DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday branded U.S. President Donald Trump a “criminal” for supporting protesters in Iran, and blamed demonstrators for causing thousands of deaths.
In a speech broadcast by state television, Khamenei said the protests had left “several thousand” people dead — the first indication from an Iranian leader of the extent of the casualties from the wave of protests that began Dec. 28 and led to a bloody crackdown.
“In this revolt, the U.S. president made remarks in person, encouraged seditious people to go ahead and said: ‘We do support you, we do support you militarily,’” said Khamenei, who has final say on all state matters. He reiterated an accusation that the U.S. seeks domination over Iran’s economic and political resources.
“We do consider the U.S. president a criminal, because of casualties and damages, because of accusations against the Iranian nation,” he said. He described the protesters as “foot soldiers” of the United States and said they had destroyed mosques and educational centers. “Through hurting people, they killed several thousand of them,” he said.
In response, Trump called for an end to Khamenei’s nearly 40-year reign.
“The man is a sick man who should run his country properly and stop killing people,” Trump told Politico in an interview Saturday. “His country is the worst place to live anywhere in the world because of poor leadership.”
“It’s time to look for new leadership in Iran,” he added.
Trump had sounded a conciliatory tone
His comments come a day after Trump sounded a conciliatory tone, saying that “Iran canceled the hanging of over 800 people,” and adding that “I greatly respect the fact that they canceled.” He did not clarify whom he spoke to in Iran to confirm the state of any planned executions. His comments were a sign he may be backing away from a military strike.
The official IRNA news agency reported that Tehran Prosecutor Gen. Ali Salehi, referring to Trump’s remarks about the cancellation of the death sentence of 800 protesters, said: “Trump always makes futile and irrelevant statements. Our attitude is severe, preventive, and fast.” He did not elaborate.
In recent days, Trump had told protesting Iranians that ” help is on the way ” and that his administration would “act accordingly” if the killing of demonstrators continued or if Iranian authorities executed detained protesters.
In his speech, Khamenei said rioters were armed with live ammunition that was imported from abroad, without naming any countries.
“We do not plan, we do not take the country toward war. But we do not release domestic offenders, worse than domestic offenders, there are international offenders. We do not let them alone either,” he said, and urged officials to pursue the cases.
An uneasy calm
Iran has returned to an uneasy calm after harsh repression of protests that began Dec. 28 over Iran’s ailing economy. The crackdown has left at least 3,095 people dead, according to the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, exceeding that of any other round of protest or unrest in Iran in decades and recalling the chaos surrounding the 1979 revolution.
The agency has been accurate throughout the years of demonstrations, relying on a network of activists inside Iran that confirms all reported fatalities. The AP has been unable to independently confirm the toll.
Iranian officials have repeatedly accused the United States and Israel of fomenting unrest in the country. On Friday, Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian, in a phone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin, accused the U.S. and Israel of meddling in the unrest.
Reports of limited internet access briefly restored
There have been no signs of protests for days in Tehran, where shopping and street life have returned to outward normality, and Iranian state media has not reported on any new unrest.
During the protests, authorities blocked all internet access on Jan. 8. On Saturday, text messaging and very limited internet services began functioning again briefly in parts of Iran, witnesses said.
Cellphone text messaging began operating overnight, while users were able to access local websites through a domestic internet service. Some also reported limited access to international internet services via use of a virtual private network, or VPN.
The extent of access and what was behind it wasn’t immediately clear. It was possible that officials were turning on some systems for the start of the Iranian working week, as the outage has affected businesses, particularly banks in the country trying to handle transactions.
Internet traffic monitoring service Cloudflare and internet access advocacy group NetBlocks reported very slight increases in connectivity Saturday morning, while Iran’s semiofficial Mehr news agency also reported limited internet access. It did not offer an explanation.
No new protests reported
A call by Iran’s exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi for protesters to take to the streets again from Saturday to Monday did not appear to have been heeded by Saturday afternoon.
Pahlavi, whose father was overthrown by Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, enjoys support from die-hard monarchists in the diaspora but has struggled to gain wider appeal within Iran. However, that has not stopped him from presenting himself as the transitional leader of Iran if the government were to fall.
The rare criticism from Israel of its close ally in Washington said the Gaza executive committee “was not coordinated with Israel and is contrary to its policy,” without details. Saturday’s statement also said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told the foreign ministry to contact Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
The committee announced by the White House on Friday includes no Israeli official but has an Israeli businessman, billionaire Yakir Gabay. Other members announced so far include two of U.S. President Donald Trump’s closest confidants, a former British prime minister, a U.S. general and representatives of several Middle Eastern governments.
The White House has said the executive committee will carry out the vision of a Trump-led “Board of Peace,” whose members have not yet been named. The White House also announced the members of a new Palestinian committee to run Gaza’s day to day affairs, with oversight from the executive committee.
The executive committee’s members include Rubio, Trump envoy Steve Witkoff, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Apollo Global Management CEO Marc Rowan, World Bank President Ajay Banga and Trump’s Deputy National Security Adviser Robert Gabriel.
Committee members also include a diplomat from Qatar, an intelligence chief from Egypt and Turkey’s foreign minister — all countries have been ceasefire mediators — as well as a Cabinet minister for the United Arab Emirates.
Turkey has a strained relationship with Israel but good relations with Hamas and could play an important role in persuading the group to yield power and disarm. Hamas has said it will dissolve its government in Gaza once the new Palestinian committee takes office, but it has shown no sign that it will dismantle its military wing or security forces.
Netanyahu’s office didn’t respond Saturday to questions about its objections regarding the executive committee.
Minutes after its statement, Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir in a statement backed Netanyahu and urged him to order the military to prepare to return to war. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, another far-right Netanyahu ally, said on social media that “the countries that kept Hamas alive cannot be the ones that replace it.”
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Gaza’s second-largest militant group after Hamas, in a statement Saturday also expressed dissatisfaction with the makeup of the Gaza executive committee and claimed it reflected Israeli “specifications.”
The Trump administration on Wednesday said the U.S.-drafted ceasefire plan for Gaza was now moving into its second phase, which includes the new Palestinian committee in Gaza, deployment of an international security force, disarmament of Hamas and reconstruction of the war-battered territory.
The ceasefire in the deadliest war ever fought between Israel and Hamas took effect on Oct. 10. The first phase focused on the return of all remaining hostages in exchange for the release of hundreds of Palestinian detainees, along with a surge in humanitarian aid and a partial withdrawal of Israeli forces in Gaza.
The war began with the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took over 250 hostage. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed over 71,400 Palestinians, including over 460 since this ceasefire began, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
The ministry, part of the Hamas-run government, maintains detailed casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by U.N. agencies and independent experts.
President Donald Trump said Saturday that he would charge a 10% import tax starting in February on goods from eight European nations because of their opposition to American control of Greenland, setting up a potentially dangerous test of U.S. partnerships in Europe.
Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands. and Finland would face the tariff, Trump said in a social media post while at his golf club in West Palm Beach, Fla. The rate would climb to 25% on June 1 if no deal was in place for “the Complete and Total purchase of Greenland” by the United States, he said.
The Republican president appeared to indicate that he was using the tariffs as leverage to force talks with Denmark and other European countries over the status of Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of NATO ally Denmark that he regards as critical to U.S. national security.
“The United States of America is immediately open to negotiation with Denmark and/or any of these Countries that have put so much at risk, despite all that we have done for them,” Trump said on Truth Social.
The tariff threat could mark a problematic rupture between Trump and America’s longtime NATO partners, further straining an alliance that dates to 1949 and provides a collective degree of security to Europe and North America. Trump has repeatedly tried to use trade penalties to bend allies and rivals alike to his will, generating investment commitments from some nations and pushback from others, notably China.
Trump is scheduled to travel on Tuesday to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where he likely will run into the European leaders he just threatened with tariffs that would start in little more than two weeks.
There are immediate questions about how the White House could try to implement the threatened tariffs because the European Union is a single economic zone in terms of trading, according to a European diplomat who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity. It was unclear, too, how Trump could act under U.S. law, though he could cite emergency economic powers that are currently subject to a U.S. Supreme Court challenge.
Trump has long said he thinks the U.S. should own the strategically located and mineral-rich island, which has a population of about 57,000 and whose defense is provided by Denmark. He intensified his calls a day after the military operation to oust Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro earlier this month.
The president indicated the tariffs were retaliation for what appeared to be the deployment of symbolic levels of troops from the European countries to Greenland, which he has said was essential for the “Golden Dome” missile defense system for the U.S., He also has argued that Russia and China might try to take over the island.
The U.S. already has access to Greenland under a 1951 defense agreement. Since 1945, the American military presence in Greenland has decreased from thousands of soldiers over 17 bases and installations to 200 at the remote Pituffik Space Base in the northwest of the island, the Danish foreign minister has said. That base supports missile warning, missile defense and space surveillance operations for the U.S. and NATO.
Resistance has steadily built in Europe to Trump’s ambitions even as several countries on the continent agreed to his 15% tariffs last year in order to preserve an economic and security relationship with Washington.
‘Important for the whole world’
Earlier Saturday, hundreds of people in Greenland’s capital, Nuuk, braved near-freezing temperatures, rain and icy streets to march in a rally in support of their own self-governance.
Tillie Martinussen, a former member of Greenland’s parliament, said the push to preserve NATO and Greenland’s autonomy were more important than facing tariffs, though she added that she was not dismissing the potential economic impact.
“This is a fight for freedom,” she said. ”It’s for NATO, it’s for everything the Western Hemisphere has been fighting for since World War II.”
Thousands of people also marched through Copenhagen, many of them carrying Greenland’s flag. Some held signs with slogans such as “Make America Smart Again” and “Hands Off.”
“This is important for the whole world,” Danish protester Elise Riechie told The Associated Press as she held Danish and Greenlandic flags. “There are many small countries. None of them are for sale.”
The rallies occurred hours after a bipartisan delegation of U.S. lawmakers, while visiting Copenhagen, sought to reassure Denmark and Greenland of their support.
NATO training exercises
Danish Maj. Gen. Søren Andersen, leader of the Joint Arctic Command, told the AP that Denmark does not expect the U.S. military to attack Greenland, or any other NATO ally, and that European troops were recently deployed to Nuuk for Arctic defense training.
He said the goal is not to send a message to the Trump administration, even through the White House has not ruled out taking the territory by force.
“I will not go into the political part, but I will say that I would never expect a NATO country to attack another NATO country,” he said from aboard a Danish military vessel docked in Nuuk. “For us, for me, it’s not about signaling. It is actually about training military units, working together with allies.”
The Danish military organized a planning meeting Friday in Greenland with NATO allies, including the U.S., to discuss Arctic security on the alliance’s northern flank in the face of a potential Russian threat. The Americans were also invited to participate in Operation Arctic Endurance in Greenland in the coming days, Andersen said.
In his 2½ years as a commander in Greenland, Andersen said that he hasn’t seen any Chinese or Russian combat vessels or warships, despite Trump saying that they were off the island’s coast.
But in the unlikely event of American troops using force on Danish soil, Andersen confirmed that Danish soldiers have an obligation to fight back.
‘Almost no better’ ally
Trump has contended that China and Russia have their own designs on Greenland and its vast untapped reserves of critical minerals. He said recently that anything less than the Arctic island being in U.S. hands would be “unacceptable.”
The president has seen tariffs as a tool to get what he wants without having to resort to military actions. At the White House on Friday, he recounted how he had threatened European allies with tariffs on pharmaceuticals and he teased the possibility of doing so again.
“I may do that for Greenland, too,” Trump said.
Earlier in the week, the foreign ministers of Denmark and Greenland met in Washington with Trump’s vice president, JD Vance, and secretary of state, Marco Rubio.
That session did not resolve the deep differences, but it did produce an agreement to set up a working group — on whose purpose Denmark and the White House then offered sharply diverging public views.
European leaders have said that it is only for Denmark and Greenland to decide on matters concerning the territory, and Denmark said this week that it was increasing its military presence in Greenland in cooperation with allies.
“There is almost no better ally to the United States than Denmark,” said Sen. Chris Coons, (D., Del.), while visiting Copenhagen with other members of Congress. “If we do things that cause Danes to question whether we can be counted on as a NATO ally, why would any other country seek to be our ally or believe in our representations?”
Two men and a 17-year-old boy are in custody after they allegedly assaulted a delivery driver and stole $16,000 worth of weight-loss drugs outside a pharmacy in Bucks County, Bensalem Township police said.
On Wednesday, a delivery driver was dropping off two boxes containing the GLP-1 weight-loss medications Mounjaro, Ozempic, and Trulicity at the Smart Choice Pharmacy at 1941 Street Rd., Bensalem, when the “strong-arm robbery” occurred, police said in a news release.
The trio drove away in a gold Toyota, nearly striking a bystander recording the robbery on video, police said.
After 911 dispatchers were notified of the car’s location, Bensalem Township police stopped the vehicle a few blocks away, police said.
Police said they found the boxes of stolen drugs in the car and arrested Joshua Dupree, 41, of Tamaqua, Schuylkill County; Jahnoi Dawkins, 21, of Albany, N.Y.; and a 17-year-old male from New York City.
“Further investigation revealed that the suspects, Dupree, Dawkins, and the juvenile male, had traveled from New York to commit the crime,” police said. “Pharmacy staff reported that they had received suspicious phone calls and emails in the days leading up to the incident requesting information about the delivery order.”
The three were charged with robbery, theft, receiving stolen property, simple assault, and related offenses, police said.
District Judge Michael Gallagher set bail at 10% of $150,000 for Dupree and of $250,000 for Dawkins; the men were taken to the Bucks County Correctional Facility. The juvenile was taken to the Bucks County Youth Detention Center.
America’s favorite multitalented Founding Father is celebrating his — checks parchment — 320th birthday Saturday, and the Franklin Institute wants everyone to join the party.
On Saturday the science museum will debut a new “immersive multimedia show,” about Franklin, according to Franklin Institute President and CEO Larry Dubinski. The massive audiovisual display will kick off a day of family-friendly learning activities centered on science and creativity.
The new installation is called “Franklin’s Spark,” Dubinski said, and the theme is curiosity — the kind that led Franklin to fly a kite to learn that lightning is electricity, invent everything from bifocal glasses to a more efficient cast-iron heating stove, and help establish the nation’s first postal system and lending library.
“The message is: curiosity drives progress,“ Dubinski said. ”Benjamin Franklin showed how important it is to ask questions, try things, learn, fail, and learn from those failures. It’s what drives society.”
Dubinski declined to say what the project cost, but noted that it was made possible by a donation from entrepreneur Ed Satell and the Satell Family Foundation.
Friday the Franklin Institute provided a preview of the four-minute presentation at the already impressive Franklin National Memorial, where a 30-ton, 20-foot statue of the former statesman resides under an 82-foot-high domed ceiling.
Seven high-resolution Panasonic projectors lit up the dome with animations and images detailing Franklin’s life and times.
“We think he would have liked it a lot,” said Brad Baer, whose design studio, Crafted Action, produced the display. “He was a tinkerer. He was an experimenter.”
At left is Larry Dubinski, president and CEO, The Franklin Institute. At right is Brad Baer, founder and CEO of Crafted Action, designer of multimedia show.
To make it work, the Philly-based company had to conduct some experiments of its own. It created Franklin’s silhouette by combining photography with “AI-style transfer techniques,” he said. It developed a 3D rendering of the 1,600-ton dome, and some of the dome’s many square “coffers” were incorporated into the visual display.
“We wanted to create something that’s equal parts experience and education,” Baer said. “It’s kind of a little gift to the city.”
Saturday at 11 a.m., the installation will commence “Ben’s Bash,” a birthday celebration tailored toward learning and fun. The event is open to anyone who has purchased a general admission ticket to the museum.
Other events include demonstrations on a replica of Franklin’s “glass armonica” musical instrument, a museumwide scavenger hunt with prizes, a lesson on electricity, a birthday card-making activity using a printing press, games, and a dance party.
Dubinski said he’s excited that the new installation will be in place as Philadelphia celebrates the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, which, of course, Franklin signed.
“Philadelphia is the place,” he said. “All these institutions are coming together to say, ‘Philadelphia is an amazing city.’”
The reconstructed “ghost” structure with partial walls and windows of the building known in the eighteenth-century as 190 High Street is officially titled, “Freedom and Slavery in the Making of a New Nation” (2010).
The open-air President’s House installation in Independence National Historical Park was designed to give visitors a sense of the house where the first two presidents of the United States, George Washington and John Adams, served their terms of office.
The commemorative site designed by Emanuel Kelly, with Kelly/Maiello Architects, pays homage to nine enslaved people of African descent who were part of the Washington household with videos scripted by Lorene Cary and directed by Louis Massiah.
Just like the Rocky statue I photographed last week in anticipation of this week’s news, the President’s House was in the news last year so it remains on my radar as I walk around Old City (our newsroom is right across the street).
The cloud formation in the winter sky was what first caught my attention. Then it was seeing the sun lined up directly behind the triangular pediment above the Georgian home’s “front door.”
I played with “placement” of the sun peeking through a tiny gap at a bottom corner of the gable. I knew knew that f/22 on my mirrorless camera’s lens would give me a nice starburst. It’s an optical effect that happens because the lens’ aperture blades don’t form a perfect circle. And the narrower the opening — like f/22 — the more pronounced the effect (shooting at f/2.8 is not quite as dramatic).
Then it was simply a matter of my moving my head ever-so-slightly to align the sun with the little hole — like threading a needle.
While standing in the thin shadow of the door, I was getting blasted in the eye each time I moved. Then a group of tourists, or a noise, startled a flock of pigeons and as they took flight I was not poised just right, but I liked having the birds there better than a perfect placement of the starburst.
I tried a similar “trick” a few years ago, when walking around my town photographing with my iPhone. It doesn’t have a mechanical diaphragm so the effect is not the same. Plus, the threading-the-needle part is much more difficult when you are not actually looking through the lens as in a DSLR. And with a backlight sun blasting you directly in the face.
The optical principle of refraction through a lens diaphragm is the same for both mirrorless and DSLR cameras because light travels through the lens elements and aperture in the same way.
Since 1998 a black-and-white photo has appeared every Monday in staff photographer Tom Gralish’s “Scene Through the Lens” photo column in the print editions of The Inquirer’s local news section. Here are the most recent, in color:
Deepika Iyer holds her niece Ira Samudra aloft in a Rockyesque pose, while her parents photograph their 8 month-old daughter, in front of the famous movie prop at the top of the steps at the Philadelphia Art Museum. Iyer lives in Philadelphia and is hosting a visit by her mother Vijayalakshmi Ramachandran (partially hidden); brother Gautham Ramachandran; and her sister-in-law Janani Gautham who all live in Bangalore, India.January 5, 2026: Parade marshals trail behind the musicians of the Greater Kensington String Band heading to their #9 position start in the Mummers Parade. Spray paint by comic wenches earlier in the day left “Oh, Dem Golden Slippers” shadows on the pavement of Market Street. This year marked the 125th anniversary of Philly’s iconic New Year’s Day celebration.Dec. 29, 2025: Canada geese at sunrise in Evans Pond in Haddonfield, during the week of the Winter Solstice for the Northern Hemisphere. December 22, 2025: SEPTA trolley operator Victoria Daniels approaches the end of the Center City Tunnel, heading toward the 40th Street trolley portal after a tour to update the news media on overhead wire repairs in the closed tunnel due to unexpected issues from new slider parts.December 15, 2025: A historical interpreter waits at the parking garage elevators headed not to a December crossing of the Delaware River, but an event at the National Constitution Center. General George Washington was on his way to an unveiling of the U.S. Mint’s new 2026 coins for the Semiquincentennial, December 8, 2025: The Benjamin Franklin Bridge and pedestrians on the Delaware River Trail are reflected in mirrored spheres of the “Weaver’s Knot: Sheet Bend” public artwork on Columbus Boulevard. The site-specific stainless steel piece located between the Cherry Street and Race Street Piers was commissioned by the City’s Public Art Office and the Delaware River Waterfront Corporation and created and installed in 2022 by the design and fabrication group Ball-Nogues Studio. The name recalls a history that dominated the region for hundreds of years. “Weaver’s knot” derives from use in textile mills and the “Sheet bend” or “sheet knot” was used on sailing vessels for bending ropes to sails. November 29, 2025: t’s ginkgo time in our region again when the distinctive fan-shaped leaves turn yellow and then, on one day, lose all their leaves at the same time laying a carpet on city streets and sidewalks. A squirrel leaps over leaves in the 18th Century Garden in Independence National Historical Park Nov. 25, 2025. The ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba) is considered a living fossil as it’s the only surviving species of a group of trees that existed before dinosaurs. Genetically, it has remained unchanged over the past 200 million years. William Hamilton, owner the Woodlands in SW Phila (no relation to Alexander Hamilton) brought the first ginkgo trees to North America in 1785.November 24, 2025: The old waiting room at 30th Street Station that most people only pass through on their way to the restrooms has been spiffed up with benches – and a Christmas tree. It was placed there this year in front of the 30-foot frieze, “The Spirit of Transportation” while the lobby of Amtrak’s $550 million station restoration is underway. The 1895 relief sculpture by Karl Bitter was originally hung in the Broad Street Station by City Hall, but was moved in 1933. It depicts travel from ancient to modern and even futuristic times. November 17, 2025: Students on a field trip from the Christian Academy in Brookhaven, Delaware County, pose for a group photo in front of the Liberty Bell in Independence National Historical Park on Thursday. The trip was planned weeks earlier, before they knew it would be on the day park buildings were reopening after the government shutdown ended. “We got so lucky,” a teacher said. Then corrected herself. “It’s because we prayed for it.” November 8, 2025: Multitasking during the Festival de Día de Muertos – Day of the Dead – in South Philadelphia.November 1, 2025: Marcy Boroff is at City Hall dressed as a Coke can, along with preschoolers and their caregivers, in support of former Mayor Jim Kenney’s 2017 tax on sweetened beverages. City Council is considering repealing the tax, which funds the city’s pre-K programs. October 25, 2025: Austin Gabauer, paint and production assistant at the Johnson Atelier, in Hamilton Twp, N.J. as the finished “O” letter awaits the return to Philadelphia. The “Y” part of the OY/YO sculpture is inside the painting booth. The well-known sculpture outside the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History was removed in May while construction continues on Market Street and has been undergoing refurbishment at the Atelier at the Grounds for Sculpture outside of Trenton.October 20, 2025:The yellow shipping container next to City Hall attracted a line of over 300 people that stretched around a corner of Dilworth Park. Bystanders wondered as they watched devotees reaching the front take their selfies inside a retro Philly diner-esque booth tableau. Followers on social media had been invited to “Climb on to immerse yourself in the worlds of Pleasing Fragrance, Big Lip, and exclusive treasures,” including a spin of the “Freebie Wheel,” for products of the unisex lifestyle brand Pleasing, created by former One Direction singer Harry Styles.October 11, 2025: Can you find the Phillie Phanatic, as he leaves a “Rally for Red October Bus Tour” stop in downtown Westmont, N.J. just before the start of the NLDS? There’s always next year and he’ll be back. The 2026 Spring Training schedule has yet to be announced by Major League Baseball, but Phillies pitchers and catchers generally first report to Clearwater, Florida in mid-February.October 6. 2025: Fluorescent orange safety cone, 28 in, Poly Ethylene. Right: Paint Torch (detail) Claes Oldenburg, 2011, Steel, Fiberglass Reinforced Plastic, Gelcoat and Polyurethane. (Gob of paint, 6 ft. Main sculpture, 51 ft.). Lenfest Plaza at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts on North Broad Street, across from the Convention Center.
OCEAN CITY, N.J. — Along the commercial stretch of Ocean City’s boardwalk, from Sixth to 14th Streets, there are 167 storefronts, including four Kohr Bros. Frozen Custards, three Johnson’s Popcorns, three Manco & Manco Pizzas, and eight Jilly’s stores of one type or another.
There are eight mini-golfs, nine candy shops, 18 ice cream places, 10 pizza shops, 18 arcades or other types of amusements, five jewelry stores, three surf shops, five T-shirt shops, and 47 clothing or other retail shops. There is one palm reader.
Even without Gillian’s Wonderland Pier, the iconic amusement park at Sixth Street that famously closed in October 2024, it still adds up to a classically specific, if repetitive, Jersey Shore boardwalk experience. Many of the shops are owned by the same Ocean City families, some into their third generation.
But now these very shop owners are sounding the alarm.
“This is a group that’s been hanging on for a long time,” Jamie Ford, owner of Barefoot Trading Co., at 1070 Boardwalk, said in an interview last week. “These places are hanging in there. They’re not going anywhere, but we’re nervous.”
Chuck Bangle, owner of the storied Manco & Manco Pizza, warned planning officials he might close one of his three locations if business did not pick up. Other boardwalk property owners said longtime tenants were not returning.
“It’s the 70th year of our family business, the 34th year on the boardwalk,” Bangle told the planning board Jan. 7, before it eventually deadlocked 4-4 on whether the Wonderland site should be declared in need of rehabilitation. “I wrestled with closing the Eighth Street location. I don’t want to close. The impact of Wonderland’s closing on all the merchants has been substantial.”
Business along Boardwalk near 7th Street, Ocean City, NJ., Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026.
Into blustery January, the debate has raged about whether a luxury hotel, even one that would save the Ferris wheel, would bolster or undermine the essential character of this dry town and its beloved boardwalk.
At this point, even the most ardent members of the Save Wonderland faction seem resigned to the reality that, as Will Morey of Morey’s Piers himself came up from Wildwood to say to the planning board, the odds of Wonderland coming to life again as an amusement park are slim to none.
A rendering of the proposed new Icona in Wonderland Resort, to be built on the site of the old Wonderland Pier. The proposal for a 252-room resort includes saving the iconic Ferris wheel and carousel.
It’s the rest of the boardwalk that now wants to be heard: merchants with the voice of their ancestors ringing in their ears.
“This is an incredible opportunity,” said Ocean City Councilman Jody Levchuk, a member of the family that owns the Jilly’s stores on the boardwalk. He is also a member of a boardwalk subcommittee that will report its findings on Feb. 7. “My grandfather — who’s a big boardwalk guy — he’d walk up and he’d say this man wants to spend $170 million and you’re ignoring him.”
Plummeting parking revenue
A season without Wonderland took its toll. Parking figures from municipal lots tell the story.
The 249-spot lot at Fifth and the boardwalk across from Wonderland brought in $483,921 in parking fees in 2024 (people paid an average of $21 to park there during the summer season), but dropped to $290,895 in 2025, a 40% decrease. Overall, parking revenue dropped by about a half-million dollars, from $2.46 million in 2024 to $1.95 million in 2025.
At the end of 2025, there were a half-dozen empty storefronts, according to boardwalk merchants who keep track, mostly in the 600 block adjacent to Wonderland, though there is inevitable churn during the offseason.
Becky Friedel, owner of 7th Street Surf Shop, said in an interview that the shop is planning to expand and take over two of the vacant boardwalk storefronts for a new breakfast and lunch spot and a clothing boutique.
She said that while businesses have seen the loss of some of the younger clientele who used to fill Ocean City rooming houses and group Shore houses, the newer second-home owners come “with a fair amount of money.” The boardwalk also has a handful of higher-end boutiques, including the Islander. The downtown saw the opening of a Lululemon last year. Some envision a boardwalk that might include more boutiques in the mix, and fewer repeating sequences of ice cream-french fries-pizza-beachwear.
“We’re optimistic,” Friedel said. “Obviously [Wonderland closing] hurt us a little bit, especially in the evening. Our night business isn’t as strong as it was. We’re taking over the french fry place to focus on breakfast and lunch.”
Taking on the boardwalk
Also optimistic are the partners behind Alex’s Pizza, the Roxborough stalwart dating to 1961 that is opening up this summer at 1214 Boardwalk, next to Candyland. Coming in hot with a tomato sauce swirl atop the pizza not unlike the Manco’s staple, Alex’s partner Rich Ennis said, “We’re more of a thin-crust pizza.”
The enthusiasm of Ennis and partner Dylan Bear to take on the boardwalk also raises the question of whether the center of gravity will continue to shift southward, away from the no-longer-Wonderland end.
Dylan Bear, owner of Alex’s Pizza, 1214 Boardwalk, Ocean City, NJ., Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026.
“If you don’t have an anchor down there, people are not going to walk down there,” said Mark Benevento, owner of Congo Falls golf at 1132 Boardwalk, among other properties he rents out. “They will turn around at the music pier.”
Rather than seeing the hotel proposal as a threat to the character of the town, the merchants have united to stress that they view it as essential to Ocean City’s preservation. In other Shore towns, it has been the push of residential development that has eaten away at commercial zones. The parcel is currently zoned for amusements.
In places like Seaside Heights, Long Beach Island, and Avalon, condo and new residential construction has chipped away at the essential character of the places, replacing some of their most distinctive destinations, from restaurants to motels to bars and nightclubs.
Mark Raab, a local pediatric dentist whose family owns five boardwalk properties in Ocean City, called the closing of Wonderland “devastating” in remarks to the planning board.
“People don’t know what’s going on,” he said. “This year we had three businesses that closed, longtime tenants that did not renew their leases. Six years ago we had a waiting list for these properties.
“The boardwalk is not thriving,” he said. “The boardwalk is slowly going down. It’s going down piece by piece. It is rapidly becoming a snowball effect.”
‘Now they have galvanized us’
Ford, of Barefoot Trading, thinks the time has come for the view of the merchants to be heeded. The 4-4 tie at the planning board is being seen not as an outright rejection of a rehabilitation designation, which would expedite zoning allowances and possible tax abatements, but as a pass back to the city council.
The families, he said, are “the backbone of it. What we’re speaking in favor of should carry a little bit of weight.”
In a usually sleepy Jersey Shore January, there has been an awful lot of intrigue, and packed meetings, with the latest talk of perhaps a limited zoning change that would allow a hotel, though perhaps one not as grand (252 rooms, seven stories) as Mita is seeking.
There is also talk of allowing residential units above boardwalk storefronts. And many believe the city council will essentially give the tie to the nonvoting planner, Randall E. Scheule, who told his deadlocked board he believed the Wonderland site did meet two needed criteria — significant deterioration and a pattern of underutilization — and to go ahead and approve the rehabilitation zone.
Mita has said that time is of the essence. He said he has been shocked at the way the town has stymied his plan twice.
Councilman Keith Hartzell, who twice voted against advancing Mita’s development plan, said he still wants to negotiate with Mita over height, parking, and other issues. One possibility, in conjunction with the boardwalk subcommittee, is rezoning just the 600 block of the boardwalk to allow a hotel. Hartzell has also been trying to bring a playground to that end in the meantime.
“I’m not anti-hotel at all,” Hartzell said. “Our job is to come up with something [Mita] can do that he can make money with and be happy with.”
For Ocean City’s merchants, the Wonderland saga, and Mita’s difficulty in getting his hotel off the ground, has prompted them to step out from behind the counter or out of the ticket booths and speak up.
Said Benevento, the Congo Falls owner: “Maybe we have never gotten political. Now they have galvanized us.”
When Jackie Fegley, a former nun, got married 51 years ago, money was tight. So she borrowed a dress from a friend.
And when her husband looked at her nurse’s salary the first year he did her taxes, he said: “Do you know you’re borderline poverty?”
But all that changed over the ensuing decades, and on Friday, Jackie and her husband Bill Fegley Jr., who made his career in accounting, gave a $5 million gift to Neumann University. Jackie is a 1971 graduate of Neumann — then called Our Lady of Angels College.
It’s the largest single gift Neumann — a Catholic university in Aston, Delaware County — has received from an individual, and the university in recognition named its nursing college The Jacquelyn Wilson Fegley ’71 College of Nursing.
“Bill and I were both lucky to receive a good education,” said Jackie, 81, who lives in Blue Bell with her husband, a Drexel University graduate. “So we decided that’s where we’d really like to give our money.”
Chris Domes, president of Neumann University
Neumann President Chris Domes said $4.5 million will be used for undergraduate nursing scholarships for students with the most need and highest achievement, and the other $500,000 for lab equipment. The scholarships will begin to be awarded in the fall, with 22 to 25 students benefiting each year and continuing to get the funds over four years.
Nursing is the largest major at Neumann, with 368 undergraduate and graduate students enrolled. That’s about 17% of the 2,174-student body.
“If the scholarships give somebody an opportunity to change their life, it’s amazing,” said Bill, 78, who started his public accounting career with Arthur Young and then founded his own firm, Fegley & Associates, in 1975.
Domes said he hopes the gift encourages others to invest in higher education.
“It sends a signal that Neumann is a place that is financially strong and getting stronger,” he said. “It’s a real sign from Bill and Jackie that they believe in what we are doing here.”
Neumann University President Chris Domes (from left) and his wife Mary Domes, William Fegley Jr. and his wife Jacquelyn Fegley, of Blue Bell and Neumann’s Nursing Health Sciences Dean Theresa Pietsch at Neumann University in Aston, Pa. on Friday, Jan. 16, 2026.
Born in Chester, Jackie said she grew to admire the Franciscan sisters at her local parish and stayed in touch with them through high school. When she graduated from Notre Dame High School in Moylan in 1962, she joined the order.
During her decade there, she taught grade school, including one year at an orphanage where the children ranged in age from 3 to 9. She said that’s when she started to think she wanted a family.
She got her bachelor’s degree while in the order, first taking classes at St. Joseph’s University and then moving over to Our Lady of Angels when it opened. She was part of the college’s second nursing graduating class.
“I think there were 10 of us in the class,” she said, including other nuns and lay people. “It was a wonderful experience integrating everyone together.”
After leaving the convent, she worked as a nurse at Holy Redeemer Hospital in Meadowbrook and Nazareth Hospital in Northeast Philadelphia. In January 1974, she met Bill, who grew up in Tamaqua, at a dance at a local pub. In September of that year, they married.
They have five children, now ages 40 to 50, who work as accountants, a personal trainer, a doctor, and a minimart operator.
Jackie has remained in contact with the sisters through the years.
“I love the sisters,” she said. “I still consider myself a Franciscan, just not a Franciscan sister.”
Bill — whose accounting firm has since merged with Morison Cogen LLP, where he continues to serve as a partner — has served on the foundation board for the Sisters of Saint Francis and has chaired it for about four-and-a-half years. And nine months ago, he joined Neumann’s board of trustees. He also has served as a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania and an adjunct professor at Drexel and Pennsylvania State University.
The couple has visited Neumann to see how the educational program has grown and were pleased to see its Franciscan spirit thriving.
“I was really thrilled to see that this was how it was progressing,” Jackie said.
The couple attended the naming celebration and gift announcement at Neumann on Friday.
“We’re just pleased that God put us in a position that we’re able to do this,” Bill said.
Sam Salvo didn’t deliver a nuanced breakdown of route trees or personnel groupings. He didn’t cite EPA or All-22 tape. He simply announced — with the confidence of someone who has never had to answer a follow-up question — that Kevin Patullo should be flipping burgers at McDonald’s. Philly nodded in unison.
The funniest part isn’t that it went viral. It’s that a day later, Patullo was gone, and the city collectively decided the kid deserved at least partial credit. In a town where people once egged an offensive coordinator’s house (too far), this somehow felt like the healthier outlet.
Sam’s rant worked because it was pure, unscripted Philly logic: blunt, emotional, metaphor-heavy, and somehow accurate. “One-half cooked, one-half raw” is not just a roast, it’s a season recap. And when he popped back up afterward saying, “I just wanted to say anything that could get him fired. And it worked,” it sounded less like a joke and more like a performance review.
The follow-up reactions only added to the lore. Fans celebrated. Former players debated scapegoating. Someone somewhere probably floated Big Dom calling plays. And the Eagles, intentionally or not, let the internet believe that an 11-year-old helped nudge a major coaching decision.
One of the witch-seeker’s fliers hangs in Fishtown on Sunday, Jan. 4. After ending a two-year relationship, a Philadelphia woman posted the fliers around the city and in Phoenixville as a way to channel her emotions over the breakup.
Philly collectively supports hexing an ex (with rules): A
At some point this winter, Philadelphia decided that asking a witch to curse your ex (politely, creatively, and without touching his health or love life) was not only acceptable, but deeply relatable.
The flier itself did most of the heavy lifting. “Seeking: Experienced Witch to Curse My Ex,” stapled to poles from Phoenixville to Fishtown, with a list of curses so specific and mild they felt less like dark magic and more like emotional Yelp reviews: thinning hair, damp bus seats, buffering Wi-Fi, eternally pebbled shoes. Nothing fatal. Nothing irreversible. Just inconvenience with intention.
Instead of pearl-clutching, the city leaned in. The flier spread through neighborhood Facebook groups and socials, where strangers did what they do best: offered commentary, solidarity, jokes, and unsolicited advice. Some people cheered her on. Some defended the ex. Others asked how it ended. And plenty of women recognized the feeling immediately: that moment after you’ve done the therapy, the journaling, the “being mature,” and still need somewhere for the anger to go. This wasn’t about actually ruining someone’s life. It was about yelling into the city and having the city yell back, “Yeah, that sucks.”
The rules mattered, too. No curses on his health. No messing with his love life. Philly rage has boundaries. Even our hexes come with ethics.
Wawa learns Philly does not want a vibes-only convenience store: C-
Philadelphia has many hard rules, but one of the hardest is this: If you remove the shelves from a Wawa, you are no longer operating a Wawa.
And in Philly, that’s not innovation. That’s friction.
This was once one of the company’s highest food-service locations before the pandemic, which makes the experiment feel even more puzzling in hindsight. People weren’t avoiding this store because they didn’t want Wawa. They were avoiding it because it stopped functioning like one. A convenience store that requires commitment, planning, and patience defeats the entire concept.
The grade isn’t lower because this wasn’t malicious or careless. It was a genuine attempt to test something new. But Philly answered clearly, quickly, and repeatedly: We don’t want a Wawa that feels like an airport kiosk. That’s what will get your store closed.
Phillies pitcher Ranger Suárez throws against the Cincinnati Reds on Saturday, July 5, 2025, in Philadelphia.
Saying goodbye to Ranger Suárez hurts, even if it makes sense: B+
This one lands softly and hard at the same time.
Ranger Suárez leaving Philadelphia was never shocking, just quietly devastating. Signed by the Phillies as a teenager, developed patiently, trusted in big moments, and forever tied to the pitch that sent the city to the World Series in 2022, Suárez felt less like a roster spot and more like a constant. You looked up in October and there he was, calm as ever, getting outs without drama.
Now he’s on the Red Sox.
The Phillies weren’t wrong to hesitate on a five-year, $130-million deal for a pitcher with mileage, injury history, and a fastball that succeeds more on craft than velocity. Andrew Painter is coming. The rotation math is real. This is how smart teams stay competitive.
But Philly doesn’t grade purely on spreadsheets.
Suárez embodied a certain Phillies ideal: unflashy, durable when it mattered, unfazed by the moment, and always a little underestimated. He wasn’t the loud ace. He was the steady one. The guy you trusted to calm everything down when the season felt like it might tip.
That’s why this stings. Not because it was reckless to let him go, but because losing someone who felt like a Phillie is different than losing someone who just wore the uniform. Watching him head to Boston is one of those reminders that the version of the team you emotionally commit to is always a few contracts behind the one that actually exists.
OpenTable adds a 2% fee, and Philly sighs deeply: C
Philadelphia understands restaurant math. We’ve lived through inflation menus, pandemic pivots, staffing shortages, reservation deposits, and the great “please cancel if you’re not coming” era. What we don’t love is when the bill quietly grows another line item after we thought we were done reading it.
That’s why OpenTable adding a 2% service fee to certain transactions (no-show penalties, deposits, prepaid dining experiences) landed with more fatigue than outrage. Not rage. Just tired acceptance.
The logic isn’t wrong. No-shows are brutal for small dining rooms, especially in places like South Philly where a missed table can knock a whole service sideways. Restaurants can absorb the fee or pass it on, and in many cases, the platform is genuinely helping places protect their bottom line.
But from a diner’s perspective, this is yet another reminder that convenience now comes with micro-costs layered so thin you barely notice them, until you do. The reservation is free … unless you’re late. Or cancel. Or book a special dinner. Or blink wrong. It’s another reminder that each new surcharge chips away at the simple joy of making dinner plans without feeling like you’re navigating airline baggage rules.
Philly draws the line at selling dinner reservations: A-
Philadelphia has tolerated a lot in recent years: prix-fixe creep, credit card holds, cancellation windows measured in hours, and now, yes, platform fees (see above). But selling a free dinner reservation for profit? That’s where the city finally says no.
The attempted resale of coveted tables at Mawn didn’t just irritate the restaurant’s owners, it offended a basic Philly value system. You can love a place. You can hustle for a table. You can brag that you got one. What you can’t do is turn access into a side hustle and expect people to shrug.
The reaction was swift and very local: public call-out, canceled reservations, and a clear message that this isn’t New York, Miami, or a StubHub-for-dinner experiment. Yes, reservation scalping exists elsewhere, powered by bots and platforms like Appointment Trader. And yes, Philly has passed laws trying to shut that down. But what made this moment resonate wasn’t legislation. It was cultural enforcement. A collective agreement that making money off a free reservation crosses from clever into gross.
Put simply: Waiting your turn is still the rule here. And if you try to flip your way around it, don’t be surprised when the city flips right back.
Amanda Seyfried gives Colbert a very real Allentown community calendar: A
Stephen Colbert has a recurring bit where he asks celebrity guests to promote actual events from their hometowns. When Amanda Seyfried, who grew up in Allentown, took her turn this week, she didn’t try to punch up the material.
She didn’t have to.
Seyfried read through a lineup of events that sounded exactly like a Lehigh Valley bulletin board: all-you-can-eat pasta night, speed dating for seniors, board games at a funeral home, a pirate-themed murder mystery, and Fastnacht Day donuts heavy on lard and tradition. No setup. No apology. Just listings.
That restraint is what made it land. Seyfried treated the segment like she was helping out a neighbor, not auditioning for a tourism campaign.
For viewers around Philly and the surrounding counties, it was immediately recognizable. This is the kind of stuff you scroll past in a local Facebook group or see taped to a coffee shop door without a second thought. Put it on national TV, though, and suddenly it becomes comedy.
We’ll show you a photo take in the Philly-area, you tell us where you think it was taken. Monday is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, so he is the theme of this week’s quest. Good luck!
Round #16
Question 1
Where is this mural?
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ClickTap on map to guess the location in the photo
ClickTap again to change your guess and hit submit when you're happy
You will be scored at the end. The closer to the location the better the score
Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
Pretty good/Not bad/Way off! Your guess was from the location.Spot on! Your guess was exactly at the location. Here's also where a random selection of Inquirer readers guessed.
This is Staircases and Mountaintops: Ascending Beyond the Dream, by artists Willis “Nomo” Humphrey and Jonny Buss. This mural is on the side of Martin Luther King Jr. Recreation Center at 22nd Street and Cecil B. Moore Avenue.
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Question 2
Where can you find this car-free recreational spot?
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Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
Pretty good/Not bad/Way off! Your guess was from the location.Spot on! Your guess was exactly at the location. Here's also where a random selection of Inquirer readers guessed.
Pretty good/Not bad/Way off! Your guess was from the location.Spot on! Your guess was exactly at the location. Here's also where a random selection of Inquirer readers guessed.
