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Philadelphia City Councilwoman Maria Quinones-Sanchez pushed for the city to change its practice of detaining immigrants on behalf of federal officials.

Emma Jacobs

Former  WRVO/Central New York reporter for the Innovation Trail.

Emma Jacobs is a native of Boston. She studied history, so she went for more practical training in public radio at NPR member-stations WNYC and WBUR. She helped shape Wired's Haiti Rewired project, a 2010 Knight Batten Innovations in Journalism Awards notable initiative. She's contributed to NPR's National Desk, and to Living on Earth, The Environment Report, Only a Game, Voice of America, and Word of Mouth.  She now reports for WHYY in Philadelphia.

  • Local police are sometimes asked to hold immigrants suspected of crimes until they can be moved to federal custody for deportation. But a mix of politics and liability is undermining that system.
  • United Methodist church officials have defrocked the Rev. Frank Schaefer, who presided over his son's gay wedding.
  • When the Supreme Court overturned part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act in June, it granted federal benefits to many couples married in states that have legalized same-sex marriage. This set off phase two of litigation: a flurry of lawsuits in Pennsylvania and other states which have not.
  • The social media site Pinterest is known as a place where people share recipes, crafts or fashion. But a new set of images have started showing up: mug shots. It's the result of one local police department's effort to get wanted notices in front of more eyeballs.
  • With the price of suburban farmland sky high, matchmakers are setting up landowners who want to lease their land to small farmers seeking to expand their growing areas and be close to urban areas where their customers live.
  • Before IBM had Watson, Westinghouse had Elektro. The Ohio manufacturer built the 7-foot-tall robot as a showpiece for the 1939 World's Fair. Now, more than 70 years later, a replica of the once-famous machine is preparing to embark on a national tour.
  • Members of the Inuit community of Canada's Newfoundland and Labrador province once used wood-and-canvas canoes to navigate the region's rivers. Joe Goudie is the last person making such canoes in this corner of Canada, and, under doctor's orders, he's finally putting down his tools.
  • Spring brings in one very unusual business in northern Canada: iceberg harvesting. Every spring, icebergs break off Greenland and float south. For residents of Newfoundland, on Canada's Atlantic coast, icebergs are a regular seasonal sight, but they still have some special qualities that Newfoundlanders are serving up with a dash of alcohol.
  • A new casino set to open in Atlantic City has announced it will set term limits for its front-line staff. When employees' terms run out, they'll have to go through the hiring process again. The casino says the policy will keep service fresh. Others say the company is taking advantage of a tough job market.
  • The Cape Race Lighthouse has warned boats off Canada's rocky coast for more than a century. It lies just south of the eastern-most point in North America. On the kind of stormy day the lighthouse was built for, its keeper talks about hanging on in one of the farthest corners in North America.