Thursday, July 23, 2026
Charlestown, RI Author Publishes Political Thriller
Local activist Thom Cahir has a new book out
Sweeping across four continents, this high-stakes narrative plunges readers
into a shadowy world where the lines between state-sanctioned justice and
domestic extremism are dangerously blurred.
The world is reeling from a new wave of brutal extremist violence.
In the Arizona high country, retired Army Colonel Martin Jeffers lives with a burning thirst for retribution.
Having weaponized a radical domestic militia, Jeffers has spent years purging white supremacists from its ranks, reshaping it into a highly disciplined, covert army dedicated to national defense.
He needs only
one thing to launch his private war: actionable intelligence.
That intelligence surfaces when David Abramowitz, a deep-cover Israeli Mossad
agent embedded inside al-Qaeda, intercepts an active terror plot. Al-Qaeda's
operations chief is assembling a massive meeting in Saudi Arabia.
Rhode Island needs this!
A New Option for Long-Term Care Costs
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“On a scale of 1 to 10 of my annoyance with taxes in general, this one is about a 2,” she said. “I see the benefits.”
The small surcharge on wages provides the funding for Washington Cares, the nation’s first state-operated program for long-term care insurance. It was set to begin distributing benefits July 1.
If Haggett, 67, a systems administrator who lives in Auburn, Washington, needs help with daily activities as she ages — bathing, dressing, grocery shopping, managing medications — she’ll be able to use the benefit she has accrued through WA Cares, as the program is known.
About 3.7 million workers participated last year, paying an additional 0.58% in payroll taxes. Those who contribute for 10 years will qualify for a lifetime benefit of $36,500. The amount will rise with inflation: A 36-year-old now earning about $50,000 a year who contributes $291 a year for a decade will have a projected $98,000 benefit if she needs assistance at age 75.
Both the WA Cares mandatory premiums and eventual benefits are modest. But for older adults and people with disabilities, they can help pay for a variety of services: home care, transportation, adult day programs, home modifications like ramps and grab bars, compensation for family members who assist them, or assisted living facilities and nursing homes.
Haggett had looked into private long-term care insurance to cover those needs, but she balked. “It’s crazy expensive,” she said. And since premiums can rise, and frequently have, “you’re basically saying, I’ll pay whatever, whenever.”
Maine ICE agent linked to fatal shooting has history of domestic violence accusations
The checkered past of ICE agent David Brouillette
Mel Leonor Barclay, Politics Reporter
This story was originally reported by Mel Leonor Barclay of The 19th. Meet Mel and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.
Mel Leonor Barclay, Politics Reporter
The man identified as the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer who fatally shot a Colombian immigrant in Maine on Monday had a documented history of domestic violence against two previous wives and his daughters, according to reporting by the Associated Press.
The AP reported Thursday that the agent, David Brouillette, had a long history of verbal and physical abuse documented in the state’s family court system. Two women who were once married to Brouillette also spoke to the AP, detailing the abuse they say Brouillette subjected them to.
Multiple reports of domestic violence incidents against Brouillette raise questions about the agency’s hiring practices as it rapidly grew its ranks to carry out President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda.
The death of 25-year-old Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a Colombian national who was shot and killed Monday while in his car with his wife and daughter, is the latest killing resulting from interactions with immigration officials.
Ashley Brouillette, who divorced David Brouillette in 2009, said her ex-husband became physically violent with her after she got pregnant with their daughter. Once, she said, Brouillette threw boiling water at her while she was holding their child.
She said the abuse continued after their divorce. Late last year, Ashley Brouillette said, her ex-husband left her a voicemail, which she shared with the AP, in which he suggested that she and other women in her “bloodline” should die.
“And all of you should have your f——--g throats cut,” the voicemail said, the AP reported. “Yeah, you should. Am I threatening that I’m gonna do that? Nope. Nope. But do I think that you should have your f——-g throats cuts? Or should have had them cut? Yep.”
Wednesday, July 22, 2026
Is the Price-Fixing "Crackdown" for Real?
Not until they arrest and try corporate offenders
by Philip
Mattera, director of the Corporate
Research Project of Good Jobs First for the
Then he concocted far-fetched claims such as the idea that
“illegal aliens” were to blame. After his attack on Iran caused fuel and other
prices to shoot up, Trump insisted the increase would last only a short time.
Now, at long last, Trump seems to be acknowledging that
inflation is real and the government needs to do something about it. Yet, of
course, he wants to give the impression he can solve the problem with what
amounts to a wave of a magic wand. He just tried that by taking credit for some
selective grocery price reductions announced by Walmart, only to end up with
egg on his face when the retailer disclosed that the cuts were scheduled well
before Trump stepped in.
Apart from Trump’s antics, some parts of the administration
are taking a more serious approach by focusing on one of the more significant causes of high prices: collusion among producers.
URI gardens, and gardeners, offer sweet scents, too
Gardeners at URI suggest sweet-smelling plants to explore
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| WELCOME: URI green spaces are open to the public, including the Youngken Medicinal Garden; shown, students AJ Chatterton, Ash Lilly and Kate Guinto with coordinator Elizabeth Leibovitz. (URI Photo / K. Curry) |
While the public loved
Morticia, the University of Rhode Island’s recently-bloomed
corpse flower, its 1,200-acre Kingston Campus offers the public a wide
variety of sweet-smelling specimens to experience and enjoy.
Plant sciences major Daniel Meservey, who works in URI’s Horridge Conservatory, says the conservatory has a number of fragrant specimens in its collection.
In the Conservatory, Meservey recommends olfactory-minded visitors locate the Lady of the Night and Kahili ginger, which will bloom soon.
Meservey also recommends
visitors look for the dendrobium and coconut orchids, passion flower, camellia,
and Arabian jasmine for their compelling smells.
His colleague Allegra Halverson, with URI Farms, says the Department of Plant Sciences and Entomology enjoyed making a cool plant like the corpse flower accessible to the public and hopes it piques interest in more of the botanical collections at URI.
“We hope this is a great gateway for people who have never visited the plant collections on campus to come back and enjoy what we have to offer,” she said. Halverson recommends visitors return to URI to smell the orange jessamine in the Horridge Conservatory come winter and notes a few other fragrant faves on campus as well:
The Katsura tree smells like cotton candy in the fall when the leaves drop. These trees can be found in the Botanical Gardens, at the Tootell Aquatic Center’s entrance, at Independence Square and elsewhere.
The Japanese tree lilac features white flowers in summer and blooms in June.
Fragrant snowball viburnum can be found at the entrance to the rose garden in May and elsewhere on the Kingston Campus. This is an example of a white flower that has a strong smell—an adaptation for attracting night foraging pollinators like moths and bats. The white flowers are also more visible at night.
Spicebush lives up to its name. Lindera benzoin smells like lemon fresh if you scratch the twigs and features small yellow flowers in spring; there are many along the Upper College Road edge of the Botanical Gardens. This native species is also great for birds with red fruits in the fall.
Common diet tips about water intake and spicy foods could be wrong
Real scientists are open to the possibility they could be wrong
By Laura Reiley, Cornell University
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| Credit: Laila Milevski/Cornell University |
The common rationale for drinking water at meals is that it physically stretches the stomach, triggering fullness so you don't eat too much. But a new Cornell study found no support for that idea in practice. The paper is published in the journal Appetite.
Instead, for every additional 100 grams of water participants drank, they ate about 39 more grams of food—roughly 49 more calories. People who frequently switched back and forth between bites of food and sips of water ate even more: Each additional switch was tied to about 4.4 more grams of food consumed.
Researchers suspect this "switching" effect works
by delaying something called sensory-specific satiety—the way a food's appeal
naturally fades the longer you eat it. Alternating with water may reintroduce
contrast that keeps the meal appealing longer, delaying the point at which
people stop eating.
"There's been this widespread advice that if we drink water, it fills us up," said Paige Cunningham, assistant professor in the Division of Nutritional Sciences in the College of Human Ecology. "But water empties quickly from the stomach, so it likely doesn't fill us up for long. Instead, water may increase how much we eat, providing lubrication that can speed up eating and preventing dry mouth, which can prolong enjoyment of the food."
Charlestown Residents United (CRU) announces its 2026 endorsements
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Tuesday, July 21, 2026
Sociopathic Trump Delivers Absurd—and Terrifying—Address to the Nation
Trump's latest efforts to end democracy
Robert Reich for Inequality Media
We’ve been here before, but this time he’s even less restrained than he was in 2020 and is surrounded by people who will do his bidding.
His address to the nation was absurd. It was riddled with so
many lies that I’m reluctant to dignify them with rebuttals, but you should
have them.
He mentioned a newly-declassified investigation into a voter registration group in Muskegon, Michigan that apparently had invited fraudulent registrations in 2020—but Trump didn’t mention that the applications had been caught and none of them had resulted in any ballots being sent out incorrectly.
The FBI closed the
investigation, stating “the investigation to date did not identify a criminal
violation or a priority threat to national security.”
He alleged, once again, that foreign powers have hijacked votes, or that federal or state officials plotted to rig either the 2020 election. But no evidence has ever emerged showing that vote counts have been manipulated or corrupted. Intelligence reports, state audits of vote tallies and lawsuits have repeatedly affirmed official results in 2020 and other years.
Nothing
suggests China manipulated votes. Instead, US intelligence assessment says
China “probably also continued longstanding efforts” to gather information on
US voters and public opinion and to use that information to influence US policy
“as it has during all election cycles since at least 2008.”
The most significant foreign influence operations occurred
in the 2016 presidential election and were conducted by Russia, in favor of
Trump, according to the Mueller report. To
the extent that this and other reports appeared to cast doubt on the legitimacy
of Trump’s victory, they have had the effect of fueling his distrust of US
intelligence agencies.
Despite his repeated assertions that US elections are not
secure, Trump during his second term has significantly cut the budget of the
Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security
Agency, including its election work. That’s because Trump grew contemptuous of
the agency, and the government’s election security work generally, after it
validated the integrity of the 2020 election.
So the entire performance was fake—an extension of his
Big Lie that the 2020 election was “stolen” from him.
Why you let down your guard on ads when scrolling on social media
Don't click "BUY" until the following day
Matthew Pittman, University of Tennessee
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| Even a few seconds of scrolling will tire your brain and make you more open to bold advertising claims. Money Knack on Unsplash, CC BY |
Honestly, I couldn’t remember. Maybe it was for a social media skit? Maybe I was planning on making her laugh? Or maybe I was just a “victim” of an online ad that showed me the wrong message at the right time.
Scroll on social media for even 30 seconds, and your brain is already a little more tired than it was before. And in that mentally foggy state, you become more open to ads that just tell you what to buy – “The facts make it clear, we’re the best!” – than to ads that invite you to draw your own conclusion.
I’m a professor of advertising who has spent years studying how social media affects consumer behavior. And my recent research underscores how the mental tax of processing information, or “cognitive load,” changes the way people respond to product claims from brands.
Tiny plastics in drinking water may be making dangerous bacteria stronger
Can plastics make you sicker?
Virginia Tech
In a study published in Water Research, Virginia
Tech researcher Jingqiu Liao and an international team found that nanoplastics
can interact with environmental microbes in ways that may create indirect risks
to human health, especially through drinking water systems.
"It is very important to better understand the adverse
effects of the nanoplastics on human health, and not just in humans but also in
the environment, which indirectly influences human health," said Liao,
assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering. "The
nanoplastics can make the antimicrobial-resistant pathogens better survive,
which could be harmful to the environment and would have public health
implications."
Nanoplastics May Complicate Water Treatment
The researchers reported that bacteria exposed to
nanoplastics can become more resistant to disinfectants. That could create
serious problems for water treatment facilities and distribution networks
designed to keep drinking water safe.
"When the nanoplastics interact with the biofilm and
the bacteria inside them, they can strengthen the biofilm and make it more
resistant to any kind of measures that are going to keep the water clean,"
said Liao, who is also an affiliate with Fralin Life Sciences Institute's
Global Change Center.
Jingqiu Liao is an assistant professor of civil and
environmental engineering. Photo by Peter Means for Virginia Tech.
Nanoplastics are a smaller category of microplastics. They
range from about one to 1,000 nanometers in size and cannot be seen with the
naked eye. In this study, the researchers examined how these particles affect
the formation of biofilms inside drinking water systems.
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