Providence County | featured news

WASHINGTON, D.C. — President Donald Trump on Monday renominated Rhode Island Public Defender Mary S. McElroy to the U.S. District Court bench.It marks McElroy's third nomination to the vacancy created by U.S. District Court Judge Mary M. Lisi’s retirement. Her nomination has twice stalled due to partisan bickering. At the recommendations of U.S. Senators Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse, President Barack Obama [...]

PROVIDENCE — A massive new weather vane on the city’s skyline greeted arriving commuters Monday morning — a 140-foot-tall, red crane, its horizontal boom looming ominously over moving traffic along Fountain Street.Riggers with North American Crane & Rigging assembled the tower crane over the weekend in the middle of the construction site for a new apartment and retail building across from The Providence Journal building.The Potain MDT 389, made in [...]

NEW BEDFORD — A judge found Shawn Souza, a Dartmouth police officer charged with child rape, to be dangerous, but did not hold him without bail Monday at a dangerousness hearing.Judge Robert S. Ovoian released the 37-year-old officer on $10,000 cash bail, told him not to come within one mile of the two victims’ school, home and employment. He also established a curfew from 6 p.m. to 8 a.m., and required Souza to wear a GPS monitoring device.Earlier during [...]

A Dominican national, who has been deported from the United States three earlier times, pleaded guilty Monday in U.S. District Court to trafficking heroin and fentanyl, and illegal reentry into the United States, according to a news release from the office of U.S. Attorney Aaron L. Weisman.Juan Manu Pena-Zapata, 39, was pulled over in Providence on Sept. 18. He had been the subject of a federal arrest warrant from Michigan on a charge of using a false Social Security number, according [...]

PROVIDENCE — Care New England announced Monday afternoon that Rick Majzun, president and chief operating officer of its Women & Infants Hospital, is resigning effective immediately “to pursue other professional opportunities,” according to a statement from CNE spokesman James Beardsworth.“Care New England and Women & Infants would like to thank Rick for his efforts since arriving last fall and appreciate his support, energy, and enthusiasm for the [...]

Mediated labor contract talks between Stop & Shop and the five New England locals of United Food and Commercial Workers International will resume Tuesday at The Graduate hotel in Providence, formerly the Biltmore.The company has posted a statement and made public its entire proposal for each local, along with a summary of each, at https://stopandshop.com/labor/2019/#/labor/news.Negotiations began Jan. 14 to [...]

PROVIDENCE — Few interest groups have been more generous to Rhode Island lawmakers than the firefighters' lobby, which is pushing controversial overtime legislation up for a House vote on Tuesday, in a state that regularly tops the national charts on the cost of fire protection.Since 2007, the R.I. State Association of Firefighters has logged [...]

As Smithfield police and Bryant University public safety officials on Monday investigated an “altercation” in one of the senior student townhouses early Sunday, the university released a statement saying that neither racism nor violence will be tolerated.Smithfield police said in a news release Sunday night that they were called to the campus around 2 a.m. to help public safety officers with a breaking-and-entering and assault that had happened earlier. According to the [...]

PROVIDENCE — Following hours of spirited discussion, the Downtown Design Review Committee voted unanimously to recommend that the I-195 Redevelopment Commission reject the proposed Hope Point Tower in its current form.The decision was received mostly with applause Monday night at the Joseph A. Doorley Jr. Municipal Building."This design as a whole is a complete departure from the character of our capital city," said Kristi Gelnett, the committee's chairwoman. "I [...]

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — R&B singer R. Kelly made a paid appearance early Sunday at a club in Illinois' capital city, but the fans who shelled out $50 to $100 for tickets got only a 28-second performance, followed by a half-hour meet-and-greet.Hours before his appearance at the Dirty South Lounge in Springfield, Kelly posted a video on Instagram asking the media to "take it easy" on him because "this is how I got to get paid now, for right now."Kelly, 52, [...]