The public has been barred from a key meeting on Thursday about the future of Central Falls High School.

Faced with opposition ranging from the Rhode Island Affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union to the Providence police union, Mayor David N. Cicilline on Wednesday backed off his order for immediate random drug testing at the Providence Police Department.

A state Supreme Court decision last week prevents the city from collecting on almost $1.5 million in back payments from the Providence Water Supply Board, the water provider that serves more than 60 percent of the state.

Pension liabilities for Rhode Island cities and towns that maintain their own plans have grown by some $300 million during the past three years, setting some communities up for greater fiscal pain as the bill for promised retirement benefits comes due, a new auditor general report concludes.

WARWICK, R.I. — The chief executive officer of Deepwater Wind answered criticism on Wednesday about the high price of power from a wind farm that his company has proposed off Block Island, saying that a premium should be expected for a type of project that has never been done before in the United States.

A new federal law that requires states to send ballots to military and overseas voters 45 days before the general election is causing headaches for states with September primaries -- states like Delaware.

WASHINGTON — Small defense companies, energy firms, and other technology start-ups throughout New England could lose tens of millions of dollars a year because of a decision by House Democrats yesterday to abruptly halt budget earmarks for companies.

Both political parties are taking tea party activists seriously and are wary of offending them – if they are not already actively wooing them for state races this fall. Just look at the governor’s election in Ohio. Republican gubernatorial candidate John Kasich openly touts his tea party credentials in his bid to defeat incumbent Democrat Ted Strickland. “I think I was in the tea party before there was a tea party,” Kasich famously told a Columbus crowd earlier this year. “This is a real movement with a real message about people’s frustrations by broken promises that leaders on both sides of the aisle would be foolish to ignore,” he went on to write in a blog posting.