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A former Jersey City mayoral candidate and his brother have been indicted on corruption charges. Tuesday's indictment comes on the same day the president of Jersey City's municipal council temporarily stepped aside and another council member pleaded guilty to corruption. Louis Manzo a former candidate for mayor, and his brother, Ronald, who acted as his political adviser, are charged with taking $27,500 in corrupt political contributions. Louis Manzo had previously served in the New Jersey General Assembly from 2004 to 2008.

JERSEY CITY -- Jack Shaw, a Jersey City political consultant who was among 44 people charged in a federal corruption probe, has died. Two officials with knowledge of the investigation said Shaw was found at home with several bottles of pills nearby. One of the officials said Shaw, 61, had an unspecified medical condition, and authorities are not jumping to conclusions about the cause of his death.

JERSEY CITY -- Jack Shaw, a Jersey City political consultant who was among 44 people charged in a federal corruption probe, has died. Two officials with knowledge of the investigation said Shaw was found at home with several bottles of pills nearby. One of the officials said Shaw, 61, had an unspecified medical condition, and authorities are not jumping to conclusions about the cause of his death. Shaw was charged with taking $10,000 from Solomon Dwek, an FBI informant posing as a real estate developer, and proposing Dwek make another $10,000 payment to a Jersey City official. Shaw was a...

Forty-four people were arrested today in a New Jersey public corruption sweep. The group includes Hoboken Mayor Peter Cammarano III, Secaucus Mayor Dennis Elwell, Jersey City Deputy Mayor Leona Beldini, state Assemblyman L. Harvey Smith and state Assemblyman Daniel Van Pelt. Ridgefield Mayor Anthony Suarez is charged with agreeing to accept an illegal cash payment.

NEWARK, N.J. - The mayors of two New Jersey cities, a state legislator and several rabbis were arrested Thursday in connection with a major corruption and international money-laundering conspiracy probe. Some of the suspects were also allegedly involved in an illegal human organ-selling ring. Among about 30 people arrested Thursday were Hoboken Mayor Peter Cammarano III, Secaucus Mayor Dennis Elwell, Jersey City Deputy Mayor Leona Beldini, former Jersey City Council President L. Harvey Smith and state Assemblyman Daniel Van Pelt. Van Pelt is accused of accepting $10,000 from a government witness posing as a developer seeking permit help. Story continues...

N.J. politicians, rabbis arrested in federal money laundering sweep.

JERSEY CITY, N.J. — A city police officer who was critically wounded in a shootout with two armed robbery suspects last week died Tuesday, one day before his 38th birthday and the same day police engaged in another gun battle nearby. Detective Marc A. DiNardo, a 10-year veteran who had been on life support, was pronounced dead around 9:35 a.m. after doctors harvested his organs for transplant. The 37-year-old was hit by a shotgun blast to the face July 16 as his SWAT team stormed the apartment where the suspects had taken cover. DiNardo had no signs of life when...

Left unsaid is why he considers weapons "manufactured for nothing other than to hunt man" suitable for police work: "It's used as part of a tactical equipment for law enforcement agencies in this country." Translation: We're the "Only Ones" who should have pump-action shotguns. You cannot. Why? Because: "It's in the hands of someone who's already been convicted of certain persons not to possess a firearm." What? But OK, let's assume we understand what he just said. And: He said that authorities traced the gun's serial number and were reasonably certain that at some point the weapon was purchased legally...

ersey City's top cop angrily denounced the influx of illegal guns onto the streets of the city and even took rhetorical aim at the National Rifle Association after an early-morning shootout left five cops wounded, two critically. "We need help to stop these weapons from hitting the street," said Police Chief Thomas Comey. "This weapon is manufactured for nothing other than to hunt man."

Note: The following text is a quote: http://baltimore.fbi.gov/dojpressrel/pressrel09/ba030309.htm ILLEGAL ALIEN SENTENCED FOR RACKETEERING CONSPIRACY Sought to Pay Bribes to Government Officials to Obtain Green Cards Baltimore, Maryland - U.S. District Judge Marvin J. Garbis sentenced Mohammad Akhtar, age 52, today to 33 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release for racketeering conspiracy related to a scheme to bribe officials with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to illegally obtain green cards and the Maryland Comptroller's Office to receive abatement of state taxes, announced United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein. Akhtar is a...

Gems, al-Qaida and murder. Mystery over killing of Osama Bin Laden's friend · Saudi man's death was political, say his family· US secret service was monitoring his activities Nick Fielding Friday March 2, 2007 The Guardian (UK) Pallbearers carry the coffin of Muhammad Jamal Khalifa at Ivato airport in Antananarivo, in Madagascar. Photograph: Jasleen Sethi/Reuters When Muhammad Jamal Khalifa was found dead at a remote gemstone mine in south-eastern Madagascar at the end of January, local police quickly put the murder down to a business deal gone wrong. The Saudi businessman, 49, had had to call in local police to...

A Jersey City councilman has reportedly been arrested for urinating on a crowd of concertgoers from the balcony of a Washington D.C. nightclub.

Prosecutors are seeking to revoke the retail gun license of a Jersey City gun merchant, but a state trooper testified yesterday that he found no violations at the gun shop and has made no recommendation that the license be revoked. "He met all his requirements," said Detective Donald Mundorf of the New Jersey State Police Firearm Investigation Unit, of David Murray, who owns David's Sporting Goods on Second Street near Newark Avenue.

A fender-bender at Hoboken and Summit avenues ended with the trunk of a parked car popping open to reveal a box labeled as having radioactive materials, Jersey City police have told The Jersey Journal. After a response that included cops, firefighters, HAZMAT and other emergency personnel, the father of the car's owner gave cops a plausible explanation for the box, police said. Get the full story in tomorrow's Jersey Journal.

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(CBS) JERSEY CITY A Jersey City woman made a shocking discovery on her lawn this morning when she noticed a military rocket launcher lying in the grass. Niranjana Besai was leaving her house at 88 Nelson Street, to go to work at just after 8 a.m. when she saw the launcher on her front lawn. She immediately called police. Besai's neighbor, Joe Quinn saw her pointing at the equipment from her front porch. When he walked over to the six-foot-long weapon, he was just as shocked. “It looked like a bazooka,” he told CBS 2 News. Quinn tells CBS 2...

A worldwide investigation has uncovered an al-Qaida loyalist's plan to blow up the PATH train tunnels under the Hudson River, thwarting a terrorist conspiracy the FBI called "the real deal," authorities said Friday. The alleged mastermind has been arrested. "The individuals were moving forward," said Special Agent Mark J. Mershon, assistant director of the FBI's New York office. They "were about to go to a phase where they would attempt to surveil targets, establish a regimen of attack and then acquire the resources necessary to effectuate the attacks." Mershon identified the plan's mastermind as Assem Hammoud, a 31-year-old Lebanese citizen...

TRENTON - Still campaigning for a one-gun-a-month ordinance that a Hudson County judge shot down in December, Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy successfully broadened his target yesterday to include the entire state. Considering a bill drafted at Healy's request, members of the state Assembly's Law and Public Safety Committee voted unanimously to send legislation that mirrors Healy's Jersey City ordinance to the full Assembly for a vote. "I'm happy," Healy said after the vote. "Anything that slows up the flow of handguns to my city and every suburb is good thing."

An illegal immigrant has been sentenced to a 13-year jail term after pleading guilty to the rape of a 51-year-old North Bergen woman last year in James J. Braddock Park. Judge Camille M. Kenny sentenced Esbin Amadeo Garcia, 26, in state Superior Court in Jersey City after he plead guilty to aggravated sexual assault, said John Mulkeen, an assistant Hudson County prosecutor. County sex crime investigators arrested Garcia, a laborer from Fairview, on Oct. 30, 2005. He was found in a bar at 71st Street and Bergenline Avenue in North Bergen after police traced a call he made using the...

A nun and two church-goers are thanking the heavens after getting caught in the middle of a dangerous shootout and walking away unharmed. Sister Carol Van Billiard, Kathleen Hatten and another convent volunteer found themselves in the middle of the crossfire which broke out on Jersey City's Ocean Avenue Tuesday night. Hatten said when they heard the gunshots, they all ducked, grabbed each other's hands, and started to pray. "There was nothing else left to do, it was so terrifying," Hatten said. Van Billiard said when she saw the gaping bullet hole in her car fender, she knew immediately that...

The sound of the blast was unearthly, and the tremor was felt 100 miles away in Philadelphia. The night sky over New York Harbor turned orange. From Bayonne to Brooklyn and beyond, people were jolted from bed as windows shattered within a radius of 25 miles. The Statue of Liberty, holding high its torch less than a mile from the epicenter, was damaged by a rain of red-hot shards of steel. On nearby Ellis Island, frightened immigrants were hastily evacuated to Manhattan. Ground zero itself -- a small island called Black Tom -- all but disappeared, "as if an atomic...

ORLANDO, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 11, 2006-- Brijot Imaging Systems, Inc. announces today that its BIS-WDS(TM) Prime has been installed for live, passenger screening operation at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey's (PANYNJ) Exchange Place PATH transit system station in Jersey City, New Jersey as part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Rail Security Pilot Project's two week field demonstration of promising advanced technologies that detect explosives and other large weapons used to injure passengers or damage facilities and equipment, and that pose serious potential threats to the nation's rail systems. Brijot's product -- which provides full-motion,...

STOP JERSEY CITY'S DISCRIMINATORY GUN BAN! Jersey City Tells Poor and Middle Class: No Self-Defense for You!  Please immediately email, call, or fax the Mayor and City Council of Jersey City to voice your opposition to three anti-gun ordinances scheduled for a public hearing and council vote on Wednesday, June 14.   Please also attend the June 14 public hearing and make your voice heard!  You need to sign up immediately in order to speak (see details below).  Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy initiated the ordinances, which make self-defense a luxury for the wealthy. But while he is busy stripping the...

Maybe Charles T. Epps Jr. needs to get a third job. Epps, who receives a $225,038 annual salary plus a $1,000-a-month housing allowance as Jersey City's state-appointed superintendent and another $49,000 as an assemblyman, is behind on his city taxes. Epps failed to pay $1,040.74 in property taxes, due May 1, on a three-family home on Bramhall Avenue. He was up to date on his taxes for his other Jersey City home on Holly Street, according to city records. "I forgot, that's all. No big deal," Epps said last night. "I'll pay it tomorrow." However, it was not the first...

NIAF TO HOST ITALIAN AMERICAN RALLY FOR JUDGE ALITO IN N.J.             (Washington, DC—December 20, 2005)  The National Italian American Foundation (NIAF) will host a rally in support of the Supreme Court nominee, Judge Samuel Alito, Jr., with the Italian-American community in Jersey City, N.J.,  on Friday morning, January 6.  The bi-partisan rally will be held at the Hyatt Regency Jersey City on the Hudson, 2 Exchange Place, Jersey City, in the Manhattan Grand Ballroom at 10:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.              Constitutional law experts and fellow attorneys including: Honorable Donald DiFrancesco, former Acting Governor of New Jersey; Justice Marie...

Divers search for New Jersey police officers who drove off bridge NEW YORK (CNN) -- Divers from state and federal agencies searched Sunday for two police officers whose emergency vehicle drove off a drawbridge and plunged into the Hackensack River in New Jersey outside Jersey City, an official said.The vehicle was driving eastbound from Kearney toward Jersey City through heavy fog on the Route 1 and 9 Bridge -- also known as the Lincoln Highway Bridge -- at 8:15 p.m., when the accident occurred, said Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Tom Sperduto."The bridge was up; they couldn't see it and...

JERSEY CITY - Prosecutors will ask that two men charged with murdering a city family during a botched robbery last January be sentenced to death if found guilty, authorities said Friday. No date has been set for the trial of Edward McDonald, 25, and Hamilton Sanchez, 31, both of whom were formally arraigned on murder charges this month. Both men have pleaded not guilty to the violent slayings of Hossam Armanious, his wife, Amal Garas, and their two young daughters. "Both of them are designated as capital murder cases," said Hudson County Prosecutor Edward DeFazio. "We're seeking the death penalty."...

The city plans to use its power of eminent domain to seize a neighborhood bar and turn the land over to a Roman Catholic high school, which wants the land to expand its football field. That has civil liberties proponents worried. ``This is one of the most egregious cases of eminent domain in the country,'' Steve Anderson of the Institute for Justice in Washington told The Star-ledger of Newark for Friday's editions. The city is seeking to condemn The Golden Cicada tavern and give the land to St. Peter's Prep, which wants to expand its athletic field. The matter is...

Muslims say a federal report supporting charges that New Jersey counterterrorism officials were compiling reports on Muslims solely because of their religion confirms what they have been claiming for years. "This shouldn't surprise anyone,'' said Yaser El-Menshawy, chairman of the Majlis Ash-Shura of New Jersey, the state's council of mosques. "Although it's wrong and it's bad law enforcement, Muslims understand that we have fewer rights than anyone else right now. I'm sure people in law enforcement realize that and know they can get away with things with Muslims that they can't with any other group.'' The Institute for Intergovernmental Research,...

Families of the six who were killed and the more than 1,000 injured in the first World Trade Center bombing will see their lawsuits against the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey go to trial on Monday after 12 years of legal delays. Six main jurors and four alternates were chosen Friday for the trial before State Supreme Court Justice Nicholas Figueroa. The trial is expected to last five weeks. Lawyers for more than 400 individuals and businesses who filed some 175 lawsuits, say the deadly blast on Feb. 26, 1993, from 1,200 pounds of explosives in a...

Police have an entire block surounded after a jewelry store robbery apparently turned into a hostage standoff. It happened at the A & J Jewelry store on Sip Avenue in Jersey City. According to several eyewitnesses the suspect entered the store and grabbed a bag of jewelry. During the robbery the wife of the owner reportedly escaped. When the suspect realized that the woman left he duct taped himself to the owner and threatened to blow himself up.

A mother and two of her children were found stabbed to death on Wednesday after police were called to their apartment by her injured son, who survived a stabbing rampage that took place at least a day earlier, authorities said. Authorities said they had no suspects, but Hudson County Prosecutor Edward DeFazio said the stabbings appeared to stem from a family dispute over money. He said authorities wanted to speak with an uncle of the children, but that no arrest warrants had been issued and the person was not considered a suspect. Only one person is believed responsible for the...

Jon Corzine goes queer FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE August 23, 2005 US SENATOR JON S. CORZINE TO APPEAR AT JERSEY CITY LBGTI PRIDE FESTIVAL “ONE AMERICAN DREAM” SATURDAY, AUGUST 27 AT EXCHANGE PLACE -- 10,000 EXPECTED TO ATTEND Jersey City Lesbian + Gay Outreach, Inc (JCLGO) is excited to announce the appearance United States Senator and New Jersey Gubernatorial Candidate Jon S. Corzine at the 5th Annual Jersey City LGBTI Pride Festival, Saturday, August 27, noon – 8 pm on the waterfront at Exchange Place. Senator Corzine will address the crowd somewhere between 4:00 and 5:00 PM. Jersey City’s Pride festival...

A Manhattan banker wearing only a condom ambushed a female jogger on the Jersey Shore - but had to scram when she turned out to be a cop, prosecutors said yesterday. The officer threatened to blast 39-year-old John Dee Kelly with pepper spray and later got the plate number off his rented car, enabling cops to track the suspect down. "He picked the wrong person to attack," said Assistant Monmouth County Prosecutor Robert Honecker. "This was a quick-thinking officer." Kelly, who lives in Jersey City, rented a car from Hertz at Newark Airport on May 15 and drove to Union...

The NJDEP Public Meeting on January 27, 2001 at Liberty State Park was the culmination of the battle against Mayor Bret Schundler's and the park's Development Corporation's proposal for a commercial, privatized Waterpark at Liberty State Park. The vast majority of over 600 people at the public meeting (and of the thousands of communications to Trenton) opposed the Waterpark. Many elected officials and mayoral candidates opposed the Waterpark. It wasn't a good day for Bret, not for a man running for Governor. Though he had retreated from Waterpark support only 3 days before the public meeting because of the writing...

Jersey City's downtown waterfront market is one of the strongest real estate areas in this country. Developers pay millions to buy small parcels of land. Colgate sold an acre for $10 million. Before Bret Schundler ran for office, he spoke against tax abatements at council meetings. When he ran for office, his campaign literature (Special Election 1992) candidate Schundler said, "... reducing sales and property taxes for all will promote far more jobs than tax abatements for the powerful few." Previously, Mayor Cucci gave abatements linked to affordable housing. Avalon Cove, an abatement that Mayor Cucci turned down because it...

Menendez blasts Bret for lost grant, Jersey Journal, Peter Weiss, 10/20/2001 "Bioterrorism has turned into a political issue in Hudson County. US Rep Robert Menendez, D-Union City, yesterday criticized the administration of former Jersey City Mayor Bret Schundler, the Republican candidate for governor, for losing a $1 million anti-terrorism grant last year. Menendez supplied a copy of a May 16, 2000 letter from the state Department of Health and Human Services to Jersey City officials informing them that their grant application was rejected. The letter stated "weaknesses" in the grant application that convinced the state that Jersey City "would have...

Jersey City police say shortcomings in their video technology may have allowed a local cabbie accused of murder to escape to Egypt. Police said they had videotape showing cabbie Walleed Khalil, 37, severely beating one of his passengers but lacked the proper equipment to view the tape. Ten days after the beating, Khalil escaped to Switzerland, presumably headed to his native Egypt, and was never questioned about the incident, authorities said. The injured man, Freddy Paredes, 46, was beaten so badly that he ended up on life support. Paredes's family members had him taken off life support Sunday, and the...

Cops say McDonald murdered, then went on with life upstairs good worker, boss says Monday, March 07, 2005 By Brian Donohue Newhouse News Service Edward McDonald, 25, was questioned by investigators on Jan. 14, the morning police found his landlord, his wife and their two daughters stabbed to death in their Jersey City Heights home. After the interview, McDonald walked out of the prosecutor's office - and coolly past the brother of the slain woman, Ayman Garas, who was entering the building to meet with detectives. On Friday, McDonald and Hamilton Sanchez, 30, pleaded not guilty to four counts of...

By ANTHONY RAMIREZ Published: March 5, 2005 or Egyptian-Americans in New Jersey, the nightmare seemed to come true in January. A Christian family of four was found slaughtered in their Jersey City home. It was rumored that the father had exchanged angry words with a Muslim on the Internet. Egyptian Muslims and Egyptian Coptic Christians are at brutal odds with each other in their homeland, but those who had immigrated to the United States had nonetheless managed to live peacefully. Now they seemed as if they could be headed toward a Muslim-Christian face-off.. Yesterday, two suspects, both of them non-Egyptian...

JERSEY CITY, N.J. — Two people have been arrested in the murder of an Egyptian Christian family, authorities said Friday. The suspects were to be arraigned Friday afternoon in state Superior Court. The Hudson County prosecutor's office would not release the identities of those arrested or the charges they face until they appear in court.

Authorities have made a major break in the case of the slain Jersey City family, with two suspects scheduled to be arraigned today. Although the Hudson County prosecutor's office isn't releasing the names of the two people or saying what the charges are, local press reports one of them is a former tenant of the building where the Coptic Christian family lived and was found murdered Jan. 14. As WorldNetDaily reported, Hossam Armanious, was found in his home with his wife and two daughters -- Sylvia, 15, and Monica, 8 -- bound and gagged with their throats slashed.

By WAYNE PARRY The Associated Press JERSEY CITY, N.J. - The upstairs neighbor of an Egyptian Christian family found slain in their home in January was charged Friday, along with another man, in the murders. Edward McDonald, 25, who rented a second-floor apartment above Hossam Armanious and his family, pleaded not guilty to four counts of felony murder. Hamilton Sanchez, 30, faces the same charges and also pleaded not guilty. Sanchez during a court hearing began crying as he stood before a judge, his hands cuffed behind his back. "I didn't kill nobody. I didn't kill nobody, man. I didn't...

March 4, 2005 -- An ex-con and former upstairs neighbor reportedly was being grilled last night in the savage stabbing deaths of a Jersey City family of four

Hudson County Prosecutor Edward DeFazio said yesterday that it appears unlikely investigators will be able to decipher the license plate of the car used by a man who made ATM withdrawals from the account of a slain Jersey City Heights family. An image caught on a security camera at a Central Avenue drive-through ATM showing the man using the family's bank card is not clear enough to read the plate, even after being digitally enhanced, DeFazio said. DeFazio said the angle the video was taken from will likely make it impossible to read the car's plate number, but that identifying...

Security video from a Central Avenue bank's drive-through ATM machine has captured images of the car used by a man to steal from the account of the slain Jersey City family of four whose bodies were found bound and gagged in their Heights home in January, officials said.Hudson County Prosecutor Edward Defazio said investigators have been able to determine the make, model and year of the car and are having the images enhanced with the hope of being able to read the license plate number."We have ascertained, by surveillance, time and observation, that the vehicle used at the drive-in by...

Security video from a Central Avenue bank's drive-through ATM machine has captured images of the car used by a man to steal from the account of the slain Jersey City family of four whose bodies were found bound and gagged in their Heights home in January, officials said. Hudson County Prosecutor Edward DeFazio said investigators have been able to determine the make, model and year of the car and are having the images enhanced with the hope of being able to read the license plate number. "We have ascertained, by surveillance, time and observation, that the vehicle was apparently used...

During the two-day period that a brutally slain Jersey City family of four lay dead in their bloody Oakland Avenue apartment, a man was already using their bank card to raid their accounts at nearby ATMs on Central Avenue and Kennedy Boulevard - and police have video of the withdrawals, officials said yesterday. "We don't know at this point where the person resides, but it could be someone from Jersey City," Hudson County Prosecutor Edward DeFazio said. "The pattern of the ATM locations speaks for itself, and I don't think we need significant analysis of that." DeFazio said reviews of...

The ATM card of slain Jersey City Heights resident Hossam Armanious was used several times in the week after his death to withdraw thousands of dollars from his bank account, Hudson County Prosecutor Edward Defazio said yesterday.The withdrawls, made on several occasions from banks in the Jersey City Heights and in mid-town Manhattan, continued for up to a week after the bodies of Armanious, his wife, Amal Garas, and their daughters, Sylvia and Monica, were found inside their Oakland Avenue apartment on Jan. 14.

NEWARK - The former deputy registrar of the Hudson County Office of Vital Statistics pleaded guilty today to conspiring to illegally transfer Hudson County birth certificates, U.S. Attorney Christopher J. Christie announced. The guilty plea from Jean Anderson, 40, of Jersey City, is the culmination of an extensive investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Diplomatic Security Service, an agency of the Department of State, into the issuance of fraudulent birth certificates from the Hudson County Office of Vital Statistics (HCOVS). An individual who paid Anderson and her co-conspirators for the service of creating the false birth records...