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Bans Havent Lowered the National Abortion Rate. Pro-Lifers Must Find Another Way. - The New York Times

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This Cake Maker Finds Beauty in Change, Time and Even Life and Death

A decade ago, Jasmine Rae de Lung, a San Francisco-based cake maker, wanted to test out some new decorating elements. She headed to Clement Street in the Richmond, a neighborhood with several Asian markets. Her haul that day included some rice paper sheets, typically used to form Vietnamese spring rolls. Back in her Mission District kitchen, de Lung realized the sheets wouldn’t work for draping on a cake; they became flimsy when wet and shrank and shattered when refrigerated. The diaphanous material offered greater potential, though, in detailing: Cut into pieces, dyed, dried and attached to wire, the rice paper resembled delicate flowers. But de Lung also learned the paper couldn’t be commanded; it curled and changed in unexpected ways. Instead, she had to create multiple versions and choose which ones worked best with the cake. “You have to let it be the beauty that it wants to form,” she said.

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North Jersey Towns, Already Swamped, Brace for More Heavy Rain

Several New Jersey communities were bracing on Friday for more rain and flooding after a winter storm earlier in the week caused several rivers in the northern part of the state to overflow. North Jersey was predicted to get up to 1.5 inches of rain Friday night, adding to the residual flooding still lingering in the area, the National Weather Service said. Some areas along the Passaic and Raritan Rivers remained underwater after the heavy rains on Tuesday. Even in places where flooding had receded, the ground was still saturated, the Weather Service said. On Friday afternoon, Gov. Phil Murphy warned residents of the affected areas that the Passaic River was already “well above flood level” and expected to rise another one to two feet by Sunday. In messages posted online, Mr. Murphy urged residents to follow local officials’ guidance and to avoid driving Friday night. Inspecting flood damage in Little Falls in Passaic County on Thursday, Mr. Murphy said at a news conference that more needed to be done to address the chronic flooding that plagues many New Jersey towns.

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1 fatality from 3-alarm morning fire in Cambridge - Boston News, Weather, Sports

Crime Adult woman who allegedly posed as Boston student pleads not guilty Prosecutors say Shelby Hewitt, 32, enrolled in Boston schools and posed as both a ninth grade and seventh grade student. Shelby Hewitt, 32, was arraigned in West Roxbury Municipal Court in July on several charges including four counts of document forgery, two counts of uttering a false writing, and one count of identity fraud. Alysa Guffey/Handout Accused of posing as a Boston Public Schools student, a former Massachusetts social worker pleaded not guilty to fraud and forgery charges Tuesday as prosecutors revealed an alleged trail of fake documents and personas that made up her purported scheme. Shelby Hewitt, 32, allegedly posed as a child and enrolled herself in several Boston schools — first as a ninth grader and later as a seventh grader, according to court documents. “In reality, the defendant was a woman in her early thirties who had attended both college and graduate school and was employed as a social worker,” prosecutors said in a statement of facts filed in court. Advertisement: Hewitt is charged with three counts of document forgery, two counts of common law forgery, and one count each of uttering false or forged records, identity fraud, larceny over $1,200, and violating public employee standards of conduct. She was previously arraigned in West Roxbury Municipal Court and released on $5,000 bail in July; her indictment last month bumped the case up to Suffolk Superior Court. Boston.com has reached out to Hewitt’s lawyer, Timothy Flaherty, for comment. According to The Boston Globe, Flaherty told the court in July that Hewitt has “a long-standing lifelong, well-documented history” of mental health challenges. Court docs: Hewitt pretended to be ‘an extremely traumatized child’ Officials allege that between Dec. 6, 2021 and Feb. 3, 2023, Hewitt “engaged in an elaborate pattern of fraudulent conduct while working as a state employee” for the Department of Children and Families. Prosecutors say she pretended to be a teen in DCF custody and obtained special education services by posing as a child in need — all while collecting her salary from the state. According to court documents, Hewitt resigned from DCF on Feb. 6, 2023. She allegedly went to great lengths to set up her scheme, purchasing a domain from GoDaddy.com for “@masstate.us” — similar to the “@state.ma.us” that appears in many state employees’ email addresses. Hewitt then used the domain to create two fictional DCF social worker identities, “Michael Kornetsky” and “Michelle Delfi,” prosecutors said. Advertisement: “Posing behind the keyboard as one of these DCF workers, the defendant got herself admitted as a child patient to the Walden Behavioral Treatment Center and enrolled herself in BPS,” according to the statement of facts. She continued to lay the groundwork for her scheme throughout 2022, according to the court document. That fall, she allegedly enrolled herself as a 16-year-old student at Jeremiah E. Burke High School in Dorchester, then requested a transfer to Brighton High School due to unspecified “concerns” with the administration at Burke. In the beginning of June 2023, she allegedly enrolled herself under a different name, this time as a 13-year-old at English High School in Jamaica Plain. “The defendant created multiple names and dates of birth for herself and propagated an intricate — but false — narrative of an extremely traumatized child with significant special educational and emotional needs,” according to the statement of facts. Prosecutors allege that Hewitt forged several documents to perpetuate her scheme, including DCF placement letters and Middlesex Juvenile Court records bearing different names and birthdays. One of her two assumed aliases was the name of a real person — a child in DCF custody, according to court documents. Advertisement: Hewitt’s alleged ruse was discovered in June, when a man posing as Hewitt’s father told staff at English High School that he was going to transfer her to a new school due to bullying, Boston.com previously reported. A BPS administrator reportedly took a closer look at her registration paperwork and realized it was suspicious. On Tuesday, Hewitt was released on the bail she had previously posted. She was ordered to stay away from any witnesses in her case, all schools, and the Walden Behavioral Health Center, to refrain from practicing social work, and to have no contact with anyone under the age of 18. She is due back in court on Feb. 2, court records show.

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Ukraine Accuses Senior Defense Official of Embezzling $40 Million

The Ukrainian police have arrested a senior Defense Ministry official on suspicions that he embezzled nearly $40 million as part of a fraudulent purchase of artillery shells for Ukraine’s military. The Ukrainian authorities have been working to clean up the ministry since reports of graft and financial mismanagement led to the removal in September of the minister at the time. Ukraine’s security service announced the arrest of the senior official, whose name was not released, on Friday. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has also made tackling corruption one of his key wartime goals, not only to reassure Ukraine’s Western allies that their billions of dollars in aid are not being siphoned off, but also to ensure an efficient allocation of resources as the country’s military runs short on weapons and ammunition in its fight to fend off Russia’s forces. Ukrainian soldiers and commanders have said in recent days that their dearth of artillery shells has led them to scale back some military operations and has weakened Ukraine’s ability to withstand relentless Russian attacks.

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What We Learned From Bogots Buses

Dear Headway reader, Recently, I traveled to Bogotá, Colombia, which is twice the size of New York, to report on a transit system that was once the envy of cities around the world. The system, a rapid bus network called TransMilenio, rolled out in 2000. Its buses weren’t as big or as fast as trains, but they were up and running in a fraction of the time and at a vastly lower cost. Millions of residents living in far-flung, formerly disconnected slums suddenly gained access to jobs and schools. The idea of rapid buses became the rage from Jakarta to Mexico City, and Enrique Peñalosa, the Bogotá mayor who cooked up the idea for TransMilenio, became a globe-trotting celebrity after his term ended. Grist Magazine even compared him to George Harrison and the Dalai Lama. Peñalosa is an outsized figure — literally; he is N.B.A. tall — with a gift for hogging the spotlight. But there was another colorful character whose contributions to TransMilenio I had to leave on the cutting room floor. Super Citizen Antanas Mockus served as mayor both before and after Peñalosa. A philosopher and mathematician by training, he first won election in a landslide, after being ousted as president of Colombia’s National University for mooning an auditorium full of booing student protesters. (He explained the dropping of his pants by citing the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of “symbolic violence.”)

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An Alleged Plots Burning Question: Why Would India Take the Risk?

Remember the bizarre and disturbing case of four infants found in the freezer in a home on East Broadway last year? Well, we have a long overdue update via the Boston Globe. And this case gets even more strange. The Globe is reporting that according to court records related to the case, the death investigation “is complex and ongoing.” It also reveals that a potential suspect has been identified, and the remains of the infants have led to evidence in an “unrelated homicide” that has already gone to trial. So strange. Evidently, as the investigation was happening, police unwittingly discovered information related to an unrelated homicide. On November 17th and 18th of last year, the remains of two boys and two girls were found in unit 3 at 838 East Broadway. Also, according to the Globe, investigators have sought to exhume a body, obtain a DNA swab, and evaluate the competency of a potential suspect. Police have not publicly revealed the identities of the infants or their families. No arrests have been reported as part of the death investigation. Prosecutors are hoping the death investigation will be completed in March. You can read the full article here.

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Lowry: Jack Smith takes aim at 2024 election

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Mykonos Greek Restaurant finds new home in Springfields TD Bank building

SPRINGFIELD — Call it a feta fete, proof that gyros — not unlike heroes — can make a comeback to save the day. Mykonos Greek Restaurant reopens in downtown Springfield’s TD Bank Center this week, nearly six months after the redevelopment of Eastfield Mall forced operators Christos and Kristin Hatzis to move.

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Britains Economy Is Not Working. Here Are 2 Key Reasons.

In the countryside of Cambridgeshire, a British semiconductor start-up was ready to expand beyond its lab and open a manufacturing base. But the company’s ambitions came with unexpected costs to bring enough electricity to the new site. The potential bill? One million pounds. The company, Paragraf, makes chips using graphene, an ultrathin carbon. Its devices can be used to check for defects in electric vehicle batteries to prevent fires, or work in quantum computers. After acquiring the site in 2023, Paragraf made plans to ramp up its weekly manufacturing capabilities from tens of thousands of devices to millions. But the cost of increasing the power supply to the location, a result of years of underinvestment in Britain’s electricity grid, is diverting money — and time — from hiring and equipment purchases, said Simon Thomas, Paragraf’s chief executive. “Our biggest kind of advantage when you’re a company like ours is the pace you can move,” he said. Delays are “not just affecting what you can do now, it’s affecting how successful you’re going to be in the future,” he added. “It’s extremely frustrating.”

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Madonna gives Boston something to celebrate

“Open your heart, I’ll make you love me,” Madonna sang to a thrilled, packed, up-way-past-bedtime TD Garden Monday night. Hearts were wide open. She made us love her. Madonna has always looked forward, charging out in front of a genre perpetually obsessed with the next young thing. This year, Madonna, who is — GASP! — 65, is taking some time to celebrate her — GASP! — past. Not a greatest hits show (no “Material Girl,” no “Like a Virgin”), the Celebration Tour is a retrospective, a finely curated biography set to the greatest pop of the past 40 years. She started her story (at 10:15 pm) in the most obvious place: the dance floor. The first mini set crammed in many of catchiest ’80s club jams, often with too much club bass. The whole night had too many melodies crushed under a tuneless low-end rumble, even ballad “Crazy for You” had a needless thumping. (Note: Pop stars, hire an actual band and minimize pre-recorded tracks.) But, true to form, she overcame the sound with spectacle and charisma. “Open Your Heart” was captivating with Madonna staring into a camera, her dancers recreating the video’s peepshow burlesque vibe behind her. The narrative moved on to different chapters (heretic, sex positive champion, mother and daughter). In each act, what worked — what’s always worked — remained: great pop, spectacle, charisma, and dancers, oh so many dancers! The stage expanded from a main section with multiple smaller sections all connected by catwalks. And Madonna and troupe used every inch of floor. “Erotica” had Madonna and her troupe throwing punches in boxing rings on side stages. “Don’t Tell Me” saw the crew strutting in chaps and cowboy hats, and Madonna can still strut with awesome energy. In one of the most arresting pieces of choreography in any pop show, a dozen dancers spun on a carousel, shirtless, undulating, bathed in warm light, striking crucifixion poses. At the center, Madonna sang a pumping, hypnotic remix of “Like A Prayer.” “Vogue” played tribute to its inspiration, New York’s ballroom scene of the ’80s. With each dancer dressed in a radically different glammed out outfit showing off in front of judge Madonna. In a twist, 11-year-old daughter Estere topped the competition with her skills (four of her kids helped out including 17-year-old daughter Mercy who accompanied her on a grand piano for “Bad Girl”). The show covered so much ground. The world-conquering rush of “Ray of Light” and breezy “Isla Bonita” and a wonderful, acoustic and raw version of “Express Yourself.” There was pyro and costume changes, hydraulic lifts and moving video screens with endless montages And yet, it wasn’t enough. That’s a good thing. She’s made us love her and we want more. “I think the most controversial thing I have ever done is to stick around,” she said in a video clip from an event honoring her as Billboard’s 2016 Woman of the Year. The comment couldn’t be more true considering the ageism and sexism she has faced and still faces. So please, shock he haters, stick around some more.

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Opinion | Train Yourself to Always Show Up

A somewhat obscure text, about 2,000 years old, has been my unlikely teacher and guide for the past many years, and my north star these last several months, as so many of us have felt as if we’ve been drowning in an ocean of sorrow and helplessness. Buried deep within the Mishnah, a Jewish legal compendium from around the third century, is an ancient practice reflecting a deep understanding of the human psyche and spirit: When your heart is broken, when the specter of death visits your family, when you feel lost and alone and inclined to retreat, you show up. You entrust your pain to the community. The text, Middot 2:2, describes a pilgrimage ritual from the time of the Second Temple. Several times each year, hundreds of thousands of Jews would ascend to Jerusalem, the center of Jewish religious and political life. They would climb the steps of the Temple Mount and enter its enormous plaza, turning to the right en masse, circling counterclockwise. Meanwhile, the brokenhearted, the mourners (and here I would also include the lonely and the sick), would make this same ritual walk but they would turn to the left and circle in the opposite direction: every step against the current.

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How to watch the broadcast premiere of Hulus Only Murders in the Building

A United States naval officer who sent an intelligence officer working for the Chinese government photos of American military installations and details of naval training exercises in Asia was sentenced to more than two years in prison on Monday. The 27-month sentence in federal court for the American officer, Wenheng Zhao, also known as Thomas, was lighter than those handed out to some other American citizens convicted of spying for China over the years. In 2019, a former C.I.A. officer, Kevin Patrick Mallory, received more than 20 years. The case is a reminder of a broader espionage shadow war that has accompanied the intensifying rivalry between China and the United States. American officials are worried in part because China has been building up its main intelligence agency and investing in wider recruitment, including of American citizens. Beijing, for its part, has offered rewards of tens of thousands of dollars to Chinese citizens who report spies, as part of a call for mass vigilance against foreign enemies.

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George Santos Is Kicked Out of Congress in a Historic Vote

George Santos, the New York Republican congressman whose tapestry of lies and schemes made him a figure of national ridicule and the subject of a 23-count federal indictment, was expelled from the House on Friday after a decisive bipartisan vote by his peers. The move consigned Mr. Santos, who over the course of his short political career invented ties to the Holocaust, Sept. 11 and the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, to a genuine place in history: He is the first person to be expelled from the House without first being convicted of a federal crime or supporting the Confederacy. Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana announced the tally to a hushed House chamber: The measure, which required a two-thirds majority, passed with 311 lawmakers in favor of expulsion, including 105 Republicans, and 114 against. Two members voted present. “The new whole number of the House is 434,” a downcast Mr. Johnson announced, confirming that with Mr. Santos’s ouster, the already paper-thin margin of Republican control had shrunk to three votes.

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Murder in Boston podcast explores lasting impact of Stuart case

It has been more than three decades since Charles placed the 911 call claiming he and his pregnant wife had been shot and carjacked in Mission Hill, identifying a Black male as the alleged attacker. While Charles survived, Carol died of her gunshot wounds. Their baby, Christopher, was born the night of the shooting after a C-section, but died 17 days later from respiratory failure. The 1989 Charles and Carol Stuart shooting set off an intense police investigation and media frenzy that still haunt the city. “Murder in Boston,” the Globe’s nine-part original investigative podcast, reexamines the case, exploring new clues, what went wrong, and the scars it left on Mission Hill’s Black community. Advertisement Black residents of Mission Hill faced increased police scrutiny and surveillance due to the investigation, with law enforcement homing in on Willie Bennett, a Black man, as a suspect. Ultimately, Matthew Stuart confessed in 1990 that he helped his brother Charles hide the gun used to murder Carol. Although Bennett’s name was cleared, the wounds inflicted on the Mission Hill community are still fresh. Get The Big To-Do Your guide to staying entertained, from live shows and outdoor fun to the newest in museums, movies, TV, books, dining, and more. Enter Email Sign Up “There was always this sense that this story was something that they never let go,” said Globe associate editor and columnist Adrian Walker, who hosts the podcast, launching Dec. 4. “Murder in Boston: Roots, Rampage, Reckoning,” a three-part documentary by HBO, produced in association with The Boston Globe, also debuts Dec. 4 on HBO and Max. The Globe’s “Nightmare in Mission Hill” eight-part investigative series is now available to read. Ahead of the release, Walker spoke about revisiting the story three decades later, what surprised him about the case, and what’s needed to start the healing process for the residents of Mission Hill. Q. In the intro for the podcast, you talk about how it’s time to “tell the story the right way.” What went wrong with the initial coverage of the case? Advertisement A. Going back and looking at a story 34 years later is nothing like reporting a story in real time. And I was on that story when it happened. Looking back on it, I think we all kind of got caught up in the competitive pressure of it, wanted to beat the [Boston] Herald, wanted to beat TV, all that kind of stuff. I think, at times, certainly judgment was a casualty. Q. What kind of reporting did you do on the investigation back then? A. I was just going wherever they sent me, like the day [Charles] jumped off the [Tobin] Bridge. The gun had been thrown into the Pines River, right where Lynn meets Revere, and my assignment was to just go there and stay there until they found the damn gun and fished it out. Q. In addition to reexamining the shooting and its aftermath, the podcast features interviews with Mission Hill residents who were impacted by the police raids and chaotic investigation. Why did you want to center their experiences? A. That was always the missing part of the story. Those voices have just not been heard to the degree that they needed to be. I always thought that was the missing piece. Q. And the scars are still there. A. You’ll see it in the documentary, but you’ll hear it even more in the podcast because there’s so many more voices. It was just such a traumatic event at the time. One of the things that drew me to it, and drew all of us to it, is that it was such a cataclysmic event when it happened, and yet three quarters of people in Boston probably weren’t here in 1989 and, for a lot of people, the story is new. Advertisement Q. Did anything surprise you while revisiting this story? A. I was surprised by how many people knew [Charles had] done it who never came forward. That was the biggest surprise to me. Q. Retired Boston detective Bill Dunn, who was involved in the investigation, is featured in the podcast and documentary. At one point he says “we’ll never know” who murdered Carol, and that police “never got the chance to finish the investigation.” Is this still an open case? A. It’s crazy. I mean there are these guys, Billy Dunn and some of the prosecutors, who are still like, “You know, I still think Willie Bennett was involved. I still think they knew each other.” That’s all just nonsense: “We didn’t get to finish the investigation”? The investigation was finished. His brother Matthew went to the police, he said Charles did it. The next day Charles jumped off the bridge. That will end any murder investigation. Q. Is there any kind of justice that needs to take place for Willie Bennett, who was wrongly suspected of the crime, and his family? Advertisement "Murder in Boston," the Globe's nine-part original investigative podcast, debuts Dec. 4. Courtesy of HBO / The Boston Globe A. There’s a reckoning that’s never occurred with this case. I think an apology would go a very long way. I mean they never got anything. [Former Boston mayor] Ray Flynn went to their house for like 30 seconds. He wouldn’t even sit down, that kind of thing. I think some kind of public acknowledgment of the pain and suffering of, first the Bennett family, but also the wider Mission Hill community, is long overdue. It would be great if that was one of the things that came out of this. Q. The podcast highlights how the media, police, and politicians all had roles in this case becoming chaotic, but does anyone deserve the lion’s share of the blame? A. No, because it’s so multifaceted. A lot of these entities were acting independently, so there’s not like one bad guy. I think there are a lot of people who wish, or should wish, they had made some different choices. Interview was edited and condensed. Listen to “Murder in Boston: The untold story of the Charles and Carol Stuart shooting” beginning Dec. 4 wherever you get your podcasts. “Murder in Boston: Roots, Rampage, Reckoning,” debuts Dec. 4 at 9 p.m. on HBO and will be available to stream on Max. “Nightmare in Mission Hill” is now available to read. Matt Juul can be reached at matt.juul@globe.com.

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Gaza Truce Talks Bog Down Over Disputes on Aid Inspections

The top political leader of Hamas was holding talks with Egyptian officials on Wednesday about a possible truce in its war with Israel in the Gaza Strip, as the United Nations Security Council separately worked frantically to craft a resolution to suspend the fighting that would not draw a veto from Israel’s staunchest ally, the United States. The talks in Egypt were taking place as concerns in Israel grow over the fate of the dozens of hostages still being held in Gaza, and as pressure grew on the Israelis to stop their military campaign and allow more desperately needed aid into the devastated enclave. Diplomats at the U.N. Security Council were engaged in their own intense negotiations in New York on Wednesday over a resolution that would call for extended pauses in the war, allow more aid into Gaza by land, air and sea, and urge the immediate release of all the hostages being held by Hamas. A vote had initially been scheduled for Monday, but was delayed repeatedly, including on Wednesday, and is now not expected until Thursday morning at the earliest.

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Do you have to report payments through Zelle, PayPal, Venmo to the IRS in 2024?

People receiving payments for goods and services through third-party services, like Venmo, Zelle and PayPal, will have at least two years before they need to abide by a new onerous threshold. Under the American Rescue Plan of 2021, taxpayers would need to report payments for goods and services over $600 received through those third-party services through the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) 1099-K forms — down from a previous threshold of $20,000 and 200 transactions in a given tax year. The IRS announced in November that the prior threshold would remain in place for another year this upcoming tax season and would only be lowered to $5,000 for the 2024 tax year. The agency cited feedback from taxpayers, tax professionals, and payment processors and a desire to reduce taxpayer confusion as reason for the delay. However, companies operating those services could still send a 1099-K form, according to the IRS. Typically, 1099-K forms are for people who use third-party apps to conduct business, but could also include casual sellers who sold personal items, like clothing, furniture and other household items, that they paid more than they sold it for. If taxpayers sold items at a loss, meaning they paid more for the items than they sold them for, they’ll be able to zero out the payment on their tax return by reporting both the payment and an offsetting adjustment on a Form 1040, Schedule 1. Reporting is not required for personal transactions, such as birthday or holiday gifts, sharing the cost of a car ride or meal, or paying a family member or another for a household bill, according to the IRS.

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As Alzheimer's rates rise, Boston researchers find that a multivitamin may improve memory, slow cognitive aging

As the number of Americans living with Alzheimer’s grows, a new “exciting” study out of Mass General Brigham shows that taking a multivitamin could help prevent memory loss and slow down cognitive aging. The Boston researchers tested the effects of a daily multivitamin on cognitive changes in older adults, as part of the COSMOS trial (COcoa Supplement and Multivitamin Outcomes Study). COSMOS is a large-scale trial testing cocoa extract and multivitamin supplements, run by researchers at Mass General Brigham. Two previous studies in COSMOS suggested that a daily multivitamin has a positive effect on cognition. COSMOS researchers are now reporting the results of a third study in COSMOS — which focused on participants who took in-person assessments. The results showed a statistically significant benefit for memory and cognition among participants taking a daily multivitamin compared to the placebo. The study suggests that taking a daily multivitamin may help prevent memory loss and slow cognitive aging in older adults. “Cognitive decline is among the top health concerns for most older adults, and a daily supplement of multivitamins has the potential as an appealing and accessible approach to slow cognitive aging,” said first author Chirag Vyas, instructor in investigation at the Department of Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital. “The meta-analysis of three separate cognition studies provides strong and consistent evidence that taking a daily multivitamin, containing more than 20 essential micronutrients, helps prevent memory loss and slow down cognitive aging,” Vyas said. The researchers for the study conducted in-person cognitive assessments among 573 participants in the subset of COSMOS known as COSMOS-Clinic. The scientists found that there was a modest benefit from the multivitamin on global cognition over two years. There was a statistically significant benefit from the multivitamin for change in episodic memory, but not in executive function/attention. The researchers estimated that the daily multivitamin slowed global cognitive aging by the equivalent of two years compared to the placebo. “These findings will garner attention among many older adults who are, understandably, very interested in ways to preserve brain health, as they provide evidence for the role of a daily multivitamin in supporting better cognitive aging,” said Olivia Okereke, senior author of the report and director of Geriatric Psychiatry at MGH. In 2020, an estimated 5.8 million Americans aged 65 years or older had Alzheimer’s disease. This number is projected to nearly triple to 14 million people by 2060, according to the CDC. JoAnn Manson, co-author of the research report and chief of the Division of Preventive Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, said, “The finding that a daily multivitamin improved memory and slowed cognitive aging in three separate placebo-controlled studies in COSMOS is exciting and further supports the promise of multivitamins as a safe, accessible and affordable approach to protecting cognitive health in older adults.”

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The Green Line Extension's long history of trouble

The results were startling. Nearly 400 sections of new track examined by the machine between Science Park and Union Square and East Somerville stations were narrower than the contract specifications, according to a copy of the scan report obtained by the Globe. The test took the form of a machine loaded onto the brand-new tracks. It would, among other things, scan and measure the width between the rails and flag any areas that were too narrow. A big test for the Green Line extension tracks came on an unseasonably warm fall day in October 2021. Stations along the routes to Union Square and Medford were still being built, lighting was missing, and passengers wouldn’t start riding trains there for several months . Advertisement Experts say it should have been a high-decibel warning that the MBTA’s first attempt at expanding its subway system since the 1980s, a $2.3 billion project that took decades to bring to realization, was being built incorrectly. In June and September of this year, the agency slowed trains to a walking pace in some areas to avoid derailments because portions of the track were too narrow. “When you’re building something new, you don’t want to build it on the ragged edge of safety,” said Allan Zarembski, a professor and director of the Railroad Engineering and Safety Program at the University of Delaware. “That means that the modest, smallest amount of degradation or wear, or change in system behavior, and you can find yourself in an unsafe condition.” It’s unclear who at the T saw the results of the October 2021 report. But the extension opened last year, with thousands of passengers riding unaware on tracks narrower than they were supposed to be. A passenger gave a thumbs up while on the first train that left from the Medford/Tufts station around 4:30 a.m. on Dec. 12, 2022. David L. Ryan/Globe Staff The Globe reviewed internal emails, track measurements, and contract documents, and interviewed current and former T employees since the track problems came to light earlier this year. Advertisement The review uncovered the October 2021 warning about track gauge problems during the construction phase of the Green Line extension, which the MBTA hadn’t previously acknowledged publicly. Other warnings came in April 2021, when the T said a subcontractor found rails on many of the track curves being built for a rail yard in Somerville were too narrow, and shortly before the final phase of the extension opened last year, when emails obtained by the Globe revealed much of the project was narrower than the contract specifications. The T publicly announced the reason trains were slowed to 3 miles per hour in October: Plates that hold the rails in place were too close together throughout most of the project. The plan to widen all of the narrow track wasn’t conceived until after media inquiries alerted general manager Phillip Eng to the problem about three months ago, the T said. Eng has said he is trying to change some of the cultural problems at the T he believes allowed for this error to happen. The new managers who came on after the extension opened say they haven’t been able to untangle how things went so wrong. “There’s a lot of hiding at the T, of keeping secrets, of not passing along bad news,” said chairperson of the MBTA board of directors Thomas P. Glynn, a former T general manager. “It’s part of the culture.” Advertisement A joint venture of several construction companies called GLX Constructors and made up of Fluor Corp., Balfour Beatty Infrastructure Inc., Herzog Contracting Group, and the Middlesex Corp. built the Green Line extension. The companies did not respond to requests for comment. The MBTA’s former Green Line extension program manager, John Dalton, and former general manager Steve Poftak, who both left the agency this year, also did not respond to requests for comment. A train pulled into the Gilman Square station in Somerville in November. Lane Turner/Globe Staff The Green Line extension is a project with a long and winding origin story. The effort to expand the reach of the MBTA’s subway system into Somerville and Medford descended from the Big Dig, the nearly $15 billion highway project that sunk Boston’s Central Artery underground and constructed the Ted Williams Tunnel under Boston Harbor. Over 16 years of construction, the Big Dig mega project, pitched as an engineering marvel, developed an ignominious reputation for astronomical cost overruns, leaky tunnels, and construction errors. The Green Line extension was conceived as an antidote to the project’s environmental impact. But more than a decade after a legal settlement mandated its construction, plans for the subway extension were trapped on the drawing board. In 2015, the project risked being scrapped altogether when the state calculated construction costs could run up to $1 billion beyond budget estimates. Then-governor Charlie Baker ordered a rescue mission. The MBTA tapped a new leader to run the project — Dalton, an independent contractor who had worked for the Chicago Transit Authority. The T moved swiftly to cut costs, notably by simplifying designs for the seven new stations. The agency then executed a $1.08 billion contract with GLX Constructors to design and build the Green Line extension. The federal government agreed to pay for about half of the total $2.3 billion cost of the project, which included buying new Green Line cars and real estate. Advertisement The T paid Dalton $406,372 during his last full fiscal year working on the project, according to agency spokesperson Joe Pesaturo. The state hosted a groundbreaking ceremony at what is now Union Square station on June 25, 2018, and the pressure was on to complete it by the end of 2021. Green Line extension tracks (left) were seen as the rail expansion was under construction in 2021. John Tlumacki/Globe Staff As with any subway project, the backbone of the Green Line extension was the track itself, built along a 4.7-mile right-of-way through Cambridge, Somerville, and Medford. The specifications for track construction were spelled out in thousands of pages of contract documents prepared by the T. Under the contract, the rails had to be positioned 56 ½ inches apart, the width known in the industry as standard gauge. British engineer George Stephenson, the principal inventor of the railroad locomotive, pioneered the standard in 1829. It was widely adopted in the United States during the presidency of Abraham Lincoln, when Congress designated it for the transcontinental railroad. The T specified that Green Line extension tracks couldn’t miss the mark by much. Deviations from the 19th-century standard were not to exceed 1/16th of an inch, the contract said. The cushion was about the thickness of a penny, the ubiquitous memorial to Lincoln. Advertisement The narrow margin for error was unusually exacting, according to Zarembski, the railroad safety expert, former managers, and new ones who joined the T after the Green Line extension opened. They said the industry usually allows track gauge deviations up to ⅛ of an inch for constructing light rail, double what was sought in the Green Line extension contract. T leaders who joined the agency after the subway expansion opened said they don’t know why the contract specified such strict parameters. The plan they’re implementing for widening the track will reposition the rails to the industry construction standard. Plates that hold the rails in place were too close together throughout most of the Green Line extension, the T said. Lane Turner/Globe Staff The T has said all of the evidence uncovered so far points to an error in which the metal plates that hold the rails in place were attached to the wooden ties in the wrong spots. And so the rails, too, were off the mark. The T has identified the tie manufacturer as Stella-Jones Corp. The company did not respond to requests for comment. The T said the first warning came in April 2021 from a quality control subcontractor that had inspected a rail yard in Somerville and found the rails on many of the track curves were too narrow, resulting in a failed inspection report. The problem at the rail yard was publicly revealed by the T earlier this year and appears to have been appropriately logged and corrected, according to emails obtained by the Globe. Eng has said that at that point, about 11 months before the first portion of the expansion opened, the Green Line extension team should have paused to investigate whether there was a larger issue, but didn’t. On the same day as the October 2021 report showing nearly 400 spots where the new tracks were too narrow, another report — based on measurements from the same device belonging to Boston company Railpod — found no areas where the tracks were too narrow. The results show one of the reports flagged areas where the distance between the rails was narrower than the minimum industry standard for building track — 56 3/8 inches — and therefore narrower than what the contract required, the Globe found. The results show the other report appears to have examined the tracks against the T’s own standard for when slow zones are required because the rails are too close together. Under the T’s standard, any section of track where rails are narrower than this measurement — 56 ⅛ inches — aren’t allowed to carry trains unless they travel at no more than 3 miles per hour, a walking pace. The standards differ by 1/4 of an inch, or about the diameter of a drinking straw, but in railroading, every fraction of an inch counts. A seemingly tiny error could and did put the system on the very edge of failing the safety standard, the T has said. The buffer was gone. The report showing the tracks had no narrow areas raises questions the T has so far been unable to answer: Why was it produced given construction was still underway? Who saw it? Did T leadership lean on its findings without fully understanding its meaning? Instead of stopping construction to reconcile the two reports, the T seems to have continued building. Pesaturo confirmed the two differing reports from 2021 are authentic and said the MBTA team handling the construction of the Green Line extension arranged for the machine to examine the tracks. But the T declined the Globe’s public records request for the documents and others examining the tracks, citing security concerns. The Globe has appealed the denial to the secretary of state’s office. The T’s Maintenance of Way department gave the agency the OK to start running test trains at full speed in December 2021, according to an internal memo obtained by the Globe. The T plowed ahead, and the Union Square branch opened on March 21, 2022, to much praise. Meanwhile, the T continued to work on the Medford branch. A month later, the T examined the tracks again. The resulting report found no areas where the tracks were too close together, but didn’t specify what standard that finding was based on, according to a copy of the report obtained by the Globe. Then in November 2022, with the ribbon cutting ceremony for the Medford branch of the extension fast approaching, another round of measurements, this time by Italian company MERMEC, again revealed a widespread problem, according to internal emails obtained by the Globe. On the morning of Dec. 1, 2022, a top T engineer told Dalton, then the MBTA’s Green Line extension leader, that the track department had confirmed there were around 30 areas on the Medford branch that were narrower than the maintenance standard, according to internal emails obtained by the Globe. If the rails were not fixed before the ribbon cutting, trains would have to operate at low speeds, the engineer said in an email. MERMEC and RailPod, the companies that have performed scans of the Green Line extension, did not respond to requests for comment. The T’s deputy director of the Maintenance of Way department, which oversees track safety, wrote to Dalton and the engineer later that afternoon to clarify that in addition to the 30 or so areas that would require speed restrictions, the agency had another problem on its hands. Almost 24,000 feet of track on the Medford branch was narrower than the stricter standard set by contract, the deputy director said in an email. That’s about 70 percent of the total track on the Medford branch. “This is outside reasonable construction tolerances and will need to be corrected,” the deputy director wrote. Days later, a track engineer again raised the larger issue in an email: “The contractor may want to address these time permitting,” he wrote on Dec. 6, 2022. Three days later, just before the grand opening, a T safety committee met to decide if the Medford branch could open for passenger service. At least two people at the meeting, Dalton and the top engineer, had been emailed about the widespread track gauge problems, according to internal emails obtained by the Globe. But minutes of the meeting obtained by the Globe don’t show a discussion of the tracks. The group deferred the vote about opening, citing pending station inspections, according to the minutes. Hours after the meeting, the track engineer told Dalton and others that the narrowest areas of tracks had been widened. “Re-gauging of Urgent Narrow Gage locations is complete. All locations have been checked and are now within maintenance standards,” he wrote. Eng has said that the Green Line extension was safe to operate at full speed when it opened. The MBTA certified the project as safe to open, and the T’s state safety regulator, the Department of Public Utilities, agreed, according to a spokesperson for that agency. The Federal Transit Administration, which chipped in $1 billion for the project, said the agency certified the T had followed correct procedures, according to a spokesperson. Determining track gauge is not part of the FTA certification process, the spokesperson added. Eng has said he had “no indication” that there was a rush to open the project on behalf of Baker, who has said through a spokesperson that his office was never informed of the track gauge issues. Still, the last minute repositioning work before the opening was a shortcut that proved insufficient, Eng said. The T fixed only the most egregious problems without getting to the bottom of why most of the new track did not meet contract specifications. Eng said widening all of the track to conform with the contract before the opening would have prevented what eventually came to pass: slow zones and shutdowns for repairs that inconvenienced riders. Because the tracks were built so close to the edge of the T’s maintenance standard, the machines that measure the width between the rails have a hard time distinguishing between what is safe and what requires a speed restriction, Eng has said. Sometimes areas of track previously gone unnoticed by the machine were identified as too narrow and required speed restrictions. “On one run [of the machine] . . . perhaps it’s OK, another one . . . you need to take immediate action,” he said in October. “And that’s not what I want as an owner. And that’s not what the public deserves.” For big construction projects such as the Green Line extension, the ribbon cutting ceremony is usually not the finish line. A punch list tracks what still needs to be finished before the contract is closed out. Current T leaders say getting the tracks to where they were supposed to be was not, at that point, treated as a priority; it was not even on the punch list. MBTA general manager Phillip Eng walked with Governor Maura Healey in March. David L. Ryan/Globe Staff In April, when Eng started as general manager of the MBTA, he knew there were a lot of problems with the beleaguered agency. He knew the $1 billion project to build new Red and Orange Line cars was years behind schedule; he knew the monthlong shutdown of the entire Orange Line for repairs in 2022 inexplicably resulted in worse track conditions; he knew the installation of Green Line collision prevention equipment that the T was first ordered to provide in 2009 still hasn’t debuted; he knew the $1 billion “fare transformation” system that has moved forward in other cities was stalled here. But, he said, no one ever told him about the big problem with the new bright spot in his subway system: the Green Line extension. And the issue would only get worse. A new set of measurements in June found more areas along the Green Line extension were too narrow for trains to operate safely at full speed, according to Eng who said he didn’t learn about the problem until months later, in September. On June 23, the T implemented slow zones on both branches, ordering trolleys not to exceed 3 miles per hour, a walking pace, in different areas totaling 600 feet of the Green Line extension, according to T data. Still, the agency fixed only the narrowest areas, and left most of the tracks narrower than what the contract required. The Globe didn’t report on the June slow downs and didn’t become aware of them until September. That month, another machine was back on the tracks uncovering more unsafe areas. By the close of service on Sept. 20, trains were crawling along sections totaling more than a mile, or about 12 percent, of the total extension track, according to T data. The bad news had finally reached Eng’s desk six days later in the form of inquiries from the news media about why so much of the brand-new track was so defective less than a year after the project fully opened. Eng put Rod Brooks, one of four top transportation executives he brought in this year, in charge of figuring out what went wrong. Brooks has 32 years of railroad experience, according to the T, starting as an assistant signalman and most recently working as senior vice president of operations at Long Island Rail Road. Internal emails obtained by the Globe indicate that no one had adequate answers for Brooks about how widespread defects brought to the attention of T leaders in December 2022 had been left unaddressed for months or why earlier warnings appear to have been missed or ignored. Several sweeping recent reviews of the agency from independent experts and the FTA have found deep dysfunction. Reports from an outside expert and the T’s own safety department released in this year found the T’s Maintenance of Way department had been so incompetent at one of its most basic duties — recording and repairing track defects — that the agency did not have an accurate accounting of the areas of the subway system that needed fixing. The entire agency was neglecting day-to-day operations, maintenance, and safety, according to a report from the FTA last year and a 2019 report from a panel of independent experts. In October, Eng let go of two managers who had been involved with the project’s construction and named a new leader for the Green Line extension. The changes followed Eng’s major shakeup of the agency’s executive ranks in September. The T began closing down the Green Line extension early in the evenings each night in late November so that the builders could work on repositioning most of the new track. The work involves unscrewing bolts from tie plates, filling the holes with epoxy or wooden dowels, and then drilling new holes and securing the plates at the correct gauge. The T initially hoped to have the work completed by Dec. 10. But it wasn’t done in time. T officials announced Thursday they plan to suspend service between North Station and both branches of the Green Line extension in January during two weekends and close the same sections early on 12 nights to continue the work. A passenger waited at the Gilman Square station in Somerville. Lane Turner/Globe Staff Taylor Dolven can be reached at taylor.dolven@globe.com. Follow her @taydolven. Laura Crimaldi can be reached at laura.crimaldi@globe.com. Follow her @lauracrimaldi. Got a problem? Send your consumer issue to sean.murphy@globe.com. Follow him @spmurphyboston.

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Opinion | What the Child Care Crisis Does to Parents

On a Saturday morning last May, Julia Sachdev, a mother of a 2-year-old and 4-year-old, woke up to an email from her children’s preschool. The school — which her children adored and had been in operation for over 50 years — announced that it would be closing in a month. In the following days, she and her husband scrambled to find an alternative that was a reasonable driving distance from their home. Most of the places they reached out to had long waiting lists. Some said their waiting lists were full. Some never even called them back. “It was so stressful,” reflected Ms. Sachdev. “There was this suffocating anxiety that ruled my day. I couldn’t concentrate on other things. It kept me up at night.” The Sachdevs’ experience is far from unique. For years, American parents — regardless of family roles, paid work status, geography or income — have struggled to find and maintain stable child care. Research shows that roughly half of Americans live in child care deserts, meaning that they have limited or no access to care.

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WATCH LIVE: House panel holds final impeachment hearing for DHS Secretary Mayorkas

“From the beginning, it was clear that the government wanted to isolate Aleksei, especially ahead of the election,” Mr. Zhdanov said, referring to the coming presidential race in Russia that President Vladimir V. Putin is widely expected to win. There has been no immediate response from the Kremlin to Mr. Navalny’s transfer. Throughout his absence from the public eye, the Russian government had been dismissive about his whereabouts. Dmitri S. Peskov, Mr. Putin’s spokesman, said on Dec. 14 that the Kremlin had “neither the possibility, nor rights or desire to trace the fate of convicts,” referring to Mr. Navalny. Over the last decade, Mr. Navalny has been the only Russian opposition politician who posed a serious challenge to Mr. Putin’s monopoly over the country’s political landscape. He built a robust political organization with offices across the country and drew thousands to his anti-Kremlin rallies. Over the last few years, the Russian government went to great lengths to dismantle the infrastructure he had created. Many of his allies had to flee Russia or were arrested. Mr. Navalny’s new penal colony, officially known as IK-3 Polar Wolf, is in the settlement of Kharp and is among the harshest and remotest prisons in Russia. Inmates endure long, dark, cold winters as well as clouds of mosquitoes in the summer. The penal colony is a successor to a Gulag labor camp, established there for prison workers building a railway across the Russian Arctic, ordered by Stalin, but never finished in full. Mr. Navalny’s previous prison, in the town of Melekhovo, was only about 160 miles east of Moscow, meaning that his lawyers could drive there in a matter of hours. In contrast, the new prison is some 1,200 miles from the capital. A train to Kharp, called the Polar Arrow, departs Moscow every second day and takes 44 hours to reach the town.

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Celtics injury report: 4 starters listed vs. Raptors Friday

The Celtics will be very undermanned on Friday night for their game against the Raptors at TD Garden. On the heels of an overtime victory over the Pistons on Thursday night, Boston has listed eight players on their injury report including four of the team’s regular starters. The Celtics have already ruled out Al Horford due to rest, no surprise since he hasn’t played a back-to-back for two straight seasons. Kristaps Porzingis (left calf injury management) is also doubtful on the second end of the back-to-back, which will likely leave Boston without their top two bigs. Luke Kornet and Neemias Queta will handle the lion’s share of minutes at center without that duo while Lamar Stevens could see spot duty if Joe Mazzulla wants to go small against Toronto. Three key starters have been listed as questionable for Boston with an assortment of injuries. Jaylen Brown is questionable for the second straight game with a low back contusion. He sat out Thursday’s win with the same injury. Jason Tatum (sprained ankle) and Jrue Holiday (right elbow sprain) are also questionable for the contest on the heels of playing big minutes against the Pistons. BET ANYTHING GET $250 BONUS ESPN BET CLAIM OFFER MASS 21+ and present in MA, NJ, PA, VA, MD, WV, TN, LA, KS, KY, CO, AZ, IL, IA, IN, OH, MI. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-Gambler. Boston will also be without rookie Jordan Walsh and two-way players Drew Peterson and JD Davison due to a G-League assignment, leaving Boston potentially without eight roster players for the matchup. The Raptors come into town with no rotation player on the injury report so Boston will see a stiff challenge as they attempt to extend their home winning streak to begin the season to 16 games. The Celtics have won four straight games overall and have beaten the Raptors in both head-to-head matchups this season. Boston and Toronto tip off at TD Garden at 7:30 p.m. ET Friday night.

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Remember Those Who Are Less Fortunate This Holiday Season East Boston Times-Free Press

“It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.” — Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities. With Christmas fast approaching, most of us will be rushing about — either to the stores and malls or on-line — to do our holiday shopping in hopes of finding that “perfect” gift for our family members and loved ones. Although economic uncertainty, spurred by the after-effects of record-high inflation, continues to afflict almost every American household, most of us are doing okay, if not extremely well, thanks to unemployment rates that are near historically record-lows. However, the strong economy (from an employment standpoint) that is being enjoyed by the majority of Americans has not been shared by all. For a sizable number of our fellow citizens, the lingering effects of the pandemic, as well as the fraying of the fabric of our social safety net in recent years, have come together to represent an existential disaster. Millions of Americans of all ages, in a percentage greater than at any time since the Great Depression, are struggling financially, even if they have a job. To put it in stark terms, more Americans, including families in our own communities, are going hungry than at any time in our recent history. One in eight households (12.8 percent) experience food insecurity, defined as the lack of access to an affordable, nutritious diet. An estimated 44.2 million Americans live in these households. A recent Feeding America survey found that 80% of network food banks reported either increased or steady demand for emergency food services, with almost 35% of responding food banks reporting an increase in the number of people they serve. In addition, thanks to the lack of affordable new housing and sky-high rents, far too many of our fellow citizens, including children, live either in shelters or in similar temporary housing arrangements — or on the streets — because our economy literally has left them out in the cold. Millions of Americans of all ages, including those in our own communities, are struggling financially, often through no fault of their own, thanks to a combination of low-wage jobs and a strong real estate market that ironically has made apartments (let alone buying a home) unaffordable. This dichotomy is most evident and acute in cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and right here in Boston (most notably at the infamous Mass. and Cass intersection in the South End). Despite the vast wealth in those metropolitan areas, thousands of homeless Americans, including many who have full-time jobs, are living in tent and cardboard “neighborhoods” on city sidewalks. The homeless always have been among us, but the scope and depth of the problem is far beyond anything that has been experienced in our lifetime. The vast discrepancy between the enormous wealth enjoyed by some Americans and the abject poverty being endured by others is similar to what exists in major urban centers in South America and India — but it now is happening right here in the U.S.A. For these millions of Americans, the holiday season brings no joy. Psychologists tell us that the Biblical directive, that we should give to those who are less fortunate, is the best gift that we can give to ourselves. Helping others activates regions of the brain associated with pleasure, social connection, and trust, creating the so-called “warm glow” effect. Never in the lifetime of anybody reading this editorial has the need for contributions to local food banks been more urgent. There will be ample opportunities in the coming days to make the holidays brighter for those who are less fortunate, whether it be donations to local food banks and toy programs, or even just dropping a few dollars in the buckets of the Salvation Army Santas. There simply is no excuse for those of us who are among the more fortunate for failing to make some effort over the next four weeks to make the holidays brighter for those who are less fortunate.

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Hunter Biden Agrees to Deposition in Impeachment Inquiry

Hunter Biden, President Biden’s son, has agreed to sit for a deposition on Feb. 28 in the House impeachment inquiry into his father, relenting after Republicans threatened to hold him in contempt of Congress for refusing an earlier subpoena to testify privately. Representatives James R. Comer of Kentucky, the chairman of the Oversight Committee, and Jim Jordan of Ohio, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, announced on Thursday that they had secured a date for Mr. Biden’s appearance. The House had initially been scheduled to vote on the contempt charges on Thursday. “His deposition will come after several interviews with Biden family members and associates,” Mr. Comer and Mr. Jordan said in a joint statement. “We look forward to Hunter Biden’s testimony.” Mr. Biden and the two committees have been at odds for weeks over the terms of his testimony. The panels initially subpoenaed him to testify in November, weeks before the full House voted to authorize the impeachment investigation into the president.

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The Early Universe Was Bananas

What does a newborn galaxy look like? For the longest time, many astrophysicists and cosmologists have assumed that newborn galaxies would look like the orbs and spidery discs familiar in the modern universe. But according to an analysis of new images from the James Webb Space Telescope, baby galaxies were neither eggs nor discs. They were bananas. Or pickles, or cigars, or surfboards — choose your own metaphor. That is the tentative conclusion of a team of astronomers who re-examined images of some 4,000 newborn galaxies observed by Webb at the dawn of time. “This is both a surprising and unexpected result, though there were already hints of it with Hubble,” said Viraj Pandya, a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University, referring to the Hubble Space Telescope. He is the lead author of a paper soon to be published in the Astrophysical Journal under the provocative title “Galaxies Going Bananas.” Dr. Pandya is scheduled to give a talk about his work on Wednesday at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in New Orleans. If the result holds, astronomers say that it could profoundly alter their understanding of how galaxies emerge and grow. It could also offer insight into the mysterious nature of dark matter, an unknown and invisible form of matter that astronomers say makes up a major part of the universe and outweighs atomic matter 5 to 1. Dark matter engulfs galaxies and provides the gravitational nurseries in which new galaxies arise.

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Police charge Quincy man with lighting a raccoon on fire, report says

Authorities are investigating Monday night’s deadly shooting on Albemarle Street in Springfield. Springfield Police Department responded to the incident at 6:05 p.m. in the 0-100 block of Albemarle Street after a ShotSpotter activation. First responders found a man with a gunshot wound and brought him to Baystate Medical Center. He later died at the hospital, police said. Police have not released the victim’s name nor any arrests in connection with the shooting. The Springfield police homicide unit is investigating under Captain Trent Duda along with the Hampden District Attorney’s Murder Unit. If you have any information on this incident, police urge you to call the detective bureau at 413-787-6355 or anonymously Text-A-Tip. Text CRIMES type SOLVE and your tip. Police are also investigating after a body was found in the pond at Van Horn Park on Monday afternoon. Police responded at 4:20 p.m. to the park at 629 Armory St. to reports of the body, said Ryan Walsh, police spokesman.

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Renaissance: A Film by Beyonc Review: Peak Performance

This movie wants to convey a great deal about the woman who made it. Predominately, it’s that despite the metallic sheen Beyoncé’s cultivated she — to quote a glitchy Captcha screen that gets projected at every show — “is not a robot.” The film is an effective humanizing of a naturally withholding star. The last time Beyoncé took a stab at this kind of auto-documentary was 10 years ago with “Life Is but a Dream.” That movie was an introvert’s idea of extroversion. “Renaissance” is less cloistered. It widens the guardrails from alleyway to thoroughfare. It’s busy; and, in its business, casually revealing. The woman who’s made it has found a rich balance between the taciturn and TMI. We can see freckles. She includes flubs and flaws. We witness a parent in an assortment of resonant parenting moods. Beyoncé turns 42 in the film. It’s Diana Ross who graces a Los Angeles show for a round of “Happy Birthday.” And the older Beyoncé gets, the more her ambition expands, as a friend of mine puts it, toward the archival. (Her backup singers are styled to evoke En Vogue. The tour’s vibe is disco-shimmer. Some of the dancers are vogue specialists.) She’s bringing the past with her into the present, communing with both an audience and her ancestors, accepting stewardship as a rite of longevity. At her “Homecoming” show at Coachella, in 2019, she came out as a bandleader. The resulting show was an achievement of artistic self-rearrangement, of what happens when your hits meet your people’s musical history. “Renaissance” does something like that but internationally. It furnishes a lot to go “aww” over, too — a trip to her girlhood home; the sight of her children parroting their mother’s choreography backstage, in what looked like their PJs; a peek at a five-way Destiny’s Child reunion; the stretch devoted to maternity, or Uncle Johnny, a late family friend and gay man whose love of dance music led to “Renaissance,” and who now is immortalized in the ferocious read Beyoncé does at the end of that album’s “Heated.” What moved me, though, is her sense of awe that any tour gets pulled off at all; her wonder at the alignment of artistries and skills solely in the name of her art, wonder at the labor of so many woman technicians. Watching her aim for perfection in collaborative environments and be second-guessed (in two differently pointed moments by Blue Ivy Carter, her eldest child), brought to mind Barbra Streisand’s ruminating in her new memoir about her own pursuit of it, why as a performer it’s necessary and how vexing doubt can feel. These two also share a passion for the importance of lighting. And watching Beyoncé figure out how things should be lit turned a lightbulb on for me: She points out that all of that luminance is often being aimed at her, like into her eyes. It has to be right.

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The Story Ron DeSantis Does Not Tell Is His Own

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has a classic American dream story. He hardly ever tells it. A middle-class kid, his baseball skills helped take his team to the Little League World Series — not that many Iowans would know it, despite his visits to all 99 of the state’s counties throughout his campaign for the Republican nomination. After graduating from Harvard Law School, he chose to join the Navy and deployed to Iraq, which he usually mentions only in passing. His wife, Casey DeSantis, was diagnosed with breast cancer early in his governorship, but he almost never talks about what it took to support her through it — while raising three young children — or what he learned. And although Mr. DeSantis frequently appears with his children on the trail, he is more likely to describe them by their ages (7, 5 and 3) than their names (Madison, Mason and Mamie). Even Ms. DeSantis, a former newscaster who is seen as providing a human touch, tends to call him “the governor” instead of “Ron” at his rallies. If there were ever a time for Mr. DeSantis to tell more of his bootstrap biography it would be now, as his hopes of a strong finish in the Iowa caucuses, and perhaps his entire presidential campaign, seem to be ebbing away. He trails former President Donald J. Trump by more than 35 points in Iowa and will almost certainly fare worse in New Hampshire on Jan. 23. Former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina has overtaken him in most polls.

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More than 20K still without power in Mass. after storm leaves behind trail of destruction

BOSTON — More than 20,000 homes and businesses in Massachusetts are without power Wednesday morning after a strong storm tore through the region with wind-driven rain on Monday. According to the MEMA Power Outages tracker, there were 22,489 outages across the Bay State as of 6 a.m. The majority of the outages were restored by Tuesday night, ahead of schedule, utility crews said. The majority of lingering outages remained on the South Shore. Eversource crews were continuing to restore power to nearly 132,000 customers and clearing 115 blocked roads late Monday night despite the challenging conditions. “We’ll continue working around the clock to get the power back and shifting crews to our hardest-hit communities,” the company said on social media. Crews are continuing to make good progress despite challenging conditions, restoring power to 132,000 of our customers and clearing 115 blocked roads since last night. We'll continue working around the clock to get the power back and shifting crews to our hardest-hit communities. pic.twitter.com/5JE3G0VTrt — Eversource MA (@EversourceMA) December 19, 2023 A viewer sent a video of a power line sparking flames near Myles Standish State Forest Monday afternoon. Myles Standish State Forest Power lines on fire credit Joel Matt A large chunk of the outages were reported in communities across Southeastern Massachusetts. The Federal Aviation Administration issued a ground stop at Boston’s Logan Airport on Monday morning due to strong wind but ultimately lifted it. MEMA's power outages map update 8 p.m. The National Weather Service issued a high-wind warning for Eastern Essex, Norther Bristol, Western Norfolk, Western Plymouth, Eastern Norfolk, Eastern Plymouth, Southeast Middlesex, Suffolk, Southern Bristol, Southern Plymouth, Barnstable, Dukes, and Nantucket counties. Wind advisories were also posted in Northern Berkshire, Southern Berkshire, Western Franklin, Western Hampden, Western Hampshire, Eastern Franklin, Eastern Hampden, Eastern Hampshire Central Middlesex County, Northern Worcester, Northwest Middlesex County, Southern Worcester, and Western Essex counties. Gusts 50+ mph have already developed. Areas of wind damage, debris, and outages will affect the area. @boston25 #mawx #newengland pic.twitter.com/Frx38bTuT2 — Shiri Spear (@ShiriSpear) December 18, 2023 In addition to the damaging wind gusts, flooding from soaking rain was a concern with the storm. A flood watch was issued for areas including Central Middlesex County, Northern Bristol, Western Hampshire, Western Norfolk, Southern Bristol, Southern Berkshire, Northern Berkshire, and Eastern Essex counties. For more visit the Boston 25 Weather Page. This is a developing story. Check back for updates as more information becomes available. Download the FREE Boston 25 News app for breaking news alerts. Follow Boston 25 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch Boston 25 News NOW ©2023 Cox Media Group

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Udonis Haslem said (expletive) Bill Russell in a pregame speech

After Bill Russell died last year ahead of the 2022-23 season, the NBA went above and beyond to honor the former Celtics legend and Hall of Famer. The league retired his No. 6 jersey across the league as the Celtics themselves honored the 11-time champion and civil rights activist. That’s natural considering Russell’s legacy, which goes beyond his contributions on the court. Still, it turns out that some players weren’t exactly happy about seeing Russell’s No. 6 jersey hanging in the rafters. Bam Adebayo recounted a story of a Udonis Haslem pregame speech on “The OGs Show,” which is hosted by Haslem and Mike Miller. BET ANYTHING GET $250 BONUS ESPN BET CLAIM OFFER MASS 21+ and present in MA, NJ, PA, VA, MD, WV, TN, LA, KS, KY, CO, AZ, IL, IA, IN, OH, MI. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-Gambler. “We playing Boston, so you know his feelings,” Adebayo said. “We’re in the huddle. Cap come in there, he gave his pregame speech and you know they retired Bill Russell’s jersey for everybody in the league. So they got 6 in our rafters. And he’s in his pregame speech — (expletive) Bill Russell, too.” Haslem expanded on his thought process a little bit in the clip. “I love Bill,” Haslem said. “No disrespect to Bill. I love you. He just caught that stray. But will you ever see a Miami Heat jersey hanging in the Boston rafters? Respect Bill Russell, I love him. Why the (expletive) he got to hang in here.” Of course, the Heat and Celtics have had a rivalry that has gone back different generations and core. Haslem was a part of those battles from the LeBron James days to the more recent seasons where Jimmy Butler and Adebayo have gone up against Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown. Haslem played all 20 of his NBA seasons in Miami, though he was a veteran presence in his final playing days and didn’t see the court much at all. There certainly wasn’t much love lost for any members of the Celtics, even a legend like Russell who was a trailblazer in his career. Russell’s impact as a human is a huge part of his legacy, which is also why the NBA honored him league-wide. Even if Haslem didn’t love seeing a Celtics jersey in the rafters, it was also symbolic of Russell’s wide-ranging legacy.

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Wu calls critics of 'electeds of color' party 'fearmongers'

Politics At MLK breakfast, Wu calls critics of ‘electeds of color’ party ‘fearmongers’ In follow-up comments on Tuesday, Wu took issue with the idea that talking about racial disparities in any context is inherently divisive. Boston Mayor Michelle Wu spoke during the 54th Annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Breakfast. Jessica Rinaldi/Boston Globe Speaking at the annual Martin Luther King Jr. memorial breakfast at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center on Monday, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu called out those who expressed outrage over her hosting a holiday party for elected officials of color. The party, which took place last month, generated national headlines after a member of Wu’s office accidentally sent an email invitation to all members of the Boston City Council. The staffer quickly apologized for the confusion, but a chain reaction had already started. The party is an annual tradition organized by an affinity group that represents elected officials of color across all levels of government in Boston, Wu said a few days later. She said that there was misinformation spread about that party and that there was a “political motive” behind the email mistake being leaked to the media. Advertisement: “I am tired of those fearmongers and mob baiters who fan the flames and call for unity,” she said at the MLK breakfast. “Viral outrage ricocheted internationally, as those who had never before cared about representation railed against this as exclusionary.” On Tuesday, Wu was asked about those comments during an appearance on GBH’s “Boston Public Radio.” “This is broader than government and politics. It’s connected to what we see happening in universities and academia, but it’s connected to lots of examples all across the business sector and in peoples’ daily lives, where there is a push to say ‘the way to not be divisive is in fact to never talk about race, to never bring up programs that should be specifically trying to address disparities, and essentially to pretend that any mention of racial inequities is dividing people further,’” Wu said on GBH. She said that politicians like her are often asked to “unite” people, but requests for them to do so are often simply calls to ignore efforts to proactively address diversity. “When they say ‘don’t divide us,’ it really means ‘don’t defy us,’” Wu said. Advertisement: There is a concerted push both locally and around the country by people who want to uphold the status quo, she said. This is manifested in calls to ban books, wrap curricula, and portray historical moments in a “distorted” way. Thinking about the legacy of Martin Luther King requires a commitment not just to peace and justice in a “warm and fuzzy way,” Wu said, but to concrete action. “That still requires a lot of work,” she said.

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Multi family sells in Worcester for $1.2 million

A multi-unit house located at 6 Windsor Street in Worcester has a new owner. The 3,690-square-foot property, built in 1910, was sold on Dec. 15, 2023, for $1,150,000, or $312 per square foot. This three-story multi-family features a total of seven bedrooms and six baths. On the exterior, the home features a hip roof design constructed with asphalt roofing. The interior features just one fireplace. Real Estate Newswire is a service provided by United Robots, which uses machine learning to generate analysis of data from Propmix, an aggregator of national real-estate data. See more Real Estate News

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Chicopee man sentenced to 7-9 years in prison for Ware shooting case

NORTHAMPTON — A Chicopee man will spend 7 to 9 years in state prison for shooting up a Ware apartment in October 2021. On Tuesday, Kent Mitchell, 35, pleaded guilty in Superior Court. Mitchell admitted that, on Oct. 30, he had words with a man and woman in their 17 Cherry St. apartment in Ware. During the argument, Mitchell brandished an unlicensed firearm and fired twice, once into the ceiling and once at the couple. One bullet struck a wall, behind which was a 1-year-old child. No one was struck by the gunfire. Hampshire Superior Court Judge James Manitsas sentenced Mitchell to the state prison term after pleading guilty to two counts of unlawful possession of a firearm, with one prior conviction for a violent crime; two counts of assault with a dangerous weapon; and one count each of unlawful possession of ammunition, with one prior conviction for a violent crime, intimidation of a witness, reckless endangerment of a child and discharging a firearm within 500 feet of a dwelling. The sentence was jointly recommended by Northwestern Assistant District Attorney Andrew Covington and defense attorney Lisa Lippiello of Northampton. “The defendant’s actions here were incredibly dangerous. Luckily, no one was struck by a round,” said Covington in a statement from the office of Northwestern District Attorney David E. Sullivan. Covington also noted that there was a lack of cooperation from witnesses at first, but detectives were able to follow leads and solve the case.

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Boston man sentenced for securities fraud scheme

BOSTON (WWLP) – A Boston man was sentenced in federal court for exerting secret control over a Massachusetts-based company as part of a pump-and-dump securities fraud scheme. According to the Department of Justice, 57-year-old Christopher R. Esposito, formerly of Everett, was sentenced on November 14 to five years of probation, three months to be served at a halfway house, and ordered to pay forfeiture and restitution. He pleaded guilty to one count of securities fraud in April 2023. Esposito and co-conspirator, Anthony Jay Pignatello, worked to conceal their control over Cannabiz Mobile, Inc. and to use backdated promissory notes to obtain free-trading shares in the company over the course of 2012 and 2015. They both took other steps taken to conceal their control, including how Esposito caused another individual to be installed as the company’s chairman, president, and CEO. The executive reported to Esposito, and the two arranged for a promotional campaign in October 2014 to artificially inflate the value and trading volume of Cannabiz Mobile, Inc.’s stock so that they could sell their shares secretly. Between September 2014 and February 2015, Esposito personally sold around 1.3 million shares that were fraudulently obtained as part of the scheme. Esposito was ordered to pay over $20,000 in connection with the pump-and-dump of Cannabiz Mobile. He was also ordered to pay over $61,000 in restitution to the investors who lost money in a separate business venture that Esposito pitched involving the company, Code2Action, Inc. Between August 2019 and February 2020, he represented to investors that he would take Code2Action, Inc. public through a reverse merger and that he solicited investments in the company for that purpose, but the merger never took place. Pignatello pleaded guilty in March 2021 to one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud for his role in the Cannabiz Mobile scheme. He is scheduled to be sentenced on December 12 before U.S. District Court Judge George A. O’Toole Jr.

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10 most expensive homes sold in Cape Cod, Dec. 31 - Jan. 6

A house in Chatham that sold for $9 million tops the list of the most expensive real estate sales in Cape Cod between Dec. 31 and Jan. 6. In total, 224 real estate sales were recorded in the area during the last two weeks, with an average price of $820,924. The average price per square foot ended up at $528. The prices in the list below concern real estate sales where the title was recorded from the week of Dec. 17 to the week of Jan. 6, even if the property was sold earlier.

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Patriots rookie WR vows to step up after loss of Kendrick Bourne

MIAMI GARDENS, FLA. – Demario Douglas couldn’t believe it. At 3:32 of the first quarter, Douglas came off the line of scrimmage and was met by a Miami Dolphins cornerback and then also safety Brandon Jones. This snap represented the first time the Patriots rookie receiver was met with double coverage in the NFL. The Dolphins were so focused on Douglas in this play that it sprung Kendrick Bourne loose for a 24-yard touchdown. The sixth-round pick was so shocked that he asked Patriots veteran receivers about it when he returned to the sideline. They told him that it was a sign of respect. “I noticed it down in the goal line when they doubled me,” Douglas told MassLive. “That’s when I realized, ‘Oh, snap.’ I got doubled in college, but I didn’t think I’d get doubled this soon in the league. I’ve got to watch this film and get back on to the next game.” $200 INSTANT BONUS DRAFTKINGS MASS CLAIM OFFER BET $5, GET $200 BONUS BET FANDUEL MASS CLAIM OFFER BET $50, GET $250 BONUS CAESARS MASS CLAIM OFFER $1,000 FIRST-BET BONUS BETMGM MASS CLAIM OFFER MA only. 21+. Gambling Problem? If you or a loved one is experiencing problems with gambling, please call 1-800-327-5050 or visit gamblinghelplinema.org for 24/7 support. LiveChat with a GameSense Advisor at GameSenseMA.com or call 1-800-GAM-1234 MA Gambling Helpline. MA only. 21+. Gambling Problem? If you or a loved one is experiencing problems with gambling, please call 1-800-327-5050 or visit gamblinghelplinema.org for 24/7 support. LiveChat with a GameSense Advisor at GameSenseMA.com or call 1-800-GAM-1234 MA Gambling Helpline. Douglas has quickly turned into one of the most dangerous offensive weapons in New England. On Sunday, Douglas was the Patriots main slot receiver ahead of veteran JuJu Smith-Schuster. He finished the game with the most snaps played (41) for a Patriots receiver and that’ll likely continue with Bourne suffering a season-ending knee injury. Douglas came into Sunday’s game after hurting the Buffalo Bills with a four-catch, 54-yard performance. The rookie also ran for 20 yards and had a 25-yard punt return. It was clear the Dolphins recognized how important the rookie was to Mac Jones and that’s why they focused on him on Sunday. Douglas led the Patriots in receptions (five) and targets (seven) while finishing with 25 yards. He’ll continue to be important for the Patriots with Bourne (knee) and DeVante Parker (concussion) suffering injuries in Miami. Douglas said he felt sick as soon as he saw Bourne go down. The veteran receiver has been one of the rookie’s mentors this season. “I’m sick – just to see that. Especially KB. That one hurt for sure,” Douglas said. “He brings a lot of energy. Just to see him go down, I just squatted down and just prayed for him.” It won’t be easy for the Patriots without Bourne, their leading receiver, but that should put Douglas in an even bigger role. That also means he’ll see more double teams. When asked how he has to approach this next game without Bourne, Douglas said it’s simple. “Time to step up,” Douglas said. “Time to step up more. That’s how I see it.”

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Uncle IDs bicyclist killed in crash involving garbage truck

A bicyclist who was struck by a garbage truck Tuesday in the Allston neighborhood of Boston has died, police said.The incident happened at 10 a.m. on Cambridge Street near Union Square. Police said the victim was riding an electric bicycle when he was hit by a Mack garbage truck operated by Republic Services. Samuel Albarado, 21, was killed, according to his uncle. Melecio Albarado said his nephew came to the area from Honduras and has been working as a restaurant cook downtown for about two years. He said that he and his nephew routinely met for breakfast."Every morning we stop by Dunkin' Donuts and drink coffee and eat donuts. Always together. Today I came, to Dunkin' Donuts I came, but he never came and a few minutes later I got the call," Melecio Albarado said. Samuel Albarado loved singing and playing guitar, his uncle said.Republic Services said they are fully cooperating with the investigation. The driver of the garbage truck remained on the scene and is also cooperating. A bicyclist who was struck by a garbage truck Tuesday in the Allston neighborhood of Boston has died, police said. The incident happened at 10 a.m. on Cambridge Street near Union Square. Police said the victim was riding an electric bicycle when he was hit by a Mack garbage truck operated by Republic Services. Advertisement Samuel Albarado, 21, was killed, according to his uncle. Family photo Melecio Albarado said his nephew came to the area from Honduras and has been working as a restaurant cook downtown for about two years. He said that he and his nephew routinely met for breakfast. "Every morning we stop by Dunkin' Donuts and drink coffee and eat donuts. Always together. Today I came, to Dunkin' Donuts I came, but he never came and a few minutes later I got the call," Melecio Albarado said. Samuel Albarado loved singing and playing guitar, his uncle said. Republic Services said they are fully cooperating with the investigation. The driver of the garbage truck remained on the scene and is also cooperating.

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Travel in 2023: 12 Months That Took Chaos to a New Level

Here are some of the year’s most disruptive and devastating events for travelers and local residents. January Technological trouble — at least in the United States — seemed to seep over from 2022 into the new year. Just weeks after Southwest Airlines upended holiday vacations for as many as 2 million passengers by canceling thousands of flights in late December 2022, another air travel meltdown struck in early January. This time, a technology system failure at the Federal Aviation Administration temporarily grounded domestic departures nationwide, causing thousands of flights across major airlines to be delayed or canceled. The trouble highlighted the fragile airspace system and renewed calls for greater funding for the F.A.A. The breadth of the outage shocked some passengers traveling that day. Jaime Vallejo was flying from Newark to Ecuador with his wife and three children when he learned that his flight was delayed because of the F.A.A. outage. “That’s the computer system for the whole country, and that’s something that should make you a little nervous,” he said. February As powerful winter storms swept across the western and northern United States, hundreds of thousands of people went without electricity. (In Michigan, outages lasted for days.) Thousands of flights were disrupted. Roads were shut down by freezing rain and heavy snowfall, especially in areas unaccustomed to snow — Portland, Ore., received nearly 11 inches of snow in one day. In the Los Angeles area, heavy flooding washed out roads and put most of the San Fernando Valley under a warning. A dangerous combination of hazards — heavy wind, rain and snow — prompted L.A. County to issue a rare blizzard warning, the first in more than three decades.

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"Emotionally Moved By The End"; Tony Award Winning Musical "The Band's Visit" Comes To Boston

BOSTON - Boston audiences are in for a transformative experience, as "The Band's Visit" takes the stage at the Huntington Theatre in Boston. The premise is simple, a transportation mix-up strands a group of Egyptian musicians in a small Israeli town for 24 hours. "It's about connection. It's about people who would not normally otherwise mingle with each other, who would not exist in the same space," actor Brian Thomas Abraham told us.

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Lawyer for Springfield cop accused of stun-gunning pregnant woman argues boyfriend lied for her

SPRINGFIELD — Newly filed records in U.S. District Court say a man lied about his girlfriend being pregnant at her behest after she was tased in 2020 by a Springfield cop. Stephen Blanchard is doing a turnabout and seeking his own attorney to protect his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination.

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Irish Cultural Center seeks $2 million to renovate West Springfield headquarters

WEST SPRINGFIELD — The Irish Cultural Center of Western New England has kicked off a $2 million drive to renovate its headquarters at 429 Morgan Road in West Springfield. “I welcome everyone to learn how they can help bring this final phase to reality,” Kevin O’Connor, a member of the development committee, said in a statement. An official capital campaign to fund completion of the $5 million project will launch at the center’s Feast of St. Brigid raffle drawing Feb. 1, 2024. So far, approximately $3 million has been raised through individual donations, company gifts, grants ― both government and private — since the ICC moved into the building in 2017. The project benefits from an ongoing crew of volunteer help. When the center procured the 11,500-square-foot space from the town seven years ago, it had been vacant for five years. Since then, the exterior shell has been transformed into a vibrant, Irish country-style restaurant, pub and gathering place. The Irish Cultural Center at 429 Morgan Road in West Springfield in 2020. (Don Treeger / The Republican) “An incredible amount of work has gone into the building and grounds over the past several years to provide a space for everyone in our communities to enjoy time with friends,” said the center’s president, Sean F. Cahillane. He said the center helps people share their Irish heritage or experience Irish culture. Mayor William Reichelt said the center has become the cultural crossroads for people, especially those with Irish heritage. “The ICC has been a popular gathering spot for city residents and will have even more to offer when the project is complete,” Reichelt said in the statement this week. The $2 million to be raised will go towards completing the Community Performance Center, which will serve the needs of the greater region for concerts, events, meetings and private banquets, according to the release. “These past years have been a labor of love, helping to create this facility that has brought so much enjoyment to so many,” Cahillane said. “We look forward to the next step of our mission and the completion of our center.”

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Lawmakers pushing for MBTA Commuter Rail electrification by 2035

In her third State of the State address, Gov. Kathy Hochul will propose a first-of-its-kind statewide consortium that would bring together public and private resources to put New York at the forefront of the artificial intelligence landscape. Under the plan, Ms. Hochul would direct $275 million in state funds toward the building of a center to be jointly used by six of the state’s research institutions, including the State University of New York and the City University of New York. Columbia University, Cornell University, New York University and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute would each contribute $25 million to the project, known as “Empire A.I.” Additional private funding has been secured through the Simons Foundation and from the billionaire Thomas Secunda, who helped found Bloomberg L.P. The initiative’s futuristic focus stands out from many of the governor’s other proposals, which are aimed at combating problems like medical debt, literacy and maternal mortality.

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Vivek Ramaswamy suspends his 2024 Republican presidential bid and endorses rival Donald Trump

Biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy suspended his bid for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination on Monday and endorsed former President Donald Trump after a disappointing finish in Iowa’s leadoff caucuses. Ramaswamy, a 38-year-old political novice who sought to replicate Trump’s rise as a bombastic, wealthy outsider, said, “As of this moment we are going to suspend this presidential campaign. There’s no path for me to be the next president absent things that we don’t want to see happen in this country.” During the campaign, he needled his opponents but praised Trump as “the best president of the 21st century.” He argued, though, that Republicans should opt for “fresh legs” and “take our America First agenda to the next level.” The approach, including his call for “revolution,” vaulted Ramaswamy into the mix of candidates vying to overtake Trump — or at least become a viable alternative. His decision to drop out, though, becomes the latest confirmation that the former president, even at 77 years old and under multiple criminal indictments, still dominates Republican politics and remains the overwhelming favorite to win the GOP nomination for the third consecutive time. Ramaswamy’s failure also affirms how difficult it is for any Republican other than Trump to push the bounds of party orthodoxy, as the first-time candidate found little political reward for positions such as his opposition to aid for Israel and Ukraine. The son of Indian immigrants, Ramaswamy entered politics at the highest level after making hundreds of millions of dollars at the intersection of hedge funds and pharmaceutical research, a career he charted and built while graduating from Harvard University and then Yale Law School. He brought to his campaign the same brash approach he used to coax money from investors even when the drugs he touted never made it to the market. __ By BILL BARROW Associated Press

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An Abandoned Cemetery Highlights a Painful Colonial Episode for France

Nestled amid the vineyards in a picturesque region of southwestern France known for its sweet wines and goat cheeses is a fenced-off parcel of thorny, empty land, mostly avoided by nearby villagers other than the few who walk their dogs there. The nondescript patch has become part of a national effort to address a painful episode in France’s colonial history: the treatment of the predominately Muslim Algerians known as Harkis who fought for the French during Algeria’s war of independence. After the war ended in 1962, some of the Harkis and their families were placed in several internment and transit camps across France. They stayed for years in those camps, treated more as unwanted refugees in France than former soldiers, surrounded by barbed wire and watchtowers, while the French government organized their relocations across the country. In the early years, many of the children in these families, historians say, died in the camps, including one known as Rivesaltes, where about 21,000 Harkis passed through. Historians say they believe that the bodies of at least 50 of these children are buried under the dry soil of Rivesaltes, which is close to the Mediterranean and about half an hour’s drive from Avignon.

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Opinion | Is South Korea Disappearing?

For some time now, South Korea has been a striking case study in the depopulation problem that hangs over the developed world. Almost all rich countries have seen their birthrates settle below replacement level, but usually that means somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.5 children per woman. For instance, in 2021 the United States stood at 1.7, France at 1.8, Italy at 1.3 and Canada at 1.4. But South Korea is distinctive in that it slipped into below-replacement territory in the 1980s but lately has been falling even more — dropping below one child per woman in 2018 to 0.8 after the pandemic and now, in provisional data for the second and third quarters of 2023, to just 0.7 births per woman. It’s worth unpacking what that means. A country that sustained a birthrate at that level would have, for every 200 people in one generation, 70 people in the next one, a depopulation exceeding what the Black Death delivered to Europe in the 14th century. Run the experiment through a second generational turnover, and your original 200-person population falls below 25. Run it again, and you’re nearing the kind of population crash caused by the fictional superflu in Stephen King’s “The Stand.” By the standards of newspaper columnists, I am a low-birthrate alarmist, but in some ways I consider myself an optimist. Just as the overpopulation panic of the 1960s and 1970s mistakenly assumed that trends would simply continue upward without adaptation, I suspect a deep pessimism about the downward trajectory of birthrates — the kind that imagines a 22nd-century America dominated by the Amish, say — underrates human adaptability, the extent to which populations that flourish amid population decline will model a higher-fertility future and attract converts over time.

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Sale closed in Newton Center: $3 million for a five-bedroom home

A spacious house located at 14 Cottonwood Road in Newton Center has new owners. The 4,826-square-foot property, built in 2007, was sold on Nov. 8, 2023. The $3,000,000 purchase price works out to $622 per square foot. This two-story house presents a roomy floor plan, featuring five bedrooms and five bathrooms. The home's outer structure has a hip roof frame, composed of asphalt. Inside, a fireplace adds character to the home. The property is equipped with forced air heating and a cooling system. Additionally, the house features an attached one-car garage. Additional houses have recently been sold nearby: A 3,748-square-foot home at 36 Sky View Circle in Newton Center sold in May 2023, for $3,100,000, a price per square foot of $827. The home has 5 bedrooms and 6 bathrooms. On Redwood Road, Newton Center, in March 2023, a 1,380-square-foot home was sold for $1,250,000, a price per square foot of $906. The home has 3 bedrooms 1 bathroom. In October 2023, a 2,422-square-foot home on Sevland Road in Newton Center sold for $1,500,000, a price per square foot of $619. The home has 4 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms. Real Estate Newswire is a service provided by United Robots, which uses machine learning to generate analysis of data from Propmix, an aggregator of national real-estate data. See more Real Estate News

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Calif. man embezzled over $1M from Mass. employer, going to prison

A California man is going to prison over a year after he pled guilty to embezzling over $1.2 million from his Massachusetts employer for almost two decades, Acting United States Attorney Joshua Levy’s office announced Thursday. Darrell Pike, 57, of Hesperia, Calif., was sentenced to three months in prison followed by three years of supervised release, with the first nine months consisting of home confinement, Levy’s office said in a statement. In addition, U.S. District Court Judge Myong Joun ordered Pike to pay restitution and forfeiture of $1,232,001. Read more: Taunton woman bribed RMV test examiner for a license going to prison Pike worked as the general manager of a subsidiary, based in Ontario, Calif., of a supply and service company located in Wilmington. Between 2005 and 2021, Pike turned in fraudulent invoices to the company on behalf of a fake temporary staffing company called Consumer Information Systems, Levy’s office said. He added approving initials of company personnel to the invoices without his employer’s knowledge or consent, Levy’s office added. Through these invoices, Pike caused the company to pay approximately $1,271,206 to Consumer Information Systems, which were then deposited into a bank account he controlled. In October 2022, Pike pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud.

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A New Hampshire man pleads guilty to threats and vandalism targeting NHPR journalists

A New Hampshire man pleaded guilty to threatening public radio journalists and vandalizing their homes, prosecutors said Thursday. Tucker Cockerline, 32, of Salem, N.H., pleaded guilty in federal court in Boston to conspiracy to commit stalking through interstate travel and the use of a facility of interstate commerce. The harassment and intimidation of the victims included the vandalism — on five separate occasions — of the victims’ homes and the home of one of the victims’ parents with bricks, large rocks and red spray paint, according to investigators. Sentencing is scheduled for March 19, 2024. Cockerline was initially arrested and charged in June along with two alleged co-conspirators. The defendants were subsequently indicted by a federal grand jury along with a fourth suspect in September. Prosecutors allege the men were involved in a plot to vandalize homes associated with New Hampshire Public Radio reporter Lauren Chooljian and news director Daniel Barrick in retaliation for a report detailing allegations of sexual misconduct against Eric Spofford, founder of New Hampshire’s largest network of addiction treatment centers. Each charge in the indictment carries a maximum sentence of up to five years in prison, three years of supervised release, a $250,000 fine and restitution.

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Kissinger Left the State Department a Half Century Ago. But He Never Left His Old Job.

When Henry Kissinger turned 100 this year, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken toasted him at one birthday celebration in New York, and the C.I.A. director, William J. Burns, did so at another in Washington. There was a reason: Kissinger managed to retain his role as adviser to Washington’s key policymakers a half century after he left office, oftentimes because what he did then was so relevant to the crises of today. Mr. Kissinger spoke with Mr. Blinken regularly, including as recently as last month, Mr. Blinken said. He had also consulted with previous secretaries of state, including Condoleezza Rice, Hillary Clinton (who took heat for those conversations during her presidential campaign), John Kerry and Mike Pompeo. But he wasn’t some retired coach, reminiscing about the good old days. Instead, he remained the ultimate back-channeller, especially to leaders in China. In July, Mr. Kissinger secretly flew to China — by private jet, since it’s an arduous flight even if you are not 100 years old — at the specific invitation of Xi Jinping, who called him an “old friend” and, during a lengthy dinner, told him “China and the United States’ relations will forever be linked to the name ‘Kissinger.’” It was a calculated move. Mr. Xi was making clear that he wanted to move back toward the warmth that surrounded President Richard M. Nixon’s opening to China in the early 1970s, engineered by Mr. Kissinger in secret interchanges and a remarkable, also secret trip to China. And the July visit helped set up Mr. Xi’s summit meeting with President Biden, outside of San Francisco, this month. On that same trip, Mr. Kissinger was celebrated at the U.S. Embassy, where R. Nicholas Burns, the current U.S. ambassador, lives in a house that Mr. Kissinger helped get constructed when the United States had a representative to China, but full diplomatic recognition had not yet happened. Mr. Kissinger met with the embassy’s vast staff, talking about what the process of opening the relationship was like — in an era when it seemed inconceivable China would become the world’s second-largest economy. The Kissinger conversations with secretaries of state and presidents were not only about navigating the downward spiral in relations with Beijing. He was engaged in strategy discussions on Russia, with whom he negotiated SALT I, a major arms-control treaty. He weighed in on artificial intelligence, a passion of his in recent years and a subject he wrote about at length, often with Eric Schmidt, the former Google chief executive who grew close to the former secretary of state. To Mr. Kissinger’s many critics, this fervor for remaining involved, decades after he could have retired, showed a thirst for power or an effort to burnish his legacy, which he knew was tarnished by charges he forgave massacres, bombings and the deaths of thousands when doing so served his diplomatic purposes. But the reason his advice was sought out goes to the depth of his experience: When Mr. Kissinger died on Wednesday, Mr. Blinken was headed to Israel in an effort to win a longer pause in a bloody conflict. Mr. Kissinger had flown the same path, in November 1973, exactly 50 years ago, during his famous shuttle diplomacy.

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Celtics injury report: 1 rotation player listed for Jazz game

The Celtics could be missing a key rotation player when they take on the Jazz at 7 p.m. Friday at TD Garden. Al Horford is listed as questionable on the injury report, though that’s due to rest. It’s no surprise the Celtics could look to stagger their rotation considering their upcoming schedule. The C’s have a back-to-back as they take on the Jazz on Friday then fly to Indiana to play the Pacers on Saturday. They also have five games over the next seven days as part of a hectic schedule. BET ANYTHING GET $250 BONUS ESPN BET CLAIM OFFER MASS 21+ and present in MA, NJ, PA, VA, MD, WV, TN, LA, KS, KY, CO, AZ, IL, IA, IN, OH, MI. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-Gambler. Horford, 37, hasn’t played in back-to-backs over the past couple seasons as the team looks to keep him fresh. But recently, the team has also been cautious with Kristaps Porzingis, who also hasn’t played in both games of a back-to-back. So considering the C’s also play Saturday, it’s not too surprising they could stagger their two big men in terms of which game they end up playing. Last week against the Raptors, the C’s were significantly shorthanded as they had either Horford nor Porzingis playing, among others. The Jazz come in with 16-19 record, led by former C’s assistant coach Will Hardy. They do have a strong rim protector in Walker Kessler, so it’ll be interesting to see how the Celtics take on Utah. Reserve big men Luke Kornet and Neemias Queta could also get some extra run if Horford sits out Friday.

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Ramaswamy Repeats Call for Ballots to Be English Only

Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican tech entrepreneur running a long-shot campaign for president, doubled down Friday on his pledge to tighten voting laws if he is elected. In his remarks in Ames, Iowa, he reiterated his promise to make English the only language on ballots. The language minority provisions of the Voting Rights Act prohibit such English-only ballots in many cases. His promise, which he has highlighted frequently in recent months, is one of many voting reforms that have become popular among Republican voters that he has seized on. “One thing I will work with Congress to deliver is a minimal federal standard for our federal elections,” he told voters at the Friday event. That standard would include “single-day voting on Election Day, as a national holiday with paper ballots, government-issued voter ID to match the voter file, and yes, English as the sole language that appears on a ballot.” Mr. Ramaswamy, who is polling far behind his Republican rivals in Iowa at fourth place, has long called for extraordinary rollbacks to voting rights in other ways as well. Early on in his campaign, he generated attention by calling for Americans under 25 to be barred from voting, unless they pass the civics test required of immigrants seeking citizenship or unless they serve in the U.S. military or as a first responder.

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Is the Holiday Shopping Season Going to Be a Success? The Answer Is Murky.

“That’s what will determine the winners and losers as we get through the rest of the holiday season,” Matthew Shay, chief executive of the National Retail Federation, a trade group, said on a recent conference call. The N.R.F. kept its forecast that holiday sales — from Nov. 1 to Dec. 31 — would grow 3 to 4 percent this year. That forecast isn’t adjusted for inflation. Neither are the early readings of sales over the weekend. Mastercard, for example, said sales both in stores and online rose 2.5 percent on Nov. 24, from a year earlier. But with consumer goods — excluding food and fuel — rising at an annual rate of around 4 percent, that suggests that retailers aren’t necessarily moving more merchandise. “We think sales were not strong; they were so-so, to the point of being mediocre,” said Craig Johnson, the founder of the retail consultancy Customer Growth Partners. His firm estimated that sales for the four-day period starting on Black Friday and ending on Cyber Monday was $94.2 billion, up about 2.5 percent from last year. Like Mastercard’s estimate, the retail consultancy forecast that — adjusted for inflation — sales slipped slightly, Mr. Johnson said. Some large retailers seem to be prepared for the slowdown in demand. Companies like Target and Macy’s have reported that they’ve cut inventory levels in recent quarters, and that may put them in a better position to profit even if demand is weaker, according to Edward Yruma, an analyst at the investment bank Piper Sandler. If stores have too much inventory on hand, they may have to cut prices more than expected, which would erode their profits. “Really for the first time in four quarters, we are seeing retailers get inventories better aligned with sales,” Mr. Yruma said. “That’s allowing them to have on-plan promotions.”

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In a Setback for Beijing, Taiwan Elects Lai Ching-te as President

The Taiwanese politician Lai Ching-te has for years been reviled by China’s Communist Party as a dangerous foe who, by its account, could drag the two sides into a war by pressing for full independence for his island democracy. Right up to Saturday, when millions of Taiwanese voted for their next president, an official Beijing news outlet warned that Mr. Lai could take Taiwan “on a path of no return.” Yet, despite China’s months of menacing warnings of a “war or peace” choice for Taiwan’s voters, Mr. Lai was elected president. Mr. Lai, currently Taiwan’s vice president, secured 40 percent of the votes in the election, giving his Democratic Progressive Party, or D.P.P., a third term in a row in the presidential office. No party has achieved more than two successive terms since Taiwan began holding direct, democratic elections for its president in 1996. At a D.P.P. gathering outside its headquarters in Taipei, thousands of supporters, many waving pink and green flags, cheered as Mr. Lai’s lead grew during the counting of the votes, which was displayed on a large screen on an outdoor stage.

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How Much Ice Is Greenland Losing? Researchers Found an Answer.

Greenland’s expansive ice sheet is known to be shrinking, especially since the 1990s, because of warming from climate change. It’s a fate shared by the Antarctic Ice Sheet as well as glaciers around the world. Now, a new study reveals that about 20 percent more of the Greenland ice sheet has disappeared than previous estimates show. The missing ice has been breaking and melting from the ends of glaciers around Greenland’s perimeter. The new research, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, provides a detailed accounting of a process that scientists knew was happening but had struggled to measure comprehensively. “Almost every glacier in Greenland is retreating. And that story is true no matter where you look,” said Chad Greene, a glaciologist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the lead author of the study. “This retreat is happening everywhere and all at once.”

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Fantasia Barrino-Taylor on the Pain (and Joy) of The Color Purple

In the film, Celie’s self-awareness and confidence builds steadily in the presence of Shug Avery (Taraji P. Henson), the free-spirited, local celebrity and, later, Celie’s lover and friend. While still suffering at home, Celie comes into her own much sooner than in the original film. She’s comfortable wearing sequins and lipstick, and her bond with Shug is more pronounced. Bazawule’s intention was to oscillate between joy and pain, a very human approach, he said. “We never wallow in just pain. Certainly, a people who have birthed such beautiful manifestations to this world, there’s no way that Black people just deal with pain. It’s impossible,” he said. “When you hear gospel, when you hear jazz, when you hear all these things, that’s turning pain into power.” He explained that the pain-joy approach “gave us a much fuller picture of her struggles. It was also the back and forth between her reality and her fantasies, and that is also a very important place, a refuge, in a way, for someone like her who was dealing with an external abuser. She could create a world in which she was more powerful than her abuser.” Celie experiences bliss in part through dance. However, Barrino-Taylor, known for gospel and R&B ballads, wasn’t used to up-tempo movement. “When they first said I had to learn how to tap dance, I thought everybody was crazy,” she said, giggling. “I literally laughed, I cried, I laughed, I cried. I was terrified. I didn’t even think my feet were going to move.” The process was challenging, but Barrino-Taylor stuck with it. After a full day of shooting on location in Georgia, she dragged herself into her garage, armed with a pair of tap shoes and got to work. “We wouldn’t get home until, like, 6, 7 o’clock in the morning. But I would go in there, put my tights on, and I would practice. Because I knew on the day when we filmed, I needed to allow Celie to take over, not be thinking 1-2-3-4, ba-ba-ba-ba, ba-ba-ba-ba,” she rhythmed.

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Hunter Biden Text Cited in Impeachment Inquiry Is Not What G.O.P. Suggests

Mr. Dubinsky answered, “Absolutely.” But a close examination of the circumstances surrounding the 2019 text message, along with others that have been cited by Republicans during the impeachment inquiry and elsewhere to suggest that Hunter Biden’s foreign income was shared with or benefited his father, shows the extent to which the contents of the communications have been misunderstood or outright distorted. And while it does not rule out the possibility that House Republicans could unearth evidence showing wrongdoing by President Biden, it underscores the flimsy nature of the material they have presented publicly so far. The story behind the message, as explained by the Bidens and backed up by other interviews and a review of Hunter Biden’s emails and text messages, offers sometimes unflattering insights into the family’s finances and internal dynamics. And it adds more detail to what is known about Hunter Biden’s erratic and irresponsible behavior while in the throes of addiction. But it is very different from the story being promoted by House Republicans and their allies. Rather than evidence that Hunter had split his foreign income with his father, the 2019 message was a reference to a story from Hunter’s youth that he repeated to his daughters when they became teenagers. It was prompted by a family dispute, fueled by Hunter Biden’s drug use, money troubles and personal resentments, according to the review of Hunter Biden’s communications and interviews with Biden aides, family friends, and Hunter and Naomi Biden. It started with a freak ski accident at the start of 2019. Naomi Biden, 25 at the time, and her then-boyfriend, Peter Neal, were having lunch at the slope-side Handle Bar Restaurant & Pub at the Four Seasons Jackson Hole ski resort in Wyoming. They received a frantic phone call from Naomi’s younger sister Finnegan, who had skipped lunch with them to continue skiing.

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Jayson Tatum says Celtics accomplished feat they wouldnt have last year

SPRINGFIELD – Darren Harris is confident in every decision he makes. Every time he takes a 3-pointer, he believes it’s going in. During his college basketball recruitment, he knew he wanted to go to Duke, so when they offered him a scholarship in Feb. 2022, he verbally committed a few months later early in his junior year. Harris, ranked as the No. 45 recruit in his class by ESPN, was the first player to commit to the Blue Devils in the Class of 2024. Harris’ confidence with the ball in his hands and off the court has helped push his high school, St. Paul VI in Virginia, to the No. 3 ranking in ESPN’s national boys basketball team rankings. His confidence has been an advantage for St. Paul VI, and he’s looking forward to having the same effect on the Blue Devils starting next year. “Duke was a dream school of mine growing up,” Harris said. “When they pushed for me to commit early it was hard to turn down. I was one of the first players they really pursued in my class. It felt like the timing was right. I knew where I wanted to go and where I wanted to be.” Despite losing to No. 5 ranked Christoher Columbus (FL), 70-61, on Monday at the Hoophall Classic in Springfield, Massachusetts, Harris chipped in 16 points on 6-of-19 shooting for St. Paul VI. Christopher Columbus’ lineup is headlined by brothers Cameron and Cayden Boozer, sons of former NBA player Carlos Boozer, and Jace and Jaxson Richardson, sons of former NBA player Jason Richardson. “Their team defense is really good,” Harris said about Christopher Columbus. “They move as one and they are really connected on the defensive side of the floor. They made us work, especially me. I was exhausted by the end of the game. They’re really physical.” The event in Springfield showcased a handful of Duke commits, including the No. 1 recruit in the Class of 2024, Cooper Flagg. Harris and St. Paul VI landed in Springfield the night before their game, so Harris didn’t have the opportunity to watch some of his future teammates play, but he was excited to have the ability to play in the showcase. “This tournament is top-notch,” Harris said. “There’s a lot of good talent out here.” Harris is teammates with fellow Duke commit, Pat Ngongba, the No. 19 recruit in the Class of 2024 according to ESPN. When Harris became the first commit for Duke in the Class of 2024, he immediately got to work doing some additional recruiting for the Blue Devils. The senior regularly messaged other players whose play style he liked on social media, and even worked to get Ngongba to commit to the program. “There are certain guys whose game I like,” Harris said. “Our class is talented and versatile on both ends of the floor. I have no complaints with the class coming in, but as far as being the first one, yeah I was doing some texting. … Especially with Pat who I saw every day. Playing together at the next level will be a great opportunity.” Harris moves a lot without the ball, has a quick shot release and is lethal from beyond the arc. The senior watches all levels of basketball constantly when he’s not playing. With so much time watching the game under his belt, he’s absorbed player traits from some of the game’s best guards. “I watch a lot of Devin Booker,” Harris said. “Young Devin Booker in college, running off pin downs, mid range, elevating over everyone. Catch and shoot guys, Klay Thompson, JJ (Redick). I watch a lot of basketball, so it’s easy to add that into my game.”

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West Springfield PD searching for SUV involved in hit-and-run that injured teen

Police said a 15-year-old boy was hurt after he was the victim of a hit-and-run in West Springfield on Sunday evening, prompting the city’s police department to ask the public for help in the case. It was around 4:52 p.m. in the area of Piper and Amostown Road on Dec. 10 when a white SUV turned left from Piper onto Amostown, the department said. The intersection is in a residential area, and the West Springfield Covenant Community Church is located on one corner. A 15-year-old boy was running in a crosswalk at the intersection and he was hit by the car, police said. The boy was sent to the ground, but police said the SUV did not stop and continued up Amostown Road. The teen was brought to the hospital by family members and had minor injuries, the department said. Residents who live in the area have been asked to check video surveillance footage from that time on Sunday to help police in the investigation. Witnesses or those with doorbell video are urged to contact Officer Shawn Knox at (413) 263-3210, Ext. 228.

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November ends with cool, dry weather throughout the week

This will be the seventh year in a row without any November snowfall in the city. This isn’t very unusual, however. Notice most of the last 10 years there hasn’t been any snowfall in Boston. Novembers without snowfall happened in the past, but the gap between Novembers with snow and those without was much smaller. Overall, we haven’t had a lot of rainy days this month, but it has been cooler than average. It is highly likely once again, Boston will not receive any measurable snow. Low pressure will continue to move into the Canadian Maritimes on Monday bringing an end to the overnight rain from Sunday night. Most areas received a good soaking, and now it’s back to the dry pattern to take us out of November and into the 12th month. Advertisement This will be the seventh year in a row without any November snowfall in Boston. ThreadEx High pressure will keep the weather dry and quite cold on Tuesday and Wednesday. Temperatures will be in the mid-30s to lower 40s across southern New England without any chance of precipitation. There’s a slight moderation in temperature as we head for the end of the week. Readings will be in the 40s, which is pretty much where you would expect to begin December. Much of the country later this week will also have near-average temperatures. The map below shows the variance of afternoon highs as compared with the 30-year normal. Notice that there really isn’t any significant cold or warm air for this time of year anywhere in the lower 48. The high temperature anomaly for the end of this week shows the coldest air compared to normal to be out west. NOAA The next chance of rain comes sometime Friday night or Saturday, but whether this is an important system or just a few innocuous showers remains to be seen. It’s unlikely we will see any significant rain to start December. The latest EURO Model show potential showers for Friday evening this week. The timing and intensity of any rain is still to be determined. Tropical Tidbits Finally the longer range models are pointing to an average or perhaps slightly above average month ahead. Advertisement NOAA has the entire eastern half of the United States with odds favoring at least average to warmer than average readings as we close out 2023. This doesn’t mean it can’t be cold, it just means that the average temperatures will be slightly above average for the whole month.

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Handels Messiah Teaches Us Something Surprising About Tradition - The New York Times

For these reasons, “Messiah” serves as a kind of test case for how we think about the nature and value of tradition. Does tradition mean attempting to preserve or recover a supposedly purer past? Or does it mean accepting our cultural inheritance as we find it, rough around the edges though it may be? In the case of “Messiah,” at least, the shabbier, less exalted vision of tradition rightly prevails. Many of the most popular recorded versions of “Messiah” emerged along with the rise of stereo in the 1950s. By that time performers and audiences alike accepted that the orchestration of the oratorio would be tinkered with and that the number of singers would be doubled or tripled or multiplied a hundredfold. The default idiom for Handel’s work was romantic, the proper mood regal rather than somber. For my money, the best example of this kind of “Messiah” is a recording made by the British conductor Leopold Stokowski in 1966 with the London Symphony Orchestra. Stokowski was an artist incapable of embarrassment, a textually heedless showman known for his contributions to Disney’s musical “Fantasia” and his wonderfully lush orchestral arrangements of piano works such as Debussy’s “Suite Bergamasque.” His “Messiah,” which features only 16 of the work’s movements, is not a sensitive interpretation. Listening to it with my head three feet away from my ancient Dahlquist speakers is the closest thing I can imagine to finding myself in the position of the shepherds in St. Luke’s Gospel, when “the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.” But Stokowski’s unsubtle “Messiah” is hardly the most radical version, in terms of its departure from Handel’s score, or the most populist. In 1958 Leonard Bernstein dramatically rearranged the structure of “Messiah” and enlisted the Westminster Choir of Lawrenceville, N.J., for an epic faux-Wagnerian performance. In 1959, Eugene Ormandy recorded a version with the singer William Warfield (perhaps best known for his role in the MGM film version of the musical “Show Boat” in 1951) and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, a best-selling LP now regarded by music snobs as an embarrassing novelty item. This list of lovable mistreatments of the oratorio could be multiplied infinitely (as my editor found out the hard way). Despite the marginal status of Baroque music among the midcentury classical music establishment, by the 1960s “Messiah” had become one of the most-recorded works in the repertoire.

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License suspended at Lawrence nightclub, site of fatal Christmas Eve shooting

Following the fatal shooting of a 29-year-old man at a Lawrence nightclub on Christmas Eve, Lawrence police suspended the business’ license, police said. Acting Chief William Castro suspended Energy Lounge’s license on Wednesday in the interest of public safety as the perpetrator hasn’t been caught, according to a Thursday Facebook post from the Lawrence Police. “This immediate action is being taken on an expedited basis due to the overriding public safety concern,” Lawrence police said. The decision to suspend the business’ license is also because the shooting is still under investigation by Lawrence police and the Massachusetts State Police detectives assigned to the Essex County District Attorney’s Office, police said. Lawrence police responded to a report of shots fired at Energy Lounge on Broadway just after midnight on Sunday morning, police said in a press release. There, officers and paramedics found the victim with a gunshot wound. They treated him before taking him to Lawrence General Hospital where he was declared dead. The identity of the victim hasn’t been released. The nightclub said it is cooperating with investigators. “Energy Lounge deeply regrets the human loss, and we send our most sincere condolences to the victim’s relatives. We accompany them in their pain,” the nightclub wrote on social media. Energy Lounge will be closed pending the results of the investigation, police said. Once the investigation is complete and the findings are given to the Lawrence licensing board, the board can hold a hearing about the suspension, authorities said.

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City, advocates break ground at new memorial 81 years after deadly Cocoanut Grove nightclub fire claimed nearly 500 lives

Local News City, advocates break ground at new memorial 81 years after deadly Cocoanut Grove nightclub fire claimed nearly 500 lives “The impacts of Cocoanut Grove are already forever enshrined in the regulations, safety practices, the innovations and knowledge that have already saved countless lives,” Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said. Cocoanut Grove Memorial Committee Community members gathered near Statler Park to honor the 81st anniversary of the Cocoanut Grove nightclub fire on Sunday, which claimed nearly 500 lives and forever changed fire safety practices. A new memorial, which survivors and victims’ families say is long overdue, is set to open next year. The Cocoanut Grove nightclub in downtown Boston was packed on Nov. 28, 1942 with about a thousand people crowding the popular spot, more than double the legal occupancy. When a paper decoration caught on fire, the blaze quickly spread, ultimately killing 492 people. The victims have since been honored with a plaque at the site of the club at 17 Piedmont Street near the Park Square theatre district, but at Sunday’s event, the Cocoanut Grove Memorial Committee broke ground on the new memorial with three 11-foot arches – a replica of the nightclub’s entrance. Advertisement: “Now, with this memorial, all the people who lost their lives and those who survived and all of their loved ones will have a place not to avoid, but rather a place to remember and reflect,” said Lesley Kaufman, whose mother is one of the two remaining survivors of the fire. The fire, still the deadliest nightclub fire in history, changed U.S. fire safety codes. The fatalities were so high in part because six of the club’s nine exit doors were locked and the revolving doors got stuck. The deadly blaze resulted in new regulations requiring revolving doors to be accompanied by standard, outward-opening doors in similar venues. At the time, the NFPA said Boston’s building laws were in a “chaotic condition.” Boston Mayor Michelle Wu was at Sunday’s event, along with Fire Commissioner Paul Burke, City Council President Ed Flynn, and former Mayor Ray Flynn. The memorial will also honor the first responders who responded to the blaze. “The impacts of Cocoanut Grove are already forever enshrined in the regulations, safety practices, the innovations and knowledge that have already saved countless lives,” Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said. The memorial, which will include the name of each victim etched on granite, is set to officially open in September 2024.

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Storm Hits Buenos Aires After Killing at Least 13

A storm that has already killed at least 13 people in Argentina was making its way through Buenos Aires on Sunday morning, drenching the city and bringing heavy winds that led to reports of power outages and damage across the capital. The nation’s meteorological service warned residents of Buenos Aires that the storm placed the capital under an orange alert, the second-highest. There were reports of power outages across the city. On Saturday, the storm hit Bahía Blanca, a port city about 400 miles south of Buenos Aires, with gusts of up to 86 miles per hour, making it comparable to a Category One hurricane,, blowing roofs off buildings and killing at least 13. President Javier Milei and the mayor of Bahía Blanca confirmed the deaths. Images published by local media outlets showed harrowing scenes in Bahía Blanca, home to more than 300,000 people. Video showed blustering winds whipping the sides of high rise buildings accompanied by distant flashes of lightning and smothering haze cloaking much of the city. Pictures showed large trees knocked over and tattered buildings, some with their roofs blown off or collapsed. The worst damage was to a basketball gym, Club Bahiense del Norte, officials said, where emergency medical workers were working to treat victims.

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The Results Are In: These Are the Best Holiday Movies According to Our Instagram Followers | Hey BU Blog

The Results Are In: These Are the Best Holiday Movies According to Our Instagram Followers Film & TV The Results Are In: These Are the Best Holiday Movies According to Our Instagram Followers It’s time to get watching, BU! It’s that time of year again, Terriers! As the weather gets colder and the holidays creep up, it’s only natural that you begin your movie-binging. There’s nothing quite like snuggling up with loved ones and indulging in heartwarming films that capture the magic of the holidays! With that being said, it can be time-consuming to find a film that everyone will agree on, so we let the Terriers who follow @bostonu on Instagram do the picking for you. Here’s a list of the top five holiday classics our followers agreed on: 1. Elf Courtesy of giphy.com It’s funny, heart-warming, and great for the whole family. Laughing is pretty standard when watching any Will Ferrell movie, no matter what age you are. The comedy follows Buddy, a human raised by elves at the North Pole, as he embarks on a journey to New York City to find his real father, Walter Hobbs. Buddy’s childlike innocence clashes with the bustling and cynical world of humans until he’s able to spread holiday cheer. Available for streaming on: Max & Hulu (free with subscription) 2. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Courtesy of giphy.com 🎶 Rudolph, with your nose so bright, won’t you guide my sleigh tonight! 🎶 Rudolph, of course, is a holiday classic. The film is right up there with the animated Santa Claus and Frosty the Snowman movies everyone knows and loves from their childhood. The film tells the story of Rudolph, a reindeer with a luminous red nose that sets him apart from his peers. Originally shamed for his unique feature, Rudolph discovers that his special ability becomes the key to guiding Santa’s sleigh on a foggy Christmas Eve. Available for purchase on Amazon Prime ($7.99) 3. Home Alone Courtesy of giphy.com Could this be a must-watch holiday movie list without Home Alone? This was Terrier’s most loved holiday movie, winning by a landslide vote. In case you somehow haven’t watched it, the story follows a young boy who is accidentally left behind during his family’s vacation. While home, Kevin must defend the house against a duo of goofy burglars. It’s an original comedy classic! Available for streaming on: Disney+ & Hulu (free with Premium subscription) 4. Love Actually Courtesy of giphy.com This film follows the lives of eight very different couples in dealing with their love lives in various loosely interrelated tales all set during a frantic month before Christmas in London, England. The overriding message? The holidays are better when you spend them with the people who care about you, and that’s good enough for us. Available for streaming on: Netflix (free with subscription) 5. The Polar Express Courtesy of giphy.com Cozy up with a cup of HOT… HOT…HOT… HOT CHOC-O-LATE and catch The Polar Express! The film follows a young boy on Christmas Eve who embarks on a magical adventure to the North Pole on the Polar Express while learning about friendship, bravery, and the spirit of Christmas. The train conductor, played by Tom Hanks, shared one of the most iconic lines in holiday film history when he said, “Seeing is believing, but sometimes the most real things in the world are the things we can’t see.” Available for streaming on: Hulu, Max, and Amazon Prime (free with subscription) Happy holidays, Terriers! Let us know if we missed one of your favorites in the comments below. ⬇️

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Universities are Trojan horses for change in our society (Guest commentary)

The most famous war story, the one that will forever be told, is that of the Trojan horse. It goes like this: About a hundred or thousand years ago the Greeks and Trojans had been duking it for a decade. The Greeks could not penetrate the city walls of Troy to take over the treasured land and eventual said they had given up. The two parties fist bumped, and the Greeks sail away as the Trojans wheel into the fortified city the giant horse of a parting gift. The Trojans had a few too many Coca-Colas in celebration and passed out. Meanwhile there are 40 MMA Greek warriors chugging Red Bull and shadow boxing. The ultimate warriors pop out and opened the gates for their fellow Greeks who had sailed back during the shadows of the night to help defeat the unsuspecting Trojans. Our country isn’t surrounded by giant walls, but we are protected by our geography, technology and strength in numbers. Pearl Harbor and 9/11 were coast-based attacks that led to death of about 5,500 Americans. In retaliation was the leveling of about three different countries and hundreds of thousands of people. The United States, like the Trojans, aren’t to be defeated in a traditional sense. In all available metrics, studies and common sense, the past decade has revealed some troubling trends. Our citizens are less patriotic than ever. We are fatter than ever. We are on more drugs, both prescribed and illegal, than ever. Suicide and drug overdoses have spiked. Crimes from shoplifting to murder hardly even get any attention due to the increased prevalence. There are more fatherless homes than ever. Birth rates and overall life expectancy have dropped for the first time ever. Porn addiction and divorce rates up. We still see people walking around with masks on. Each one of these things adds to the rotting of our great society. How has there been such acceptance to all of this? If this is the end of a Scooby-Doo episode, the mask being pulled off the bad guy has a university president’s face under it.

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Boys Basketball Scoreboard for Jan. 19: Granby narrowly pushes past Palmer

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MAPC Boston assesses racial equity action plan pilot

The effort quickly spurred reforms. By the next year, the city had created an affordable-housing trust fund that supports income-restricted housing construction and preservation. Then, the City Council approved an ordinance that requires most new housing to include some amount of affordable housing units. LYNN — In February 2021, a coalition of city officials and residents set out on a goal to boost affordable-housing opportunities across this middle-class city to help address wealth disparities. This story was produced by the Globe’s Money, Power, and Inequality team, which covers the racial wealth gap in Greater Boston. You can sign up for the newsletter here . Advertisement The changes were limited to Lynn and are just one small step in a broader goal to close a yawning racial wealth gap. But they could also serve as a blueprint for other municipalities across the state looking to identify strategies to address disparities within their own communities. Get Money, Power, Inequality A weekly newsletter connecting you with news about the racial wealth gap in Greater Boston, along with solutions being proposed to bridge the gap. Enter Email Sign Up Lynn was one of six communities selected three years ago to pilot a Racial Equity Municipal Action Plan, or REMAP, a grant-funded program that aims to help communities tackle deep-rooted inequities and narrow the state’s racial wealth gap through reforms at the most basic levels of local government. “It takes all sectors to address the wealth gap, but government definitely has a role to play directly and indirectly,” said Ryan Curren, the housing, land, and development director for the Government Alliance on Race and Equity, which helped coordinate the pilot. The REMAP program was launched in 2020 amid the racial reckoning that followed George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police. And today, advocates say the continuation of such programs is critical amid a political backlash against such initiatives, as conservative lawmakers across the country remove diversity, equity, and inclusion goals from their local bylaws. The success of such programs may be difficult to measure in the short term, advocates say, but a long-term commitment at all levels of government could slowly level the playing field for all residents. Advertisement “Racial equity is not an easy, one-off process,“ said Raúl González, a senior planner for the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, a regional agency that helps coordinate the program. “REMAP is really just the beginning stages of creating that space for addressing issues of inequity in housing, education, employment, criminal justice, and, of course, closing the racial wealth gap.” The measure of success could also depend on the size of the community, and its demographics. In Natick, for instance, one of the six communities selected for the pilot program, most of the employees who were involved in the local initiative when it first began have left town government. The town of 36,000 residents has seen some progress under REMAP — such as the hiring of a new equity, inclusion, and outreach officer, as well as a communications chief — but with a smaller government and town meeting structure, change has come about much slower, said Natick’s town administrator, James Errickson. “Our progress is going to need to be measured in a much longer timeframe,” Errickson said. In other communities such as Lynn, the initiative has led to some effective changes, including in the Police Department, which is requiring police officers to wear body cameras, an effort to address demands for police transparency and accountability. The other communities involved in the pilot are Revere, Framingham, Bedford, and Stoughton. Advertisement Each community received $20,000 in technical assistance over two years, thanks to a mix of state and philanthropic funds provided to the Metropolitan Area Planning Council. For the program’s first year of operation in 2021, each municipality identified root causes of inequities, and then crafted a mission statement for future policies to address. Throughout the process, the Metropolitan Area Planning Council coordinated virtual trainings for municipal employees on subjects ranging from how the racial wealth gap formed to ways to measure equity. The program’s second year focused on how municipal governments can use data such as health equity statistics and demographics to better support its residents. This fall, the municipalities are participating in a “peer exchange and training program,” which González called an opportunity for each municipality to compare their initiatives, so that they can learn from each other. “You’re planting the seeds for having these conversations everywhere,” said Drew Russo, Lynn’s personnel director. In addition to the housing reforms, Lynn also looked at internal changes it could make at City Hall. Then, the city hired translators in Spanish, Haitian Creole, Arabic, and Khmer, and translated job postings into different languages. At Lynn City Hall, signs in English and Spanish direct visitors to different offices. Faustina Cuevas, Lynn’s first-ever director of diversity, equity, and inclusion, said the seemingly small changes such as translation services, help “change our culture so that people know when they come in here, they feel like they belong.” Advertisement And she says she has seen some incremental success: As of September, 62 percent of city applicants were people of color, a jump from previous years. The share of percentage of employees of color has grown, too, from one in 10 employees in 2018 to one in three this year. “Giving people a way to work where they live ... that’s one way” to help close disparities, Cuevas said. Still, some participants, such as Jonathon Feinberg, former organizing director for the New Lynn Coalition, said there’s more work to do. REMAP allowed Lynn to reflect on its policies, he said, but the city needs to be more radical to address inequities. “The stuff that we went in to fight for, we’re still fighting for,” Feinberg said. Russo said progress can be slow, but it is real, saying the city is virtually “building the plan as you fly it.” “We’re going to make mistakes,” Russo said. “But we’re going to continue moving forward so we really can advance a true vision of equity that lifts up everybody in this community.” Tiana Woodard is a Report for America corps member covering Black neighborhoods. She can be reached at tiana.woodard@globe.com. Follow her @tianarochon.

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Mass. police salute fellow officer killed in Waltham crash

Part one of the reunion episode of “Jersey Shore: Family Vacation” will air on MTV Thursday, Nov. 30 at 8 p.m. ET. The new episode from season 6 will be available on streaming platforms like Philo, which offers a free trial. Viewers can also use other streaming services to watch the show like DirecTV and FuboTV. Both offer a free trial for new users interested in signing up for an account. According to MTV, “the Jersey Shore family dynamic is shaken up by the return of Sammi “Sweetheart” Giancola, this season’s plus-one to all the chaos and adventures.” Returning “Jersey Shore” cast members will include Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi, Paul “Pauly D” DelVecchio, Michael “The Situation” Sorrentino, Jenni “JWoww” Farley, Vinny Guadagnino, Deena Nicole Cortese and Angelina Pivarnick. In the new episode, “after partying in Las Vegas, the gang head back to the East Coast, celebrating milestones in Atlantic City and settling in for an extended summer stay at the Shore, reliving their glory days together.” How can I watch ‘Jersey Shore: Family Vacation’ without cable? Streaming platforms are always available if you don’t have access to cable, like Philo, DirecTV and FuboTV. All three streaming services offer a free 7-day trial for users who are interested in signing up. What is Philo? Philo is an over-the-top internet live TV streaming service that offers 60+ entertainment and lifestyle channels, like AMC, BET, MTV, Comedy Central and more, for the budget-friendly price of $25/month. What is FuboTV? FuboTV is an over-the-top internet live TV streaming service that offers more than 100 channels, such as sports, news, entertainment and local channels. What is DirecTV? The streaming platform offers a plethora of content including streaming the best of live and On Demand, starting with more than 75 live TV channels. DirecTV also offers a free trial for any package you sign up.

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Police say they're looking for a crew that attacked several people at random on Mission Hill

Boston Police report they are seeking help to find for four men they say "attacked several people at random in the Mission Hill Area and robbed another victim, taking his cellphone" on Dec. 1. Police did not specify where on Mission Hill, but surveillance photos of the four were taken on the plaza in front of the Stop & Shop at Brigham Circle. Police described the suspects: Suspect 1: Light skinned Male, wearing a blue/maroon Nike hooded jacket, white hoodie underneath, light colored pants with dark “S” on right leg red “M” on left, and white sneakers Suspect 2: Short light skinned male, with dark curly hair, wearing a dark hoodie, and light jeans Suspect 3: Light skinned male, wearing a gray hoodie, black pants with rips, and white sneakers with black on outer Suspect 4: Black male, wearing a black hooded puffer coat, navy hoodie, navy sweatpants, and white/gray New Balances Anyone with information can contact detectives at 617-343-4275 or the anonymous tip line by calling 800-494-TIPS or by texting TIP to CRIME (27463).

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The Challenge: Battle for a New Champion episode 14: How to watch for free

The end of Chaos is near and with alliances on the brink of collapse, a grueling minifinal awaits in the newest episode of “The Challenge: Battle for a New Champion” airing on Wednesday, January 17. The new season will air a new episode at 8 p.m. EST on MTV. Viewers looking to stream the new season can do so by using Philo, FuboTV, Sling and DirecTV Stream. Philo, fuboTV and DirecTV all offer free trials and Sling offers 50% off your first month. In season 39, “reality stars party, fight and hook up in exotic locales while competing in insane physical challenges and scheming to win cash prizes on the competition show that started it all,” according to MTV. In episode 14 of the new season, The end of Chaos is near and with alliances on the brink of collapse, a grueling minifinal awaits. Here is a look at the new season from MTV’s The Challenge YouTube Channel: How can I watch “The Challenge: Battle for a New Champion” without cable? The new season will air a new episode at 8 p.m. EST on MTV. Viewers looking to stream the new season can do so by using Philo, FuboTV, Sling and DirecTV Stream. Philo, fuboTV and DirecTV all offer free trials and Sling offers 50% off your first month. What is Philo? Philo is an over-the-top internet live TV streaming service that offers 60+ entertainment and lifestyle channels, like AMC, BET, MTV, Comedy Central and more, for the budget-friendly price of $25/month. What is FuboTV? FuboTV is an over-the-top internet live TV streaming service that offers more than 100 channels, such as sports, news, entertainment and local channels. What is DirecTV Stream? The streaming platform offers a plethora of content including streaming the best of live and On Demand, starting with more than 75 live TV channels. DirecTV also offers a free trial for any package you sign up.

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With MBTA closures underway, commuters turn to walking, driving

Bree, in her 30s, moved in September to a Union Square apartment along the MBTA Green Line Extension, and was initially excited about living so close to the T. She took the Green Line to Park Street every day, switching trains to an outbound Red Line that would take her to work, near JFK in Dorchester. The trip lasts about an hour and 15 minutes, but lately, she’s been cutting her commute time in half by driving her partner’s car a few days a week. Bree K. relied on public transit all her life while growing up in New York City and after moving to Boston 10 years ago. But recently, amid relentless MBTA shutdowns and slow zones, she got something she never thought she’d need: a driver’s license. Advertisement “I’ve relied on public transportation for 20 years of my life, but it’s very freeing right now to be able to drive instead of having to take the train,” said Bree, who did not want her last name published. “I drive around a lot now. It’s been great.” The Globe heard from several riders who, after recent T closures, opted for other modes of transportation: cars, bikes, and for one Brighton resident, the first Uber of her life. Their experiences reflected the increasingly apparent ways in which the T has been unable to serve the needs of many riders. The MBTA announced last month it would incrementally shut down segments of the Red, Blue, Green, and Orange Lines for maintenance and repairs. The periodic closures, the MBTA said, target the T’s slow zones, aiming to eliminate them for good by 2025. The first of the closures spanned a significant portion of all branches of the Green Line, including the entire E branch, from Nov. 26 to Dec. 5. Advertisement Lisa Battiston, a spokesperson for the MBTA, told the Globe that maintenance performed during shutdowns that began in November has helped eliminate 24 speed restriction zones between the Green, Red, and Orange lines. “The MBTA recognizes these shutdowns are frustrating for riders, but the improvements to infrastructure following these shutdowns have allowed the T to lift slow zones and provide more reliable service with less unplanned service delays,” Battiston said in a statement to the Globe. So far, T closures have garnered mixed reactions from riders, some of whom expressed optimism for a once-and-for-all solution, while others remained wary of the maintenance. Among the pessimists is Rob Adams, who recently discovered he can walk faster than the T. “I just can’t see it getting better,” he said, describing the Green Line as inefficient and decrepit. Adams has commuted since 1996 from Wood Island on the Blue Line to Hynes Convention Center on the Green Line, typically in 35 minutes. His commute has varied in recent years, peaking at two hours before leveling out to an inconsistent 45 minutes or an hour, Adams said. Fed up with the inconsistency of the Green Line, Adams decided to start walking that leg of his journey, exiting the Blue Line at Bowdoin near the North End and walking southwest through the Boston Public Garden and into Back Bay, where he works, for a total commute of about 45 minutes. The walk often gets him to work faster than the Green Line, and with the right podcast or playlist, it’s a breeze — plus, added movement, sunlight, and an escape from the germ-infested subway during cold and flu season. Advertisement “I look at it as more of a plus than a negative,” Adams said. “I get out, I get exercise, I’m not stuck on the Green Line wondering whether I should get out and walk.” Among more hopeful riders is Matt Wunderlich, who lives near the Washington Square stop of the Green Line’s C Branch. “I have more faith than ever that these shutdowns might be the shutdowns that put us in the right direction,” he said. Most weekdays, Wunderlich takes a 35-minute bike ride to his Seaport office — a commute that would eat up an hour and 15 minutes via T. He said the T’s slowness creates an illusion of distance in the city, leaving riders feeling even more desperate during closures and shutdowns. “It makes you think you’re going much further than you actually are, and then you walk or bike somewhere and you’re like, ‘oh, that’s actually pretty close,’” Wunderlich said. He said biking is not only faster, but more consistent — especially when car traffic increases. While those driving, taking ride-share services, or riding MBTA shuttles to work battle with packed roads, Wunderlich hasn’t experienced any crowding within bike lanes, he said. Molly Liddell, who lives in Braintree and commutes via the Red and Orange Lines to Ruggles, switched to the commuter rail after the month-long Orange Line shutdown in 2022. The new route cut Liddell’s commute time in half — and it’s more relaxing, she said. Advertisement “On the Red and Orange [lines] I would try to read, but it was so crowded and I felt like I always had to be vigilant,” she said. “On the commuter rail I can read or listen to a podcast.” The downside: cost. While Liddell’s commute costs $4.80 via T, the commuter rail racks up quickly — she pays $9 to park in a lot near the train station, $7 for the first leg of her journey, and $2.40 for the second. Once she gets to work and back, Liddell tallies up to $27.80 per day. While she hopes the closures and maintenance will result in a fully-functioning T, Liddell said the timing for such repairs is never good — and more often than not, it’s everyday riders who have to pay. “Commuters are collateral damage in all of this,” Liddell said. “Our time and our money are being taken advantage of just because fixes need to happen.” Vivi Smilgius can be reached at vivi.smilgius@globe.com. Follow her @viviraye.

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Opinion | The Deification of Donald Trump Poses Some Interesting Questions

Trump’s evolution into a Jesus-like figure for some but not all white evangelicals began soon after he began his first presidential campaign. As David P. Gushee, a professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University, explained by email: Some of Trump’s Christian followers do appear to have grown to see him as a kind of religious figure. He is a savior. I think it began with the sense that he was uniquely committed to saving them from their foes (liberals, Democrats, elites, seculars, illegal immigrants, etc.) and saving America from all that threatens it. In this sense, Gushee continued, “a savior does not have to be a good person but just needs to fulfill his divinely appointed role. Trump is seen by many as actually having done so while president.” This view of Trump is especially strong “in the Pentecostal wing of the conservative Christian world,” Gushee wrote, where he is sometimes also viewed as an anointed leader sent by God. “Anointed” here means set apart and especially equipped by God for a holy task. Sometimes the most unlikely people got anointed by God in the Bible. So Trump’s unlikeliness for this role is actually evidence in favor. The multiple criminal charges against Trump serve to strengthen the belief of many evangelicals about his ties to God, according to Gushee: The prosecutions underway against Trump have been easily interpretable as signs of persecution, which can then connect to the suffering Jesus theme in Christianity. Trump has been able to leverage that with lines like, “They’re not persecuting me. They’re persecuting you.” The idea that he is unjustly suffering and, in so doing, vicariously absorbing the suffering that his followers would be enduring is a powerful way for Trump to be identified with Jesus. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, gave voice to this phenomenon when she protested the filing of criminal charges against Trump. On her way to a pro-Trump rally in Manhattan on April 3, 2023, she told Brian Glenn of the Right Side Broadcasting Network: Jesus was arrested and murdered by the Roman government. There have been many people throughout history that have been arrested and persecuted by radical, corrupt governments, and it’s beginning today in New York City, and I just can’t believe it’s happening, but I’ll always support him. He’s done nothing wrong. The more interesting case, Gushee wrote, is Trump himself. I accept as given that he entered politics as the amoral, worldly, narcissistic New York businessman that he appeared to be. Like all G.O.P. politicians, he knew he would have to win over the conservative Christian voting bloc so central to the party. If people wanted to make him out to be savior, anointed one and agent of God, he would not object. It enhanced their attention and loyalty and his power over and in this group. Lacking any inner spiritual or moral compass that would seek to deflect overinflated or even idolatrous claims about himself, he instead reposted their artwork and videos and so on. Anyone truly serious about the Christian faith would deflect claims to being a savior or anointed one, but he did not have such brakes operating. I do not suppose that he actually believed himself to be any of these things, but others did, and it helped him, and it fed his ego, so why stand in the way? Certain denominations among evangelicals are more willing to believe Trump is God’s messenger than others. John Fea, a professor at Messiah University in Pennsylvania, wrote by email that there are evangelicals of the charismatic and Pentecostal variety — the so-called New Apostolic Reformation or Independent Network Charismatics — who believe that Donald Trump is an agent of God to rescue the United States from the atheistic, even demonic, secularists and progressives who want to destroy the country by advancing abortion, gay marriage, wokeness, transgenderism, etc. “This whole movement,” Fea wrote, is rooted in prophecy. The prophets speak directly to God and receive direct messages from him about politics. They think that politics is a form of spiritual warfare and believe that God is using Donald Trump to help wage this war. (God can even use sinners to accomplish his will — there are a lot of biblical examples of this, they say.) But even this group of Christians does not see Trump as the Messiah, Fea wrote: “They will be quick to tell you that only Jesus is the Messiah. They do not believe Trump has special powers, but he is certainly an agent or vessel for God to work through to make America Christian again.” As far as Trump goes, Fea continued, “he probably thinks these charismatics and Pentecostals are crazy. But if they are going to tell him he is God’s anointed one, he will gladly accept the title and use it if it wins him votes. He will happily accept their prayers because it is politically expedient.” Robert P. Jones, the founder and chief executive of P.R.R.I. (formerly the Public Religion Research Institute), contends that Trump’s religious claims are an outright fraud: Trump has given us adequate evidence that he has little religious sensibility or theological acuity. He has scant knowledge of the Bible, he has said that he has never sought forgiveness for his sins, and he has no substantive connection to a church or denomination. He’s not only one of the least religious but also likely one of the most theologically ignorant presidents the country has ever had. Trump, Jones added in an email, “almost certainly lacks the kind of religious sensibility or theological framework necessary to personally grasp what it would even mean to be a Jesus-like, messianic figure.” Despite that, Jones wrote, “many of his most loyal Christian followers, white evangelical Protestants, have indeed come to see him as a kind of metaphorical savior figure.”

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Detached house sells for $915,000 in Harvard

A 4,088-square-foot house built in 1973 has changed hands. The spacious property located at 10 Ann Lee Road in Harvard was sold on Dec. 21, 2023, for $915,000, or $224 per square foot. This two-story house boasts a generous living space with four bedrooms and four baths. The home's outer structure has a gambrel roof frame, composed of asphalt. Inside, there is a fireplace. Additional houses have recently been purchased nearby:

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Western Mass. Boys Basketball Super 7: Seven schools represented on 2023 list

Andrew Mabry is one of two returning Super 7 players this winter.

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Westfield Tech students nearing completion on home build at 64 Mill St.

WESTFIELD - It’s been a year since Westfield Technical Academy broke ground for a new home at 64 Mill St. to be built by students in construction tech, cabinetmaking, electrical wiring, and horticulture, and the house is nearing completion, according to lead construction instructor Matthew Gomes. The house is a project of the newly formed Westfield Technical Foundation, a non-profit entity set up to benefit the school, enabling WTA to borrow the money to buy the property and build the house from the Polish National Credit Union at zero percent interest. When the home is completed, it will be sold, and proceeds will go back into the school’s programs.

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This Seed Season, Consider a Catalog That Takes a Different Approach

It takes a village, not a threshing machine, to complete the harvest of pounds of watermelon seeds that will fill the simple, white packets sold by Turtle Tree Seed. “Nobody minds helping with the watermelon-seed collection,” said Lia Babitch, the seed company’s co-manager. She’s not just talking about their crew: Residents of Camphill Village, in Copake, N.Y., where Turtle Tree is headquartered, are happy to join in. It’s a pretty sweet task, after all, that involves eating the fruit of yellow-fleshed Early Moonbeam, or perhaps an heirloom like Moon and Stars, and spitting the seeds into cups provided for that purpose — the first step before washing, drying and eventually packing them for sale.

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Tom Werner explains why he thinks Red Sox fans should go to Fenway Park in 2024

SPRINGFIELD — Red Sox chairman Tom Werner was asked a simple question Friday night before the team’s annual Winter Weekend event started at the MassMutual Center. If the team plans on lowering payroll and not truly going “full throttle” in pursuit of contention in 2024, then how is it comfortable asking fans to pay ticket prices that generally are the highest in baseball? His response was that the Fenway Park experience is about much more than how good the Red Sox are — an interesting thought considering how fans of visiting teams have seemed to take over the ballpark on multiple occasions in recent years. “First, we recognize the frustration that fans have,” Werner said. “We spend a lot of time trying to figure out ways to bring new fans into the park and have some tickets that are very affordable for students. We spend a lot of time talking about the experience of going to Fenway. We think our record is probably the most important thing, but there are other things that make going to Fenway a special place. And we’ve got to put a better product on the field and we know that.” It’s no secret that morale among Red Sox fans has plateaued after a second straight last-place finish and a disappointing offseason that began with Werner’s ill-fated “full throttle” declaration and has come to the point of the team significantly lowering expectations this week, with team president Sam Kennedy acknowledging Friday that the payroll would likely be lower than its 2023 mark of $225 million in 2024. A year after the well-documented booing of team officials at the Town Hall event that opened Winter Weekend in Springfield, that format was replaced and fans were not allowed to directly address Red Sox personnel Friday night. Kennedy and chief baseball officer Craig Breslow were met with some boos as they took the stage to join former closer Jonathan Papelbon on Friday night and a couple of loud jeers were heard from the crowd during the event. One fan screamed, “Add some pitching!” Another interrupted Breslow to call him “Chaim Bloom 2.0.” BetMGM BET $5, GET $158! BONUS BETS CLAIM OFFER Promo code: MASS158 STATES: MA, KY, AZ, CO, IA, IL, IN, KS, LA, MD, MI, NJ, NY, OH, PA, TN, VA. Visit BetMGM.com for Terms and Conditions. 21 years of age or older to wager. MA Only. New Customer Offer. All promotions are subject to qualification and eligibility requirements. Rewards issued as non-withdrawable bonus bets. Bonus bets expire 7 days from issuance. In Partnership with MGM Springfield. Play it smart from the start with GameSense. GameSenseMA.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-327-5050 or visit gamblinghelplinema.org. Kennedy, as top Red Sox executives often do, chalked up fan sentiment to the passion of Red Sox fans in good times and bad. “We were standing in the lobby and a very nice woman asked if we could take pictures with her and her 10-year old son,” Kennedy said. “We smiled and took a picture. As she walked away, she whispered in my ear, saying, ‘Don’t worry, we don’t hate you as much as you think we do.’ And to me, that represents the fact that the anger, the frustration, the vitriol, especially on social media, I think is very different from the real world. “When you get out and talk to Red Sox fans people are angry and upset because we haven’t performed, and that’s what makes this the best market in all baseball. Our fans care deeply. They’re more passionate than any other fan base in all of baseball. Werner, acknowledging that questions about the team’s direction and decision to largely avoid impact additions instead of improving the outlook drastically for 2024, said he believed there were plenty of reasons for fans to be optimistic. “I want to say that the glass is more than half full,” he said. “When you look around our team, look at our infield. Triston Casas. We made a great trade, I think, for (Vaughn) Grissom. Hopefully, Trevor Story will be healthy. Raffy Devers at third. If (Jarren) Duran has a healthy year. I’m looking forward to Wilyer Abreu having 400 at bats. “There’s a lot to be excited about, and we admit that our pitching wasn’t strong last year, but I expect improvement. I expect the people who are on our team, and we have a young core, will be a step closer to being excellent.” Werner contended that the Red Sox brand hasn’t suffered despite the fan outrage. “All I can say is that it’s about where we are at the end of the season,” Werner said. “It’s not about where we are now. We hope and expect improvement. I think most fans get that we have an exciting young core, but we have to demonstrate it. “When I last looked, we won four World Series, which is more than any team in baseball since the year 2000,” Werner added. “I think our fans are frustrated. We’re frustrated, but I’m very proud of the Red Sox.”

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Nikki Haley Is Chasing Independents. They Have a Mind of Their Own.

Nikki Haley’s presidential aspirations may hang on a victory in the New Hampshire primary election on Tuesday, powered by her sway with people who do not belong to a political party. It’s not a bad bet in a state where about 40 percent of voters call themselves independents. The problem with her plan: Those voters come in all shapes and stripes, and many of them aren’t open to her. Ms. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, has won over plenty of voters in the middle in New Hampshire. They include moderate, conservative-leaning independents chased from the Republican Party by former President Donald J. Trump. And about 4,000 Democrats have re-registered as Republicans or independents to vote in the G.O.P. primary, in some cases to thwart Mr. Trump’s steady march to the nomination.

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Southwick Conservation Commission approves outlay to acquire Middle Pond parcel

SOUTHWICK — The Conservation Commission approved covering the cost of acquiring a parcel of property its owner wants to donate to the town on the Middle Pond of Congamond Lake at its meeting Monday night. “Here’s my favorite one,” said Commission Vice Chair Dennis Clark about the commission’s agenda item to appropriate the money needed to pay the legal fees and for a survey needed for the town to accept the lot at 13 Berkshire Ave.

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Cold again tonight, then temps climb - Boston News, Weather, Sports

It was cold out there today! It’ll be cold tonight, before we begin a day-to-day temperature climb. Highs reach the 50s this weekend. Although it comes with a strong front that will bring heavy rain and gusty wind late Sunday into Monday morning. Temperatures started off in the teens and 20s. There were a lot of clouds that helped cap high temperatures in the upper 20s/low 30s. Our average high this time of year is 45° in Boston, so today was certainly a taste of winter! Overnight, temperatures fall into the low/mid 20s. Tomorrow might feel better for you with highs near 40°/low 40s. A warm front lifts through late Friday into Saturday. This will usher in more mild air. Highs will be near 50° for the first half of the weekend. It’ll be nice for the Army – Navy game. You might not need the thick coat! High temperatures Sunday reach the upper 50s late in the day. This comes ahead of a strong front that brings heavy rain and gusty wind. Rain will arrive later Sunday and continue through Monday morning. Rainfall totals are expected to be 3/4″ – 2″. Wind will be strongest early Monday morning with gusts 40-55 mph, stronger for Cape Cod. Behind this storm, temperatures will fall into the 40s, and it’ll stay cool for the rest of our 7-day forecast. -Meteorologist Melanie Black

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Boston snow storm this weekend: How many inches of snow in Massachusetts, NH? NBC Boston

Our first impactful and widespread snowstorm of the season in southern New England started Saturday evening and continues into Sunday afternoon. The National Weather Service has issued a Winter Storm Warning to different areas in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. And it begins! The snow is closing in on most of the area. Snowfall rates overnight could be over 1" per hour in spots near Central MA. and Southern NH. #Boston #newengland pic.twitter.com/U9th9WCDkC — Sydney Welch (@SydWeather) January 7, 2024 There’s a lot at stake with this one, especially along the coastline where the thought process continues to be focused on the relatively mild ocean water and a gusty easterly wind which will develop. This will certainly be a determining factor in terms of snow totals across the area (from coastal to inland communities) which will be greatly impacted by the wind direction which will affect the overall temperatures. Get Boston local news, weather forecasts, lifestyle and entertainment stories to your inbox. Sign up for NBC Boston’s newsletters. A potent storm system bringing snow, freezing rain and ice arrived in the region Saturday night. Follow NBC10 Boston on... Instagram: instagram.com/nbc10boston TikTok: tiktok.com/@nbc10boston Facebook: facebook.com/NBC10Boston X: twitter.com/NBC10Boston When does the snow start in Boston? Right now it looks like the east wind wins out keeping snow amounts low along the coastal plain, but we won’t let our guard down in case there are some subtle changes once the storm gets going overnight and Sunday. Expect clouds to increase and thicken throughout this afternoon with a few coastal flurries and snow showers developing. Highs reach the mid to upper 30s south, upper 20s north. New England snow forecast Snow breaks out from west to east this evening and ramps up overnight with a few communities seeing 1-2” per hour snow rates after midnight. Along the immediate coastline, south shore of Boston, and down over the Cape, rain will mix in and the precipitation which is expected to flip to all rain. The wind will also ramp up overnight as low pressure develops just south of the New England coast with an east/northeast wind developing gusting up to 40, up to 50 by daybreak over the Cape and Islands. Overnight lows drop into the upper 20s to low 30s inland, mid 30s along the coast, 20s northern New England. Precipitation is expected to wind down a bit after daybreak with snow inland, mix/rain along the coast with temperatures starting out below freezing inland, above freezing along the coast. At this time our system will start to pull away from the region which will allow cold air to funnel back into the area via a gusty north wind resulting in a flash freeze on untreated surfaces…we’ll also see another round of precipitation coincide with the cold air moving back in, this is when the coast will start to make up on snow accumulations. Live radar of the Massachusetts snowstorm Morning temps start out around 30 inland, 20s north, mid 30s coast, falling back into the 20s in the afternoon via a gusty north wind. Snow pulls out early Sunday night as low pressure exits east. Very cold start to the work week with early morning temps in the teens Monday morning, climbing into the 30s in the afternoon with some sunshine. The pattern stays active as we will be closely monitoring our next system arriving here by the middle of next week which will likely have significant impacts to the region with heavy rain and gusty winds. Beyond that, another storm possible by the weekend, that one looks a bit colder. More on those in the days to come, one storm at a time….

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Topics Suppressed in China Are Underrepresented on TikTok, Study Says

Topics often suppressed by the Chinese government within its borders, including Tibet, Hong Kong protests and the Uyghur population, appear to be unusually underrepresented on TikTok compared with Instagram, according to a report published Thursday by online researchers. The findings could add to a wave of concern that Beijing may be influencing content on the popular video platform. TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company. The report, from the Network Contagion Research Institute at Rutgers University, analyzed the volume of posts with certain hashtags on TikTok and Instagram, which has hundreds of millions more users. For popular pop culture and politics terms like #TaylorSwift and #Trump, the researchers found roughly two Instagram posts for every one on TikTok, the report said. But that ratio jumped to more than 8-to-1 for #Uyghur or #Uighur, 30-to-1 for #Tibet, 57-to-1 for #TiananmenSquare, and 174-to-1 for #HongKongProtest.

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Cool kicks for a powerful cause at the Embrace Boston Sneaker Gala

The Embrace Boston Sneaker Gala was held Sunday night in the city, celebrating those who embody the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Racial equity was top of mind as attendees came dressed to the nines from head to toe, wearing cool kicks for a powerful cause at the second annual MLK Embrace Honors at Big Night Live. “My sneakers have Dr. King on one side, really pensive and thinking, and then the other side has Tommie Smith and John Carlos from the 1968 Olympics when they threw their fists in the air," explained Michael Curry, the president and CEO of Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers. NOW: The Embrace Boston Sneaker Gala is officially kicking off at Big Night Live! 👟 People wearing their finest attire and coolest kicks… honoring 3 couples with the MLK and Coretta Scott King Awards @NBC10Boston @NECN pic.twitter.com/vzzpgkGSoT — Kirsten Glavin (@kirstenglavin) January 14, 2024 Get Boston local news, weather forecasts, lifestyle and entertainment stories to your inbox. Sign up for NBC Boston’s newsletters. "We wanted to have an article of clothing that unites all of us," said the president and CEO of Embrace Boston, Imari Paris Jeffries. NBC10 Boston's own Latoyia Edwards was one of the revered emcees at the event. Wondering who’s going to bring the energy and excitement to the Embrace Honors: Friends & Family Sneaker Affair? Introducing you to our emcees of the night, @NBC10Boston's @LatoyNBCBoston and @celtics In-Arena Host and professional dancer Melisa Valdez!#EMBRACEHONORS pic.twitter.com/bMRhNbGTfp — Embrace Boston (@EmbraceBOS) January 12, 2024 Three couples were honored for their work in the community with the MLK and Coretta Scott King awards at the event that raises money for Embrace Boston, whose mission is to dismantle structural racism through the intersection of arts, culture, community, research and policy. The vision is a radically inclusive and equitable Boston. “It’s truly humbling and never expected it," said Dr. Kia Martin, an educator and equity advocate. "Excited about being here tonight, it’s an incredible honor.” The Martins, two of the recipients, have spent their lives promoting inclusivity and building equitable communities. “We know what it’s like not to have meaningful healthcare, we know what it's like not to have schools properly stocked with the right books,” said Demond Martin, CEO of WellWithAll. It was a night of music, dancing and joy -- with a commitment to continue the cause. “There is not any other event that celebrates the life and legacy of Martin Luther King with love, joy, dancing and communities,” Paris Jeffries said. This is part of a series of five events put on by Embrace Boston. The next one will be held during Black History Month. Embrace Boston, the organization behind the monument honoring the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, seeks to make Boston a more equitable city.

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Boston's untold Black history

Boston is known for its host of historic landmarks, such as the Boston Tea Party and the USS Constitution, but there are also many historical stories and sites in the city that too often go unheard and unseen. Researcher and educator Joel Mackall seeks to change this through his Hidden History of Black Boston tours — a series of driving and walking tours that highlight the city's often untold Black history. WBUR reporter Arielle Gray joins The Common to discuss Mackall's Hidden History of Black Boston tour in the North End, which took her from the Rose Kennedy Greenway to the Copp's Hill Burying Ground.

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Paul Pierce: Lakers hung In-Season Tournament banner to spite Celtics

Paul Pierce faced the Los Angeles Lakers in the NBA Finals twice as a member of the Boston Celtics, winning the Larry O’Brien Trophy in 2008 before losing to LA in 2010. So he knows what it takes to not only get to the Finals, but to win it all. So when the Lakers lifted a banner to the Crypto.com Arena rafters for their In-Season Tournament championship, Pierce took issue with it. “They did that to spite the Celtics, bro,” Pierce told ex-Celtics teammate Kevin Garnett on SHOWTIME Basketball’s “Ticket and The Truth.” “I’m telling you because we got 17. So that counts toward the 17? 17.5?” BET ANYTHING GET $250 BONUS ESPN BET CLAIM OFFER MASS 21+ and present in MA, NJ, PA, VA, MD, WV, TN, LA, KS, KY, CO, AZ, IL, IA, IN, OH, MI. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-Gambler. Pierce suggested the Lakers should have received a plaque rather than raise a banner. “Just put it in the locker room,” Pierce said. It’s been a tough road for the Lakers since their victory in the inaugural tournament. They sit ninth in the Western Conference and are 3-7 in their last 10 games. The Lakers and the Celtics are tied for most NBA titles with 17. Boston has come close — reaching the NBA Finals in 2021 under first-year coach Ime Udoka — but has yet to win Banner 18. Going into Sunday’s game against the San Antonio Spurs, the Celtics sit atop the Eastern Conference standings with a 25-6 record and built a roster in the offseason that will certainly keep them competitive as they hope to make a lengthy playoff run. As for the Lakers? The In-Season Tournament banner might end up being their bright spot of 2023-24.

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2023 All-Western Mass. Girls Cross Country: Selections announced for fall season

MassLive announced its All-Western Mass. teams for girls cross country on Dec. 28. Take a look at the first and second teams in Class A and Class B below: Class A

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Boston Calling 2024: Ed Sheeran, Tyler Childers, The Killers headlining festival

Boston Calling, one of the most popular three-day music festivals in the country, has revealed its 2024 lineup. The annual festival will take place Memorial Day Weekend from Friday, May 24 until Sunday, May 26 at the Harvard Athletic Complex in Allston. This year’s headliners include Grammy Award-winning global superstar Ed Sheeran on Friday, acclaimed country singer Tyler Childers on Saturday, and legendary rock band The Killers on Sunday. The headliners will be joined by more than 50 artists including other notable acts such as Leon Bridges, Trey Anastasio and Classic TAB, Hozier, Reneé Rapp, Khruangbin, Megan Thee Stallion, Jessie Murph, Frank Turner and The Sleeping Souls, and Young the Giant. More than 20 local acts will also be performing on both the main stages and the Orange stage at Boston Calling. This year’s local lineup includes indie pop band Beach Weather, singer-songwriter Kieran Rhodes, the quirky Senseless Optimism, the fiery hip hop of kei, and guitar-driven rockers Tysk Tysk Task, and Bad Rabbits. Fans looking to purchase tickets before they go on sale can shop online using StubHub and VividSeats. The full day-by-day lineup for Boston Calling 2024 is as follows: Friday, May 24 Ed Sheeran Leon Bridges Reneé Rapp Young the Giant Luke Hemmings David Kushner Cannons Beach Weather Ric Wilson Madi Diaz Maris Divine Sweater Kieran Rhodes kei JVK Justin Clancy The Wolff Sisters Saturday, May 25 Tyler Childers Trey Anastasio and Classic TAB Khruangbin Frank Turner and The Sleeping Souls Jessie Murph d4vd The Red Clay Strays Tanner Usrey Bad Rabbits The Castellows Motherfolk Senseless Optimism Tori Tori Ward Hayden Paper Lady Cakeswagg Highwater Haulers Sunday, May 26 The Killers Hozier Megan Thee Stallion The Revivalists Lovejoy Chappell Roan Blondshell Royel Otis The Heavy Heavy Christone Kingfish Ingram Francis of Delirium Stefan Thev The Thing Fleshwater Zola Simone Billy Dean Thomas Tysk Tysk Task The lineup is subject to change, and performance times have not yet been determined. More details on the festival’s food and drink components will be announced in the coming months. Specially priced presale 3-Day General Admission, GA+, VIP, and Platinum tickets, as well as Single Day General Admission, GA+, VIP and Platinum tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. on Thursday, Jan. 11. Fans can get updates on the festival by going online or by following Boston Calling on social media. Fans looking to purchase tickets before they go on sale can shop online using StubHub and VividSeats.

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New Hope and an Old Hurdle for a Terrible Disease With Terrible Treatments

But there is no money to be made on a drug for a condition that overwhelmingly affects the poor, and academic or public health institutes rarely have the resources to push a drug through to the end of the process, said Marcela Vieira, a Brazilian intellectual property lawyer with an expertise in drug development and access. The global drug development system has long favored private sector firms that can bankroll experiments and diseases that afflict people with money to pay for treatments. Increasingly, new research on diseases such as leishmaniasis is coming from public sector and academic institutions in middle-income countries, particularly Brazil, South Africa, India, Cuba and China, Ms. Vieira said. The Covid-19 pandemic, during which low- and middle-income countries were shunted to the back of the line for vaccines and therapeutics, helped spur new investment into building drug development and production capacity. “We need to do it, because no one will do it for us,” said Dr. Juliana Quintero, an expert in leishmaniasis and researcher at PECET. The program’s research labs sit six floors up in a bulky brick building at the University of Antioquia in Medellín. On the ground floor, Dr. Quintero sees patients who arrive on buses from rural towns. She knows that few can afford to stay in the city for a month of injections; she wants a treatment she can send home with them, ideally one they can take by mouth. Because funds for drug development for leishmaniasis are so scarce, she hopes for something that will work for every one of the 22 parasites in the family that cause variations of the disease in tropical countries around the world.

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Floating East River Pool May Open to Public Next Year Under Hochul Plan

As summers get hotter and people turn to pools and waterways for escape, drownings in New York have reached record highs, Ms. Hochul said. In 2021, the last year for which data was available, 230 people drowned in the state. All of the deaths were preventable, the governor said. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has cited drowning as the leading cause of death among children 1 to 4 years old. “If you don’t know how to swim, what you think is a refuge, that break, can become a death trap in an instant,” Ms. Hochul said. The initiative announced on Friday reflects the largest statewide investment in swimming since the New Deal and will expand swimming access for underserved communities, the governor said. Shekar Krishnan, who leads the City Council’s parks and recreation committee, called the effort an “important piece,” but said it was not enough to stem the number of drownings in the city. “When the mayor is cutting free swim lessons, cutting summer programs for children and hiring fewer lifeguards than ever, a floating pool in the East River is nice, but that can’t save a child from drowning at Rockaway Beach,” Mr. Krishnan, a member of the council’s Progressive Caucus, said.

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Salad chain honeygrow offering Chicken Parmesan stir-fry for a limited time

Fancy a plate of stir-fry that features the flavors of Italy? Well, here’s your chance to crush that craving. The restaurant chain honeygrow has specialized in stir-fry, salads and honeybars since 2012, and now the Philadelphia-based company is offering its “Chicken Parm Stir-Fry” for a limited time this winter. The delicacy will be available at honeygrow’s 40 locations nationwide, including its Massachusetts stores, starting Tuesday, Jan. 16. Coated in house-made tomato basil sauce, the stir-fry consists of egg white noodles, roasted chicken, grape tomatoes, bell peppers, red onions, breadcrumbs, parsley and shaved parmesan. Salad chain honeygrow will feature Chicken Parm Stir-fry on its menu from Jan. 16 until March 19.Courtesy of honeygrow Justin Rosenberg, founder and CEO of honeygrow, said the idea for the saucy stir-fry came from his culinary team’s love for the classic Italian-American dish. “Our culinary team and I went back to the drawing board and thought a lot about the things we love to eat – chicken parm was a constant,” Rosenburg said. “The team did a great job in creating a nutritious twist on a beloved classic that brings together comfort and a wholesome meal.” The Chicken Parm Stir Fry is 684 calories per serving, and costs $12.53. The stir fry will be featured on honeygrow’s menus through March 19. The food chain has two locations in Massachusetts, one in Boston’s Fenway neighborhood and the other in Seaport and those interested in trying can order on DoorDash. More information about the Chicken Parm Stir-Fry can be found online.

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How to watch Undercover: Caught on Tape series premiere on A&E for free

A&E’s new series, ‘Undercover: Caught on Tape,” looks at the first-hand accounts of dangerous investigations from undercover agents. The series will premiere on Thursday, January 11 at 10 p.m. EST and will be broadcast on A&E. Viewers looking to stream the new season can do so by using Philo and DirecTV Stream. Both streaming services offer free trials for new users. Sling is also an option to watch A&E and offers 50% off your first month. According to a description of the new series by A&E, “Undercover: Caught on Tape” is a true crime series offering viewers a first-hand account of dangerous criminal investigations from those closest to the action, the undercover agents themselves. Undercover agents are on the front lines, often risking their lives to gather evidence that may help take criminals off the streets. Each episode of the series includes surveillance video and audio recordings from actual investigations to reveal the critical moments that could make or break a case—or an agent’s life. “Living in secrecy and often unrecognized beyond their tightest circles, these agents rarely get to tell their stories, until now,” according to A&E. Here is a look at the new true crime series from A&E’s YouTube Channel: How can I watch “Undercover: Caught on Tape” without cable? The new series will premiere at 10 p.m. EST and will be broadcast on A&E. Viewers looking to stream the new season can do so by using Philo and DirecTV Stream. Both streaming services offer free trials for new users. Sling is also an option to watch A&E and offers 50% off your first month. What is Philo? Philo is an over-the-top internet live TV streaming service that offers 60+ entertainment and lifestyle channels for the budget-friendly price of $25/month. What is DirecTV Stream? The streaming platform offers a plethora of content including streaming the best of live and On Demand, starting with more than 75 live TV channels. What is Sling TV? Sling TV is the first app-based TV service letting you stream live television and on-demand content over the internet. Watch live shows wherever you are, at home or on the go! With Sling TV, you get to choose the television option that’s right for you, including Channel Add-ons, Premiums Add-ons, DVR Plus and more.

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The Nicest New Years Resolution I Ever Made - The New York Times

Between those reminders and the writing itself, I can feel myself slowing down. This is not the kind of writing I can blast through at a messy speed, correcting later. This kind of writing requires a deliberation that little else in my life requires: one thought, one word, one sentence at a time. In that sense, the letters are as much for me as for their recipients: a thin, scrawled thread connecting us across the miles, linking their grief with my grief, their joy with my joy, their generosity with my thanks. Sometimes this practice reminds me to act on my own generosity, a way to tell people I love or admire that I’m thinking of them. I like to imagine how surprised they will be to find a handwritten letter tucked among the bills and the ads they never glance at for products they will never need. Not that making time is easy. It may have been a mistake to have hit on such an ambitious project during a pandemic that keeps making nearly everything harder. But I don’t regret it. Despite one setback after another — the death of my beloved father-in-law, health issues in the family, major surgery — this project is self-rewarding, so I keep finding my way back to it, and to my grandmother’s secretary. Finding time for anything that matters will always be a challenge, but the notes themselves aren’t hard. All that dread, for years, always putting off and putting off the obligation of a thank-you note or the duty of a condolence letter — why did I waste so much time on dread? With every renewed effort, I marvel again at how easy it is. How it takes almost nothing to write just a few lines, nothing to fix a stamp in the corner, to walk the letter out to the mailbox and lift the little metal flag to tell the mail carrier to stop at this house. I wish I had known long ago how much pleasure I would take in lifting that little red flag. I wish I’d remembered how much I love the smell of paper and ink and the memory of my grandmother, sitting at this very secretary, the way she said, “You’re the writer in the family” and made it real. This is the 326th day of the year, and it is clear now that I will not come remotely close to making my goal of 365 handwritten notes. At best, I will hit 200. Still, I’ve spent this hard year being reminded, again and again, of the magic I recognized as a child at my grandmother’s elbow. As Thanksgiving approaches, I am filled with gratitude for the people I want to greet, the people I hope to console, the people I need to thank. And they’re all only a mailbox away. Margaret Renkl, a contributing Opinion writer, is the author of the books “Graceland, at Last: Notes on Hope and Heartache From the American South” and “Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss.” The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.

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How to Take Care of Your Skin in the Fall and Winter

As the outside air cools and the heat starts to crank on indoors, you may notice your skin becoming flaky, maybe even a bit itchy. Welcome to fall and winter. Your skin’s main job is to “keep the inside world in and the outside world out,” said Dr. Brittany Craiglow, an associate adjunct professor of dermatology at the Yale School of Medicine and a dermatologist in Fairfield, Conn. The outermost layer, the lipid barrier, which is composed of fatty compounds, helps to prevent germs and toxins from entering your body and hydration from leaving it. When temperatures drop, the air gets drier — both indoors and outdoors — and moisture gets pulled from the lipid barrier. With less hydration, the turnover of skin cells is impaired and they start to clump together, which people can experience as dry, flaky or even scaly skin, Dr. Craiglow said. Some are more susceptible to developing dry skin in cooler weather, particularly older adults and those with eczema, said Dr. Jeffrey Weinberg, a clinical professor of dermatology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. But it can happen to anyone.

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The F.D.A. Approved Gene Editing Therapy for Sickle Cell Disease

The Food and Drug Administration announced today that it had approved a gene editing treatment for sickle cell disease, the debilitating blood disorder caused by a single mutated gene. The therapy, called Casgevy, will become the first available treatment for humans in the U.S. to use the revolutionary gene editing tool CRISPR. The approval — which was announced alongside a second gene therapy that does not use gene editing — offers hope for the 100,000 Americans, most of them Black, who live with the disease. But the one-time treatments — so effective in clinical trials that they have been hailed as cures — come with both technical and financial obstacles that limit their reach. The sickle cell treatment will serve a test case for using CRISPR gene editing to treat other diseases. CRISPR Therapeutics, one of the developers of Casgevy, is now studying gene editing to treat cancer, diabetes, and A.L.S., among others. In sub-Saharan Africa, where a vast majority of people with sickle cell live, the new treatments will be effectively unavailable because of the price and lack of medical infrastructure to administer the treatment.

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David Ellenson, 76, Who Guided a Generation of Reform Rabbis, Dies

Rabbi David Ellenson, a scholar who wrestled with the interplay of tradition and modernity in Judaism and who shaped a generation of Reform rabbis as a teacher and later as the president of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, died on Thursday at his home in Manhattan. He was 76. His wife, Rabbi Jacqueline Koch Ellenson, said the cause was a heart ailment. Though his father was a lawyer, Rabbi David Ellenson was surrounded by rabbis and rabbinical students for much of his life. Not only is his wife a rabbi, but one of his five children is also one, and two others are rabbinical students. He taught for more than 40 years at the Reform seminary, which trains rabbis, cantors and Jewish educators on four campuses: in New York, Cincinnati, Los Angeles and Jerusalem. He forged important academic and intellectual alliances across the Orthodox, Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist branches of Judaism, becoming something of “a denominational crossover,” said his friend Menachem Butler, an Orthodox Jew and a fellow in Jewish legal studies at Harvard Law School. Though he was raised Orthodox, Rabbi Ellenson remained true to the beliefs and ideals of Reform Judaism. He championed the rights of women and L.G.B.T.Q. Jews to be ordained, and he promoted the belief that fathers, not just mothers, could pass on Jewish lineage, positions that were rejected by the more traditional branch of his youth.

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New Boston Police Contract Will Let Civilians Direct Traffic at Some Construction Sites

StreetsblogMASS relies on the generous support of readers like you. Help us meet our year-end fundraising goals – give today! Last week, the labor union that represents most Boston police officers ratified a new contract that will introduce a number of reforms – including one that will start allowing civilians to take unwanted traffic detail shifts at construction sites. Under the former contract, Boston Police officers were the only people allowed to direct traffic for events and at construction sites. And they got paid extremely handsomely to do so: Boston police working as flaggers take home $60 an hour. In spite of that lucrative pay, Boston has a lot of construction sites, and fewer and fewer people who want to wear a police uniform. Boston City Councilor Kendra Lara told StreetsblogMASS earlier this year that over 40 percent of requests for police details at construction sites were going unfilled. The new labor contract removes a key barrier to reforming this system. But there is still a city ordinance on the books that requires at least one Boston Police officer at every city construction site "to protect the safety and general welfare of the public and to preserve the free circulation of traffic." A press spokesperson for Mayor Michelle Wu told StreetsblogMASS last week that their office is aware of the ordinance and has "identified multiple legal paths to implementing the new collective bargaining agreement." Old rules created absurd delays for street projects Councilor Lara also told StreetsblogMASS that many privately-run construction sites will simply ignore the law and do their work without a flagger if nobody responds to their requests for a detail. But construction firms who are sticklers for the rules can end up waiting months before a cop shows up to let them get their work done. That's what happened earlier this year in Oak Square, where the MBTA waited a full year for a police detail to show up so that they could paint some new crosswalks on Washington Street in Oak Square. Neighbors report that those crosswalks finally got painted in August – after a year-long wait. New contract hikes pay, allows civilian flaggers For all these reasons, allowing civilian flaggers at construction sites had been one of the city's key points of negotiation for a new collective bargaining agreement with its police union. Police details will still be required at "high-priority" events and construction sites, which involve major streets, busy intersections, or major events that anticipate over 5,000 attendees. The new contract would also pay cops who work those high-priority details "the highest overtime rate of the most senior officer." At other worksites, such as those along quiet neighborhood streets, Boston Police would still get the right of first refusal to fill traffic details. But if no Boston Police are interested, the work can be offered to other non-BPD certified officers, including campus police and retired Boston cops. If people with those qualifications still aren't interested, construction contractors can then offer the job to civilian workers. The agreement further specifies that anyone directing traffic in those lower-priority sites will earn $60 per hour. The new agreement will also ban cops from double-booking their shifts, which allowed some to get paid twice for the same period of time when one detail ended early. Incredibly, the police department is still using a labor-intensive paper-based system to assign details in each police district. The new agreement will allow for a citywide electronic scheduling system.

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F.D.A. Issues First Approval for Mass Drug Imports to States From Canada

The Food and Drug Administration has allowed Florida to import millions of dollars worth of medications from Canada at far lower prices than in the United States, overriding fierce decades-long objections from the pharmaceutical industry. The approval, issued in a letter to Florida Friday, is a major policy shift for the United States, and supporters hope it will be a significant step forward in the long and largely unsuccessful effort to rein in drug prices. Individuals in the United States are allowed to buy directly from Canadian pharmacies, but states have long wanted to be able to purchase medicines in bulk for their Medicaid programs, government clinics and prisons from Canadian wholesalers. Florida has estimated that it could save up to $150 million in its first year of the program, importing medicines that treat H.I.V., AIDS, diabetes, hepatitis C and psychiatric conditions. Other states have applied to the F.D.A. to set up similar programs. But significant hurdles remain. Some drug manufacturers have agreements with Canadian wholesalers not to export their medicines, and the Canadian government has already taken steps to block the export of prescription drugs that are in short supply.

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RMV reports big increase in licensed drivers in first 6 months of new law - Boston News, Weather, Sports

BOSTON (WHDH) - Since a new immigrant license law went into effect six months ago, the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles has seen a large increase in new drivers obtaining driver’s licenses and learner’s permits. The Work and Family Mobility Act allowed residents to obtain a driver’s license regardless of immigration status. The law went into effect on July 1, and since then the RMV has issued 91,961 new learner’s permits and 54,952 new, first-time driver’s licenses to Massachusetts residents. This represents a 244 percent increase in new learner’s permits and a 120 percent increase in new driver’s licenses. “Since the Work and Family Mobility Act was implemented in July, thousands of Massachusetts residents have been able to get licenses helping provide access to friends, families, and their communities,” said MassDOT Secretary and CEO Monica Tibbits-Nutt in a statement. To accomodate this increase, the RMV increased the number of staff, service hours, and testing locations. “The RMV and its employees have worked hard to meet the challenge of increased demand for appointments and credentials under the Work and Family Mobility Act,” said Registrar Colleen Ogilvie in a statement. “We are grateful for the support from advocates and community leaders throughout this process, and we are continuing to improve each step of our process.” (Copyright (c) 2023 Sunbeam Television. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)

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Attleboro man sentenced for 2020 drunken crash that killed 36-year-old woman

An Attleboro man whose drunk driving caused the death of 36-year-old woman in Norton in June 2020 was sentenced to five to seven years in state prison, Bristol County District Attorney Thomas M. Quinn III said Tuesday. Russell Stone, 63, was sentenced after he pleaded guilty to charges of manslaughter while operating under the influence of alcohol and operating under the influence of alcohol with serious bodily injury in Fall River Superior Court. The charges stemmed from the fatal crash that happened on Oak Street in Norton around 3:51 p.m. on June 7, 2020, Quinn said. Read More: Milan Lucic pleads not guilty to assault and battery charge Witnesses said a woman sitting in the front seat of Stone’s car got out of the vehicle and started screaming at him to slow down. The woman also told investigators that Stone was screaming that he wanted to die before crashing his car into a tree, according to Quinn. When first responders arrived at the crash, they found Thersea McNutt, 36, of Attleboro, unconscious in the back seat. She had severe head trauma and was pronounced dead, Quinn said. In addition, the woman sitting in the front seat suffered a fractured spine and three fractures in her left arm. Investigators later found several empty mini alcohol bottles in the vehicle, according to the district attorney. The bottles had Stone’s DNA on them. After he was brought to the hospital following the crash, a blood test showed that Stone’s blood alcohol level was at .184, more than twice the legal limit. Further investigation revealed Stone was driving 51 mph in a 30 mph zone, Quinn said. Read More: Franklin police charge 3 people believed to have helped hide missing teen “The defendant should not have been behind the wheel because of his intoxicated state. His reckless driving caused the death of an innocent person,” Quinn said. “The sentence is appropriate to hold the defendant accountable.”

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Dozens dash into chilly water for L Street Brownies polar plunge

A New Year's Day tradition that dates back more than a century is still going strong in South Boston.The dozens who took part in this year's L Street Brownies polar plunge braved some chilly conditions on Monday at M Street Beach.Many who dashed into the ocean this year have made the plunge and annual event, and some continue to do it as a tribute to loved ones they have lost."My father Lenny started jumping in the water in his 80s and then when he couldn't do it anymore by himself, we had to go and pick him up. After that, we just kept doing it," said Allston resident Deedee Kelleher. "We were going to stop, and then we all felt guilty one night and said: 'Alright, we've got to do it anyway.'"The L Street Brownies are the oldest “polar bear” club in America and promote health, fun and friendship. Their home base at the Curley Community Center in South Boston is near Carson Beach.The polar plunge raises money for various charities. A New Year's Day tradition that dates back more than a century is still going strong in South Boston. The dozens who took part in this year's L Street Brownies polar plunge braved some chilly conditions on Monday at M Street Beach. Advertisement Many who dashed into the ocean this year have made the plunge and annual event, and some continue to do it as a tribute to loved ones they have lost. "My father Lenny started jumping in the water in his 80s and then when he couldn't do it anymore by himself, we had to go and pick him up. After that, we just kept doing it," said Allston resident Deedee Kelleher. "We were going to stop, and then we all felt guilty one night and said: 'Alright, we've got to do it anyway.'" The L Street Brownies are the oldest “polar bear” club in America and promote health, fun and friendship. Their home base at the Curley Community Center in South Boston is near Carson Beach. The polar plunge raises money for various charities.