BREAKING: Fumo Guilty On All Counts

INQUIRER: Former State Sen. Vincent Fumo was convicted of all 137 counts against him today as his marathon federal corruption trial ended in a stunning victory for prosecutors. The jury also found co-defendant Ruth Arnao guilty of all 45 counts against her. After a 30-minute hearing this afternoon, U.S. District Judge Ronald L. Buckwalter agreed to let Fumo and Arnao remain free pending sentencing although he ordered them to post bail of $2 million and $500,000, respectively, by Wednesday. The two had been free on unsecured own-recognizance bail since they were charged. Both defendants were ordered not to leave the Eastern District of Pennsylvania – nine counties in the southeastern part of the state – without court approval and to report in person once a week to federal pre-trial services personnel and three more times each week by phone. Buckwalter did not set a sentencing date but scheduled a hearing for Thursday morning on how much in assets Fumo should be ordered to forfeit, based on the jury’s finding that he illegally funneled public funds for his personal benefit. Prosecutors are expected to seek a prison term of more than 10 years for the once-powerful politician. MORE

PHILLY CLOUT: Mayor Nutter just announced that his upcoming budget won’t include layoffs in the police or fire departments.  Nutter, joined by Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey and Fire Commissioner Lloyd Ayers, also said there will be no closures of facilities or elimination of equipment.  His plan last fall to close libraries and eliminate fire companies drew legal challenges and prompted wide-spread controversy. “I refuse to do anything that halts our progress on a march to a safer city,” Nutter said. Nutter – who must close a five-year $1 billion budget shortfall — is set to release his budget and five-year financial plan in City Council on Thursday. MORE

SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE: Post Intelligencer First Major Daily To Go Online-Only

 

ASSOCIATED PRESS:  The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which has chronicled the news of the city since logs slid down its steep streets to the harbor and miners caroused in its bars before heading north to Alaska’s gold fields, will print its final edition Tuesday. Hearst Corp., which owns the 146-year-old P-I, said Monday that it failed to find a buyer for the newspaper, which it put up for a 60-day sale in January after years of losing money. Now the P-I will shift entirely to the Web. “Tonight will be the final run, so let’s do it right,” publisher Roger Oglesby told the newsroom. Hearst’s decision to abandon the print product in favor of an Internet-only version is the first for a large American newspaper, raising questions about whether the company can make money in a medium where others have come up short. MORE

PEW RESEARCH CENTER: As many newspapers struggle to stay economically viable, fewer than half of Americans (43%) say that losing their local newspaper would hurt civic life in their community “a lot.” Even fewer (33%) say they would personally miss reading the local newspaper a lot if it were no longer available. Not unexpectedly, those who get local news regularly from newspapers are much more likely than those who read them less often to see the potential shutdown of a local paper as a significant loss. More than half of regular newspaper readers (56%) say that if the local newspaper they read most often no longer published — either in print or online — it would hurt the civic life of the community a lot; an almost identical percentage (55%) says they would personally miss reading the paper a lot if it were no longer available. MORE