STATE COLLEGE — Former Gov. Tom Ridge has endorsed Republican candidate Pat Toomey in the Pennsylvania Senate race.

Ridge praised Toomey at a news conference Thursday on the Penn State University campus. The former governor said Toomey has the small business background and fiscal discipline to foster ideas that will help revive the struggling economy and create more jobs.

Toomey is in a close race with Democratic candidate Joe Sestak with two months until the general election. The economy and the national debt are the race's main themes.

Game Commission backs shale gas tax

HARRISBURG — The Pennsylvania Game Commission said it supports a severance tax on Marcellus Shale natural gas drilling.

The eight-member commission's Thursday vote, however, didn't give support to any particular proposal in the debate that's set to ramp up in the state Legislature this month.

The Game Commission and the Fish and Boat Commission hope to get help for their budgets from a tax on the extraction of natural gas. The Game Commission's resolution said it would benefit from a minimum of 2 percent of the total revenues from a severance tax.

Bridge incident blamed on rust

TARENTUM — Pennsylvania officials plan to remove a catch basin from a Tarentum bridge after another one and a pipe weighing 200 pounds fell from it.

PennDOT said rust caused the steel catch basin and drainage pipe to fall from the Tarentum Bridge on Monday. The pieces fell into the Fish Commission access driveway causing a large bang. No one was injured.

Despite that, officials told a local newspaper that the bridge is structurally sound. PennDOT will remove the only other catch basin on the bridge and engineers will figure out a new drainage system for the bridge.

State officials said the bridge has been inspected and is not considered one of the state's unsafe bridges.

By The Associated Press