Tears

KERMIT GOSNELL, the former West Philadelphia abortion doctor, spent the second day of his capital murder trial Tuesday watching a former employee and a patient dissolve into tears while testifying about their bloodcurdling experiences at his now-closed "House of Horrors" clinic. Adrienne Moton, 35, who spent four years working for Gosnell, administering drugs and performing ultrasounds despite having only a high-school diploma, testified that she, Gosnell and other employees cut the spinal cords of dozens of babies - some still moving and seemingly alive.

A tearful girl who ran away from a crossing guard outside the Helen L. Beeler Elementary School on Friday morning turned up safe after seven Evesham Township police cars were deployed to the school. Police said the crossing guard asked what was troubling the girl but received no answer before the child disappeared from view. The woman then called 911. The girl, 7, was accounted for within 90 minutes of the 8:35 a.m. emergency call. But the seven-vehicle response and intensive search of the neighborhood sparked "a high volume" of calls from residents and parents worried about what was going on at Beeler.

DEAR ABBY: While cleaning out my attic yesterday, I found a letter that my daughter wrote to you a few years ago when she was 13. She was responding to a poem that had appeared in your column, "Legacy of an Adopted Child. " She was going through a very trying time and was being bullied because she was adopted and looked very different from her parents. My daughter is grown now and is a delightful, successful young woman. That poem helped her greatly. Can you reprint it for others?

I have an embarrassing story to tell you about how I tore my quadriceps muscle. I didn't do it skiing or running, snowboarding or hiking. All I did was get off the toilet seat. Yes, I'm too old to pee-pee without hazard. Last Sunday I left the bathroom, took a step, and got a pain in my thigh that felt as bad as childbirth without the ice chips. I tried to take two more steps, but couldn't walk. I broke out in a sweat and cried out in pain. The dogs didn't notice anything amiss.

SCHLADMING, Austria - Lindsey Vonn will miss the rest of the ski season after tearing knee ligaments and breaking a bone in her leg in a high-speed crash Tuesday at the world championships. The U.S. team expects her to return for the next World Cup season and the 2014 Sochi Olympics. Vonn lost balance on her right leg while landing a jump in the super-G. She flipped in the air, landed on her back, and smashed through a gate. The four-time overall World Cup winner and 2010 Olympic downhill champion received medical treatment on the slope for 12 minutes before being taken by helicopter to a hospital in Schladming.

If notes on staves were New Year's greetings, the Philadelphia Orchestra would have sailed a sheaf of good wishes out into Verizon Hall Monday night. At what he told a sold-out crowd was "the biggest party in town," Yannick Nézet-Séguin led a program that, Janus-like, glanced back at a year of "great moments and maybe not-so-great moments," but looked forward, too. Everyone knew what he meant. Never uttered was the word bankruptcy , but by forming a first half of the program with Haydn's "Farewell" Symphony and music from Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier , the orchestra's music director put sound to his aspirations, and, it's hoped, the city's as well.

SOMETHING IS wrong with me. I've yet to weep for the victims of the Newtown massacre. And I usually cry at everything. Just ask my co-workers. But I didn't feel a thing when I heard the father of 6-year-old Emilie Parker describe how his softhearted little girl had loved to make greeting cards for those having a bad day. I barely blinked when I read that tiny Charlotte Bacon died wearing her new pink dress and boots. I couldn't squeeze out a lone tear for sweet-voiced Ana Marquez-Greene, who sings "Come, Thou Almighty King" in a family video that is going viral.

RAHFEK and Rashawn Dennis' older sister, Zykia Sanders, 22, was their confidante and role model. But early Saturday morning, police say, a thug violently ripped the boys' sister away from them, when a stray bullet not meant for Sanders tore through the young woman's back as she stood outside the West Park Apartments, on Busti Street near Holden, in Powelton. The woman, who relatives said was about to graduate with a bachelor's degree in business administration, became the city's 295th homicide victim of 2012 when she died of her wounds about 2:30 a.m. at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

BRICK, N.J. - The FEMA mobile disaster-recovery station was nothing more than a trailer, a couple of folding tables, some phones, and a lot of people wandering around the parking lot of the Drum Point Elementary School, where a sign that said "Respect" on fading construction paper faced out a window. Nearby were giant Dumpsters where residents were allowed to bring the ruins of their flooded homes. Across the street was the PAL center, where hot meals were being served. Not far away was the Brick Little League field, where the ballplayers and parents have been serving hot breakfasts and lunches nearly every day. There were mostly dazed looks on the people who showed up at one of the two FEMA mobile centers that opened Friday - the other was in Cape May Courthouse - to start recovering.

An angry Hurricane Sandy landed hard on Philadelphia and its suburbs Monday night, forcing evacuations and closures and frazzling nerves during what authorities said could be a once-in-a-lifetime storm. People across the region listened warily as winds rose to window-rattling intensity and stayed there for long seconds, and rain came down in sheets. Creeks and waterways rose, trees fell, streets closed, and, in places, power died. High winds shut the Schuylkill Expressway, I-95, and other major highways and closed the major bridges across the Delaware River.