FAIRFIELD COUNTY
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FCBJ this week
June 17, 2013 | VOL. 49, No. 24
STATE TRAILS NATION IN GROWTH
MIXED REVIEWS
THE DANBURY MINI MAKER FAIRE went on despite the rain as city officials look to drum up excitement for the Danbury Hackerspace and Innovation Center … 2
maLLoY Not SoLd oN LEGaLiZiNG miXEd martiaL artS
CONNECTICUT ECONOMY CONTRACTED IN 2012
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BRIDGEPORT OFFICIALS are making preparations for a train station to be built on the Barnum Avenue property formerly occupied by Remington Arms Co. … 3
BY JENNIFER BISSELL jbissell@westfairinc.com
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ministries of First Baptist Church of Bridgeport and vice chairman of the board of Family ReEntry Inc., has made it his mission to empower the incarcerated and former prisoners to get their lives on the right track. “The purpose is to humanize the issue — that these are real problems that are happening to real families,” Grant
onnecticut was the only state to see its economy contract in 2012, according to a new report. The state’s economic output, or gross state product, decreased 0.01 percent last year, whereas the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) increased about 2.5 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. New England had the slowest growth rate of any region in the country, with Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont averaging a 1.2 percent increase in economic output. Leading the nation’s recovery were economies in the Southwest and West. Those regions averaged growth of 4.1 percent and 3.3 percent, respectively. North Dakota’s economy outpaced every other state, growing 13.4 percent. Cutbacks by the financial services, insurance and real estate industries, and by the government, were the primary factors that contributed to Connecticut’s decline in economic output, while durablegoods manufacturing and the management of companies helped soften the blow, the report indicates. Durable-good manufacturing is what drove most of the nation’s growth, according to the report. In 2012, the sector grew 9.1 percent after increasing 6.8 percent the
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SIX COMMISSIONS advocating for underserved populations that had been marked for consolidation or elimination were ultimately preserved in the state’s 2014-15 budget … 7 DIRECTING TRAFFIC to your website is only part of the battle, Bruce Newman writes … 12
MEDIA PARTNER
Glover Teixeira (top), a Connecticut native, fights Quinton “Rampage” Jackson during their Jan. 26 UFC light heavyweight bout at United Center in Chicago. Photo by Josh Hedges/Zuffa LLC, courtesy of UFC.
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FOR EX-CON LAWYER TURNED MINISTER, THE MISSION IS TO EMPOWER OTHERS BY PATRICK GALLAGHER pgallagher@westfairinc.com
WHEN ASKED ABOUT THE FREQUENCY of individuals with both a Juris Doctor and a Master of Divinity degree, Jeff Grant replied — with a chuckle — “There are more of us than you would think.” Grant, a Greenwich resident, associate minister and director of prison
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21 $90 million facelift
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3‘Now arriving on Track 2 …’
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