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"....At a rainy press conference near the crime scene, Commissioner Evans described the man as in "mid 20s", travelling on foot, and carrying a black "military-style knife". Some US media have reported the weapon as a machete. The suspect was taken to hospital, where he was pronounced dead. The two officers are in hospital to be examined for stress, but did not suffer physical injuries, police said...."

The man fatally shot by anti-terrorism officers in Boston on Tuesday and the suspect arrested Tuesday night in Everett had conspired to kill a police officer, according to two law enforcement officials briefed on the case. “We believe the intent was to behead a police officer,” one official said Wednesday morning. “We knew the plot had to be stopped. They were planning to take action Tuesday.” (snip)They had a brief exchange near a bus stop, according to an official with knowledge of the investigation, before Rahim lunged with the knife. The weapon was more than a foot long with a...

A man arrested in connection with a terror investigation in Boston will be in federal court Wednesday. David Wright was taken into custody at his home in Everett Tuesday afternoon, hours after a Boston police officer and an FBI agent shot and killed a man who was under 24-hour surveillance by terrorism investigators in Roslindale. According to CBS News, Wright and the man killed, 26-year-old Usaama Rahim, were communicating about attacks in the U.S. and that’s why he was arrested. Investigators are continuing to look for other people both men were communicating with. Wright will face federal charges in U.S....

Writing in the Washington Post, Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democratic Senator from Rhode Island, offered a curious suggestion for dealing with global warming skeptics - apply RICO laws and prosecute them.

Former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee will officially enter the presidential race on June 3, a source with knowledge of his plans told POLITICO. He’ll make the announcement in a speech he’s scheduled to deliver next Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. at the George Mason Center for Politics & Foreign Relations in Arlington, Virginia. Following the announcement, Chafee will travel to New Hampshire on June 4 for a previously scheduled event with local Democrats in Grafton County.

Rhode Island health officials are blaming dating apps, such as Tinder and Grindr, for a spike in syphilis, gonorrhea and HIV cases in the state. Syphilis cases have spiked 79%, while gonorrhea has risen 30%, according to data from 2013 and 2014. New cases of HIV increased by 32%. "These data send a clear signal that despite the progress we have made in reducing STDs and HIV over the years, there is more work to do," state health director Dr. Nicole Alexander-Scott said in a statement. Officials say the spike there follows a national trend. "High-risk behaviours include using social...

Washington — An alliance of Asian American groups on Friday filed a federal complaint against HarvardUniversity, saying that school and other Ivy League institutions are using racial quotas to admit students other than high-scoring Asians. More than 60 Chinese, Indian, Korean and Pakistani groups came together for the complaint, which was filed with the civil rights offices at the Justice and Education departments. They are calling for an investigation and say these schools should stop using racial quotas or racial balancing in admission. "We are seeking equal treatment regardless of race," said Chunyan Li, a professor and civil rights activist,...

Twenty-seven senators want President Obama to block federal agencies and contractors from asking job applicants about prior criminal convictions. The senators, including 26 Democrats and presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), want Obama to take executive action to "ban the box," referring to a question on job applications that asks if an applicant has any convictions. "We ask you to require federal contractors and agencies to refrain from asking job applicants about prior convictions until later in the hiring process," they said in a letter to Obama on Monday. "This policy would eliminate unnecessary barriers to employment for all job...

University of Rhode Island campus police will start carrying guns Friday, making it the final public university in the nation to arm its officers. The move to arm police came after a false alarm in 2013, when some students in a lecture hall thought they heard someone say they had a gun, setting off a panic on URI’s bucolic campus in South Kingstown. While campus police arrived at the scene in less than a minute, it took about five minutes for armed police from South Kingstown to arrive. No gun was ever found. […] A student government survey of URI...

The fallout from the “Deflategate” report released Wednesday remains very much up in the air (sorry), with most informed opinion pointing to at least a several-game suspension for quarterback Tom Brady. The media coverage of the report has focused largely on the highly-qualified language of its conclusion (“more probable than not” that Patriots staff cheated, and that Brady “was at least generally aware”), rather than on the far more damning details of the report. Patriots (and Brady) apologists like to point to this language as an indication that the report doesn’t meet the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard of proof,...

The world’s first nuclear powered aircraft carrier was moved into its birthplace dry dock at Huntington Ingalls’ Newport News Shipbuilding this weekend as part of the ongoing inactivation process. The aircraft carrier, USS Enterprise (CVN 65), was moved Saturday from Newport News’ Pier 2 to Dry Dock 11, where the super carrier was constructed over 60 years ago.

Happy International Workers Day, the perfect occasion to write about Bernie Sanders, an actual Socialist running for President. The jokes fairly assemble themselves, mostly along the lines of: Sanders is far from the first Socialist presidential candidate, he’s just the first to admit it. You may assemble your own snarky rejoinders as the cranky 73-year-old gears up a challenge to Ms. Inevitability, Hillary Clinton. But once the chuckles fade, it is worth noting that Sanders brings some wild cards to the table. None of them suggest strongly that he will be the nominee, but they do suggest that he could...

Former Sen. Lincoln Chafee said he is not convinced Hillary Clinton will be the presidential nominee for the Democratic Party. Clinton faces a primary challenge from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) and potentially Chafee himself. When asked about Clinton being pushed further to the left, Chafee brought up the scandals surrounding the Clinton Foundation and lack of accomplishments. “I would argue that between what’s happening internationally in her tenure as Secretary of State, no real accomplishments, and now these new allegations coming out about the Clinton foundation and the book coming out next week. These are real,” Chafee said.

Was TWA Flight 800 shot out of the sky? As a former pilot, that is a question I get asked about all the time. I’m no conspiracy theorist, but let’s be clear: Yes. I say it was. And I believe the FBI covered it up. LOOK BACK: REPORTING THE CRASH OF TWA FLIGHT 800 ON JULY 17, 1996 There are many reasons to disbelieve the official explanation of what happened to TWA 800 almost 19 years ago, on July 17, 1996, off the South Shore of Long Island. There’s hardly an airline pilot among the hundreds I know who buys...

Former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee said Thursday on CNN that he's running for the Democratic nomination for president, just a week after announcing he formed an exploratory committee, his most definitive statement he's made toward formalizing a 2016 campaign. "Yes, that's why I'm running. Because I feel strong about where we're going as a country," Chafee told CNN's "New Day" on Thursday, when asked why he's been so critical of Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton. Chafee was asked by CNN's John Berman in the context of having not formally declared his presidential campaign. Chafee spokeswoman Debbie Rich said Chafee did...

Hillary Clinton might have a new headache. On the eve of her presidential campaign launch, Lincoln Chafee, a former U.S. senator and governor from Rhode Island, announced Thursday that he is exploring a run for the Democratic presidential nomination. And unlike other potential Clinton challengers, Chafee appears to be spoiling for a fight.

Lincoln Chafee, a former governor and senator from Rhode Island, says he's exploring a run for the 2016 Democratic nomination. On a new web site, Chafee, who served as an independent as governor and a Republican in the United States Senate, says he's concerned about "international instability, especially in the Middle East and north Africa." "Throughout my career, I exercised good judgment on a wide range of high-pressure decisions, decisions that require level-headedness and careful foresight," he added. "Often these decisions came in the face of political adversity. During the next weeks and months I look forward to sharing with...

Few proposals in Governor Raimondo’s budget have sparked a more heated debate than her proposed “Obamacare tax.” The tax – technically, a “health reform assessment” fee – is the mechanism she’s settled on to pay for the state-run health insurance marketplace created to implement President Obama’s Affordable Care Act. The federal government paid the startup costs for HealthSource RI – to the tune of nearly $170 million at last count – but it’s up to the states to figure out how to pay to keep it operating going forward. And that means the state has to come up with its...

On top of an $18.9 million Defense Department grant doled out in Sept. 2010, the Institute received $13.6 million from the Department of Education, according to USASpending.gov. In the 2009 federal budget, another $5.8 million was appropriated through the Department of Labor and the Department of Health and Human Services. The state of Massachusetts gave the University of Massachusetts $5 million, earmarked for the Institute. As a senator in 2010, current Sec. of State John Kerry waged an unsuccessful attempt to earmark another $28.9 million for the museum ... the $18.9 million Defense Department earmark was “funneled through the Defense...

Currently, 61 members of Congress have confirmed they will not attend the speech. Arizona Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) California Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA) Rep. Lois Capps (D-CA) Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) — “I am disappointed Speaker Boehner chose to irresponsibly interject politics into what has long been a strong and bipartisan relationship between the United States and Israel. As President Obama has noted, it is inappropriate for a Head of State to address Congress just two weeks ahead of their election. I agree that Congress should not be used as a prop in Israeli election campaigns,...