HOT

Priscilla Edwards

She has it all going and she has her "glow" on.

Edwards, the Assistant Coach of the Providence College Women’s Basketball team, has opened The Glow Cafe in Providence. Edwards's motivation for opening the new cafe and juice bar was she was looking to share her plant-based based lifestyle on a larger platform.

“Just from the name, ‘Glow,' we wanted to bring something bright to the community. There is an abundance of places that aren’t the healthiest. If I was going to bring something into the neighborhood, I wanted it to be something that would lift it up.”

As an athlete and a coach, Edwards is conscious about what she consumes and shares this lifestyle through The Glow Cafe.

HOT

Gotham Greens

New York-based Gotham Greens joined Governor Gina Raimondo and elected officials on Thursday to preview its new $12.5 million urban farm greenhouse facility under construction on Harris Avenue in Providence.

Gotham Greens, which touts itself as a global pioneer in urban greenhouse agriculture and a leading consumer brand of premium-quality local produce and fresh food products, grows produce using ecologically sustainable methods in technologically-sophisticated, climate controlled, urban greenhouses.

The $12.5 million project consists of a 110,000 square foot state-of-the-art greenhouse farm that will create approximately 60 permanent and 100 construction jobs.  The project has $1.3 million in Rebuild RI tax credits. 

“Most of the fresh food you all consume — especially fresh produce -- spends an average of 3,000 miles to get your plate. That impacts freshness, flavor, nutrition, quality, and leads to waste. It’s also extremely inefficient and takes a toll on natural resources. Things will change this fall when this facility will start to produce over ten million heads of premium quality leafy green lettuce and herbs in the City of Providence,” said Gotham Greens Co-Founder and CEO Viraj Puri at Thursday’s press event. “This facility will use state of the art proprietary indoor growing technology that uses a fraction of the land, a fraction of the water, and fraction of the energy compared to conventional commodity agri-business.”

HOT

Liz Tanner

The Director of the Department of Business Regulation is one person in government that simply understands business handworks to make the regulatory structure simpler and easily navigable.

Whether it is reducing the number of regulations or integrating the permitting process between municipalities and the state, Tanner is making tangible improvements.

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Special Olympics

Cicilline led a bipartisan effort to save more than $28 million for the Special Olympics in the upcoming fiscal year.

His announcement came a day after Education Secretary Betsy DeVos proposed to cut the federal funding.

Well, it worked. On Thursday night, President Trump announced that he was overruling his staff and restoring funding. 

Special Olympics said in a statement by Dennis DeJesus:

We express our gratitude to President Trump for re-authorizing funding for Special Olympics school-based programming. He joins a long history of over 50 years of United States Presidents and Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle in their support of Special Olympics and the work we do in communities throughout the country.

This is a non-partisan issue and we are proud of our work to create inclusion in 6,500 U.S. schools and among young people. This is a crucial time in our schools and our communities. Programs like Special Olympics Unified Champion Schools are transforming school climates to create a safer and more inclusive world.

We are so grateful for the outpouring of support from Special Olympics athletes, young people, and the community at large and encourage everyone to continue their support of our school-based programming until we have reached all 100,000 schools in the country.

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Washington Trust

You have to love local and community-based.

Washington Trust has been named as the #1 performing community bank in New England and was ranked #33 out of the top 50 U.S. banks by S&P Global Market Intelligence.

“Washington Trust is honored to be recognized as one of the top-performing community banks by S&P Global Market Intelligence. Washington Trust is the oldest community bank in the nation and now we can proudly state that our strong performance, quality metrics, and steady growth has also earned us recognition as the top financial institution in our region,” said Edward “Ned” Handy, Washington Trust Chairman and CEO.

S&P’s list is based on financials for the year ended December 31, 2018, and defines community banks as those with assets between $3 billion and $10 billion.

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NY and MA Attorney Generals

While Rhode Island’s Attorney General seems disinterested at best and Rhode Island’s Governor can’t understand why taking $12,500 and keeping money from the Sackler’s undermines her credibility, the women who serve as Attorney Generals in Massachusetts and New York are proving they are women of action and both have named the members of the billionaire Sackler family who helped lead Purdue Pharma over the past decades.

NY's Attorney General -- see what she has done.

Massachusetts' Attorney General -- read here.

HOT

Narragansett Creamery 

The RI-based company was awarded a Silver Medal for its Burrata Cheese at the United States Championship Cheese Contest earlier this month.

“We are honored to win this award in the Burrata category and to be included with such an outstanding group of dedicated and creative cheesemakers,” said Mark Federico, owner, and co-founder of Narragansett Creamery.

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10,000 Problem Gamblers

Governor Gina Raimondo signed legislation this week which was rushed through the Rhode Island General Assembly that allows for mobile sports betting — de facto, to be accessible in your pocket.

“The ink is barely dry [on sports betting] and there is a rush to mobile,” Keith S. Whyte of the National Council on Problem Gambling (NCPG).

According to Whyte, a survey conducted by his organization find that sports gamblers have twice the rate of problem gambling as those who bet on other forms of gambling.

Whyte says the new immediate and mobile accessibility to gambling will increase abusive behavior, estimating that about 10,000 new problem gamblers will emerge in Rhode Island due to the expansion of sports betting to the cellphone.

"Take 15% of Rhode Island adults as your number of sports bettors. Of that number we expect 6% to show signs of gambling problems,”  said Whyte who appeared on GoLocal LIVE.

With Rhode Island’s population now at stagnant at 1,060,000, that means nearly 10,000 will be impacted by the gambling expansion.

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Sacklers Target Veterans

As the lawsuits pile up against opioid maker Purdue Pharma, documents unveiled show the family who owns the company had direct involvement with the sales strategy that led to the national health crisis and helped build their massive fortune. Documents also reveal that one of the target markets that the Sacklers' company zeroed in on with its sales and marketing was U.S. military veterans.

A key player named in lawsuits in the multi-billion dollar scheme is Jonathan Sackler. He and his wife are major donors to Governor Gina Raimondo and she has repeatedly refused to return the Sacklers' donations.

According to the lawsuit filed by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the Sackers were directly involved in the Purdue Pharma marketing strategy — a strategy that more than 1,600 lawsuits across the country allege was fraudulent and has led to hundreds of thousands of deaths.

“That same month, Richard and Jonathan’s father, Raymond Sackler, sent David, Jonathan, and Richard Sackler a confidential memo about Purdue’s strategy, including specifically putting patients on high doses of opioids for long periods of time,” cites the Massachusetts lawsuit against Purdue Pharma and Raimondo’s donor individually.

“The memo recounted that some physicians had argued that patients should not be given high doses of Purdue opioids, or kept on Purdue opioids for long periods of time, but Purdue had defeated efforts to impose a maximum dose limit or a maximum duration of use. Raymond asked David, Jonathan, and Richard to talk with him about the report,” the lawsuit states, which cites a May 5, 2014 memo from Burt Rosen, Vice President for Federal Government Relations of Purdue Pharmaceuticals.

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Life for Doctors in RI

Rhode Island is one of the worst states in the country for doctors. And, it may only get more complex for physicians in Rhode Island with a major hospital merger pending.

Presently, the subsidiary of Partners HealthCare -- Brigham hospital has an application into the RI Department of Health to take over Rhode Island's second-largest hospital group Care New England.

According to a recent study completed by WalletHub, RI is ranked as the third worst state in the U.S. for doctors.

“Doctors are among the highest-paid and most educated professionals in the U.S. In fact, “physician” was the highest-paid job type in 2018, with a median base salary of over $195,000 and over 3,000 job openings during the year. The high salary average makes sense, given the importance of their life-saving work and the struggles that come with life in the medical profession,” said WalletHub.