by | Feb 27, 2025 2:05 pm | Comments (10)
Sam Gurwitt File Photo
Food pantry $$ in flux.
Connecticut’s primary food bank is preparing to lose at least $800,000 in federal funding, as food pantries and soup kitchens across the city brace for a dual storm of federal budget slashes and an expected rise in hunger.
by | Feb 27, 2025 11:28 am | Comments (11)
Maya McFadden File Photo
Reading reading reading, in a Barnard kindergarten class.
Two years after the school district switched over to a phonics-focused literacy curriculum, reading levels among New Haven’s youngest students are slowly but surely on the rise.
by | Feb 26, 2025 6:35 pm | Comments (12)
Committee Chair Lemar: "The appropriate time to regulate an industry is at its onset."
HARTFORD — “When is it too late?”
So asked state AFL-CIO President Ed Hawthorne Wednesday during a public hearing on the explosion of artificial intelligence (AI) systems out in the wild and the path to reigning them in in Connecticut.
There’s a lot of good that AI can do, he said, but not without a steady hand to guide it. Letting the technology proliferate unchecked poses risks –– mass firings, discriminatory hiring, and data harvesting, to name a few –– that the state’s “most vulnerable” just can’t afford.
by | Feb 26, 2025 2:14 pm | Comments (7)
Thomas Breen file photo
I-91 diner, under new ownership.
A gas station development crew from Trumbull and the Bronx has purchased the I‑91 diner site for $1.225 million — as a neighbor seeks to stop the burgers-to-fuel conversion through a state court appeal.
by | Feb 26, 2025 9:12 am | Comments (24)
Christopher Peak file photo
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
That’s the text of the 10th Amendment, which according to local immigration law experts is the basis for New Haven’s lawsuit against the Trump administration to protect its “welcoming city” status for undocumented immigrants.
by | Feb 25, 2025 11:39 am | Comments (27)
At Monday's online school board meeting.
(Updated) Nathan Hale School is missing a certified second-grade teacher — bringing eight parents to ring the alarm bell at the Board of Education about their students falling further and further behind thanks to the staffing shortage.
by | Feb 25, 2025 9:12 am | Comments (17)
Thomas Breen photo
No more Bigelow, hello "Bigelow Square"?
A vacant, contaminated waterfront industrial property in Fair Haven took a big step towards becoming a new 12,000 square-foot commercial/industrial building — thanks to a suite of City Plan Commission approvals for the redevelopment of the site of the now-demolished former Bigelow factory complex.
by | Feb 24, 2025 4:42 pm | Comments (21)
Lisa Reisman photo
Anna Salemme and Lyudmyla Kobylyanska at Sunday's mass.
Three years after Russia invaded Ukraine — and began a war that President Trump now falsely claims Ukraine started — 75 people gathered on George Street for a somber Sunday mass to try to figure out how best to support the country they love in such tumultuous times.
by | Feb 24, 2025 1:57 pm | Comments (12)
Abbey Kim file photo
Robert James (right) leads petition procession to the front office.
Elderly renters at a church-owned apartment complex on Goffe Street marched down their building’s hallway holding signs reading “Respect Seniors,” “Justice Matters,” and “Help Us Stay Safe.”
They then delivered a petition to the front office announcing their new status as a tenants union — and demanded a collective bargaining agreement.
by | Feb 24, 2025 9:39 am | Comments (28)
Jordan Allyn photos
Tending bud at Nautilus Botanicals ...
... owned by Luis Vega (center), celebrating a "dream come true" eight years after cannabis arrest.
Behind shelves of pipes by Bridgeport glass blower Mary Melts and across from a wall of paintings by Westville’s Shady Dankin, budtenders at Nautilus Botanicals invited the public to the grand opening of the city’s third legal pot shop.
by | Feb 21, 2025 11:28 am | Comments (13)
Maya McFadden Photos
East Rock seventh grader Jeryl searches for frog's large intestines...
...while others check out the frog's tongue and teeth.
East Rock School seventh graders Leia and Lesly suited up in gloves and eye protection to pierce through the unexpectedly tough skin of a frog — and discover, through hands-on education, what a real three-lobed liver looks like.
by | Feb 21, 2025 11:25 am | Comments (2)
Some of the iconic New Haven products (above) Steve Thomas (below, at WNHH FM) sends out.
Steve Thomas noticed New Haven ex-pats hankering online for some Elm City pie and cannoli — and willing to pay to have someone ship it to them.
Continue reading ‘He's Shipping New Haven's Delicacies Nationwide’
by | Feb 20, 2025 4:10 pm | Comments (14)
Thomas Breen photos
Ocean workers clear Monterey-adjacent encampment ...
... which LCI's Taylor Munroe said has been the subject of neighbor and SeeClickFix complaints.
Wynter and two fellow Ocean Management workers hauled a mattress, a bicycle, two shopping carts, a frying pan, a wicker chair, a pile of clothes, and a host of other belongings and debris from a Dixwell Avenue homeless encampment Thursday and into the back of a U‑Haul.
The truck was parked on the sidewalk in front of the decrepit former Monterey Jazz Club — a long-vacant building that the Elicker administration tried to buy two years ago, but that still remains rundown and under megalandlord ownership.
by | Feb 20, 2025 4:01 pm | Comments (35)
Laura Glesby File Photo
City, state, and Yale leaders brainstorm "inclusive growth" over breakfast.
Over 150 Yale and New Haven leaders gathered amid sparkling lamps and plant walls at Hotel Marcel to start thinking about what a plan for tackling poverty and economic exclusion might someday look like.
by | Feb 20, 2025 1:09 pm | Comments (15)
McMahon and Murphy, at confirmation hearing.
Washington — The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee voted along party lines Thursday to confirm Linda McMahon as the next education secretary as Democrats said she would be the last person to hold the post of a cabinet agency President Donald Trump wants to disband.
Continue reading ‘Committee OKs McMahon; Dems: There Goes The Ed Department’