Making Waves: Adam Garber, (center) field director for PennEnvironment, touts the new EPA safeguards for small waterways. At far right, Democratic mayoral nominee Jim Kenney questions those who would turn back the clock on clean water laws. New federal safeguards…

Mark Stehle Samantha Phillips, director of the city’s Office of Emergency Management, answers questions about her agency’s preparedness for an oil-train disaster in Philly. She spoke at the Center City Residents Association meeting at the Trinity Center. Railroad companies that…

Critics of a new Pennsylvania law that seeks to stop criminal offenders from speaking public­ly have welcomed a federal judge’s ruling that they have standing to argue their case that the law violates the constitutional protection of free speech. Chief…

Activists are trying once again to force local retailers to charge customers for using shopping bags that can clog drains, hang in trees and take up valuable space in landfills. Three environmental groups today launched a new effort to get…

As millennials flood in and real-estate prices surge in some neighborhoods of Philadelphia, many residents won’t benefit from a rising tide of prosperity unless city leaders provide the financial and political structure to make that happen, according to a new…

Hillary Petrozziello An early draft of the Bill of Rights. Amid the heated national debate on the Senate’s report alleging torture by CIA officers and sustained protests about decisions by grand juries to clear police involved in the deaths of…

Charles Mosteller Protesters outside energy hub meeting at Drexel University The noisy scene outside the student center at Drexel Univer­sity appeared to be just the latest installment in the long-running confrontation between the natural-gas industry and its opponents in the…

The Philadelphia Furniture Bank, the city’s first to supply furniture free of charge to people moving off the streets, will work with clients who have been pre-approved by the public or private social-service agencies that are caring for them. Clients…

The planned buyer of Philadelphia Gas Works pulled out of the deal late Thursday, ending a four-year process that could have modernized the utility and paid off a chunk of the city’s public-pension deficit, but ended up as a only…