Follow us on social media:
Rhode Island
RI Hockey Hall of Fame will induct 5 hockey greats. Who are they?
PROVIDENCE — Five more hockey greats with Ocean State ties joined the RI Hockey Hall of Fame, as its “Class of 2024” on Friday night. The names were unveiled between periods of the Providence Bruins-Hershey Bears “Hall of Fame Game” at the Amica Mutual Pavilion in Providence.
“With each passing year, the announcement of our newest class of Hall of Fame inductees rekindles memories and adds testimony to the illustrious history of hockey in Rhode Island and our contributions to the game,” said Hall chairman, Vincent Cimini.
“We look forward to the formal enshrinement of this new class in August,” he added, “and showcasing their inspirational careers for present and future generations through our HOF website, our interactive kiosk at the AMP, and our future Museum.”
The Class of 2024 inductees-elect are:
Joe Augustine
This former Boston College standout and NHL and WHA draftee starred for the AHL’s Springfield Indians before launching a 41-year coaching career in Rhode Island. In 1989, he took the helm of the URI hockey program. His 708th win this year became the most all time by any URI coach, while recording 32 winning seasons and capturing the 2006 ACHA National Championship along the way.
Bill Bennett
Born and raised in Cranston, Bennett played for the NHL’s Hartford Whalers and Boston Bruins after terrorizing AHL opponents with his size and goal-scoring ability with the Rochester Americans. A regular at Boston Bruins Alumni charity games, he continues to teach the skills of the game at the Bennett Hockey Clinics first established by his father, Harvey, in the 1950s. He is the fourth member of his family to be inducted into the Hall.
Vicki Movsessian-Lamoriello
For several decades, this visionary honoree has been a catalyst in the incredible rise of women’s hockey in Rhode Island and the nation. She earned All-ECAC honors three times at Providence College and also represented the USA in world play three times, capturing Olympic Gold in 1998. She founded the all-girls MA Spitfires program and later teamed with close friend Sara DeCosta to establish the RI Sting All-Girls Hockey Club in 2010.
Tim Regan
A three-time All-Stater at LaSalle Academy, this legendary goaltender was named to The Providence Journal’s All-Time High School Hockey Team. A USA Olympian and All-American at Boston University, he led the Terriers to two consecutive NCAA national championships while earning MVP finals honors in 1972. Drafted by the NHL’s Buffalo Sabres, he starred in the AHL with the Hershey Bears.
Chuck Scherza
This former New York Ranger and Boston Bruin became a legendary name in Providence Reds and RI hockey history. A fan favorite for 10 seasons, this five-time team captain ranks second all-time in games played and fourth all-time in points scored in Reds history. After retirement, this longtime Pawtucket resident spent four decades giving back as a dedicated teacher of the game and a revered high school and college referee.
Induction ceremonies for the “Class of 2024” are scheduled for Aug. 17 at Rhodes-on-the-Pawtuxet in Cranston. Tickets are available at RIHHOF.com.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) — The Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra on Monday announced the schedule and theme for its Summer Pops program, an annual series of free outdoor concerts featuring well-known songs performed in a classical style.
This year’s show, “Outstanding Overtures,” features beloved introductory tunes from theater, film and classical music.
“There’s something magical about an overture,” said David Beauchesne, executive director of the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra & Music School. “It sets the stage, stirs the imagination, and invites you into a story.”
The program includes overtures ranging from “William Tell” and “The Marriage of Figaro” to “Phantom of the Opera,” “West Side Story,” “Mary Poppins,” and “Wicked.”
“Experiencing these masterpieces performed by a full symphony orchestra in a relaxed, outdoor setting is something truly special,” Beauchesne said. “And best of all, it’s completely free.”
R.I. Philharmonic’s 2026 “Outstanding Overtures” Schedule
Narragansett
Friday, July 10, at 8 p.m. (rain date: Saturday, July 11, at 8 p.m.)
North Beach Clubhouse, 77 Boston Neck Road
Providence
Wednesday, Aug. 5, at 7 p.m. (rain date: Thursday, Aug. 6, at 7 p.m.)
Roger Williams Park Temple to Music, F C Greene Memorial Boulevard
Newport
Sunday, Aug. 9, at 7 p.m.
Rosecliff Mansion, 548 Bellevue Avenue
Bristol
Saturday, Sept. 5, at 7 p.m.
Independence Park, Thames Street
For more information and the full program, click here.
Download the WPRI 12 and Pinpoint Weather 12 apps to get breaking news and weather alerts.
Watch 12 News Now on WPRI.com or with the free WPRI 12+ TV app.
The Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra announced their 2026 Summer Pops schedule.
All concerts are free and open to the public. No tickets are required.
The Summer Pops series will be held in:
- Narragansett at the North Beach Clubhouse on July 10 at 8 p.m.
- Providence at the Roger Williams Park Temple to Music on Aug. 5 at 7 p.m.
- Newport at the Rosecliff Mansion on Aug. 9 at 7 p.m.
- Bristol at Independence Park on Sept. 5 at 7 p.m.
BE THE FIRST TO COMMENT
The program will feature overtures to “West Side Story,” “Wicked” and “The Marriage of Figaro and William Tell.”
Whitehouse climate speeches over the decades
Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse has been speaking out about climate change for decades
On Aug. 7, 2025, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse gave his 300th “Time to Wake Up” speech about the dangers of climate change.
“It’s hard, given our peril, not to feel a bitter sense of failure about where we are,” he said.
Since then, he’s given at least seven more of these speeches. This session alone, he’s sponsored more than 30 bills on environmental protection. And he warns about the dangers of climate change almost every day on his social media channels.
Climate change has long been a priority of the left. But lately, Whitehouse seems like the only Democrat remaining who’s still trying.
“The Democrats have been running away from this issue,” said J. Timmons Roberts, a professor of environmental studies at Brown University.
He’s not sure why they’re backing away. Maybe they are preoccupied with other issues, he said, such as the Iran war and immigrants’ rights. Or maybe they think that Democrats should stop talking about climate – a group Whitehouse calls “climate hushers.”
This group includes Matthew Huber, a professor of geography at Syracuse University, who argued in an opinion piece for The New York Times that climate change fuels polarization and that Democrats should stop talking about it in order to win back the working class.
But Whitehouse has taken to social media to address this line of thinking, saying in posts that it’s wrong “about pretty much everything.”
In a recent interview for Political Scene, he said it’s worth it to keep trying because the risks are so high. And he thinks that, politically, it’s actually “a winning issue that my party has just gotten wrong and overlooked.”
Do people care about climate change?
Addressing climate change under the Trump administration is “brutal,” Roberts said.
“It’s hard to know where to start,” Rachel Cleetus, senior policy director with the climate and energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said. “They’ve pretty much torn up federal agencies. Attacked budgets and staffing and expertise. They’ve undermined climate science. They’re spreading propaganda and lies about climate science. They’re boosting the fossil fuel industry, attacking clean energy. It’s just from every possible angle.”
Yet around the country, Democrats have been backing away from talking about climate change. Many rising Democratic stars, such as New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger, speak more about affordability than climate action. And Roberts thinks that even historically climate-friendly politicians, such as Sen. Ed Markey, D-Massachusetts, who he said has been “legendary” in the climate fight, have lately been quiet on the issue.
Their silence seems to correlate with polls showing that climate ranks low, or falling, on people’s priority lists. Regular Pew Research Center surveys consistently find that climate is near the bottom of people’s priority lists. An April poll from the center found that support for the United States prioritizing renewable energy development over fossil fuels has declined from 79% to 57% in the last six years – and it even declined among Democrats. And a compilation of YouGov polls show that 4.5% of Americans currently rank climate change and the environment as the most important issue for them, down from a high of 16.6% in December 2021.
Roberts said that people do care about the issues – the 2025 Rhode Island Life Index survey found that 62% of Rhode Islanders say that climate change is a serious problem in their community. But it’s not always at the top of people’s priority lists because things like the economy and crime can take precedence in voters’ minds.
Climate hushers, Whitehouse argues on social media, fall into the problem of “poll-chasing,” where they ask what voters think and parrot that back instead of leading on an issue. Instead, he and Roberts said, politicians themselves can raise the salience of climate change.
“Democrats can drive this public opinion if they choose to,” Roberts said. “These issues don’t just happen by themselves. There’s a whole theory on what drives public opinion, and there’s some great research on environmental sociology that says that it comes from party elites. That the opinion on climate change doesn’t just happen by itself; it’s really what are the politicians talking about that drives public opinion.”
Plus, Whitehouse suggested in the interview that when people connect the dots between climate change and their lives, the issue skyrockets in priority to them. He mentioned a poll he often cites that found 92% of voters in Texas are worried about home insurance, a higher amount than were worried about health care, and that 66% of Texas voters connected their home insurance concern to climate-driven extreme weather.
Why is Whitehouse still trying?
Climate change, along with what he sees as political corruption from fossil fuel companies funding legislators, is Whitehouse’s top policy issue because of its urgency and how it’s intertwined with everything else.
“It’s already in your increased grocery prices. It’s already in your increased electricity prices. It’s already in your increased home and auto insurance prices. So if you want to deal with those big cost increases, you’ve got to face the facts about what fossil fuel emissions do,” Whitehouse told Political Scene. “We’re in kind of a gradual stage of this economic distress, but there’s every prediction that this goes really bad all at once.”
It’s not that climate change is more important than issues such as wars or rights, but that it’s the context in which everything is happening, said Cleetus, of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
“Yes, there are many pressing challenges, geopolitical challenges, that are making news headlines,” Cleetus said. “Climate change is not stopping for the politics. It’s here. It’s the background condition that’s exacerbating a lot of the acute challenges people are already facing.”
And it’s not some abstract, future problem either, Whitehouse said. While states such as Florida and Texas may be seeing the brunt of the home insurance crisis, Rhode Island won’t be far behind. He’s afraid of another insurance meltdown in the state, like the Rhode Island Share and Deposit Indemnity Corp. collapse in 1991.
Whitehouse argues that voters are ahead of politicians on this issue. And Roberts is optimistic that lawmakers will come around, too, especially if the midterms don’t go Trump’s way.
“I think the pendulum is about to swing back, and people, I mean this, people do care about this issue over the long haul,” Roberts said. “We need people like Sheldon Whitehouse who are continuing to talk about it.”
-
San Francisco, CA1 minute agoSan Francisco ninth graders will now be measured by a controversial ‘Wheel of Power’ — so how would the city’s leaders fare? We put them to the test. – The Voice of San Francisco
-
Dallas, TX7 minutes ago
Mailbag: Could Valdes-Scantling battle for WR3?
-
Miami, FL13 minutes agoMen arrested for defacing Miami Beach pride bench with antisemitic graffiti, cops say
-
Boston, MA19 minutes agoBoston’s Logan airport opens first-in-nation remote airport terminal
-
Denver, CO25 minutes agoVehicle goes airborne, hits home overnight in Denver: Police
-
Seattle, WA31 minutes agoHidden earthquake faults beneath Seattle may be more dangerous than expected
-
San Diego, CA37 minutes agoSecurity guard’s ‘heroic’ actions saved others in San Diego mosque attack, officials say
-
Milwaukee, WI43 minutes agoFrom The Strokes to Benson Boone, 15 top summer concerts in Milwaukee
