Young, well-heeled and independent-minded women, who are also conscious of the perils of using public transport, are helping to propel a boom in sales of scooters.

30 percent of Catholics in the European countries and 36 percent in the United States agree with the church ban on female priests, compared with 80 percent in Africa and 76 percent in the Philippines, the country with the largest Catholic population in Asia.

Party committee members were splintered among five candidates Saturday during two rounds of voting at their winter meeting. State Treasurer Rob McCord received the most votes in both rounds, but fell short of the two-thirds majority necessary to win an endorsement.

The District of Columbia city council moved another step closer to decriminalizing marijuana possession in the nation’s capital Tuesday, approving a bill to do just that on an 11-1 vote. But it only acted after approving last-minute amendments that would make public pot-smoking a criminal offense and give police the right to conduct vehicle searches if they smell marijuana.

Public support for assisted dying has grown in the past half-century but depends in part on terminology. In a Gallup Poll conducted in May, for example, 70 percent of respondents agreed that when patients and their families wanted it, doctors should be allowed to “end the patient’s life by some painless means.” In 1948, that share was 37 percent, and it rose steadily for four decades but has remained roughly stable since the mid-1990s…

Sometimes we should lighten up and acknowledge that an adversary has done something worthwhile.

NEW YORK TIMES: Her first thought after she heard the news, after she screamed and made her mother and boyfriend leave the room, was that she would never have children. Amanda Baxley’s doctor had just told her, over a speakerphone in her psychiatrist’s office, that she had the gene for Gerstmann-Straussler-Scheinker disease, or GSS, which would inevitably lead to her slow and terrible death…

According to a report by the Pennsylvania State Coroners Association last year, heroin-related fatalities rose steadily from 332 in 2009 to 827 in 2012 in 40 counties that were surveyed. A partial report from 2013 counted 524 fatalities through the summer. Over that time period, a total of 2,676 people statewide died overdosing on heroin or a combination of heroin and other drugs.

Muhlenberg College political pollster Chris Borick said despite Schwartz’s centrist voting record, it will be difficult for her to overcome the liberal name-calling from Republicans. And that may worry party Democrats intent on seizing the governor’s mansion from Gov. Tom Corbett, whose poll numbers are abysmal…

The governor’s plan relies too heavily on putting off the state’s bills. He would postpone full pension payments, repeating a mistake that helped the state accumulate unfunded liabilities. He would delay payments to Medicaid providers, straining the health-care industry.

The Pennsylvania Association of School Business Officials echoed the other groups in pushing for Corbett to distribute the new money to schools through the general schools appropriation that helps underwrite the cost of instruction and operations.