Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News

The final graduating class of Germantown High said goodbye on Wednesday - to each other, to their teachers, to a historic but troubled school that's being closed by a district desperate to save money and improve academics.

A handyman and amateur artist with a history of drug addiction pleaded guilty Wednesday to bludgeoning to death an elderly neighbor of Mayor Nutter who had hired him to work on his Wynnefield house.

A suspended northwestern Pennsylvania high school teacher must remain jailed until trial on federal charges that he possessed and created child pornography, including images of one boy he's charged in state court with molesting.

Award-winning journalist and war correspondent Michael Hastings, whose unflinching reporting ended the career of a top American army general, died early Tuesday in a car accident in Los Angeles, his employer and family said.

The story so far: Tyrek Taylor was detectives' best hope for solving the murder of Beau Zabel, the aspiring teacher from Minnesota killed in a robbery for his iPod. Now Taylor was dead, shot in cold blood just like Zabel.

AS CITY COUNCIL President Darrell Clarke declared yesterday that the city has done its part to solve the school-funding crisis, Gov. Corbett and state and city officials were moving closer to a deal that could send up to $100 million to the struggling district.

Regular residents will have a chance to buy properties to fix them up, unlike past auctions that bundled houses.

Since 1914, school has served distinguished alumni, industrial roots.

Sources say Gino DiPietro, who was allegedly murdered by a reputed mob soldier, had previously worn a wire.