MAPLE SHADE, N.J. (WPVI) — The Philadelphia skyline and several landmarks were lit up in blue Monday night to support a 12-year-old boy from South Jersey who remains in critical condition after a baseball injury.

Buildings across the city – including sites in the sports complex and the Ben Franklin Bridge – glowed blue in honor of Xavier Taylor, who was struck in the neck by a baseball during pregame warmups with Maple Shade Youth Baseball last month.

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The show of support has spread far beyond Philadelphia.

Residents across the region and around the country have worn Xavier’s No. 6 jersey, placed baseball bats outside their homes, and lit blue porch lights to stand in solidarity with the young athlete.

The boy’s father says there are signs of progress. Xavier is no longer on blood pressure medication, his vital signs are stable, and he is receiving nutritional care.

An investigation is underway after police said a teen girl was shot in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

According to the Atlantic City Police Department, on June 2, 2026, around 11:43 p.m. officers responded to the 600 block of New York Avenue after receiving a report about a shooting.

When officers got to the scene, police said they found a 16-year-old girl shot. She was taken to a nearby hospital for treatment.

Police said anyone with information about this incident is urged to contact the Atlantic City Police Department Violent Crimes Unit at 609-347-5858 or to submit an anonymous text tip to tip411 (847411), begin the text with ACPD.

Eastern Kentucky has a long history of being taken advantage by outsiders who came to the state and cut the old-growth trees and tore up the land extracting coal from the ground.

• A New Jersey congressional candidate’s website listed reopening Kentucky coal mines as a top priority.
• The candidate, Gregg Mele, claimed his website was either hacked or contained an error.
• Restarting the coal industry in Eastern Kentucky is unlikely due to depleted coal seams and cheap natural gas.

Something seemed amiss when a friend in Washington, D.C. sent me an email about a candidate in New Jersey who seemed to be taking an oversized interest in what happens in Eastern Kentucky.

Gregg Mele, a perennial candidate who somehow became the Republican nominee in New Jersey’s 12^th Congressional District in this year’s election, seemed from his campaign website to be auditioning to replace 88-year-old Hal Rogers of Kentucky and not 81-year-old Bonnie Watson Coleman of the Garden State.

Mele was pledging on his campaign website to “reopen and open new coal mines in Kentucky’s 5th District” and to “Access untapped oil in Southeastern Kentucky.”

It seemed oddly specific.

Why Kentucky’s 5^th District and not West Virginia’s 1^st or Pennsylvania’s 14^th?

It’s even odder when you look at the campaign websites of Rogers, who has represented Kentucky’s 5th District since 1981, and Democrat Ned Pillersdorf, who is running to replace him, and neither say anything about bringing coal back.

The last mention of coal on Rogers’ website is a 2013 press release where he talks about diversifying the region’s economy beyond coal.

KY coal issues at top of website

Not only did Mele include these two items in the section of his website listing his platform, they were the top two issues.

To be honest, I wasn’t quite sure what to think of this.

Eastern Kentucky has a long history of being taken advantage of by outsiders who came to the state and cut the old-growth trees and tore up the land while extracting coal from the ground.

They took our natural resources worth billions of dollars and left behind only poverty and scarred mountains.

Was Mele seeking to restart this type of neocolonialism, or was he actually trying to help by somehow providing jobs in an industry that is increasingly becoming automated?

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Could hackers be responsible?

So, I asked him.

“I’m sorry, this seems to be an error or a hack. I am getting my team on this to have it corrected,” he said in an email.

That was on Wednesday. It was still on the website on Thursday.

I’m betting on an error.

It doesn’t seem much like something a hacker would add to a website.

Either way, it’s probably not a big deal as Mele’s chances of winning in the Democratic district are practically non-existent. Polymarket gives him just an 8% chance of winning, and I can’t find a single organization that rates House races that believes the district is in play.

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No matter how many House members from Kentucky or West Virginia or Pennsylvania or even New Jersey want to jump start the coal industry in Kentucky, it’s unlikely to happen. Especially in Eastern Kentucky where the large coal seams have been depleted by more than a century of mining.

Coal industry peaked in KY

The rise of fracking, which has made natural gas cheap and easily attainable, may have been the death knell.

The coal industry peaked in Kentucky after World War II, when nearly 80,000 Kentuckians worked in the coal industry, and it has been falling ever since — particularly over the last 40 years.

In 1990, more than 28,000 people were employed in Kentucky’s coal industry, according to the Kentucky Center for Statistics. By 2023, the number had dropped to 3,939, and the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis estimates the number of coal mining jobs in Kentucky fell to 2,900 last year.

And Mele, despite what his website says, ain’t going to stop that trend.

Joseph Gerth can be reached at 502-582-4702 or by email at jgerth@courierjournal.com. You can also follow him at @jgerth.bsky.social.