Local:
The Warwick school committee, after a few public hearings, voted on Tuesday to consolidate the city’s elementary schools by closing two and repurposing another. John Wickes Elementary and Randall Holden Elementary will be be closed, and John Brown Francis Elementary will become an early childcare facility. Current fifth graders at these schools will move to sixth grade immediately in the 2017-18 school year, but the rest of the closures will not go into effect until the year of 2018-19, after the committee voted to delay it by a year.
A legal dispute over the Vanderbilt family’s famous Breakers mansion has been sent to The Rhode Island Supreme Court. The owners of the property, The Preservation Society of Newport County, plan to build a visitors’ center on the grounds, while members of the Vanderbilt family have come out in opposition to the plans. On Tuesday, the court heard arguments relating to the dispute. The case concerns city objections regarding licensing and zoning laws rather than the Vanderbilt family’s objections to the visitors’ center, as the addition would allegedly harm the historical nature of the mansion.
National:
The United States Department of Health and Human Services announced on Tuesday that insurance premiums, under The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), will be increasing next year by an average of around 20 percent. However, the increases will mostly hurt just the 15 percent of people who do not get Federal healthcare subsidies on the insurance exchanges. It is likely that premiums will go up for everyone – subsidies or not. The issue has also remained political since the law was first passed in 2009, with Republican candidate Donald Trump calling for the ACA to be repealed and President Barack Obama claiming that the law must continue to be improved.
This week, veterans of the California National Guard were ordered to pay back millions of dollars in re-enlistment bonuses. Veterans are being required to repay their bonuses because of the fallout from a previous case involving California National Guard Master Sergeant Toni Jaffe, who was sentenced to prison in 2012 after fraudulently submitting claims for bonuses when veterans were not eligible. Even though the promised bonuses were a result of fraudulent activity, the Guard said, the debt still must be paid back, as it is required by Federal law and the Guard does not have the authority to waive the debt.
Global
According to a report by the International Energy Agency, due to additional renewable energy efforts, the world now has the capacity to generate more energy from renewable resources than it does by coal. The report did not find that the renewable sources like wind, solar, and hydroelectric power are currently producing that much energy, only that they have the potential capacity to do so. The IEA said that costs of renewable energy are projected to continue declining, and so its energy capacity will continue to increase.
On Tuesday, the National Assembly of Venezuela moved to try President Nicolas Maduro. Led by the party in opposition to the president, the Assembly accused him of violating the constitution. However, according to the current Venezuelan government, all actions of the Congress are void, because the legislature was declared illegitimate by previous court rulings.