Do students have a First Amendment right to make fun of their principals and teachers on Facebook and other social-media sites? Or can schools discipline them for talking out of school? In a pair of free-speech rulings, a federal appeals court in Pennsylvania last week came down on the side of the students. In both cases, the court said that schools were wrong to suspend students for posting parodies of ...

SOME INGREDIENTS IN THE STEAMING HORmonal stew that is American adolescence: For Prom Night last week, senior class officers at Benicia High School in California assembled some party favors -- a gift-wrapped condom, a Planned Parenthood pamphlet advocating abstinence and a piece of candy. "We know Prom Night is a big night for a lot of people, sexually," senior Lisa Puryear told the San Jose Mercury News. "We were trying to spread a little responsible behavior." But administrators confiscated the ...

Love is all Prince William and Kate Middleton need: they've asked that charitable donations be made in lieu of gifts. But that doesn't mean the rest of town isn't cashing in. Economists predicted the royal wedding would give London a business boost, and already there's no shortage of swag for sale in anticipation of William and Kate's April 29 nuptials, from the classy to the ... less classy . "People want to be a part of this wedding, and ...

When I traveled through northeastern Pennsylvania in March for my TIME cover story on shale natural gas, it wasn't hard to find unhappy homeowners like Sherry Vargason. Vargason, who lives on a cattle farm in rural Bradford County, has leased her land for shale-gas exploration, and a well was drilled a few hundred feet from her front door. Not long after, she began to experience problems with her water, which comes from an underground well on her ...

Six years ago, Luz Cuevas heard an explosion upstairs in her house and ran into her 10-day-old daughter's bedroom. The baby had vanished. Cuevas looked up and noticed the window was open, which struck her as odd on a cold winter night. Before she could make sense of the empty crib, she noticed a small fire that quickly engulfed the whole bedroom. Investigators determined that it swallowed the remains of the infant as well. Cuevas never believed it had. ...

In no national election since 1860 have politicians been so Negro-minded as in 1936. There were 32 blackamoor delegates and alternates at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia last June. Fortnight ago, after much soul-searching, Democratic National Chairman James A. Farley picked his Negro campaign managers. Last week the Republicans completed their slate of Negro managers. Estimates of the amount of money both parties will spend to corral the Negro vote before election day ran as high as $1,000,000. All emotion ...

It's countdown time in Philadelphia's public schools. Just 21 days remain before the state reading and math tests in March, and the kids and faculty at James G. Blaine Elementary, an all-black, inner-city school that spans pre-K to eighth grade, have been drilling for much of the day. At 2:45 in the afternoon, Rasheed Abdullah, the kinetic lead math teacher, stages what could be called a prep rally with 11 third-graders. The kids, who are at neither the top nor ...

Having been denied the right to puff in public buildings, workplaces and bars, staff and student smokers in Pennsylvania public colleges and universities now find themselves forced to leave campus property before lighting up. And they're fighting back. Opposition is mounting to a new ordinance banning smoking anywhere within the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education . As one of the most far-reaching prohibitions in the country, the ordinance forbids smoking both inside and outside campus buildings, ...

No green light flared from a track-side tower; no warning whistle echoed down the line. But no trainman missed the signal. When the Supreme Court gave its approval last week to the merger of the Pennsylvania and New York Central railroads, it was clearing the track for the nation's entire rail system. It was giving railroad management permission to highball into the future. As Justice Abe Fortas read the 37-page opinion that put an end to ten years of ...

Fog settled down on the grimy industrial towns of Pennsylvania's Monongahela Valley one day last week, blurred the bleak outlines of steel mills and foundries, and softened the glare of great furnaces. At sooty Donora , it was particularly heavy; the hills stand close and no breath of breeze had reached its streets. The haze thickened as locomotives and the high stacks of U.S. Steel's huge Donora Zinc Works sent fumes into the still air. But nobody paid much attention ...