New Jersey

In an annual rite known as Upfront Week, NBC, Fox, ABC, CBS, and the CW just presented their lineups for the 2012-13 TV season to advertisers in New York. The ceremonies took place in some of the city's most august concert Halls (Carnegie, Avery Fisher, Radio City Music) over four days. The broadcast companies introduced only 20 new series for the fall (down from 27 last season). NBC led the pack with six new shows. Fox and the CW had half that many. Like it or not, an awful lot of familiar faces will be returning in the fall.

Pam Chandler decided to accompany her husband, Bob, to the extraordinary auction of an Ocean City, N.J., mansion Saturday to keep him from "going overboard. " But an hour after she toured the 7,000-square-foot Victorian-style house on the Great Bay, she was the one prodding him to stay in the frenzied bidding on the breezy bayside veranda. The Chandlers, who live in Rumson, Monmouth County, with their three children, won the auction, ultimately paying $3.9 million for a property that was listed at about $6.5 million two years ago. It is assessed at $5 million.

ATLANTIC CITY — The stabbing deaths of two Canadian tourists outside a casino hotel left tourism officials stunned and dismayed Monday, casting a shadow over the formal opening on Memorial Day weekend of the newest gambling palace and tripping up a $30 million-a-year campaign to rebrand and revive the sagging resort town. The two victims, women ages 80 and 47, were stabbed and killed during a robbery Monday morning outside Bally's Atlantic City casino hotel, just steps from where a police officer was sitting in a patrol car. Police declined to provide the names of the victims, or precisely where they were from, pending notification of family.

In rejecting PSA screening for prostate cancer, an influential federal panel has chipped a cornerstone of preventive medicine, declaring that it's not always best to catch cancer as early as possible. "At best, PSA screening may help only 1 man in 1,000 avoid death from prostate cancer," the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force said Monday. "Most prostate cancers found by PSA screening are slow growing, not life threatening, and will not cause a man any harm during his lifetime.

A dream had carried the boys so far from home, some 5,000 miles across the ocean to a cramped and dingy apartment in Philadelphia: a hope that ice hockey could change their lives. Ivan Pravilov could fulfill that dream, they were told. He could take them from the daily grind of post-communist Ukraine to the gleaming ice of the NHL. He'd done it before. He'd done if for Andrei Zyuzin, who went on to play for six NHL teams. He'd done it for Konstantin Kalmikov, a third-round draft pick of the Toronto Maple Leafs in 1996.

TRENTON - More than five years after New Jersey passed a law to start tracking prescription drug use, the state will launch a database to monitor use of dangerous drugs with the intent of helping doctors spot abusers more quickly and authorities stop drug dealers. The database, which has been collecting information since Sept. 1, contains more than four million prescriptions. Starting this month, doctors and pharmacies, including mail-order operations, can access detailed patient information on prescriptions for painkillers, steroids, sedatives, and stimulants.

In his inaugural, Gov. Corzine said he would "never settle for less than excellence. " What does that mean to you in terms of how the state operates? What should he do to ensure that fellow state leaders uphold that same standard? Share your ideas in essays of 250 words or fewer. E-mail us by Wednesday at sjvoices@phillynews.com, fax 856-779-3221, or write to The Inquirer, attn: Community Voices, 53 Haddonfield Rd., Suite 300, Cherry Hill, N.J. 08002. Please put "Corzine" in the subject line.

New Jersey is in the news again and whenever New Jersey is in the news it's not good. The election of a woman governor, Christie Todd Whitman, should have brought us some positive media coverage as a progressive state. Instead, Ed Rollins, her political strategist, bragged that he suppressed the turnout of African American voters. If such political chicanery had happened in any other state, I suspect it wouldn't have been the lead story of the MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour. Of course, Rollins later said he was lying, but the damage was done.

After their youngest child finished high school in June, destined for college, Janice and John Potts lost no time bolting from New Jersey. By the end of July, the longtime Haddonfield residents were cheerfully ensconced in a three-bedroom rowhouse near Philadelphia's Washington Square. Their new abode is much smaller than the 4,500-square-foot home (with swimming pool) that they sold, but it comes with a huge plus. "We downsized in terms of space, but cut our property-tax bill in half," said Janice Potts, 52, an outsource-services manager for a Center City firm.

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. - New Jersey should expect to add 48,000 jobs this year, led by the construction and service sectors, as it continues its postrecession recovery, economists at Rutgers University said Wednesday. While the Garden State's economy has "definitely" come out of the recession, continuing problems in the U.S. and global economies, including rising oil prices, the federal budget deficit, and the housing downturn, will keep the state's comeback modest, said Nancy H. Mantell, director of the Rutgers Economic Advisory Service.

In January 2011, amid much fanfare, Gov. Christie trekked out to Chicago on the heels of a public-relations blitz, promising to lure businesses and jobs from Illinois to New Jersey. His administration spent more than $300,000 in taxpayer money on an advertising campaign starring Christie himself. Newspapers ads ran up and down the state, from the Chicago Tribune to the State Journal-Register of Springfield, encouraging businesses to pick up stakes and relocate to the Garden State. Even though major employers such as Kraft Foods ignored or refused the governor's request for a meeting, Christie nonetheless immediately deemed the trip a success.

An alarming new study shows more New Jersey residents than ever are struggling to provide for their families. A record 885,000 people in the state lived below the poverty line in 2010, according to the study released Sunday by the Legal Services of New Jersey Poverty Research Institute. The poverty rate increased from 9.4 percent in 2009 to 10.3 percent in 2010, based on the latest census figures available. Among the poor were 300,000 children, the state's most vulnerable and neediest residents.

ATLANTIC CITY - New Jersey's chief justice didn't opine on the extraordinary upheaval and political controversies in the state's court system Friday during his annual "State of the Judiciary" speech at the state's bar association convention. But the new president of the New Jersey State Bar Association most certainly did, in an interview slamming as "borderline unethical" Republican Gov. Christie's recent criticism of one judge's ruling. In introducing the chief justice, bar president Kevin P. McCann, a Democrat with a practice in Bridgeton, told the gathering that judges should not be "looking over their shoulder" or "second-guessed by someone else.

TRENTON — Before they delved completely into the budget, lawmakers took some time this week to talk about sharks, tigers, and pigs. The Legislature is considering bills to ban the sale of shark fins, require aggressive monitoring of captive tigers, and keep pregnant pigs out of restrictive crates. The shark-fin bill generated the most controversy. It would force New Jersey fishermen to throw away shark fins rather than sell them. Supporters of the bill hope it will help stifle the shark-fin market, which has led to a practice called "finning," in which fishermen cut fins from live sharks and toss the animals back into the ocean to die. Fins are prized for shark-fin soup, a Chinese delicacy served at weddings and celebrations.

For the third straight series, the New York Rangers are basking in the glow of a one-game-to-none lead earned in the confines of "The World's Most Famous Arena. " The Eastern Conference's top-seeded team has failed in its first two attempts to double that edge at Madison Square Garden. Given a third shot against the New Jersey Devils, the Rangers are determined to make the most of home-ice advantage in Game 2 of the East finals Wednesday night. The Rangers held an optional practice Tuesday at their home rink, the site of a 3-0 win in Game 1 on Monday.

TRENTON - Tax collections in New Jersey are running $230 million behind Gov. Christie's projections after April revenue came up short, according to a state Treasury report released Tuesday. If the trend continues, Christie and lawmakers may have to revise their plans to cut taxes, or they may have to find other places to trim the budget. New Jersey's economy is growing, but revenue in April - when the state brings in a large haul of its income and corporate tax collection - lagged in New Jersey, down from $3.32 billion last year to $3.26 billion this year, according to the Treasury report.

Flyers goalie Ilya Bryzgalov refused to talk to reporters during the team's postseason media day Thursday, but he candidly told a Russian newspaper he was fed up with the scrutiny he was under during his first year with the club. "What I lived through this season I wouldn't wish to an enemy," he said to reporter Natalia Bragilevskaya of SovSport. ". . . I need to keep working. I understand the fans. They paid their money and want the show. But many forget that we are not robots, but living people.

  TRENTON - President Obama's change of heart Wednesday boosted morale for gay rights advocates in New Jersey, but they don't expect the state to legalize gay marriage any time soon. The Legislature made history in February by approving a bill to legalize same-sex marriage. But Republican Gov. Christie vetoed the bill just one day after it passed the Assembly. A supporter of civil unions, Christie thinks voters should decide whether gay couples can marry. Sen. President Stephen Sweeney (D., Gloucester)

Here's a look at attitudes and laws about gay marriage locally and around the country: State Sen. Daylin Leach, D-Delaware/Montgomery, and state Rep. Babette Josephs, D-Center City, proposed same-sex marriage bills in 2009, but both stalled in committee. Ultraconservative state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, R-Butler County, proposed an amendment to the state Constitution last year to officially ban same-sex marriage, but that stalled as well. A recent Muhlenberg College/Morning Call poll showed that 52 percent of Pennsylvanians feel that gay marriage should be legal, while 37 percent believed it should not and 9 percent said they were unsure.

CAN THE FLYERS' system, as currently constructed, win a Stanley Cup? On the surface, the question seems easily dismissed. Peter Laviolette won a Stanley Cup in Carolina and went to the finals with a Flyers team only two seasons ago, using a pair of journeyman goalies, no less. And yet the way it has ended for him over the last two springs - his offensive-minded men bottled up haplessly in their own end by healthy, defensive-minded teams in Boston and New Jersey - has created not merely seeds of doubt, but weeds of it. And so, as they packed their bags up Thursday at Skate Zone, this was the overriding discussion: Did a team that dispatched the Stanley Cup-favorite Penguins with 30 goals in their first-round matchup, and had a week to rest and recharge, simply get outplayed by a sixth-seeded Devils team that had to rally just to push past Florida in seven games the previous series?