Lawmakers Target Newark Airport

The heads of two powerful House committees yesterday asked federal aviation officials to explain relentless security breakdowns at Newark Liberty International Airport, saying Newark's lapses suggest deeper national problems.

In a letter to Edmund "Kip" Hawley, director of the U.S. Transportation Security Administration, the lawmakers said they "believe the problems raised in Newark are illustrative of some significant areas of dysfunction at TSA that undermine aviation security."

Read the full NJ Star Ledger story here.

Merchant Ship Rescues 14 Sailors

Fourteen Senegal nationals arrived in Brooklyn today aboard a merchant ship after being plucked from their 60-foot catamaran about 800 miles east of Cape Cod, Mass., Saturday afternoon. All 14 rescued, reportedly in good physical condition, were placed in the care of Newark U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents.

Read the full Military.com story here.

Newark CBP Returns Stolen Artifacts to Pakistan

Customs and immigration officials have returned several ancient artifacts to the government of Pakistan nearly a year and a half after they were discovered at Port Newark.

Experts determined that the artifacts, one of which dated to the second century BC, were stolen from a site in northern Pakistan.

They arrived in Newark in Sept 2005 in two shipments in which the shipper had misrepresented the country of origin, officials said on Tuesday.

The person to whom the shipments were addressed in the US did not pick them up and has not been detained, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman Michael Gilhooly.

Customs officials are cooperating with Pakistani officials investigating the thefts. The artifacts were shipped from the United Arab Emirates and declared as decorative items. A routine search of the containers was conducted to make sure the items matched what was on the shipping manifest, Gilhooly said.

Among the items recovered was a rare cup from the second century BC and a statue of a starving Buddha that is one of two ever found, officials said.

N.Y. Port Authority to Buy Stewart Airport

The New York area`s airport operator will vote to buy the lease to operate Stewart International Airport north of the city, a report said Wednesday night.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey`s board will vote Thursday to buy the lease from Britain`s National Express Corp. for $78.5 million, the Mid-Hudson News Service reported.

The Port Authority -- which operates Kennedy International, LaGuardia and Newark Liberty International airports -- expects to close on the lease purchase by October.

The purchase is intended to relieve air traffic and airport overcrowding in the New York metropolitan area.

New York state has legislation to permit the transaction. New Jersey would have to adopt similar legislation, which is not expected to be an issue, the news service said.

The Port Authority earlier set aside $150 million to develop a fourth passenger airport to serve the New York metropolitan region, and singled out Stewart -- 55 miles north of New York City in Newburgh, N.Y. -- as the fourth airport`s most likely site.

Area Ports Putting More Cargo on Trains

Anyone sandwiched between two trucks in bumper-to-bumper traffic on northern New Jersey highways might find this hard to believe.

But a growing number of cargo containers from Port Newark and Port Elizabeth are heading out from the docks on trains instead of on trucks, according to statistics released yesterday.

Under the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey's ExpressRail program, freight trains handled 338,882 cargo containers from the ports last year, a 11.8 percent increase.

Read the full NJ Star-Ledger story here.

Canadians Acquire Global

The Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan has bought Global Terminal & Container Systems, Inc., at Port Jersey Boulevard, of Jersey City and Bayonne, along with the New York Container Terminal (formerly known as Howland Hook) in Staten Island and two marine container terminals in Vancouver for $2.4 billion.

Read the full NJ Star-Ledger story here.