Friday Morning News Roundup
By Jon Whiten • Jan 29th, 2010 • Category: Blog- FBI informant Solomon Dwek took the stand yesterday in the federal corruption trial of suspended deputy mayor and former Healy campaign treasurer Leona Beldini, telling jurors that Beldini was someone he had met and done business with. More from the Record and from Bob Braun.
- David Cruz has a message for the protesters at this week’s City Council meeting: “you brought it on yourselves.”
- Protesters rallied outside the Bank of America on Martin Luther King Drive with Assemblyman Charles Mainor yesterday, declaring the company made the “wrong corporate decision” to close the only bank on that street.
- “I’ve done a lot of medical relief trips like Katrina, but I felt like I was in the middle of a war zone,” Jersey City Medical Center nurse Christina Wade says of her first days on a relief mission in Haiti. “It reminded me of the civil war (because of) the lack of materials we had.” For more from Haiti, check out Jersey City photographer Simon Biswas’ multimedia piece we ran this week.
- Assemblyman Anthony Chiappone, who is currently under indictment for campaign fraud, says he is considering a run for Bayonne mayor this May.
- Crews continued to work into the night to repair a broken water main on 18th Street that has left many Newport residents without water.
- A 27-year-old Jersey City woman vanished this Tuesday — the night before she was expected to deliver her baby.
- A Jersey City pharmacist and two city residents have been arrested as part of an ongoing investigation of a criminal narcotics network that allegedly distributed black market prescription pain pills like OxyContin and Percocet.
- A 29-year-old Jersey City man has been indicted on charges that he distributed child pornography on the Internet.
In statewide news:
- Gov. Christie met for the first time with his cabinet heads yesterday, telling them they should speak freely on subjects aside from their areas of expertise.
- About 20 big businesses in New Jersey are asking the state to let them pay less for clean-energy programs that they say disproportionately benefit smaller utility customers.
- A fishing council in New Hampshire that regulates scallop harvests from Maine to North Carolina has reversed a decision it made in November to reduce scallop harvests by nearly 25 percent, a call that pleased New Jersey’s commercial scallopers.
- A federal judge says Delaware can’t require the Army Corps of Engineers to get state permits before it starts to deepen the shipping channel in the Delaware River. Pennsylvania has championed the idea, but officials in Delaware and New Jersey have been skeptical.
- For just the second time in 40 years, New Jersey will suspend its annual springtime spraying for gypsy moths because the invasive bug’s population has dropped significantly.
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Jon Whiten is the founding editor of the Jersey City Independent; he now works for a public-policy nonprofit in Trenton.
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