get the tablets at that low price, buyers must sign up for a two-year, $10-a-month subscription for digital editions of the papers and the Inquirer 's newly developed Android multimedia app. Customers also have the option of purchasing a one-year, $13-a-month subscription to the digital editions, which would raise the price of the tablet to $129.

Will tablet computers such as the Apple iPad and its Android counterparts be the answer to the advertising and circulation problems plaguing the newspaper and magazine industries? That's the guarded prediction of some media analysts as well as the hope of a growing list of publishers - including Philadelphia Media Network Inc., owners of The Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News, which plans to roll out an offer this week aimed at riding the digital wave on the hottest new electronic platform.

WASHINGTON - It cost nearly $2 billion over the last two years to send hundreds of extra U.S. civilians to Afghanistan to help with development projects, the economy, and training Afghan government officials, a report said Thursday. Sending just one employee to Afghanistan for one year, excluding infrastructure and security needed to support that person, costs the government between $410,000 and $570,000, according to the joint report by the offices of the State Department inspector general and the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction.

THE ARLENE Ackerman saga came to its official conclusion yesterday as the district cut her a $905,000 buyout check, but not before one more twist of the screw into taxpayers. You're now on the hook for the whole thing. The school district shelled out the total cost of the agreement after public pressure to reveal the identities of anonymous donors who had pledged $405,000 led "almost all" to pull out, according to a statement from the School Reform Commission. Officials delivered the shocking news on the last day to pay Ackerman under the agreement.

T HE GIZMO: Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 with Verizon 4G LTE mobile access (if you want) brings the game. APPLE CORED? Steve and company have done good Jobs laughing away iPad competition. Just imagine the party they threw last week when HP exited the tablet computer biz after giving its TouchPad the best darned six-week retail run they could muster. Still, there's one rival product Apple sees as a serious threat - Samsung's new Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet. Enough so that Apple took Samsung to court in Düsseldorf, Germany, earlier this month and won a temporary injunction banning sales of the tablet in 26 European Union countries based on the physical resemblance of the device to the E.U.-design-patented iPad.

Christopher Levy has been out of work since June of last year, when federal law enforcement officials shut down Life's Good Inc., alleging that its founder and chief executive, Robert Stinson, was running a $16 million Ponzi scheme. As if unemployment weren't enough of a burden for Levy, 48, of King of Prussia, the IRS is after him for $353,000 in Life's Good payroll taxes the agency says the Philadelphia company failed to turn over. "I had nothing to do with taxes," Levy said in an interview at his attorney's office.

LONDON - With their former boss under arrest, tabloid reporters are beginning to reveal secrets of what it was like to work in Rebekah Brooks' newsrooms. Disguises, bullying, lies dropped into copy - all were part of the pressure-cooker atmosphere that prevailed, according to former journalists. Michael Taggart, who worked at the Sun in 2003, said the paper under Brooks was marked by "ruthlessness and misogyny. " Taggart described routinely participating in overnight stakeouts while at the Sun , something he said was rare at other papers he had worked for. The News of the World famously employed Mazhar Mahmood, who dressed as a hidden camera-wielding Middle Eastern potentate dubbed the "Fake Sheik" to trick scores of prominent figures into embarrassing indiscretions.

LONDON - Britain's voracious tabloids may have hit a new low: the News of the World was facing claims yesterday that it hacked into a missing 13-year-old's phone messages, possibly hampering a police inquiry into her abduction and murder. Britons are used to seeing their press harass royals, sports stars and celebrities, constantly eavesdropping and paying even the most tangential sources for information about stars' sex lives and drug problems. Yet the hacking case involving 13-year-old Milly Dowler has horrified everyone, including British Prime Minister David Cameron.

Raheem Brock, 33, a former Dobbins High School and Temple University football player, was in court Tuesday to face theft charges after he allegedly skipped out on a $27 restaurant bill last week on South Street. During the brief hearing before Municipal Judge Patrick Dugan, Brock's attorney, Sonte Anthony Reavis, asked for a trial. The judge set the next court date - a status hearing - for July 20. A date for the nonjury trial could be given then. "At this point, we have no comment to the press other than to say that he's not guilty and he wants to go to trial," Reavis said.

A team with 16 seniors, most who have been playing together since they were in the third grade, isn't always easy to manage. As with a family, there are ups and downs. There are hard times and fights, and sometimes it's difficult to keep it together. When the 2011 postseason started, the Moorestown boys' lacrosse team was entrenched in one of those hard times. How the Quakers ended up winning a state championship is the result of a lot of changes coming together in a very short period of time.