North Providence News

North Providence may be one of the state's smallest communities but has the eight-highest population of Rhode Island's 39 cities and towns.

Rhode Island is moving to eliminate the type of ''sheltered workshop'' that was found to have violated the rights of disabled individuals for years at a state-licensed employment program in North Providence.

The federal government has reached a settlement with Rhode Island and the city of Providence for violating the rights of the disabled by segregating them at a vocational school and an employment program where they were "robbed of years of productivity," a Justice Department official said Thursday.

Rhode Island and the city of Providence violated the rights of the developmentally disabled for years by unnecessarily segregating them at a city school and a state-licensed employment program where they worked for long hours at low wages, the U.S. Justice Department said.

Singer Jeffrey Osborne, a Providence native, continued to make donations from the more than $150,000 raised for Rhode Island charities from his inaugural Jeffrey Osborne Celebrity Classic golf tournament.

The federal Department of Justice has ruled the city and state violated federal law, and the civil rights of disabled students at a Providence school, and one of the state's largest employment programs for people with disabilities.

PROVIDENCE _ Legislation has been introduced in the Senate to establish a special commission to study the possibility of building a multi-million dollar parking garage next to the Garrahy Judicial Complex.

A federal judge has rebuffed an imprisoned former North Providence councilman who asked for an adjustment of his sentence based on the argument that his mental health issues made him incapable of pleading guilty to corruption charges.

The accused ringleader in a kickback operation that allegedly received more than $10 million in payments from contractors who received Navy contracts is set to go to trial Wednesday before Chief U.S. District Court Judge Mary Lisi.

Not a critical word was said before the state Senate Judiciary Committee voted 11-0 to move Governor Chafee's nomination of former Senate president and current District Court Magistrate Joseph A. Montalbano to the Superior Court bench on to the full Senate.

Around 7 this Sunday morning, a few dozen people will gather in the back sections of the Rhode Island Veterans Memorial Cemetery, where the Vietnam War Memorial stands near woodland, to remember.

Suzanne A. Desjarlais, 73, of Homewood Avenue, North Providence, died peacefully on May 19, 2013.

Because Monday is Memorial Day, the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority will run a Sunday/Holiday schedule on all regular fixed-route buses and trolleys.

The police arrested Rawlins Cummings, 35, of 69 Waltham St., Pawtucket, in the hallway of an apartment house at 222 Mineral Spring Ave., Saturday after a resident there said she saw him trying to climb through her dining room window.

Upgraded charges have been filed against a Brown University wrestler accused of participating in a fight that left a university basketball player critically injured.

Usually, legislation is introduced during the General Assembly session and may languish for quite awhile before a committee hearing is scheduled to consider a bill.

North Providence Police are asking for the public's help in identifying a suspect who robbed the Citizen's Bank on Charles Street shortly before noon on Thursday.

Eight people were forced to flee their three apartments after a two-alarm fire swept through their three-story building around 7 p.m Tuesday.

Born in 1903, the same year the Wright brothers flew, she lived in Providence all her life, except when she was 10 and the family returned to Italy and then moved back to Rhode Island.

In 1903, Theodore Roosevelt was President and a loaf of bread cost about seven cents.