HAVANA – In the seaside neighborhood of Vedado in Cuba’s capital city of Havana, a tall, heavily-guarded office building houses the United States Interests Section.

Under the new agreement, the University will pay the city an additional $31.5 million over the next 11 years, a payment plan that amounts to an increase of $3.9 million for the current fiscal year, bringing the University’s total annual contributions to about $7.9 million through 2016. 

At a February press conference announcing the city’s potential looming bankruptcy, Providence Mayor Angel Taveras’ staff gave reporters a packet that included a page specifically devoted to explaining the contributions the University needed to make to help avert financial disaster.

Fitch Ratings dropped Providence’s credit rating by three grades from A to BBB yesterday, putting the city only two steps away from junk bond status. 

From a Quaker upbringing to her selection as Brown’s president-elect, Christina Paxson has led a life marked by community involvement and strong leadership. She comes to Brown from Princeton with a reputation as a collaborator, an attentive listener and an efficient organizer. After graduating from Swarthmore College with an economics degree, she embarked on a career as an economist and landed at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. In 2009, after 23 years of teaching, she became dean of the Woodrow Wilson School. That same year, she was one of two final candidates for Swarthmore’s presidency, said Rob Hollister, professor of economics at Swarthmore. She was named the 19th president of Brown Friday. 

New legislation in the Rhode Island House of Representatives may allow local wineries and breweries to sell their products at farmer’s   markets in Rhode Island. Currently, these companies are required to go through a distributor in order to sell wine and beer at the markets. 

Liberal intellectual speaks out against fraternities In a 1963 speech in Alumnae Hall, famed educator and liberal historian Henry Steele Commager said the Supreme Court was the “central conscience” of Americans and denounced fraternities as educationally irrelevant. Commager, then a professor at Amherst College, said that since 1938, the Supreme […]

Providence Mayor Angel Taveras announced Thursday morning that the city could face bankruptcy in June unless it reins in its $22.5 million budget deficit, in part by increasing payments from nonprofits like the University. Later that day, Gov. Lincoln Chafee ’75 P’14 convened a meeting with President Ruth Simmons, Chancellor Thomas Tisch ’76 P’07 and Taveras to address the issue. At the meeting, representatives from the city and the University agreed to “renew conversations regarding the University’s payments,” said Marisa Quinn, vice president for public affairs and University relations. Taveras has threatened legal action if an agreement with nonprofits cannot be reached cooperatively.

The Rhode Island General Assembly approved a bill last night that would redraw the boundaries of the voting districts for elections to Congress and the General Assembly following an estimated 4,000-person population increase in the state over the past decade. Redistricting happens every ten years to account for demographic changes recorded in the census.

After a judge ruled last week in favor of a Cranston High School West student who requested the removal of a prayer banner hanging in her school, her attorneys have asked the city to compensate her legal fees, a sum of $173,000.