As her father calls on American manufacturers to make products on U.S. soil, Ivanka Trump continues to sell Chinese-made dresses on her clothing line, NBC News reported. 

Since Election Day, the apparel brand run by President Donald Trump's daughter has imported 56 shipments of Ivanka Trump products from China and Singapore, part of a total of 215 shipments from Asia since Jan. 1, 2016, according to documents reviewed by NBC News.

During the campaign, Trump stressed China was taking jobs from U.S. workers, saying "We can't continue to allow China to rape our country" at a stop in Indiana. 

A brand spokesperson told NBC News that Ivanka Trump has wanted her products made in the United States but economies of scale and infrastructure make it impossible.

State police have arrested a Thompson man accused of drug sales after investigating the death of a woman in October. 

State police responded to Brandy Hill Road, near the Thompson Rod and Gun Club, at 12:19 a.m. on Oct. 20 after receiving reports that a woman in a parked car was unresponsive, according to state police. 

The woman was later pronounced dead at Hubbard Hospital in Webster, Massachusetts and police said they learned the victim was given heroin and took it before she died, police said. 

Police identified David Gagnon, 39, of Thompson, as a suspect and he has turned himself in to police. 

Gagnon was charged with one count of sale of narcotics and held on a $10,000.

Follow the money — and the giant chickens.

The Women's March had the "pussyhat," and when protesters take to the streets in next week's Tax March they will have their own symbol: oversized inflatable chickens that look like President Donald Trump.

On April 15, protesters in more than 100 U.S. cities are expected to take to the streets in an effort to pressure Trump to release his tax returns. The chickens are expected join the marchers in at least a dozen cities.

The broad message of the protest is clear: Trump should release his tax returns — and he's a chicken for not doing so.

"You got the serious logical issue of the tax returns, then you got brilliant mockery of him," said Taran Brar, 31, an organizer of the Chicago march, which will feature a 33-foot inflatable Trump chicken.

Danelle Morton, a veteran journalist and first-time organizer, is responsible for the chickens. As she wrote in Slate, Morton tracked down the Chinese manufacturer of the Trump chickens, which were originally made to resemble roosters for a Lunar New Year celebration.

She launched a GoFundMe page to raise funds for San Francisco's chicken, which was quickly met. Organizers in other cities followed suit. And now the chickens will join marchers in more conservative towns like Houston and deep blue Chicago and New York.

The chickens range in size from 6 to 33 feet, organizers say. They have a mop of golden hair that resembles Trump's. The bird's hands are arranged in a pointing gesture like the one the future president made his signature when telling contestants "you're fired" on "Celebrity Apprentice."

But the chickens are only a slice of the Tax March's origin story.

Morton and Brar are among a group of grassroots organizers — many of whom have no prior experience in the field — who have embraced their role in the Trump resistance, guiding the march through its conception on social media to the final days of planning the nationwide action.

Frank Lesser, 37, an Emmy-award winning comedic writer formerly of "The Colbert Report," is credited with sparking the initial buzz around the protest.

A day after the Women's March on Washington, Lesser was procrastinating while working on a screenplay in a New York coffee shop, he said. He clicked on a story about the White House refusing to release Trump's tax returns.

"We litigated this all through the election. People didn't care," White House adviser Kellyanne Conway said about the tax returns that Sunday.

Lesser then wrote a tweet — now pinned to the top of his feed — that would go viral. "Trump claims no one cares about his taxes. The next mass protest should be on Tax Day to prove him wrong," he wrote.

"I figured that would get 30 or 40 retweets maybe," Lesser told NBC.

Instead, it's been retweeted more than 21,000 times, including by activist Michael Moore, writer Dan Savage and comedians Patton Oswalt and Billy Eichner.

Lesser's initial reaction to the attention was "holy s---! I guess this is actually happening," he said. "The whole time, I'm like, 'I'm not going to get back to my screenplay.'"

So he signed on to the organizing effort, but joked that he originally wanted to play a "secret, shadowy" advisory role: "I wanted to be the march's Rasputin. Or to reference someone who equally looks like he's been poisoned and then drowned: Steve Bannon."

As the organizing effort took off, Lesser dived in. He attended weekly meetings to help plan. He's communicated with media outlets, worked to enlist speakers and has helped publicize the march on social media.

He also worked to secure the New York march's chickens, one of which now sits in a cardboard box near the front door of his East Village apartment.

But Lesser and his tweet are far from the only factors responsible for the nationwide march.

Around the same time Lesser sent his tweet, Facebook event pages for tax marches across the country began to pop up.

In New York, two friends from college with no organizing experience created a Facebook event for the protest. Wes Shockley, 33, who works in media analytics, said he had not seen Lesser's tweet, but serendipitously put up the page after attending the women's march in New York with his friend Liz Tursi.

Experienced organizers from the Working Families Party, which plans pro-progressive taxation demonstrations every tax day, spotted Shockley's event and joined in the planning.

In San Francisco, Anne Pruett, a 25-year-old who works as a lab tech and studied biology in college, created the page for her city's march.

Pruett, who has no previous organizing experience, was recovering from ankle surgery at the time of the women's marches. She had seen some of the buzz about the tax marches and decided to create the group while recovering on disability.

"I just really had a lot of free time and a laptop, and there's a lot you can do with those two things," Pruett said.

In Chicago, Brar, a documentary filmmaker by trade, said he was inspired by Lesser's tweet to make the event page for the march there.

"That night it had 11 people signed up and by the end of the week it was thousands," Brar said. "It had gone viral."

And as April 15 approaches, the group of unlikely organizers are united under one tent. Aside from their local efforts, they exchange ideas nationally over the messaging app Slack and through an email list.

They've faced setbacks that seem to come with the grassroots territory. The march is now backed by at least 25 political organizing groups and various labor unions. Each have their own message and own views about the focus of the march.

There's even been debate about the chickens. Some of the organizers want to stress the serious issue that Trump has not released his taxes, others want to stress inequality in the American tax system, rather than the comical chickens. 

Less than two weeks away, the months of herding cats appears to have paid off for the newly minted organizers. San Francisco now has four chickens that will join the marchers. A number of U.S. representatives are expected to speak at the march in Washington, D.C. And Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston will appear in a video interview to publicize the marches.

Johnston published two pages of Trump's 2005 tax return in March, showing the president paid $38 million in taxes and had an income of more than $150 million that year.

Johnston's report was one of the few glimpses the public got of Trump's tax returns. In October, The New York Times published a story based on a leaked portion of Trump's 1995 state tax returns. They showed a loss of $916 million that year, in a move that could have allowed him to avoid paying taxes for 18 years, according to the Times.

Trump has downplayed releasing his tax returns, but polls show the marchers have public support. A recent Pew survey found 60 percent of Americans believe Trump has a responsibility to release his tax returns. 

For the organizers, though, there are still uncertainties.

Shockley said that the New York organizers plan to hold a news conference Sunday to announce the march to local press. Possibly with a Trump chicken.

Emergency crews responded to the Connecticut River, near the Arrigoni Bridge, after someone spotted an overturned boat and it turned to be an abandoned canoe, according to officials.

Crews are towing it back to shore.

Parents are asking a lot of questions after reading a report showing pictures of disturbed asbestos inside West Haven High School.

Back in November, the Connecticut Department of Public Health requested Dunn Environmental Inspections (DEI) investigate the installation of cameras at the school.

DEI reported, "the project was not reviewed by an Asbestos Project Designer or an Asbestos Management Planner as required by Connecticut and EPA regulations. Additionally, asbestos materials were disturbed by untrained and unlicensed persons during this camera installation project without containment or engineering controls to prevent fiber release."

The report also contains pictures showing where work was done near asbestos and some show asbestos debris, including on top of a trophy display.

"They could have at least put a phone call out and said that this happened," said Kim Poirier, a mother of a high school student.

Kim and Tom Poirier's daughter attends West Haven High School and said they only found out about this through Facebook the day before.

In an email, the superintendent says the installation was done over the summer when no students were in the building and that a random inspection by the state health department had been done in November. The superintendent also wrote that he contacted the agency and they replied that, "at no time was anyone in that building put at risk, and the school is safe and clear."

"I was surprised that they would do work in a school with asbestos and then not handle it properly," said parent Bridgette Hoskie.

Hoskie's daughter is considering attending West Haven High School next school year, but with renovations expected to take place at the school, she's now wondering if that's the right decision.

"Are they then going to handle the asbestos properly next time? And that really, really concerns me," said Hoskie.

Parents also question the timing of the camera installation when renovations to the school are expected in the near future. The superintendent says they received assurances the cameras could be dismantled and reused.

Both the mayor and superintendent stress that the school is safe and there is no risk to students. The mayor says he believes the DEI report is flawed.

NBC Connecticut reached out to the health department tonight and have not yet heard back.

A new Republican congressman will take charge of the embattled House investigation into Russia's alleged meddling in the U.S. election as Rep. Devin Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, is temporarily stepping aside.

Nunes, R-Calif., said in a statement Thursday that he believes it's in the best interests of the committee and Congress for him to do so. The move comes weeks after he generated accusations that the investigation was biased when he took information — later revealed to be acquired on White House grounds — directly to President Donald Trump without sharing it with colleagues on the committee.

Nunes called charges filed against him with the Office of Congressional Ethics "false and politically motivated." The office confirmed Thursday that it is aware of accusations "Rep. Devin Nunes may have made unauthorized disclosures of classified information."

"Despite the baselessness of the charges, I believe it is in the best interests of the House Intelligence Committee and Congress for me to have Representative Mike Conaway ... temporarily take charge of the Committee's Russia investigation while the House Ethics Committee looks into this matter," he said in the statement.

House Speaker Paul Ryan said that he supports the decision and that Nunes, who served on Trump's presidential transition team, continues to have his trust.

"I know he is eager to demonstrate to the Ethics Committee that he has followed all proper guidelines and laws. In the meantime, it is clear that this process would be a distraction for the House Intelligence Committee's investigation into Russian interference in our election," Ryan said.

The ranking Democrat on the committee, Adam Schiff, D-Calif., called Nunes' sharing of information with the White House "gravely concerning." He argued that Nunes' actions show the need for an independent investigation into the alleged meddling, which is also the subject of a Senate investigation and an FBI counterintelligence investigation.

"The important work of investigating the Russian involvement in our election never subsided, but we have a fresh opportunity to move forward in the unified and nonpartisan way that an investigation of this seriousness demands," Schiff said Thursday in a statement.

Nunes steps down with most Democrats and Republicans focused on different facets of the investigation.

Schiff has said he's seen "more than circumstantial evidence of collusion" that associates of Donald Trump colluded with Russia during the election. He has not named individuals who may have colluded with Russians, but some members of the Trump campaign who have been implicated in news reports have denied the allegation.

Trump has claimed, without evidence, that he believes Trump Tower was placed under surveillance by the Obama administration, and Nunes has said that while there is no evidence of an order to collect surveillance, communications with the Trump team were caught "incidentally." Trump's supporters have argued that the identities of Trump associates were improperly "unmasked" by members of the Obama administration.

On Wednesday, Trump claimed, again without evidence, that Obama aide Susan Rice illegally ordered the names unmasked. 

Rice, who had the power as national security adviser to request that names be unmasked for national security purposes, has denied that she or other Obama officials spied on Trump associates for political purposes. 

"I'm not going to dignify the president's ludicrous charge with a comment," Rice's spokeswoman said of Trump's latest accusation.

The president spoke to reporters aboard Air Force One on the way to his Florida resort on Thursday afternoon. Trump said he only recently heard that Nunes stepped aside from the committee's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible ties to the Trump campaign.

Nunes is a "good person" and "a very honorable guy," Trump said.

Nunes remains the chairman of the intelligence committee after stepping down from the Russia investigation, which Republican congressman Trey Gowdy and Tom Rooney will help Conaway lead.

______

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

A man with a gun robbed the Noble Gas Station at 76 North Road in East Windsor this morning and forced the clerk into a cooler, police said.

The robber held the clerk at gunpoint around 3:13 a.m., ordered the employee to empty the cash from the register into a plastic bag and then forced the clerk into a cooler, police said.

The robber then left through the back door and went west on North Road to an abandoned house at the intersection of North and Winkler roads. Police believe a vehicle was parked there and said a state police K9 unit tried to find the man but he managed to get away.

The man police are looking for is around 5-feet-10 to 6-feet tall and authorities said this case is similar to the robbery at the 7-Eleven in East Windsor last month and robberies at convenience stores in East Hartford and Newington.

Police are looking into whether the same person was behind all of the robberies. 

The man who robbed the gas station this morning was wearing a black mask, a black hooded sweatshirt, a black jacket, gloves, black jeans and a pair of black boots.

Police believe he is left handed.

Anyone with information should call the East Windsor Police Department at (860) 292-8240.

A New London woman is accused of driving 90 miles per hour while drunk in Groton and Ledyard just before 2:30 a.m. Thursday.

Groton town police alerted Ledyard police to be on the lookout for a white Pontiac G6 going more than 100 miles per hour north on Route 12 and a Ledyard police patrol officer soon saw a white 2007 Pontiac G6 going 90 miles per hour on Route 12 north, near Whalehead Road, police said.

Police identified the driver as 38-year-old Samantha Whitcher, of New London, and said she was swerving over the median and fog lines.

When a Ledyard police officer put on the emergency lights, she stopped on Route 12, near Stoddards Warf Road, police said, and they determined she was intoxicated. 

Whitcher was arrested and charged with reckless driving, failure to drive in proper lane and driving while intoxicated.

She was held on a $500 cash bond.

Columbus School in Bridgeport has been evacuated because of an odor in the school and four children were taken to the hospital.

School officials said eight students were coughing and vomiting and four were transported to the hospital. Parents of the other four students who became ill went to the school, picked up their children and have spoken with the school nurse.

The rest of the students have been taken to Johnson School.

School officials said the fire department was called to the school and firefighters are trying to figure out what the odor is. The health department also responded and has not found anything.

With less than two months to go until the start of hurricane season, forecasters at Colorado State University unveiled their projections for 2017. There is slightly better news than expected for those along the East Coast.

Initial projections say there will be 11 named storms forming in Atlantic Ocean between June 1 and Nov. 30, with four of them becoming hurricanes and just two of those being classified as major.

Those numbers are down from the 12 named storms and 6.5 hurricanes each season, numbers that come from a 30-season average taken between 1981 and 2010.

Forecasters predict a 42 percent chance that at least one Category 3 or higher storm will hit the U.S. Coast – including a 24 percent chance of the east coast of Florida being struck.

In their report, officials say cooler waters in the Atlantic in recent months make conditions “less conducive” for hurricanes to form and intensify.

A Southern California woman said her relaxing weekend in the mountains turned into a nightmare when an Airbnb host abruptly canceled a cabin reservation because of her race.

Law student Dyne Suh was looking forward to spending Presidents Day weekend with her fiancé, friends and dogs at what she thought was the perfect winter cabin in Running Springs.

"We were looking forward to it, especially with law school and working and being really busy," Suh told NBC4 Los Angeles on Wednesday. "It was a welcome break."

While Suh was headed up to the cabin in stormy weather, she sent a text message to the host to confirm the reservation for four people. According to Suh, that's when the host denied agreeing to guests at her cabin.

"I wouldn't rent it to u (sic) if u (sic) were the last person on earth," the host told Suh in a text exchange that was shown to NBC4. "One word says it all. Asian."

Suh said her heart dropped.

"I will report to Airbnb that you are racist," Suh texted back to the host.

To which the host replied, "Go ahead...It's why we have Trump...I will not allow this country to be told what to do by foreigners." The host then canceled the reservation, Suh said.

Suh, who studies race relations and currently resides in Riverside, said she's been living in the United States since she was 3 years old.

"This is home to me," Suh said. "No matter how long I've lived here, for me to be treated this way just because of my race?"

In a statement to NBC4 Wednesday, Airbnb called the host's behavior "abhorrent and unacceptable."

"We have worked to provide the guest with our full support and in line with our non-discrimination policy, this host has been permanently removed from the Airbnb platform," said Christopher Nulty, spokesman for the short-term rental site. Airbnb also stated the company works to identify and prevent discrimination on its platform. 

NBC4 reached out to the host, who said she had "no comment."

American military saw Syrian fixed-wing aircraft drop chemical weapons on civilians in Idlib this week, two officials told NBC News.

Americans saw the aircraft on radar and watched bombs fall, the officials said. The attack killed dozens of people, including 25 children, and injured at least 350 others.

The bombs hit a hospital run by the al Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front, damaging operating rooms and injuring medical professionals, the officials said.

Turkey said Thursday that autopsies conducted on victims of the attack showed chemical weapons were used. Syria has maintained that it did not use chemical weapons.

Fire Station 15 in Hartford will be closed, at least for several weeks, for structural renovations. 

A statement from the fire department says the project at 8 Fairfield Ave. has been in the works for some time and is essential to the structural integrity of the firehouse. 

The temporary closure is expected to last 28 to 30 days and return to normal service in May. 

Engine company 15 will be relocated to Company 8’s fire station at 721 Park St. and Ladder Company 2 will be relocated to Engine company 10 at 510 Franklin Ave. 

Fire department officials said there is no expected loss of service. 

They said there are signs and notification throughout the communities affected.

Fire broke out in a sauna at the Italian Center in Stamford this morning. 

Firefighters responded to 1620 Newfield Ave. at 6:07 a.m. after smoke was reported in the sauna. People who were in the building evacuated and firefighters struck a second alarm. 

They said heavy fire extended from the sauna to the locker room area near it and sent smoke through the building. 

No one was injured. 

Crews left the scene at 9:17 a.m. and the fire marshal’s office is investigating the cause.

A man who used to live in Connecticut is accused of defrauding lenders of more than $3 million to fund his pita manufacturing business.

Mohsen Youssef, formerly of Vernon, was arrested in Canada on Mar. 1 and now faces a 14-count indictment, which he plead not guilty to on Thursday, the U.S. attorney's office said. 

The indictment claims that Youssef defrauded various banks, a corporate leasing and vendor finance company and the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development in an alleged scheme to secure funds for his business, Amoun Pita and Distribution LLC and other companies he controls. 

According to Youssef's business plan, his company was a bakery that manufactured pocket pita bread from a South Windsor facility, the state prosecutor's office said. 

Youssef provided these lenders with false information when obtaining loans, lines of credit, lease financing and state grants, in order to buy machinery for his pita-making business. The lenders, collectively, lost more than $3 million as a part of Youssef's alleged scheme, according to the U.S. attorney's office. 

The 26-year-old, who has dual citizenship in the United States and Egypt, moved to Canada in 2014. He is currently being detained. 

Youssef was charged with two counts of wire fraud, 11 counts of bank fraud and one count of mail fraud. 

A 27-year-old West Hartford man has been arrested in connection with a fatal crash on Route 4 in Farmington in October. 

Bennett Dunbar has been charged with second-degree manslaughter and first-degree reckless endangerment. 

Police said several cars were involved in the crash. 

Dunbar was arrested on a warrant and bond was set at $150,000.

Syrian refugees in the United States say they are horrified by the grim images showing the aftermath of a suspected chemical weapons attack in their home country that killed more than 80 people, including at least 27 children.

“It’s extreme,” Samer Dukhar tells NBC Boston.

Dukhar left Syria just after the civil war broke out in 2011. He now lives in Manchester, New Hampshire, and said he learned of Tuesday's dawn attack on Facebook after relatives and friends began posting photos and videos from the scene.

The images are from the Idlib province, the region Dukhar called home for more than 25 years, now devastated by chemical warfare.

“You see, they are killed without a single drop of blood, they look like they are sleeping, but they are not – they are gone,” Dukhar said, while watching a video posted on social media by a friend in Syria.

Activists in Turkey have reported the death toll at about 100, with more than 400 injured, NBC News reported.

“It’s really chaos now, people are scared, they don’t know what’s coming next,” Dukhar said.

Bashar al-Assad has denied responsibility, but Dukhar says there’s no question in his mind that the country’s president is the mastermind behind the attacks.

“He needs to be held accountable,” Dukhar said.

Six years ago, Dukhar stood with hundreds in his hometown to protest the Assad regime in what he thought would be a revolution. But the government responded by killing civilians, and the uprising against President Assad gradually turned into a full-scale civil war.

“Almost every single family has lost somebody,” Dukhar said.

Since migrating from Syria, Dukhar has earned a master’s degree in the U.S. and created a Facebook page to help connect other refugees in New Hampshire.

He hopes someday it’ll be safe enough to return to his birth country and rebuild.

“I feel it’s a responsibility,” Dukhar said. “When justice finds its way to Syria, peace will absolutely happen.”

For Justin Lonergan, the Durham property where he grew up and his parents currently live is important to him. It’s the home he plans to buy from them in about a year. 

But on Thursday, he spoke with NBC Connecticut about the issues he has every time it rains heavily.

It stems from a catch basin on state Route 147. It’s located steps away from his driveway, which runs down hill to his home. 

"The basin gets over taken with the amount of water and overtakes the curb, draining on to our driveway and down to the property," said Lonergan.

From the top of the driveway to the home is an estimated 300 feet away and the damage from the drainage is apparent, making small streams through the gravel on the driveway that leads to the home.

"And the water goes underneath down our walkway and underneath our deck which is concerning to us because it’s right next to our foundation," said Lonergan.

Below the ground connected to the catch basin on Route 147 is an 8 inch pipe that belongs to the state Department of Transportation (DOT) and a 16 inch pipe, which belongs to the property owner, according to DOT.

One of those pipes being clogged is likely the cause of the problem according to DOT spokesperson, Kevin Nursick. He said the state is investigating the situation.

"The determination that needs to be made is whether or not that issue is being caused by a back-up in the DOT’s drainage infrastructure meaning specifically the catch basin and the small outlet pipe at that catch basin or if this is being caused by the pipe underneath the homeowners driveway which is on private property that the DOT did not install and it is not our responsibility," said Nursick.

If the state determines the cause of the problem is from the pipe under Lonergan’s family’s property, then they must fix it. Lonergan said the estimated cost to fix it is about $2,500.

For now, he’ll have to wait and see. It’ll take the state between one and two weeks to investigate the cause. 

Police have arrested a Brooklyn, New York, man after officers found a small alligator, drugs and a weapon inside his apartment, according to authorities.

Officers executed a search warrant at Tracey Habakkuk's apartment in Flatbush around 6:20 a.m. Wednesday and recovered a loaded .380 semi-automatic handgun, crack cocaine and a caiman inside a tank kept in his living room, authorities said.

Police arrested the 41-year-old Wednesday.

Habakkuk was charged with criminal possession of a controlled substance, criminal possession of a loaded firearm and possession of a prohibited wild animal.

For months neighbors in Plainville complained about the town's tap water quality.

Residents submitted more than 100 complaints to town hall. Thursday, local health officials collected water samples from businesses, schools, and municipal buildings for testing.

"It's very important. We are dealing with the public water supply. It might be something we don't even think about. But we want to test it and and gather some information," said Plainville Director of Health Shane Lockwood.

Using recommendations from the state toxicologist and analysis from the complaints, the water samples will be tested for 14 parameters.

Parameters like: odor, hardness, chlorine, and sulfates to name a few.

"I feel good about that. That action is actually being taken," said Plainville resident Kathy Maynard.

The results from the tests will be available in roughly two weeks, health officials said. Next week, state officials will be collecting water samples from homes. Once the results are in health officials said they will present the findings at a public meeting possibly in May.