This spectacular Aquarium is one of the Philadelphia region's most visited destinations. Current exhibits include Ocean Base Atlantic, a 760,000 gallon Open Ocean Tank, COOL!, the Shark Zone and Inguza Island, home to African penguins that love to play and preen for visitors. The newest addition to the aquarium is the Camden Children's Garden, featuring imaginative, fun-filled gardens and exhibits.

You may just forget once you dive into the Adventure Aquarium — the most exciting underwater experience you can have without growing gills! Once you enter, you're in their world now! You’ll find yourself surrounded by over two-dozen sharks in the new 550,000-gallon Shark Realm. Then, dive into the deepest, darkest parts of the ocean in the new 4-D Theater - presented by PSE&G - and come face-to-teeth with some of the most amazing underwater creatures known to man!

With nearly double its previous exhibit space and a host of new creatures from land, air and sea, Adventure Aquarium will lead you through an underwater world complete with the West African River Experience (home to the only two hippos inside an aquarium and a free-flight aviary), a 40-foot, walk-through shark tunnel and the Jules Verne Gallery, where you will discover all kinds of exotic and wonderful animals.

Adventure Aquarium
One Aquarium Drive
Camden, NJ 08103
800-616-JAWS
www.adventureaquarium.com

On June 11, 2009, the World Health Organization (WHO) raised the worldwide pandemic alert level to Phase 6 in response to the ongoing global spread of the novel influenza A (H1N1) virus. A Phase 6 designation indicates that a global pandemic is underway.

More than 80 countries are now reporting cases of human infection with novel H1N1 flu. This number has been increasing over the past few weeks, but many of the cases reportedly had links to travel or were localized outbreaks without community spread. The WHO designation of a pandemic alert Phase 6 reflects the fact that there are now ongoing community level outbreaks in multiple parts of world.

WHO’s decision to raise the pandemic alert level to Phase 6 is a reflection of the spread of the virus, not the severity of illness caused by the virus. It’s uncertain at this time how serious or severe this novel H1N1 pandemic will be in terms of how many people infected will develop serious complications or die from novel H1N1 infection. Experience with this virus so far is limited and influenza is unpredictable. However, because novel H1N1 is a new virus, many people may have little or no immunity against it, and illness may be more severe and widespread as a result. In addition, currently there is no vaccine to protect against novel H1N1 virus.

"Let it be remembered," wrote Thomas Sharp in 1718, "That upon the nineteenth day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand six hundred and eighty-one, Mark Newby, William Bates, Thomas Thackara, George Goldsmith and Thomas Sharp set sail from the harbor...of Dublin...We took our land in tract together...bounding in the forks of Newton Creek and so over to Cooper's Creek..." Sharp's narrative account of the first permanent European settlement in what is today West Collingswood is the most accurate history of the establishment of Camden County.

Many of the early settlers in late seventeenth and early eighteenth century West Jersey (modern-day South Jersey) were like the Newton Colony people. Quakers, members of the Society of Friends, were persecuted in England for their religious beliefs and way of life. They came, lured by the Concessions and Agreements, a document written in 1677 by proprietors such as William Penn, who owned a large portion of the land in West Jersey and wished to encourage Quaker settlement in the area. The settlement offered the promise of religious freedom, equitable taxation, and representative government.

Quakers were not the first people to arrive on New Jersey's shores. Some 13,000-15,000 years earlier, after a long migration eastward beginning in Asia and leading over the Bering Strait through Alaska and across the American continent, the Paleo-Indians (Old Stone Age peoples), whose descendents eventually became known as the Lenape, had arrived. The Lenape were peace-loving, semi-nomadic people who lived in small family groups along the banks of waterways, spoke an Algonkian language, farmed, hunted, and fished.

Shocking but true: the United States has a lower rate of unioized workers than most democracies around the globe. Australia, Brazil, Japan, and South Africa have higher percentages of organized workers than the USA.

How does the EFCA affect Local 1034 members now? The kinds of attacks we suffer from the employer at the bargaining table, in the media, and in the state house are supported by the non-union workers who don't understand or have not benefited from a union contract. State workers are criticized for having generous health and pension benefits, but these benefits were hard-won at the bargaining table and through political action. If we do not make organizing easier, and actively recruit non-union workers and workplaces to join us in the labor movement, we all will suffer a race to the bottom. EFCA will help workers organize faster, without fear of retribution from the employer, and bargain first contracts faster.