HARRISBURG — The judge in a federal court challenge to Pennsylvania's 17-year-old law that bans recognition of same-sex marriages is rejecting three different attempts to dismiss the lawsuit.

U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III on Friday denied the challenges to the lawsuit by Pennsylvania's departments of Health and Revenue and a Bucks County official.

It's a strong sign the case is headed to trial and, potentially, the U.S. Supreme Court. Every northeastern state except Pennsylvania allows same-sex marriage.

LORETTO — A new friar has been elected to replace St. Francis University's president after this academic year.The school's board of trustees picked the Rev. Malachi Van Tassell to replace the Rev. Gabriel Zeis, who has been president for 10 years.Van Tassell is from Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and has undergraduate degrees in Spanish and accounting, a master's in taxation from Arizona State University and a doctorate in higher education leadership from Capella University.Van Tassell has been a friar since 1999 and was ordained a priest in 2004 at the university's Immaculate Conception Chapel.He worked as a certified public accountant before joining the religious order and has been an adjunct and assistant professor of accounting at St. Francis.Enrollment at the school grew 20 percent under Zeis and its endowment more than doubled to $37.4 million.

GIRARD — Mercyhurst University in Erie is closing a branch campus in nearby Girard due to low enrollment.The Erie Times-News reports the private, Catholic school plans to close the campus known as Mercyhurst West because only 13 students are enrolled there. The campus will close at the end of the 2013-14 academic year.The campus opened in 2006 and is one of four branches of the main campus based near downtown Erie.The other branch campuses are in North East, Corry and at the Booker T. Washington Center, also in Erie.

PITTSBURGH — Investor David Tepper has given $67 million to Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University.The school said the gift will help fund a new 295,000-square-foot building for its school of business, and other initiatives on a 4.5-acre site that will be called the Tepper Quadrangle.Tepper is a Carnegie Mellon alumnus and the founder of New Jersey-based Appaloosa Management. He says Carnegie Mellon has a long history of providing the world with innovative thinkers.Tepper has committed more than $125 million in gifts to Carnegie Mellon over the past nine years.