Public Service Electric & Gas is still investigating the cause of a substation failure in Somerset Jan. 24 that knocked out power to thousands of township residents. In a release, the company said that about 5,900 customers in the township lost power shortly after 11 a.m. when a substation malfunctioned.

After scoring 16 unanswered points in the first quarter, the Franklin Middle School boys’ basketball team coasted to a 38-27 win over Branchburg Central Middle School on Jan. 24. Franklin increased that lead to 31-5 at the half.

The Franklin Township Shade Tree Commission is holding its seventh annual shade tree sale through Feb. 7 The trees being offered this year are Red Maple and Zelcova for shade, and the ornamentals, Sweet Bay Magnolia and Redbud.

UPDATE: The cheerleaders’ fundraiser at Appleby’s has been changed to 8-10 a.m. Feb. 2. The Franklin High School cheerleaders won’t be getting any official help from the Board of Education in their effort to raise money to attend a national championship in Florida next month.

The match started well for the Warriors, but Bridgewater-Raritan High School came back to take the last two of three games to win the contest, held at Majestic Lanes in Hopelawn. Senior Nicholas Chow led his team with 626 pins (243, 194, 189), followed by senior Sergey Eccles with 572 pins (196, 194, 182).

The first real discussion among Board of Education members about selecting a new schools Superintendent will be held at the February work session. That’s not to say the board hasn’t already talked about it, albeit haltingly. At the Jan. 23 work session, several board members peppered board president Julia Presley with questions about the selection process, and also questioned why …

The Franklin Middle School girls’ basketball team had to fight for it Jan. 23, but ended up with a win over William Annin Middle School of Bernards, 47-40. The Franklin girls were down by two points at the half, but grabbed the lead with a 12-2 run in the third quarter and never looked back.

Andre Hughes’ task was to draw a superhero that would bring inspiration to a hospitalized child. His choice? Max Steel. Why?

This week’s snow storm caused more than 40 traffic incidents on township streets between Jan. 21 and Jan. 22, police said. The bulk of them – 32, to be exact – occurred between about 11 a.m. and midnight on Jan. 21, while the snow was still falling.

Franklin Township is the launching ground for a new training tool to educate food service workers about food defense. The tool is a set of cartoons used to illustrate what food service workers should do in four common scenarios: Being presented with an unknown food source, dealing with symptoms of illness, preventing employee contamination of food and dealing with suspicious …