TIMES ON LINE: A top budget aide to Gov. Tom Corbett says a British firm has extended its bid to manage the $3.5 billion Pennsylvania Lottery while the administration mulls over how it will respond to the state attorney general rejecting the deal…

“Most big corporations trade well above book value,” Warren said, referring to the measure of a company’s assets minus liabilities. “But many of the Wall Street banks right now are trading below book value. And I can only think of two reasons why that would be so. One would be because nobody believes that the banks’ books are honest, or the second would be that no one believes that the banks are really manageable.”…

“His continued presence in the Vatican is necessary, otherwise he might be defenseless. He wouldn’t have his immunity, his prerogatives, his security, if he is anywhere else,” said one Vatican official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Drones are becoming a darling of law enforcement authorities across the country. But they have given rise to fears of government surveillance, in many cases even before they take to the skies. And that has prompted local and state lawmakers from Seattle to Tallahassee to proscribe how they can be used by police or to ground them altogether…

It is a generational thing. Despite the remarkable progress in civil rights and racial harmony, persons who grew up in the 1940s and 1950s and into the 1960s are likely to have been influenced by racial stereotypes. Studies have shown that early attitudes become deeply rooted in one portion of the brain. It takes conscious effort from another portion to offset their influence.

Lawyers representing the Corbett administration and plaintiffs who are challenging the constitutionality of the voter ID law in state Commonwealth Court agreed that the law won’t be enforced as voters choose nominees for judicial and municipal offices.

But that wasn’t the only reason she rejected it. She cited the state lottery act, the gaming act and other applicable case law as reasons why the contract didn’t meet her test for form and legality.

J. P. McCaskey, representing the defense, defeated Lancaster Catholic by a score of 6 – 0 yesterday evening with Magistrate Judge Bruce Roth presiding. McCaskey coach Kevin Webster observed that “I have to congratulate Lancaster Catholic as they obviously worked hard and the trial was closer than it might appear.”

The absurdity of reciprocal recognition without common standards was brought into sharp focus in Philadelphia in 2010. Marqus Hill of Philadelphia, who had been denied a concealed carry permit in 2006 and lost his appeal in 2008, obtained one from Florida in 2009. Then, in 2010, he fired 13 shots into and killed a teenager who, Mr. Hill claimed, had broken into his car. He is serving an eight-to-20-year prison sentence…

But a source close to Allen says he feels as though he’s being pushed out — partly over the email scandal that Pentagon officials fear will never completely go away and partly because the other services are angling for one of their own to fill the coveted post as NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander in Brussels…