More than 20 East Side businesses have signed up to promote the 3/50 Project, a national grassroots organization that encourages consumers to spend $50 a month at three of their favorite independent retailers, restaurants or other local businesses.

The newly minted Moderate Party of Rhode Island has hired Christine Hunsinger MPA’08 as its new executive director, the party announced in a Sept. 18 press release.

After being evicted from their camps by city and state officials, a community of Providence homeless people who sought safety in numbers has been left looking for a home before the arrival of winter.

Amid neighborhood skepticism, a final draft of a proposal to allow commercial development in the former Shooters Restaurant property by India Point Park was presented on Tuesday night by the Rhode Island Department of Planning and Development.

Those trying to reach T.F. Green Airport could have a new transportation option by fall 2011.

Governor Donald Carcieri ’65 has reportedly reached a provisional agreement with state employee unions to allow pay cuts in place of layoffs or government shutdown days. Carcieri has been engaged in an ongoing struggle with the unions in an effort to meet budget cut requirements.

Street Sights, a newspaper that aims to shed light on homelessness in Rhode Island, won the North American Newspaper Association’s Most Improved Street Newspaper award last July.

While the state Senate and House reconcile differences in two versions of a bill to close a loophole that allows indoor prostitution in Rhode Island, Providence Mayor David Cicilline ’83 has instructed the city council to move ahead with an ordinance banning the practice within city limits.

A fire Thursday night at the building at 669-685 North Main St. destroyed a furniture store and left residents living in apartments upstairs, including two Brown graduate students, looking for other places to stay.

As a new fall semester begins, new restaurants and stores have begun to pop up on Thayer Street, though some shuttered windows remain.