Last week was a good one for our local Customs agents. Not only did they find $300,000 in fake bills at JFK, agents at Newark confiscated about 6.1 pounds of cocaine in two separate incidents. The Italian woman who hid her coke in a false bottomed bag is pretty run of the mill, but give credit to the Peruvian guy who tried to smuggle his drugs in deflated soccer balls and inside four pairs of sandals. No hiding coke in coloring book pages, but not bad. more ›

Lori Berenson, the New York native who spent over 15 years in a Peruvian prison after her 1996 conviction in a foiled terrorist plot, arrived at Newark Liberty Airport this morning as part of a sanctioned holiday visit. Before finally taking off in Peru with her 2-year-old son Salvador, she told an AP reporter, in reference to her mandated January 11 return date, "I just hope we don't get caught in a snow storm." more ›

Newark police and the Essex County Prosecutor's Office say that an off-duty Newark police officer shot a man who was trying to carjack him. The cop had been sitting in his car (wearing street clothes) near 17 Avenue A when two men approached him, demanding his car while brandishing a gun. more ›

A Newark cop has been accused of tricking a drunk driver into giving him his pickup truck so the officer could use it to ram his estranged wife's car. Officer Enrique Gonzalez has been charged with criminal mischief and receiving stolen property—police say the pickup driver thought he had lucked out when the uniformed officer, who was off-duty at the time, told him to pickup the car later: "He says, ‘Okay, I’m not going to arrest you. Park your car here. I’m going to leave the keys in the tailpipe. Come back and get the car when you’re sober,’" Police Director Samuel DeMaio said. The driver "comes back several hours later and finds the car gone." more ›

While the real Gotham City is right here, of course, sometimes other cities are used to portray it on film—you know, since we're so terribly busy and important here in New York. And so it goes, The Dark Knight Rises has now relocated from Manhattan to... Newark. According to CBS, the cast and crew are in the Garden State today and tomorrow, prompting major traffic concerns for New Jersey commuters—the Newark Light Rail from Penn Station to Broad Street Station will not be running for the two days, and car traffic will be rerouted. more ›

It may have taken the TSA ages to stop doing things like feeling up our nation's youth, but when an agent puts a note next to a passenger's vibrator saying "GET YOUR FREAK ON GIRL?" Oh you better believe their response is swift and firm. Surely we will all rest easy knowing that the Administration really means it when they say that they take "all allegations of inappropriate conduct seriously and is investigating this claim." A day after the story went viral, the TSA says it has found and punished the note-writing baggage screener. more ›

Clearly, the Mets hate Newark. Rather than let the largest Jersey city enjoy a year of being home to a AAA team, the Mets have exercised their territorial rights and blocked the Yankees' Scranton, Pennsylvania, farm team from spending a year playing in Newark while its Scranton-Wilkes Barre stadium undergoes renovations. more ›

If you traveled through Newark Airport yesterday, chances are no one saw your naughty parts! (Unless you're into that sort of thing.) According to the Post, Newark was the first area airport to implement the "why-didn't-we-do-this-initially" step of using computer software that shows drastically less detail in their full-body scanners. Presumably the only people upset by the move are those who really feel the need for other people to scope out their 8-Minute Abs. more ›

No good deed comes unpunished, right? The ACLU today filed a lawsuit [PDF] against pretty much everyone in Newark (not to mention Governor Chris Christie) to get to the bottom of Mark Zuckerberg's not-at-all-suspicious $100 million donation to the city's school system last year. They don't want to stop the donation, they just want to find out how it came to be, and the Newark is not making that easy. Essentially the suit seems to come down to the question "whose leg do you have to hump to get some transparency here?" more ›

Unless you seriously love the smell of Auntie Anne's lingering in your hair or paying $34 for a neck pillow that won't inflate properly, it's probably best to avoid Newark Liberty Airport, which is the airport you are most likely to get delayed at. Hope you brought a book! more ›

Poor Newark. As if the city didn't have enough problems to deal with, now the New York Times has to go and point out that while everyone in the region is suffering in this heat, Newark has it worse. By multiple degrees. As in yesterday when it was 97 degrees in Central Park? It was 102 degrees in Newark. more ›

Two weeks ago the Newark City Council voted to require all restaurants that served fewer than 20 guests to have an armed guard on premises if they were open past 9 p.m. However, yesterday Newark's mayor, Cory Booker, vetoed the plan. At a press conference today, Booker explained his thinking: "There are many businesses that would be caught up in these extreme costs associated with armed security that never even had these problems in their neighborhoods." more ›

As he confronts a higher-than-2010-so-far murder rate, Newark Mayor Cory Booker spoke today two shootings last night that killed one 15-year-old and left 11 others wounded. And apparently, the violence was related to a "weeks-long drug dispute." more ›

Newark: where the murders abound, the mayor will shovel your streets and one day soon the fried chicken joints will have armed guards. Yesterday the Newark City Council approved an ordinance that will require any eatery that serves less than 20 customers to post an armed guard on premises if they are open past 9 p.m. more ›

An early-morning accident in Newark left a pedestrian dead after being pinned beneath a car, severing both of his legs, and two women have been arrested in conjunction with the crash, which authorities say may have been alcohol-related. more ›

Is Newark's Cory Booker eyeing a seat in the Senate? Though the telegenic and Twitter-friendly mayor denied any interest in going to Washington not so long ago, his recent creation of a political action committee, called CoryPAC, has insiders wondering if he's changed his mind. But if Booker runs, how ever will he find the time to shovel out all of New Jersey? more ›

In April of last year, Newark Mayor Cory Booker bragged about how March was Newark's first murder-free month since 1966. This year, things are not so good. The Star-Ledger reports, "Three fatal shootings in the last two days pushed Newark’s homicide total to 29 this year, a 71 percent jump in killings compared with the same period in 2010, as violent crime surges following police layoffs." more ›

It's a win for corporate welfare and a loss for Brooklyn: Panasonic has decided to move its headquarters—and its 950 jobs—from Secaucus, NJ to Newark, NJ, deciding against a Brooklyn property owned by Forest City Ratner. According to Crain's New York, "In the end, Brooklyn could not compete with a $102.4 million subsidy package offered to the consumer electronics giant to move to Newark." But it's not so cut-and-dry, because Panasonic's landlord in Secaucus and the town of Secaucus are suing! more ›

A radical and comprehensive new biography of Malcolm X published today names a Newark man as his main assassin. "Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention," written by the late Columbia professor Manning Marable, asserts that 72 year-old Mustafa Shabazz killed Malcolm X, and that two out of the three men who were arrested had nothing to do with the crime. Shabazz, through his lawyer, told the Star-Ledger that "there's nothing to support this." more ›

Airplane tantrums aren't just for disgruntled employees and Ivana Trump: a cranky vegetarian on a Newark-bound Continental Airlines flight yesterday became agitated when she was served the wrong in-flight food. So she decided to handle it the mature way, and write a complaint to the airline company threw her food tray at a flight attendant in the midst of a self-absorbed tempter tantrum. more ›

Another day, another report of a TSA screw-up. But just to shake it up, the latest lapse—in which a mother mistakenly took a steak knife aboard a flight—was at Newark, instead of JFK. more ›

A Newark man was sentenced to 15 years in prison this week, after he was arrested for a 75th time last month. Eric Warren, 43, has been committing theft-related crimes since 1988; according to police, he has at least 14 aliases, seven criminal convictions, and at least three short stints in jail between 2003 and 2004. But what was lucky crime # 75? What luxury item was too much for him to resist? more ›

TSA agents are unsure why a man decided to bring the body of his dead dog with him in a cardboard box on a flight from Newark Airport to Los Angeles on Tuesday, but he reportedly didn't seem too suspicious. During check-in, he informed workers of the contents of the box; the workers then told him that it would need to be screened at the Continental cargo facility. However, once the plane was in the air TSA workers realized that the box hadn't been screened, and feared it could contain a bomb or a disease. more ›

The storm has really brought out everyone's creative side. Yesterday we saw an Oscar-worthy short documenting the blizzard, and its more lo-brow counterpart—now someone has sent along the below video, where somehow inspiration was found in Newark Airport. Can you really go wrong with a 5D Mark II and a soundtrack by The National, though? more ›

While one day of shoveling the driveways of the people could have been seen as a PR stunt, two days of such kindness suggests actual kindness! After signing off for about five hours overnight, Newark Mayor Cory Booker reemerged on Twitter. He is currently on his way to Tremont Avenue and dispatching a crew to Brunswick Street. And so far his Twitter enemy has kept quiet, probably still reeling from Booker's scathing retort to his endless taunting. Or just plotting his revenge. more ›