OK, Philly, you can drink the water without worry now.

“We can all confidently say the threat has passed,” Mayor Jim Kenney said at a news briefing Tuesday evening. “I repeat, all the city’s drinking water is safe to drink.” He even drank a glass himself.

Repeated tests detected no evidence of contamination from the 8,100 gallons of hazardous material that spilled just before midnight Friday from a Bucks County plant and into a Delaware River tributary about 13 miles north of the Philadelphia Water Department’s Baxter water-treatment plant, city officials said.

In fact, Mike Carroll, the city’s deputy managing director, said it would have been impossible for the contaminants to reach the Baxter intake before the gate was closed early Saturday.

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Pennsylvania lawmakers plan to introduce legislation that would place a moratorium on private equity and other for-profit firms from buying hospitals in the state, following closures and cutbacks that curtailed care in parts of suburban Philadelphia.

The package of bills would also prohibit owners from taking out dividends within two years of an acquisition and limit a type of financing known as sale-leaseback transactions on hospitals’ real estate. The legislation was floated at the end of the session last year but didn’t progress. A separate bill introduced this year, meanwhile, would make it more difficult to close hospitals.

The legislation, which is similar to efforts to curb corporate ownership and closures in a handful of states like Rhode Island and Illinois, comes after cutbacks at private equity-owned Crozer Health and its closure of two Pennsylvania facilities: Springfield Hospital early last year in a move it called temporary, and Delaware County Memorial in November amidst a court battle over its future.

The private equity industry’s charge into hospital ownership has lawmakers and patient advocates across the country on edge just as labor shortages and inflation have thrown the industry into financial crisis. The backlash is unsurprising since private hospitals have a reputation for putting profits ahead of the needs of the community, especially in poor areas, said Alan Sager, professor of health law, policy and management at Boston University.

More than 8,000 gallons of a hazardous solution have spilled into Otter Creek near the Delaware River in Bristol Borough, Bucks County, officials said late Saturday, and the total potentially could reach 12,000 gallons.

The Coast Guard said the spill of what it described as a water-soluble “latex finishing material” was reported about 11:40 p.m. Friday. Cleanup operations are underway, and the Coast Guard was urging people to stay away from the area. It said it had received no reports of harm to wildlife.

The Coast Guard did not identify the source of the spill, but other news outlets reported that it was the Trinseo chemical plant. The Coast Guard said the source “has been secured and is under investigation.”

Agencies involved the investigation include the EPA, NOAA, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, and the state Fish and Boat Commission, the Coast Guard said.

A company traced to an address used by M. Night Shyamalan, writer and director of The Sixth Sense and Knock at the Cabin, has paid $24 million for a 210-acre Chester County property that was associated with generations of the Rockefeller family.

Public records show that Woodkirk LLC sold the Kirkwood Farm on Providence Road in Willistown Township to 944 Providence Road LLC for $24 million on March 14. The registered address for 944 Providence LLC is on Campus Boulevard in Newtown Square. That is the same address used by the M. Night Shyamalan Foundation Inc., the famed director’s charitable organization.

Shyamalan, who grew up in suburban Philadelphia, could not be reached for comment. He and his family live in Willistown on an estate called Ravenwood. Conservationists who had feared hundreds of houses would be developed on the Willistown Township site known as Kirkwood Farm are relieved.

“The sale is going to have a conservation-minded outcome,” said Kate Etherington, executive director of the Willistown Conservation Trust. “Kirkwood Farm is not being sold to a developer. And we’re thrilled.”

Authorities across the Mid-Atlantic keep expanding spotted lanternfly quarantine zones, but the tenacious bugs don’t seem to be getting the message.

In February, Pennsylvania officials added six counties — Butler, Clearfield, Clinton, Fayette, Lawrence and Somerset — to their list of counties under quarantine, bringing the total to 51 statewide. In doing so, Agriculture Secretary Russell Redding sounded an optimistic note: "Through collective and intentional efforts, including instituting quarantine zones, we continue to slow the spread of this insect, and I call on all Pennsylvanians to assist.”

Maryland officials enlarged their quarantine in March to cover nearly the entire state. They added seven counties: Allegany, Calvert, Caroline, Prince George’s, Queen Anne’s, Talbot and Wicomico. That raised the number of counties in the quarantine to 17; Baltimore city is also included.

And in Virginia, the quarantine now covers 22 jurisdictions, up from four from the beginning of 2022. The latest additions rein in the Shenandoah Valley region as well as pockets in the southwest and near Washington, DC. The quarantines restrict the transport of items known to enable the spread of lanternflies during any stage of life. Regulated items include plants, construction waste, firewood, packing materials and vehicles.

WASHINGTON — A Pennsylvania woman who was accused — but not convicted — of aiding in the theft of a computer from then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office suite during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol was sentenced Thursday to three years in prison for a half-dozen other crimes after a prosecutor described her as “among the worst” of the rioters that day.

Riley June Williams, 24, who was found guilty of six offenses Nov. 21 in U.S. District Court in Washington, apologized at her sentencing for being “disrespectful, hateful and angry at innocent people” during the Jan. 6 mayhem. Back then, she said, she was “a young and stupid girl” who “was addicted to the internet” and believed lies by President Donald Trump and his supporters about Mr. Trump being denied reelection because of massive fraud.

“There’s no justification or excuse for my behavior,” she told Judge Amy Berman Jackson. Echoing a defense attorney, who said Williams had been “manipulated” by Mr. Trump and others into storming the Capitol, Williams said in court, “I stand before you as a responsible woman who admits she made a mistake.”

Jurors in her trial said they could not unanimously agree on whether Williams was culpable in the theft of a laptop computer from a conference room in Ms. Pelosi’s suite or for obstructing an official proceeding of Congress. Those two charges have since been dismissed at the request of prosecutors, meaning Williams will not face a second trial. She was convicted of civil disorder, impeding police officers, trespassing on restricted grounds, illegally demonstrating in the Capitol and two counts of disorderly conduct.

In 2021, then-Gov. Tom Wolf announced that a Danish artificial turf recycler would be opening its first U.S. processing center in Pennsylvania, providing a new destination for ever-accumulating piles of discarded sports fields. The company, Re-Match, would receive Pennsylvania loans and grants totaling $1.85 million to open its recycling facility, which is expected to create around 40 new jobs in the commonwealth, officials said.

More than a year later, the processing center hasn’t opened. In fact, an official in Rush Township, Schuylkill County, where the future plant is expected to operate, said the company hasn’t yet gotten the municipal approvals needed for the project. Meanwhile, the artificial turf they one day hope to recycle has been waiting around, stacked in sagging piles in Pennsylvania fields and parking lots. And the very same company that is in line to capture nearly $2 million in state incentives is also getting notices that it’s violating the commonwealth’s environmental laws.

Over the last few years, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has identified infractions at three separate sites where Re-Match was storing the turf. DEP officials haven't yet imposed any fines on Re-Match for the violations and are working with the company on a plan to relocate the material to the location of its future processing center, an agency representative said.

Re-Match representatives acknowledged there have been delays in opening the Pennsylvania recycling facility, as they've been focusing first on launching another location in Holland. It would have been far cheaper and easier for them to discard the fields rather than storing them for years — but they say they couldn't do that.

"We don't want it to be landfilled or burned," Re-Match CEO and co-founder Nikolaj Magne Larsen said. "One of the worst things I can do, from a board perspective/owner's perspective, is to throw my materials away, even though it costs me more to store them."

HARRISBURG — The state agency overseeing Pennsylvania’s troubled mortgage relief program has leveled a slew of new accusations against the private contractor originally hired to run it as thousands of homeowners remain stuck in limbo and at risk of further financial harm. The allegations represent a stark reversal from the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency. In January, the agency announced that it would end the contract March 31 and run the program itself, but pointedly avoided saying the company, Innovative Emergency Management, Inc., was at fault.

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In a scathing letter dated March 1, PHFA leveled a series of new criticisms at the company, and ended the contract even sooner than planned. The housing agency now says the company failed to deliver what it had promised since the beginning. More recently, IEM prematurely denied assistance to some homeowners in an effort to close applications quickly, PHFA said.

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The Pennsylvania contract, signed in October 2021, was supposed to last five years. In its March letter alleging serious problems with the company’s performance, PHFA noted a recent uptick in the number of homeowners denied assistance because IEM caseworkers deemed their mortgage or utility company unresponsive. The increase, which the agency said began after it first moved to end the contract, appears to represent an effort by IEM to close applications “prematurely,” the letter said.

PHFA spokesperson Scott Elliott said in a statement that it was not yet clear how many homeowners were affected and that PHFA would review those cases to ensure that no one was unfairly disqualified.

HARRISBURG — Commonwealth Court has ruled that workers’ compensation should cover the cost of medical marijuana for treatment of injuries suffered on the job.

The court on Friday handed down two decisions in cases brought by workers who were hurt on the job and were initially prescribed opioids for treatment. But in both cases, the workers sought to get their cost of medical marijuana covered by workers’ compensation, asserting that the marijuana has been more effective in treating their pain.

In Teresa L. Fegley, as Executrix of the Estate of Paul Sheetz v. Firestone Tire and Rubber (Workers’ Compensation Appeal Board), Sheetz had been injured at work in 1977, according to the opinion written by Judge Anne Covey. He underwent two back surgeries and over the years, he treated the pain with opioid and narcotics.

In 2019, “at the recommendation of his doctor,” he began using medical marijuana to deal with his back pain in the “hope of eliminating the need for the opiates and narcotics he had been taking for approximately 30 years. Medical marijuana afforded Claimant pain relief and reduced his need for the opiates and narcotics,” according to Judge Covey’s opinion. She added that Sheetz also reported that taking medical marijuana apparently provided psychological benefits and in 2019, he began seeking to have the cost of his medical marijuana covered by workers’ comp.