In a move that protects the critical privacy rights of
residents in South Kingstown and beyond, the South Kingstown Town
Council voted unanimously last night to terminate the Town’s contract
with the company Flock Safety and
to remove the half-dozen automated license plate reader (ALPR)
cameras presently in the Town.
The decision by the council came after a thorough discussion
where a representative from Flock Safety was asked numerous questions and the
councilors shared their concerns, and concerns they had received from dozens of
their constituents, who also showed up to the meeting to support cancellation
of the contract.
The contract was initially approved a year ago, in June
2025. The Council’s decision to terminate it comes just weeks after the Little
Compton Town Council voted to reject installing Flock Safety cameras
in that community.
Last week, the ACLU of RI sent a
four-page letter to the South Kingstown council members outlining
numerous privacy concerns about the Flock Safety cameras.
The letter emphasized
that the cameras collect more information than just license plates, that there
are no state laws that protect the privacy of Rhode Islanders in the
installation and use of these systems, and that the cameras are part of a
nationwide surveillance system that has been misused in many ways.
In the past
year, dozens of other municipalities across the country have canceled their contracts
or rejected the cameras due to the significant privacy concerns their use
raises. In Rhode Island, in addition to Little Compton, the Warren and Portsmouth
Town Councils have recently rejected police efforts to install the
cameras in those communities.
House Appropriations Committee
Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D-CT-03) issued the following statement after the
State Department notified Congress of its intent to release $600 million in
lawfully appropriated funding for Gavi, an international organization that
supports children in developing nations with vaccine access.
“After continued advocacy from myself and my Democratic
colleagues on the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, these funds are
finally being allowed to flow. It is utterly shameful that these resources were
ever blocked in the first place, and children around the world were deprived of
desperately needed vaccines for nearly two years.
How can you trust a Health Secretary who takes his grandchildren swimming in sewage?
“Gavi has helped to vaccinate over 1 billion children
globally over the past 25 years, preventing more than 20 million deaths. The
insertion of Secretary Kennedy’s senseless, selfish, and absurd crusade against
vaccines is putting children in the United States and abroad at great risk. He
must stop putting his own personal, ill-informed opinions above
well-established scientific evidence before even more children get sick.”
Ranking Member DeLauro raised this issue during an
Appropriations Committee meeting in late
April.
In 2022, when Dan McKee and Helena Buonanno Foulkes first squared off for the democratic gubernatorial nomination, opioids didn’t get a lot of airtime.
Aside from a few high-profile moments — a jab in a debate by candidate Luis Daniel Munoz, a controversialTV ad where the McKee campaign claimed Foulkes had made money “pumping opioids into our homes” — you could have easily missed discussion of the issue. McKee ultimately won that primary over Foulkes by three percentage points.
Foulkes was president of CVS’s Pharmacy division from January 2014 to February 2018. During that time she was, as a company-produced bio noted, responsible for all aspects of the company’s retail business, including pharmacy operations.
In her answers to reporters’ questions and in stump speeches, Foulkes has returned to a few points: the company’s record of cutting off pill mill doctors, its role in passing legislation that lowered the number of pills allowed in initial opioid prescriptions, the sweeping drug-takeback initiatives on her watch, and a steep overall drop in opioids dispensed during her tenure.
Trump on Monday signed orders to impose a 50 percent tariff
on a wide range of Canadian imports.
The White House claims the tariffs are a “punishment” for
Canadian discrimination against American cars, dairy, and alcohol.
But the tariffs will also punish us. Remember,
tariffs are import taxes — paid for by you and me and everyone else in America. So,
we’re about to pay more for everything we import from Canada — plywood, paper,
furniture, hockey sticks, cement, et al. Canada is our second-largest trading
partner, for chrissake.
Even if the Supreme Court finds that Trump lacks authority
to invoke these tariffs and the government must refund American importers for
the extra cost — as the high court did with his first round of tariffs — you
and I won’t be reimbursed for the extra costs we’ve paid.
Corporations aren’t giving their customers any of the $80
billion in refunds they’ve received from the Treasury Department for
the first round of tariffs, so don’t expect any reimbursement on this second
round. Which means we’re doubly screwed.
Worse yet, the Treasury isn’t really bearing the cost of the
$80 billion in refunds.
While McKee turns against the environment, Foulkes steps up
By Rob Smith / ecoRI News staff
With less than six weeks to go until
September’s primary, some environmental groups are getting off the bench and
making their political endorsements in the governor’s race.
The Providence Streets Coalition, a grassroots activist
organization devoted to increasing funding, safety, and reliability in the
state’s transit network, announced July 21 that it is backing former CVS
executive Helena Foulkes for governor.
“For far too long, this community has advocated for our
state leaders to care about improvements and investments for safer streets and
a transit system that works for all,” said Nichole O’Loughlin, political
director for the Providence Streets Coalition, at the group’s endorsement
announcement. “Unfortunately, our current governor has repeatedly done the
opposite, and we need to change that right now.”
Transit and the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority have
not fared well under Gov. Dan McKee. Thanks to a persistent $32 million budget deficit and a lack of
support from the governor’s office and the General Assembly, RIPTA had to make
deep operational cuts to balance its budget, reducing bus service or frequency,
resulting in fewer and worse rides for the agency’s regular users.
The cuts have particularly hit hard in the state’s metro
area, where it sees the bulk of its riders, many of whom cannot afford to own a
car or come up with transportation alternatives outside of RIPTA. Foulkes,
meanwhile, has pledged to fully fund and invest in expanding RIPTA’s bus
service, as well as the state’s network of roads, bridges and bike
infrastructure.
In her remarks accepting the Providence Streets Coalition
endorsement, Foulkes said she had spent hours attending listening sessions when
the cuts were first proposed, recalling riders gathering in small rooms to
share their personal stories of what cuts to bus service would mean to them.
“Owning a car costs over $11,000 a year in this state, and
riding a bus is less than $1,000 a year,” Foulkes said. “If we want to attract
young people and keep them here, this is the wave of the future.”
The group didn’t endorse a gubernatorial candidate in 2022.
Other endorsement announcements from the Providence Streets Coalition are
expected later this summer.
Tuesday’s announcement was far from the first endorsement
Foulkes picked up from an environmental organization. Last month Climate Action
Rhode Island announced it was endorsing Foulkes, citing her policy
platform of investing $40 million for residents and businesses to install solar
and battery storage, and her pledge to hold Rhode Island Energy accountable for
its rate hikes.
A major long-term study linked coffee consumption with lower
risks of cirrhosis, liver cancer, and death from liver disease. Coffee drinkers
also showed healthier liver scans and blood protein patterns, with less fat,
inflammation, and scarring. Benefits appeared even at one or two cups daily and
were strongest around three to four cups.
One of the largest investigations yet into coffee and liver
health has found that people who drink more coffee tend to have lower risks of
cirrhosis, liver cancer, and death related to liver disease.
The Cedars-Sinai Health Sciences University study, published
in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, also uncovered
biological patterns that could help explain why coffee consumption has
repeatedly been associated with healthier livers.
"Previous studies suggested that coffee might benefit
the liver, but most were smaller or looked at only one piece of the
puzzle," said hepatologist Hyunseok Kim, MD, MPH, PhD, assistant professor
of Medicine at Cedars-Sinai and corresponding author of the study. "We
followed hundreds of thousands of people for more than a decade and looked at
their health outcomes along with liver MRI scans and blood protein analyses.
Together, those findings help explain the biological mechanisms behind coffee's
association with better liver health."
Most Americans don’t read the rules that govern the federal grants funding science. Those rules, called the Uniform Guidance, shape how cancer research is funded, graduate students are trained, clinical trials are sustained, universities stock their labs and discoveries from those labs move into broader society.
When the Trump administration announced on May 29, 2026, its intentions to revise these rules, many researchers were alarmed.
The Office of Management and Budget – the White House agency tasked with implementing the president’s policies across the executive branch – proposed requiring political appointees to review grant decisions for whether research projects advance the president’s policy priorities. These political officials would also have greater authority to override the decisions of the research agencies managing the grants.
The OMB said these changes are intended to improve transparency and oversight of federal funds. However, scientists worry that several of these revisions could make research less predictable, harder to share and more expensive to do.
Beyond concerns about political influence over funding decisions, there are also more practical issues: What happens when the federal grant system becomes less stable for the people involved in the work of research?
Deprioritizing scientific merit
The first issue is peer review. Federal science agencies already use peer-review systems to assess which research projects will receive federal funding.
These systems generally involve scientists and other specialists with expertise relevant to the proposed work. Grant proposals typically undergo several rounds of review, one involving external experts and one involving agency officials. I am a scientist who has served for many years on federal grant review panels, including within the National Institutes of Health.
Reviewers like me assess the scientific merit of a research proposal through several factors. These include the rigor and feasibility of the work – that is, whether the study design can appropriately answer the research question. We consider whether the investigators have the expertise and institutional support to conduct the work. We also assess the overall impact of the project, examining whether the research could meaningfully advance the field and benefit science and society.
On July 21, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Joint
Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine appeared
before the Senate Appropriations Committee, hats in hand. The war in
Iran has depleted key weapons stockpiles, reducing U.S. inventories of interceptor
missiles and stealth
cruise missiles to less than half and costing over $37 billion to
date.
To the naked eye, these expenditures against a nominal force reflect
waste and incompetence: disastrous mismanagement of an undefined, intractable,
and escalating war.
Hegseth expected lawmakers to correct his urgent shortfall,
but wouldn’t correct, clarify or explain his own obviously false claims about
Iran. Hegseth’s early-in-the-war
announcements that Iran’s military had been dismantled, “destroyed
and made combat ineffective,” while claiming “historic and overwhelming
victory” were obviously untrue,
but on July 22, the
GOP-led House put another $1 trillion in Hegseth’s
hands anyway.
Arming a blowhard who delivers culture
war braggadocio instead of sober analysis is not confidence inspiring,
it’s irresponsible. It’s also dangerous as hell.
Turkey pecking at his reflection in the back of my car. Photo by Will Collette
After wild turkeys attacked an 83-year-old woman in May 2026, sending her to the emergency room for stitches, police warned residents of Alameda, California, to avoid interacting with the animals.
Wild turkeys can be particularly aggressive
during mating season. They can also damage property: digging up gardens, staining decks with their droppings and occasionally attacking cars and windows when they mistake their own reflections for rival turkeys.
Turkeys may be a nuisance to Alameda’s human residents, but they have also been highly valued by multiple cultures throughout the history of North America. Given these threats to human safety and property, is it fair to call this quintessentially American bird a pest?
If Turkeys decorate American dinner tables and are pardoned by presidents, are they still pests?
Labeling an animal a pest typically justifies the use of harmful or deadly methods to remove undesirable species from human spaces. But these methods can lead to costs that far outweigh their benefits, causing unnecessary suffering for not only the so-called pests, but also for humans, other animals and entire ecosystems.
Understanding why people label certain animals pests can help society respond to potential conflicts while minimizing harm to both humans and animals.
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As a Fox News commentator, Hegseth
lobbied hard for presidential pardons for war
criminals, leading Trump to
fully pardon a Lieutenant convicted of murdering two
Afghan civilians, and a Major who admitted to the CIA that
he killed someone off base in 2010 and
buried his remains. .webp)
