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October 23, 2007

Tonight: A cavalcade of music around the state

Tonight, the cavalcade is under way.

The Cavalcade of Bands -- jazz and swing -- is playing at Rhodes-on-the-Pawtuxet, 60 Rhodes Place, in Cranston. Call 941-2717.

In the ballroom there's Hank Doiron Strollers, Arthur Medeiros and His 15-Piece Dance Orchestra with Hank Doiron & Terri Giviens, the Tommy Rotondo Group and The Dick Parent 15-Piece Swing Orchestra with Bob Mainelli.

In the foyer: Ed Drew and the Dixieland Pops, the Pat Mitchell Group with George Masso & Arnie Krakowski, the Johnny Badessa Group with Vinny Lato & Charlie Harris, the Shawnn Monteiro Group, the Mac Chrupcala Group with Nicolas King, and The Tony Cipolla Quartet with Terri Giviens.

The show runs from 6 to 11:30 pm. $10 advance; $15 at the door.

Rudy D'Agostino (of The Rock) plays acoustic rock at McFadden's Restaurant and Saloon, 52 Pine St., Providence. Call 861-1782. 10 p.m. to 1 am. No cover.

Dancing Nancy plays another tribute to Dave Matthews at Gillary's Tavern, 198 Thames St., Bristol. Call 253-2012. 9:30 pm.

Half Boozed plays rock at One Pelham East, 270 Thames St., Newport. 847-9460. 9 pm.

Harpoon and Tapir play rock at AS220, 115 Empire St., Providence. Call 831-9327. 10 p.m. $4. All ages.

For more events, check projo.com's Lifebeat page and calendar.

Posted by Mike McKinney at 7:00 PM | Comment

World Series tickets at Denver gone after glitch / Photo

Journal photo / Gretchen Ertl
Colorado Rockies pitchers Ramon Ramirez, left, and Jorge Julio take in the view of Fenway Park from the stands as their team takes a workout today. Ramirez is on the 60-day disabled list and neither he or Julio are on the active roster for the series.

DENVER -- The Colorado Rockies sold out all three World Series games at Coors Field today, one day after their first attempt collapsed in a computer-system crash the team blamed on an "external, malicious attack."

"The online system, after a slow start, certainly worked very, very well for us," club spokesman Jay Alves said.

Alves said tickets were selling as fast as 1,500 per minute today and all were gone in 2 1/2 hours.

Yesterday, the Rockies were forced to stop the online-only sale of tickets after about two hours when 8.5 million hits overwhelmed the servers set up to take the orders. The Rockies later said they were victims of an attack. Neither the team nor the company hired to run the sale, Irvine, Calif.-based Paciolan Inc., have offered any specifics about what happened.

The Rockies are pitted against the Boston Red Sox in the World Series, which begins tomorrow night at Fenway Park in Boston. The visitors were in Bean Town today taking practice. The games move to Denver on Saturday.

Dave Marcus of McAfee Avert Labs, the research arm of antivirus software maker McAfee Inc., said Paciolan could have been the target of a "denial-of-service" attack yesterday.

Under that scenario, attacking computers overwhelm Web servers with repeated but false requests to connect. When the Web server signals the attacking computer to proceed, the attacker doesn't respond, tying up the server.

"In a certain kind of denial-of-service attack, you never complete that handshake," Marcus said.

Alves said he was unaware of any criminal investigation into what happened yesterday. The FBI did not immediately return a call from The Associated Press.

-- Associated Press

Posted by Andrea Panciera at 6:02 PM | Comment

Ethics board delays vote on prosecuting 2 lawmakers

PROVIDENCE -- The Ethics Commission today put off a decision on whether to prosecute two legislators, dismissed a complaint against a Cumberland Town Council member and lead a North Smithfield Planning Board member to say he’ll drop off the board when his term expires because of possible conflict of interest problems.

The commission staff has been investigating state Sen. Frank A. Ciccone III and state Rep. Raymond E. Gallison Jr. on separate accusations that they violated the state Code of Ethics. It has reached the point of bringing the cases before the commission for a probable cause vote that could lead to their prosecution.

Instead, saying that the two legislators have asked for delays, the commission voted to put the cases off until January.

Gallison, a Bristol Democrat, was accused in a complaint filed by Patricia Morgan, then head of the state Republican Party, of using his seat on the House Finance Committee to benefit his employer, Alternative Educational Programming, and himself. The commission dismissed that complaint in April.

But at the same time, Peter J. Mancini, the commission’s deputy chief investigator, filed his own complaint accusing Gallison of breaking the ethics law repeatedly by failing to disclose his income from the College Readiness Program, AEP’s predecessor, for 2000, 2001 and 2002.

Ciccone, a Providence Democrat and official with Local 808 of the Rhode Island Laborers International Union, was accused by Operation Clean Government, the government reform group, of sponsoring legislation favoring his union, not disclosing that source of income, and potentially benefiting unionized employees by participating in a legislative investigation of the Carcieri administration’s hiring of temporary workers.

While denying most of the accusations, Ciccone has acknowledged that he omitted the union jobs from his last two years’ financial disclosure reports, which are intended to let the public detect conflicts of interest among public officials. He said that was an oversight and a mistake.

-- Journal staff writer Bruce Landis

After an inconclusive commission vote, John A. Flaherty, the North Smithfield Planning Board member, said, "I think I’m going to step aside."

Besides his Planning Board membership, Flaherty works as director of research and communications at Grow Smart Rhode Island, the nonprofit organization pushing for sustainable growth. Grow Smart includes on its board of directors the principals of private engineering firms which represent developers before local agencies like the North Smithfield Planning Board.

A key question for Flaherty was whether he could participate in Planning Board meetings when representatives of the engineering firms, notably Pare Corporation and DiPrete Engineering Associates, represent applicants before the board.

He didn’t get a clear answer, contributing to his decision to drop off the Planning Board.

Four of the five commission members present voted in favor of a staff recommendation that would have required Flaherty to return for advisory legal opinions from the commission on a case-by-case basis when that question came up. Because five affirmative votes are required to approve an advisory opinion, the motion failed and no opinion was adopted.

But with four of eight commission members supporting an outcome Flaherty said could be impractical, he said he will not seek reappointment to the Planning Board when his term runs out in December.

The commission also dismissed a complaint brought by Cumberland Zoning Board member Paul W. Santoro against Cumberland Councilwoman Kelley Morris. It accused her of improperly helping her law partner, Thomas Moses, during a Cumberland Zoning Board meeting on June 13.

The commission staff’s report on their investigation found contradictions and conflicts in the accusations, and concluded that the complaint didn’t allege enough facts to amount to a knowing and willful violation of the state Code of Ethics.

Posted by Mike McKinney at 5:51 PM | Comment

Reed evaluates Bush's new war funds bill

WASHINGTON – Congressional Democrats gave a chilly reception today to President Bush’s request for urgent action on a new, $45.9-billion war funds bill that, according to Sen. Jack Reed, will not be needed until early next year.

"They won’t run out of money before February,’’ the Rhode Island Democrat said of U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Reed, a leading military policy maker in the Senate, said Democrats will recruit Republican support for making troop withdrawals from Iraq a pre-condition for passage of a new war-spending bill.

Congress attached just such a string to the last big war appropriation, late in the spring, drawing a veto from Mr. Bush. Democrats failed to muster the votes to override the veto and then gave Mr. Bush the money he sought, without any language obliging him to reduce troop levels in Iraq or set a timetable for winding down the war.

Democrats lost a similar confrontation with Mr. Bush last month, after the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, rallied Republicans to stick with Mr. Bush’s strategy of adding troops in order to reduce violence in Iraq and give the embattled government more time to establish its own army and police forces.

Reed said Republicans who face reelection next year "may be less enthusiastic now’’ about support for still more spending on a war that is unpopular with the public.

But Mr. Bush has clearly signaled his willingness to confront Congress once again on the emotional issue of the war. "Congress should not go home for the holidays while our troops are still waiting for the funds they need,’’ he said Monday as he unveiled the new spending bill, which would bring to almost $200 billion the war spending total for fiscal 2008, which began Oct. 1.

Posted by Andrea Panciera at 5:44 PM | Comment

Sox vs. Rox: Two mindsets in cyberspace

As anyone knows who's watched the Papelbon dance, jig, Riverdance -- whatever you call it -- over and over again, Red Sox fans are taking to YouTube and other Internet spots to gear up for the World Series against the Rockies.

Type in Red Sox on YouTube, where there are at least 4,360 Sox entries, and there's everything from the aforementioned happy dance to the Dropkick Murphys band playing at Fenway, to pictures of fans from the Game 7 win against Cleveland.

On Digg.com, there's a link for getting Red Sox "wallpaper,'' which in this century means the background on your computer desktop. Click on the link and it takes you to Jeffzachowski.com

(Not to be outdone by Digg, projo.com has just posted a wallpaper of its own -- it's illustrator Frank Galasso's own version of a Sox victory dance. Click here to get it for yourself.)

There's also a site to see here -- the depiction of the history of the Red Sox as a Beatles album cover. Read the story that goes with the picture: "Red Sox in the Sky with Diamonds."

Over in the land of the "Rox" -- that's what they call the Rockies, that team from Colorado -- several of the 651 YouTube postings take a more urgent tone: The difficulties some fans had getting selling World Series tickets because of computer system problems the team had. According to news reports today, the team was able to sell tickets through its online system.

It's not all ticket mania for Rox fans: One video, titled "Colorado Rockies Song," shows a guy wearing a Rockies hat strumming his tune on an acoustic guitar.

The series starts at Fenway tomorrow night. Keep tabs on all the action right here.

-- projo.com staff writer Michael P. McKinney

Posted by Mike McKinney at 4:50 PM | Comment

Carcieri calls on legislators to forego raises

PROVIDENCE -- Amid controversy over his behind-the-scenes attempt to win raises of up to 19 percent for his cabinet, Governor Carcieri today called on state legislators to return their own pay raises.

Carcieri said in a news release the General Assembly should forego pay increases they have gotten since 2002 and begin paying a share of their health insurance premiums, as other state employees do.

The part-time legislators have received six pay raises in the last six years and pay no share of their taxpayer-funded health insurance premium, unlike other state employees, Carcieri stated.

The state Constitution, as amended in 1994, stopped the practice of paying Assembly members $300 per year and providing them with pensions. Instead, it nows entitles them to yearly cost-of-living adjustments that began in 1995 with a base salary of $10,000.

But, the governor noted today, the Constitution does not require lawmakers to accept those pay increases.

"It is simply hypocritical for these legislators to criticize an effort to give department directors the same pay increases all other state employees received, while accepting their own pay raises and refusing to help defray their own health care costs,” Carcieri said in the statement.

Carcieri's plan to give state department directors cumulative raises came to light yesterday.

-- With reports from Katherine Gregg of the Journal State House Bureau, projo.com staff writer Michael P. McKinney and previous Journal reports

The governor in late January or early February of each year submits to the General Assembly -- and the public -- a book called the "Personnel Supplement’,’ which contains proposed and anticipated salaries of everyone in state government.

But the Personnel Supplement Carcieri submitted this year did not include the 18 to 19 percent directors’ raises his administration proposed in a May 24 memo to the House and Senate finance chairmen that came to light for the first time yesterday.

And when asked during the final weeks of this year’s budget debate in late May and early-June if the administration had proposed any last-minute budget amendments, Carcieri's press office said no.

Until yesterday, the governor’s office did not disclose or explain why he felt this was the year to give the directors cumulative raises equal to those given other state workers.

In the May 24 memo to the House and Senate finance committees' chairmen, Carcieri’s Budget Director Rosemary Booth Gallogly recommended “final adjustments required to address the projected deficit.”

The memo also proposed including in this year’s spending bill a law requiring Department of Administration to automatically “provide cabinet directors cost of living increases that are comparable to those accorded other non-union state employees in the executive branch.”

The Journal reported today that would have given immediate raises of $14,527 for the state’s $95,387-a-year Elderly Affairs Director Corinne Russo and $24,884 for W. Michael Sullivan, the $130,152-a-year director of the Department of Environmental Management.

Last June, Carcieri vowed to eliminate 1,000 state jobs, replace union employees with private workers for “every state service that could possibly be performed more efficiently by the private sector.” He called on the legislature to pass a law allowing him to freeze union-negotiated wage increases.

Today, the governor's statement said several state legislators were quoted as condemning Carcieri's plan to give state department directors the pay raises all other state employees have gotten, but "state department directors have not received a cost of living adjustment since 2002. During that time, state employees received four separate pay increases of 3, 3, 4 and 4 percent."

Lawmakers got pay increases of 1.5 percent in 2002, 2.4 in 2003, 1.84 in 2004, 2.94 in 2005, and 3.5 in 2006, according to the governor's office.

Posted by Mike McKinney at 4:25 PM | Comment

Tape of mother's testimony played in tot's murder trial

The jury in the child-murder trial of Kimberly W. Mawson is hearing a tape of her April 2005 grand jury testimony in which she talks about everything that happened between her and different men that had been in her life: a boyfriend, an ex-husband and the father of her daughter, Jade.

Mawson, 37, formerly of Warwick, has been charged with second-degree murder in 19-month-old Jade's death in 2002.

The jury has begun to hear from the tape about Dec. 2, 2002, the day Jade was taken by ambulance to Hasbro Children's Hospital after she collapsed in an Elmwood Avenue apartment with a head wound. Two days later, Jade was declared brain dead.

Earlier today, a forensic scientist testified that she found blood stains inside Jade’s one-piece pajamas and matching cap, but, she told a jury, she couldn’t say whose blood it was.

Sharon Mallard was a forensic scientist for the state Department of Health in 2002 when Jade died. Mallard, who still works for the department, but in a different capacity, said she did not receive a request for DNA analysis from the Attorney General’s Office nor from the Warwick police, so she could not say if the blood was the baby’s or not.

Judge Edwin J. Gale has told the jury the case may be handed down to them as early as tomorrow.

-- projo.com staff writers Michael P. McKinney and Brandie M. Jefferson, with reports from Journal staff writer Talia Buford

Posted by Mike McKinney at 3:50 PM | Comment

Wakefield won't pitch in World Series

Red Sox starting pitcher Tim Wakefield announced today at Fenway Park that he will not be on the team's roster for the World Series due to recurring shoulder problems. For much more, go to the SoxBlog.

Posted by Mike McDermott at 3:46 PM | Comment

Film about quadriplegic diver from R.I. gets grant

The Christopher Reeve and Dana Reeve Foundation is awarding a Providence-based company more than $2,000 to help distribute a documentary film about a man’s endeavor to become the first ventilator-dependent quadriplegic diver.

The Quality of Life grant will help distribute Ocean Opportunity's film, Diving a Dream, which follows Matthew Johnston, who has Duchenne muscular dystrophy, as he works through the technical, physical and fiscal challenges to accommodating his needs for SCUBA diving.

Diving a Dream is the creation of Michael Lombardi, the Providence-based founder of Open Opportunity.

The $2,200 grant will help facilitate distribution of the film to more than 100 muscular dystrophy, respiratory care, adaptive scuba, and paralysis support groups.

-- projo.com writer Brandie M. Jefferson

Posted by Brandie Jefferson at 1:58 PM | Comment

Forensic scientist found blood in child's pajamas, cap

A forensic scientist says she found blood stains inside 19-month-old Jade Mawson’s one-piece pajamas and matching cap, but, she told a jury, she couldn’t say whose blood it was.

Sharon Mallard was a forensic scientist for the state Department of Health in 2002 when Jade died. She testified today in the trial of Kimberly A. Mawson, Jade’s mother, who faces second degree murder charges for the girl’s death.

Mallard, who still works for the Department, but in a different capacity, said she did not receive a request for DNA analysis from the Attorney General’s office nor from the Warwick Police Department, so she could not say if the blood was the baby’s or not.

Prosecutors spent the remainder of the morning playing a recording of Mawson’s grand jury testimony. The tape will continue after a lunch break.

Judge Edwin J. Gale has told the jury that the case may be handed down to them as early as tomorrow.

-- projo.com staff writer Brandie M. Jefferson, with reports from Journal Staff writer Talia Buford

Posted by Brandie Jefferson at 1:42 PM | Comment

Amgen wins patent case in federal court

Amgen Inc., the world’s biggest biotechnology company, won a jury verdict in a patent-infringement trial that may prevent Roche Holdings AG from selling a competing anemia medicine until 2013.

The federal jury in Boston today upheld the validity of four patents Amgen owns for a means to produce the protein erythropoietin, or EPO, and decided that three of them were infringed. U.S. District Judge William Young previously said the fourth patent was infringed by the Roche drug, Mircera.

Amgen, headquartered in California, has a facility in West Greenwich.

Amgen sued Roche in 2005 to prevent the medicine from entering the U.S. market and competing with Amgen’s Epogen and Aranesp. Those two drugs had combined sales last year of $6.63 billion, or 46 percent of Amgen’s revenue last year. Roche said it expects the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to approve Mircera next month.

During the trial, jurors were told by Amgen lawyers that Roche was trying to use its medical inventions, which had revolutionized the treatment of people with anemia. Amgen scientist Fu-Keon Lin’s work on EPO resulted in “a pioneering breakthrough,” attorney Lloyd Day said in closing arguments.

Leora Ben-Ami, a lawyer for Basel, Switzerland-based Roche, argued that Amgen impermissibly extended its hold on the technology and used invalid patents to stifle competition. The applications were filed in 1984, and one of Lin’s patents expired in 2004. The earliest two patents in the case expire in 2012.

Anemia is a lack of oxygen-carrying red blood cells, a condition that results in weakness and fatigue. The drugs made by Amgen are genetically engineered copies of erythropoietin, a protein made by the kidney that increases the number of red blood cells.

-- Bloomberg News

Amgen’s Epogen and Aranesp, a longer-acting version of the drug, are approved by the FDA to treat people with chronic kidney failure and cancer patients receiving chemotherapy.

Roche’s Mircera may provide the first threat to the U.S. monopoly that Amgen has held since 1989 with Epogen, which had $2.5 billion in U.S. sales in 2006.

If allowed on the market, Roche’s drug may grab 10 to 15 percent of U.S. sales for chronic kidney disease and undercut Amgen’s Epogen on price, said Geoffrey Porges, an analyst with Sanford Bernstein & Co. in New York. U.S. sales of Aranesp will fall 39 percent to $1.7 billion in 2008 from $2.8 billion in 2006, he said.

Amgen also makes the chemotherapy infection drugs Neupogen and Neulasta and licenses its patents to Johnson & Johnson for a version of Epogen, called Procrit.

Amgen shares rose on the news. Check the latest price.

Posted by Mike McKinney at 1:05 PM | Comment

URI researchers to study global-warming effects

University of Rhode Island researchers will use $1.1 million in federal grants to study changes to the Bering Sea and Arctic Ocean brought on by melting arctic ice from global warming.

The researchers at the Graduate School of Oceanography have been awarded grants the Office of Polar Programs at the National Science Foundation and from the North Pacific Research Board, the university said in a news release today.

The grants were awarded to S. Bradley Moran, a professor of oceanography, and Robert Campbell, associate marine research scientist. Moran and Campbell will look at "shifts in the productivity, abundance and species composition of ice algae, phytoplankton and zooplankton in open water areas of the Bering Sea and in areas where the ice cover is receding due to warming temperatures," the university said.

The URI team will spend up to 70 days at sea each spring and summer for the next three years gathering information.

The URI scientists' research is part of a six-year, $50-million initiative by the NSF and NPRB to figure out how the eastern Bering Sea shelf -- the area between the Aleutian Islands and St. Lawrence Island, Alaska -- will respond to climate change. That area supports the largest commercial fisheries in the world, the university said.

-- projo.com staff writer Michael P. McKinney

Their studies fall under a project that includes working with scientists from the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences, University of Miami, University of Alaska-Fairbanks, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Oregon State University, and the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth.

“The overarching goal of this study is to improve our understanding of climate-driven ecological changes occurring in one of the world’s most productive and economically-driven regions,” Moran said in the statement.

“Warmer water temperatures in the Bering Sea in spring due to climate warming could result in an earlier and more rapid seasonal ice retreat, with potentially harmful effects on one of the world’s richest and most productive fisheries," he added.

Posted by Mike McKinney at 1:02 PM | Comment

Reporter's query: Seeking stories from World Series

Are you going to the World Series? Willing to tell us your story from the games? We'll even take stories from non-Red Sox fans :)

If so, please e-mail The Journal newsroom, at pjnews@projo.com, with your name, telephone number and e-mail address, and a reporter may contact you.

Posted by Andrea Panciera at 12:46 PM | Comment

Police seize suspected SUV in fatal Seekonk hit, run

SEEKONK — The police have seized a sport-utility vehicle suspected in an Oct. 14 hit-and-run crash that killed a 38-year old Seekonk woman.

Police Chief Ronald R. Charron said this morning that the police seized the vehicle on Saturday, although he refused to say where or how the police located the vehicle. “We feel it may be connected to this accident,” Charron said.

Charron said the state police’s crime lab is analyzing the SUV, including comparing the car’s exterior with paint chips found at the accident scene. He said he did not know how long the analysis would take.

The police have said that Maria Aguiar, of 155 Chestnut St., was struck and killed by a white “SUV-type” vehicle Oct. 14 at about 6:22 p.m. while she was walking down her street with her daughter, who was riding a bicycle. The 10-year old girl was uninjured, but witnessed the accident.

Aguiar’s funeral was on Friday.

-- Journal staff writer Meaghan Wims

Posted by Brandie Jefferson at 11:32 AM | Comment

New way to get excited about snow days

With temperatures in the 70s, it’s easy to forget that winter is just around the corner.

But it is, and so are freezing temperatures, snow, and school cancellations.

Lt. Gov. Elizabeth Roberts will showcase a new Web-based way to let kids and parents know when there have been delays or cancellations at schools, businesses and government offices.

The new system will also give residents the option to receive closing announcements on their cellphones or in e-mail alerts.

Roberts will join members of the Rhode Island Broadcasters Association to present the new system in the State House today at 3:30 p.m.

Posted by Brandie Jefferson at 10:59 AM | Comment

Update: Discovery in orbit

Nine minutes after takeoff, the Discovery Shuttle is now in orbit, two days away from a scheduled rendezvous with the International Space Station.

Less than an hour before scheduled liftoff, Inspectors at the launch pad had been concerned that ice formed on a hydrogen line might delay takeoff.

But the ice dissipated, the weather held steady, and less than four minutes after liftoff, Discovery was traveling faster than 4,500 miles per hour, and all but gone from view.

See continuing coverage on NASA TV.

-- projo.com staff writer Brandie M. Jefferson, with Associated Press reports

The astronauts are set to spend two weeks on a construction mission that's considered the most complex and challenging in the nine years of assembly of the international space station.

Commander Pam Melroy describes their task thusly: “STS-120 is such a cool mission.”

What else can you say?

Melroy is one of seven astronauts and just the second woman to command a shuttle.

They’re planning to add a module, called Harmony, that will make it easier to attach European and Japanese laboratory modules to attach to the station in the future.

What a cool mission.

Posted by Brandie Jefferson at 10:45 AM | Comment

Recognition for restoration

Groups dedicated to the preserving some of the country’s oldest buildings will be recognized tomorrow night at Preserve Rhode Island’s annual meeting.

The 2007 Preservation Merit Awards recognize individual and groups “who exemplify sound historic preservation practices and support Preserve Rhode Island's mission to protect Rhode Island's historic structures and unique places for present and future generations," according to a news release.”

Awards will be granted in four categories:

Preservation education and advocacy
Landscape preservation
Residential restoration and rehabilitation
Commercial restoration and rehabilitation

The meeting, at 5:30 p.m., will be at the Central Congregational Church, 296 Angell St.

And people or groups looking for help with preservation projects have until Monday to apply for the Preserve Rhode Island Citizen’s Bank Mini Grants – up to $1,000 toward planning fees, project designs, and emergency interventions.

Grants must be matched with another grant or through fundraising. For more information, visit Preserve Rhode Island’s Web site.

Posted by Brandie Jefferson at 9:10 AM | Comment

Warwick holds primary today for special election

Three Democrats vie today for a spot on the ballot in the Warwick special election to replace District 22 Rep. Peter T. Ginaitt, who resigned in September.

Frank G. Ferri, an activist and a business owner; Edgar N. Ladouceur, owner of a Warwick-based home improvement business; and Olin Thompson, a lawyer, are competing for a spot opposite Republican Jonathan Wheeler, former treasurer of the state GOP and independent Carlo Pisaturo, a former councilman, in the Nov. 27 general election.

Visit the Secretary of State’s Web site to find out where to vote.

-- with archive reports from Journal staff writer Cynthia Needham

Posted by Brandie Jefferson at 7:29 AM | Comment

Noose in Halloween display prompts protest

STRATFORD, Conn -- A Halloween display on Main Street in Stratford that featured a man hanging from a noose kicked off protests and complaints and has led the homeowners to change it.

Black leaders and neighbors say the "hanging man" resembled a black man hanging from a noose and a protest march was being planned.

The homeowners initially said they would not succumb to pressure by the community and police to take it down.

But after a meeting Monday with the mayor, police chief and community leaders, the homeowners have agreed to remove the figure from the noose and incorporate it into the Halloween display.

The figure will be sitting on the house steps with a knife through the heart.

-- The Associated Press

Posted by Jack Perry at 7:03 AM | Comment

A chance of rain, high near 73

There's a good chance of rain today. The National Weather Service is forecasting a 30 percent chance of precipitation after 3 p.m. and a high temperature near 73 degrees. Wind is also in the forecast, with gusts up to 35 mph.

More rain late tonight with an overnight low of about 60 degrees.

Tomorrow morning will probably bring more rain, and a high temperature in the mid 60s.

Posted by Brandie Jefferson at 7:01 AM | Comment

Today's front page

Today's front page features a story about a Coventry man who received the Silver Star for gallantry in Iraq.

There's also a story about fans heading to stores to buy Red Sox' merchandise after the team's American League championship.

Download a copy of today's front page in .pdf format.

Posted by Jack Perry at 7:00 AM | Comment