Category Archives: Current Affairs

Monmouth County is one of six counties statewide that may have to revert to paper ballots for first-time voters because of a crush of last-minute registrations, today's Star-Ledger reports. From the article: Warren, Atlantic, Bergen, Monmouth, Ocean and Salem counties...

The Independent Fire House on Mechanic Street does double duty as the district 2 polling station on election day. Will the lines be long? Will the flow of voters through the polling stations be smooth? That remains to be seen....

Admit it: you've read the two public questions on this year's ballot over and over again, and the "interpretive statements" that purport to explain them, and you don't know what to make of them. First, you're not alone. And second,...

Ayala Naphtali, with neighbor Andrew Crockett, had a spare Obama sign to replace the one stolen from her yard. Below, Yvonne Grayson's sign is anchored in concrete after vandals ripped it out of the ground. A rash of campaign-sign thefts...

Inspired in seemingly equal parts by Karl Marx, Woody Guthrie and the Clash, singer-songwriter Billy Bragg has cut a singular path through the world of popular music. On Sunday, the iconoclastic guitar slinger from Barking, England brings his axe and...

Several dozen citizens turned out at the Pilgrim Baptist Church on Shrewsbury Avenue in Red Bank last night to watch the final presidential debate between senators Barack Obama and John McCain on a projection screen suspended above the altar. The...

You gotta be in it for your candidate to win it. It's deadline time for citizens who want a voice that counts in the Nov. 4 elections. New Jersey law requires that would-be voters register no less than 21 days...

"It's something that affects all of us. It's not just a Wall Street bailout," says Jan Gardiner, of Locust. Today's Washington Post reports the results of a poll that finds voters deeply divided over the terms of the government's $700...

Ferry commuters to Wall Street, besieged by blowback over the spreading-around-the-globe credit meltdown they helped create, will see a slight dip in the monthly fare charged by SeaStreak beginning tomorrow. Assuming, of course, that there still is a Wall Street...

Democratic party swells who plan to rub elbows with presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama at the Navesink chateau of popstar Bon Jovi Friday evening will lay out $28,500 for the privilege, today's Star-Ledger reports. First, there's the $2,300 cocktail reception...

Sen. Barack Obama Prepare for a traffic jam in the vicinity of Navesink River Road next week. Democratic presidential nominee-apparent Barack Obama will visit Middletown on Friday, September 5 for a two-stop lovefest that wraps up at the riverfront chateau...

Keith Rella, newsman in a hurry. If all goes according to his remarkably hasty plan, this time next week, Keith Rella will oversee a bunch of teenagers in newsie caps calling out "Extra, extra!" while distributing first editions of a...

Sen. John and Cindy McCain, Jersey-bound. Trailing in three recent New Jersey polls, the wife of Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain is set to visit a GOP redoubt next week: Rumson, where no Democrat is said to have been...

Sea Bright and other coastal areas could expect more scenes like this one, from tropical storm Ernesto in 2006, according to a report that also examines the economic wallop of rising seas. The economic impacts of global warming on New...

The view north from Hobbymasters' roof, which gets unimpeded exposure to the sun. In what's being billed as the largest installation of its kind in the Red Bank area, game & toy retailer Hobbymasters plans to cover the roof of...

Shortly after dawn, there were about 200 people in line. Mexican nationals began lining up before 10p Tuesday in a bid to be among the first to get passports and consular IDs from the 'Mexican Consulate on Wheels' program being...

Clean Ocean Action's Casey Shanley models the latest in environmental beachwear. By SUE MORGAN Piggybacking on the popularity of the dolphin pod that's been in the Shrewsbury River since mid-June, Clean Ocean Action last week took aim at three proposals...

Undaunted by sprinkles and a brief downpour, students from the Red Bank Regional High School chapter of STAND held a vigil in Marine Park last night to mourn the rapes, displacements and killings of millions of Darfurians in what the...

Are there more cigarette butts on New Jersey's beaches than in decades past? Some environmentalists say so. Citing data gleaned in part by Clean Ocean Action from its twice-yearly sweep of New Jersey beaches, today's Star-Ledger reports that this summer's...

The R-FH Euro challengers: from left, Sam Wilson, Robbie Trocchia, Margot Keale, Steven Fuschetti and Jennifer Lapp. If you think understanding the U.S. economy is a brain-buster, try overlaying its complexity with currency exchange rates, European history and social trends...