URI Master Gardeners to hold spring plant sale Saturday, May 4, on Kingston Campus

Get there early for the primo stuff

URI Master Gardeners will hold their spring plant sale Saturday morning, May 4, on the University’s Kingston Campus. The plant sale is open to the public. (URI Photos / Cooperative Extension)

Got tomatoes? Broccoli? How about some peppers? On Saturday, May 4, the University of Rhode Island Cooperative Extension’s Master Gardener Program will hold its annual spring plant sale, open to the public, from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. in the Kingston Campus’ botanical gardens on Greenhouse Road, Kingston campus.

The plant sale will feature annuals, perennials, herbs, and vegetable seedlings — including the 2024 Plant of the Year, Gourmet Orange Bell Pepper — grown by URI Master Gardener propagation volunteers in URI’s East Farm greenhouses. 

This annual sale supports educational services offered through the URI Master Gardener Program throughout the year, including the gardening and environmental hotline, gardening information and soil testing exhibits, and ongoing educational workshops.

This year’s plant sale will feature annuals, perennials, herbs, and vegetable seedlings, including the 2024 Plant of the Year, Gourmet Orange Bell Pepper, all grown by URI Master Gardener volunteers in URI greenhouses. Master Gardeners will be on hand to field gardening questions, too.

Thousands of plants will be available for purchase by credit card or cash. URI Master Gardeners will also be there to answer lawn and garden questions.

The hidden risk of letting AI decide – losing the skills to choose for ourselves

Another reason to worry about AI

Joe Árvai, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

As artificial intelligence creeps further into people’s daily lives, so do worries about it. At the most alarmist are concerns about AI going rogue and terminating its human masters.

But behind the calls for a pause on the development of AI is a suite of more tangible social ills. Among them are the risks AI poses to people’s privacy and dignity and the inevitable fact that, because the algorithms under AI’s hood are programmed by humans, it is just as biased and discriminatory as many of us. 

Throw in the lack of transparency about how AI is designed, and by whom, and it’s easy to understand why so much time these days is devoted to debating its risks as much as its potential.

But my own research as a psychologist who studies how people make decisions leads me to believe that all these risks are overshadowed by an even more corrupting, though largely invisible, threat. That is, AI is mere keystrokes away from making people even less disciplined and skilled when it comes to thoughtful decisions.

The Chariho school construction bond

Why I am voting “Yes”

By Will Collette

Cathy and I don’t have kids, school age or otherwise. Our self-interest in the May 7 tri-town referendum for a $150 million Chariho school construction plan is limited to two factors: our taxes and our long-term stake in the community.

As taxpayers and voters, we are often asked to pay for things we don’t use, don’t need or don’t like. Though I may not agree with every item, I have no problem with this concept. Mutual aid is the foundation of a civil society, meaning we all have a duty to support the common good.

I don’t understand people who quibble about the costs of education given how much education gives back, or stated conversely, how much it costs us as a community if we fail to provide a solid and complete education for all.

Town Council member Scott Bill Hirst (R) and his band of Hopkinton MAGAs are campaigning hard against the school bond. They already convinced Hopkinton to vote down the Chariho budget, though the yes votes from Richmond and Charlestown were more than enough to approve the budget. The odious Clay Johnson and Richmond MAGAs are also against the bond, as is the right-wing RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity

And of course, they oppose any and all advances in public education. After all their Party Leader Donald J. Trump famously declared: "I love the poorly educated!" CLICK HERE to watch him say it.

That Hopkinton Republicans and these other MAGAnuts want to block this bond so badly is reason enough on its own for me to vote yes, but there’s much more than that.

By providing greater educational opportunities, we increase people’s earning capacity, reduce crime and poverty and improve productivity. Is there a down-side? Well, to MAGA Republicans, yes there is: an educated public is less likely to buy their bullshit.

Critics have grumbled about the cost of $150 million to build three schools and predict there will be cost over-runs. They dismiss the $112 million in estimated state funding saying that’s still our own money, but ignoring how the state cost-share spreads the cost out over the much larger statewide base.

I worked for the building trades for 10 years before I retired. One of my responsibilities was to review bidding on public construction projects. In 2005, the going rate for building a public school in Rhode Island was $60 million.

I am amazed at Chariho’s $50 million per school price tag compared to 20 years ago. Since 2005, schools must meet improved standards for digital learning, fire prevention, prevention of environmental hazards, isolation of communicable diseases like COVID and of course protection for the kids from the shameful plague of school shootings.

It’s not just age and disrepair driving the need being this bond issue, it’s new needs that were never envisioned when Chariho built the schools slated for replacement. We can’t afford to skimp on health and safety or the critical need to keep up with advances in technology.

Teaching young children in the best possible setting prepares them for success in high school, college or trade school and for careers beyond. The small bump in property taxes is a very worthy gamble.

Vote YES on May 7 or by mail-in ballot.

Sleepy

Yep

McKee releases his lame, sketchy "plan" to boost Rhode Islanders' incomes

He promised a "plan" but issued a "plan for a plan," if that

By Nancy Lavin, Rhode Island Current

Ears perked when Gov. Dan McKee unveiled an ambitious goal during his Jan. 16 State of the State address, promising to raise per-person annual earnings by $20,000 by the end of the decade.

The many questions that followed were met with one answer: Wait 100 days. The plan is coming.

A day before the 100-day mark, McKee delivered. Sort of.

The three-page memo announced on X on Thursday and added to the state’s long-term planning website, Rhode Island 2030, is more of a plan for a plan.

Or, in the words of Laura Hart, “a framework.”

“It’s not the plan itself because if we created a full plan and imposed it on people, we didn’t think that would work,” Hart, a spokesperson for McKee’s office, said in an interview on Friday.

Instead, the “Rhode to Prosperity” document proposes a series of summer outreach sessions with business and education leaders to gather feedback and hone details on the personal income goal. 

The document is rife with buzzwords popular in the workforce development world: stressing the need for “viable pathways to higher-wage jobs” and the role of “experiential learning” that relies on traditional educational programs and “employer-aligned models.”

East Coast Mussel Shells Are Becoming More Porous in Warming Waters

Another delectable under siege from warming waters 

American Museum of Natural History

Researchers at the American Museum of Natural History have found that over the last 120 years, the porosity—or small-scale holes—in mussel shells along the East Coast of the United States has increased, potentially due to warming waters. 

The study, which analyzed modern mussel shells in comparison to specimens in the Museum’s historic collection, was published today in the journal PLOS ONE. 

“Mussels are important on so many levels: they provide habitats on reefs, they filter water, they protect coasts during storms, and they are important commercially as well—I love mussels and I know many other people do, too,” said Leanne Melbourne, a Kathryn W. Davis postdoctoral fellow in the Museum’s Master of Arts in Teaching program and the lead author on the study. 

“Human-caused environmental changes are threatening the ability of mussels and other mollusks to form their shells, and we need to better understand what risks will come from this in the future.” 

Pell Center poll shows most American support traditional democratic values

Good news: Most Americans are NOT Christian nationalists

By Nancy Lavin, Rhode Island Current

There’s a glimmer of hope in what seems like an increasingly divisive national political atmosphere: Nearly two-thirds of Americans say they value the nation’s founding principles of equality and pursuit of happiness, according to a new survey out of Salve Regina University’s The Pell Center.

The results published through Pell Center’s democracy-focused research project, Nationhood Lab, are part of a larger initiative launched in March that aims to better understand the historic and evolving sense of American nationalism beginning with the Declaration of Independence. 

More than 1,500 voters nationwide interviewed from March 28 to April 2 were asked about their views on founding democratic values, along with their demographic details such as gender, political affiliation, race, religion, and age.

Among the most surprising findings: Twice as many survey takers favor a national narrative rooted in civic ideals of equality rather than one based in their ancestral or religious identity.

GOP Confirms 2025 Tax Plan If Trump Wins: More Giveaways to the Rich

Not surprisingly, tax breaks for the rich are 2024 GOP mainstay

BRETT WILKINS for Common Dreams

As House Republicans prepare for Donald Trump's possible White House return by plotting to expand the billionaire and corporate tax cuts that were the cornerstone of the former president's first administration, congressional Democrats and advocates for working Americans warned Thursday that a second Trump term would bring more of the same inequality-exacerbating policies.

The GOP-controlled House Ways and Means Committee held a hearing on "expanding the success" of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA)—widely derided by opponents as the "GOP Tax Scam." 

Republican committee members couched a policy that the Center for Popular Democracy said "delivered big benefits to the rich and corporations but nearly none for working families" as "relief to help hardworking American families."

Presidential shield

 

Good safety tip

Senate OKs Sosnowski legislation to create Rhode Island Lake Management Program

Fighting off invaders 

Chapman Pond, Westerly (DEM)

The Senate passed legislation introduced by Sen. V. Susan Sosnowski (D-Dist. 37, South Kingstown) that would create the Rhode Island Lake Management Program.

The bill (2024-S 2153A) would create a restricted receipt account to aid with lake and pond management issues relating to the control of invasive aquatic plants.

“Local wetlands are being threatened by invasive aquatic weeds,” said Senator Sosnowski. “This bill would be a first step to start a program at the Department of Environmental Management. The situation is becoming worse with warming temperatures, and it’s creating biological imbalance in these freshwater bodies. We have to be proactive to protect our lakes, which provide us with recreation, flood mitigation and an important habitat to plants and animals.”

Conditions in many Rhode Island lakes, ponds and tributaries are threatened or degraded by the growth of aquatic invasive plants, harmful algal blooms, nutrient enrichment and other water pollution problems. Restoring conditions in the state’s freshwater resources is essential to sustaining the valuable ecosystem services they provide.

The measure now moves to the House, where similar legislation (2024-H 8093) has been introduced by House Minority Leader Michael W. Chippendale (R-Dist. 40, Foster, Glocester, Coventry).

Invasion of the (Water)Body Snatchers 

By Rob Smith / ecoRI News staff

Indian Lake doesn’t look like the site of an alien invasion.

URI Launches Initiative to Study PFAS in R.I. Water Systems

Looking for solutions to pervasive problem

The state of Rhode Island mandated testing of public drinking water systems for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, better known as PFAS or “forever chemicals,” last year. 

To assistance with that effort, the University of Rhode Island has launched an initiative that will research the prevalence of PFAS in other sources, including ground and surface waters. 

PFAS have been used for decades in consumer products such as coating on nonstick cookware, on clothing and carpets to prevent stains, and in firefighting foam. These forever chemicals degrade slowly in the environment. Human exposure is widespread and may lead to such health impacts as cancer and reproductive issues.

Caring for older Americans’ teeth and gums is essential, but Medicare generally doesn’t cover that cost

Essential but not covered

Frank Scannapieco, University at Buffalo and Ira Lamster, Stony Brook University (The State University of New York)

C. Everett Koop, the avuncular doctor with a fluffy white beard who served as the U.S. surgeon general during the Reagan administration, was famous for his work as an innovative pediatric surgeon and the attention he paid to the HIV-AIDS crisis.

As dentistry scholars, we believe Koop also deserves credit for something else. To help make the medical profession pay more attention to the importance of healthy teeth and gums, he’d often say: “You are not healthy without good oral health.”

Yet, more than three decades after Koop’s surgeon general stint ended in 1989, millions of Americans don’t get even the most basic dental services, such as checkups, tooth cleanings and fillings.

Americans who rely on the traditional Medicare program for their health insurance get no help from that program with paying their dental bills aside from some narrow exceptions. This group includes some 24 million people over 65 – about half of all the people who rely on Medicare for their health insurance.

Many of the officials in the Earth Day photo ops are, at best, stagnant when it comes to environmental initiatives

Earth Day Events in R.I. ‘Reek of Blatant Deception’

By Victor Martelle

Prime example

Rhode Island news has been abuzz with Earth Day activities, from tree planting and cleanups to cookout celebrations. 

While a lot of this is pushed by local groups, city officials have also taken hold of the spotlight. They’re often seen in photo-ops, posting on social media, or participating directly.

For Rhode Islanders at least, it feels like a kick in the teeth: many of these same officials, at best, are stagnant when it comes to environmental initiatives, while some take staunch anti-environmental actions the rest of the 364 days out of the year. 

Yet, when Earth Day rolls around, they all equally come out of the woodwork to show their support, likely for a piece of that sweet green media pie — yuck!

It’s been said that Rhode Island’s environmental track record is notoriously slow-moving, where laws and regulations are hardly enforced, its own DEM is inept, and the top officials hardly care. 

This extends down to the state’s municipalities, where we’ve seen recent backward peddling examples in Pawtucket, Providence, Lincoln, and nearly every other city and town should you look further. It doesn’t help that these mayors and council members prop this up, all the while, strutting their stuff on Earth Day, claiming that we need to be more environmentally conscious.

None of this feels right; in fact, it reeks of blatant deception. We don’t even need to look that far to notice either. 

The notion of having to volunteer highlights the fact that there are ongoing, unaddressed problems: Why do we need to clean up that area? Why does this street require the planting of trees and shrubbery? Why are we creating cutouts of animals and insects — shouldn’t we be able to see them regularly? 

Better yet, why do we continually let these things fall into these conditions, and why don’t we have adequate laws encouraging and enforcing even the most basic green initiatives?

Suffice it to say, there’s nothing wrong about taking time to focus on something, but we must examine why we need to do so in the first place and look at who is involved and what they’re doing. 

This extends to not just municipal officials either, but to businesses and leaders within our communities. Are they behaving like they genuinely care, or for a PR push or business bump? Additionally, as a side, what can we locals do to push them in a better direction?

Let’s not kid ourselves, either; if we want more permanent fixes, it won’t be easy. Given that we live on the coast, and with landscapes ranging from city to rural, long-term solutions will vary and may very well be complex. However, it doesn’t feel like we’ve taken the first steps. 

We need better oversight from the state, followed by initiatives, ordinances, and encouragement by the towns and cities therein. Until we attempt to crawl, we can’t even think about walking. With that, let’s stop kidding ourselves and hope that one day in the future, there won’t need to be an Earth Day.

About as clear as it gets

For more cartoons by Ruben Bolling, CLICK HERE.

I miss Dr. Fauci. Hope he's enjoying his retirement

 

Wild turkey numbers are falling in some parts of the US

Maybe we should stop shooting them

Photo by Will Collette

Marcus Lashley, University of Florida and William Gulsby, Auburn University

Birdsong is a welcome sign of spring, but robins and cardinals aren’t the only birds showing off for breeding season. In many parts of North America, you’re likely to encounter male wild turkeys, puffed up like beach balls and with their tails fanned out, aggressively strutting through woods and parks or stopping traffic on your street.

Wild turkeys were abundant across North America when European settlers arrived. But people killed them indiscriminately year-round – sometimes for their meat and feathers, but settlers also took turkey eggs from nests and poisoned adult turkeys to keep them from damaging crops. Thanks to this unregulated killing and habitat loss, by 1900 wild turkeys had disappeared from much of their historical range.

Turkey populations gradually recovered over the 20th century, aided by regulation, conservation funding and state restoration programs. By the early 2000s, they could be found in Mexico, Canada and every U.S. state except Alaska.

Healthy or high risk?

New analysis warns of pesticide residues on some fruits and veggies

CAREY GILLAM  

PHOTO: SARAH ANNE WARD

Several types of fruits and vegetables generally considered to be healthy can contain levels of pesticide residues potentially unsafe for consumption, according to an analysis conducted by Consumer Reports (CR) released on Thursday.

The report, which is based on seven years of data gathered by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) as part of its annual pesticide residue reporting program, concluded that 20% of 59 different fruit and vegetable categories included in the analysis carried residue levels that posed “significant risks” to consumers of those foods.

Those high-risk foods included bell peppers, blueberries, green beans, potatoes and strawberries, according to CR. The group found that some green beans even had residues of an insecticide called acephate, which has been banned for use on green beans by US regulators since 2011. 

To understand the risks posed by AI, follow the money

"Cui bono" probably isn't you

Tim O'Reilly, UCL; Ilan Strauss, UCL; Mariana Mazzucato, UCL, and Rufus Rock, UCL

Shutterstock/Chaosamran_Studio

Time and again, leading scientists, technologists, and philosophers have made spectacularly terrible guesses about the direction of innovation. 

Even Einstein was not immune, claiming, “There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable,” just ten years before Enrico Fermi completed construction of the first fission reactor in Chicago. Shortly thereafter, the consensus switched to fears of an imminent nuclear holocaust.

Similarly, today’s experts warn that an artificial general intelligence (AGI) doomsday is imminent. Others retort that large language models (LLMs) have already reached the peak of their powers.

It’s difficult to argue with David Collingridge’s influential thesis that attempting to predict the risks posed by new technologies is a fool’s errand. Given that our leading scientists and technologists are usually so mistaken about technological evolution, what chance do our policymakers have of effectively regulating the emerging technological risks from artificial intelligence (AI)?

We ought to heed Collingridge’s warning that technology evolves in uncertain ways. 

However, there is one class of AI risk that is generally knowable in advance. These are risks stemming from misalignment between a company’s economic incentives to profit from its proprietary AI model in a particular way and society’s interests in how the AI model should be monetized and deployed.

Photograph of Albert Einstein in his office at Princeton
University, New Jersey, taken by Roman Vishniac in 1942.
 Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life/Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA

The surest way to ignore such misalignment is by focusing exclusively on technical questions about AI model capabilities, divorced from the socio-economic environment in which these models will operate and be designed for profit.

Focusing on the economic risks from AI is not simply about preventing “monopoly,” “self-preferencing,” or “Big Tech dominance”. 

It’s about ensuring that the economic environment facilitating innovation is not incentivizing hard-to-predict technological risks as companies “move fast and break things” in a race for profit or market dominance.

It’s also about ensuring that value from AI is widely shared, by preventing premature consolidation. We’ll see more innovation if emerging AI tools are accessible to everyone, such that a dispersed ecosystem of new firms, start-ups, and AI tools can arise.

Billionaires are bad for democracy

Taxing them is good for it

By Omar Ocampo 

A new, disturbing milestone has been confirmed in the latest Forbes World Billionaires List. The U.S. billionaire class is now larger and richer than ever, with 813 ten-figure oligarchs together holding $5.7 trillion.

This is a $1.2 trillion increase from the year before — and a gargantuan $2.7 trillion increase since March 2020.

The staggering upsurge shows how our economy primarily benefits the wealthy, rather than the ordinary working people who produce their wealth. Even worse, those extremely wealthy individuals often use these assets to undermine our democracy.

Billionaires have enormous power to influence the political process. They spent $1.2 billion in the 2020 general election and more than $880 million in the 2022 midterms. Even when their preferred candidates aren’t in office, our institutions are still more likely to respond to their policy preferences than the average voter’s, especially when it comes to taxes.

The vast majority of Americans, including 63 percent of Republicans, support higher taxes on the wealthy. Yet our representatives consistently fail to deliver. A quintessential example was Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts for corporations and the rich — the most unpopular legislation signed into law in the past 25 years.

Donny's new business

The price of gas

 

Westerly plans to bio-bomb mosquitos on Monday

Helicopters will spread bacteria that kills mosquito larvae on Chapman Pond

The Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management (DEM) is announcing that the Town of Westerly will conduct an aerial application of mosquito larvicide across 500 acres of Chapman Swamp and nearby swamplands by helicopter on Monday, April 29, weather permitting. 

The application, which consists of pellets that kill mosquito larvae being dropped by a helicopter, will take place between 8 AM and 3 PM. In the event of inclement weather, a rain date will occur on Tuesday, April 30, weather permitting.

Bti, a naturally occurring bacterium applied in granular form to control mosquito breeding in swamps and other breeding habitats, is the treatment that will be applied. It is applied to standing water where developing larvae are found. 

It is an environmentally friendly product whose toxins specifically affect the larvae of only mosquitoes, black flies, and fungus gnats and do not pose a risk to human health. 

Larviciding is recommended as part of the state's action plan to control West Nile Virus and Eastern Equine Encephalitis (EEE) and considered an effective strategy to reduce mosquito populations and related disease risk.

In most communities, the state recommends applying larvicide by hand to roadside catch basins. In the Chapman Swamp area of Westerly, however, aerial application is recommended given the area’s remote location and large footprint. Mosquitoes carrying the EEE virus were found in Chapman Swamp in 1996, 2003, 2019, 2020, 2022. 

Since 1997, the Town has applied Bti annually to help control mosquito breeding. Additional dates for treatment may be scheduled by the Town; the targeted areas include portions of Chapman Swamp and swampland near Hespar Drive.

For additional mosquito prevention tips, videos, and local data from the Rhode Island Department of Health, visit health.ri.gov/mosquito.

For more information on DEM programs and initiatives, visit www.dem.ri.gov. Follow DEM on Facebook, Twitter (@RhodeIslandDEM), or Instagram (@rhodeisland.dem) for timely updates.

New Research Reveals Why You Should Always Refrigerate Lettuce

Eat your greens but store them safely

By UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURAL, CONSUMER AND ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES 

A new study explores E. coli contamination in leafy greens, finding that factors like temperature and leaf characteristics affect susceptibility. 

Lettuce is particularly vulnerable, but kale and collards show promise as less susceptible options due to their natural antimicrobial properties when cooked.

Leafy greens are valuable for their dietary fiber and nutrients, yet they may also carry dangerous pathogens. Lettuce, in particular, has frequently been linked to foodborne illness outbreaks in the U.S. A recent study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign investigates the factors influencing E. coli contamination in five different types of leafy greens: romaine lettuce, green-leaf lettuce, spinach, kale, and collard greens.

Medical Providers Still Grappling With UnitedHealth Cyberattack

‘More Devastating Than Covid’

Samantha Liss 

DALL-E Created Thumbnail

Two months after a cyberattack on a UnitedHealth Group subsidiary halted payments to some doctors, medical providers say they’re still grappling with the fallout, even though UnitedHealth told shareholders on Tuesday that business is largely back to normal.

“We are still desperately struggling,” said Emily Benson, a therapist in Edina, Minnesota, who runs her own practice, Beginnings & Beyond. “This was way more devastating than covid ever was.”

Change Healthcare, a business unit of the Minnesota-based insurance giant UnitedHealth Group, controls a digital network so vast it processes nearly 1 in 3 U.S. patient records each year. The network is a critical conduit for shuttling information between most of the nation’s insurance companies and medical providers, who submit claims through it to get paid for treating patients.

We can't recycle our way out of our plastic mess

Reduce. Period.

By Daily Dose

This year’s Earth Day theme was Planet vs. Plastics, a problem we have been railing against since Alan Weisman first published his essay “Polymers Are Forever,” in 2007, where we first learned about the persistence of microplastics and their infiltration into the marine food chain.

“Plastic is still plastic. The material still remains a polymer. Polyethylene is not biodegraded in any practical time scale. There is no mechanism in the marine environment to biodegrade that long a molecule.” Even if photodegradable nets help marine mammals live, he concluded, their powdery residue remains in the sea, where the filter feeders will find it.

“Except for a small amount that’s been incinerated,” says Tony Andrady the oracle, “every bit of plastic manufactured in the world for the last fifty years or so still remains. It’s somewhere in the environment.”

The official Earth Day organization is “demanding a 60% reduction in the production of ALL plastics by 2040. Our theme, Planet vs. Plastics, calls to advocate for widespread awareness on the health risk of plastics, rapidly phase out all single use plastics, urgently push for a strong UN Treaty on Plastic Pollution, and demand an end to fast fashion.”

What a nice boy!

Draw your own conclusions

Star Trek's Holodeck recreated using ChatGPT and video game assets

What could possibly go wrong?

University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science

Many of STNG's worst episodes centered around
holodeck malfunctions, such as "Fistful of Datas"

In Star Trek: The Next Generation, Captain Picard and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise leverage the holodeck, an empty room capable of generating 3D environments, to prepare for missions and to entertain themselves, simulating everything from lush jungles to the London of Sherlock Holmes. Deeply immersive and fully interactive, holodeck-created environments are infinitely customizable, using nothing but language: the crew has only to ask the computer to generate an environment, and that space appears in the holodeck.

Today, virtual interactive environments are also used to train robots prior to real-world deployment in a process called "Sim2Real." However, virtual interactive environments have been in surprisingly short supply. 

Rhode Island public radio and TV merger is OK'd

Hopes high for stronger non-profit journalism

By Alexander Castro, Rhode Island Current

AG Peter Neronha's statement that the
merger offers "a community benefit"

Rhode Island PBS and The Public’s Radio’s will soon be one entity.

Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha announced the approval of the merger of the two public media organizations Tuesday after conducting a review to ensure compliance with state law.

Elizabeth Delude-Dix, chair of the board of directors of The Public’s Radio, thanked the attorney general’s office and said in a statement: “The Public’s Radio and Rhode Island PBS have long provided honest journalism, robust educational programming, and engaging and entertaining content to Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts. Our impact will be increased and our audience expanded as we take these next exciting steps forward.” 

Torey Malatia, CEO of The Public’s Radio, said via email: “I agree the new institution has great potential for community service.”

Now, a new jointly-made board will begin to work with staff from both broadcast stations to align their respective operations and administration, according to a press release from Rhode Island PBS. 

UAW wins big at Volkswagen in Tennessee – its first victory at a foreign-owned factory in the American South

The first of many wins?

Bob Bussel, University of Oregon

Volkswagen workers celebrate in Chattanooga, Tenn.,
after their bid to join the UAW union prevailed.
 AP Photo/George Walker IV

A decisive majority of the Volkswagen workers employed at a factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee cast their ballots in favor of joining the United Auto Workers union, the German automaker announced on April 19, 2024.

Persuading any Southern autoworkers to join a union had long been one of the U.S. labor movement’s most enduring challenges, despite persistent efforts by the UAW to organize this workforce.

To be sure, the UAW already has members employed by Ford and General Motors at facilities in Kentucky, Texas, Missouri and Mississippi.

However, the union had previously tried and largely failed to organize workers at foreign-owned companies, including Volkswagen and Nissan, in Southern states – where about 30% of all U.S. automotive jobs are located. It was the UAW’s third election at the same factory since 2014. The prior two ended in narrow losses.

The victory follows the UAW’s most successful strike in a generation against Detroit’s Big Three automakers, through which it won higher pay and better benefits for its members in 2023.

Volkswagen said it will await certification of the results by the National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency responsible for enforcing U.S. workers’ rights to organize. As long as neither side challenges the results within five business days, the NLRB will certify them – greenlighting the start of bargaining over a contract.

The union has already scheduled another election that will occur less than a month after the Volkswagen vote. More than 5,000 workers at the Mercedes-Benz plant in Vance, Alabama, will have their say on whether to join the UAW in a vote that will run May 13-17, 2024.

5 years after the Mueller report into Russian meddling in the 2016 US election on behalf of Trump

Mueller did a poor job of putting the facts about Russia's election interference before the public

Howard Manly, The Conversation

In the long list of Donald Trump’s legal woes, the Mueller report – which was released in redacted form on April 18, 2019 – appears all but forgotten.

But the nearly two-year investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election dominated headlines – and revealed what has become Trump’s trademark denial of any wrongdoing. For Trump, the Russia investigation was the first “ridiculous hoax” and “witch hunt.”

Mueller didn’t help matters. “While this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him,” the special counsel stated.

Trump Bible: illustrated version

I'm with Joe

Biden's new solar energy plan will bring $50 million to Rhode Island

On Earth Day, RI Delegation Delivers $49.3M for Cost-Saving Clean Energy Upgrades

In an effort to make clean energy upgrades accessible to more Rhode Islanders, U.S. Senators Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse and Congressmen Seth Magaziner and Gabe Amo announced that the state will receive $49.3 million in federal funding through the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Solar for All Program.

The Biden Administration’s $7 billion announcement of clean energy funding comes on Earth Day 2024 and was made possible by the landmark Inflation Reduction Act (P.L. 117-169), which Democrats passed in 2022. 

The funding secured for Rhode Island Equitable Access to Solar Energy (EASE) programs will support the launch and expansion of a comprehensive suite of seven financial assistance programs and twelve project deployment technical assistance initiatives designed to equitably address financial barriers to solar adoption. 

These initiatives will facilitate broader, more equitable access to reliable solar power across Rhode Island’s most historically underserved communities. 

According to Rhode Island Office of Energy Resources (OER), these funds will help serve thousands of households in the Ocean State, help to unlock millions in household energy cost savings over time, and realize significant reductions in annual carbon dioxide emissions.

EDITOR'S NOTE: In 2017, we took advantage of the Solarize Charlestown to install solar panels at a discount. Over the past seven years despite living in a wooded area, our monthly electricity bill is much lower plus we get a monthly check from National Grid for their purchase of excess power our panels produce and feed into the grid. We've long past the break-even point. Charlestown ought to do this again and if they do, you ought to consider going solar.     - Will Collette

Here are ways to filter out some harmful ‘forever chemicals’ at home

Removing PFAS from public water will cost billions and take time

Kyle Doudrick, University of Notre Dame

PFAS are showing up in water systems across the U.S.
 Jacek Dylag/Unsplash, CC BY

Chemists invented PFAS in the 1930s to make life easier: Nonstick pans, waterproof clothing, grease-resistant food packaging and stain-resistant carpet were all made possible by PFAS. 

But in recent years, the growing number of health risks found to be connected to these chemicals has become increasingly alarming.

PFAS – perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances – are now either suspected or known to contribute to thyroid disease, elevated cholesterol, liver damage and cancer, among other health issues.

They can be found in the blood of most Americans and in many drinking water systems, which is why the Environmental Protection Agency in April 2024 finalized the first enforceable federal limits for six types of PFAS in drinking water systems. 

The limits – between 4 and 10 parts per trillion for PFOS, PFOA, PFHxS, PFNA and GenX – are less than a drop of water in a thousand Olympic-sized swimming pools, which speaks to the chemicals’ toxicity. The sixth type, PFBS, is regulated as a mixture using what’s known as a hazard index.

Meeting these new limits won’t be easy or cheap. And there’s another problem: While PFAS can be filtered out of water, these “forever chemicals” are hard to destroy.

My team at the University of Notre Dame works on solving problems involving contaminants in water systems, including PFAS. We explore new technologies to remove PFAS from drinking water and to handle the PFAS waste. Here’s a glimpse of the magnitude of the challenge and ways you can reduce PFAS in your own drinking water:

EPA’s New Guidelines, and Funding, Will Boost Testing and Controls of PFAS in Rhode Island

Numerous sites across South County, including Charlestown

By Mary Lhowe / ecoRI News contributor

PFAS, manufactured since the 1940s, can be found in our food, our drinking water, and in our body tissue. They are in the soil, in rainwater, and in emissions spewed into the air. (EPA)

The Biden administration and the Environmental Protection Agency announced new guidelines this month that will give a push to efforts around the nation, including in Rhode Island, to eliminate or reduce toxic per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances — a class of chemicals known as PFAS — from drinking water.

The announcement created the first nationwide and enforceable ceiling — or “maximum contaminant level” (MCL) — of 4 parts per trillion (ppt) of PFAS in drinking water. A few types of PFAS chemicals were given a federal MCL of 10 ppt.

The new federal levels are more restrictive than the current maximum contaminant level in Rhode Island, which is 20 ppt in drinking water. Up to April 10, when the guidelines were announced, no federal level existed; states devised maximum contaminant levels for themselves.

The announcement also said the federal government would offer $1 billion to states and territories for testing and treatment of drinking water. It is part of a $9 billion investment through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to help communities track and clean up PFAS and other “emerging contaminants” in drinking water.

EPA believes that 6% to 10% of the nation’s 66,000 public drinking water systems may have to take action to reduce PFAS to meet the new standards. It also said the final rule of April 10 would reduce PFAS exposure for about 100 million people.

Both through legislation and in water treatment facilities and water pipes, Rhode Island has been working over the past few years to get control over PFAS — a class of toxic chemicals that have been used since the 1940s in a wide range of consumer products from food wrappers to carpets to Teflon pans to firefighting foam.