The latest in pollution enforcement lawsuits by the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office targets a source familiar to drivers — dirty diesel engine trucks and cars.
Despite regulations and new technology that can keep diesel pollution roughly as controlled as that from gasoline engines, diesel vehicles too often leave streams of bad air for following drivers to breathe.
One reason, apparently, is that sellers and owners of diesel vehicles are disabling or removing pollution controls. Last week the state sued Manheim Remarking Inc., alleging it tampered with controls on 214 vehicles in less than three years and perhaps thousands of others annually.
The nation’s largest vehicle auction company, Manheim has a facility in Burlington County and a lesser one in Essex County. Also sued were three vehicle resale dealers, including Rezzetti Enterprises in Vineland.
The state said Manheim and subsequent sellers advertised that the vehicles had disabled pollution controls, including no catalytic converter, exhaust gas recirculation removed or simply “altered emissions.” When these controls are removed, nitrogen oxide pollution is increased 20-fold.
A Department of Environmental Protection raid of a Manheim facility in February last year found 28% of 50 vehicles inspected had been tampered with. The company sells hundreds of thousands of vehicles a year in New Jersey.
New Jersey’s fall in-person bar exam is canceled and will instead be held remotely, as cases of the coronavirus climb nationwide and make it unsafe to bring together the roughly 2,000 applicants across multiple locations, the state Supreme Court’s chief justice said on Wednesday.
The COVID-19 pandemic led the New Jersey Supreme Court in April to postpone the in-person test from this month to Sept. 9-10, but the New Jersey Board of Bar Examiners will now administer the examination remotely on Oct. 5-6, Chief Justice Stuart Rabner said in an order.
Of the nearly 2,000 applicants for the in-person test — which was supposed to be held at multiple locations — roughly 900 candidates are from outside the state and about 150 hail from states whose residents must self-quarantine for two weeks in accordance with the governor’s travel advisory, the justice noted.
“Although New Jersey has made significant inroads to combat the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, COVID-19 is gaining strength in many areas of the country and continues to be a serious threat to health and safety,” Justice Rabner said.
“Under the circumstances, and guided by the science, the Supreme Court has concluded it is simply unsafe to gather 2,000 applicants, even across multiple coordinated locations, for an in-person bar examination,” the justice added.
The switch from an in-person to a remote bar exam reflects the state judiciary’s ongoing cautious approach to the evolving public health crisis. While some in-person state court proceedings have resumed, most court events have been held via video or telephone over the past few months.
Florida on Sunday reported a record 15,300 new coronavirus cases, the most by any state in a single day since the pandemic reached the United States.
The staggering number was the result of both increased testing and widespread community transmission that has affected the state’s population centers as well as its rural areas. It shattered the previous highs of 11,694 reported by California last week and 11,571 reported by New York on April 15.
Florida is set to hold the Republican National Convention in Jacksonville next month and has ordered schools to reopen five days a week.
Here are some significant developments:
President Trump on Saturday wore a mask in public for the first time, while visiting wounded service members and health-care workers at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. Trump has previously shown disdain toward face coverings amid the coronavirus pandemic and refused to wear them.
Louisiana’s Democratic governor announced a new requirement that most people wear a mask in public. The state’s Republican lawmakers have opposed coronavirus restrictions.
Walt Disney World in Orlando reopened after having been shuttered for nearly four months, even as Florida continued to report record infections. Testing supplies in the state are running low, and some big labs are taking several days to return results, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said at a news conference. He partly attributed the backlog to testing many asymptomatic people.
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New Jersey on Saturday reported 49 more deaths attributed to the coronavirus and 438 more positive tests, while hospitalizations fell again and the state’s transmission rate stayed below a crucial benchmark for the second consecutive day.
The Garden State has now reported 15,525 deaths related to COVID-19 — 13,578 lab-confirmed and 1,947 probable — with 174,959 known cases in the little more than four months since the state’s first case was announced March 4.
Gov. Phil Murphy announced the numbers on Twitter.
The latest figures come as numerous other states continue to see surges in new cases. Once one of the nation’s hardest-hit states, New Jersey continues to see its numbers of new cases, deaths, and hospitalizations remain steady after falling significantly from their April peaks.
The state’s latest transmission rate — a key figure to determine how much the virus is spreading and guiding how to further reopen from lockdown restrictions — is 0.98, identical to the rate reported on Friday.
EnviroPolitics Blog is working to keep you informed about all aspects of the coronavirus — the status of confirmed cases, disease spread, death toll–and also how Americans are coping. Like this story, for instance. If you like what we are doing, Click to receive free EP Blog updates and please tell your friends about us.
In Pennsylvania. on Friday, the state hit a grim milestone, as it reported 1,000 new cases, the largest single-day toll in two months.
All this raises a new question, could we be looking at Lockdown Mark II? It’s too soon to say, of course. But we have seen some states retreat from their reopening plans as they deal with a spike in cases.
Taken together, it’s a reminder that we’re nowhere out of the woods yet. And, as we’ve said before, just like the ancient Spartans (borrowing from someone else) we can’t drop our shields.
Each of us depends on the other to safeguard public health. That means observing social distancing guidelines and wearing a mask when you’re out in public. Is it an inconvenience? Perhaps. But that scarcely matters. It’s in the service of a greater good.
Set to go to prison on July 14 for lying to Congress and witness tampering, Stone is spared three years and four months in jail by his friend, President Trump
WASHINGTON — President Trump commuted the sentence of his longtime friend Roger J. Stone Jr. on seven felony crimes on Friday, using the power of his office to help a former campaign adviser days before Mr. Stone was to report to a federal prison to serve a 40-month term.
In a lengthy statement released late on a Friday evening, the White House denounced the prosecution against Mr. Stone on what it called “process based charges” stemming from “the Russia Hoax” investigation. “Roger Stone has already suffered greatly,” the statement said. “He was treated very unfairly, as were many others in this case. Roger Stone is now a free man!”
Punctuated by the same sort of inflammatory language and angry grievances characteristic of the president’s Twitter feed, the official statement assailed “overzealous prosecutors” working for the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, and the “witch hunts” aimed at the president and his associates. It attacked the “activist juror” who led the panel that convicted Mr. Stone and went on to complain about the show of force used by federal law enforcement agents when he was arrested.
Roger Stone Photo by Leah Millis, Reuters
“These charges were the product of recklessness borne of frustration and malice,” the statement said. “This is why the out-of-control Mueller prosecutors, desperate for splashy headlines to compensate for a failed investigation, set their sights on Mr. Stone.”
The statement did not argue that Mr. Stone was innocent, only that he should not have been pursued. “The simple fact is that if the special counsel had not been pursuing an absolutely baseless investigation, Mr. Stone would not be facing time in prison,” it said.
Mr. Stone, 67, a longtime Republican operative, was convicted of obstructing a congressional investigation into Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign and has been openly lobbying for clemency, maintaining that he could die in prison and emphasizing that he had stayed loyal to the president rather than help investigators.
“He knows I was under enormous pressure to turn on him,” Mr. Stone told the journalist Howard Fineman on Friday shortly before the announcement. “It would have eased my situation considerably. But I didn’t.”
After the commutation was announced, Grant Smith, a lawyer for Mr. Stone, said: “Mr. Stone is incredibly honored that President Trump used his awesome and unique power under the Constitution of the United States for this act of mercy. Mr. and Mrs. Stone appreciate all the consideration the president gave to this matter.”
Democrats quickly condemned the president’s decision, characterizing it as an abuse of the rule of law. “With this commutation, Trump makes clear that there are two systems of justice in America: one for his criminal friends, and one for everyone else,” said Representative Adam Schiff, Democrat of California and a leader of the drive to impeach Mr. Trump last year for pressuring Ukraine to incriminate his domestic rivals.
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