Tara Nurin

First there was New Jersey legend Bruce Springsteen headlining a star-studded telethon to benefit the American Red Cross. Then there was Oscar de la Hoya and his Los Angeles-based Golden Boy Productions donating the proceeds from a night of boxing to the decimated Boys & Girls Club of Atlantic City.

The owner of New Jersey's largest estate winery would like to do it. So would the mayor of Princeton Township. But so far, the only person to open a distillery in post-Prohibition New Jersey is James Yoakum. The 27-year-old Philadelphia real estate broker is waiting final approval to start legally making his Petty's Island Rum and other spirits in a former garage in downtown Camden.

American shad were once so common that East Coast rivers were described as being “black” and “boiling” as tens of millions of fish migrated upstream each spring to spawn. Today, approximately 98 percent of the fish that formed a staple of the Colonial diet have been depleted. In rivers once teeming with shad, a daily catch is sometimes counted in the single digits.

The future of gambling in New Jersey continues to take center stage for industry leaders and lawmakers in Trenton and Washington, D.C. Over the past several months, state and national legislators have drafted more than a dozen bills to expand gaming in the state to include sports betting, gambling via the Internet and mobile apps, and wagering at horsetracks and at special events. Some of these activities are already being implemented at the state level despite violating federal law.

The Legislature Thursday made several moves in its battle to restructure New Jersey higher education, including a legislative warning to the Rutgers' board of trustees that the plan is all or nothing — accept all aspects of the proposal or have it voided in its entirety.

There's been no end to hoopla over the fact that the Rutgers University faculty opposes a proposed merger between Rutgers-Camden and Rowan University. Now it appears that the Rowan faculty does not support the restructuring either.

Far-reaching legislation was introduced into the New Jersey Senate Monday to restructure the state’s higher education system, and critics are angry that the bill, framed by sponsors as a compromise, does not take into account most of the concerns that have formed the basis of a six-month controversy among the state’s politicians, educators, unions, students and residents.

A union representing Rowan University’s faculty, adjunct faculty, coaches, and librarians has endorsed a set of recommendations that oppose the school’s proposed merger with Rutgers-Camden. Despite a pledge of neutrality by Rowan’s administration and the union itself, representatives of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) Local 2373 voted to approve a proposal written by a state-wide coalition of labor unions that asserts, “Rutgers-Camden must remain a part of Rutgers University.”