‘Fifteen wheelbarrow loads’ of uncooked spaghetti and macaroni mysteriously left in Old Bridge creek

Residents of a New Jersey town are stumped after they found about 500lbs of pasta inexplicably dumped next to a local brook.

Last month, Nina Jochnowitz – a former candidate for a seat on the Old Bridge township council – posted pictures on to her Facebook page that showed heaps of spaghetti and macaroni preposterously dumped alongside a bank of Iresick brook.

Queen Latifah and Pia Wilson take part in celebration of abolitionist in New Jersey city

Newark’s Mayor Ras Baraka, community leaders and celebrities including the musician and actor Queen Latifah and writer Pia Wilson led celebrations of a new monument to the abolitionist Harriet Tubman this week. The ceremony was a historic final step in replacing a Christopher Columbus statute that was removed from a square in the New Jersey city following the murder of George Floyd in 2020.

Gone is an ode to Columbus, who engaged in the kidnapping, enslavement and killing of Indigenous people in the Caribbean. Instead is now a depiction of Tubman, a legendary racial justice activist. Known as the “Moses of her people”, Tubman, who escaped slavery herself, helped other enslaved people gain their freedom amid great danger, acting as what was known as a conductor of the Underground Railroad during the civil war.

Agreement between diocese of Camden and plaintiffs is one of largest cash settlements involving Catholic church in US

A New Jersey Catholic diocese has agreed to pay $87.5m to settle claims involving clergy sexual abuse with some 300 alleged victims, marking one of the largest cash settlements involving the Catholic church in the United States.

The agreement between the diocese of Camden, which encompasses six counties in southern New Jersey on the outskirts of Philadelphia, and plaintiffs was filed with US bankruptcy court in Camden on Tuesday.