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The pastor of a Roman Catholic church has been removed after a church inquiry into allegations he sexually abused a minor 18 years ago. In a letter read over the weekend to parishioners of St. Joseph's Church, Metuchen Bishop Paul Bootkoski said the Rev. John Casey has been removed from his post and all active church ministry. He is accused of molesting a minor when he served as a parochial vicar at St. Peter The Apostle Church in New Brunswick. The bishop noted that Casey denies the allegation. Bootkoski said the diocese conducted its own investigation after law enforcement authorities...

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) _ Acting Gov. Richard J. Codey followed up on a promise to keep New Jersey in the forefront of stem-cell research Thursday by introducing legislation that would provide a big financial boost. In his State of the State speech in January, Codey said he would dedicate $150 million to a stem-cell research facility in New Brunswick. In addition to that money, the bill would provide the neglected state park system with $75 million for repairs and maintenance and dedicate $60 million for biomedical research. It would allow the state to tap unused bond capacity _ loans approved...

Steven Croteau, playing then for Acadian Peninsula Senateurs, is seen in this 2001 file photo from Tracadie-Sheila, N.B. Photo: Mario Landry, L'Acadie Nouvelle/CP Michel Croteau is an outraged hockey dad who just won't quit. From a small village best known for peat-moss bogs and crab fishing, the New Brunswicker is waging a protracted battle against minor hockey's highest powers all in the name of his teenaged son, Steven, who was denied a most-valuable-player award more than three years ago. Since then, the MVP snub has prompted a failed lawsuit, a rejected human-rights complaint and a Federal Court case that was...

Fund Abortion at Private Clinics or Face "Consequences" Feds Warn New Brunswick FREDERICTON, April 28, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - New Brunswick remains deadlocked with the federal Liberal Government over funding of abortions at private clinics. While the province will pay for abortions at hospitals after two doctors approve the procedure, the province is under pressure by both the federal government and a lawsuit by abortionist Henry Morgentaler to fund Morgentaler's private Fredericton abortuary that offers abortion on demand. Yesterday the provincial Department of Health and Wellness received a letter from the federal government initiating an official dispute avoidance resolution process to...

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. Grand jurors in Middlesex County have indicted two people on charges of starting a six-hour police standoff with a prank call in New Brunswick. The panel also handed up a new set of charges, alleging Fatin (FAH'-teen) Ward and Wadu Jackson engaged in a similar prank in January. Police in the city were twice sent to a home on Hale Street. No one was injured and officers eventually realized both calls were pranks. Last month, authorities scrambled a SWAT team after getting a call that a girl had been raped was being held hostage. Ward lives in...

A nationwide crackdown on a violent Latin American street gang called MS-13 has so far led to the arrests of more than 100 alleged gang members in six states, including several in New Jersey, federal immigration authorities said yesterday. The gang, established in Los Angeles in the 1980s by refugees of the Salvadoran civil war, has spread to Hispanic communities around the country while developing a reputation as one of America's bloodiest criminal organizations. In New Jersey, where officials estimate there are hundreds of MS-13 members, the gang is believed to be responsible for several murders, but its activity has...

New Brunswick 'hostage' incident probed Building resident talks out his kids after rape call causes standoff Wednesday, March 23, 2005 BY TOM HAYDON AND SULEMAN DIN Star-Ledger Staff A 911 call from a girl who claimed she was raped and held hostage in a New Brunswick apartment house sparked a six-hour police standoff in the heart of the city yesterday that ended when three people were taken into custody. By evening, however, police had not made any arrests and would not say whether a rape occurred in the third-floor apartment at 226 Seaman St.

EW BRUNSWICK, N.J. (AP) -- A teenage girl was being held hostage by two men in a house here Tuesday, and authorities had the building surrounded, police said. Police Sgt. Thomas Keefe said police believe two armed men were holding a 14-year-old girl hostage. County hostage negotiators were on the scene and Keefe said authorities were communicating with the men.

It doesn't take much to become a Big Man On Campus these days. At Rutg ers University, all you have to do is murder cops. Thomas Trantino — who should have gone to the chair 40 years ago — will be a guest panelist there today, lecturing his bleeding-heart audience on "How to Survive Probation and Parole," at the New Jersey college's Camden campus. The forum is co-sponsored by the school's department of sociology, anthropology and criminal justice — whose bizarre notion of criminal justice apparently includes welcoming a cop-killer. Better today's audience should hear from the families of...

Study: Scurvy Hit Early N. American French Colony 1 hour, 4 minutes ago Science - Reuters CHICAGO (Reuters) - Scurvy wiped out nearly half of the colonists who established one of the first French settlements in North America 400 years ago, scientists confirmed on Monday. The colony existed in 1604 and 1605 on St. Croix Island off present-day Calais, Maine, and St. Stephen, New Brunswick. Nearly half of the 79 settlers died during the harsh winter, prompting survivors to move to what is now Nova Scotia in the summer of 1605. It was one of the earliest European outposts on...

An illegal immigrant from Honduras was convicted in a series of rapes near Rutgers University that struck fear into the campus and surrounding neighborhood for more than two years.A Superior Court jury in Middlesex County convicted Ricardo Cepates on Tuesday of all but one of 27 counts of kidnapping, raping, and sometimes robbing his victims.The trial included three days of testimony in which laboratory experts said genetic testing conclusively proved that Cepates raped four women and a teenage girl between September 2001 and June 2003..He still faces trial on charges of attacking four other women, one of whom was raped...

What did you make of that poll showing 40% of Canadian teens regard America as “evil”? A little statistical oversampling of various Khadr nephews and nieces in southern Ontario perhaps? But no, these seem to be regular well-adjusted wholesome all-American-hating Canadian teens. And the only sub-group variation I saw in the Dominion Institute’s survey was that, when it comes to francophone teens, the number who regard America as an “evil global force” rises to 64%. Given that, unlike other Yankophobic nations, the Canadian economy has only one customer, our anti-Americanism is, obviously, psychologically unhealthy: we decline to put our money...

RUTGERS UNIVERSITY OFFICIALS CANCEL PALESTINE CONFERENCE Statement from the Organizing Committee of the Third National Student Conference on the Palestine Solidarity Movement at Rutgers University *** This is an Urgent Call to Action! Your immediate solidarity is needed! *** (Press release follows this Call to Action) Today, Rutgers University officials have CANCELLED the Third National Student Conference of the Palestine Solidarity Movement, scheduled for October 10-12, 2003 at Rutgers University. Yet, the students at Rutgers University are determined to hold the conference as planned. In canceling this widely supported conference throughout North America, the university administration has trampled on constitutional...

It took a few minutes for leaders of the Bisexual, Gay & Lesbian Alliance at Rutgers University to realize something was wrong at their back-to-school meeting. The hall was full of unfamiliar students wanting to become members. Most were carrying Bibles with markers in the first chapter of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans. They also had copies of the campus policy forbidding discrimination on the basis of "race, religion, color, national origin, ancestry, age, sex, sexual orientation, disability, marital or veteran status." Truth is, this scene hasn't happened at Rutgers or anywhere else — so far. What if it...