Rhode Island
GoLocalProv | Business | Breeze’s Expansion in RI Is an Economic Boost — See the Full List of Direct Flights
Saturday, April 01, 2023
This week, it was one other celebration at Rhode Island Worldwide Airport for the enlargement of Breeze Airways.
The airline was based by David Neeleman, arguably essentially the most profitable entrepreneur in airline historical past and who beforehand co-founded Morris Air, WestJet, JetBlue, and Azul Linhas Aereas.
Breeze’s development is unmatched for the Rhode Island airport and the financial system.
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Its operations solely launched on Might 27, 2021. And now the airline is flying a report 15 direct flights or BreezeThrus to and from RI Worldwide and 5 extra locations are anticipated to be introduced within the subsequent few weeks. A BreezeThru is a brief stopover.
SEE THE BREEZE DESTINATIONS BELOW
Now, Rhode Island has been named a “Base” for Breeze and together with that comes devoted planes, crews, upkeep hub, and a rise of 250 jobs.
For vacationers and for vacationers coming into Rhode Island, the elevated flights are a boon.
“I thank Breeze Airways for selecting Rhode Island, and Rhode Island T.F. Inexperienced Worldwide Airport, for its base of operations. This new hub is bringing jobs to our state, financial exercise for our small enterprise neighborhood, and new continuous routes which is able to enable numerous vacationers and guests to see what makes Rhode Island a real vacation spot state,” stated Governor Dan McKee at a press convention this week.
For Rhode Island, the important thing to the expanded flights will not be solely increasing the journey choices for vacationers in southern New England, but additionally working to fill the returning flights with enterprise vacationers and vacationers into New England.
“Our airports are an important financial driver for the state, supporting over 19,000 jobs and an financial affect of over $2.6 billion a 12 months,” stated RIAC Board Chair Jonathan Savage.
SEE THE BREEZE DESTINATIONS BELOW
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Rhode Island
RI Senate to vote on gun ‘safe-storage’ law. What to know.
PROVIDENCE – When the state Senate votes Tuesday on proposed new “safe-storage” requirements for guns, it will, by chance, be doing so within days of this USA Today headline from Detroit: “School Gunman’s Dad Guilty of Manslaughter.”
There, James Crumbley, the father of a school shooter who killed four students and injured seven other people at Oxford High School in November 2021, was found guilty of failing to secure a gun at home and doing nothing to address acute signs of his son’s mental turmoil. Crumbley – and months earlier, his wife – were convicted of involuntary manslaughter.
Safe storage bill draws opposition from Republicans
Closer to home, the proposed new Rhode Island safe-storage law that emerged from a Senate committee on a straight 9-to-3 party-line vote last week followed years of heart-wrenching testimony of family members left behind by a suicide in Warwick, as well as the accidental shooting death of a Johnston teenager at the hands of a friend playing with his uncle’s unlocked gun.
The three Republicans in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing room cast the three nay votes.
They included Senate Minority Leader Jessica de la Cruz who, in her weekly newsletter, reiterated her belief that the legislation [H2202] co-sponsored by 28 of the 37 current senators is “an infringement on our right to self-defense with a firearm in our homes.”
And she was not alone. As both a Rhode Island National Guardsman and “Firearms Policy Coalition Member,” Christopher Morin of Coventry told the lawmakers in written testimony that the requirement that firearms “be secured in locked containers or equipped with tamper-resistant locks at all times when not in use” is impractical, “could delay or prevent individuals from defending their homes and loved ones in emergencies” and “infringes on the rights of law-abiding gun owners.”
He said the penalties could also add to the trauma of “individuals and families already suffering fromaccidents involving firearms” – presumably their own.
Arguments in support of the bill
But Rhonda Brewster, the mother of the 16-year-old shot to death by his best friend in Johnston in 2022, told legislators during one of the gun hearings last week that she has a chihuahua and a Rottweiler who would alert her of an intruder in plenty of time.
Working in child protective services for the state, she said, she also sees cases that don’t make the headlines where children get into guns and shoot themselves.
“Just within the last four months, we’ve had about six cases of children having access to guns – with their parents’ home – and shooting themselves,” she said.
More: RI faith leaders implore state ‘leaders to lead’ with assault-weapons ban and safe storage law
For South Kingstown Councilwoman Patricia Alley, last week’s hearings marked the latest in a year-after-year series of visits to the State House to recount the events that led to the suicide of her sister Allyson Dosreis at age 37.
“This bill would prevent other Rhode Island families from enduring the same devastation that my family and I have gone through after the suicide of my sister, Ally,“ she told the House Judiciary Committee.
Alley told lawmakers how she and her sister got close later in life when she reunited with her birth family. But COVID and the pandemic took a toll on her sister’s hairdressing business, and then her sister’s partner “abruptly” ended their 10-year relationship and listed their house for sale. He was active duty military, Alley said, and when his firearm wasn’t with him, it was in an “easily accessible location known to the family.”
“And when she was at her lowest, she used that gun to end her life,” Alley said.
“Suicide is often an impulsive act,” she told the legislators. “If you can prevent access to a gun, you can short-circuit that impulse and save a life.”
What would the penalties be for violating the safe storage law?
The potential penalties for violating the proposed new Rhode Island safe-storage law start with a fine of up to $250 a first offense, which would be treated as a civil infraction, to a fine of up to $1,000 for a second offense and up to six months in prison, and a fine of up to $500 for three of more violations.
The penalty gets steeper – a potential year in prison and $1,000 fine – for someone “who knows or reasonably should know that a child” or someone prohibited from purchasing a firearm “is likely to gain access to the firearm.”
The penalty increases exponentially for the gun owner if the unsecured gun is obtained by a child or a person prohibited by state or federal law from having a firearm and is then used to commit a crime or cause injury. Any of those scenarios would be punishable by up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $5,000.
Rhode Island
Massachusetts and Rhode Island Fought in Court Over This City
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the State of Rhode Island are nestled closely in what appears to be a perfect state of harmony in the southeast corner of New England.
However, it hasn’t always been such a cozy relationship for the two Revolution-era neighbors.
In 1861, not long after the start of the American Civil War, the Bay State and the Ocean State were embroiled in a bit of an imbroglio over border rights to, of all places, Fall River.
The dispute was not the only border battle to develop between the two states, or the other northeast states for that matter.
New Hampshire and New York fought over rights to Vermont, which ultimately declared its independence from both with the help of Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys.
The border battle over what would become the South End of Fall River is near and dear to our hearts.
Some border disputes in the “New World” lasted more than 200 years, dating back to colonial times and the first settlements along Massachusetts Bay when the British throne began to hand out land grants.
Locally, a lengthy debate erupted over whether Massachusetts or Rhode Island and Providence Plantations controlled a portion of land later to become a part of Fall River.
The land dispute ended in 1861 when the U.S. Supreme Court awarded an 11 square mile area of disputed land to Massachusetts, creating the South End of Fall River and establishing the current border with Rhode Island.
The Fall River Herald News wrote a piece on the land dispute in 2019. There is also a more detailed account online from the book History of Fall River, the source of which could not be immediately traced.
KEEP READING: Scroll to see what the big headlines were the year you were born
Gallery Credit: Andrew Lisa
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Rhode Island
Chinese billionaire pleads guilty to straw donor scheme in New York and Rhode Island – The Boston Globe
When asked, an attorney for Adams, Vito Pitta, said: âAs the federal government made clear today, the campaign had no knowledge of a straw donor scheme â and no member of the campaign has been charged with or accused of any wrongdoing.”
Qin was previously included on the Forbes list of billionaires, with an estimated net worth of $1.8 billion from his stake in film and entertainment companies, including the Honk Kong-based SMI Culture. He has been in U.S. custody since his arrest last October on charges of using a fake identification.
A phone call to his attorney was not immediately returned.
Campaign finance records show Qin, who is a Chinese citizen with a U.S. green card, donated $2,000 to Adams in March of 2021. Under the cityâs campaign finance rules, green card-holders can contribute to races and participate in the cityâs generous matching funds program, which caps donations at $2,100.
Nine months after he donated to Adams, federal prosecutors say Qin began working âto find individuals to make more than $10,000 in straw donor contributionsâ to an unnamed New York City candidate.
At least one person donated $1,000 on Qinâs behalf on Dec. 9, according to prosecutors. The following day, Qin spoke with an unnamed co-conspirator, who told him they expected to be able to obtain up to $20,000 in straw donor contributions for the candidate.
Adams, a Democrat, is currently facing a federal investigation for his fundraising practices that prompted the FBI to seize his cell phones last year. Earlier this month, agents raided the homes of one of his top aides, Winnie Greco, as part of an investigation led by the U.S. Attorneyâs Office in Brooklyn.
An investigation by Manhattan prosecutors into an alleged straw donor scheme over the summer resulted in the arrest of six people, who were accused of seeking to divert public money into Adamsâ campaign to gain political favors.
Prosecutors say Qin engaged in similar straw donor schemes to funnel donations to a U.S. representative in New York and a congressional candidate in Rhode Island.
Federal Elections Commission records show Qin donated $2,900 in 2022 to the campaign of Allan Fung, a Republican former mayor who ran unsuccessfully for Congress in Rhode Island. Fung didnât respond to messages seeking comment Monday.
Records also show that a man named Jonathan Chau, who provided Adamsâ transition committee with $1,000 on December 9, 2021, gave $5,800 to a committee supporting Fung, and $2,900 to a committee backing Rep. Andrew Garbarino, a Long Island Republican.
Prosecutors said Qin hid his illicit funding efforts from the officials they were intended to benefit, causing them to unknowingly file false campaign reports.
Chau could not be reached for comment. Garbarino did not respond to an emailed request.
As part of the plea deal, Qin also admitted that he filed a false application for lawful permanent residency status in the U.S. 2019 when he claimed to have never used an alias. In fact, prosecutors said, he was provided the alias âMuk Lam Li,â along with accompanying identification documents, by an official in the Chinese government in 2008.
He used that identity to transfer more than $5 million to a U.S. bank account, spending some of it on a luxury apartment in Manhattan, according to prosecutors.
Qin will give up his right to live in the U.S. and be deported as part of his plea deal, prosecutors said.
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