The turnpike is required to pay $450 million annually to PennDOT for nonturnpike costs because of a 2007 state law, Act 44, which attempted to find money for road and bridge repairs and mass transit.

A long-awaited analysis by the Congressional Budget Office found that the benefits of an increase in legal residents from immigration legislation currently being debated in the Senate — which includes a pathway to citizenship — would outweigh the costs.

The association voted on the measure at its annual meeting in Chicago. The AMA noted that obesity rates in the United States have “doubled among adults in the last twenty years and tripled among children in a single generation” and that the World Health Organization, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Internal Revenue Service already recognize the condition as a disease…

Dilma Rousseff, a former leftist guerrilla who was imprisoned and tortured during Brazil’s 1964-85 dictatorship, said on Tuesday that the protests were evidence of a vibrant democracy and acknowledge the need for better public services and more responsive governance.

Even if it might not entirely reflect the realities of today’s society, the retirement mandate was properly added to the state constitution by the voters 45 years ago, the state Supreme Court concluded in a unanimous ruling.

Gov. Tom Corbett’s office announced without fanfare Monday afternoon that he had signed the bill into law. It would allow policies sold through the [new insurance] exchanges to provide for abortion only in cases of rape or incest or to save the life of the woman.

Concerned about the stalled smoking rate, the CDC launched a graphic advertising campaign last year that was the agency’s largest and starkest anti-smoking push. The campaign triggered an increase of 200,000 calls to quit lines, and CDC officials said thousands of smokers probably went on to kick the habit. The CDC did a second wave of the ads earlier this year…

The justices voted 7-2 to throw out Arizona’s voter-approved requirement that prospective voters document their U.S. citizenship in order to use a registration form produced under the federal “Motor Voter” voter registration law.

Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor suggested that judicial elections should be eliminated in Pennsylvania because contributions to those campaigns lead the public to perceive judges as influenced by donors.

Philadelphia’s schools, whose chronic budget problems led to a state takeover in 2002, have not been this close to the abyss in memory. The troubles have many causes: rising pension costs, high debt payments for past borrowing that papered over budget gaps, a flight to charter schools and a block-grant formula for state aid that has fallen behind enrollments, which have increased 5,000 a year between charter and traditional schools, according to Mr. Hite.

As Iranians responded to the victory of the cleric Hassan Rowhani in the country’s presidential race over the weekend by erupting into street parties not seen in many years, it almost seemed as if some sort of reformist revolution could be under way.

Five of the six current Supremes, all white males, will need an extension of the mandatory 70 retirement age to complete existing or terms to be determined at this year’s election. With a straight face all have pledged to hear the case on judicial retirement without regard to personal benefit by the decision.

William Binney: We tried to stay for the better part of seven years inside the government trying to get the government to recognize the unconstitutional, illegal activity that they were doing and openly admit that and devise certain ways that would be constitutionally and legally acceptable to achieve the ends they were really after.