Rhode Island, Providence | featured news

PROVIDENCE -- The National Weather Service has issued a winter weather advisory with snow expected to move into the region late tonight or early this evening.The storm should drop 2 to 4 inches on the area before the snow stops Thursday [...]

Ocean State Job Lot stores will open at former Benny's locations in Cranston, Warwick and Wakefield, according to an announcement Wednesday morning.The Carpionato Group, which bought the former Benny's buildings, made the announcement.The stores will be at 148 Atwood Avenue, Cranston; 1109 Warwick Avenue, Warwick; and 688 Kingstown Road, Wakefield.In Warwick and Wakefield, Ocean State Job Lot will relocate existing stores into the bigger spaces. In [...]

PROVIDENCE -- Supt. Christopher N. Maher, in an interview Wednesday, acknowledged that bureaucratic hurdles made his job challenging, but said it isn't the reason why he is leaving.Maher, who is in his fourth year in the district, announced that he was stepping down this June. He is not leaving for another job but he is looking, although not for another superintendency."This is the first time I have gone through this phase of parenthood," he said. "One son is going to graduate [...]

Providence chefs James Mark and Benjamin Sukle are among the 20 semifinalists for the 2019 James Beard Award for Best Chef: Northeast.Sukle is on the list for the fourth time in five years. He was first nominated in 2014 for his work at Birch. This year’s nod is for his seafood- and pasta-focused wine bar Oberlin, located downtown on Union Street.It’s the first nomination for Mark, chef-owner of North, in the Dean Hotel; and Big King, on the West Side. With [...]

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump's former personal lawyer told Congress on Wednesday that Trump knew ahead of time that WikiLeaks had emails damaging to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, and he testified that Trump is a "racist," a "conman" and a "cheat." Michael Cohen suggested that Trump also implicitly told him to lie about a Moscow real estate project. Cohen has pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about the project, which he says Trump knew about as [...]

HANOI, Vietnam — U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korea's Kim Jong Un, leaders of two nations with a long history of hostility, opened their second summit Wednesday with smiles, hopeful talk and a friendly dinner that set the stage for the much more difficult talks to come about curbing North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons. Facing widespread skepticism about whether they can solve a problem that has bedeviled generations of diplomats and officials, the two [...]

SOMERSET — April 27 has been selected as the demolition date of the Brayton Point cooling towers, but local residents weren’t entirely thrilled when that information was announced at a town hall meeting held by the property’s owner Tuesday evening.“What’s that going to do to our homes, dust-contamination-wise?” asked Somerset resident Alison Kosinski Viana. “I’m nervous. I’m very nervous about what it’s going to do. [...]

NORTH KINGSTOWN -- More than 100 members of the Rhode Island National Guard's 143d Airlift Wing deployed Tuesday from Quonset Air National Guard Base to a forward operating base in Southwest Asia, according to the Rhode Island National Guard.The group, which includes members with operational, support and maintenance specialties, will support Operation Freedom's Sentinel."The men and women of the 143d are the best at what they do. They are highly trained and bring [...]

LINCOLN -- Boxing promoter Jimmy Burchfield Sr. was charged Saturday with throwing punches at a losing fighter in an altercation that began shortly after an actual boxing match ended at the Twin River Casino Saturday.Lincoln police said that at the end of a heavyweight bout, people climbed into the ring and taunted the losing fighter, Brendan Barrett. Barrett, though he’d just been knocked out in the authorized brawl, “verbally confronted them." During the argument, one [...]

PROVIDENCE — In an effort to demonstrate to Rhode Island lawmakers how seriously it takes sexual misconduct allegations, an arm of the Catholic Diocese of Providence has acknowledged paying "over $21 million in legal settlements,'' and another $2.3 million for counseling to "resolve'' more than 130 claims of abuse by clergy in church-run schools and parishes.The diocese reported the payouts in written testimony the Rhode Island Catholic Conference filed with the House [...]