Weather knocked out power to dozens of people in Roxbury Tuesday.
Eversource spokesperson Mitch Gross said they were managing a weather-related outage in the area. The outage is affecting 162 customers – about 12 percent of the small town. The estimated restoration time is 6:45 p.m.
No other details were immediately available.
In a historic March vote, the House of Representatives passed a broad voting access and reform bill, H.R. 1, that includes a call for D.C. to be defined as a state. This was the first time in history that either chamber of Congress endorsed D.C. statehood, according to D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, and it paved the way for H.R. 51, a more specific statehood measure currently awaiting a hearing in the House.
The District of Columbia — home to more than 702,000 residents — has electoral votes in presidential elections but no voting members in the House or Senate.
While a recent Gallup poll concluded that 64% of Americans oppose statehood for the District, that hasn't stopped the issue from becoming a national news story in recent weeks.
A hearing on the issue was initially scheduled for July 24 but was postponed due to former special counsel Robert Mueller's testimony before the House on the same day. Norton announced Monday that the hearing has since been rescheduled for Sept. 19.
Several 2020 presidential candidates have also spoken out on the issue. But where do each of the candidates stand on whether the District should become a state? Explore our gallery below to learn more.
There is no swimming at Lake Pocotopaug in East Hampton after routine testing showed elevated levels of blue-green algae.
The Chatham Health District posted results of testing of water sampled on July 24 and found dangerously high levels of the algae, prompting a closure of swimming areas at the lake.
Blue-green algae is not harmful in normal circumstances, but can be dangerous during an algae bloom – a rapid increase in the amount of algae, according to the Centers for Disease Control. A bloom can caused by a combination of warmer water temperatures and high nutrient concentrations that allows the algae to spread.
The algae can porduce toxins that can be poisonous to humans, pets and wildlife.
The health district regularly tests the water and will advise when the water is safe to swim in.
The second debate of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary race kicks off at 8 p.m. ET in Detroit. Ten candidates will debate tonight and 10 more tomorrow. Follow along with news and analysis below.
Note: The blog will refresh on its own every 2 minutes.
Two people are in custody after an armed home invasion at Nelton Court in Hartford Tuesday.
Police said suspects armed with a gun and attacked and robbed two people in the home. The suspects took off, but were spotted a short time later by officers who gave chase. The suspect vehicle crashed at Keney Terrace and Vine Street and two suspects were taken into custody, police said.
The suspects have not been publicly identified at this time.
More details were not immediately available.
Three missions are accomplished and now another one is about to get underway for the Connecticut National Guard.
It’s a busy time for them and an emotional time for families, as loved ones return from deployment or prepare to go.
“Still trying believe it actually happened and we’re home right now,” Sgt. Teresa Morrison of the 192nd Engineer Battalion.
Morrison and about 150 other guardsmen from three Connecticut National Guard units were officially welcomed back from Southwest Asia at the State Armory in Hartford on Tuesday.
“I’m still in shock of it. Words can’t explain it,” said Diana Morrison, Sgt. Morrison's wife.
The two were married just days before the deployment.
“It wasn’t easy at first for me. It’s our first one,” said Diana Morrison. “But I saw the importance of it and her love for her country and stuff. And it made me love her even more.”
The Guard says Tuesday’s ceremony was the first ever to welcome back and send off units.
As some guardsmen readjust to life back in Connecticut, another unit is preparing to head to Afghanistan.
About 50 guardsmen will help fly helicopter missions there.
“People are looking forward to using our skills with how much work we’ve been doing in the past couple of years getting ready for this,” said Captain Joshua Holcombe from Bravo Company, Detachment 2, 104th Aviation Battalion.
Among those wishing the Guardsmen a safe trip was Gov, Ned Lamont.
This was one of his first events like this.
“What they do for their country, it just moves me,” Lamont said.
And there is lots of gratitude for those whose missions are accomplished.
“The work is never done. So I’m just happy to be a part of something like that and happy to be home,” Sgt. Donnell Niles, 192nd Engineer Battalion.
Niles spent most of his time in Iraq.
He says the temperature hit 115 there so that puts our current hot stretch in some perspective.
Dozens of families are scrambling to find child care after learning a preschool program in Hartford is closing its doors.
As they’re figuring out what to do, many are questioning why they have to do it in the first place.
The city says part of the reason they’re pulling some of the funding for the Community Renewal Team’s School Readiness Program is because the organization ranked 16th out of 18 in the city for its performance.
But Monday at a meeting about the closure of the center, parents who say they depend on the affordable child care they get from CRT said they’re unprepared for this kind of change, and don’t know what they’ll do next.
Four-year-old Taylor spends her summer like most kids, playing and having fun. But a meeting Monday to discuss her day care’s shutdown left her mother anything but happy.
“I haven't even had a chance to process this information that's been given to me. I literally don't know where I'm going to move from here,” Natalie Morris told NBC Connecticut.
Morris is one of several parents who showed up at an emergency meeting at the CRT Center on Grace Street a day after learning their year-round child care at the facility will end next month because of a city funding cut eliminating roughly half of CRT’s School Readiness Program slots.
“This is too much on us. It is. It's too much without us even being a part of the process to put our input in and then you make such a drastic decision,” Morris said.
The city says it has limited funding for early childhood programs and is opting to transfer funding now at CRT to other providers in the city. CRT said the city hasn’t offered them a meaningful explanation of why.
“It is the city that made this decision. It's the city that forced our hand here. We did not want this to happen,” stressed Jason Black, communications director for CRT.
Hayley Greenlee’s son has been at CRT for about a year and a half. She says he loves the care he gets here and challenges the idea that CRT is falling short.
“I can only speak for my CRT, and I know that he's never had a better education than what he has here,” Greenlee said.
Like others here, she says she’s still waiting for information about another place she can afford to send her son after August.
“I'm a single mom. I do everything by myself. So 400 a week at a different facility, it’s not going happen. They didn't have answers for us. This was a waste of time,” Greenlee said.
In a statement, Kim Oliver, the city’s director of the Department of Children, Families, Youth, and Recreation, wrote:
“Hartford receives approximately 1,300 School Readiness Program slots from the State for the School Readiness Program, which are allocated to a variety of community partners through an application process that measures and reviews providers’ performance. The decision to allocate slots to providers is made by the Mayor’s Cabinet for Young Children, 11 members representing parents, philanthropy, early childhood education, higher education, health care, Hartford Public Library, Hartford Public Schools, and the City of Hartford. During this year’s allocation of slots, multiple providers had slots reduced, including CRT, and slot allocations were reviewed and approved by the State of Connecticut’s Office of Early Childhood. In response to the reduction in slots, CRT chose to close one of their centers and our staff has been planning to transition affected families to new providers. When it comes to our kids, we have to have high standards and demand the very best, and we remain committed to working with all our providers to ensure we’re delivering high quality programming for Hartford children and families.”
The city stressed that no children are actually losing their spots, they are being reassigned.
The Grace Street center is set to close August 27. The city says they will be in touch with impacted families to discuss alternatives.
Two people are injured after a vehicle crashed into a store in Bridgeport late Tuesday night.
Police said the 2003 Chevy Trailblazer crashed into Tony's Smoke Shop on Main Street shortly before 11 p.m.
Two men who were in the vehicle were taken to St. Vincent's Hospital. The driver suffered minor injuries and the passenger is in stable, but critical condition, according to officers.
Authorities believe speed was a factor in the crash.
A structural engineer was called to the scene to survey the extent of the damage.
Main Street is closed in the area while police investigate. There is no estimate for when the road will fully reopen.
Police are investigating after a stabbing in New Haven early Wednesday morning.
Officers said it happened on Dixwell Avenue around 5 a.m.
Authorities did not release details about the extent of any injuries.
A portion of Dixwell Avenue was closed, but has since reopened.
A Connecticut State Police Dive Team is continuing to search for a man who reportedly drowned in Salisbury on Tuesday night.
State police were called to Housatonic River Road in Salisbury around 7:30 p.m. after getting a report of a drowning.
Police said the drowning victim is reported to be a 40-year-old man from Brooklyn, New York.
Drive teams arrived at the scene on Tuesday and could not find the man, authorities added. The divers are expected to continue their search on Wednesday morning.
The incident remains under investigation.
A garbage truck crash has closed an off ramp on Interstate 84 east in Hartford on Wednesday morning.
The crash has closed the off ramp from I-84 east to I-91 south in the area of exit 52, according to the state Department of Transportation.
Connecticut Department of Transportation officials are heading to the scene for structural inspections because the truck hit an abutment on the bridge.
State police said they expect the crash to take a while to clear.
The driver of the truck was not injured in the crash, authorities added.
A man was seriously injured when he became pinned between a paving apparatus and a pickup on the grounds of Connecticut College on Tuesday afternoon.
Police said a 911 call reporting the accident came in at 2:49 p.m. and New London police and firefighters found the man, who was transported to L+M Hospital.
The victim’s injuries are serious, but did not appear to be life-threatening, police said.
The state Department of Transportation and OSHA were notified.
Anyone with information about what happened should call the New London Police Department at 860-447-5269, extension 0, or submit anonymous information through the New London Tips 411 system by texting NLPDTip plus the information to Tip411 (847411).
Governor Ned Lamont will hold a news conference Wednesday morning about what he called modifications to the operations of state government that his administration plans to implement to reduce bureaucracy and save money.
The news conference starts at 10:30 a.m. in the governor’s office at the State Capitol.
He will be joined by Office of Policy and Management Secretary Melissa McCaw and Department of Administrative Services Commissioner Josh Geballe.
A Monday ruling by Attorney General William Barr that limited the ability of migrants to seek asylum in the U.S. is the latest example of the Trump administration's use of a unique power of the attorney general's office to reshape immigration law, NBC News reported.
Barr used a process called "certification" to issue a decision on Monday that closes the door on most asylum seekers who fear persecution due to family ties, overturning years of precedent.
The case involves a Mexican man who said he was threatened by gangs when his father refused to let them use his store. U.S. law requires asylum seekers to prove they fear persecution based on race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a "particular social group." The Board of Immigration Appeals determined that the man's family constituted a social group.
Barr reversed that finding, writing that a family does not qualify as such a group just because it is being persecuted. He was able to reshape the law because immigration courts are part of the executive branch.
Critics believe the system puts too much power in the hands of the AG and Barr's decision is expected to be challenged in court. But in the short term this could mean hundreds or thousands of those arriving at the border with claims of being targeted due to family ties do not qualify for protection.
Attorney General William Tong and Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection Commissioner Michelle Seagull are holding a news conference on Thursday morning to announce an investigation into JUUL Labs, Inc.
JUUL is an electronic cigarette company.
The news conference begins at 11 a.m. in the office of the attorney general in Hartford.
The attorney general’s news conference comes the day after Yale University released a study that says people who use some e-cigarettes are consuming more than the ingredients listed and chemical reactions in flavored liquids of the popular JUUL e-cigarettes created unexpected chemicals that can irritate users' airways.
In a statement, a spokesperson said in part that the analysis in the Yale study "failed to take into account real world conditions, including realistic human exposure to vapor products like JUUL."
The estranged wife of Dubai's ruler applied for protective orders in a British court Tuesday using laws intended to safeguard victims of forced marriages and domestic abuse, while the sheikh's lawyers requested that their two children be quickly returned to Dubai.
Princess Haya, 45, asked for a forced marriage protection order and a non-molestation order during a British High Court hearing that centered on the welfare of her two children with Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. The forced marriage protection order applied to the children.
She asked for wardship of the children during the preliminary hearing. The names and ages of the children are not allowed to be published under British law.
Princess Haya, who is Sheikh Mohammed's sixth wife and the daughter of the late King Hussein of Jordan, reportedly fled Dubai earlier this year.
Family court Judge Andrew McFarlane rejected a request from Sheikh Mohammed's lawyers to have details about the protective orders subject to reporting restrictions.
"There is a public interest in the public understanding, in very broad terms, proceedings that are before the court," he said.
The clash between Sheikh Mohammed and Princess Haya is the latest sign of trouble in Dubai's ruling family. Last year, a daughter of Sheikh Mohammed tried to flee Dubai after appearing in a 40-minute video saying she had been imprisoned.
Sheikh Mohammed, who turned 70 earlier this month, is also the founder of the successful Godolphin horse racing stable and last month received a trophy from Queen Elizabeth II after one of his horses won a race at Royal Ascot.
He was not present at the hearing Tuesday.
A vehicle has crashed into a building on Main Street in Southington.
A Tweet from the Southington Fire Department said it happened at 416 North Main St. and no injuries are reported.
No additional information was immediately available.
Washington National Cathedral leaders are responding to President Donald Trump's repeated attacks on representatives of color, asking if Americans have had enough of "violent dehumanizing words" from the White House.
"Make no mistake about it, words matter. And, Mr. Trump’s words are dangerous," Cathedral leaders said in a statement released Tuesday. The letter was attributed to Revs. Mariann Edgar Budde, Randolph Marshall Hollerith and Kelly Brown Douglas.
Trump faced backlash over the weekend after deriding Rep. Elijah Cummings' majority-black congressional district, which includes part of Baltimore, as "disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess" where "no human being would want to live."
The National Cathedral said that comments like that, and Trump's earlier tweets saying four congresswomen of color should return to "broken and crime-infested" countries, "call to mind a dark period in our history" and "give cover" to white supremacists.
Such words "serve as a call to action from those people to keep America great by ridding it of such infestation," the letter said. "Violent words lead to violent actions."
Trump has repeatedly said his statements are not racist.
The authors of the letter from the Cathedral reference a moment in 1954 when a U.S. army attorney lambasted then-Sen. Joseph McCarthy over his relentless hunt for supposed communists in America. Joseph Welch asked McCarthy, "You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir?"
The authors did not call for Trump to resign or face impeachment, but they did suggest that Americans "take every opportunity to oppose the indecency and dehumanization that is racism."
"When does silence become complicity? What will it take for us all to say, with one voice, that we have had enough? The question is less about the president’s sense of decency, but of ours," the letter says.
The National Cathedral hasn't shied away from taking a corrective tone with President Trump in the past, even pointing out in March that no presidential permission was needed for Sen. John McCain's funeral. Trump falsely said at the time he "had to approve" the funeral.
The National Cathedral is associated with the Episcopal Church but says it welcomes people of all faiths and backgrounds. It does not receive funding from the federal government, but regularly hosts funerals for high-ranking lawmakers, including former President George H.W. Bush and Sen. John McCain.
A 9-year-old New York boy died while swimming at a popular New Jersey water park Tuesday night, police said.
Hersh Meilech Grossman, of Brooklyn, died while on a camping trip at Sahara Sam's Oasis water park, Berlin Township Police Chief Leonard Check said.
Officers responded shortly after 7:30 p.m. to a report of someone undergoing cardiac arrest, Check said. When they arrived, lifeguards were already performing CPR on Grossman after pulling him unconscious from the pool.
The boy was rushed to Virtua Voorhees Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 8:34 p.m., Check said.
Grossman was at the water park as part of a class trip with Belzer Talmud Torah group, the chief said. The drowning happened during a private event involving several other groups. At the time, Check said, there were some 750 to 800 people at the park.
Officials at Sahara Sam's Oasis said they were "deeply saddened by the incident" and maintained that guest safety is their "first priority."
"We are completing a thorough review of the incident, which occurred during a private event, and working closely with local authorities," Sahara Sam's Director of Marketing Sharon Rushen said in a statement.
Grossman's death was ruled accidental, Check said. No criminal charges have been filed.
