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Barrington Police

According to a Tweet by the Barrington Police:

Breaking and Entering suspect? This pup was “detained” for entering a neighbors house when she opened the door!

Our ACO was able to assist and we let the little guy off with a warning. He was returned to his owner without further incident.

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RI's First New College in 30 Years

College Unbound has been granted initial accreditation status by the New England Commission of Higher Education. Accreditation by the Commission indicates that the institution meets or exceeds criteria for the assessment of institutional quality periodically applied through a peer review process.

The effort to create RI's first new colllege in 30 years took Dennis Littky just 12 years.

Now, there is a new model that meets the needs of a range of audiences.

In an historic and unanimous vote on May 20, 2015, the Rhode Island Council on Postsecondary Education welcomed College Unbound as a nonprofit degree-granting post secondary option in the state. It was standing room only as College Unbound supporters flooded the boardroom to hear the final verdict.

The crowd cheered when council member John J. Smith spoke of College Unbound’s ability to serve underrepresented, low-income adult learners, saying, “This particular program appears to give them hope, so they are able to not only feel pride in themselves and in their work, but have an opportunity to grow, expand, and to find their pathway.”

(Former) Rhode Island Commissioner of Post secondary Education Dr. Jim Purcell also praised the college, saying, “Education is all about bringing forth the capacity that exists within people, and College Unbound offers people the opportunity to expand their minds, finish their degrees, and build better lives.” Dr. Purcell continued, saying, “These types of adult degree completion programs are transformative not just for the individuals and their families, but also for our community and workforce.”

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Trying to Help

The owners of two popular Rhode Island restaurants are thinking outside the box -- and inside beer cans -- to help their employees this holiday season during the pandemic. 

J.P. Rutkov, who owns Camp Nowhere on Smith Street in North Providence and Dr. Duff's Lost and Found Project on Putnam Pike in Johnston, said he decided to get into the candle business in order to help his staff.

The state's coronavirus restrictions for businesses -- especially the curtailed nighttime hours, which Rutkov has said has impacted his tipped workers as much as 90% -- had him thinking of ways to generate new income.

"I think I was on Etsy, and I saw candles in beer cans, and said hey, that’s a good idea," said Rutkov. "We partnered with a packing plant in Johnston, and we’ve experimented for a couple a weeks."

The candles, which sell for $20, will see $6 of each sale go into the pockets of his waitstaff.

BUY CANDLES HERE

"I never thought I'd be doing this. This time last year, we were strictly brick-and-mortar," said Rutkov. 

Read more here.

Kinch Legacy

The Kinches of Pawtucket, who include a family legacy that includes a mayor and council presidents, have now added a council presidency in Cumberland. 

Mike Kinch is now the newly elected Council President in Cumberland.

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Tax Winner

The Rhode Island General Assembly announced this week that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has issued proposed regulations affirming a workaround initiated by House Speaker-nominee K. Joseph Shekarchi to help small-business owners who were negatively affected by the Trump administration’s 2017 tax changes.

The IRS issued a notice that it is proposing regulations that will clarify that state and local taxes paid by a partnership or S corporation on its income are allowed as a deduction by the partnership or S corporation in computing its taxable income. Therefore, the taxes would not be subject to the state and local taxes (SALT) deduction cap on the returns of the owners in the business.

“While we were always confident that this solution worked within the boundaries of the federal law, it’s great to have this stamp of approval from the IRS. This notice gives business owners in Rhode Island certainty and clarity that they can continue getting the full credit for the state and local taxes they are paying," said Shekarchi. 

VIDEO: Watch Shekarchi Explain Legislation on GoLocal LIVE

"The pandemic has made this year extremely challenging for businesses of all types, and they shouldn’t be saddled with higher tax liability on top of the other difficulties they are facing right now," he added. 

About Legislation

In 2019, Shekarchi sponsored legislation (2019-H 5576), which was later enacted as part of the 2020 state budget, to provide Rhode Island business owners the workaround affirmed by this IRS regulation. 

Without it, owners of “pass-through” entities such as LLCs, S corporations, sole proprietors and partnerships potentially faced higher federal tax liabilities due to a $10,000 cap on the SALT deduction on federal taxes that was enacted as part of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act pushed by President Trump and passed by Congress in December 2017.

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Super Speakers

The Newport Art Museum's Winter Speakers Series will not be stopped. It is another deep and varied line-up.

Each lecture requires a ticket, The presentations and the questions and answers will be online.

Saturdays, January 23 - February 27, 2021 at 2 pm

Since 1928, the Winter Speaker Series has been a cornerstone of the Newport Art Museum's annual programming. Each year the Winter Speaker Series Committee and Museum staff curate this series to reflect the ideas of our times to educate, illuminate, delight, and inspire. Now, incredibly in its 93rd year, the 2021 series is poised to have its widest reach yet. Delivered live via Zoom, this year's thought-provoking talks will come to you virtually, wherever you happen to be!

Each lecture will be followed by a virtual Q&A with the speaker.

Our favorite speaker is:

January 23, 2 pm: Darrell West

Vice President, Senior Fellow and Douglas Dillon, Chair in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution

"Politics 2021: Challenges Facing the Next Administration" How will the incoming Biden/Harris administration manage the pandemic, respond to social unrest, and remedy broadly felt economic hardship, all at a time when the country remains so sharply divided?

TICKETS

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Vin Mor Yet Again

This week, the National Institute on Aging awarded a grant to a team of researchers based at Brown University to design a monitoring system to identify and track adverse health impacts after elderly nursing home residents receive COVID-19 vaccinations.

“Nursing home residents constitute about 40% of all deaths due to COVID in the nation, but make up less than one half of one percent of the U.S. population,” said lead investigator Vincent Mor, a professor of health services, policy and practice at Brown’s School of Public Health. “Residents are in desperate need of protection from the virus, but no one as sick as a nursing home resident was enrolled in any of the vaccine trials.”

The new effort, a supplement to a $53.4 million IMPACT Collaboratory grant awarded to Brown and Hebrew SeniorLife in 2019, provides funding for Mor and a team of Brown researchers to work with Genesis HealthCare, one of the nation’s largest post-acute care providers with more than 350 facilities across 25 states.

The researchers will monitor the occurrence of adverse events — diagnoses, signs and symptoms that virologists, epidemiologists and clinicians believe may be associated with the vaccine — following COVID-19 vaccinations to residents in facilities affiliated with Genesis. The work is part of a U.S. Centers for Disease Control effort to establish a vaccine adverse event monitoring system for COVID-19, particularly focused on frail elderly residents who were not included in vaccine trials.

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RI's Testing Program Is a Failure

The testing conducted by the State of Rhode Island is approximately half of the 20,000 tests promised by Governor Gina Raimondo.

RI's existing testing structure has little or no benefit as Rhode Island has a failed contract tracing program. 

RI has the 7th highest per capita death rate in America and it continues to have the highest level of infection on the East Coast. These are facts. Not hyperbole.

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Mayor of Providence

Has anyone seen the mayor of Providence?

Is this a case of taking money under false pretenses?

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RI GOP

The latest claim by GOP chair Sue Cienki is that there were voter "irregularities" that need to be investigated. 

The only problem is there wasn't any fraud or corruption. The difference is that people could vote by mail and it was different. The RIGOP are embarrassing themselves.