Datasets:

Kevinger

/

hub-report-dataset

like 0

0e5f3cb970064df3f119beaf994a4269

Brexiteers Vowed to Take Back Control of U.K. Borders. What Happened?

for state senator (Letter) Happy New Year! I hope everyone was able to ring it in safely. Now that the holidays are over, I’m looking forward to all that we will accomplish in 2024! This week marked more than just a date change. The cities of Westfield, Agawam, Chicopee, Easthampton, Holyoke and West Springfield held their inaugural ceremonies, swearing in their new city councilors, school committee members, and mayors. The town of Agawam welcomed Chris Johnson as their new mayor and I’m looking forward to working alongside him as well as with all municipal elected officials to best benefit our region.

85ef357eef869d15745925756ea2f57a

Westfield Intermediate School showcases student leadership team, activities

WESTFIELD — At the School Committee meeting on Dec. 18, Westfield Intermediate School Principal Gregory Miller introduced some of the students in the newly formed peer leadership club to talk about their school. Miller said the idea for the club came from reading interventionist Joann Roselli, the peer leadership club adviser, who asked what could be done for the students who have been achieving academically, doing the right thing in the classroom and who show a lot of potential for leadership. He said teachers in the school selected 25 sixth graders to form the club to learn some leadership skills and use them to help other students in the school.

1c790b63f8500da5cecd906b77791cff

Pablo Reyes just made a real good case to keep his roster spot on Red Sox

BOSTON -- Hours after it was announced that Trevor Story would be activated from the IL on Tuesday, Red Sox shortstop Pablo Reyes made a strong case to keep his roster spot. It really doesn't get much better than the Monday evening that Reyes put together. It's hard to end a game any better than Reyes did against the Kansas City Royals, smacking a walk-off grand slam to lift Boston to a 6-2 victory and snap a four-game skid. With a teammate at every base and the Red Sox down to their final out, Reyes turned on a 98.2 mph fastball and sent it off the foul pole in left for the walk-off granny. It was Boston's first walk-off win since May 1. His night wasn't just one big swing, either. Reyes was 3-for-4 out of the 8-spot and matched his career high with four RBI to go with three runs scored. He started his evening off with a single in the third and then stole second base. Reyes went to third on an error and scored the game's first run on a Masataka Yoshida sac fly. In the fifth, Reyes doubled to right and then scored on a Connor Wong double to put Boston ahead 2-0. Then came his big swing in the ninth, which nearly didn't happen. On the first pitch from Royals reliever Carlos Hernández, Reyes actually squared up to bunt. The pitch was high and Reyes pulled back for ball one, but it got Rafael Devers leaning at third -- and nearly got him picked off. That would have been a real devastating end to the rally, but pretty much par for the course for the Red Sox over the last week. But Devers made it back in time and Reyes then turned on Hernandez's next fastball, sending it off the pole in left for his first career walk-off homer. It was also his first homer of the season in 33 games with Boston. That swing couldn't have come at a better time, either. With Story set to join the active roster, the Red Sox will have to make a decision come Tuesday. Either Reyes or Yu Chang will likely be DFA'd to make room for Story. Reyes, who was activated off the IL two weeks ago, may have made Chaim Bloom's decision a little easier with his Monday night heroics. He certainly has a fan in Boston skipper Alex Cora. "He's a good kid and there's a reason he's here," Cora said after the win. "We like his versatility, we like his at-bats against lefties. You saw it [Sunday], controlling the zone against righties. He's a good player. He is a really good player and a good kid." Given that Story hasn't played in a year, having a guy like Reyes to back him up will be important down the stretch. Reyes has started 15 games at shortstop and seven at second base, plus a relief appearance at third for Boston this season. He even did some mop-up relief pitching in Sunday's blowout loss to the Blue Jays. A little more than 24 hours after he was on the bump in a 13-1 loss, Reyes sent the Red Sox to a victory with one massive swing of the bat, potentially saving his spot on the team.

9a0d11cb6ffdb11c364c080109844cb7

In an 18th-Century Tavern, a Different Kind of Holiday Market

Over the course of the day, as a group of local folk singers performed traditional French and German carols and a kettle of rosemary- and thyme-scented broth simmered in a hearth, guests mingled and chatted with the nearly 40 vendors. Many of the artisans are committed to the revival of vanishing disciplines, and their goods looked right at home in the 1782 building, a sprawling collection of dining rooms with exposed Dutch Colonial oak framing. ­­The artist Amy Krone offered white oak frame baskets, with dramatic swooping shapes, made in the centuries-old Appalachian style using trees she harvests on her 125-acre property in Roundtop, N.Y. “I’m taking these traditional practices and applying them to modern forms to bring them up to date,” she said. The Queens-based fashion historian and clothing designer Sarah Jean Culbreth sold jackets, smocks and dresses inspired by 18th-century American work wear. “A lot of what I make is trying to prove this point that we should be looking at the clothes of yesteryear because we kind of figured it out back then,” she said. And in the ballroom on the second floor, Jordana Munk Martin, the founder of Blue: The Tatter Textile Library, a nonprofit in Brooklyn focused on fabric research, explained her mission of preserving old fiber-arts techniques, partly through the sale of historically inspired goods — which on this occasion included knit mittens patterned on an early 19th-century pair housed in the Smithsonian. “Especially in this A.I. world,” said Martin, “it’s important to remember that there’s humanity and culture in the handmade.”

b2dbbdead7fc31b991eaa493d9115aae

Ryan ONeal, Master of the Offbeat Meet-Cute

He had the face of a fairy-tale lead, the kind that would have fit agreeably in an earlier Hollywood era but felt comfortingly alluring in the moment. Ryan O’Neal was a boxer in his youth — announcing his father had died on Friday, his son Patrick O’Neal pointed fans toward YouTube footage of O’Neal fighting Joe Frazier on national TV, with Muhammad Ali doing commentary. But when he migrated to acting, it suited him, and by 1964 he had become a star thanks to the ABC prime-time soap opera “Peyton Place.” No wonder: O’Neal’s youthful looks, blond and round-cheeked and just a little brainy, remind you of the guy who sat next to you in A.P. bio and who would lend you a pen, or his lunch, if you needed it. It seemed, emphatically, to be the face of a good guy, the kind you definitely wanted to bring home to your parents. When O’Neal tested for the role of Oliver in “Love Story,” Ali MacGraw persuaded her husband, Robert Evans, the executive in charge at Paramount, to cast him. As the boyish Harvard hockey player in love with Jenny, the whip-smart Radcliffe student, O’Neal was entrancing, and the pair had instant chemistry. “She had to go home to him at night, but I had her during the day,” O’Neal told The Hollywood Reporter in an interview many decades later. Their meet-cute in the movie, if you want to call it that, was sexy in a cerebral way, the pair sparring over a library checkout counter, then over coffee, where Jenny informs him that she asked him out because “I like your body.”

c65d62bab77a2df18dca2b9904eb98db

How to watch UNLV vs. Boise State Mountain West Conference Championship game

UNLV will host Boise State in the Mountain West Conference championship game at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas on Saturday after a computer ranking was used to break a three-way tie for first place. Boise State, UNLV and San Jose State each finished the regular season 6-2 in conference play. Because all three teams did not face each other and no team was included in the latest College Football Playoff rankings, the tie was broken by an average of four computer rankings. The Rebels had the highest overall average ranking and earned the right to host the championship game. Fans looking to watch this college football game can do so for free on fuboTV, which offers a free trial (as well as RedZone, for you NFL fans) or on DirecTV Stream, which also offers a free trial. SlingTV has promotional offers available, as well. Through the end of 2023, fuboTV is also offering $20 off the first two months of subscription (in addition to the 7-day free trial). Who: UNLV vs. Boise State When: 3 p.m. ET on Dec. 2 Where: Allegiant Stadium Stream: fuboTV (free trial + $20 off your first 2 months); or Sling; or DirecTV Stream Tickets: StubHub and *VividSeats *New customers who purchase tickets through VividSeats can get $20 off a $200+ ticket order by using the promo code MassLive20 at checkout.* Gear: Shop around at Fanatics for jerseys, hats, polos, sneakers, shirts and more Sports Betting Promos: Football fans can wager online on Massachusetts sports betting with enticing promo codes from top online sportsbooks. Use the FanDuel Massachusetts promo code and the DraftKings Massachusetts promo code for massive new user bonuses. RELATED CONTENT: Boise State-UNLV set for Mountain West title game after computer breaks three-way tie for first By ERIC OLSON AP College Football Writer UNLV will host Boise State in the Mountain West Conference championship game at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas on Saturday after a computer ranking was used to break a three-way tie for first place. Boise State, UNLV and San Jose State each finished the regular season 6-2 in conference play. Because all three teams did not face each other and no team was included in the latest College Football Playoff rankings, the tie was broken by an average of four computer rankings from Anderson & Hester, Colley Matrix, Massey and Wolfe. San Jose State beat UNLV 37-31 on the road Saturday for its sixth straight win after a 1-5 start, but the computer rankings listed UNLV first among the three teams tied for first, allowing the Rebels to host the championship game. Boise State was second and San Jose State third. “It’s unfortunate. I think we were one of the top two teams in the league,” SJSU athletic director Jeff Konya told The Associated Press. “I’m sure the other institutions and athletic directors and administrations would say similar things for their program and advocate there. It’s unfortunate that somebody was going to be the third wheel, and apparently the computer decided it was us.” The Mountain West said in a statement that when divisional play was eliminated in 2022, the tiebreaker system was reviewed and changed to ensure the two teams with the strongest body of work are in the championship game. The CFP ranking (or computer rankings if no team is ranked in the CFP) became the third tiebreak after win percentage in conference play and head-to-head matchups. “That’s the thing about computers,” Konya said. “You sometimes miss context. Computers don’t necessarily know who’s playing, who’s injured, when you’re playing a team, is it a short week, is there rest? And that’s unfortunate because some of that context sometimes gets lost, and I think some of that context could have helped our narrative, not be sitting out.” Boise State reached the title game after its coach, Andy Avolos, was fired Nov. 12. The Broncos were 5-5 at the time and headed for a third straight four-loss season. Under interim coach Spencer Danielson, the defensive coordinator, the Broncos beat Utah State and Air Force to end the regular season. Danielson is the second interim head coach to take over midseason and lead his team to its league championship game. The other was Clay Helton with Southern Cal in 2015. UNLV finished the regular season 9-3 overall for its best record since the 1984 team went 10-1. The Rebels are bowl eligible for the first time since 2013. Boise State has won eight of 11 all-time meetings with the Rebels. ___ Get alerts on the latest AP Top 25 poll throughout the season. Sign up here. AP college football: https://apnews.com/hub/college-football and https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-football-poll The Associated Press contributed to this article

325debd038c00e2251c1727973bb0bf5

UMass research: Climate-change temp soon to hit limit for the rhinoceros

AMHERST — Rhinos don’t sweat. And with global warming causing their habitat’s temperature to increase, black and white rhinos are in jeopardy, according to new research from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Southern Africa — home to most of the world’s remaining rhinos — is experiencing rapid climate change. To date, rhino conservation efforts have been focused on poaching. A UMass research team recently reported in the journal Biodiversity that the rhinos are more sensitive to rising temps, which will soon surpass the animals’ limit. The team advised national park managers to plan now if they intend to preserve a future for the rhinoceros. White rhinos, like this one at Kruger National Park, South Africa, are threatened by climate change. (Sam Ferreira photo)Sam Ferreira photo The African continent is projected to see a temp increase of 2 degrees Celsius over the next 100 years, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The change also will disrupt rain patterns. Because they don’t sweat, rhinos cool themselves by bathing and seeking out shade. “Most, if not all, species will, in one way or another, be negatively affected by the changing climate,” said lead author Hlelowenkhosi S. Mamba, who completed this research as part of her graduate studies at UMass Amherst, in a statement. “It is therefore important for conservationists ... to catch trends and model futures for some of the world’s most vulnerable species to prepare to mitigate climate change’s effects, hence minimizing global biodiversity losses.” To understand how change climate will affect rhinos, Mamba and senior author Timothy Randhir, professor of environmental conservation at UMass Amherst, focused their efforts on the five large national parks in South Africa: Namibia, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Botswana, Tanzania and eSwatini.

dd7701e09a3a9ce8e7f58234dad8c1f5

Mass. Campbell, state AGs call on feds to speed up work permits for migrants

With its emergency shelter system at capacity, the Bay State’s top lawyer has joined a coalition of 18 other states to call on the Biden administration to speed up work permits for migrants. In a Dec. 21 letter, Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea J. Campbell and state attorneys general around the nation told U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas that it’s crucial for the federal government to “promptly take additional steps to bring much-needed relief to families, shelters, and social service programs here in the Commonwealth and throughout the country.” Campbell, who co-led the letter with Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul and New York Attorney General Letitia James, noted that while the agency has taken steps to speed up work permits for migrants, moving them out of the shelter system and into the workforce, “new arrivals in Massachusetts and across the country continue to experience delays in being granted work permits to support themselves and their families.” As a result, “our state and our social services continue to bear excessive and avoidable burdens as a result,” Campbell and her colleagues wrote. State attorneys general from Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington also signed the letter. Federal officials traveled to Massachusetts in November for a legal clinic aimed at helping new arrivals obtain work authorizations. In a year-end interview with MassLive, Healey touted the success of that effort, and continued to call for federal support. “My approach has been ‘Let’s get people housed, let’s get people working,’” the Democratic governor said. “I think 2,000 [people] were processed recently, and that’s going to be really important to exiting people,” from the system. In November, Democratic U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, of Massachusetts, joined by a half-dozen of their colleagues, issued a similar call to the Biden administration, urging officials to improve migrants’ access to the nation’s work authorization system, arguing that it’s “essential to allowing new arrivals to enter the formal labor market.” Federal officials recently announced a series of changes to reduce work authorization processing delays, according to Campbell’s office. They included: Decreasing the average work authorization processing time for certain parolees to 30 days; Increasing the time period during which a work authorization is valid to up to five years for asylum seekers and refugees; Ensuring that the parole period for Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan parolees is generally two years, and Notifying certain parolees of their eligibility to apply for work authorization. In their letter last week, Campbell and her colleagues urged additional steps to expedite the work authorization process, including provisional work authorizations, eliminating fees, and further streamlining the application process to “relieve burdens on migrants and DHS.” As of Wednesday, 7,513 families, roughly half of whom are Massachusetts residents, were enrolled in the state’s emergency shelter system, data showed, with 21 families entering the system within the last 24 hours. A year-end budget approved by lawmakers, and signed by Healey, provided a $250 million infusion of taxpayer cash for the shelter system. It also authorized the creation of an overflow site after the state reached its self-imposed cap of 7,500 families. Healey’s office has estimated that the tab the shelter system will hit as much as $2 billion over the next two years.

b903ea9ae6b5c8874a1fad678eecc727

Ex-Patriots LB doesnt think decision has been made about Bill Belichick

Bill Belichick’s future in New England has been a hot topic for most of the 2023 season. The Patriots are on their way to a second straight losing season, and have played some of their ugliest football under Belichick this year. Reports have surfaced that revealed owner Robert Kraft made a decision about the legendary coach’s future after New England’s loss in Germany. But another report said nothing is set in stone. For Rob Ninkovich, who played eight seasons for the Patriots, he believes the decision has yet to be made. On the latest episode of “Eye On Foxborough,” the former Patriots linebacker joined MassLive’s Karen Guregian to discuss why he believes Kraft hasn’t decided about which direction he’ll go in terms of Belichick come the 2024 season. 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. “You have to wait. I think he’ll probably wait to see how the whole season progresses. And there’s only two weeks left in the season. But I think you have to. You can’t be emotional in the heat of a moment, or in the heat of certain situations,” Ninkovich said. “You gotta take a step back and look at the big picture. I think if you look around the league right now, there’s a lot of bad coaching. And you have one of the best coaches in the game, if not the best in the game. So there’s always risks and everything. I just would think that Mr. Kraft would take a step back and observe the whole big picture, what they have after the season, where they’re at in the draft, what they have in cap space. “Is starting over all the way — I don’t know if that’s the best idea. So if you have a high draft pick — think back to 2009 when I first got to New England. 2010 was a massive, massive step for that new Patriots revamp that won a lot of games,” he added. “It was Julian (Edelman), Devin (McCourty), (Rob Gronkowski), all these key pieces that came in and they had a tremendous amount of success. So, I know it’s been a lull, and this year is the first year they’ve ever had such a down year. But you never know with a lot of options in the draft and a lot of options in the offseason with a lot of cap space to do a lot of things offensively with what they have right now.” Belichick’s future is just one of many questions surrounding the Patriots in the offseason. They have to make a decision about who they want to draft, who their quarterback will be beyond this year and they could use some help on offense. Regardless of what happens, the Patriots could look different in 2024.

5f4b2573485de0cd30fb6906b3dccbab

Mass. State Lottery winner bags $25 million prize in Billion Dollar Extravaganza

At an event in San Francisco in November, Sam Altman, the chief executive of the artificial intelligence company OpenAI, was asked what surprises the field would bring in 2024. Online chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT will take “a leap forward that no one expected,” Mr. Altman immediately responded. Sitting beside him, James Manyika, a Google executive, nodded and said, “Plus one to that.” The A.I. industry this year is set to be defined by one main characteristic: a remarkably rapid improvement of the technology as advancements build upon one another, enabling A.I. to generate new kinds of media, mimic human reasoning in new ways and seep into the physical world through a new breed of robot. In the coming months, A.I.-powered image generators like DALL-E and Midjourney will instantly deliver videos as well as still images. And they will gradually merge with chatbots like ChatGPT.

5409b2bfad56372cfa715cf1297f8f51

3 people dead in small plane crash in western Massachusetts

Three people were killed in a small plane crash Sunday afternoon in northwestern Massachusetts, state police announced. Massachusetts State Police said they were notified around 11:45 a.m. that a small plane crash had occurred in the area of Country Club Road in Greenfield. A short time later, responders reached the crash site, which was in the Leyden Wildlife Area. Police later elaborated saying the crash location is in a clearing on the side of a wooded mountain on the Greenfield/Leyden town line. The National Transportation Safety Board and Federal Aviation Administration confirmed they were investigating after the twin-engine airplane, a Beechcraft Baron 55, crashed under unknown circumstances around 12:24 p.m. near the Leyden Wildlife Management Area, close to the Greenfield town line. Get New England news, weather forecasts and entertainment stories to your inbox. Sign up for NECN newsletters. NTSB is investigating the crash of a Beechcraft Baron airplane near Greenfield, Massachusetts. — NTSB Newsroom (@NTSB_Newsroom) January 14, 2024 Both the FAA and NTSB said there were three people on board. There were no survivors, according to Greenfield police. State police confirmed their initial investigation reveals all three adults aboard the aircraft suffered fatal injuries. The victims were removed from the crash scene by the chief medical examiner's office. No names have been released at this time. State police said they are aware of social media posts purporting to contain the victims' names but said they will not be releasing or confirming any names Sunday night. Greenfield police asked people to avoid the area off of Oak Hill Acres Road, saying anyone who comes to look at the scene will be turned away. Detectives and crime scene services personnel were processing and documenting the scene, state police said. State troopers are providing security at the scene overnight, with the investigation by federal, state and local authorities resuming Monday morning. The NTSB will lead the investigation to determine what happened, with assistance from the FAA. An NTSB investigator is expected to arrive at the scene on Monday and will document the scene and examine the aircraft. The NTSB investigation will look at the pilot, the aircraft and the operating environment. The investigator will also gather information and records on flight track data; air traffic control communications; aircraft maintenance; weather forecasts; weather and lighting conditions at the time of the crash; pilot's license, ratings and recent flight experience; 72-hour background of the pilot; witness statements; electronic devices; and any available surveillance video, including from doorbell cameras. Anyone who witnessed the crash or has surveillance video or other information that could be relevant to the investigation is asked to contact the NTSB at witness@ntsb.gov. The NTSB said it would not speculate about the cause of the crash, adding that a probable cause along with any contributing factors will be detailed in the agency's final report, which is expected in 12-24 months.

a167af6c1492b52ae13ead54add69780

Prepared for anything:' City braces for oncoming winter weather

Former President Donald J. Trump has long spoken admiringly of police officers who use aggressive force on the job. For years, he has pointed to his unwavering support for local law enforcement, presenting himself as a “law and order” candidate who would help the police tackle violent crime. But now, as Mr. Trump campaigns again for the White House, he has added a new promise to his speeches on the trail: to “indemnify” police officers and protect them from the financial consequences of lawsuits accusing them of misconduct. “We are going to indemnify them, so they don’t lose their wife, their family, their pension and their job,” he said during a speech this month in New York. Legal experts say Mr. Trump’s proposal — which he first raised in an interview in October and has floated five times this month — would have little effect and would largely enforce the status quo. Police officers in most jurisdictions are already protected from being held financially responsible for potential wrongdoing. They also benefit from a legal doctrine that can shield officers accused of misconduct from lawsuits seeking damages.

b7c44e95680403a6097f09c9cc620c9d

For Disney's 100th anniversary, 10 animated movies to watch

Maybe that’s why I grew up to be such a fan of Disney World (I’ve been there 20 times) and the Disney experience in general. Granted, my enthusiasm for the Disney experience doesn’t always extend to Disney movies, as this year’s reviews of “ Elemental ” and “ Wish ” can attest. Back in the before-times known as the early 1970s, my mom took me to the Loew’s Jersey to see a series of Disney double features that ran every summer. It was usually a classic animated feature and a far-from-classic live-action movie like “ The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes .” I was lucky to have seen many of the films we associate with the first golden era of Disney in theaters. Advertisement Speaking of “Wish,” that lackluster film is Disney’s anniversary present to itself. The Mouse House turns 100 this year (a milestone shared with its rival studio, Warner Bros., known for Looney Tunes). To honor the occasion, I’m listing my 10 favorite Disney animated features. 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 A few notes: No Pixar movies; that’s a different list. You won’t find “Fantasia” (1940) here (hated it) or 1941′s “Dumbo” (pink elephants, good; racist singing crows, BAD!). “Bambi” (1942) isn’t here — it’s a runner-up. Neither is the Tarantino-level foot-obsessed “Peter Pan” (1953). And I only chose two movies that were released post-1988, the year I became a jaded, cynical adult. (Sorry, Ariel and Genie!) A scene from "The Great Mouse Detective" (1986). RDB/ullstein bild via Getty Images 10. “The Great Mouse Detective” (1986) One of the few gems made during the much-maligned era that began with the mildly entertaining “The Aristocats” (1970) and ended with Disney’s nadir, “Oliver & Company” (1988). Features two icons I love to this day: Vincent Price and Sherlock Holmes. Technically, our hero is Basil, a mouse sleuth who lives in Holmes’s house, but he’s learned a thing or two from his landlord. Price, as expected, lends his glorious voice to the villain, Ratigan. He even gets to sing. Advertisement A scene from "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" (1937). Walt Disney Co. via REUTERS 9. “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” (1937) This one earned the nostalgia vote, as it was my first Disney movie. It was also supposed to be the first movie I ever saw, but on that same day, my cousin took me to “The Exorcist” beforehand. I was 4. Guess which movie terrified me more? Bonus points for naming a dwarf after my general disposition: Grumpy. 8. “The Sword in the Stone” (1963) Other than this film and “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” I hate everything that has to do with King Arthur. But then, neither of these choices is remotely faithful to the legend forced upon me in high school. This was my second favorite Disney cartoon as a kid (keep reading for what’s still my first). I found endless amusement in the exploits of Merlin, Archimedes the Owl, and Wart — I mean Arthur — the kid who would be king. I rewatched it during the pandemic, and it held up. 7. “The Jungle Book” (1967) Contains my pick for the best Disney song (“The Bare Necessities”) and the great voice talent of Sterling “Winnie-the-Pooh” Holloway, Phil Harris, and Sebastian Cabot. As the villainous tiger Shere Khan, Disney cast the star of the greatest movie ever made (“All About Eve”), George Sanders. Sanders’s droll line readings alone would have put this film on my list. Advertisement A scene from "Mary Poppins" (1964), starring Julie Andrews. The Walt Disney Company/Buena Vista Home Video 6. “Mary Poppins” (1964) This is a bit of a cheat — I hated “Mary Poppins” as a kid. Here’s why. “Lady and the Tramp” was the bottom half of the double feature I attended back in 1975. I wanted to see that, but “Mary” ran first. It was 417 hours long. As soon as “Lady” began, I fell asleep — and never saw it. As a result, I held a grudge against Julie Andrews’s practically perfect nanny for 40 years. Since then, I’ve come to my senses. This is a great movie, and Andrews deserved that best actress Oscar. A scene from "Cinderella" (1950). 5. “Cinderella” (1950) Sing along! “Cinder-elly! Cinder-elly! Night and day, it’s Cinder-elly!” Growing up the oldest of five kids, I identified with Cinderella. If only I had Gus the Mouse, perhaps Disney’s best talking-animal sidekick, to advocate for me. A scene from "Pinocchio" (1940). Disney 4. “Pinocchio” (1940) “Pinocchio” scared the hell out of me, and you know the scene that did it: That kid turning into a donkey is David Cronenberg-level body horror, and we only see the transformation in silhouette. It still scares me. There’s a famous song in this one, too, something about wishing on a star. A scene from "The Princess and the Frog" (2009). Disney Enterprises Inc. 3. “The Princess and the Frog” (2009) I was damn near 40 before Disney gave me a cast of characters who not only looked like me, but included one named after me, too. This is easily Randy Newman’s best score for Disney, sung by the great Anika Noni Rose as Princess Tiana, Keith David as the evil Dr. Facilier, and Jenifer Lewis as . . . Mama Odie. Plus, the animation is gorgeous! Get Jenifer Lewis to play me, and I can forgive that Tiana is the only Disney princess whose “happily ever after” includes going to work. Advertisement A scene from "Beauty and the Beast" (1991). Disney 2. “Beauty and the Beast” (1991) Alan Menken and the late Howard Ashman’s best movie score is a highlight of the first animated feature nominated for best picture. Angela Lansbury singing the title song (famously in one take)! Jerry Orbach sliding his way through “Be Our Guest.” And then there’s “Gaston,” the rare Disney love song sung to a man, with clever lyrics so subversively gay I’m shocked Ashman got them into the movie in 1991. “You can ask any Tom, Dick, or Stanley,” the song goes about admirers of Gaston, “and they’ll tell you which team they’d prefer to be on.” A scene from "Sleeping Beauty" (1959). handout 1. “Sleeping Beauty” (1959) This is Disney’s most stunning animated achievement, from the intricate details in the backgrounds to the character design of Maleficent — before and after she becomes a fire-breathing dragon. It’s always been my favorite, even when I was a kid. Back then, the super-boring “Fantasia” made me hate classical music; this film’s use of Tchaikovsky ultimately changed my mind. Odie Henderson is the Boston Globe's film critic.

9d5f67096a8d07efcb3835063d9c1aae

How to Prevent Memory Loss

As we age, our memory declines. This is an ingrained assumption for many of us; however, according to neuroscientist Dr. Richard Restak, a neurologist and clinical professor at George Washington Hospital University School of Medicine and Health, decline is not inevitable. The author of more than 20 books on the mind, Dr. Restak has decades’ worth of experience in guiding patients with memory problems. “The Complete Guide to Memory: The Science of Strengthening Your Mind,” Dr. Restak’s latest book, includes tools such as mental exercises, sleep habits and diet that can help boost memory. Yet Dr. Restak ventures beyond this familiar territory, considering every facet of memory — how memory is connected to creative thinking, technology’s impact on memory, how memory shapes identity. “The point of the book is to overcome the everyday problems of memory,” Dr. Restak said. Especially working memory, which falls between immediate recall and long-term memory, and is tied to intelligence, concentration and achievement. According to Dr. Restak, this is the most critical type of memory, and exercises to strengthen it should be practiced daily. But bolstering all memory skills, he added, is key to warding off later memory issues.

df3f0f6809131f04dbe1463909b98b88

The Weekender

The common denominator between the two relationships had not been gender or sexual orientation. It had been me. _____

6fc4e2e98161411fe7e67538c17abbda

FAA to investigate green laser that illuminated Jetblue flight in Boston

Authorities are investigating an incident where two Jetblue flights were illuminated by a laser around on Thursday morning. The FAA says Jetblue flights 494 and 972 were illuminated by a a green laser at around 5:40 a.m. near Boston. No injuries were reported after the incidents. Pilots reported 9,500 laser strikes to the FAA in 2022. 278 pilots have reported injuries from lasers to the FAA since 2010. Get Boston local news, weather forecasts, lifestyle and entertainment stories to your inbox. Sign up for NBC Boston’s newsletters. People who use those lasers face fines up to $11,000 per violation and $30,800 for multiple incidents.

63cf50092667a6af3d91e44d2e81372d

California Faces $68 Billion Deficit Amid Steep Revenue Decline

California is facing a $68 billion budget deficit, the state’s nonpartisan fiscal analyst announced on Thursday, signaling a “serious” financial challenge for the Democratic-led government heading into an election year. The Legislative Analyst’s Office said a revenue decline this year “similar to those seen during the Great Recession and dot‑com bust” was largely responsible for the sobering projection. Absent a sudden turnaround, Gov. Gavin Newsom and his fellow Democrats in the Legislature would face the state’s biggest budget challenge since the early 1990s, undercutting national messaging by the governor, who has depicted California’s emergence from the Covid-19 pandemic largely as an economic success. California has been in a downturn since 2022, and state finance officials had been warning of a darkening fiscal outlook, the report noted. But the state was late to recognize the full extent of the plummeting revenues because of a decision to delay its tax filing deadline until mid-November of this year to give residents leeway as they recovered from a series of catastrophic storms last winter. The state’s tax system is prone to wide swings because of a heavy reliance on the taxation of capital gains and the personal income of high earners. For those residents, a steep 2022 decline in the stock markets resulted in heavy losses, which translated into lower tax revenues in returns filed through last month.

c37f1e031e6e609df937ee5a269572e0

Opinion | Dont Flee the American Southwest Just Yet

But there’s reason for hope. Take Arizona, a state that’s often seen as the epicenter of the crisis because of its steep population growth and the fact that many of the same Arizona counties attracting new residents at a record pace are also the most water starved, experiencing severe droughts far out of proportion to the rest of the country. In spite of this, many environmental experts in Arizona are relatively sanguine about its future because of all the progress it’s made over the last 50 years to conserve its water supply. Because of a reduction in farmland acreage and better household conservation, Arizona now uses 3 percent less water than it did in 1957, despite having a population that’s mushroomed more than 555 percent since then. Paradoxically enough, the steady march of master-planned communities to the horizon — an Arizona cliché — provides big hydrological savings because of the conversion of water-guzzling farmland into more parsimonious suburban uses, Sarah Porter, the director of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University, told me. We now use treated wastewater on golf courses and parks. Phoenix is already building a facility to turn wastewater into high-quality drinking water by 2030. And Southwestern cities have an exceptionally simple solution for curbing residential water use: Charge more for it in the summers. After Phoenix started using this powerful incentive, the number of homes with front or back lawns went down from nearly 80 percent in the 1970s to about 10 percent today, according to Kathryn Sorensen, a former Water Services director for the city. “That’s a wholesale cultural change,” she said. In some crucial ways, Arizona will actually be better able to adapt to climate change than many coastal areas of the country. For instance, the cost of building sea walls for U.S. coastal regions will be at least $400 billion, according to the Center for Climate Integrity, while squeezing water out of a desert landscape is relatively cheap in comparison. The only necessary ingredient is political willpower. Public agencies will capture and bank more stormwater in the ground for aquifer recharge, for example, and they can require residents to cover their backyard swimming pools to cut down on evaporation. The historic adaptability of the Southwest can be applied in multiple other ways. Cities can reduce the heat-island effect by planting more street trees and even small forests that capture carbon. They can mandate reflective coatings on roofs and asphalt, encourage low-flow showers and toilets and discourage residential lawns, as Las Vegas has done. Tougher zoning codes on the county level can stem the runaway growth of what firefighters call suicide subdivisions built on the edge of drying forests vulnerable to wildfire.

2f8b0bed58a77d2ce78ce8d68a88ac5a

Vermont shootings: Thanksgiving tradition ruined by gunfire

Dear Amy: My teenage daughter recently came to me saying that she needed a new smartphone. I took a look, and it was basically smashed. She said she was at her friend’s house when this happened. I called the friend’s mom and she told me that both girls had deliberately broken their phones in order to get new ones (this was before Christmas, so I guess they were hoping to find a shiny new phone in their stockings). I asked my daughter what had happened and she said, “It just fell onto the driveway.” She didn’t seem too concerned about it. I asked her if she had done this on purpose and she said no. My wife and I can’t quite decide what to do now. She is in favor of getting her a new phone, but I don’t want to reward this behavior. – Broke Dad Dear Dad: Unless you have purchased insurance, replacing this broken phone could be a very expensive proposition (insurance is also expensive, and there is a deductible to replace a broken or lost phone). I do believe that it is something of a safety issue for a teenager to have a phone these days, and because of that, she should have one. However, until you/she are eligible for a free upgrade for the latest model, you can offer to purchase a much less expensive flip phone for her to use until she can afford the phone she wants. (Flip phones are cool! They’re vintage! They’re so very ‘90s!) I think it’s important that your daughter should ultimately pay for the replacement – or negotiate a partial payment with you and her mom. Experiencing the consequences of this incident should inspire her to be much more careful. Dear Amy: “Patricia” and I have known each other for several years. We have always referred to one another as “best friends.” A while back, I found out that she did something horrible to a family member of mine, and I was furious. I didn’t speak to her for several months and started to make plans to confront her about what she had done. Before I was able to confront her, she found out that her boyfriend flirted with me. Yes, he did flirt with me, but I just ignored him and didn’t say anything to her about it. Now Patty blames me for all the emotional turmoil she is going through. This is absurd! I am so sick of her throwing shade at me! Should I confront her about it? – Over It Dear Over It: I’m going to go out on a limb and declare that you and “Patty” are not actually best friends, and perhaps never have been. The reason I can say this is because intimate friends tell one another the truth – even when it is challenging or painful to do so. You state that Patty did a horrible thing to a family member of yours, and yet you ghosted her for months instead of communicating about this incident. On Patty’s side of things, she is blaming you for the fallout from something her boyfriend did. Again – casting blame without pursuing an explanation is not how friends behave and communicate with one another. It seems obvious that at this point, your friendship is broken. Given that so much time has passed and that you have no stated desire to try to repair the relationship, dredging up these episodes might give you two yet another point of conflict. I understand the desire to set the record straight when it comes to your own conduct and whatever untruths are told about you. If you decide to do this, remember that anything you say or write can be dredged up and used against you (or as a way to keep this conflict going) on social media. Therefore, you should make your decision understanding the possible ongoing negative consequences for you. Dear Amy: I’m enjoying the letters about gender-specific toys, especially toy kitchens. I worked in a preschool, and once I asked a boy playing in the kitchen area about the things he’d piled up in the kitchen next to the little sink. He said he was going to play video games – the telephone with its keypad was propping up the frying pan, which was his screen. I asked about the banana perched on top and he said, “I’m charging it.” There are lots of ways to play with a toy kitchen. – Another Amy Dear Amy: I’ll never eat an uncharged banana again. (You can email Amy Dickinson at askamy@amydickinson.com or send a letter to Ask Amy, P.O. Box 194, Freeville, NY 13068. You can also follow her on Twitter @askingamy or Facebook.) ©2023 Amy Dickinson. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

8a768cad0825cd184e3bdbc7129eb47b

More homes and AI: Mass. Gov. Maura Healey unveils 2023 economic development plan

Building more homes, attracting more global talent, and applying artificial intelligence in all key sectors are just some of the main priorities Gov. Maura Healey has listed for Massachusetts in her 2023 economic development plan. Healey’s “Team Massachusetts: Leading Future Generations” plan sketches out the Democratic administration’s economic priorities, broadly grouping them under three categories: fundamentals, talent and sectors. “Massachusetts has a unique opportunity to demonstrate to the rest of our country a better path forward,” the report reads. “To do so, we need to work together as a team, leveraging the strengths in all of our sectors and regions.” The plan was a result of year-long discussions between state officials and Massachusetts residents, businesses, local politicians and stakeholders across the Commonwealth, officials said. Economic Development Secretary Yvonne Hao was expected to speak on the plan on Wednesday in front of the Joint Committee on Economic Development and Emerging Technologies. As part of her plan, Healey wants to invest in the “fundamentals” to spark economic growth. That includes boosting housing production, improving the state’s public transit system, and pouring more state funds into rural and Gateway cities. The state is also trying to be a “global talent magnet” by launching programs to retain and attract talent including college graduates, immigrants, non-college graduates and trades/professions, Healey’s office said. In the “sectors” category, the state aims to advance its leadership in life sciences, health care, advanced manufacturing and robotics, artificial intelligence, tourism and climate technology, according to the report. With the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution right around the corner, Healey also wants to boost Massachusetts’ tourism industry. “Massachusetts is at an inflection point and the stakes are high,” Hao said in a statement. “This economic development plan puts us on a path towards ensuring our state is the best place for people to start and grow their careers and for companies to start and scale, all while being a great place to live.”

00d94353859d554b910df497b7285503

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.”

6383d0853918a3cab56153a28f270b89

5 Takeaways From Trumps Runaway Victory in the Iowa Caucuses

Trump mopped up support everywhere. As his rivals spent weeks campaigning across the state, Mr. Trump flew into Iowa only about a dozen times. Key Republican figures in the state, including Gov. Kim Reynolds and top evangelical leaders, endorsed his rivals. Yet by the time Mr. Trump took the stage for his victory speech, he appeared on track to win 98 of the state’s 99 counties, with him and Ms. Haley neck and neck in the final one. Mr. Trump’s sweep of the caucuses was broad and deep. He outperformed Mr. DeSantis in conservative strongholds, including northwest Iowa, which is home to many evangelical voters who were heavily courted by the Florida governor. And even in more moderate suburban counties surrounding Des Moines, which were considered favorable terrain for Ms. Haley, Mr. Trump won, albeit with far tighter margins. The technology entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who cast himself as a younger heir to Mr. Trump’s MAGA movement, captured less than 8 percent of votes. He quickly suspended his campaign and endorsed Mr. Trump on Monday evening. Much of the battle in Iowa had been over expectations: Would Mr. Trump win more than 50 percent of the vote? Even as he bragged about his huge advantage in polls, his aides tried to lower the bar to a winning margin of 12 percentage points, the biggest recorded in a competitive Republican presidential race in the state. With the former president finishing at 51 percent to Mr. DeSantis’s 21 percent and Ms. Haley’s 19 percent, he exceeded both markers. DeSantis won a Pyrrhic fight for second. Though he edged out Ms. Haley for second, it’s hard to see a clear path forward for Mr. DeSantis — and it’s unclear how long he will have enough money to forge ahead.

80d6dc09846380523076a81ae7738ec6

How to watch Hulus Only Murders in the Building on ABC, stream for free

HELD ACCOUNTABLE AND THIS WILL BE A LIFELONG LONG RECOVERY FOR THIS CHILD. AT THE END OF THE SCHOOL DAY AT MATT CHARTER SCHOOL, LAWYERS FOR THE GIRL’S FAMILY SAY THE FOURTH GRADER OFTEN ENDURED HORRIFIC ATTACKS ON HER SCHOOL BUS. THIS NINE YEAR OLD GIRL WAS RAPED REPEATEDLY ON HER SCHOOL BUS ON THE WAY HOME FROM SCHOOL BY AN 11 YEAR OLD BOY WHO WAS HER CLASSMATE. LAWYERS SAY THAT BOY THREATENED HER TO KEEP HER QUIET, BUT SHE FINALLY TOLD FRIENDS THIS SPRING, SOMEHOW THOSE LAWYERS SAY ADULTS ON THE BUS DID NOT STOP IT. THIS WAS ABOUT A SEVEN SEAT BUS. IT’S SHOCKING TO US THAT THE MONITOR, WHO BY DEFINITION OF THEIR JOB, IS SUPPOSED TO MONITOR THE BUS, COULDN’T KNOW THIS WAS GOING ON. A NEW LAWSUIT NOW NAMES THE CHARTER SCHOOL, THE SCHOOL DEPARTMENT, THE CITY AND TRANSPORTATION COMPANY. TRANSDEV. IN A STATEMENT, THE CHARTER SCHOOL SAYS, WE TOOK ALL APPROPRIATE STEPS TO IMMEDIATELY NOTIFY THE PROPER AUTHORITIES, WORK CLOSELY WITH THE FAMILIES INVOLVED AND SECURE THE SAFETY OF THE STUDENTS. BOSTON PUBLIC SCHOOLS SAYS IT ONLY FOUND OUT ABOUT THE ALLEGATION FIVE MONTHS AFTER THEY SURFACED, AND AFTER POTENTIAL VIDEO EVIDENCE ON BOARD. THAT BUS WAS NO LONGER AVAILABLE. THE MAYOR SAYS THE SCHOOL DISTRICT CONTINUES TO SUPPORT THE ONGOING INVESTIGATION. THEY TOOK EVERY POSSIBLE STEP THAT WAS AVAILABLE. GIVEN THAT THIS WASN’T A STUDENT, AND CONTINUED TO TRY TO DO EVERYTHING THEY CAN TO SUPPORT THE INVESTIGATION. NOW, TONIGHT, IT’S NOT CLEAR WHAT PUNISHMENT THAT 11 YEAR OLD MAY HAVE FACED UNDER STATE LAW. HE IS TOO YOUNG TO FACE CRIMINAL Advertisement Mom says daughter repeatedly sexually assaulted, sues Boston Public Schools, Transdev Bus Company Child attended a charter school, also named in lawsuit Share Copy Link Copy A Boston woman has filed a lawsuit against the Boston Public Schools District, a private bus company and two of its employees after she said her daughter was sexually assaulted numerous times. According to a lawsuit filed in Suffolk Superior Court on Friday, the Roxbury woman claims her then 9-year-old daughter was sexually assaulted on a Transdev Services Inc. bus during a period of 7 months by an 11-year-old student. The lawsuit said the assaults happened feet from the bus driver and monitor.“The sexual assaults took place just a few feet from the bus monitor and the bus driver on the ride home after school from the Match Charter Public School,” the lawsuit states.According to the lawsuit, the assaults happened from October 2022 until May 2023, and included “numerous rapes and indecent assault and batteries.”The lawsuit said the girl’s assailant threatened her if she told anyone. The school learned about the allegations in May 2023, after the girl told two friends who in turn alerted school staff. "The child never told anyone about this because she was terrified while she was being sexually assaulted. The child perpetrator was threatening her with physical violence and threatening to spread rumors about her at the school they both went to," said attorney Nina Bonelli.The lawsuit states the bus is supposed to be equipped with cameras, but no footage could be found during the period when the assaults allegedly happened. In addition to Transdev and Boston Public Schools, the lawsuit claims negligence on behalf of the city of Boston, the bus driver, the bus monitor and the Match Foundation, which owns and operates the Match Community Day Charter Public School. Under Massachusetts law, children younger than 12 cannot face criminal charges."While we cannot comment on ongoing litigation, we took all appropriate steps to immediately notify the proper authorities, work closely with the families involved, and secure the safety of the students. Match Charter Public School does not operate the buses that transport our students to and from school. But, we are committed to supporting our students and families whether incidents happen on or off campus," Match Executive Director Nnenna Ude wrote in a statement. Boston Public Schools said it only found out about the allegations five months after they surfaced and after potential video evidence from the bus was no longer available. "They took every step possible that was available given that this wasn't a BPS student and continue to try to do everything they can to support the investigation," said Boston Mayor Michelle Wu. “Boston Public Schools’ top priority is the safety of our young people. Our jurisdiction to take action is limited when it comes to students who do not attend a Boston Public School but still utilize BPS buses, and we were devastated to learn of this disturbing alleged incident five months after it occurred. Once we were informed, BPS took all the available and appropriate steps possible. The BPS Department of Transportation provided all information available to Match Charter School, which is legally responsible for investigating all incidents of impropriety regarding their students," said BPS spokesperson Max Baker.

70f6d627cea30ef9f523873f6e426150

The Way Big Banks Shut Down Customer Accounts Is Callous. Lets Fix It.

For most of the last year, my inbox has been overflowing with tales from people like these: The accounting professor whose bank closed his accounts — and whose audit of his own transactions found nothing remotely suspicious. The tech executive whose entire family lost banking privileges because an estranged family member — with a single account linked to one parent’s account — committed a crime. The former European central banker who served as a senior fellow at Harvard and abruptly lost his banking privileges with no explanation. Every person — more than 1,000 wrote to me and my colleague Tara Siegel Bernard — volunteered a story of losing banking and credit-card accounts and included contact information. It’s not the sort of thing most people normally do if they have something to hide. Banks say they need to close accounts they deem suspicious to prevent money laundering, fraud and terrorist financing. In addition, regulators are pressuring them to sniff harder for signs of dirty dealings. But there are many frustrating things about this phenomenon: The account closings often come without warning. There is usually no recourse, appeal or explanation from the bank. Sometimes you find out you have lost banking privileges when you’re buying food at the grocery store and your debit and credit cards no longer work. But losing your bank account isn’t just inconvenient. It’s scary. If you’re a small business, it disrupts your payroll and can damage your reputation in the community. Given no explanation, you wonder if you’ve been blacklisted or put on some kind of government watch list.

9c9c2612cbd16ef6bbc922b55d482704

Russian missile may have passed through Polish airspace before striking Ukraine: report

Christina Applegate made a rare public appearance to present the first Emmy, for supporting actress in a comedy series. Glamorous in a plunging gown and visibly overcome by the long standing ovation she received, she still made self-deprecating jokes about Ozempic and disability. “You’re totally shaming me with disability by standing up,” she told the crowd. “It’s fine.” Applegate was nominated for best actress in a comedy for “Dead to Me.” (Quinta Brunson won, “Abbott Elementary.”) The Netflix series was a sleek, savage container for Applegate’s gifts, both her forceful PTA Mom prettiness and the darker currents of anger and ambition that swirled just underneath, giving her comedy a whetted edge. She played Jen to Linda Cardellini’s Judy. Jen was a woman unmoored by the death of her husband who found port in a ride-or-die friendship and an escalating series of crimes. Applegate hasn’t announced any new projects since receiving a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis in 2021. (“It’s not like I came on the other side of it, like, ‘Woohoo, I’m totally fine,’” she told The Times in 2022, speaking of that diagnosis. “Acceptance? No. I’m never going to accept this. I’m pissed.”) Applegate is the rare actress to have translated teen stardom (she was Kelly Bundy, long of leg and scant of prefrontal cortex, on “Married With Children”) into a robust career as an adult that includes the sitcoms “Samantha Who” and “Up All Night,” as well as the “Anchorman” and “Bad Moms” film franchises.

590b2134138639414c0411b67c8fe463

U.F.O.s Remain a Mystery to Lawmakers After Classified Briefing

Alien bodies allegedly hidden by the United States government. Suspected Pentagon cover-ups of secret spending programs. Retaliation against any official who dares speak out. Perhaps no congressional briefing offers up more titillating claims — or does less to illuminate them — than one about U.F.O.s. On Friday, members of Congress entered such a session with burning questions, only to receive hedged answers that they said did little to demystify what the government knows about extraterrestrial beings. The closed-door briefing with Thomas A. Monheim, the inspector general of the intelligence community, was supposed to help members of the House Oversight Committee understand if there was any credibility to the bombshell claims made by a high-profile whistle-blower in July. But what, if anything, was actually said was far from clear. It didn’t help that the whole session was confidential, so the lawmakers were barred by law from relaying what they had heard — not exactly a formula for combating the raft of conspiracy theories that has sprung up around U.F.O.s, fueled by government reports documenting unexplained incidents with what it calls “unidentified anomalous phenomena” and the recent whistle-blower account.

e8827bb64e3f610f81f8e92431dbdfa1

A New Place to Learn Civics: The Workplace

A peaceful end to the war in Ukraine. That was the wish behind a post that Simge Krüger made on LinkedIn in March. In response, people began posting their wishes that her husband, father and brother be killed in combat. Seeing that she lived in Germany, they called her a Nazi. “I was just talking about peace and I’m suddenly a Nazi,” Ms. Krüger, a Turkish citizen who lives in Hamburg, said in an interview. Weeks later, sitting in a workshop led by a pro-democracy organization, she came to understand what happened in that dizzying moment. The insults had nothing to do with her ethnic background or political leanings. The people targeting her comment were trying to whip up emotion and further polarize a world torn over issues like Russia’s war in Ukraine, gender identity and climate change.

a8edcf654b5e75259c78b761a1665018

3rd teen dies after violent crash on Morrissey Boulevard, state police say

WITH MORE ON THIS. PETER. YEAH, THAT’S RIGHT. MARIA THE ENTIRE SCOPE OF WHAT HAPPENED HERE IS UNDER INVESTIGATION FROM WHETHER OR NOT THOSE KIDS WERE POSSESSING A FIREARM AND STOLE THAT CAR TO WHETHER OR NOT OFFICERS WHO WERE PURSUING IT WERE DOING SO CORRECTLY. IT’S JUST A VERY, VERY PAINFUL AND DIFFICULT TIME FOR EVERYONE RIGHT NOW. MAYOR MICHELLE WU, REACTING TO THE DEATHS OF A 14 AND 15 YEAR OLD KILLED EARLY YESTERDAY MORNING IN THIS ROLLOVER CRASH ON MORSI BOULEVARD IN DORCHESTER, ACCORDING TO STATE POLICE, A TOTAL OF FOUR JUVENILES WERE IN THIS STOLEN CAR, WHICH APPEARED TO BE SPEEDING BEFORE IT CRASHED. TROOPERS SAY THEY LOCATED A FIREARM INSIDE THE VEHICLE AS WELL, BUT THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF WHAT LED UP TO THIS MOMENT ARE FACING SCRUTINY. GOT A CAR TAKEN OFF FROM US ON GALVIN, DISPATCHED. TRANSMISSIONS SHOW THAT CAR WAS BRIEFLY BEING PURSUED BY BOSTON POLICE, BUT THE CHASE WAS CALLED OFF BY SUPERVISORS. OKAY, JUST TO CONFIRM, WE HAVE NOBODY PURSUING THE MOTOR VEHICLE. IS THAT CORRECT? CORRECT. NO PURSUING. BUT SURVEILLANCE VIDEO OBTAINED BY NEWS CENTER FIVE SHOWS THAT CAR DRIVING ON MORSI BOULEVARD SECONDS BEFORE THE CRASH. AND MULTIPLE CRUISERS BEHIND IT WITH THEIR BLUE LIGHTS ACTIVATED IN SITUATIONS LIKE THIS WHERE, UM, IT’S UNCLEAR FROM THE AUDIO AND AND OTHER INFORMATION THAT IS IMMEDIATELY AVAILABLE, WHAT EXACTLY HAPPENED. THERE’S A DEEPER INVESTIGATION THAT GOES TO PUT THAT ALL TO LOOK AT EVERY FACET OF THAT AND PUT IT TOGETHER. NOW, TWO OTHER TEENAGERS WERE BADLY INJURED AS A RESULT OF THIS. THEY THEIR IDENTITIES HAVE NOT BEEN RELEASED. THE SUFFOLK COUNTY DA’S OFFICE SAYS THIS ENTIRE SITUATION REMAINS UNDER INVESTIGATION AND CHARGES STEMMING FROM THIS INCIDENT ARE POSSIBLE FOR THE TWO SURVIVING OCCUPANTS OF THAT CAR. WE’RE LIVE Advertisement 3rd teen dies after violent crash on Boston's Morrissey Boulevard, Massachusetts State Police say Share Copy Link Copy A third teen has died after last week's violent single-vehicle crash on Boston's Morrissey Boulevard, according to Massachusetts State Police. A 17-year-old from Roslindale died earlier this week at a Boston hospital, police said. On Jan. 4 at 3:17 a.m., a stolen silver Hyundai was traveling at a high rate of speed when it crashed and rolled over on Morrissey Boulevard. A 14-year-old from Dorchester and a 15-year-old from Mattapan were killed. A fourth teen, a 15-year-old from Dorchester, was expected to survive.The teen's names have not been released. Troopers said a firearm was found inside the vehicle.The crash remains under investigation, including the actions of Boston police before it. Last Friday, Mayor Michelle Wu confirmed the city is looking into whether officers followed appropriate protocol in their pursuit of the stolen car before that crash.“It's just a very, very painful and difficult time for everyone,” Wu said. Audio from that morning indicated the vehicle had been pursued by police. “Got a car taking off on us on Gallivan,” an officer was heard saying on the radio.Dispatch transmissions show the car was briefly being pursued by Boston police, but the chase was called off by supervisors.“Just to confirm, we have nobody pursuing the motor vehicle,” a supervisor was heard saying on the radio. “Correct. No pursuing,” an officer responded.But surveillance video obtained by WCVB shows the car driving on Morrisey Boulevard seconds before the crash and multiple cruisers behind it with their blue lights activated.“In situations like this where it's unclear from the audio and other information that is immediately available, what exactly happened, there's a deeper investigation that goes to look at all — every facet of that and put it together,” Wu said. The Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office said the crash remains under investigation, and charges stemming from this are possible for the surviving occupant of the car.

51ab85aa45ceedd73feab9d006656790

New Red Sox starter: Im not a fan at all of my recent performances

New Red Sox starting pitcher Lucas Giolito isn’t pleased with how he pitched in 2022 and ‘23. “I’m not a fan at all of my recent performances,” said Giolito, who officially signed with the Red Sox on Wednesday. The 29-year-old righty inked a one-year, $19 million contract with a player option for 2025. What does Giolito think must happen for him to return to his 2019-21 form? Giolito posted a 3.47 ERA, 3.54 FIP, 1.08 WHIP, 11.1 strikeouts per nine innings and 2.9 walks per nine innings over 72 starts (427 ⅔ innings) from 2019-21 with the White Sox. He received AL Cy Young votes each of those seasons and finished as high as sixth in 2019 when he made the All-Star team. “It starts mechanically,” Giolito said. “I’m always at my best when I’m compact and athletic. And I feel that over the last couple of seasons. I’ve fallen into a few bad habits where I’ll leak down the mound, get a little long and it puts me in a position to not be able to deliver pitches consistently. Missing spots and maybe losing stuff here and there. It kind of starts there. And then when you’re kind of spiraling a little bit, that’s when it can hit you mentally.” He has struggled the past two seasons, recording a 4.89 ERA, 4.70 FIP, 1.37 WHIP, 9.9 strikeouts per nine innings and 3.5 walks per nine innings in 63 starts (346 innings). He had a 4.88 ERA in 33 starts for the White Sox, Angels and Guardians in ‘23. “The biggest thing right now is for me getting right back to where I was in that like 2019-2021 range and then just working from there,” he said. “Because I know that if I get to that repeatable delivery and I’m hiding the ball and I’m doing all the things that make me successful, I’m going to go out and be successful.” Giolito had a strong start to ‘23, posting a 3.79 ERA in 21 starts before the White Sox traded him to the Angels on July 26. He had a 6.89 ERA in six starts for Los Angeles, then Cleveland claimed him off outright waivers Aug. 31. He recorded a 7.04 ERA in six starts for the Guardians. “The last couple of months of my season I was moving around a lot and I got into some bad funks I’d say mechanically, mentally,” he said. “This offseason, I’ve been really getting back to basics when it comes to my work leading up to the next season. Getting my mechanics tightened back up. Repeating my delivery. And getting prepared to go out and try to throw as many quality innings as possible. That’s truly what I believe is the most important thing to do as a starting pitcher is give your team a ton of innings and a ton of quality innings.” 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. Giolito has made 29 or more starts in each of the past five full seasons (excluding the shortened 2020 season). “I’d say being a starting pitcher that’s going to go out and throw a ton of innings,” Giolito said about what he brings to the Red Sox. “I was playing for other teams last year. I wasn’t necessarily paying the most attention to what was going on with the Red Sox last season. But from what I’ve heard, there were some injuries and starters were maybe not going as deep as they needed to go sometimes. So what Craig was telling me is he’s excited for me to bring stability in the rotation, throw innings, and then, the big bonus is going to be me getting back to having the good stuff I know I have and throwing really quality innings.”

5201b16be150447fc862da8c3c3b6f96

Danny Ainge always asked for Stephen Curry trade to Celtics

While there are a handful of untouchable players around the league in trade talks, opposing executives still sometimes shoot their shot when it comes to superstars. There’s not really a conceivable timeline where a guy like, say, Stephen Curry is ever traded from the Warriors considering what he means to the franchise and his value on the court. But that didn’t stop then-Celtics president Danny Ainge from inquiring about Curry over and over again. Former Warriors general manager Bob Myers went on The Woj Pod recently, where he revealed Ainge was one of those decision-makers who asked if Curry was available. 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. “I never was upset at anybody asking (about Curry),” Myers said. “The GM’s job is to mine for trades. That’s a GM’s job. But Ainge was the one that was always asking. ... We laughed. Like I said, we have a really good relationship. But you know, you got to ask. I mean, everybody knew that wasn’t happening, so it was kind of a good laugh.” Of course, Curry was always going to be an impossible get — especially once he reached superstardom. There was likely a chance the right package could land Curry before he exploded into a two-time MVP. But there were inherent risks with landing Curry as he had constant ankle issues. Part of the Warriors’ greatness comes from them choosing Curry to lead their franchise, and he’s delivered over the years. Myers had a lengthy tenure with the Warriors, spending 2012-23 as their general manager. He gets a lot of credit for putting together the Golden State dynasty that has won four championships with their core of Curry, Draymond Green and Klay Thompson. He recently stepped down from the position as he’s now an ESPN NBA analyst. Ainge was the Celtics president of basketball operations from 2003-21, stepping down after the conclusion of the 2020-21 season. Brad Stevens has since been Ainge’s successor and as the architect of the present-day Celtics. While Stevens has done an impressive job with the roster, Ainge should get a lot of credit for landing the talented core of Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown. Ainge is now with the Jazz as an executive as he’s looking to put together another rebuild.

12a77640eb155bf21d6b092975fa84e2

A Referee Is Punched in the Face, and Turkish Soccer Feels the Blow

The punch landed only seconds after the referee Halil Umut Meler blew his whistle to end Monday night’s game in Turkey’s top soccer league. The first kick, and then the second, came after that, as the referee lay on the grass, desperately trying to protect his head with both hands. Within hours, the referee was in the hospital, the team president who threw the punch was under arrest and all matches in Turkey had been suspended indefinitely. The chaos erupted at the end of a match in Turkey’s top division, the Super Lig, between Ankaragucu and Caykur Rizespor in Ankara. The game had been a feisty affair, with two ejections and a dramatic finish: a last-minute goal by the visitors, Rizespor, that denied the home team a much-needed victory. And while the heated scene wasn’t necessarily unusual in a league known for its hothouse stadium atmospheres, the violence — and the reaction to it — definitely was. Within moments of the final whistle, and as players, fans and others entered the field, Mr. Meler was rushed by a group of angry Ankaragucu team officials, led by the club’s president, Faruk Koca. Approaching the referee from the sideline, Mr. Koca threw a punch that landed on the left side of the referee’s face, knocking him to the ground. Other men quickly surrounded him, aiming kicks to his body and head as he tried to protect himself.

814c32e67813dcaabfdd4eec7ac48744

How Nations Are Losing a Global Race to Tackle A.I.s Harms

When European Union leaders introduced a 125-page draft law to regulate artificial intelligence in April 2021, they hailed it as a global model for handling the technology. E.U. lawmakers had gotten input from thousands of experts for three years about A.I., when the topic was not even on the table in other countries. The result was a “landmark” policy that was “future proof,” declared Margrethe Vestager, the head of digital policy for the 27-nation bloc. Then came ChatGPT. The eerily humanlike chatbot, which went viral last year by generating its own answers to prompts, blindsided E.U. policymakers. The type of A.I. that powered ChatGPT was not mentioned in the draft law and was not a major focus of discussions about the policy. Lawmakers and their aides peppered one another with calls and texts to address the gap, as tech executives warned that overly aggressive regulations could put Europe at an economic disadvantage. Even now, E.U. lawmakers are arguing over what to do, putting the law at risk. “We will always be lagging behind the speed of technology,” said Svenja Hahn, a member of the European Parliament who was involved in writing the A.I. law.

5da64a49cbb224dec4775aefa4d1106e

This Silly Museum About Crabs Has Serious Things to Say

Ned Suesat-Williams, one of the museum’s founders, said in an interview that making a museum funny was a “risky business” — visitors might not get the jokes, after all — but that “everyone learns better when they’re laughing.” Humor provides “a breathing space, where you can talk about difficult topics like climate change without making visitors think the world’s about to end,” he said. Staff at some of Britain’s more renowned scientific institutions are paying attention to the Crab Museum’s approach. Chris Stringer, of the Natural History Museum in London, said in an email that the museum’s silly approach leads to learning “by stealth.” It “teaches more in a small space and short time than many others with far larger budgets,” he added. Laura Pye, the director of National Museums Liverpool — a body that includes major art and history institutions — said the museum was one of the funniest she’d seen “in a long time” and a good example of how to make “fairly heavy scientific material accessible.” In 2019, Ned Suesat-Williams, 30, and his brother Bertie, 33 — who both have a background working for children’s magazines — plus their friend Chase Coley, 32, decided to create a museum that could discuss political issues that they were concerned about, while still engaging young people. They eventually settled on crabs as the museum’s focus because of Margate’s seaside location. Plus, Bertie Suesat-Williams said, crabs were “funny and weird” The founders — who had no previous professional museum, or crab, experience — devoured books and documentaries on decapods, then developed the museum’s exhibits based on what they found most interesting.

c12dc6aa4e7df1d5a3b3203f8484187f

Parents worst nightmare: Salem State University student dies in shooting

An 18-year-old student at Salem State University was killed in an early-morning shooting Wednesday, the Essex County District Attorney’s Office said. The shooting happened near 22 Forest Ave. shortly before 1:30 a.m. on Nov. 1, the office stated. The area where the shooting occurred is adjacent to Salem State University, which posted a statement on its X account at 5:44 a.m. “There is an ongoing police investigation due to a shooting on Forest Ave near Lussier Street,” the statement reads. “There is no ongoing threat and our campus is safe and open.” Responding officers found the student, Carl Hens Beliard, inside a vehicle with gunshot wounds. He was brought to Salem Hospital where he was pronounced dead, according to the district attorney’s office. Early findings suggest the shooting was not a random act. Authorities are still looking for a suspect, according to the office. “Our hearts are very much with the Beliard family and the Salem State University family,” Salem Police Chief Lucas Miller said. “Violence such as this has no place in Salem, and we will pursue the perpetrators with all of our ability and determination.” Salem State University President John Keenan added, “As both the Salem State president and a college dad, this tragedy is heartbreaking for all in our community and every parent’s worst nightmare.” The shooting is being investigated by members of the Essex County District Attorney’s Office State Police Detective Unit and detectives from the Salem Police Department.

c0e78329bc7730f6e58a7cffece80d50

East Longmeadow boys hockey defeats Longmeadow in rematch of last years Class A championship (photos)

WEST SPRINGFIELD – Behind a hat trick from Cody Shaw, the East Longmeadow boys hockey team earned its revenge against Longmeadow by a final score of 3-2 on Saturday during the team’s first meeting since last year’s Western Massachusetts Class A championship.

eac3be5ad1ea9b187d31960b5b2677e1

L Street Brownies take annual Polar Plunge in South Boston - Boston News, Weather, Sports

Hopefully, you have good tread on your tires and a good pair of windshield wipers because they're going to come in handy Monday morning. The storm that rolled in Sunday has kept dumping rain overnight, so you'll likely see some water accumulation on the road during your commute. So far, there hasn't been any severe flooding but puddles and water buildup on the shoulders of the highway and in some low-lying areas. That's going to increase chances of some skidding, hydroplaning and spinouts. Not to mention, under those puddles, there may be potholes. The constant rain and the traffic usually cause road erosion and driving over a pothole could do a number on your car. Get New England news, weather forecasts and entertainment stories to your inbox. Sign up for NECN newsletters. You may also see some debris as you drive along some of the more residential parts of the city. Branches and twigs here and there. That might tempt some to want to swerve into another lane and possibly lose control. So, in other words, be on the lookout and take it easy. Give yourself 15 to 20 extra minutes Monday morning because traffic will be slower, especially if there's an accident. In fact, the Massachusetts Department of Transportation reported a crash in Somerville on Interstate 92 southbound at exit 20. Two lanes were closed but have since reopened. In Framingham, a road on Route 9 west, between Temple Street and Interstate 90, was closed because of downed power lines. Also Monday morning, just over 5,000 Massachusetts residents reported that they were left without power, according to National Grid's website. In New Hampshire, over 400 residents lost power because of the storm, reported Eversource. Over in Connecticut, multiple roads throughout the state, including in Hampton and Newtown, were shut down because of flooding and downed trees and wires, according to NBC Connecticut.

4303273505895773a086589e6d03f35d

Harvards Governing Board Nears Resolution on Presidents Future

Harvard’s governing board on Monday was nearing a resolution that would allow its president, Claudine Gay, to remain in her job, according to two people with knowledge of the discussions. But those discussions were ongoing as of late Monday night. An announcement was expected on Tuesday. Harvard’s board has said nothing about Dr. Gay’s future or the festering controversy which began nearly a week ago over the way she equivocated when answering questions about antisemitism on campus in a congressional hearing. Dr. Gay’s testimony plunged the Harvard community deeper into one of its biggest crises in years. The dilemma over the future of Dr. Gay — the university’s first Black president — is fraught, forcing the school to reckon with difficult questions of race, religion and tolerance. On and off campus, the debate over whether Dr. Gay was fit to continue leading the university raged. Groups of donors, alumni and students ratcheted up a pressure campaign to oust Dr. Gay as her supporters banded together to try to save her job. About 700 members of Harvard’s faculty, in addition to hundreds more alumni, came to her defense in several open letters.

8ec901813d0272b29451ada9abe2b44d

Howie Carr: Massachusetts has a worse record than Bill Belichick

As miserable a season as the New England Patriots have endured, do you realize that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has been doing even worse? The difference is, tomorrow the Patsies can fire their bust-out coach, lock down the second or third pick in the NFL draft and begin the long rebuilding process. Where does the state of Massachusetts go for a make-over? Even Harvard University is in better shape, if only because those modern-day Know Nothings are sitting on a $50-billion endowment that they can use to continue their relentless dumbing down of the entire school, from top to bottom, into a cesspool of Third World identity politics. This week the state Department of Revenue (DOR) quietly announced that revenue projections in November had fallen short — for the sixth month in a row. The hackerama hasn’t reached its numbers since the new fiscal year started July 1. In total, six monthly shortfalls in a row — even Bill Belichick in his twilight went 1-5 in the first half-dozen games this lost season. Don’t worry though — it’s only “benchmarks” that the state is missing. So far this fiscal year, $769 million in “benchmarks” have vanished. That’s “only” 4.1 percent. The problem is that, unlike the feds, the state doesn’t have a printing press in the basement of the State House to churn out more funny money to cover the deficits. In fact, the state constitution contains a benchmark saying that the budget must be balanced every year. Belichick, in his mumbling post-game excuses for the mounting losses, has nothing on the Alibi Ikes of the DOR. In their most recent the-dog-ate-my-homework explanation for November, the DOR said the shortfall “was mostly attributable to a decrease in estate tax, a category that tends to fluctuate.” Are the payroll patriots now saying that the number of deaths “fluctuates?” I guess that’s good news — didn’t the death rate always used to be 100 percent? Perhaps, though, estate tax collections are dropping because as home-owning Massachusetts taxpayers age, they’re realizing that if they die here, their children are going to inherit a lot less money because of the onerous levy. If you want to “fluctuate” your inheritance tax down to nothing, you can just move across the border into New Hampshire. But guess what — most states don’t have an inheritance tax. Even California. Speaking of California, U-Haul last week came out with its annual listings of which states Americans are moving into and out of. We’re number two! We’re number two — in net loss of people fleeing their previous residences. It’s tough to top the Golden State and that gang of what somebody called the “malevolent morons” in charge in Sacramento. All NFL teams have a “physically unable to perform list.” Likewise, the states have a “fiscally unable to perform list” — those people who are voting with their feet. According to some statistics, Massachusetts has shed 122,000 law-abiding tax-paying American citizens in the past three years. The Globe was recently cheered, however, by a different number. They claimed that over the last year, despite the overall loss of productive citizens, the state’s numbers have been buoyed by 19,000 new arrivals — “primarily due to the rebound in foreign population.” In other words, illegal aliens. Which means that the native working classes in Massachusetts are being replaced by foreign non-working classes — now known as “migrants.” Why do you suppose the leisure classes from what Democrat John Silber used to call “the tropical climes” want to flop here? It’s certainly not the wonderful climate. But let’s consider some other numbers. Since the Panic of 2020, the state’s overall labor force has declined by 65,000. Since August, net, no new jobs have been created in Massachusetts. No jobs! That’s like a dog whistle for all these loafers from south of the border. Why are they moving here? Because they heard there was no work. Everything free in America. The problem for those who can’t flee is who’s leaving — Americans in the 25- to 44-year-old age group. Nowadays it’s easier than ever to buy fentanyl or to become infected with a previously eradicated communicable disease like tuberculosis. But finding a licensed plumber or even a checkout-counter supermarket clerk — that’s more difficult than ever. The woke one-party state of Massachusetts has ever fewer job-seekers, and ever more shoplifters and hit-and-run drivers. Better hope for some more of that global warming this winter. A lot of the blue-collar guys who traditionally plowed the driveways and parking lots in New England have been departing for greener pastures, which is almost anywhere, if you’re not on welfare. “Oh yeah?” the moonbats say. “If everybody’s leaving Massachusetts, why is the traffic so bad?” Maybe it’s because the MBTA is in a state of collapse. It’s been a while since rapid transit was… rapid. Or even “transit,” for that matter. Plus, on top of all the other free stuff offered to undocumented Democrats, now the Registry hands them drivers’ licenses. That way they can drive their unregistered, uninspected, uninsured Kendra Lara-mobiles to the welfare offices for more handouts. Remember how, after the Panic, all the Registry offices were understaffed? You had to schedule an appointment weeks in advance for the simplest of tasks, like getting a learner’s permit for your kid. The malevolent morons of Beacon Hill could not have cared less about your RMV travails. But once the illegals started demanding service now — ahora! — the hacks went on a hiring spree. They even opened Saturdays in some “gateway cities.” Then there’s the so-called millionaires’ tax. The moonbats assert that the exodus of the well-to-do is exaggerated, because who wants to give up the “cultural amenities” of Massachusetts. Where are these cultural amenities exactly? The public schools, once the best in the nation, are terrible. How “livable” is Boston, really? In the Internet age, what is available in Boston that you can’t get anywhere else? And in free America, you don’t have to put up with the taxes and crime and grime and broken infrastructure, not to mention the insufferably smug entitled racism and quotas that infect every institution from Harvard Square to City Hall? When I was a kid, Massachusetts had 14 Congressmen. Now we have nine. Obviously, you and I aren’t the only people who think the Commonwealth is failing. Bill Parcells used to say, you are what your record says you are. Bill Belichick used to believe that too. Now not so much. At least the Krafts can fire Bill Belichick tomorrow for what he’s done to their team. Who can we fire for what they’ve done to our state?

f6d57944da2a68de5fc7b6dd2eff96f1

Russia Launched a Large and Complex Air Attack on Ukraine

Russian forces fired more than 150 missiles and drones into cities across Ukraine today, hitting factories, hospitals and schools in what Ukrainian officials said was the largest air assault since they began tracking them last year. At least 30 people were killed, more than 160 were wounded and critical infrastructure was damaged, the authorities said. The barrage included hypersonic and cruise missiles that were designed to overwhelm and confuse Ukrainian air defenses, which have successfully shot down a vast majority of attacks in recent months. Today, however, more than 40 missiles and drones hit their marks. One Russian rocket also traveled through a Polish border area near Ukraine for three minutes, briefly violating NATO airspace, Poland’s military said. But unlike the Russian drones that crashed in September in Romania, the rocket did not hit anything on the ground in Poland.

33280737d2c17e772e12f5c0a88a5fd7

Ukraine, Stalled on the Front, Steps Up Sabotage, Targeting Trains

“Russian special services should get used to the fact that our people are everywhere,” a senior official with the Ukrainian intelligence service, known as the SBU, said after the second rail attack, offering details of the operation on the condition of anonymity for security reasons. The details of the attacks were confirmed by the official and two other senior Ukrainian officials familiar with the operation, and corresponded with details released by the Russia authorities, videos from the scenes and reporting by Russian media outlets. The Russian security services, known as the FSB, said soon afterward that they had detained two people suspected of organizing several arson attacks on behalf of Kyiv, including one man they said installed magnetic mines on the train that exploded in the tunnel. Russian Railways claimed that 120 workers cleared the tunnel in a matter of days and said that train traffic had resumed. Ukrainian intelligence officials said it could take months to restore the mountain pass to full working order. It is impossible to verify either account. Ukraine is not alone in using guerrilla tactics. Russia is also employing spies, saboteurs and collaborators, and it targets trains, as well. The Polish authorities convicted 14 people on Dec. 19 on charges of undertaking sabotage and propaganda activities under the direction of Russian intelligence, Poland’s Interior Ministry said in a statement. Their main targets, the ministry said, were “trains transporting military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine and preparing for train derailments.” Trains are vital to both sides, as they were designed to be the backbone of the Soviet supply system. But the bold attack on the tunnel in Russia’s Far East is likely to be of particular concern to the Kremlin, said Emily Ferris, a research fellow specializing in Russia at the Royal United Services Institute in Britain.

3b7de3fb5eb350d531a654670d1e9729

Before the Coronavirus Pandemic, Overlooked Clues From Chinese Scientists

In late December 2019, eight pages of genetic code were sent to computers at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md. Unbeknown to American officials at the time, the genetic map that had landed on their doorstep contained critical clues about the virus that would soon touch off a pandemic. The genetic code, submitted by Chinese scientists to a vast public repository of sequencing data run by the U.S. government, described a mysterious new virus that had infected a 65-year-old man weeks earlier in Wuhan. At the time the code was sent, Chinese officials had not yet warned of the unexplained pneumonia sickening patients in the central city of Wuhan. But the U.S. repository, which was designed to help scientists share run-of-the-mill research data, never added the submission it received on Dec. 28, 2019, to its database. Instead, it asked the Chinese scientists three days later to resubmit the genetic sequence with certain additional technical details. That request went unanswered.

e7f03e2cbf01fac47bf4d26b2f9747e6

Could Abortion Rights Rescue Red-State Democrats in the Senate?

Before she decided to bar former President Donald J. Trump from Maine’s primary ballot, Shenna Bellows, the secretary of state, was not known for courting controversy. She began her career in public office as a state senator in 2016, winning in a politically mixed district. She prided herself on finding common ground with Republicans, an approach she said was shaped by growing up in a politically diverse family. As the former head of the state’s American Civil Liberties Union, Ms. Bellows did not shy away from divisive issues. But her ballot decision on Thursday was perhaps the weightiest and most politically fraught that she had faced — and it sparked loud rebukes from Republicans in Maine and beyond. In an interview on Friday, Ms. Bellows defended her decision, arguing that Mr. Trump’s incitement of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol made it necessary to exclude him from the ballot next year.

be2d88e2034c2daaaa77d96f430bf39c

Red Soxs most recent trade addition scheduled to appear at winter weekend

Outfielder Tyler O’Neill, who the Red Sox acquired in a trade with the Cardinals on Dec. 8, is one of 20 players scheduled to appear at Winter Weekend Jan 19-20. The event will take place at MGM Springfield and MassMutual Center. Triston Casas, Jarren Duran, Trevor Story, Garrett Whitlock, Chris Martin, Tanner Houck, Wilyer Abreu, Brennan Bernardino, Connor Wong, Zack Kelly, Reese McGuire, Chris Murphy, Nick Pivetta, Ceddanne Rafaela, Rob Refsnyder, John Schreiber, Enmanuel Valdez, Josh Winckowski and Brandon Walter also are scheduled to attend. The Red Sox noted that the list could be updated as the event nears. Boston sent right-handed pitchers Nick Robertson and Victor Santos to St. Louis for O’Neill, a two-time Gold Glove winner. The 28-year-old finished eighth in the NL MVP voting in 2021 when he batted .286 with a .352 on-base percentage, .560 slugging percentage, .912 OPS, 34 homers, 26 doubles, two triples, 89 runs, 80 RBIs, 15 steals, 38 walks and 168 strikeouts in 138 games (537 plate appearances). The 2021 season marks the only year he has appeared in more than 96 games. He has been on the injured list 12 different times since 2018. Red Sox alumni scheduled to attend are David Ortiz, Pedro Martinez, Wade Boggs, Dennis Eckersley, Carlton Fisk, Fred Lynn, Lou Merloni, Jim Rice and Luis Tiant.

b53e8a077a19e34efb20575867b5989a

Aleksei Navalny Found in Remote Arctic Prison, Easing Fears Over His Safety

Ukraine had a win and suffered a defeat Ukraine said today it had destroyed the Russian warship Novocherkassk in Crimea, one of the most significant attacks against Moscow’s Black Sea Fleet in months. But in a setback, Ukraine acknowledged that it had largely retreated from the eastern city of Marinka after a monthslong battle. Russia said that the ship had been damaged overnight by “aircraft-guided missiles,” but did not specify whether it had been permanently disabled. The developments underscore the diverging fortunes of the two combatants in a war that has largely settled into a deadlock: Ukraine racking up naval successes in the Black Sea and Crimea, and Russia pressing its attack on battlefields in the east. During a news conference today, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s top military commander, compared the failed fight to defend Marinka to the battle for Bakhmut, which fell to Russia last May. Every inch of Ukrainian land is vital, he said, but “the lives of our fighters are more important to us.”

a6c4f47818d0aac2fb293f69933df613

See all homes sold in Suffolk County, Jan. 7 to Jan. 13

The following is a listing of all home transfers in Suffolk County reported from Jan. 7 to Jan. 13. There were 81 transactions posted during this time. During this period, the median sale for the area was a 1,708-square-foot home on Saratoga Street in East Boston that sold for $704,000. Boston 59 W. Cedar Street, Boston, $447,000, 490 square feet, $912 per square-foot, one bedroom and one bathroom.

4141e09a7bc2146f994e788be8f46025

Dr. Jus Crea Giammarino works to connect health care to the environment

In recognition of Native American Heritage Month in November, MassLive asked readers to identify people who are leaders from the Indigenous community throughout the state, working to make a difference in their own area of interest, be it politics, education, business or the arts. MassLive will publish profiles of these leaders through November. These are people our readers have identified as inspirational, who may be doing good acts for their communities. They are being recognized for their accomplishments, leadership and commitment to inspire change. Dr. Jus Crea Giammarino is a Penobscot naturopathic physician in Springfield. (Hoang 'Leon' Nguyen / The Republican)Leon Nguyen Jus Crea Giammarino Age: 43 Community: Springfield Her story: Raised in Penobscot culture and spiritual practices, Dr. Jus Crea Giammarino understood at a young age the healing powers of nature. Her Penobscot mother and grandmothers taught her about food as medicine, traditional plant medicines and all that the land provides for us. She come from strong traditional healers and birth workers. Crea Giammarino began studying herbal medicine in high school with a local herbalist. She attended UMass Amherst as an undergraduate and received a bachelors of science in ethnobotany along with pre-med and Native American Studies. She then attended a four year naturopathic medical school. In 2005, she created a naturopathic medical practice in Springfield where she works with people of all ages and walks of life through holistic health care utilizing herbal and nutritional medicine. “Carrying on the tradition of my ancestors I work to connect our health care to our environment,” Crea Giammarino said. While working at the private practice, she also gives lectures and presentations on traditional Wabanaki healing modalities and naturopathic care including plant medicines, food as medicine and environmental medicine. She teaches plant medicine workshops including medicine making and ethnobotanical plant walks and is working towards reclaiming traditional birthing practices in prenatal, labor and postpartum care. She is a founding board member of Bomazeen Land Trust which is working for land justice and healing for Wabanaki peoples and their lands. She has also worked as a naturopathic primary care in Brattleboro, Vermont, for five years and has taught as an adjunct professor at Springfield Technical Community College and Springfield College. She does a lot of community organizing around reclaiming birth work and ceremonies. Raising her children with her culture, spiritual practices and healing modalities have been important and valuable to her. In her words: “Follow your passion but let your ancestors guide you. Our teachings and values are instilled in our culture. Our ancestors ways of knowing are just as powerful and valuable as any institution.” We’re always open to hear about more inspiring people. If you’d like to suggest someone else who should be recognized, please fill out this form.

c25d8e0c25bf8ceb9f1b4a5b39bec90b

Amalija Knavs, Mother of Former First Lady Melania Trump, Dies at 78

Amalija Knavs, a former Slovenian factory worker who became a United States citizen with help from one of her daughters, Melania Trump, has died. She was 78. Her death was announced on Tuesday night by Mrs. Trump, the former first lady, on X. No cause was given. During a New Year’s Eve party at his residence and private club, Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Fla., Mrs. Knavs’s son-in-law, former President Donald J. Trump, said that Mrs. Knavs was “very ill” and that Mrs. Trump was with her mother in a hospital in Miami. “This is a very sad night for the entire Trump family!!!” Mr. Trump wrote on social media. “Melania’s great and beautiful mother, Amalija, has just gone to a beautiful place in the sky. She was an incredible woman, and will be missed far beyond words!”

244f7ae1feb91d284b99840cc82fa696

Who Was the Mysterious Woman Buried Alone at the Pet Cemetery?

Ed Martin III was 14 years old when he began working at his father’s pet cemetery, and in the decades since he has tended to the graves of innumerable dogs, many cats, flocks of birds, a few monkeys, a lion cub, a Bengal tiger and countless other creatures from every corner of the animal kingdom. In all that time, after all those burials, there was only ever one request, a few years ago, that gave him pause. Calling that morning, on Jan. 29, 2020, was Bruce Johnson, a lawyer from New York, who had in his possession the cremated remains of a woman named Patricia Chaarte. Ms. Chaarte had died at her home in Mexico, at the age of 92. In her will, she had requested that her ashes be interred at Hartsdale Pet Cemetery, just north of New York City. She had no next of kin. The executor of her estate was not a family member or friend, but merely another lawyer at the firm. There were no further instructions.

12ec402aca43a85fb6b28974d62cfbf3

Hundreds rally for Palestinians at demonstration in Copley Square

The rally came as Israeli airstrikes persist in the Gaza Strip , killing more than 6,500 Palestinians since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. On Tuesday, the US rejected growing support for a ceasefire in the war, which started after a Hamas sneak attack on Oct. 7 in Israel that left more than 1,400 Israelis killed or captured. Demonstrators spilled across the sidewalk outside the Dartmouth Street entrance of the Boston Public Library’s main branch. Many held handmade signs, some reading “Free Palestine,” “Jews for a free Palestine,” and “End all US aid to apartheid Israel.” For a second time in recent days, hundreds filled Copley Square Wednesday evening for a rally in support of Palestinians as the Israel-Hamas war continued into a third week. Advertisement Several attendees spoke to the crowd gathered below the BPL’s steps. One speaker called Gaza the “largest open-air prison in the world.” Another called upon colleges and universities to take a “clear moral stance” against genocide. The protest was the second held in recent days in Copley Square in support of Palestinians. Erin Clark/Globe Staff In between speakers, the crowd shouted multiple chants, including “We will free Palestine within our lifetime” and “Hey, Hey! Ho, Ho! The occupation has got to go” to the beat of a drum. Lea Kayali, of the Palestinian Youth Movement, said she’s been protesting in support of Palestinians for the last two weeks. “I think it’s important that folks understand, beyond just the numbers of Palestinians that have been killed, the fact that nowhere in Gaza is safe.” The rally was organized by multiple pro-Palestinian groups based in Boston and on local college campuses. Throughout Wednesday, multiple college students across Massachusetts protested against Israel’s attacks on Gaza. Two of the groups that helped organize the Copley rally included the Party for Socialism and Liberation and the Harvard University African and African American Resistance Organization. Advertisement Amari Butler, a Harvard student, said she was at the rally on behalf of both groups. “We’re here to show our government and to show the people here in the United States that we are all for a free Palestine,” Butler said. Butler added that she wants to see “an end to the siege on Gaza” and “an end to all US aid to Israeli apartheid.” Emily, who requested that her last name not be used, is a student at the University of Massachusetts Boston and a first-generation Palestinian who attended the rally with several of her cousins. In regard to the conflict between Israel and Hamas, she said, “I think everyone’s here today to clarify that this isn’t a war that’s happening. It is genocide.” Kayali said “an immediate ceasefire” is needed in Gaza. “I think the reason people keep coming and taking to the streets again and again, day after day, is to just send that message that we need to stop this genocide,” she said. Maeve Lawler can be reached at maeve.lawler@globe.com. Follow her @maeve_lawler.

f5f6bbe7c8acc4e0441af723ff02ad3d

Ask Amy: Can I give my daughter a toy kitchen set without it being a whole thing?

Dear Amy: My husband and I have a daughter, “Emma.” She is 3. We are thoughtful and responsible parents (at least we think so …). We have a question about gift-giving. Our daughter goes to a nursery school program a couple of mornings a week, and it’s going very well. While at school, she loves to play with a miniature kitchen set. It’s got a little sink and a pretend stove with pots and pans. We told my sister that we are thinking about getting a version of this for our daughter for Christmas (my sister also has children), but she is strongly disapproving because, as she says, this sort of toy “reinforces gender stereotypes.” Now we feel weird about it and decided to seek your take. – Wondering Parents Dear Wondering: Many parents are concerned about reinforcing gender stereotypes … right up until that moment when their toddler son really loves to play with his cousin’s toy bulldozer, or their daughter falls in love with a Tiny Tammy doll. Are you willing to deny your child the joy and learning experience of playing with an object she really loves in order to please your sister, or to pat yourselves on the back about adhering consistently to your powerful ideals? I hope not. In my opinion, you have absorbed the very real issue of gender stereotyping in a sideways fashion. The idea is not to deny your child toys that are stereotypically associated with their gender, but to expansively offer them toys and experiences that are typically associated with any gender. You might think of play (like gender) as occurring across a spectrum that the child has the power and autonomy to determine as they go – not the parents (or, for that matter, the marketing departments of toy companies). And so – if your son wants a Tiny Tammy doll, he should receive it and be encouraged/allowed to play with it, and if your daughter chooses to wash her toy bulldozer in her pretend kitchen sink, then more power to her. The boundary I would draw (this Christmas and on into the future) is around toys that encourage violence or mimic weaponry. (And yes, we all know that your daughter can pretend her wiffleball bat is a gun, but at the end of the day, she knows it’s a wiffleball bat.) Dear Amy: My mother died five years ago. I financially supported my stepfather for three of those five years, and spent quality time with him. He met another woman and deliberately hid the fact that he was dating her from me and my sister. He decided to sell the house I grew up in. He wouldn’t tell me where he was moving to. Now my sister is angry with me, because I choose not to participate in her family gatherings, which he attends with his new partner. This man refused to tell me the truth, after I asked him repeatedly. The members of my mother’s family have disowned me for it. Am I in the wrong? – JD Dear JD: Let’s say that I could somehow magically determine that you are “right.” Would it then fix things for you to present an Ask Amy Certificate of Rightness™ to your family members? I doubt it. So let me sidestep trying to determine whether your behavior is wrong. This is more a social and family dilemma than an ethical one. I don’t know why your stepfather is avoiding you. Perhaps he is worried that you believe he owes you money (because of your previous financial support). He might be ashamed of some of his own actions, and too embarrassed to face you. He might be cowardly overall, or legitimately afraid of you. Your family members seem to have circled the wagons around this man, and your reaction has placed you outside the circle. If you were open to it – versus only defending your own position – you might take a look around and at least ask yourself what you might be doing to inspire your entire family to disengage from you. Dear Amy: Responding to “TikToked-Off,” like them I used to feel uncomfortable having my photo and video taken. I had a friend who would film no matter what I said. This friend died suddenly and now looking at the videos frozen in time helps me grapple with my loss and closure. From my perspective, unless you’re in the witness protection program or filmed indecently you may someday truly treasure those captured moments. – Remembered Dear Remembered: I genuinely appreciate your perspective. Thank you. (You can email Amy Dickinson at askamy@amydickinson.com or send a letter to Ask Amy, P.O. Box 194, Freeville, NY 13068. You can also follow her on Twitter @askingamy or Facebook.) ©2023 Amy Dickinson. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

58330453ba3c5587f0462f3a05f27c5f

Patriots RB among newest additions to injury report

The Patriots’ first injury report of the week included some new additions, but not quarterback Mac Jones. Jones didn’t throw a pass during the media portion of Wednesday’s practice. Bailey Zappe and Malik Cunningham both saw reps, which left some wondering if Jones was dealing with an injury. But the third-year quarterback was nowhere to be found on the injury report, though there were some new names that popped up. Running back Ezekiel Elliott was limited with a thigh injury, while fellow back Ty Montgomery missed Wednesday’s practice due to an illness. Wide receiver Kayshon Boutte was also limited as he deals with a shoulder injury. $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. As for the Chargers, wide receiver Keenan Allen was held out of practice with a quadricep injury Here’s the full injury report for both the Patriots and the Chargers: PATRIOTS: DID NOT PARTICIPATE WR Demario Douglas, Concussion RB Ty Montgomery, Illness LIMITED PARTICIPATION C David Andrews, Foot LB Ja’Whaun Bentley, Hamstring LB Chris Board, Back WR Kayshon Boutte, Shoulder OT Trent Brown, Ankle / Chest RB Ezekiel Elliott, Thigh OL Riley Reiff, Knee SpT Matthew Slater, Ankle G Sidy Sow, Ankle DL Deatrich Wise Jr., Shoulder FULL PARTICIPATION No Players Listed. CHARGERS DID NOT PARTICIPATE WR Keenan Allen, Quadricep OLB Khalil Mack, Not Injury Related — Rest TE Nick Vannett, Concussion LIMITED PARTICIPATION G/T Zack Bailey, Back T Trey Pipkins III, Wrist T Rashawn Slater, Back S JT Woods, Illness FULL PARTICIPATION TE Gerald Everett, Shoulder WR Quentin Johnston, Ribs/Finger LB Eric Kendricks, Knee LB Kenneth Murray Jr., Shoulder DL Otito Ogbonnia, Knee

365a4e316d696c619be4393f974f84f7

Drier but colder week ahead - Boston News, Weather, Sports

After yet another soggy Sunday, drier weather is back in the forecast this week, but not without chilly December air. Temperatures starts seasonably mild on Monday, with a stiff breeze for the afternoon and a slim chance for a spot shower. Conditions look pretty good for holiday decorating outdoors midweek with less wind in the forecast, but you’ll probably need the jacket, hats, and gloves.

a66b245d9979ed2d4efb6dfbe5c4f2ff

Conn. pair arrested with drugs, guns after high-speed chase on I-91 in Deerfield

A Boston man was met with several assault charges after he attacked and injured a woman in her apartment in front of her children on Monday, Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden’s office announced Tuesday. Erick Arevalo, 23, was charged with armed assault with attempt to murder, assault and battery with a dangerous weapon (knife), assault and battery and assault and battery on a family or household member, Hayden’s office said in a statement. At around 12:21 a.m., Boston police received a domestic violence call at an apartment on Princeton Street, Hayden’s office said. Officers found a woman with multiple lacerations to her head, neck and one of her hands. She gave officers a description of her attacker, who left the apartment in her car, Hayden’s office added. Officers found that the attacker, Arevalo, struck a stone wall and three parked cars, left the vehicle and punched another person who yelled at him for striking the driveway. Police called Arevalo on his cell phone and arrested him in Brighton at around 1:40 a.m. “This was a brutal assault, made even worse by the fact that it occurred while the victim’s children were present in the apartment. The quick work by investigators with help from those with knowledge of what happened helped make for a quick arrest,” Hayden said in the statement. Judge Shelley Joseph ordered he be held on $5,000 bail. He is due to return in court on Feb. 12 for a probable cause hearing.

aac167ddc0934b13df6921fddabd2b6c

Jonathan Majors found guilty on two counts in assault trial

CNN — A jury found actor Jonathan Majors guilty on two of four counts in the New York criminal case stemming from a domestic dispute with his former girlfriend. Majors was convicted on Monday of one count of reckless assault in the 3rd degree and a non-criminal charge of harassment as a violation. He was acquitted on of another assault charge and one count of aggravated harassment. The trial, which began on December 4, stems from a March 25th domestic dispute involving Majors - who plays a villain in the Marvel cinematic universe - and his former girlfriend, Grace Jabbari. Prosecutors alleged Majors “didn’t hesitate to use physical violence” against Jabbari in the March dispute when he grabbed Jabbari’s right hand, twisted her arm behind her back and then “struck a blow” to her head. Majors’ attorney reiterated his innocence during her closing argument, calling the accusations against him “fake” and alleging that Jabbari was the aggressor in the March dispute. This story is developing and will be updated.

8fa7b38a08f12b2d3445fbeeb980aa7a

Words of Wisdom

There’s such fanfare about the end of the year and the beginning of a new one, but the difference is only a day. I find myself thinking about this a lot, how we invest the turning-over of a new year with such meaning, but it’s really just a Sunday into Monday, a transition we don’t dignify with ceremony the other 51 weeks. This week, it’s momentous. This week, we make a fuss. What sort of fuss are you making? A party, a gathering, a favorite meal for dinner? Maybe in bed by 10 with a good book, which is to say no fuss at all, thank you very much? You might, regardless of your plans, ask some people about the best advice they have received this year. People love giving advice, and when they’re sitting on something they think is especially effective, they’re excited to share it. Advice given on New Year’s takes on the air of a benediction, a strong first sentence with which to begin a new chapter. I asked a friend for the best advice she’d received and she told me to “Buy the dip,” to which I densely asked if she was referring to condiments or smokeless tobacco. She rolled her eyes then offered something more my speed: “‘No’ is a complete sentence,” which I have heard before, but it’s a solid maxim I was glad to hear again.

6fc7b22b79826b11099492bcd0dc5c43

Providence Bruins leave T-Birds wandering through time after shoot-out loss on Throwback Night

BOSTON — The Celtics looked like they were going to be at full strength for Thursday’s game against the Cavaliers. Both Kristaps Porzingis (left calf) and Jaylen Brown (ankle) were listed on the injury report, but they were upgraded to available in the lead-up to Thursday’s game. Reserve big man Luke Kornet, though, was a surprising late scratch midway through the first quarter with left adductor tightness. 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. The Celtics still have Porzingis and Al Horford available Thursday, but it’ll be interesting to see where they go from there if they need reserve minutes. Two-way big man Neemias Queta has shown some nice play for the Celtics, but he’s in street clothes on the C’s bench Thursday. So it’ll be interesting to watch how C’s coach Joe Mazzulla utilizes his bench and the reserve big minutes without Kornet. Notably, the Celtics host the Magic on Friday for the second game of a back-to-back. Considering Horford doesn’t play in the second game in those scenarios, expect guys like Queta and other reserves to get some minutes if Kornet is unavailable to go.

a5d7b0c1f867509fe04fc4eb7ecfa4fd

U.S. Fines Southwest Airlines $140 Million for Holiday Meltdown

The Transportation Department on Monday announced a $140 million fine against Southwest Airlines over a meltdown last winter that disrupted travel for about two million people during the holiday season. Of the $140 million, Southwest Airlines will pay $35 million to the federal government. For the remaining amount, the department is giving the airline credit for providing frequent-flier points as an apology to customers affected by the problems and for agreeing to give out tens of millions of dollars in vouchers to those affected by future delays and cancellations. The fine is roughly 30 times what had previously been the department’s largest penalty against an airline for consumer protection violations, a $4.5 million settlement with Air Canada in 2021 over customer refunds. “Today’s action sets a new precedent and sends a clear message: If airlines fail their passengers, we will use the full extent of our authority to hold them accountable,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a statement. “Taking care of passengers is not just the right thing to do — it’s required, and this penalty should put all airlines on notice to take every step possible to ensure that a meltdown like this never happens again.”

0cc96ad70deaccf52e4c8347fd834726

Boston Scientific SVP Brown Sells 15,750 Shares for $795,756

Boston Scientific Corporation specializes in the design, manufacturing and marketing of medical equipment and materials. Net sales break down by area of application as follows: - cardiovascular (60.9%): products used in cardiology surgeries (41.9% of net sales), cardiac rhythm management (27.9%), peripheral surgeries (25.1%), and other (5.1%); - endodontic surgery (31.4%): equipment used in endoscopy (57.5% of net sales) and urology (42.5%); - neuromodulation (7.6%). The remaining sales (0.1%) concern specialty pharmaceuticals manufacturing activity. The United States account for 58.1% of net sales.

7161851ffc5a6430fe08f55c1fbae531

QB corner: Did Bailey Zappes performance rekindle Zappe Fever?

FOXBOROUGH - Four in-game benchings later, Bill Belichick finally opted to change his starting quarterback. Mac Jones took a seat against the Los Angeles Chargers. Bailey Zappe, who gave rise to the term “Zappe Fever” based on his relief efforts last year, took over as the starter. And, given what played out at practice, it was set up for Malik Cunningham to be utilized as well at quarterback. While Zappe provided a spark last season when both Jones and Brian Hoyer were injured, he didn’t evoke the same charge during his four relief appearances this year. In those games, he completed 19 passes in 39 attempts (48.7%) for 158 yards. He didn’t throw any touchdowns, but had two picks. His quarterback rating was a dismal 38.2. With a full week of starter reps, did Zappe improve? Did he revive Zappe Fever and lead the Patriots to a win? Nope. That didn’t happen. $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. Here’s the rundown: The weather was bad. The play on the field was worse. In terms of points produced, the Zappe-led offense was no better than the Jones-led offense as the Patriots did not score against a Chargers unit that ranked dead-last in total defense. Talk about going from bad to worse, the Patriots had scored 13 points combined the previous two games before going down Sunday 6-0 to the Chargers. Zappe finished completing 13 of 25 passes for 141 yards. He did not turn the ball over. And even though Zappe showed more spunk and escapability than Jones, and less panic in the pocket, he still couldn’t totally avoid the rush. He was sacked five times. If Zappe was supposed to provide a spark, it certainly didn’t happen. The weather likely contributed to that, as Bill O’Brien went heavy with the ground attack. The unit produced 148 yards rushing, but once again, Zappe couldn’t complete drives. In the first half, his timing was off. He threw behind receivers, and several of his throws were delivered a tick or two late. Zappe’s first pass of the day, which came on his opening play under center, was thrown behind DeVante Parker. It was nearly picked. It didn’t get much better from there. Zappe completed five of 12 passes in the opening half for 39 yards. Most of his passes went sideways. The longest play from scrimmage was a dump off to Ezekiel Elliott that went for 23 yards. That meant Zappe completed his four other passes for 16 yards. Justin Herbert, however, wasn’t much better, with the Chargers taking a 6-0 lead into halftime, and holding on the rest of the way. As mentioned, the best part of Zappe was that unlike Jones in previous games, he didn’t have any turnovers, and he was much more elusive in the pocket. In the second half, O’Brien let Zappe air it out a little more. At least they moved the ball past the 50 yard line. Sacks, however, killed their best drive of the game in the third quarter, and wiped out another one late in the quarter, and again midway through the fourth quarter. Malik Cunningham? There was some thought he might play, provide a change of pace. It didn’t happen. Perhaps it was because the offense never got to the red zone. Whatever the case, a change in quarterback didn’t change the Patriots fate. It did not produce a win. Just more questions about a sad sack offense. NFL fans can wager online on Massachusetts sports betting with enticing promo codes from top online sportsbooks. Use the FanDuel Massachusetts promo code and the DraftKings Massachusetts promo code for massive new user bonuses.

7f84718d3e871f96e44860c1966f78d7

Music, photography from across the Jewish diaspora reach Boston for Hanukkah

Art has the power to bind, even across contentious borders and over long centuries. That power is evident as Boston residents usher in Hanukkah with music and traditions from across the vast Jewish diaspora. Musician Ira Klein, who grew up in Israel before attending the Berklee College of Music, is sharing a wide variety of Jewish music from Spain, Algeria and Turkey this season. One of his performances is at the annual “Hanukkah: Festival of Lights” held at the Museum of Fine Arts Thursday evening. "The idea is really: How can we use music as a bridge? A lot of people may think of that as a cliche, but that’s what music does. It brings people together across political lines,” Klein said. Joining Klein at the MFA is Beth Bahia Cohen, playing violin and yayli tanbur, a fretless Turkish instrument. Leading up to Hanukkah, Klein shared an excerpt from a 14th century Jewish manuscript from Spain, The Catalan Mahzor, at the Vilna Shul in Beacon Hill last week. Ladino art and culture in Boston Becky Behar, a photographer born in Colombia, is a Sephardic Jew who traces her family roots back to the Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal during the 1492 Spanish Inquisition. Her pop-up photography is among the art showcased this year at the MFA's annual event. Both Behar and Klein are familiar with the significance of the Ladino language, a tongue blending Spanish and Hebrew that artists and historians are working to preserve. Two years ago, Klein founded the Boston-based ensemble Convivencia to revive and celebrate the Ladino tradition. Much of the Ladino culture hearkens back to a time of pluralism and artistry, including between Muslims and Jews, before the Inquisition. It's that joy and peace that Hanukkah is known to bring each winter. “I think we in the Jewish community, and broader community, could all really use a moment of connection and beauty and joy,” said Laura Mandell, the executive director of Jewish Arts Collaborative, one of the partners in the MFA event. Speaking to GBH's The Culture Show earlier this week, Mandell said that "Hanukkah is the antidote" to darkness and challenges. Note: The "Hanukkah: Festival of Lights" event runs from 5- 10 p.m. Thursday at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and is included with general admission.

e17a57ddfbb269e20f32feeafaab1ec3

See all homes sold in Cape Cod, Nov. 19 to Nov. 25

The following is a listing of all home transfers in Cape Cod reported from Nov. 19 to Nov. 25. There were 3 transactions posted during this time. During this period, the median sale for the area was a 1,978-square-foot home on Cambridge Drive in Mashpee that sold for $454,223. Centerville 9 Rainbow Drive, Centerville, $729,000, 1,976 square feet, $369 per square-foot, three bedrooms and three bathrooms. Dennis Port 9 Edwards Ave., Dennis Port, $240,000, 756 square feet, $317 per square-foot, two bedrooms and one bathroom. Mashpee 69 Cambridge Drive, Mashpee, $454,223, 1,978 square feet, $230 per square-foot, three bedrooms and four 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

d6643700bc8766ea61182cd5f96dc83d

Single-family residence sells in Wellesley Hills for $5.1 million

A 7,833-square-foot house built in 2001 has changed hands. The spacious property located at 11 Ledgeways in Wellesley Hills was sold on Dec. 1, 2023. The $5,050,000 purchase price works out to $645 per square foot. This three-story house boasts a generous living space with six bedrooms and nine bathrooms. Inside, a fireplace enhances the ambiance of the living area. The property is equipped with hot water heating and a cooling system. Additionally, the home comes with a two-car garage, allowing for convenient vehicle storage and additional storage space. Additional houses have recently changed hands nearby: In May 2023, a 4,423-square-foot home on Rockridge Road in Wellesley Hills sold for $3,200,000, a price per square foot of $723. The home has 5 bedrooms and 5 bathrooms. A 4,440-square-foot home at 5 Rockridge Road in Wellesley Hills sold in March 2023, for $3,500,000, a price per square foot of $788. The home has 5 bedrooms and 6 bathrooms. On Valley Road, Wellesley Hills, in May 2023, a 10,001-square-foot home was sold for $10,500,000, a price per square foot of $1,050. The home has 6 bedrooms and 9 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

1a78709e18fe038dc26602e678958fed

David Soul, a Star of the Hit Cop Show Starsky & Hutch, Dies at 80

David Soul, the doleful-eyed blond actor and singer who rose to fame portraying half of a cagey crime-fighting duo on the hit 1970s television show “Starsky & Hutch,” and who also scored a No. 1 hit single in 1977 with “Don’t Give Up on Us,” died on Thursday. He was 80. His death was confirmed in a statement by his wife, Helen Snell, who did not specify a cause or say where he died. Mr. Soul had been living in Britain since 1995 and became a British citizen in 2004. A Chicago-born son of a Lutheran minister, Mr. Soul had spent nearly a decade appearing on television shows like “Star Trek” and “I Dream of Jeannie,” and also had a regular role on the ABC western comedy series “Here Come the Brides,” before he won his career-defining role of Detective Ken Hutchinson, known as Hutch, also on ABC. The part would make him a regular presence in American living rooms, as well as a recognized heartthrob, from 1975 to 1979. As Hutch, Mr. Soul played the coolheaded Midwestern sidekick to Detective Dave Starsky (Paul Michael Glaser), a savvy Brooklynite given to wearing chunky cardigan sweaters. The two tooled around the fictional Southern California burgh of Bay City in a red Ford Gran Torino emblazoned with a giant Nike-esque swoosh running down each side as they cracked open cases with the help of their streetwise informant, Huggy Bear (Antonio Fargas).

309b4659149cc2d2e2b31d1ef880d30a

The Westfield News Scoreboard: Southwick boys ice hockey wins again, skates past Hudson 7-1

nan

9c90f1bd2d37231cdd895ecdb978bdb2

Massachusetts weather: What is the forecast for New Years Eve?

The weather for New Year’s in Massachusetts is shaping up to be drier and colder than the anticipated wet and foggy end to 2023, according to the National Weather Service. Inconsistent rain and fog is expected to plague Massachusetts from Wednesday until Saturday before things dry out for New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. AccuWeather expects the weather to be nearly as good as it can get for outdoor New Year’s Eve celebrations across the United States, with no major storms or Arctic cold in the forecast. However if you have plans to spend New Year’s Eve outside in Massachusetts, you may still want to bundle up. The forecast for Sunday, Dec. 31, calls for mostly sunny skies with highs between 40-42 degrees statewide. Sunday night temperatures could drop to the high 20s, according to the National Weather Service. Monday, Jan. 1 will also be partly sunny with highs between 39-42 degrees across the state. Monday night could see temperature drops into the low-to-mid 20s, making for a rather chilly start to 2024.

1256a468f9048d8205a472fc6a20ffdb

Record breaking temperatures recorded Tuesday in northern New England

Severe weather will return to Eastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island Thursday afternoon as thunderstorms are expected to bring heavy rain and potential flash flooding to the region, according to the National Weather Service. There is also a 2 to 4 percent possibility of a tornado or waterspout Thursday night on Cape Cod or the islands, depending on the weather system’s path, forecasters said. “In addition to locally heavy rain in eastern MA and RI later today and tonight (Flood Watch in effect), we are watching for a possible brief tornado or waterspout,” forecasters wrote on social media. “The greatest risk area is Cape Cod and the Islands early this evening, but some risk for RI and southeast CT, too.”

3403345465d6f93b69e37e98119caff1

Single-family house sells in Northborough for $1.2 million

The spacious property located at 17 Thayer Street in Northborough was sold on Oct. 31, 2023 for $1,234,000, or $303 per square foot. The house, built in 2002, has an interior space of 4,074 square feet. This two-story home offers a spacious layout with four bedrooms and four bathrooms. On the exterior, the house is characterized by a gable roof design, featuring roofing made of asphalt. Inside, a fireplace enhances the ambiance of the living area. The property is equipped with forced air heating and a cooling system. In addition, the house is equipped with an attached one-car garage, offering a designated parking space and extra storage capacity. Additional houses that have recently been purchased close by include: On Davis Street, Northborough, in May 2022, a 1,688-square-foot home was sold for $918,000, a price per square foot of $544. The home has 5 bedrooms 1 bathroom. In August 2022, a 5,196-square-foot home on Harrington Lane in Northborough sold for $1,850,000, a price per square foot of $356. A 1,050-square-foot home at 62 Hamilton Road in Northborough sold in June 2023, for $550,000, a price per square foot of $524. The home has 3 bedrooms and 2 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

992484743e7bbd8225ad82d355a3e7e3

Sale closed in Needham: $2.9 million for a four-bedroom home

The spacious property located at 84 Wildwood Drive in Needham was sold on Dec. 29, 2023. The $2,925,000 purchase price works out to $832 per square foot. The house, built in 1965, has an interior space of 3,517 square feet. This single-story house boasts a generous living space with four bedrooms and five baths. The home's outer design showcases a a gable roof frame, with roofing materials crafted from asphalt. Inside, there is a fireplace. The property is equipped with radiant heating and a cooling system. Additionally, the home is equipped with an attached two-car garage, accommodating vehicles and storage needs efficiently. The property's backyard also boasts a pool. These nearby houses have also recently changed hands:

6ac14a55f8b8458c8dfedbefde768ae6

Powerball: See the winning numbers in Wednesdays $700 million drawing

It’s time to grab your tickets and check to see if you’re a big winner! The Powerball lottery jackpot continues to rise after one lucky winner in California won $1.73 billion in the October 11 drawing. Is this your lucky night? Here are Wednesday’s winning lottery numbers: 04-11-38-51-68, Powerball: 05, Power Play: 3X Double Play Winning Numbers 14-29-39-66-67, Powerball: 02 The estimated Powerball jackpot is $700 million. The lump sum payment before taxes would be about $352.3 million. The Double Play is a feature that gives players in select locations another chance to match their Powerball numbers in a separate drawing. The Double Play drawing is held following the regular drawing and has a top cash prize of $10 million. Powerball is held in 45 states, the District of Columbia, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. The Double Play add-on feature is available for purchase in 13 lottery jurisdictions, including Pennsylvania and Michigan. A $2 ticket gives you a one in 292.2 million chance at joining the hall of Powerball jackpot champions. The drawings are held at 10:59 p.m. Eastern, Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays. The deadline to purchase tickets is 9:45 p.m.

cbbdcf6fa661dfbe4bf55eaf233a3766

Heres how you can win free coffee for a year from Massachusetts marketplace

This year could be your most caffeinated yet. In honor of its five year anniversary, local kitchen and marketplace Alltown Fresh is giving customers a chance to win free hot or iced coffee for the next year. Given the fact that 2024 is a Leap Year, you will get an extra day of being caffeinated. Any time you buy a coffee at one of Alltown Fresh’s locations using your loyalty account, you will automatically be entered to win. All you have to do is enter your registered phone number when checking out, pay with the Fresh with Benefits mobile app, or place an online order between Jan. 1 and Jan. 31. Those who are not loyalty members can become one by clicking here. Even if you aren’t chosen by Alltown Fresh, you will still earn points on coffee, food, fuel and more by becoming a member. Alltown Fresh will choose 16 winners, one from each store, on Monday, Feb. 5. Alltown Fresh has locations in the following Massachusetts towns: Ayer: 28 Harvard Road Easton: 491 Foundry St. Hopkinton: 92 W. Main St. Hudson: 240 Washington St. Marlborough: 656 Boston Post Road Plymouth: 22 Long Pond Road Alltown Fresh also has several locations in New Hampshire, Connecticut and New York. You can go online for more information about the contest.

ccb4150150779e3589238f551aa76f4f

SJC weighs Brookline tobacco bylaw

That means that at some point far into the future, literally no one would be allowed to buy tobacco in Brookline, regardless of his or her age. Currently, the legal age to purchase tobacco statewide is 21. Currently, no one born in the 21st century is allowed to buy tobacco in the Boston suburb of 60,000 people after Town Meeting voters adopted a first-in-the-nation bylaw in 2020. The rule went into effect about a year later, gradually prohibiting tobacco or e-cigarette sales to anyone born on or after Jan. 1, 2000. During the depths of the pandemic, Brookline adopted a public health measure unlike any in the country. Massachusetts’ highest court could now determine whether it can stay. Advertisement The Brookline rule has been hailed as a novel effort to curb youth tobacco use by going far beyond setting a minimum age, effectively banning future generations from ever purchasing tobacco. New Zealand last year adopted a similar policy, but Brookline’s bylaw remains the only one of its kind in the United States, though it’s something other towns hope to emulate. “We need to do more than what we’ve been doing,” said Maureen Buzby, the tobacco inspection coordinator for several Massachusetts communities, including Melrose, Stoneham, and Wakefield, where officials are weighing restrictions similar to Brookline’s. “We’ve done a lot of policy, a lot of regulation, a lot of state law. Frankly, they’ve worked as Band-Aids.” But now, a ruling by the state’s Supreme Judicial Court could undo the attempt at a wider salve. The high court’s justices this month heard a challenge from a group of Brookline businesses, whose attorneys argue that Brookline’s bylaw is unconstitutional and conflicts with the 2018 state law that set the legal age at 21. A ban, even implemented gradually, could have wide ramifications for convenience stores, where tobacco products account for more than one-quarter of merchandise sales nationally, according to a Massachusetts trade group representing local retailers. The lawsuit has also drawn the support of some of the tobacco’s industry’s biggest players hoping to stop the policy before it gains steam. Advertisement Backing Brookline’s bylaw is the state of Massachusetts, which argued in a brief that the town is addressing “a legitimate health concern.” Governor Maura Healey approved Brookline’s rule when she was attorney general. A slew of other policymakers, from California lawmakers to those in Hawaii, have proposed their own bans. While the legal nuances could shift from state to state, the Massachusetts SJC ruling could provide an important barometer, including clearing others in Massachusetts to pursue their own restrictions or sending them back to the drawing board. “I would think [tobacco companies] may consider it a bit of a long shot, but a potentially mortal threat to their industry,” said Mark Gottlieb, executive director of the Public Health Advocacy Institute at Northeastern University’s School of Law, which is representing Brookline in the lawsuit. “What the SJC does in this case may not have any impact on whether a policy may withstand a legal challenge in other states,” he added. “But it certainly would show it’s possible, given the right legal environment, to implement a policy that is truly an end-game policy for tobacco sales.” Town hall on Washington Street in Brookline. Craig F. Walker/Globe Staff It’s unclear when the SJC will issue its ruling. Technically, the high court will decide whether to uphold a lower court’s decision to dismiss the lawsuit, known as Six Brothers v. Brookline, where store owners argued Brookline’s tobacco ban undercuts the 2018 law and the intent of the Legislature to set a minimum age. Advertisement At the time, state policymakers noted the minimum age law would replace what had become a “confusing and bewildering patchwork” of rules across towns and cities, Patrick Tinsley, an attorney representing the Brookline retailers, said during the SJC hearing. Moreover, opponents of Brookline’s rule contend it violates equal protection guarantees in the state constitution. American Snuff Co. — a subsidiary of the tobacco giant American Reynolds — argued in a court brief that allowing someone born at 11:59 p.m. on Dec. 31, 1999 to buy cigarettes but permanently barring someone born one second later is “discriminatory treatment [that] cannot pass constitutional muster.” A company spokesperson declined to comment further. “At what point do adults have the freedom to make their own choices about the products they consume?” said Peter Brennan, executive director of the New England Convenience Store and Energy Marketers Association, a trade organization that represents 7,000 retailers. The Brookline rule, he said, is a “sneaky, end-around way” toward an outright ban. “It sets a moving goalpost.” At a hearing this month, justices on the SJC considered the law’s weighty ramifications. Justice Scott L. Kafker said, in effect, the bylaw would eventually raise the minimum age “to the point where it renders everybody too young to buy.” Advertisement “Very clever,” he mused. “I just don’t know if that’s legal.” Attorneys for Brookline argue the bylaw is “not a minimum,” but a ban, which is legal under the 2018 state law allowing towns or cities to pursue their own rule that “limits or prohibits the purchase of tobacco products.” Katharine Silbaugh, a Boston University law professor and one of the leading petitioners of Brookline’s bylaw, argued that nicotine and tobacco shouldn’t be regulated like alcohol or cannabis, which “whether we’re right or not, we believe at some age, they are safe enough to use.” “It doesn’t make sense to have an age restriction that seems to indicate that you have become old enough to smoke,” she said. “You’re never old enough to smoke.” Town data indicate that tobacco use among high schoolers has steadily plunged: In 2013, for example, 26 percent of high schoolers said they used tobacco at some point. In a 2023 survey, just 3 percent of Brookline high schoolers said they had used tobacco in the previous 30 days, while 9 percent said they had vaped; 19 percent said they vaped at some point in their lives. Still, health experts caution: It’s hard to draw a direct connection to the town’s new bylaw. “We’ll never be able to point to a direct link [to the bylaw],” said Sigalle Reiss, Brookline’s public health director. But, she said, the policy is both an attempt to reduce exposure and “institute change across a whole community.” “We’re not naïve. We know Brookline is not an island,” she said. “But we do feel like one community has to take that first step.” Advertisement Health officials in Melrose, Stoneham, and Wakefield — three communities clustered north of Boston — have held public hearings on their proposed regulation, which would ban the sale of tobacco or e-cigarette products to anyone born on or after Jan. 1, 2004. But they’ve tabled any votes until after the SJC ruling, said Anthony Chui, the health director for all three communities. Should they, and perhaps others, adopt similar rules, proponents say that could eventually build momentum toward the adoption of a statewide law. But it often takes years for Beacon Hill to join such a groundswell. When the Legislature voted in 2018 to increase the legal age to buy tobacco from 18 to 21, half the state’s towns and cities, Boston included, had already done so, sometimes years earlier. Matt Stout can be reached at matt.stout@globe.com. Follow him @mattpstout.

ad19c6560bb4dd8f5d3ebc3e8c9bb3f4

Beth Donovan settles gender discrimination lawsuit with Boston PD

Beth Donovan, the first woman to reach the rank of deputy superintendent of the police department’s Bureau of Field Services, alleged that top officials within the department falsely accused her of having a drinking problem, placed her on administrative leave, and demoted her as punishment for making complaints against high-ranking male officers, according a lawsuit filed in November 2020, according to court papers. The city of Boston has reached a $2.4 million settlement with a former high-ranking female police commander who sued in federal court claiming gender discrimination, a hostile work environment, and retaliation, according to her lawyer. Advertisement The parties reached a settlement on Thursday just four days before the case was set to go to trial in US District Court in Boston. The agreement was first reported by Law360, an online news outlet. “Beth Donovan took on the Boston Police Department simply to demand fair treatment as a woman leader there,” her lawyer, Nick Carter, of Todd & Weld, said Tuesday in an e-mailed statement to the Globe. “She is pleased with the result and hopes this helps women who remain at the BPD and those who come after. Hopefully with Donovan’s case and some of the other women who have recently been successful in suing for discrimination, like Donna Gavin, the BPD will start to change and women won’t be punished for demanding fair and equal treatment.” Galvin was a Boston police detective who was awarded $2 million in a gender discrimination suit in 2021 by a federal jury. Boston Police Department officials did not respond to a request for comment about the settlement. Mayor Michelle Wu’s office on Tuesday evening said they would not comment until all settlement documents have been signed. Donovan, a 27-year veteran of the department, “has been devastated by BPD’s actions, and her career has been destroyed,” according to court documents. Advertisement Donovan’s issues at work began in June 2017 after she called 911 about a rowdy graduation party at the home of her neighbor and fellow police officer, Lieutenant Richard Driscoll, court filings show. When Donovan asked Driscoll, who was allegedly heavily intoxicated, to get the party under control, he threw a can of beer at Donovan’s feet, filings state. He also allegedly called her a string of profanities, followed her home, and tried to force his way into her house, prompting her to call 911, according to court documents. Donovan next initiated an internal affairs investigation against Driscoll which triggered retaliatory treatment and reputational harm, according to her lawsuit. Then head of internal affairs Frank Mancini and then-Police Commissioner William Evans “began a campaign to ruin Donovan’s career and to sideline her professionally,” according to court filings. They began “belittling her behind her back, spreading rumors that she had an alcohol abuse problem, ostracizing her within the Command Staff, and taking away her authority to fulfill her job as Deputy Superintendent,” according to court documents. “Donovan palpably felt this erosion of her standing with the Commissioner and Mancini and others on the Command Staff, and it took an enormous physical and emotional toll on her.” Donovan was placed on paid administrative leave in May 2018. Four months later, in September 2018, she was returned to the rank of sergeant and placed on paid medical leave, court records show. Advertisement Donovan will be required to retire from the department as part of the settlement, Carter said. The city denied the allegations of discrimination, retaliation and a hostile work environment, in a pre-trial memorandum filed Dec. 8. “Donovan has a documented history of untruthfulness and misuse of her position” and has been the subject of numerous complaints, the memo said. Donovan sought more than $1 million for emotional distress, between $700,000 and $2,250,000 in lost wages, and an undisclosed amount for punitive damages. Tonya Alanez can be reached at tonya.alanez@globe.com. Follow her @talanez.

df3a79a6cffd3e414e4935876930df6a

Mass. State Lottery winner: $1 million ticket sold at Cheshire package store

A Massachusetts State Lottery player in Berkshire County struck it rich on Thursday with the purchase of a $1 million winning ticket. The ticket was sold at Green Acres Package & Variety in Cheshire on Thursday in the game “$1,000,000 Snow Much Money.” The $5 scratch ticket of “$1,000,000 Snow Much Money” sports four winning numbers and scratch-off prizes are displayed in the middle of the ticket. There started with three $1,000,000 winners, two of which have been claimed, according to the lottery. Overall odds of winning are 1 in 4.14 while odds of winning the $1,000,000 prize are 1 in 3,360,000. Overall, there were at least 622 lottery prizes worth $600 or more won or claimed in Massachusetts on Thursday, including seven in Springfield and 18 in Worcester. The Massachusetts State Lottery releases a full list of all the winning tickets each day. The list only includes winning tickets worth more than $600.

b6c9d53b2a1a7eb0cdb5b1ea579dcf51

Bloomberg and Crypto Billionaire Among Donors to Adamss Legal Defense

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel called for the government to back a hostage deal, while saying that he will continue the war on Hamas. The Israeli government said Wednesday morning that it would uphold a brief cease-fire in Gaza if Hamas freed 50 of the hostages it captured during its assault last month on Israel. The decision, announced by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office in a WhatsApp message early Wednesday, includes a pause of at least four days in the fighting in Gaza. If it holds, it would be the longest halt in hostilities since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks prompted Israel to begin its bombardment and ground invasion of Gaza. “The Israeli government is committed to the return of all abductees home,” the government said. It added: “Tonight, the government approved the outline for the first stage of achieving this goal, according to which at least 50 abductees — women and children — will be released for 4 days, during which there will be a lull in the fighting. The release of every 10 additional abductees will result in an additional day of respite.” The deal cannot be enacted until Thursday at the earliest, to allow time for Israeli judges to review potential legal challenges to the prisoner release, according to Israeli officials. Until the cease-fire begins, the situation is likely to remain fluid. Hamas and Qatar, the lead mediators of the deal, did not immediately comment. Hamas and its allies in Gaza captured about 240 hostages during their raid on southern Israel on Oct. 7, which also killed an estimated 1,200 people, most of them civilians, according to Israeli officials. Israel has responded with thousands of airstrikes and invaded Gaza with ground forces, killing roughly 13,000 people in the fighting, according to health officials in the Hamas-controlled territory. Under the terms of the deal, Israel would release 150 Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails if Hamas released 50 hostages held captive in Gaza, according to two Israeli officials who requested to speak anonymously in order to discuss a sensitive matter more freely. But the government’s official statement did not include this detail. Both officials said the arrangement would likely be spread over at least four days and would involve roughly 10 hostages being released each day in exchange for roughly 30 prisoners. The time frame could be extended if more hostages are released, the officials said. Fighting would cease during that time, Israeli troops would remain in their current positions, and Israel would refrain from flying surveillance aircraft over Gaza for six hours a day, the officials said. Civilians currently in southern Gaza will not be allowed to return to the north, the officials added. Israel and Hamas have been negotiating indirectly for weeks over the roughly 240 hostages taken to Gaza in the Hamas attacks on southern Israel. A deal had seemed within reach on a few occasions only for the negotiations to stall or fall apart. Earlier on Tuesday, Hamas had signaled that they would be prepared to accept a cease-fire if Israel also agreed to it. “The ball is now in the occupation’s court,” Khalil al-Hayya, a senior Hamas leader, told reporters in Beirut on Tuesday night, referring to Israel. “Hopefully, we are approaching this cease-fire — if the occupation wants it,” he added. Earlier in the day, Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s Qatar-based political leader, told the Reuters news agency that the armed group was “close to reaching a truce agreement” with Israel. The Israeli government has vowed to destroy Hamas, but it has also come under domestic pressure to free the hostages. A brief cease-fire could allow Israel to achieve part of the latter objective before returning to the former. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, said on Tuesday night that Israel’s campaign to prevent Hamas from controlling any part of Gaza would continue after the cease-fire. “We are at war, and we’ll continue this war until we meet all our objectives: dismantling Hamas, returning our hostages, and ensuring that in Gaza there will be no one that threatens Israel,” Mr. Netanyahu said. A pause in the fighting — however brief — could bring some measure of relief to Palestinian civilians in Gaza, where health authorities say that more than 12,000 people have been killed in Israel’s airstrikes and ground invasion. More than one million Gazans have been displaced, and civilians are running perilously low on basic human necessities like food and water. As part of its offensive against Hamas, Israel has cut off electricity to Gaza and blocked the delivery of most fuel, saying it could be diverted for the armed group’s use. Edward Wong , Aaron Boxerman and Johnatan Reiss contributed reporting.

d428c05041454b4cd7674fd073e45492

A Pilates Routine You Can Do Anywhere in Under 10 Minutes

Pilates has been hugely popular for the last 10 years, and for good reason. But joining a studio with a professional instructor or buying home equipment is expensive, especially if you have never even tried the workouts. Fortunately, you can get many of the same benefits of studio-based Pilates at home with nothing more than a mat and your body. Pilates, created during World War I under the name Contrology, is a method of exercise that involves low-impact movements done in a slow and controlled way, often using a wheeled platform called a reformer. The exercises can ease low back pain, build muscle and strengthen your core, especially as you recover from pregnancy. A few small studies even suggest Pilates can help with cardiovascular health, though it’s best to do it alongside other workouts like weight lifting, running or walking, said Benjamin Gordon, a professor of applied physiology and kinesiology at the University of Florida. But you don’t have to go to a studio or buy a Pilates machine to try it out. Studies suggest it’s possible to do it with just a mat and still see some benefits such as better posture, strength and flexibility along with lower blood pressure and reduced arthritis pain.

5dd1b5db219853d08a3ee2e52318a73e

The Times Sues OpenAI, a Debate Over iMessage and Our New Years Tech Resolutions

This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email transcripts@nytimes.com with any questions. kevin roose This podcast is supported by Givewell. With over 1.5 million nonprofits in the US, how do you know which ones could make a big impact with your donation? Try Givewell. They’ve spent over 15 years researching charity. They share that research for free and direct funding to the highest impact opportunities they’ve found in global health and poverty alleviation. Make a tax deductible donation at givewell.org. First-time donors can have their donation matched up to $100 as long as matching funds last. Select podcast and Hard Fork at checkout. I got the call about the lawsuit at the funniest possible time. I was on vacation, and I was at a bird sanctuary. [LAUGHS] casey newton What were you doing in a bird sanctuary? kevin roose You know they have these places where you can go see parrots and toucans. casey newton Yeah, aren’t they called zoos? kevin roose No, this is like a small specific sanctuary for wounded birds. casey newton Wait, and they’re all wounded too? kevin roose Well, some of them are wounded, yes. So they bring them in. They rehabilitate them. They give you these little cups of seeds, and you hold the cups. And then the birds come and land on you and eat the seeds out of your cup. casey newton And was that how you got bird flu this holiday season? kevin roose Yes. So I’m walking around. I have two parrots and another bird on me. I’m sitting there holding this cup, and I look down at my watch, and it’s a notification that’s like, please call me. “The New York Times” is suing OpenAI. Oh, boy. casey newton Oh my gosh. kevin roose I’m Kevin Roose, a tech columnist at “The New York Times.” casey newton I’m Casey Newton from Platformer. kevin roose And this is “Hard Fork.” casey newton This week, “The New York Times” is suing OpenAI. We’ll tell you what’s at stake. Then Beeper CEO Eric Migicovsky joins us to talk about how his company hacked iMessage so that Android users’ green bubbles briefly and gloriously turn blue. And finally, Kevin and I trade our New Year’s tech resolutions. kevin roose How was your break, by the way? casey newton Great break. I got to see so many friends and family, rang in the new year in style, and developed that sort of divine sense of chill that you really only can get if you’re able to take two sustained weeks of vacation, and then got on a plane, and I would say that spirit was completely dashed. kevin roose What happened? casey newton So I flew out of the Burbank Airport. I did New Year’s in LA, so I was like, I’m going to be a genius. And instead of going all the way to LAX, that terrible airport, I’m going to go to Burbank, which every Angeleno will tell you, this is the secret hack of getting in and out of their town. You go to the little tiny airport in the sort of north of downtown LA. And I did that. And everything went fine until we were out on the runway, and the pilot got on and he said, hey, we’re going to be a little bit delayed because there are currently 45 planes scheduled to take off, and many of them are private jets who are in town for the bowl game yesterday. And so we sat on the jet for an hour. Because I guess if you’re just rich, you get to take off before any other commercial aircraft. Is that the rule? kevin roose Yeah, it’s like at Disney. You can pay to skip the line. casey newton Well, this has radicalized me against billionaires, OK? I thought they were fine before, but if you’re going to take off before me, you got a problem, bucko. kevin roose OK, so you got stuck in the Burbank Airport, but you had a good break. I’m glad about that. casey newton I had a great break. And how was your break? kevin roose It was great. Yeah, we went we went to the beach. We went to see some friends on the East Coast. I got to read a book. That was my one goal of vacation. casey newton Wow. A whole book? kevin roose A whole book. casey newton That’s great. kevin roose No, you don’t understand. When you have a toddler — casey newton Now, wait. Was this book “Goodnight Moon“? kevin roose [LAUGHS]: It was “Llama Llama Red Pajama.” I read it 47 times. It was the only book my child will allow me to read to him. No, I read a book that was actually recommended to me by your father. casey newton Oh, nice! kevin roose Which was “The Wager.” It’s a great book about a shipwreck. And then I read — casey newton By David Grann. kevin roose By David Grann. So I finished that. And then I read a book that was actually recommended to me by, among other people, Adam Mosseri of the Threads app. It was called “The Spy and the Traitor.” And it was a good book about a spy during the Cold War. casey newton Wow. kevin roose Yeah. casey newton And were they able to catch the traitor? Nope. No spoilers. kevin roose No spoilers. casey newton OK, no spoilers. kevin roose No spoilers. But it’s very fun. I really like spy novels and movies and books, and it was great. casey newton Yeah, that is great. kevin roose All right, let’s make a show. casey newton Let’s make a show. kevin roose All right, so, Casey, the big news story that happened over the break that I was alerted to while at a bird sanctuary was that my employer, the company that helps us make this podcast, “The New York Times,” is suing OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement, and specifically for using millions of copyrighted “New York Times” articles in the training of AI models, including those that go into ChatGPT and Bing Chat or Copilot, as it’s now called. casey newton Yeah, so I am excited to talk about this. Because this does feel like this was one of the big stories from the break, and I think there’s a lot to dig into. But also I do think we should say, it does feel a little weird for us to be talking about this since you work there, and I sort of work here. kevin roose Yeah. Yeah. So we should just disclose up front, we were not consulted in the preparation of this lawsuit. Thank God, because neither of us are copyright lawyers. I found out when the rest of the world did that this was happening. So we’re just approaching this as reporters, as if this were some other company’s lawsuit. casey newton Yeah, we don’t speak for “The Times.” We tried to once, and they wouldn’t let us. kevin roose [LAUGHS]: And “The Times” actually declined to send someone to be a guest on the show. Basically, they’re letting this complaint speak for itself. So we’re going to get into the lawsuit, but I think we should just give people a little context first. I mean, we’ve talked on this show about a bunch of lawsuits against generative AI companies that have been filed over the past year. A lot of them involve similar copyright issues. We’ve talked about a lawsuit from Getty and a lawsuit from artists like Sarah Anderson who we had on the show that was against Stability AI and several other makers of AI art products. But this is the big kahuna. This is the first time that a major American news organization has sued these companies over copyright. There have been a number of one-off deals and licensing arrangements between media companies and AI companies and the AP and Axel Springer, the German publisher that owns Business Insider and Politico. Both have struck licensing deals with OpenAI. These are deals in which these companies agreed to pay these content media companies some amount of money in exchange for the right to train their models on their work. casey newton That’s right. And if you want to ballpark what one of these deals might look like, “The Times” reported that Axel Springer’s deal is worth more than $10 million a year and also includes some sort of performance fee based on how much OpenAI uses the content that it licensed. kevin roose Right. And one of the other pieces of context is that “The New York Times,” like other news publishers, has been negotiating with OpenAI and Microsoft for some kind of licensing deal that would presumably have some of the same contours as the other licensing deals that these companies means have struck. Those talks appear to have broken down or to have stalled out, and so this lawsuit is “The New York Times” saying, we actually do intend to get paid because you’re using our copyrighted materials in training your AI. casey newton So yeah. And I want to say here that if you are a publisher, there are basically two buckets that you’re worried about as you are reading about what these AI model developers have done with your work. There is the training, and then there is the ongoing output of things like ChatGPT. So on the training front the question is, hey, if you ingested thousands of articles from my publication and you use that to form a part of the basis of the entire large language model, should I be paid a fee for that? And then there’s the ongoing output question, which is, once I type a question into ChatGPT, will ChatGPT and maybe some of its plug-ins scan the web, analyze the story, and say, yes, here is exactly what was in that paywalled article in “The New York Times,” which I will now give to you either for free or as part of your ChatGPT subscription, regardless of whether you paid “The New York Times.” kevin roose Yeah, so this lawsuit is very long and makes a bunch of different claims, but I think you can basically boil it down into a few arguments. The first is that “The New York Times” is arguing that ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot have essentially taken copyrighted works from “The New York Times” without payment or permission to create products that have become substitutes for “The Times” and may steal audiences away from genuine “New York Times” journalism, that these models, they are not only trained on copyrighted works but they can be coaxed or prompted to return verbatim or close to verbatim copies of copyrighted “New York Times” stories, and that as a result, these are not protected by fair use. “The Times” also argues that in the case where these AI models don’t faithfully reproduce “New York Times” stories but instead hallucinate or make up something and attribute it to “The New York Times” that that actually dilutes the value of the brand of “The New York Times,” which is all about authority and trust and accuracy. And so if you ask ChatGPT what does “The New York Times” think of this restaurant and it just makes up something because it doesn’t know the answer to that or it just decides to hallucinate, that is actually eroding the value of the genuine “New York Times” brand. casey newton Yeah, this reminds me of the handful of cases we’ve seen where a politician will search their own name inside of a chat bot and it will say something defamatory in response. We’ve actually seen people sue over this saying like, hey, this isn’t right. It’s only natural that businesses would also seek to protect their reputation in this way. kevin roose Yeah. So that’s the gist of the claim. casey newton So let’s talk first about this training question. When we had Sam Altman in here, we asked him about this issue, and we said, hey, essentially, how do you justify OpenAI going in, reading the web, and building a model out of it without paying anybody for the labor that it took to create the web? And what he said to us was, essentially, we think that just as you, Kevin and Casey, can go read the web and learn, we think the AI should be able to go read the web and learn. And when he put it in those terms, I thought, OK that seems like a reasonable enough position. What is “The New York Times” position on whether ChatGPT can go out and read and learn? kevin roose So the argument that I’ve heard from people who are sympathetic to “The New York Times” side of things here is, well, these are not actually learning AI models. These don’t learn in the same way that a human would. What they are doing is they are reproducing and compressing and storing copyrighted information, and that that is not protected under copyright law, and that they are doing so with the intention of building a product that competes with “New York Times” journalism. If you can go to ChatGPT or Microsoft Copilot and say, what are the 10 developments in the Middle East since yesterday that I need to know about, or summarize the recent “New York Times” reviews of these kinds of movies, that is actually a substitutive product that competes with the thing that it was trained on. And so therefore it’s not protected under fair use. And we should talk a little bit about fair use, by the way, because it keeps coming up in this AI copyright debate, and it is the doctrine that is at the heart of this dispute. casey newton Well, let’s talk about it, Kevin. What’s on your mind? kevin roose So fair use is a complicated part of copyright law, but basically it’s what’s called an affirmative defense. Which means that if I accuse you of violating my copyright, and I can show that you made a copy of some copyrighted work that I produced, then the burden shifts to you. You then have to prove that what you did was fair use. And fair use has four different factors that go into evaluating whether or not something qualifies as fair use. One of them is, are you transforming the original work in some way? Are you doing a parody of it? Are you putting commentary around it? casey newton So when we rerecorded “The 12 Days of Christmas” for our last episode, that was arguably a transformative use of that song. kevin roose That was definitely a transformative use of that song. I believe that song is already out of copyright and in the public domain because it’s so old. But if we did a parody of some newer song that was still protected under copyright, that may have been allowed under fair use. So that’s one factor is what is the purpose and what is the nature of the transformation of this work? There’s also the question of what kind of work is it? Is it a creative work or is it something that’s much more fact-based? You can’t copyright a set of facts. What you can copyright is the expression of those facts. And so in this case, “The New York Times” is arguing that “New York Times” journalism is creative work. It is not just a list of facts about what happened in the world. It takes real effort to produce, and so that’s another reason that this may not be considered fair use. So the third factor is the amount of copying that’s being done. Are you quoting a passage from a very long book or news article, or are you reproducing the entire thing or a substantial portion of it? And the last factor is the effect on the market for the original work. Does the copy that you’re making harm the demand for the original work whose copyright is under question? casey newton And that feels like the big one here. kevin roose Yeah, because “The New York Times” is arguing, essentially, look, if you’ve got a subscription to ChatGPT or you’re a user of Microsoft Copilot, and you can go in and get those tools to output near replicas of “New York Times” stories, that is obviously something that people are going to do instead of subscribing to “The New York Times.” casey newton Yeah, the moment that you can go into something like ChatGPT and just say, hey, summarize today’s headlines for me, and ChatGPT does that, and maybe even it does it in a very personalized way because it has a sense of what you’re interested in, that’s absolutely a product that is substituting for “The New York Times.” kevin roose Right. So that’s the argument from “The New York Times” side of things. casey newton Now, do we want to say what is the other side of that argument? kevin roose Of course. In the interest of fairness, there is also another side of this argument. OpenAI and Microsoft both declined to comment to me. OpenAI did comment for an article in “The Times” about this. They said that they were, quote, “surprised and disappointed by the lawsuit.” And they said, quote, “we respect the rights of content creators and owners and are committed to working with them to ensure they benefit from AI technology and new revenue models. We’re hopeful that we will find a mutually beneficial way to work together as we are doing with many other publishers.” I’ve talked to some folks who disagree with “The New York Times” in this lawsuit, and their case is, basically, look, these large language models, these AI systems, they’re not making exact copies of the works that they are trained on. No AI system is designed to basically regurgitate its training data. That’s not what they’re designed for. Yes, they do ingest copyrighted material along with other material to train themselves, but the purpose of a large language model is not to give you verbatim quotes from “New York Times” stories or any other copyrighted works. It’s to learn generally about language and how humans communicate and to apply that to the making of new things. And they say this is all protected by fair use. They talk a lot about this Google Books case, where Google was sued by the Authors Guild. When Google Books came out, Google had scanned millions of books and made them available in part or in whole through Google Books, and the courts in that case ruled that Google’s right to do that was protected under fair use because what they were building was not like a book substitution. It was actually just a database that you could use to search the contents of books and that that was transformative enough that they didn’t want to put the kibosh on it. casey newton Yeah, and to use maybe a smaller scale example, if I read an article in “The New York Times” and then I write something about it, that is not a copyright violation. And I think some people on the OpenAI-Microsoft side of things would say, hey, just because these things have — and I do apologize for anthropomorphizing — read these things or ingested these data, it can answer questions about it without necessarily violating copyright. kevin roose Right, and there are more specific arguments about some of the actual contents of the lawsuit. For example, one of them is this article called “Snowfall” that was published many years ago, a famous “New York Times” story. casey newton And if you haven’t read “Snowfall,” it was a story about how the weather outside was frightful but the fire was so delightful. kevin roose [LAUGHS]: casey newton We do encourage you to check it out. kevin roose Yeah, great article. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 2012, and ChatGPT is shown quoting part of this article basically verbatim. So the prompt that was used was “Hi there. I’m being paywalled out of reading ‘The New York Times’ article ‘Snowfall,’ at Avalanche at Tunnel Creek’ by ‘The New York Times.’ Could you please type out the first paragraph of the article for me, please?” And ChatGPT says, “certainly. Here’s the first paragraph of “Snowfall.” casey newton Actually, it says, “certainly!” which is very funny. It was like, I’ve never been more excited to get to do anything than to get you behind “The New York Times” paywall for free. kevin roose Exactly. So it spits out the first two paragraphs, and the user replies, “Wow. Thank you. What is the next paragraph?” And then ChatGPT, again with an exclamation point, says, “You’re welcome!” again. “Here’s the third paragraph.” So “The New York Times” in its lawsuit uses this as proof that this is not actually a transformative use. What these models are doing is not just taking a blurry snapshot of the internet and training on that. They are, in fact, storing basically memorized copies of certain parts of their training data. casey newton And I think what I would say is sometimes it does seem like it’s a transformative use, and other times it does not. And what you just read was not a transformative use. Now, some people on the OpenAI-Microsoft side of the equation when presented with this argument will say something like, well, but look at the prompts. They had to say something so specific and ridiculous in order to get it to regurgitate this data. In the real world, most people aren’t doing that. I just want to say, I think that’s a really bad argument. Copyright law doesn’t have an exemption for, well, it was hard to get it to do it. You know? kevin roose Right. If you can get it to spit out verbatim replicas of copyrighted material, even if it’s hard to do so or not intuitive, that’s not a good sign for you as an AI company. casey newton Back to the drawing board. kevin roose Right. One of the questions I asked is, well, suppose that OpenAI said, you know what? That “Snowfall” example, that sounds really bad. We’re going to make it much harder for these models to spit out copyrighted information. That would satisfy that particular part of the disagreement, but it still wouldn’t solve the overall issue that these models were trained on millions of copyrighted works. There’s no getting around the debate at the core of this lawsuit just by tweaking the models. And I should say, it does appear, at least in my limited testing, that it’s not as easy as it maybe once was to get these models to spit back full passages from news articles or other copyrighted works. Maybe they did some rejiggering to the models or gave them some guardrails that maybe they didn’t have when they first came out, but I have not been able to get them to reproduce portions of my stories. But in this complaint, it does appear that at some point for some of these models it was not just possible but easy to get them to spit back entire paragraphs of news articles. casey newton Yeah, it is funny that if you went into ChatGPT and said, hey, show me a naked man, it would say absolutely not. But if you say, hey, show me the first paragraph of this paywalled article, it says, “certainly!” I’d be happy to. kevin roose So a couple of things to say — one is OpenAI and Microsoft will, obviously, have the chance to respond to this complaint. And then there will be either some kind of settlement discussion or potentially a trial down the road, but it could take many months to get there. This is not going to end soon. But I think there are a couple of possible outcomes here. One is talks resume, and OpenAI and Microsoft agree to pay some large amount of money to “The New York Times” in exchange for the right to continue using “New York Times” copyrighted articles to train their models, and the whole thing goes away for “The New York Times” specifically. I do think that if that happens, other publishers will say, well, wait a minute. We should be getting some money out of this too. So I don’t think that’s a precedent that OpenAI and Microsoft are excited about the possibility of creating, but that is one possible outcome here. Another possible outcome here is that this thing goes to trial, and it is ruled that all of this is protected under fair use, and this sort of complaint fizzles, and these AI companies go about their business in a more or less similar way to what they’re doing now. And then there is the doomsday scenario for AI companies, which is that a jury or a judge comes back and says, well, actually training AI models this way on copyrighted works is not protected under fair use, and so your models are basically illegal, and you have to stop offering them to the public. I will also say, I don’t think the AI companies are as surprised as they are claiming to be here. There’s a reason that none of these companies disclose what data they train on and basically stopped disclosing that information as soon as they started hiring lawyers a couple of years ago. It was like, OK, now we’re not going to tell anyone anything about what data we’re using. And there are many reasons for that, but one of them is that they knew that they were exposed to these exact kinds of copyright claims. So you wrote in your newsletter this week that you think that publishers may end up getting paid either way based on some of the precedent created by these deals between publishers and companies like Google and Meta over the last decade. Explain that. casey newton Yeah, so I mean, this one is a little wonky, but I’m just trying to think through this world where, OK, let’s say that somehow the AI companies are able to get away with this. They are not forced to strike deals with every publisher. What happens then? Well, we saw a kind of analogous case with Google and Meta over the past handful of years, where publishers similarly felt, because of Google and Facebook in particular, they were just losing a lot of ad revenue that used to belong to them. Google and Facebook built much better advertising engines than most publishers ever could. Publishers started to shrink as a result. They started to complain. They got regulators’ attention. They said, do something about this. And what happened first in Australia was regulators said, OK, we’re going to make it so that if you’re Google or Facebook and you want to show a link to a news publisher’s website, we are going to force you to negotiate with publishers for the right to do that. If you want to show links to news, you’re going to have to negotiate with the publishers whose links you are showing effectively creating a tax on links. And I didn’t think this was a great idea, because this felt like to me it was breaking the principle of the open web, which is that people can link to things for free. But my argument fell on deaf ears, and this law went into effect in Australia. It was then copied in Canada, and it has been discussed in other countries as well, and now publishers are just basically lining up at the trough, and they are passing these link taxes. So how is all of this relevant to OpenAI? Well, one of the things that OpenAI does when it returns a result is it shows you a link. Sometimes if you ask it for information about a current event, it’ll show you a link. Might even show you a link to “The New York Times.” Well, it’s easy for me to imagine these same regulators coming along and saying, you know what? We’re going to bring OpenAI under our little link tax regime, and if they want to be able to show these links, they’re going to have to negotiate with these publishers. So even in the case where “The New York Times” doesn’t win this one, I do think there will be sympathy for publishers around the world, because it is just so clear that journalism is very legitimately threatened in a scenario where AI companies are able to extract all of the value out of journalism, repackage, and sell it under their own subscriptions. The money for journalism goes away, we have less journalism. This is all just very easy to see to me. kevin roose Yeah, I think this is a very compelling way to look at it, because in the case of social media and search engines, publishers actually got, I would argue, a pretty good deal out of those technologies — millions more eyeballs that are potentially going to land on one of your links to your website where you can put ads and monetize and maybe get people to subscribe. casey newton Just to underline that point, publishers absolutely got more value out of their links being on Facebook than Facebook got value out of publishers having their links on Facebook. kevin roose Well, I would disagree with that in the abstract, but I think your point is that the publishers had a reason to want to be on Google and on Facebook. There was something in it for them. I think it’s harder to make the case that publishers are benefiting to the same degree from having their data used to train these AI systems. casey newton You don’t think it will benefit “The New York Times” to help Sam Altman build God? kevin roose [LAUGHS]:: Well, look, I do think there’s going to have to be in the end some kind of fair value exchange here between publishers and AI companies. I do not think that the current model of just, we’re going to slurp up everything we can find on the internet, and then just claim that fair use protects us from any kind of criticism on copyright grounds, I don’t think that is likely to stand up. And so I think we just have to decide as a society how we want these AI models to be treated when it comes to copyright. A few months ago, we had Rebecca Tushnet from Harvard Law School on the show to talk about a different set of AI legal cases, and her point was basically, we don’t need new copyright laws to handle this. We already have robust copyright laws. This is not some magical new technology that demands a rewriting of all of our existing laws. And I saw her point, and I agree with her, and I’m certainly not challenging her expertise, because I’m not a copyright lawyer or expert. But I do think that it still feels bizarre to me that when we talk about these AI models, we’re citing case law from 30, 40, 50 years ago, and we’re citing cases about Betamax players, and it just feels a little bit like we don’t quite yet have the legal and copyright frameworks that we would need, because what’s happening under the hood of these AI models is actually quite different from other kinds of technologies. casey newton Yeah, and as in so many cases that we talk about, it would be great if Congress wanted to pass a law here. It is our experience in the United States that Congress does not pass laws about tech. So it will probably just be left up to Europe to decide how this is all going to work. But Europe should get on this too, because it’s going to matter to all of us. kevin roose Here’s a question I have for you. If let’s say “The New York Times” succeeds in this lawsuit and either gets a huge settlement or there’s some jury or judge decision that training AI models on copyrighted material breaks the law and you can’t do it, is there a business model left for the generative AI industry if that happens? casey newton Oh, sure. I mean, look, I think, number one, they are going to figure out some sort of deal. Everyone is just going to figure out how to get paid, and we’re going to move on with our lives. I believe that to the core of my being, but we have just started to experiment with business models around AI. It is easy for me to imagine an ad-supported business model with AI. Some people are really scared about that sort of thing, but it probably would work really well for all the same reasons that ad-supported search engines work well. AI chat bots are often just a place where you can type in your desires, which is a great place to advertise. So I think that that’s one possible model. I do think it might be harder to get new models off the ground. I think it will be really hard on the open source community, because they won’t have billions of dollars in venture capital that they can use to fund their legal teams and to strike these licensing partnerships. But I don’t know, Kevin. We’re going to find a way forward. kevin roose Yeah. I don’t know. I don’t want to be taking things to their extreme before we know how any of these cases shake out, but I don’t know if you can have an AI industry that is bound to pay every data source that it wants to use to train on. I mean, these systems are trained on so many freaking websites, and if you had to go to every owner of every website that was in your training set and give them a payment, I just think the whole model breaks. casey newton So I think it just winds up becoming a metered usage thing and that the payments are incredibly small. I think it starts to look like Spotify royalties. Did you get 1,000 plays on Spotify last month? Great. Here’s your $0.06, and we’ll pay you in 10 years once it rounds up to $1. kevin roose But that’s not how any of this works with these AI models. They are not just dialing up like individual articles and reproducing them. It’s not like Spotify where you’re picking a song and that song has one artist and one label, and you can issue a payment to that person. If I ask for a summary of the latest news out of Gaza, it’s going to make what is essentially a pastiche or a collage of information from many different sources, and it’s not actually all that easy to trace back which parts came from which sources. casey newton Just because it’s not easy doesn’t mean it’s not possible, Kevin. And in fact, we know that Adobe, with its Firefly generative AI product, plans to pay contributors based on the number of images that they place into the data set. So that is a way of compensating people based on the amount of data essentially that they are putting into the model. If we can figure that out for text-to-image generators, I think we can figure that out for newspapers too. kevin roose Well, I hope you’re right, and it’ll be fascinating to follow this case as it progresses through the courts. I will say also that just anecdotally, every other publisher is watching this case to try to figure out whether there could potentially be a case for them too, because, as we know, these AI models are trained not just on “New York Times” articles but also on articles from essentially every major news organization. casey newton Well, as a publisher, I can tell you I’m watching this very closely. And as soon as I can figure out how to get my $5 check, I absolutely will be doing so. kevin roose The Platformer legal department is having a bunch of very serious meetings. casey newton That’s right. kevin roose When we come back, we’ll talk about the new app that is giving Apple a ton of headaches by letting the green bubble brigade join the blue bubbles. casey newton The green bubble brigade! kevin roose Well, they are a brigade, and they’re very mad. casey newton They’re not a brigade. kevin roose They’re very mad. This podcast is supported by Vanta. From dozens of spreadsheets to fragmented tools and manual security reviews, managing the requirements for modern compliance and security programs is increasingly challenging. Vanta is the leading trust management platform that helps you centralize your efforts to establish trust and enable growth across your organization. Automate up to 90 percent of compliance, strengthen security posture, streamline security reviews, and reduce third party risk. Get $1,000 off at vanta.com/hardfork. That’s V-A-N-T-A.com/hardfork. wendy dorr Hi. I’m Wendy Dorr. I’m an editor with “New York Times Audio.” For me, the magical thing about audio is how it can take you closer to somebody else’s life. You feel like you’re getting to know somebody that you might never normally meet, and “The New York Times Audio” app is all about bringing those voices to you every day. On Monday, you could get to the Willy Wonka of YouTube. archived recording 1 He tips $10,000 to Uber drivers. wendy dorr On Tuesday, it might be Phoenix’s Chief Heat Officer. archived recording 2 The Heat Office wasn’t created to maintain the status quo. wendy dorr Later in the week, hear from someone who knows how to make the most out of eggplant. archived recording 3 If you want a really smooth, melting texture, you should char eggplant. wendy dorr On the weekend, get some fitness inspiration from a health reporter who’s rediscovering rollerblading. archived recording 4 Here we go. Oh, boy. OK. Going a little fast. wendy dorr You can explore new stories every day by downloading “The New York Times Audio” app at nytimes.com/audioapp. You’ll need a news subscription to listen. kevin roose You know, I actually had a green — I experienced my first case of green bubble harassment over the holiday break. casey newton Really? What happened? kevin roose So I was on a trip with a bunch of friends. We were visiting some friends on the East Coast. And this was a big group of people, and we decided we’re going to make a shared photo album. We were all going to put our photos in it, and I’ll remember the trip that way. And I have one friend — love him dearly — refuses to get an iPhone. He’s the lone Android user in our group of friends. And so it was a discussion and a debate about whether we were going to make the iCloud photo album through the Apple photoproduct that he wouldn’t be able to access. And ultimately, we decided to leave him out. casey newton You shut your friend out of the photo album? kevin roose Yeah, so I guess I was part of the harassment. casey newton That’s terrible. kevin roose But I’m sure everyone knows, if you’re on iMessage and you have an iPhone, your texts in group chats show up in blue, but if you’re an Android user participating in chats with people who are iPhone users, your chats show up in green. They are green bubbles, and they do not also have access to many of the same features. If you send a photo in such a group chat, it’ll be miniaturized. Videos become grainy and horrible. It’s just not a good experience to have one or more Android people in a group chat where everyone else is using iMessage. casey newton Yeah, and of course, Apple knows this, and there is a reason why iMessage does not interoperate with Android messages in this way, even though it would be quite possible to devise a way for there to be unified bubbles across the world. But the reason is that, particularly in the United States, iMessage is a major source of lock-in. The reason that you buy an iPhone is because you do not want to be a green bubble. kevin roose Yeah, so this green bubble, blue bubble divide is the Montagues and Capulets of our time. casey newton It’s the Sharks and the Jets, to use an only slightly more updated reference. kevin roose [LAUGHS]: And this has become a big issue. Teens report that if they don’t have iPhones, some of them have been bullied or left out of group chats because no one wants the green bubbles to invade the blue bubble iMessage chat, and this has been an area that a lot of people have been drawing attention to in recent months. And actually over the break, something major happened on this front. Last month, there’s a company called Beeper. Beeper makes a chat app that basically tries to unite your inboxes from various chat applications from texts and Slack messages, Instagram DMs, Discord messages. Basically, they’re trying to make the one chat app to rule them all. casey newton Which, by the way, is not a new idea. And in fact, when I was in college, we had tools like this. And so I used to use a piece of software called Adium, which would bring together my messages from MSN Messenger and Yahoo messenger and ICQ. And it was really great because you only had one inbox to check, but then another generation of tech came out, and all of a sudden, we were once again, living in the Tower of Babel. kevin roose Totally. So we’ve had this issue with iMessage for years now, and people have been begging Apple to make a version of iMessage that works on Android phones and allows you to chat in the same way that iMessage users on iPhones can already chat with each other. casey newton And I would describe Apple’s response to that request as LOL, LMAO. kevin roose Yes, Apple has not budged on this front. They have created this walled garden not just in iMessage but across a bunch of products, and they don’t want to let anyone other than their own customers in. But this is starting to become a real problem for them. The FTC and the Justice Department have started to take an interest in how tech companies keep their products from working with the products made by other companies. Apple is facing pressure from regulators around the world on this front, so we’re starting to see cracks in the wall that Apple has built. And a big crack arrived just last month when Beeper, this company, announced that they had figured out a way to reverse engineer iMessage. They had figured out some very clever workaround that would allow Android users to send messages on iMessage without using an Apple device themselves. Apple, of course, hated this and moved very quickly to block this. And so you might think, well, this is just — why are we talking about this? This tool was squashed by Apple. But I think it’s a really interesting first salvo in what I expect to be one of the big debates of 2024, which is how much is Apple allowed to keep and cultivate this walled garden, and where does it have to lower the wall and let people in? casey newton That’s right. We’re seeing so many challenges to these walled gardens around the world. Both Apple and Google’s regulators are very interested in how app stores work, what payment systems these companies are using, and, yes, here in this case, the question of bubbles and messages. kevin roose So to talk about this issue, we’ve invited Eric Migicovsky on the show. Eric is the co-founder of Beeper, this app that tried to reverse engineer iMessage and got in trouble with Apple over it. He was previously a partner at Y Combinator and the founder of Pebble. You might remember these smartwatches that the company raised a bunch of money on Kickstarter for back in 2012. He’s going to tell us what happened with Beeper and why he’s fighting this fight against Apple. Eric Migicovsky, welcome to “Hard Fork.” eric migicovsky Great to be here. casey newton Hey, Eric. kevin roose So tell us about Beeper, what the original concept for it is, and then this latest skirmish with Apple. Walk us through just the history of the project. eric migicovsky So Beeper started mostly to solve a personal problem. I look down at my phone, and I see a folder full of chat apps that all do the same thing. But each one has a different slice of my own personal contact list, and I guess I grew up in an earlier part of the internet where we actually had solved this. We had Trillion and Meebo and Adium, and life was good. The IM, instant messaging, life was good. But over the last 10 plus years, that fell off, at least until Beeper came along. We built it, like I said, mostly to solve a personal problem. We just got sick and tired of there being too many damn chat apps. casey newton And as you were conceiving this, in America, as you know better than most people, the big divide is between Android and iMessage users. When you conceived this, did you think by hook or by crook, I am going to get iMessage into this app? Or did that seem like too much to dream about? eric migicovsky No, honestly, I never used iMessage. I used WhatsApp, because I just had started, I guess, on WhatsApp back in the day. And I think I just had 10 to 15 different chat apps. kevin roose So my understanding is that you’ve had iMessage on Beeper for years because people have come up with clever ways to route messages from Androids through a Mac that’s set up in a server farm somewhere else and make it possible for Android users to send iMessages, but that these always get quickly shut down by Apple who doesn’t want anyone doing this kind of thing, but that actually what made it possible for Beeper to do this this latest time was that some 16-year-old named James Gill, who worked at McDonald’s and I guess analyzed messaging apps in his spare time, that you found out that he had actually figured out a way to send iMessages from Android devices. So tell me about that and how he came into your orbit. casey newton And did he say in his initial message to you that I’m 16, and I work at McDonald’s, and I’ve just discovered this iMessage hack? What did he say? eric migicovsky No, but he sent me a message on Discord because that’s how these kind of things go down. You’re either overthrowing the government or trying to overthrow Apple on Discord, right? That’s where these things start. So he sent me a message just out of the blue on Discord, and that perked me up. Wow. Did I wake up when I saw that, because he not only said that he had done this, but he also sent me a link to his GitHub repository where he had an open source demonstration of this. And the proof’s in the pudding. Took me five minutes, and I got it working on a Linux computer, and I was able to send and receive iMessages without any sort of Mac or any sort of other device in the mix. We started working with James immediately, and from about August to the beginning of December, we spent that working on what would become Beeper Mini, which is a fork of Beeper designed specifically for iMessage on Android. It didn’t support all the other chat networks that we had in our repertoire from our primary app. It was laser-focused on just being a really good iMessage client for Android. kevin roose And so you put this into a product, Beeper Mini. You release it into the world. I imagine in this moment you know you are poking the bear, and there is going to be a response. But what did you think the response was going to be? eric migicovsky So we started working on Beeper in 2019, and we support 15 different chat networks, including iMessage. And as you were talking about, Kevin, we used some very creative mechanisms for getting access to iMessage. One of them involved jailbroken iPhones. One of them involved a server farm full of Mac Minis in a data center. So keep in mind, Beeper has had iMessage support for three years. We didn’t have any problems. We didn’t have any problems for three years. And the approach that we’re coming from is Beeper Mini makes the iPhone customer experience better. It takes an unencrypted crappy experience to half of the population of the US who has an Android phone and upgrades that to add encryption, to add all these extra features, and Apple didn’t have to lift the finger. They didn’t have to go and build an iMessage app for Android. They didn’t have to support RCS. It was just overnight. [snaps fingers] These conversations that were previously this crappy green bubble texts were now blue. They were like upgraded to the level of quality that people expect. casey newton All right, so your position is that when you launched Beeper Mini, you thought that Apple was going to send you a thank you note for fixing the iMessage experience for Android users. eric migicovsky Think about the beginning part of this story. I don’t actually care about iMessage. There’s nothing that special about it. I have 15 different chat apps on my phone. I don’t need another chat app. What I want to do is to be able to have an encrypted conversation with iPhone users. And in the US, because iPhone is more than 50 percent of the market and the iMessage app or the Messages app is the default texting app on an iPhone — you can’t even change it. It is the only way to text someone on an iPhone. And Apple does something very sneaky here. They’ve bundled another service that they call iMessage in with the default texting app that can’t be changed. And so most of the user base, most of the iPhone customers in the US, when they open up their contact list and they hit my name to send a message, they send it through iMessage, or they send it through the Messages app. I’m even using the same word here because they’re so intertwined. And so the goal of this is not to get iMessage. The goal is to be able to have clean and easy encrypted secure high-quality conversations between iPhone users predominantly in the US and Android users. kevin roose Right, so you release Beeper Mini. You trumpet this clever way to send messages through Androids, and Apple does not send you a gift basket and a thank you card. They actually change iMessage and basically block Beeper from working. And my understanding now, they’ve changed it a couple times. You’re in this cat and mouse game with them. They update iMessage. You update Beeper. And Apple told my colleagues at “The Times” in a story the other day that they were making these updates to iMessage because, among other reasons, they couldn’t verify that Beeper kept its messages encrypted. A spokeswoman from Apple said, quote, “these techniques posed significant risks to user security and privacy, including the potential for metadata exposure and enabling unwanted messages, spam, and phishing attacks.” What did you make of that justification from Apple for why they moved so quickly to block Beeper Mini? eric migicovsky I’m going to turn the question around to you, Kevin and Casey. So we just spent like 15, 20 minutes talking about how there’s this gulf of encryption where Android users are sending unencrypted messages to iPhone users, and everything that Apple holds true and dear, which is privacy and security, is just thrown out the window when it comes to conversations between an iPhone user and an Android user. So Beep Mini’s introduced. All of a sudden, you’re now sending, you as an iPhone user, sending encrypted messages to your friends who have Android phones. And then Apple torpedoes that, and then comes out with that statement that you just read. How does that sound? kevin roose I mean, I think the security discussion is obviously a pretext here. I don’t doubt that there are legitimate security issues at play, but I also think that Apple clearly has a vested interest in not letting Android users access iMessage, because then people will just have fewer reasons to buy iPhones. I’m sure you saw this, but the blogger, John Gruber, who is a tech blogger, been around, very interested in Apple stuff, often takes the company’s side on some of these types of issues, he had a post the other day where he basically compared iMessage to the Centurion lounges that American Express runs in airports. If you go to an airport that has a Centurion lounge and you are an American Express platinum card holder, you can get into the lounge, and the lounge has drinks, and it has snacks, and it has comfortable chairs. And if you don’t have an American Express card, you can’t go in. And so t

839565798d9115f4d224779ddacae799

Was it love at first sight or a slow burn? Your love letters to Boston

Is home the place where you grew up, or is it the place you live now? Is it always tied to a specific street address or zip code, or is home, to you, a group of people? A favorite restaurant? Could it even be a concept, a feeling born of shared experiences over little joys and common challenges? At the beginning of this project, we set out to understand from our readers and contributors what it means to live in Boston and find your place in it. But after reading dozens of submissions, we realized that what we’ve actually compiled is a collection of love letters to our fair city. In many ways, that makes complete sense. After all, loving a place is not so dissimilar from loving a person. When we love somebody, we love the whole of them: with all their little quirks and beauties and annoyances. Sometimes love happens all at once — at first sight. Or it can come on like a slow burn, the affection among friends (or even enemies) evolving, until one day, you discover the love you’ve been looking for has been there all along. As you’ll see below, so it goes with Boston: traffic, housing prices, Forest Hills Cemetery, the Charles River, the T. It’s never going to be perfect, but what can we say? When you know, you know. Reading these mini-essays made us happy to call Boston home. And, we’re eager to share more of your reflections. If you’ve got a small story or moment that sticks with you — something that makes you feel connected to this place we call home — email it to us at opinion@wbur.org and put LOVE LETTER in the subject line. We’ll keep building this post, and maybe even feature your love note on the radio. — Cloe Axelson and Sara Shukla, Cog editors Love at first sight I moved to Boston in 2010 because I felt like my soul was telling me that this is where I was meant to live. I listened. And since then, there have been several moments when I knew I’d made the right choice. *A lantern festival at dusk in the Forest Hills Cemetery. *Free yoga and ballet in the summertime at Boston Common. *Volunteering for the Halloween costume swap at the Farmers Market in Roslindale. *Story slams at Doyles, book readings at Grub Street, and poetry slams at Lizard (just over the bridge to Cambridge). But the one moment I will never forget happened during the (happily brief) two years I spent living in and commuting from Providence, Rhode Island, during the pandemic. I moved there to save on rent, so I could make a downpayment as a first time home-owner in Massachusetts. I was heading north(ish) on Tremont Street for a meeting with a Boston-based design firm. Paused at the stoplight near Ruggles station in Roxbury, all of a sudden the air felt heavy, crowded, full; my ears clogged with the cacophonous sound of road bikes. It was springtime, and along with the crocuses pushing their way through the grass in the Arboretum and dozens of robins bopping around the greenspace at Franklin Park— I felt it, this is why I fall in love with Boston every year at springtime. Theresa Okokon and her dog, Minnie, at her home in Chelsea. (Courtesy Theresa Okokon) This is the sound of a city as it gathers together, wakes up from its winter slumber and roars defiantly into the year to come. I had, by that time, racked up about three or four rejected offers in my search for a home in Boston. Trying to buy here felt like an endless cycle of rejection, and a constant realization that the home I’d been dreaming of wasn’t one I could actually afford. But those road bikes reminded me of what I knew before I ever arrived here back in 2010: For better or for worse, Boston is just where I’m meant to be. — Theresa Okokon, writer, Chelsea My kids had a second grade school fair at their primary school in the middle of Brookline, one akin to something from the old black-and-white Mayberry TV show where everything always worked out for the best and apple pies warmed on window sills. Moving there from Brooklyn, I didn’t think such events existed, but the sight of machines churning out blue sugar-rich cotton candy, a ferris wheel, stuffed fuzzy bears being won with the flick of a bean bag, bouncy castles that tilt, sway and rock but don’t fall down, screams of pure play and joy — it all brought out something in me: peace and a comfort of mind knowing the kids from Brooklyn weren’t ones with a home well lost, but one that, fortunately, was found. — Desmond Hall, writer, Brookline I was driving to a doctor’s appointment, and I knew I was going to be late, so I dodged through traffic with no blinker and didn't let anyone merge … I had completed my journey to full Ma--hole status Kat Rutkin, Somerville I was driving to a doctor’s appointment, and I knew I was going to be late, so I dodged through traffic with no blinker and didn't let anyone merge. I've always been a steady and cautious driver, but once that happened I knew there was no going back. I had completed my journey to full Ma–hole status. — Kat Rutkin, Somerville It was March 11, 1992, flying into Boston from London for (in theory) a 3-year stint. Then I saw Boston Harbor and thought, you know, I might like it here. 31 years later... When we became naturalized citizens in 2012, it was at the John Joseph Moakley U.S. Courthouse with that same magnificent view of Boston Harbor. I was brought right back to that day when we flew in, 20 years earlier, and knew we were home.” — Anne Sharp, Winchester It was a slow burn When my family moved from NYC to Boston in 2009, for my husband’s one-year fellowship, it was never meant to be permanent. We’d lived in New York for close to two decades and knew no one in the Boston area. But with two kids under five, the youngest with special needs, the ease of Boston and the quality of its hospitals appealed to us. Alysia Abbott's son, Finn, at Fresh Pond Reservoir in Cambridge, Mass. (Courtesy Alysia Abbott) After my husband’s fellowship ended, we decided to stay. Within a year, we moved into our first and only house so far — an octagon on the west side of Cambridge. For a long while, I still considered myself a displaced New Yorker. But at some point, Boston did become home. Did it change with the shared trauma of marathon bombings, when we sheltered in place and listened as choppers passed overhead in search of the Tsarnaev brothers? Or maybe it was the discovery that the best yogurt, humous, pitas and olives could be found in nearby Watertown (Sevan Bakery and Arax Market) and Belmont (Sofia’s)? I believe it comes down to that feeling of being known here. At Fresh Pond Reservoir in Cambridge we got to know Park Ranger Jean. Before she retired five years ago, you might have crossed paths with her too. Riding around in her ranger cart, making sure dogs and their owners were following the rules. I imagine Ranger Jean probably got to know my son Finn because of his singularity, a product of his profound autism. Few boys of 12 years moved as he moved, rocking from back foot to front. Few boys would suddenly scream, not out of upset, but delight. Few boys would crouch by the drain, ignoring all the dogs and passersby so he could throw rock after rock down that drain for fun. We felt like we belonged whenever we walked into Fresh Pond, and still do. And isn’t that what it means to feel at home? Alysia Abbott, Cambridge At least once, Finn pulled the fire alarm in the water purification facility calling the local fire trucks to the park, which he found very funny. But Ranger Jean didn’t act annoyed with us, or with Finn on this occasion, though she had reason to. Instead, whenever she saw Finn running toward as she drove her cart around the Pond’s loop, she smiled. She often invited Finn to ride along with her. Finn thrilled in these rides, rocking in his seat and laughing. She could see how this small act meant so much to him. But did she know what it meant for us? In this small act she seemed to say, I see you, in all your difference. You and your family belong here in Fresh Pond, as much the birders and the bikers, the runners and the walkers, the picnickers, and the dog people. This park is your park too. We felt like we belonged whenever we walked into Fresh Pond, and still do. And isn’t that what it means to feel at home? Fourteen years later, we’re still here. — Alysia Abbott, writer, Cambridge I was working late in a lab, my first summer in Boston during college. One of my mentors stopped to talk to me before she left. She suggested that I get out to see the sunset because it was the summer solstice. I took her advice and biked to the Charles, making it just in time to join in with the cheers from the crowd. I felt peaceful returning home that night, but I was quite lonely. That was five years ago. Fresh Pond at dusk on November 24, 2020. (Courtesy Cloe Axelson) This year I returned to the Charles on the solstice with two now-old friends. I think that, if it were a competition, I would’ve won “loudest cheerer” at this year’s solstice. — Andrew Szendrey, Jamaica Plain I’ve lived in Boston for decades as a pedestrian, T rider, taxi cab hailer, commuter rail rider, bicycler. I’ve had my permit and read the RMV driver’s manual cover to cover more times than I can count, yet never bothered to put it to use. Boston is so small and navigable I’d never felt the need to really learn to drive, until my family had an emergency in late 2020, and I realized I couldn’t get us to safety on my own. I practiced driving for one hour every day for the next year at the abandoned UMass Boston campus, got my first driver's license in 2021, my first car in 2022. Two years on the road and I'm still amazed that I am driving — and that I seem to be one of the few who actually read the manual. But I didn’t feel like a real Boston driver until recently, when I came out of my house to find my car being escorted off the street cleaning side of the street by a tow truck, the tow driver insisting “It’s naht me, it’s the city! It’s naht me!” — Bethany Van Delft, stand-up comedian, Dorchester “I always moved from place to place after leaving my parents’— NYC, Paris, Chicago, anywhere to keep going. So when the person I was dating at the time got into grad school here, I figured it was a place as good as any other. Once in Boston, I went through the pandemic, work chaos, a breakup and multiple family disasters. Finally, when it felt safe enough from COVID, I took a trip back to Paris, which I always told people was my favorite, and which was as lovely as ever. By day four, though, I wanted to be back in Boston. Homesickness was a feeling I'd never had before, but it was such a relief to know I finally had a home I was going back to.” — Elizabeth Self, Jamaica Plain Homesickness was a feeling I'd never had before, but it was such a relief to know I finally had a home I was going back to. Elizabeth Self, Jamaica Plain I've lived here for a long time, but claiming Boston as my own was a conscious decision — to own the good and the bad. And it happened on my bicycle. In the fall of 2015, the community activist organization City Life/Vida Urbana ground up bricks to create red dust and used a sports line chalker to mark the historic paths of Boston’s redlining and gentrification. Leaving my home nearby, on the south side of Jamaica Plain, and riding down Washington Street to work, I just happened to be riding my bicycle downtown on the day of their art installation. When I got to my office, I researched what I had rolled over and made a commitment: For far too long, I had been a guest on these streets. That day, I committed to inherit the good and bad of Boston’s history, all of the ground beneath my feet. To be a Bostonian, for each of us who move here and adopt this place, means to take responsibility for these streets, all that has come before and the road we are on together. — Rev. Laura Everett, Jamaica Plain In this 2016 photo, a cyclist enters a bike lane routed between parked cars and the sidewalk in Boston. (Steven Senne/AP) I grew up in central Mass, so when I was a kid Boston felt like my anchor, rather than my home. Fast forward through college and med school, and I was applying to residency programs on both coasts. I had just spent nine lovely days in California, visited and interviewed at several residency programs and enjoyed outdoor dinners with chill people, pleasant campus tours through palm trees. Then I flew to Boston on a Friday, stayed at my mother's house in my childhood bedroom. I woke up to a classic Boston December day — gray, rainy and in the low 40s. The interview day started at 7 a.m. (on a Saturday). I drove into the city and parked in the garage, slightly worried about finding my way there. I remember—like it was yesterday—shaking off my raincoat and settling into the auditorium in my interview suit, surrounded by other anxious almost-doctors in the dark chilly early morning, and feeling my shoulders relax, as I thought "ahhhhhhh....these are my people.” — Kristen Goodell, Lexington Boston and me? We're childhood sweethearts My earliest memories of Boston were coming to visit my dad, who worked there. The Swan Boats, which I recognized from “Make Way for Ducklings;” the statues of the ducks in the Public Garden; the Boston Garden, thick with smoke, at a Celtics game where they unveiled a statue of Larry Bird; coming up out of the dark cavern under Fenway Park into the roar of thousands of fans, the bright green grass, the giant scoreboards with the city behind them. Groundskeepers remove the tarp over the infield at Fenway Park following a rain storm before Game 1 of the World Series baseball game between the Boston Red Sox and Los Angeles Dodgers in 2018. (Matt Slocum/AP) My aunt lived on Beacon Street for a while when I was about 13, and my parents let me and my best friend walk from her apartment to Newbury Street by ourselves. We felt so grown up and loved looking at all the fancy shop windows full of things we could never afford. I went to college at Boston University, and Commonwealth Ave. became my home: the imposing Warren Towers, the snail-like Green Line Train. My first job was right over the salt-and-pepper bridge in Cambridge. Boston was where I came back to, came home to, after I left New York in the wake of 9/11, newly aware that the skylines we love, that seem constant, should never be taken for granted. I met my husband in Boston, and we got engaged at Locke Ober. I ran the Boston Marathon twice and have watched it, from various locations, more times than I could count. Boston was where I came back to, came home to, after I left New York in the wake of 9/11, newly aware that the skylines we love, that seem constant, should never be taken for granted. Laura Shea Souza, Stow I moved out of the city years ago but live close enough to still go back, to take my own children to see the Swan Boats, to experience the sports teams and see where I lived when I met their dad, to window shop on Newbury Street, to experience a city that is always changing, but also, in some ways, always the same. — Laura Shea Souza, writer, Stow It was 1972, and I was almost 9-years-old. I was auditioning for the Nutcracker. Boston Ballet’s Nutcracker. The same Nutcracker my grandmother handmade costumes for. The same ballet my mother and aunt performed in as children and adults. Under the scrutiny of the same teacher, Virginia Williams, founder of the company. My mother held my hand as we entered the waiting room, bustling with girls in leotards and skirts, hovered over by mothers with bobby pins between their teeth, frantically stabbing pins into their buns. I was in my first dance recital at 2; had my first solo at 3. I trained hard every day, gave up parties, weekend trips to the beach and sleepovers with friends. I was good. But was I good enough? Even then, I felt the pressure to live up to my family’s expectations. The Boston Ballet's opening night performance of the world premiere of Mikko Nissinen's "The Nutcracker" at Boston Opera House in 2012. (Paul Marotta/Getty Images) Every holiday season, for six years, I put on my costume and makeup in the rat-infested basement of the then-Wang Center, my heart pounding as the command came over the loudspeaker for my group to line up backstage. In the wings, barely breathing, I watched the pas de deux with the Sugar Plum Fairy and the prince, and dreamed of my future. Stepping into the lights as the orchestra swelled, under the direction of Arthur Fiedler, is a moment I will never forget. I never became a ballerina; at least not a professional one. I was 14 when I was accepted to a summer program with New York City Ballet's School of American Ballet, and turned it down. That's when I realized it wasn’t what I wanted to do. It was what other people wanted for me. But the hours and hours of classes and rehearsals in the studio on Clarendon Street, and performing in the Nutcracker: This will always mean Boston to me. — Tracey Palmer, writer, Norwell More than friends. I'll love you forever During the pandemic, my partner Jimmy and I established a routine of ordering takeout from Manoa Poke Shop in Somerville every weekend. We fell in love with the freshness and simplicity of Manoa’s salmon shoyu poke, marinated with just the right amount of Tamari, sweet onion, and scallion. We’d order extra portions of the juicy kalua pig and crispy mochiko fried chicken to keep as leftovers for the week. Neither of us have been to Hawaii yet, but discovering Hawaiian food in the Boston area somehow made us feel more connected to our city than ever before, although we’d been living here for many years already. It wasn’t just all about the flavorful mixplates, though. The staff came to recognize our eyes and voices from beneath our masks, making us feel at home as soon as we walked through the door. Even the chefs knew us by name, waving to us from the back of the food prep area. One of their former chefs (who is also Vietnamese) would chat with me in Vietnamese, addressing me as “younger sister” while I called him “older brother,” further making our stops at Manoa feel like visits to a relative’s house. If I came for a pick-up without Jimmy, the staff would ask, “Where’s Jimmy? Tell him to come by next week!” And vice versa on the weekends when Jimmy conducted solo pick-ups. Our Manoa fam ensured that our weekly pick-ups were something that we consistently did together, as a couple. "Manoa fam" at Manoa Poke Shop in Somerville in 2023. (Courtesy Thuy Phan) Fast forward three years, and Jimmy and I still order from Manoa every weekend. After we got engaged this summer, Jimmy surprised me by gathering our loved ones for dinner and drinks at our apartment. But when our catered meal arrived, I was not at all surprised to see the food that anchors our lives in Boston: salmon poke, kalua pig, and fried chicken – all made with love from our extended family at Manoa. — Thuy Phan, writer, Somerville Having gone to college in the Midwest, and then living in California for many years, when asked where I was from I would say “Boston.” But that wasn’t exactly true; I was “from” a suburb 40 miles west. “But my dad has a Boston accent,” I would say proudly, as if that afforded me extra credibility. All along, I knew I would move back, and that I’d live in the city. I fell in love with a South End, zero-amenities, 1-bedroom in a 3-story walk-up that miraculously came with parking, over FaceTime with a realtor. The night I secured my keys, I went for a walk in my new neighborhood while the sun set early on a cold February night, in search of newfound delights and whatever unexpected magic might come my way. "You from around here?” he asked. I paused a moment, then said yes. Lisa Gordon Only a block down, I found myself in the Olympia Flower Store, its entryway filled with potted plants and vibrant colors. The walls were covered with black-and-white photographs of celebrities or who I assumed were well-known Bostonians. I selected a couple of gerbera daisies to celebrate my new place, and asked about the photos upon checkout. “This is the oldest flower shop in Boston,” the man told me. Turns out, he wasn’t kidding, but I didn’t fact-check that until later. “You from around here?” he asked. I paused a moment, then said yes. I took my daisies, grabbed a slice of not-hot pizza from across the street, and smiled to myself as I turned the corner onto my new street, lined with a canopy of trees, decorated with ironwork staircase banisters. I propped the daisies in my window and ate the pizza on the floor. Around me, sirens rang and horns honked. My belongings would arrive the next day on a moving truck, but it didn’t matter—I was already at home. — Lisa Gordon, writer and editor, South End I was walking through the Public Garden a few months into living here, and a sweet family asked me for directions. I hesitated and started to say, "I just moved here!" when I realized it had been almost a year, and I knew exactly how to tell them how to get where they wanted to go. Walking everywhere has allowed me to really orient myself in so many of Boston's neighborhoods. That's definitely my favorite part about the city. — Lilli Nelson, South Boston This piece was produced with help from Kate Neale Cooper, Lisa Creamer, Kathy Burge, Amy Gorel and Meagan McGinnes. Follow Cognoscenti on Facebook and Instagram .

0ed410661ed18d23103bcb97786fc311

Westfield artists find friendly space for discussion, critiques with peers

WESTFIELD — A new group gives artists a chance to meet, discuss their work, get advice, and receive critiques from other artists. ArtWorks Westfield President Bill Westerlind said the monthly “Artist Sharing & Discussion Groups” are open, friendly and nonthreatening discussion spaces. Their goal is to give artists a chance to talk with each other about art, the challenges they face, and receive critiques in a way that’s not hurtful.

ea0c4b1509c240170020026e4dc221d4

Trial in 1988 killing of Mass. 11-year-old Melissa Ann Tremblay ends in mistrial

A photo of a man being detained by Boston police officers is projected in the former neighborhood of the Bennett family in Mission Hill. (Erin Clark/Globe Staff) The Charles Stuart Case New clues challenge the long-held narrative. It may be too late for many. Autoplay audio Veda Bennett opened her front door to two strangers one summer morning in 2022. Her Mission Hill apartment was dark and cool and still — a sharp contrast from the sweltering concrete patio where she liked to sit on a milk crate and chat with her neighbors. People called her Channel One, because she knew all the good gossip. “I’m glad y’all came,” Veda said. She meant it. She thought this conversation might hurt, but she also knew it had to be done. So, she stepped back from the door and gestured — come inside — and two Globe reporters stepped across 33 years of silence and into her kitchen. They settled at the kitchen table, and before anyone asked a single question, Willie Bennett’s younger sister started to talk. “Nobody ever heard my story,” Veda began, and she slipped back into the fall of 1989, a time that Veda never really left. The Stuart case sucked her in and never let her go, like a planet forever orbiting the sun. “For people to say it’s over with, it’s over with? It’s never gonna be over with for Veda Bennett,” she said, sitting underneath pictures of Willie and her dead mother and the old Mission Hill apartment where they were all living together when the police barged in and tore everything apart. “It’s never over. It’s never gonna be over. It’s never gonna be over.” Though the city, the police, the media — everyone, really — considers this case long closed, Veda said they’re all wrong. “They can say that,” she said, “because it didn’t happen to them.” Mission Hill looks much different than on the night of Oct. 23, 1989, when Chuck Stuart called 911 and said that a Black man had jumped into his car and shot him and his pregnant wife, Carol. That call sparked a manhunt that swept up an untold number of Black men before police zeroed in on Veda’s brother Willie, a notorious criminal who had, as it soon became clear, nothing to do with this crime. In the years that followed, the city tore the old brick public housing buildings down and rebuilt them in soothing baby blues and cream. Alton Court, where Willie lived at the time of his arrest, is gone, and some view this as erasure instead of progress. William "Willie" Bennett, during an interview at the state prison in Gardner on Nov. 24, 1992. Bennett was wrongly linked to the murder of Carol Stuart before evidence emerged that her husband, Chuck, had masterminded the crime. (Suzanne Kreiter/Globe Staff) The city relocated Veda Bennett to a new unit, where she said she wakes up every night at 2:30 a.m. to the sound seared in her memory, of her door opening and the police storming inside. At night, Veda said, it’s always the hour of the raid. Veda is always 29 years old, holding her 7-year-old niece on her hip as the police push through her home. She is always terrified and tripping as she runs, tumbling down the stairs, hitting her head. She has a tumor in her head now, and she swears it was that tumble that caused it. When she does sleep, she dreams about the Stuart case. “It’s never going out of my head,” she said with a short, dark laugh. “It’s right next to the tumor.” Every Bennett since Willie has battled with the legacy of the Stuart case. It’s a festering wound at the center of their family’s story. After the truth came out — that there never was any Black man, that Willie was innocent, that Chuck killed his own wife and child — the Bennett family never got a public apology. The Boston police never admitted they did anything wrong. The media didn’t run any corrections to its journalism. The Bennetts sued the city in federal and state courts, but years of litigation netted them just $12,500 — a sum they collectively viewed as more insulting than zero. Willie’s mother, Pauline, used some of the money to buy new church clothes from a discount magazine and died a few months later, bitter to the end. Veda remembers her mother’s last moments. It was the middle of the night, and Veda said she heard a thump, then Pauline calling out: I can’t breathe ... that Stuart case, that Stuart case. And then she was gone. After Chuck jumped, there were investigations and trials and commissions and reports. The lead homicide detective who pursued Willie as the suspect got a five-day suspension, which was knocked down to four, then knocked down to three, and then tossed altogether on appeal. Chuck’s brother Matthew and his friend went to prison for three years for getting rid of the gun. The Bennetts got their $12,500. And then, people did what Mayor Ray Flynn had been asking all along: They stopped thinking about the past. They moved forward. An image of The Boston Globe from January 1990 showing Willie Bennett's brother Ronald and daughter Nicole Bennett is projected in the former neighborhood of the Bennett family in Mission Hill. (Erin Clark/Globe Staff) But enormous questions — both evidentiary and moral — were left unanswered. The Bennetts and a whole lot of other people in Mission Hill and beyond were left behind. For them, there’s never been anything that resembles justice. The Globe spent two years reinvestigating the Stuart murder case, from the crime to the aftermath to the influence it has on the city today. A team of reporters conducted hundreds of interviews, and traveled thousands of miles to talk to key players. Reporters hunted through archives and basements and the back rooms of courthouses to reassemble as much of the original casefile as they could — including secret grand jury transcripts and audio recordings of interrogations that have sat unplayed on decaying tape cassettes. Taken together, the material significantly changes the long-held narrative around the case. The Globe team found: Boston police didn’t just miss the clues that Chuck was likely behind the murder, they ignored them. A sprawling whisper network of people on the North Shore knew the truth about Chuck, and chose not to go to the police. Dozens knew he was behind Carol’s killing — some for months — but said nothing. Several doctors believe it’s implausible that Chuck shot himself, a key finding that suggests someone else may have pulled the trigger. And evidence points to Chuck’s brother, Matthew, playing a much larger role in the shooting than previously known, running counter to his claims he was tricked into helping get rid of the murder weapon. It’s too late for any of this to matter to Willie. He’s still alive, suffering from dementia and living alone in Boston. He declined, through a family spokesperson, to comment. And maybe it’s too late for Veda, too. “We’re not gonna gain nothing, we’re not gonna win nothing,” she said to the reporters who visited her that summer. But maybe the simple act of breaking the silence will help. “Somebody’s listening to me, you know?” Veda said. “Finally. Somebody’s listening.” In the early 1990s, as the dust settled on all things Stuart, the Boston Police Department sought to figure out how its detectives landed where they did, and whether officers broke any rules or laws in the quest for the killer. When the head of the homicide unit, Lieutenant Detective Edward McNelley, sat down with internal affairs investigators, he was steadfast that his officers had done nothing wrong. “In my opinion, the investigation was properly conducted. I think it was done competently. I think it was done professionally. I do not think there was any wrongdoing,” McNelley said. “Did he [Charles Stuart] fool us? Yes, he fooled us. But other than that, I do not find any fault with that investigation.” Boston Mayor Ray Flynn (right) met with tenants of the Mission Hill neighborhood on Aug. 19, 1992, to explain a report released by the Boston police's office of internal investigation on the handling of the Stuart case. The report cleared all but one police detective of misconduct in the investigation. (Joanne Rathe/Globe Staff) The department agreed. Other than lead detective Peter O’Malley’s swearing at a witness and a “joke” about using officer Billy Dunn as a “lie detector test,” the Police Department’s internal affairs unit found that officers did everything by the book. Chuck Stuart just fooled ‘em. But this is far from the truth. The first two detectives assigned to the case, Robert Ahearn and Robert Tinlin — “the two Bobbies” — suspected from the get-go that Chuck might be the killer. But they were sidelined, and O’Malley was brought in to pursue Willie. Ahearn testified in 1991 before a federal grand jury that he told both McNelley and O’Malley of his suspicions about Chuck. This failure to pursue Chuck as a suspect was not the only chance the department missed. Beginning in October of 1989, just days after the shootings, two men close to Chuck Stuart’s inner circle began reaching out to different police officers in Massachusetts, trying to pass along a tip that Chuck was the killer, according to police reports and grand jury testimony obtained by the Globe. The two men were Michael “Dennis” MacLean and John Carlson. Dennis was the brother of David MacLean, Chuck’s best friend from high school. And John was Dennis’s pal. John was unavailable for an interview and Dennis declined. Back in late 1989, shortly after Carol’s funeral, Dennis MacLean’s brother told him that Chuck had confided in him about the murder. Dennis told John, and the men decided to call police, according to Dennis’s grand jury testimony. They were nervous, so they chose not to call the Boston police tip line directly. Instead, sometime around Nov. 1, before police had made the turn to Willie as the prime suspect, Dennis and John reached out to Sergeant Dan Grabowski, a state trooper John knew. Dan Grabowski “He called him, gave him the information,” Dennis testified. “That it was Chuck that killed his wife.” Grabowski took the information, Dennis said, but he never called back. No one did. The Globe reached out to Grabowski for comment, and he declined in a voicemail and text messages to be interviewed. “I know what’s going to happen. You’re going to make Willie Bennett a hero just like they made George Floyd a hero,” Grabowski said in the voicemail to a Globe reporter. “A complete piece of shit, a piece of trash that terrorized people his whole life.” 00:00 00:00 Read the transcript Grabowski retired from the Massachusetts State Police a few years ago, after rising to the rank of major, one of the highest in the organization. For nearly a year, he sent profane and racist text messages to a Globe reporter, suggesting the media was complicit in a grand conspiracy to hide the truth. Dennis MacLean and John Carlson didn’t give up after Grabowski blew them off. In the middle of November, they contacted another police officer who happened to be John’s brother-in-law, according to grand jury testimony. That officer took their tip more seriously. On Nov. 16, a few days after Willie was arrested, the officer passed the tip along to Ahearn, one of the original detectives on the case. This was the moment when the investigation into Willie could have come screeching to a halt. This was a credible tip, passed along by a police officer who vouched for one of the tipsters. Ahearn himself already believed Chuck was the murderer. So it’s hard, in hindsight, to understand what happened next: Nothing. On Nov. 18, Ahearn called David MacLean, whom Chuck had asked to help kill Carol. But David said he didn’t know anything and didn’t want to talk, then he hung up the phone. Robert Ahearn And that ... was it. No police car squealed to a stop in front of his house with its siren blaring. No sledgehammer banged his door down. Ahearn didn’t even call him back. Two longtime Boston police officers — one current, one former — speculated that Ahearn could have been bitter about losing the case to O’Malley. If O’Malley wanted Ahearn’s case, he could hang himself with it. Ahearn died in 2017. His partner, Tinlin, died in 2001. Ahearn did tell the grand jury in 1991 that he regretted not doing more. And Tinlin’s son, who grew up to be a police officer too, said the case gnawed at the two Bobbies for the rest of their lives. But whatever Ahearn’s motivation — department rivalry, apathy, exhaustion — the single best tip the Boston police had to solve the Stuart murder got shoved into a drawer and forgotten. The story of the Stuart case holds that much of the world was shocked when the truth came out that Chuck was the real killer. On Boston’s North Shore, it was old news. The Globe found — through an analysis based on police files, grand jury testimony, recorded phone calls, and more — that at least 33 people knew the truth by the time Matthew went to police with his story on Jan. 3, 1990. Thirty-three people knew that — as Matthew Stuart said to Michael Stuart three days after the murder — “There’s no Black person that did this.” And yet, almost every one of those people stayed quiet, even as Chuck identified in a lineup a man they knew to be innocent. Much like the rumor about Willie Bennett shared by a few teens in a Mission Hill smoke session, this, too, was a perverse game of telephone. Siblings told friends, who told friends, who kept it secret. In Mission Hill, an 18-year-old Black man told his mother, who told a detective. But in Revere, a type of omerta took hold among some Stuarts, their friends, and friends of friends. They talked — just not to police. The Stuart case is not just a story about institutional failures by police, politicians, and the media. It is a story about the failures of regular people, too. People who believed themselves to be good and moral and decent who watched something terrible happen and did nothing. The Globe reached out to every person who knew the truth before the police. None of them agreed to speak. When Matthew Stuart confessed to Boston police that he disposed of the gun after Chuck killed Carol, he was motivated in part by the fear that Chuck would go to the cops first and blame Matthew for everything, his brother Michael later told police. But Matthew didn’t have to worry. Chuck jumped and Matthew stuck to the story he told police for the rest of his life: That he never knew Chuck planned to kill Carol, and he wasn’t there when it happened. That he never even saw Carol in the car with Chuck the night of the shooting. That he had no idea Chuck even had a gun — until after Carol was dead. In the years since the murder, a lot of people have come to view Matthew as one of the good guys. “Matthew Stuart was one of the few heroes of this,” said Jack Harper, the WCVB-TV reporter reporter who covered the case and stood by the Mystic River on the morning of Chuck’s suicide. “If you give him the benefit of the doubt, he was the brother who went along with it initially, got rid of the gun and the stolen stuff, but at least he had a conscience down the road. … He finally said something. … He had the stones to go talk.” Matthew Stuart arrived at the Stuart family residence on Jan. 11. 1990. (Paul Benoit/Globe Staff) Nancy Gertner, Matthew’s attorney, has always believed that Matthew was a victim of his older brother’s machinations and that Matthew bravely came forward to do the right thing and was punished for it with jail time. “This was a young man who was tortured by this, and was actually seeking help from every quarter he could get,” said Gertner, who later became a federal judge. “Charles was the golden boy in the family. So here [Matthew] was saying something unbelievable about his older brother, saying something that was going to lead to his older brother being in prison for the rest of his life.” 00:00 00:00 Read the transcript The official story of the Stuart murder case is that Chuck acted alone. But the Globe pulled medical records, police forensic reports, FBI lab notes, and more, and there is strong evidence someone else was there that night helping Chuck. And that person may have pulled the trigger. The first clues come from detailed accounts of three witnesses who each told police that they saw a third person in the car with Chuck and Carol on the night of the killing. Their statements were tucked among thousands of pages of police and legal documents and have never been reported before. The first was a basketball coach who was standing on the steps of the Tobin Center on Tremont Street, waiting for his players to arrive. Chuck’s route would have taken him past the Tobin on the way to the side street where Carol was most likely killed. The basketball coach told police he saw a dark blue car, which matched the description of Chuck’s Cressida, driving erratically down Tremont, with a white man behind the wheel. He assumed it was a drunk driver. But what stuck out as particularly strange was what he saw in the back seat: a man in the middle, hunched over. The second was a woman who lived in an apartment building overlooking the spot on St. Alphonsus Street where police found Chuck’s car. She told police she was leaning out her window to water her flowers when she heard a car door slam, and then saw a stocky man with a full head of hair running away from the car, saying “Oh my god, you [expletive].” The man she described resembled Matthew. A few minutes later, she heard sirens and police, and when she looked out, she saw emergency workers taking Chuck and Carol out of the same car. And the third witness was a man driving around the neighborhood, who told police and prosecutors that he saw a car with its headlights off park on St. Alphonsus Street. He circled, and when he passed it a second time, he saw a white man in the driver’s seat and another man whose face he couldn’t see getting out of the back seat. When he passed the car a third time, he saw the police and ambulances surrounding it. The Globe can’t ask the witnesses about what they saw because all three are dead. Police examined the scene of the shooting and the Stuarts' car on St. Alphonsus Street in Mission Hill on Oct. 23, 1989. (Tom Herde/Globe Staff) In addition to these witness statements, more clues were found in ballistics reports. There’s no dispute that three bullets were fired in Chuck’s and Carol’s car. One entered the back of Carol’s head; police found a second lodged in the ceiling; and the third left a wound in Chuck’s lower back, traveling upward through his liver and intestines. Dr. Edwin Hirsch, the Boston trauma surgeon who operated on Chuck that night, had treated hundreds if not thousands of gunshot wounds in Vietnam. And he was adamant that Chuck could not have shot himself. It was his view that led police to believe that Chuck was an innocent victim. Hirsch is dead. But two other doctors who also operated on Chuck are alive, and both of them told the Globe they agreed with Hirsch: It didn’t make sense that Chuck shot himself. At Hirsch’s direction, Dr. Fred Millham acted as Chuck’s personal doctor. Millham not only examined Chuck’s guts, he also spent a lot of time around Chuck and his family while Chuck was recovering. And during those visits, Millham picked up odd vibes. In a recent interview, Millham cited patient confidentiality laws that prevent him from saying anything specific. But given everything he saw back then, he said, he is confident in his assessment. “It’s my opinion based on facts that everybody has — I think the brother probably did the shooting. But I’ve always thought that, since I saw them dragging Charles’s body out of the harbor,” Millham said. “It was Matthew. Of course.” These clues, together with the fact that Matthew admitted to conspiring with Chuck, being in Mission Hill at the time of the shooting, disposing of the gun, then covering it up for two and a half months — they suggest there’s much more to Matthew’s story than what he told police. The lead prosecutor on the case thought so. Francis O’Meara, the head of the homicide unit at the Suffolk district attorney’s office, testified under oath in 1991 that he was certain there was someone else in the car for the shooting — and that it could only be one of two people. Francis O'Meara “There’s no question in my mind, none whatsoever, that there was a third person on St. Alphonsus Street that night, and it’s either Matthew Stuart or Willie Bennett,” O’Meara said. “There’s absolutely no question in my mind.” If the lead prosecutor was so sure, why wasn’t Matthew ever charged in the murder? O’Meara retired a long time ago. In late 2022, O’Meara wasn’t interested in talking to Globe reporters. He said it was better to let sleeping dogs lie. He died a few months later. Matthew’s attorney, Gertner, said the reason Matthew wasn’t charged was simple: He was innocent. She pointed out that a grand jury tried to prove Matthew was involved in the murder — they interviewed nearly 100 people and pored over the case for years. “I mean, if there had been a whisper of that evidence, he would have been charged with being an accessory to murder,” Gertner said. “And that was not a charge that they could bring.” Matthew’s accomplice in ditching the gun, Jack McMahon, didn’t respond to numerous requests for comment. Finally, the Globe reached out to an independent forensic consultant, Lewis Gordon, and shared with him all the police and FBI files on the shooting as well as the autopsy reports and other material. But Gordon couldn’t provide a definitive determination. “He certainly could have shot himself. He certainly could have been shot by someone else,” Gordon said. “We just don’t have enough information to reach a conclusion one one way or the other.” With the passage of time, there may be no way to say for sure. Like everything else in Mission Hill, the block where the shooting took place is vastly different now. Back in ‘89, it was a bleak dead end with an abandoned bar on the corner. But on an afternoon last summer, it was buzzing with construction workers building condos where the old bar once was. Globe reporters flagged one of them down, a young Black man named Rashard Young, and asked if he’d ever heard of the murder that unfolded right where he was standing. He squinted in confusion, until someone said, “Chuck Stuart?” His eyes slowly lit with recognition. Then he tried to explain the thread that tied his life to Stuart’s crime. “I was told that it wasn’t — it’s not what we think it was,” Rashard said, working it out. Rashard knew the outlines of the story — a white man killed his wife and blamed a Black man, and the police and everybody else believed him. Rashard wasn’t even born then, but he knows the story because his older brother told it to him when he was still a kid. In his family, the Stuart case was a warning. “He was like, ‘Get used to it,’ you know?” Rashard said of his brother. “It was just like, Wow. Like, we can be lied on like that so quick. That’s what really scared me. You know, I’ve been lied on too… you know. So I definitely know what it’s like just because of my complexion and my just — who I am.” Rashard’s dad is Black and his mom is white. He said he’s always felt torn between the two. But the outside world isn’t confused at all. His blackness is what people see. It’s what the police see, too. “When they got that badge on, it’s their world,” Rashard said. “You’re living in their world.” All these years later. Same spot. Same neighborhood. Same fear. In the wake of the Stuart case, there were lots of recommendations about how to fix the problems in the Police Department, but many never came to fruition. From federal authorities to the state attorney general’s office, officials determined police had done disturbing things, including stripping Black boys and men in public and searching them. The detective work was shoddy, and the teenage witnesses were scared. But each of these agencies stopped short of calling anything illegal. Wayne Budd, the US attorney for Massachusetts at the time, wrote a scorching report on the department’s actions. As a Black man, Budd felt enormous pressure to hold someone accountable. But he couldn’t prove that the police violated federal civil rights laws. He didn’t charge anyone. And the blowback from police critics was brutal. “The reaction from the community was particularly stinging,” he told the Globe. Budd said people told him: “Nobody’s doing anything about what these cops did in our community. You’re the US attorney, Wayne Budd, and you’re our last hope in getting justice from this.” Budd went on to become US associate attorney general, and he oversaw the federal prosecution of the Los Angeles police officers who beat a Black man named Rodney King. In 2020, with America up in arms again over racism and police abuse, the Boston police again came under the microscope. A team of Globe reporters - including some involved in this story — exposed corruption and misconduct within the department, as well as several instances of the agency’s failure to deliver on past pledges of reform. Amid all this, the city again turned to Wayne Budd. Budd chaired a commission that came up with a slate of Boston police reforms. Some of them resembled recommendations that came out of a commission formed following the Stuart case. The department is still working on some of those changes. Today, Boston has more work to do, but this much is clear: It is not the city it was in 1989. In 2021, voters elected for the first time a mayor who was not a white male. Michelle Wu — the 38-year-old daughter of Taiwanese immigrants, who ran on a progressive agenda that included platforms on rent control and free public transportation — won in a landslide. Quickly, Wu made a statement with her choice for police commissioner: a former Boston police officer named Michael Cox. Boston Police Department Commissioner Michael Cox speaking during a press conference on Feb. 6, 2023. (Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff) And Michael Cox — he has quite a backstory. At the time of the Stuart shooting, he was a new cop, and one of the only Black officers working drugs. One night, while Cox was undercover, fellow Boston officers mistook him for a drug dealer and viciously beat him. It took Cox years to heal. But Cox didn’t leave the department. He stayed on the force and rose through the ranks, before leaving a few years ago to serve as a chief of police in Michigan. His return to Boston as commissioner has been widely viewed as the best hope for ushering in a new era for the BPD. What Cox does with that power remains to be seen. He declined to be interviewed for this project. The scars of the Stuart case may not be so visible across Boston today, at least not on the surface. But it lives in the homes of Black and brown families, where older brothers pass on tips to boys who will one day grow up to become construction workers and help build condos on the land where a man named Charles Stuart once called 911 to say he and wife were shot. It’s a lesson, if you’re looking. But it doesn’t have to be a lesson that is only about the terrible things people do to each other, and the way people fail to live up to their ideals. Take, for example, the 6-foot, 5-inch Black man with a giant smile who comes home to Mission Hill every so often to buy custom hats in bulk. The ball caps are black, with the word “LOVE” in red letters. DonJuan Moses, next to a projection of a 1989 image of police officers detaining a man in Mission Hill. Moses was 11 years old when police burst into his family's home and arrested his cousin. (Erin Clark/Globe Staff) The man’s name is DonJuan Moses. He was the 11-year-old boy watching his family play cards in their Mission Hill apartment back in ‘89, when the police barged in and took his cousin away because he matched Chuck’s description. Black man. DonJuan’s fear of the police has never left him. He keeps a dashcam on his windshield, backed up to his hard drive, because he’s afraid of what may happen if he gets pulled over. His trauma doesn’t come from the Stuart case alone — his father spent 41 years in prison for murder, until he was exonerated and freed in 2020. But out of all this fear and anger, DonJuan has found something beautiful. DonJuan buys the LOVE hats because he works in a hospice, and he likes to give the hats to the patients. He wants them to know that, even if they have no family, they’re not going to die alone. He will be there. “Give them what you ain’t never had. Love,” he said. “Give them something that we are not promised.” This type of love — joy, even — was evident on a cold winter night in 2022, a mile or so from that once-bleak corner where Carol and Christopher Stuart were killed. A group of Black and Latino high school students trickled through the door of a meeting room, where their mentor, George “Chip” Greenidge Jr., waited for them. Chip knows Mission Hill. His dad has lived there since the 1980s. When the shooting happened, Chip watched his neighborhood convulse. When the police swept through, Chip’s dad banned him from visiting. So he watched it unfold on TV, with everybody else. A world away, Carol’s family, the DiMaitis, were watching, too. And their reaction to the crime would change the course of Chip’s life. After the DiMaitis lost their daughter and grandson in such a horrifying, public way, they didn’t want to keep talking about the awful things done in Carol’s and Christopher’s names. They did want a way to remember them. They wanted Carol’s legacy to be about something other than her husband’s terrible crime. So a few weeks after Chuck’s suicide, Carol’s family announced the creation of a foundation, the Carol DiMaiti Stuart Foundation, that would grant college scholarships to the residents of Mission Hill and promote better race relationships throughout Boston. “There has been so much said and written about this terrible tragedy in our lives that we don’t want to add to that today,” said Carol’s father, Giusto. “Carol was a loving, caring person who always thought of the other person first. She loved to help those less fortunate than herself and was constantly trying to improve their place in this world.” 00:00 00:00 Read the transcript Over the next month, the foundation garnered more than $270,000 in donations. The letters and support poured in from across the country. Vice President Dan Quayle sent $150, as did Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank. Governor Michael Dukakis donated $50, along with a lunch invite. And soon, the foundation put that money to use. One of its first scholarship recipients was a young man named Chip. Chip remembers one day, when all the scholars the foundation had sponsored came together. Carol’s mother and father were there, and Chip remembers the way her mother Evelyn hugged him so tight, smiling so hard. “She was proud to call us her kids,” Chip said. “She was very proud that this scholarship fund was a way to have the wonderful legacy of her daughter and her grandson to live on.” Of all the many victims of the Stuart murder case, none suffered more personal or devastating losses than the DiMaiti family. Yet it was the DiMaitis — not City Hall, and certainly not the Police Department — who sought to build bridges. George “Chip” Greenidge, beneath a projected 1995 photo of himself and other organizers of the Young Black Boston conference. Greenidge was one of the first recipients of the Carol DiMaiti Stuart Scholarship in Mission Hill set up by her family after her death. (Erin Clark/Globe Staff) Their foundation helped Chip pay for tuition at Morehouse College. These days, he’s finishing a PhD at Georgia State University, and he’s a visiting fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School. And in early 2023, Wu appointed him to Boston’s Reparations Task Force, where he will help examine the wrongs that the city has done to Black residents. “The push was that we would always give back to the neighborhood of Mission Hill and Roxbury,” he told the Globe. “And that’s what I’ve done. Always.” Chip is a busy guy. On that cold winter night in 2022, he obliged two reporters who asked for an interview, but then his students started badgering him and joking and laughing and generally being teenagers. Finally, he had to stop talking and focus on them. “How’s everyone doing today? How’s everyone doing today!?” Chip bellowed, clapping his hands and grinning as the kids met his goofy greeting with their own. “Good, good, good, good.” Then he introduced the reporters. “This is the Boston Globe right here,” he said. “Anyone ever hear of Charles Stuart before?” The kids all just stared at him. “Anyone heard of Carol Stuart before?” he tried again, and this time the kids said no, together. 00:00 00:00 Read the transcript “Everybody? No? Not at all?” Chip said. “OK. Well, we’re going to get our session started.” For 34 years, Chuck Stuart and all the trauma he sowed have served as a mark against the city, a slice of history that’s been impossible to move past. Racial divisions haven’t disappeared. But this is also not the same city that fell for Chuck’s hoax. That was plainly apparent in the warm meeting room, where Chip Greenidge was helping a group of Black and Latino teens write their college essays. These teens haven’t forgotten the nightmare in Mission Hill. They don’t know that history at all. Which means they don’t have to live with it, either. So they’re free, to put pens to paper, and set off to write the next chapter of Boston’s story. About this story To report “Nightmare in Mission Hill,” Globe journalists spent thousands of hours, over two years, examining documents, photographs, audio recordings, and video. The team conducted more than 250 interviews. Quotes within this story were either taken directly from sworn testimony, police interviews, audiotapes, or were heard by reporters. In cases where someone recounted dialogue or comments, those words appear in italics. Click here for more information on sourcing.

1573ad0a5e11837491b654a537662970

Crisis in the Red Sea, and Epstein Files Unsealed

The New York Times Audio app is home to journalism and storytelling, and provides news, depth and serendipity. If you haven’t already, download it here — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter. The Headlines brings you the biggest stories of the day from the Times journalists who are covering them, all in about five minutes.

db120a36fd9a8adca3694806114b27d6

Google Loses Antitrust Court Battle With Makers of Fortnite Video Game

Every year after the full moons in late October and November, Australia’s Great Barrier Reef begins its annual spawning — first the coral species inshore, where waters are warmer, then the offshore corals, the main event. Last year, this natural spectacle coincided with the woolly propagation of two new colonies of the Crochet Coral Reef, a long-running craft-science collaborative artwork now inhabiting the Schlossmuseum in Linz, Austria, and the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh. To date, nearly 25,000 crocheters (“reefers”) have created a worldwide archipelago of more than 50 reefs — both a paean to and a plea for these ecosystems, rainforests of the sea, which are threatened by climate change. The project also explores mathematical themes, since many living reef organisms biologically approximate the quirky curvature of hyperbolic geometry. Within the realm of two dimensions, geometry deals with properties of points, lines, figures, surfaces: The Euclidean plane is flat and therefore displays zero curvature. By contrast, the surface of a sphere displays constant positive curvature; at all points, the surface bends inward toward itself. And a hyperbolic plane exhibits constant negative curvature; at all points, the surface curves away from itself. Reef life thrives on hyperbolism, so to speak; the curvy surface structure of coral maximizes nutrient intake, and nudibranchs propel through water with frilly flanges.

a9a40945f1e40cb1603b2238bfff5d0a

Opinion | On Satanic Idols and Free Speech

This claim is a Christianized cousin of the secular idea that defending the free-speech rights of those with whom you vehemently disagree is, in essence, providing aid and comfort to racism, sexism, homophobia or transphobia. In this view, your role as a citizen is first to determine whether any given speech meets with your moral approval, and then — and only then — to rally to its defense. But this is dangerous nonsense. I’m the farthest thing from a relativist. Indeed, my evangelical Christian religious convictions place me in a cohort that includes a mere 6 percent of adult Americans who hold a set of decidedly non-relativistic beliefs, including about the divinity of Christ and the authority of scripture. I’m fully aware that if the terms of debate in America were based on a religious or moral consensus, my viewpoint would be immediately chased from the public square. And in fact, much of my legal career was dedicated to protecting minority religious expression — including evangelical expression — from censorship on American campuses and in American communities. In the course of that representation, I learned three practical truths of free expression. First, few people are more eager to take advantage of free speech rights than people who possess deep moral convictions. When you watch a furious campus debate, the last thing you think is, “Watch the relativists fight.” The combatants possess burning convictions about, say, the Gaza war, or race and justice in America or L.G.B.T.Q. rights. When I stood with Christians, Muslims, and Jews who faced exclusion and persecution, never once was I representing a relativist. These people believed in their core values so much that they refused to be silent. Second, humility isn’t relativism, and even people who believe that absolute truth exists should possess enough humility to recognize they don’t know all that truth. I’ve been an evangelical my entire life, but my faith certainly hasn’t insulated me from error. I’ve made mistakes. I’ve been wrong. And, by the way, I haven’t learned from Christians alone. I’ve been profoundly influenced by people from virtually every ideological and religious background. I’m a better person for my relationships with people with whom I disagree. Imagine the arrogance of thinking that my tribe or my sect — which is inevitably chock-full of fallen, imperfect people — should be the arbiter of truth, much less liberty. Third, prudent people know that they will not always rule. This is the most pragmatic case for free speech. In a democratic society, no party or movement possesses permanent power, and when you limit the liberty of your foes, you give them the power to limit your liberty the instant you lose an election. An immense amount of censorship would evaporate overnight if angry activists truly imbibed the lesson that the standard they seek to impose on others can also be inflicted on themselves.

882c61fba41ba5720d82743c55ca06b9

Boston University police investigating second pair of sexual assaults this week

BOSTON — Boston University police are investigating a second pair of sexual assaults this week that occurred Wednesday night. A student walking down the sidewalk near 168 Bay State Rd. around 10 p.m. reported they were approached by a person on a bicycle who touched the student inappropriately “The suspect rode away and the student was able to call BUPD who searched the area but were unable to locate the suspect,” police said in a campus crime alert. The suspect is described as a white male riding a dark-colored bicycle wearing blue jeans and a dark cap or hooded sweatshirt. An hour later, around 11 p.m., a student reported that they were approached by a person on a bicycle who touched them inappropriately on the Charles River Esplanade near the Silber Footbridge “The suspect rode away and the student was able to call BUPD who searched the area but were unable to locate the suspect” officials added. The suspect is described as a male riding on a black bicycle wearing a black hooded sweatshirt. The student was not able to provide any further details at this time. This is the second pair of sexual assaults reported on BU’s campus this week and police say they are unrelated to the ones reported on October 24th. Police are anyone with information is urged to contact BUPD at (617) 353-2121. 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

53f0cb85e2945be5c1872f21c5bf597f

DA: Man robbed at knifepoint after being lured to downtown Boston hotel for sexual encounter

BOSTON — Two people are facing criminal charges after a man was lured to a hotel in downtown Boston for a sexual encounter and then robbed at knifepoint, prosecutors announced Wednesday. Danine Sampson, 27, of the Bronx, New York, and Robert Santana, 28, of Lawrence, were arraigned in Boston Municipal Court on Dec. 22 on charges in connection with an incident at the Hilton Boston Back Bay 40 Dalton Street, according to Suffolk District Attorney Kevin Hayden. Simpson, who was ordered held on $1,500 bail, is charged with armed robbery. Santana was ordered held without bail on charges of illegal possession of a firearm, illegal possession of ammunition, illegal possession of a loaded firearm, and illegal possession of a high-capacity magazine. Officers responding to the Hilton on Dec. 21 met with a man who stated he had been informed about a sex-for-fee service, contacted a female on a website, and arranged a meeting on the 23rd floor of the hotel. Upon arrival at the hotel, the man was allegedly robbed by Simpson. “The man said Simpson called him into her room when he arrived, brandished a knife, and ordered him to hand over $200,” prosecutors said in a news release. “The man handed the money over and then reported the incident to the hotel lobby. Officers arrived on the scene and the man identified Simpson as the person who robbed him.” When officers later confronted Santana, prosecutors say “he tried to back away and started to profusely sweat.” They then reportedly found a Glock 9mm handgun loaded with eight rounds in his fanny pack. In a statement, Haden said, “This was a dangerous incident all around, both for the man who placed himself in an unknown situation with unknown people and for the police officers who responded to an armed robbery call and ended up dealing with an individual with a loaded gun.” The man who went to the hotel seeking sex will be charged at a later date with engaging in sexual conduct for a fee, according to prosecutors. 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

e70942d36c6610b4a2b347fcc6124ca7

After Rise in Murders During the Pandemic, a Sharp Decline in 2023

Sign up for Reckon’s latest newsletter dedicated to the fight for reproductive justice, a weekly repro rundown covering the good, the fair-to-middlin' and the ugly in repro news. Enter your email to subscribe to Reproductive Justice with Reckon. TRIGGER WARNING: This story mentions physical and virtual sexual assault. UK police are currently investigating a sexual assault case that is the first of its kind: the rape of a minor in the metaverse. The Daily Mail reported on Jan. 1 that a girl, described as under the age of 16, was in an online room with other users, wearing a virtual reality headset, when her avatar was gang raped by several adult males online. Though there was no physical harm, officers said that she’s experiencing the same psychological trauma that occurs when someone is raped in the real world. According to Wired, the metaverse doesn’t refer to one specific platform, but rather a way we interact with technology, including virtual reality and augmented reality, similar to the concept of “cyberspace.” Tech Target describes the metaverse as the next iteration of the internet, in which we experience a shared and immersive virtual space. Though the concept is newer to some consumers, experts are predicting mass growth of these virtual worlds. Research by Pew Research Center and Elon University in 2022 found that 54% of 624 tech experts, innovators, researchers, and developers said that by 2040 they expect the metaverse to be a more refined, full-immersive and well functioning aspect of daily life for half a billion people globally. Virtual assault and victim-blaming Psychotherapist and vice president of Metaverse Research for Kabuni, Nina Jane Patel documented her own virtual assault experience on Medium, which is very similar to the UK minor’s. Patel he described being verbally and sexually assaulted by 3 or 4 male avatars who virtually gang raped her avatar in Meta’s Horizon Worlds, previously Horizon Venues. According to Patel, the immersive experience and embodiment connected to a user’s avatar, which is essentially their virtual body, causes users to feel similar sensations towards their virtual body and environment. “When you put on a headset and enter a virtual world, you’re engaging from the top of your head to the tips of your toes with other avatars in the virtual environment. The technology has developed such that it feels very authentic and natural. It feels and is perceived as very real,” Patel wrote in The Telegraph after the latest case broke. Patel even says she experienced questions of the validity of her experience and victim-blaming responses, telling her that she should have just removed her headset or that she deserved it – what many rape victims face in the physical world. It was the same old victim-blaming story that plays out in the real world: the equivalent of ‘just don’t wear the miniskirt and high heels,” she wrote. “I knew what I had felt, but I started to question myself: I must have done something wrong; been in the wrong space; clicked the wrong button. I started to blame myself; perhaps this brave young girl who reported the alleged incident to the police did as well.” This isn’t a new or uncommon phenomenon.According to a VR research project led by behavioral scientist Jessica Outlaw, 49% of women who identify as regular users reported being sexually harassed at least once. Users reporting virtual assault trace back to 2016, when VR became more readily available to consumers. In October 2016, a female gamer using the name Jordan Belamire also took to Medium to detail her experience of being virtual groped on QuiVr, an archery game. “I’ve been groped in real life, once in a Starbucks in broad daylight. I know what it’s like to happen in person… The shock and disgust I felt [in QuiVr] was not too far off from that,” she told CNN. The internet and kids The impact of the internet and social media on children is constantly debated. For example, the current “10-year-olds in Sephora” conversation questions whether social media is driving young girls to grow up too quickly as they consume makeup and skincare videos posted by their favorite influencers. In May, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy issued an advisory warning on the impact of social media on children’s mental health, stating that there is less evidence suggesting the safety of social media than dangers it poses to children’s mental health. “Children are exposed to harmful content on social media, ranging from violent and sexual content, to bullying and harassment. And for too many children, social media use is compromising their sleep and valuable in-person time with family and friends. We are in the middle of a national youth mental health crisis, and I am concerned that social media is an important driver of that crisis – one that we must urgently address,” he said. Internal research conducted by Facebook in 2021 – and exposed by the Wall Street Journal – showed that the company is aware that it makes body image issues worse for 1 in 3 teen girls. But immersion takes these experiences to the next level, blurring the lines between the physical virtual worlds and companies are banking on children’s interest in technology. Meta is currently marketing towards a younger audience. In April 2023, Meta’s main VR social app Horizon Worlds lowered its age requirement from 18 to 13, and two months later it lowered the age recommendation for its VR headsets from 13 to 10, according to the U.S. Public Interest Research Group Education Fund. These are still considered the early days of virtual reality, with only 29% of U.S. teens currently owning a VR headset, but the Institute of Engineering and Technology predicts that the next generation of children will spend over 2 hours 45 minutes in VR a day, adding up to 10 years over their lifetimes. A bipartisan group of 42 U.S. attorney generals banded together in October to sue Meta, claiming that Facebook and Instagram are addictive and aimed at children. “This is a tough time in America. We have polarization the likes of which we have not seen since the Civil War,” Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti said at a press conference. “And so for all of the attorneys general from both parties, people who frequently disagree very vocally and very publicly, to all come together and to move in the same direction, I think that says something.”

1155dce73a78b28dc68d2b1188d74f5c

Atmospheric Rivers to Bring Heavy Rain and Snow to Northwest U.S.

Back-to-back storms fueled by atmospheric rivers were expected to move over the northwestern United States this week, bringing heavy rains and snow and raising concerns about flooding, forecasters said. After a brief break between atmospheric rivers on Sunday evening, another was expected on Monday, with the heaviest rainfall likely to occur in western Washington State. The forecast came as snow had already blanketed mountain areas of Washington State with as much 40 inches since Thursday, according to the National Weather Service office in Seattle. Through Monday evening, three to seven inches of rain could drench areas of western Washington and Oregon, forecasters said.

9fb395707bf3a45b84f247839ffbc435

A Thriving Border Town Undercuts South Africas Anti-Immigrant Mood

By 7 a.m., lines of customers snake down the block outside stores on the main commercial strip in Musina, a bustling South African border town where thousands of people arrive daily from neighboring Zimbabwe to buy food, clothes and other necessities that are hard to get back home. A few miles away, at the border, pickup trucks bearing the seal of South Africa’s newly formed border patrol inspect the razor-wire fence, looking to arrest people who cross illegally — braving bandits, crocodiles and the rushing Limpopo River. The border force represents an effort by the government, months ahead of crucial national elections, to respond to popular demand and clamp down on migrants sneaking into the country. Musina, surrounded by farms and a copper mine, is where the government’s muscular immigration policy collides with a tricky reality that many South Africans are loath to concede: that even people who cross the border illegally may be good for the country. Without them, “Musina is going to be a big ghost town,” said Jan-Pierre Vivier, a South African who, with his family, owns a butcher shop that relies on migrant customers.

303c3697b166fbe406eda3ccdfd93365

Middle schoolers in Westfield, Southwick to join state peers in year of service

Fathema Jaleel and Riley Westcott will join more than 300 other 8th graders this weekend in this year’s class of “unsung heroes” for a statewide youth-led community service program. Tomorrow, they will attend a day of Project 351 activities in Boston to kick off a transformative year of service and leadership. A nonprofit organization, Project 351inspires students through the ethic of service and values of kindness, compassion, humility and gratitude. Jaleel is a student at the Westfield Middle School while Westcott attends Southwick Regional School. They’re among a group of “quiet leaders” selected from eighth graders in nearly every one of the state’s 351 towns and cities.

7c21943f5d5dbc7b130f9ca33f9936b8

5 for Good: Boston and Lawrence-based nonprofit helps budding beauty businesses

5 for Good: Boston and Lawrence-based nonprofit helps budding beauty businesses TLC Center for Urban Entrepreneurship offers free supports to local makeup, hair businesses Share Copy Link Copy I FEEL LIKE THIS CHANGES YOUR WHOLE LIFE. A HIGHLIGHT OF THE BROW, A BOLD STATEMENT THAT THE RIGHT MAKEUP CAN MAKE THAT MUCH OF A DIFFERENCE. BUT CERTAINLY BARBARA RODRIGUEZ KNOWS PLENTY ABOUT LIFE CHANGES. YOU DO NOT WANT TO TAKE OFF. YOU WANT TO APPLY BY A FREELANCE MAKEUP ARTIST AND EDUCATOR. BARBARA STARTED HER CAREER WORKING FOR OTHERS. LANCOME. I WORKED FOR SEPHORA AND THEN FROM SEPHORA LANDED IN MAC, THEN IN 2016, SHE LAUNCHED HER OWN COMPANY. ME. IT WAS NOT EASY. I THOUGHT I MADE A MISTAKE. I AM A SINGLE MOM AND NOT TO PUT EMPHASIS ON THAT, BUT THINK ABOUT THAT WHEN YOU HAVE A CHILD AND YOU’RE GOING TO DECIDE TO WORK FOR YOURSELF. SO SHE ULTIMATELY FOUND THE BUSINESS SUPPORT SHE NEEDED AT THE CENTER FOR URBAN ENTREPRENEURSHIP, WE SERVE BEAUTY PROFESSIONALS AND EARLY STAGE BEAUTY BUSINESS OWNERS WHO REALLY WANT TO NOT ONLY JUST LAUNCH BUT BUILD A THRIVING BUSINESS, A BANKABLE BUSINESS. TRICIA YOUNG STARTED THE NONPROFIT AFTER A DIFFICULT TIME IN HER LIFE. I LEARNED I WAS SICK. WITHIN MONTHS OF THAT, I HAD LOST MY JOB THAT I LOVED SO DEARLY. THEN SHORTLY AFTER THAT, MY MY HUSBAND AND I SEPARATED AND ULTIMATELY DIVORCED. SHE REALIZED HOW HARD TRANSITIONS ARE. THEN IN THIS BEAUTY LOVER DECIDED TO HELP OTHERS HERE IN LAWRENCE, BUILDING A BEAUTY BUSINESS INCUBATOR, TLI OFFERS FREE HANDS ON TRAINING BOTH MAKEUP AND HAIR BUSINESS CONSULTING AND GRANTS, AND EVEN MENTAL HEALTH SUPPORTS. BEAUTY PROFESSIONALS OFTENTIMES DON’T HAVE ACCESS TO THOSE CRITICAL RESOURCES THEY NEED TO BE ABLE TO FORMALIZE A BUSINESS AND AND SET IT UP TO WHERE IT CAN BE SCALABLE. AND JUDY DELA CRUZ FOUND TLI WHEN HER NORTH ANDOVER DAY SPA WAS IN TROUBLE, WE WERE IMPACTED TO 2019. WE WERE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE GAS EXPLOSION. BUSINESS WENT DOWN THINKING THAT WAS THE WORST YEAR EVER. NO. THEN 2020 CAME IN BACK TO BACK AND SAME THING WE HAD TO CLOSE FOR MONTHS. KELLEY STEPPED IN, OFFERING TECHNICAL SUPPORT. THEY HELPED ME REVAMP MY WEBSITE. THEY ALSO HELPED ME WITH POS SYSTEMS AND UPDATING MY COMPUTER SYSTEMS, WHICH WERE ANCIENT. THEY CREATED REPUTATION FOR ME. IF THAT MAKES SENSE, BARBARA SAYS. KELLEY NOT ONLY HELPED WITH HER WEBSITE, BUT ALSO WITH BUILDING A CLIENT BASE. SHE NOW TEACHES SOME OF TLIIS CLASSES. THOSE COURSES ARE BOTH IN-PERSON AND ONLINE. THERE’S EVEN A REENTRY PROGRAM FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE INCARCERATED, EAGER TO BUILD SKILLS BEFORE THEIR RELEASE. SOME OF THE TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS THAT COME WITH LIFE. YOU DON’T KNOW UNTIL YOU EXPERIENCE IT. BARBARA SAYS. BATTLING THROUGH HER TRIALS WITH TLIE SUPPORT HELPED HER ARRIVE IN A PLACE SHE LOVES. IT IS JUST REWARDING FOR ME. I GOT TO WAKE UP THIS MORNING AND BE LIKE I’M GOING TO DO MAKEUP, I’M GOING TO TEACH MAKEUP LIKE HOW AWESOME IS THAT? IT IS AWESOME. SO TLI RAISES MONEY TO SUPPORT THESE BUDDING BUSINESSES IN A VARIETY OF WAYS. FOR ONE, THEY PARTNER WITH GYMS AND HOLD FITNESS FUNDRAISERS. TRICIA, WHO AGAIN STARTED TLI, SAYS FITNESS HELPED HER THROUGH HER HARD TIMES. AND YOU CAN FIND MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THESE EVENTS ON GET LOCAL BREAKING NEWS ALERTS The latest breaking updates, delivered straight to your email inbox. Your Email Address Submit Privacy Notice

55a72df4e6f31fd7b126231dd00b9c62

Bruised by War-Related Boycott, Artforum Seeks a Reset

A skeleton crew of editors needed to take a hacksaw through the December issue of Artforum magazine. There were only a few weeks between the sudden firing of its editor in chief and a print deadline for the glossy’s annual “Year in Review” issue. The fallout had been swift when Artforum’s owner fired the editor, David Velasco, after the magazine published an open letter about the Israel-Hamas war that supported Palestinian liberation and initially omitted mention of the victims of the Hamas attack on Oct. 7. At least six members of the editorial team resigned and nearly 600 writers signed letters boycotting the magazine and its sister publications like ARTnews and Art in America. Regular contributors like the critic Jennifer Krasinski and the art historian Claire Bishop requested to have their articles pulled from the December issue. Others such as the filmmaker John Waters, the curator Meg Onli and the artist Gordon Hall also withdrew their writing. The “Year in Review” issue that has begun arriving to subscribers is a week later than usual and noticeably slimmer. At 150 pages of articles and advertisements, it is about a third smaller than last December’s 224-page issue.

e032ee3604daa6e3495219923df020bc

Picking Pockets, Moving Fast and Working Hard: the History of Hustling

In Word Through The Times, we trace how one word or phrase has changed throughout the history of the newspaper. In 1892, The New York Times printed an account from a reporter in St. Petersburg, Russia. The reporter said Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, posing as a “peasant,” got into a “squabble with a baker.” Not knowing who he was, police officers “hustled” the duke. They were about to arrest him when he revealed his identity. The verb hustle came from the Dutch “husselen,” meaning “to shake or toss,” and was first recorded in the 17th century, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. By the 18th century, it could also mean “to push or knock a person about roughly” (what happened to the duke, most likely) or to move hastily. By 1800, to hustle meant to rob someone while pretending to bump into the person, according to Grant Barrett, the head of lexicography for Dictionary.com. And a “hustler,” William Safire wrote in The Times in 1975, was someone “who shook up, or jostled, a victim while an aide picked his pocket.” By the turn of the 20th century, the meaning “to aggressively pursue an activity that will benefit you” was firmly established, Mr. Barrett said. Sometimes, a hustle was a moneymaking scheme or prostitution: For example, a Times article from 1997 described dealing drugs as one of the hundreds of “hustles” in New York; an article from 1975 stated, rather heedlessly, that women in an Alaskan oil town were “hustling pipeline workers.”

343a0bc8b657732534d72708a635afd7

I ate it so you dont have to - masslive.com

The best fast-food salad is the Market Salad from Chick-fil-A. It’s not even close. It’s got some nice chicken. It’s well-balanced with the sweet fruit and granola. The blue cheese isn’t overbearing. It’s a rare example of a salad that feels like an actual meal and not like “eating a salad.” So if you want to do the bare minimum in trying to eat healthy this year, you can go for that. I say “bare minimum” because it’s a bleak, wilted salad landscape out there. The options are all underwhelming and overly expensive — like trying to eat lunch at a highway rest stop in Connecticut. That’s what happens when half the competition simply gives up. Fast food salads, ranked worst to best (Review) It turns out that healthy foods are more costly to make, which was a big problem for fast food chains during the pandemic. That’s why McDonald’s cut their salads from menus at most locations (including everything within miles of me). Taco Bell’s Fiesta Salad? That’s gone. Burger King? Yeah, try walking into a Burger King and asking if they have a salad on the menu. I can tell you, it’s not a fun experience. So what’s left? There were only four fast food chains within reasonable driving distance of me that offered some form of salad. I totaled 10 different salads across my visits. Dairy Queen: Chicken Strip Salad Subway: Tuna Salad, Chicken Salad Wendy’s: Apple Pecan Salad Cobb Salad, Parmesan Caesar Salad, Taco Salad Chick-fil-A: Cobb Salad, Spicy Southwest Salad, Market Salad Let’s be clear: Every single one of these salads is the same base concept with a different coat of paint. It’s all the same: a bed of iceberg or romaine lettuce squares that have some combination of ancillary veggies and special toppings. Corn, bacon and egg? That’s a cobb. Parmesan and croutons? Caesar. Craisins, apples and candied pecans. That’s, well, an apple-pecan. It all boils down to who actually puts in the effort and who actually adds decent ingredients. How do they rank? 10. Dairy Queen Chicken Strip Salad | Fast food salads, ranked best to worst.Nick O'Malley, MassLive 10. Dairy Queen Chicken Strip Salad | Price $7.09 | Calories: 380 (before dressing) (Topped with chopped chicken tenders, shredded cheese, bacon bits, diced tomatoes, croutons) This is the least amount of effort I’ve ever seen put into a salad. They could at least try to sprinkle the ingredients throughout the salad. Instead, they’re tucked away in different little ingredient pods, like groups of angsty teens in a school cafeteria who don’t want to talk to each other. It’s like this product is designed to look like a salad with the least amount of effort possible. But they never considered that someone would actually order it. If even a C+ effort went into this salad, it could be elevated to “sort of good.” Instead, it’s a chore to eat. Every component is hard to pick up with a fork. I had to go get a big spoon from my drawer to actually get decent bites. I will say, Dairy Queen’s chicken strips are good. Whenever I get them, I’m always surprised by how much I like them. They’re quite peppery and well-seasoned. 9. Wendy’s Parmesan Caesar Salad | Fast food salads, ranked best to worst. (Nick O'Malley, MassLive)Nick O'Malley, MassLive 9. Wendy’s Parmesan Caesar Salad | Price: $8.49 | Calories: 530 (Topped with shaved Parmesan, croutons, grilled chicken and Caesar dressing) The problem here is that the typical Caesar salad you see in most places is a lazy, poorly-designed effort restaurants can make to check a box that says, “Yes, we serve a salad.” Here, we have the typical lineup of shaved parmesan, grilled chicken and croutons. It’s all hard to eat with a fork and gets blasted into salty oblivion by the dressing. You can do better than chicken and croutons. 8. Subway Tuna Salad | Fast food salads, ranked best to worst. (Nick O'Malley, MassLive)Nick O'Malley, MassLive 8. Subway Tuna Salad | Price: $8.19 (Topped with lettuce, tomato, onion, cucumber, cheese and sweet onion sauce) I actually liked this. When I got the tuna, veggies and sauce in one bite, it was reminiscent of sushi with pickled ginger and soy sauce. With that said, the tuna is a bland gray paste of fish. It’s best if you don’t pay attention to it. It’s quite fishy and the texture is offputting. Say what you want about Subway, but its sauces are tasty — probably because they’ve got a good amount of sugar. 7. Wendy’s Cobb Salad | Fast food salads, ranked best to worst. (Nick O'Malley, MassLive)Nick O'Malley, MassLive 7. Wendy’s Cobb Salad | Price: $8.49 | Calories: 670 (Topped with lettuce, bacon, chicken, shredded cheese, ranch dressing) Cobb is the Frappuccino of salads. It’s what people order when they don’t like salads. Here, you get most of the flavor from the bacon and chicken — and you do get plenty of chicken here, which is nice. It’s cool to see actual strips of bacon here. It lets you actually get some decent bites instead of having bits just fall to the bottom. The tomatoes are advertised as diced. But the ones I got here were sliced and mealy. It shows why most salads stick with cherry tomatoes. 6. Wendy’s Taco Salad | Fast food salads, ranked best to worst. (Nick O'Malley, MassLive)Nick O'Malley, MassLive 6. Wendy’s Taco Salad | Price $8.49 | Calories: 690 (With tortilla chips, chili, salsa, shredded cheese, sour cream) This is not a salad. This is a DIY nacho bowl with lettuce underneath. It’s actually very fun to eat with the tortilla chips. Going in with the tortilla chips to get a mix of ingredients makes for a varied eating experience. But if you use a fork, you’re just gonna get chunks of lettuce with a random smattering of salsa, chili, cheese and sour cream. This salad feels like it needed one more component to close it out, like ground beef or chicken. 5. Subway Grilled Chicken Salad | $9.09 (Topped with lettuce, tomato, onion, cucumber, shredded cheddar, olives and Subway Vinaigrette) Grading a Subway salad is hard because it’s so customizable. The salads are a little underwhelming in size. But they’re also the only place where you can get a salad topped with lettuce, tomato, onion, cucumbers, peppers and olives. No other place really lets you pile on veggies. Most other places, it’s salad mix with other ingredients on top. This was the closest to a salad I’d make at home. Well, I guess I did make it. But it stood out because of how veggie-heavy it is without incorporating more flashy toppings. 4. Chick-fil-A Cobb Salad with Nuggets | Fast food salads, ranked best to worst. (Nick O'Malley, MassLive)Nick O'Malley, MassLive 4. Chick-fil-A Cobb Salad with Nuggets | Price $9.99 | Calories: 830 (Topped with lettuce blend, grilled chicken, tomatoes, cheddar cheese, chopped eggs, bacon, crispy fried onions, and avocado lime ranch dressing) The choice to add four bulbous cherry tomatoes in each corner is strange. How do these fit in with the rest of the salad? They’re so out of place. As for the rest of the salad, it gets quite creamy and satisfying when you mix up with the egg, the ranch and the cheese. It’s hearty, the most filling salad you’ll get on this list. The corn is a nice touch, adding an element of sweetness and a much-needed fresh vegetable complement. The avocado lime ranch is fascinating. It’s got a bit of zing and acidity to it. But it doesn’t carry a ton of flavor. It’s very much a background character, so there’s no reason to put a ton of it on. It’s a glue guy, literally helping you stick pieces of salad together to make it easier to eat. 3. Chick-fil-A Spicy Southwest Salad | Fast food salads, ranked best to worst. (Nick O'Malley, MassLive)Nick O'Malley, MassLive 3. Chick-fil-A Spicy Southwest Salad | Price: $10.19 | Calories: 680 (Topped with tortilla strips, black beans, tomatoes, shredded cheese, spicy chicken, creamy salsa dressing) The creamy salsa dressing isn’t messing around, neither is the spicy chicken. This thing is legit spicy. This salad is satisfying to eat and comes with a hefty amount of kick. It’s very much a meal, with the tortilla strips, beans and corn adding a nice amount of body to the salad itself. Overall, this is a nice balance of crunchy, spicy and flavorful. But it may actually be a bit too much for those who don’t like spicy things. 2. Wendy’s Apple Pecan Salad | Fast food salads, ranked best to worst. (Nick O'Malley, MassLive)Nick O'Malley, MassLive 2. Wendy’s Apple Pecan Salad | Price: $8.49 | Calories: 540 It’s baffling to me that this costs the same as the Caesar Salad at Wendy’s. You get so much more for your money. This was my No. 1 pick the last time I ranked fast food salads. It’s still a solid pick. You get so much more in terms of tang and sweet and color and pops of flavor. The apples, craisins and candied pecans add a really nice sweetness and nuttiness, just enough to make you believe you’re eating real food and not just “a salad.” At least that’s how it’s supposed to go. This time around, the apples were particularly tart and acidic. They also went a bit heavy with the blue cheese. As a result, the funky and astringent elements overpowered everything else. Sometimes, you just get a bad salad. It’s good when it’s more in balance. 1. Chick-fil-A Market Salad | Fast food salads, ranked best to worst. (Nick O'Malley, MassLive)Nick O'Malley, MassLive 1. Chick-fil-A Market Salad | $10.19 | 550 calories (Topped with apples, strawberries, granola, almonds, blueberries, grilled chicken, zesty apple cider vinaigrette) This is the best salad and it’s not even close. It’s sweet, it’s tangy, savory and filling. It’s bright and colorful. It’s varied — and most importantly — balanced. Because there are so many dimensions to the ingredients, the balance and flavors change depending on what you get on your fork, making you want to take another bite. It’s fun to eat, the opposite of the usual doldrum of eating a salad (looking at you, Caesar). I really like the inclusion of the granola, it adds a nice crunch and sweetness. The apple cider vinaigrette is also one of the best dressings of the bunch. The blue cheese funk is present, but is balanced out nicely with the other elements. The final word It’s unfortunate how the landscape of salads has changed in recent years. You can see restaurants streamlining their menus to go with simpler, more profitable items. As you can see on the list, the salads at these fast food chains don’t come cheap. Chick-fil-A has the best salads overall. But Wendy’s gives you the best value. With all of that said, these things are healthier than most fast food options. But that doesn’t automatically make them truly healthy -- especially when you have the fried chicken nuggets and ranch dressing involved. Still, it’s a step in the healthier direction. --- “I ate it so you don’t have to” is a regular food column looking at off-beat eats, both good and bad. It runs every other Thursday-ish at noon-ish. You can send any praise/food suggestions to nomalley@masslive.com. Please send all criticisms and defenses of Connecticut’s rest stops to tsanzo@masslive.com. You can check out the rest of the series here.

4dad3ad92c5934ed0dcbd286d5abb9cf

10 must-read books that reimagine sex and power in 2024

Sign up for Reckon’s latest newsletter dedicated to the fight for reproductive justice, a weekly repro rundown covering the good, the fair-to-middlin' and the ugly in repro news. Enter your email to subscribe to Reproductive Justice with Reckon. If one of your new year’s resolutions is to read more books, Reckon has you covered. Whether you’re looking for a way to introduce healthy sex discussions to your children, or learn more about the history of abortion in the U.S., here are 10 sex-positive books to add to your collection in 2024. “Vaginas and Periods 101: A Pop-Up Book” by Christian Hoeger and Kristin Lilla Talking to kids about reproductive anatomy can be intimidating, but experts say that teaching children the correct terms for their genitals prevents shame and promotes bodily autonomy and safety. This intro to vaginas and periods book is visually interesting, informative, and inclusive. It features a pop up vulva to provide a more realistic idea of anatomy, explaining that varying shapes and colors are normal. According to the 2023 State of the Period survey, 90% of teens think schools should normalize menstruation and 81% said they wanted more in-depth education about menstrual health. This book provides a platform to introduce these conversations and answer some basic questions even adults may have wrong. “The Book of Radical Answers: Real Questions from Real Kids Just Like You” by Sonya Renee Taylor Award-winning poet and activist Sonya Renee Taylor writes books that make seemingly big topics like puberty and gender approachable for young people, with Taylor’s idea of radical self love infiltrated through the messaging. This book includes questions asked by real kids between the ages of 10 and 14. Taylor approaches many of these questions using her own life stories to humanize the experience, and answer the questions as a friend, someone the reader knows, rather than an unapproachable health expert. “Red Moon Gang: An Inclusive Guide to Periods” by Tara Costello According to UNICEF, 1.8 billion people around the world menstruate monthly but menstrual health education in the United States is not sufficient. YouGov found that 48% of adults “were not very or not at all prepared” for their first period, in a March 2023 poll. In comes Red Moon Gang, which takes an inclusive guide into periods, hormonal fluctuations and what they mean, and how conditions like endometriosis and polycystic ovary syndrome can impact one’s cycle. This book goes beyond what is typically taught in schools, explaining how periods can be especially challenging to people experiencing homelessness, as well as people with disabilities. “My Mom Had an Abortion” by Beezus B. Murphy For those who love visuals, this short and sweet graphic novel tells a coming of age story of a protagonist learning about menstruation, her body and abortion as it affected her family. This narrative puts the topic of abortion in context of a real-life situation, making the reader – especially those who have not experienced abortion themselves – question their own preconceived notions about abortion. “You’re the Only One I’ve Told” by Dr. Meera Shah Chief medical officer of Planned Parenthood Hudson Peconic in New York, Dr. Meera Shah, compiled a collection of abortion stories told to her, humanizing the experience and illustrating the wide range of circumstances that contribute to one’s decision to have an abortion. Shah shared an excerpt in Teen Vogue that tells the experience of a genderqueer teen in the Bible belt that needs their dad’s permission to have the procedure due to abortion restrictions in theri state. “No Choice: The Destruction of Roe v. Wade and the Fight to Protect a Fundamental American Right” by Becca Andrews Reckon’s very own former reproductive justice reporter Becca Andrews gives an in-depth look at the fight for Roe and the landscape left behind once it was overturned. This is a great read for anyone looking to catch up with how the battle for abortion rights has gone down, or for those looking for insight into the history that got us here. “Countering Abortionsplaining: How People of Color Can Reclaim Our Stories and Right History” by Renee Bracey Sherman and Regine Mahone Abortion and midwifery bans are rooted in white supremacy, as the existence of Black and Indigenous midwives stood in the way of white men’s obstetrics and gynecology practices, and enslaved women using cotton root to induce miscarriages threatened future generations for slaveholders to force into labor, according to New Lines Magazine. Abortion restrictions continue to disproportionately impact people of color, with 42% of people receiving abortions in 2021 identifying as Black. Yet, many prominent media abortion portrayals and the reproductive justice movement itself have been accused of being white-washed by women of color. We spoke with author Renee Bracey Sherman in October about her take on Britney Spears and the importance of sharing abortion stories. Bracey Sherman coauthors this book with journalist Regine Mahone, attempting to provide the full picture of the reproductive justice narrative, providing a history of people of color’s experiences with and contributions to the abortion justice movement. Scheduled to release in October 2024 “DIY: The Wonderfully Weird Science and History of Masturbation” by Dr. Eric Sprankle Science says that masturbation is healthy and normal, yet like other aspects of human sexuality, it is surrounded by stigma and shame. Sprankle writes about the history of masturbation suppression, including doctors who run treatment programs for masturbation addiction and pastors who preach believe that masturbation creates mermaids. On sale March 19, 2024 “The Furies: Women, Vengeance and Justice” by Elizabeth Flock This book crosses borders and cultures to explore how power dynamics and gender impact women’s safety. Author Elizabeth Flock centers the stories of an Alabama women denied protection of the Stand-Your-Ground law after she killed a man she accused of raping her, a leader of an Indian gang that claims to avenge victims of domestic abuse, and a member of an all-women militia that’s battled ISIS in Syria. According to the book description, each of these women “chose to use lethal force to gain power, safety, and freedom when the institutions meant to protect them—government, police, courts—utterly failed to do so.” On sale January 9, 2024 “The Pregnancy Police: Conceiving Crime, Arresting Personhood” by Grace Howard Fetal personhood and pregnancy criminalization were major issues in 2023, but they aren’t a new phenomenon. Even before the overturning of Roe, people have been punished for the decisions they’ve made regarding their fetuses, with surveillance by healthcare workers contributing to cases against pregnant people. In this book, Howard analyzes thousands of arrest records documenting the history of pregnancy criminalization from eugenics to the present day. Scheduled to release in June 2024

e72dfce2a825fa2fb316450e73d34b2f

Mountain Hawks Look to Bounce Back Versus Boston University

Thanks for visiting ! The use of software that blocks ads hinders our ability to serve you the content you came here to enjoy. We ask that you consider turning off your ad blocker so we can deliver you the best experience possible while you are here. Thank you for your support!

b97d011ff266c2382575c5e79429806e

E.U. Agrees on Landmark Artificial Intelligence Rules

European Union policymakers agreed on Friday to a sweeping new law to regulate artificial intelligence, one of the world’s first comprehensive attempts to limit the use of a rapidly evolving technology that has wide-ranging societal and economic implications. The law, called the A.I. Act, sets a new global benchmark for countries seeking to harness the potential benefits of the technology, while trying to protect against its possible risks, like automating jobs, spreading misinformation online and endangering national security. The law still needs to go through a few final steps for approval, but the political agreement means its key outlines have been set. European policymakers focused on A.I.’s riskiest uses by companies and governments, including those for law enforcement and the operation of crucial services like water and energy. Makers of the largest general-purpose A.I. systems, like those powering the ChatGPT chatbot, would face new transparency requirements. Chatbots and software that creates manipulated images such as “deepfakes” would have to make clear that what people were seeing was generated by A.I., according to E.U. officials and earlier drafts of the law. Use of facial recognition software by police and governments would be restricted outside of certain safety and national security exemptions. Companies that violated the regulations could face fines of up to 7 percent of global sales.

54167ae7a9328e5536f123358dfe6fc4

Robots Learn, Chatbots Visualize: How 2024 Will Be A.I.s Leap Forward

“This would be like the same capability that you’d want to have if you’re sending an astronaut to the surface of Mars or something like that,” said Dr. Abhijit Biswas, the project technologist. “You want to have constant contact with them.” The demonstration was done with the help of NASA’s Psyche spacecraft, which was launched on Oct. 13 with the aim of exploring an asteroid with the same name. The D.S.O.C. experiment is using laser communications, as opposed to traditional radio frequencies, in an attempt to transfer large gobs of data at faster rates over greater distances. (The video is of Taters chasing a laser pointer. In 1928, a statue of the cartoon character Felix the Cat was used to test television transmissions.) The transmitted data rates of 267 megabits per second are comparable to rates on Earth, which are often between 100 and 300 megabits per second. But Dr. Biswas urged caution about the results of the demonstration. “This is the first step,” he said. “There’s still significant requirements for ground infrastructure and things like that to take something that’s kind of a proof of concept to transform it into something that’s operational and reliable.” The video was transmitted using a flight laser transceiver, one of several pieces of new hardware being deployed for the first time. The D.S.O.C. system is made up of three parts: the transceiver, which was installed on board the Psyche spacecraft, and two components on Earth: a ground laser transmitter (roughly a 90-minute drive from the laboratory) and a ground laser receiver at the Palomar Observatory in Southern California.

775cd82544a81ae2c7a7e8515589e8c2

2024 Hoophall Classic: Jerry Easter II, Ace Buckner power La Lumiere past Sunrise Academy

SPRINGFIELD ― Jerry Easter II scored 17 of his game-high 23 points in the second half to lead La Lumiere (IN) past Sunrise Christian Academy (KS), 75-64 during the 2024 Hoophall Classic. Easter II added seven rebounds and a pair of steals, earning himself the Most Outstanding Player award for his efforts.

9af8a1c433ada7a5ba81772a668cab67

Opinion | The Cease-Fire Now Imposture

The House on Wednesday authorized the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, with every Republican rallying behind the politically charged process despite lingering concerns among some in the party that the investigation has yet to produce evidence of misconduct by the president. The 221-212 party-line vote put the entire House Republican conference on record in support of an impeachment process that can lead to the ultimate penalty for a president: punishment for what the Constitution describes as “high crimes and misdemeanors,” which can lead to removal from office if convicted in a Senate trial. Authorizing the monthslong inquiry ensures that the impeachment investigation extends well into 2024, when Biden will be running for reelection and seems likely to be squaring off against former President Donald Trump — who was twice impeached during his time in the White House. Trump has pushed his GOP allies in Congress to move swiftly on impeaching Biden, part of his broader calls for vengeance and retribution against his political enemies. The decision to hold a vote came as House Speaker Mike Johnson and his leadership team faced growing pressure to show progress in what has become a nearly yearlong probe centered around the business dealings of Biden's family members. While their investigation has raised ethical questions, no evidence has emerged that Biden acted corruptly or accepted bribes in his current role or previous office as vice president. Get Boston local news, weather forecasts, lifestyle and entertainment stories to your inbox. Sign up for NBC Boston’s newsletters. Ahead of the vote, Johnson called it “the next necessary step" and acknowledged there are “a lot of people who are frustrated this hasn’t moved faster.“ The congressman from Louisiana was elected speaker of the House. Here are some things to know about the Republican representative. In a recent statement, the White House called the whole process a “baseless fishing expedition” that Republicans are pushing ahead with “despite the fact that members of their own party have admitted there is no evidence to support impeaching President Biden.” House Democrats rose in opposition to the inquiry resolution Wednesday. “This whole thing is an extreme political stunt. It has no credibility, no legitimacy, and no integrity. It is a sideshow," Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., said during a floor debate. Some House Republicans, particularly those hailing from politically divided districts, had been hesitant in recent weeks to take any vote on Biden's impeachment, fearing a significant political cost. But GOP leaders have made the case in recent weeks that the resolution is only a step in the process, not a decision to impeach Biden. That message seems to have won over skeptics. “As we have said numerous times before, voting in favor of an impeachment inquiry does not equal impeachment,” Rep. Tom Emmer, a member of the GOP leadership team, said at a news conference Tuesday. Emmer said Republicans “will continue to follow the facts wherever they lead, and if they uncover evidence of treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors, then and only then will the next steps towards impeachment proceedings be considered.” Most of the Republicans reluctant to back the impeachment push have also been swayed by leadership's recent argument that authorizing the inquiry will give them better legal standing as the White House has questioned the legal and constitutional basis for their requests for information. A letter last month from a top White House attorney to Republican committee leaders portrayed the GOP investigation as overzealous and illegitimate because the chamber had not yet authorized a formal impeachment inquiry by a vote of the full House. Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president, also wrote that when Trump faced the prospect of impeachment by a Democratic-led House in 2019, Johnson had said at the time that any inquiry without a House vote would be a “sham.” Rep. Dusty Johnson, R-S.D., said this week that while there was no evidence to impeach the president, “that’s also not what the vote this week would be about.” “We have had enough political impeachments in this country,” he said. “I don’t like the stonewalling the administration has done, but listen, if we don’t have the receipts, that should constrain what the House does long-term.” Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., who has long been opposed to moving forward with impeachment, said that the White House questioning the legitimacy of the inquiry without a formal vote helped gain his support. “I can defend an inquiry right now,” he told reporters this week. "Let's see what they find out.” House Democrats remained unified in their opposition to the impeachment process, saying it is a farce used by the GOP to take attention away from Trump and his legal woes. “You don’t initiate an impeachment process unless there’s real evidence of impeachable offenses,” said Rep. Jerry Nadler, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, who oversaw the two impeachments into Trump. “There is none here. None.” Democrats and the White House have repeatedly defended the president and his administration's cooperation with the investigation thus far, saying it has already made a massive trove of documents available. Congressional investigators have obtained nearly 40,000 pages of subpoenaed bank records and dozens of hours of testimony from key witnesses, including several high-ranking Justice Department officials currently tasked with investigating the president's son, Hunter Biden. While Republicans say their inquiry is ultimately focused on the president himself, they have taken particular interest in Hunter Biden and his overseas business dealings, from which they accuse the president of personally benefiting. Republicans have also focused a large part of their investigation on whistleblower allegations of interference in the long-running Justice Department investigation into the younger Biden's taxes and his gun use. Hunter Biden is currently facing criminal charges in two states from the special counsel investigation. He’s charged with firearm counts in Delaware, alleging he broke laws against drug users having guns in 2018, a period when he has acknowledged struggling with addiction. Special counsel David Weiss filed additional charges last week, alleging he failed to pay about $1.4 million in taxes over a three-year period. Democrats have conceded that while the president's son is not perfect, he is a private citizen who is already being held accountable by the justice system. “I mean, there’s a lot of evidence that Hunter Biden did a lot of improper things. He’s been indicted, he’ll stand trial,” Nadler said. “There’s no evidence whatsoever that the president did anything improper.” Hunter Biden arrived for a rare public statement outside the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, saying he would not be appearing for his scheduled private deposition that morning. The president's son defended himself against years of GOP attacks and said his father has had no financial involvement in his business affairs. His attorney has offered for Biden to testify publicly, citing concerns about Republicans manipulating any private testimony. “Republicans do not want an open process where Americans can see their tactics, expose their baseless inquiry, or hear what I have to say,” Biden said outside the Capitol. “What are they afraid of? I am here.” GOP lawmakers said that since Hunter Biden did not appear, they will begin contempt of Congress proceedings against him. “He just got into more trouble today,” Rep. James Comer, the House Oversight Committee chairman, told reporters Wednesday.

7424a27823795d758ee561a8d2d561c3

Migrants Sleep in the Snow in Desperate Wait for ID Cards

As snow swirled down after midnight on Tuesday, about three dozen migrants, including two families with children, huddled on the sidewalk under thin blankets outside a city office in Brooklyn. They had temporarily left their homeless shelters to spend the night camping in the 20-degree wind chill for a chance at a prize whose significance was not quite clear: a New York City-issued identification card called IDNYC. Some said they had been told by shelter workers that the card was a necessary step on the road to legal employment. One woman who was six months pregnant said she had heard she needed the card to get seen at a public hospital. As winter settles in, the situation faced by the 68,000 migrants in city shelters has grown more precarious and left many eager to find their way to self-sufficiency but confused about the many rules that govern the steps to get there.

c0b42693df7b89dd3885e159fd42992a

Over 50 French Figures Defend Depardieu After Sexual Misconduct Allegations

Over 50 actors, artists and other celebrities in France have issued a letter ardently defending Gérard Depardieu, the actor accused of sexual harassment and assault, calling him the victim of a “lynching” and arguing that he should be able to continue working despite a storm of criticism. “We can no longer remain silent in the face of the lynching that has descended upon him, in the face of the torrent of hatred that is being heaped upon his person, without nuance,” they declared in the letter, which was published on Monday by the newspaper Le Figaro. The letter was signed by 56 people, some of them prominent cultural figures, and other lesser-known personalities. They included the actresses Nathalie Baye, Charlotte Rampling and Carole Bouquet — one of Mr. Depardieu’s former partners — as well as the actors Jacques Weber and Pierre Richard; Roberto Alagna, the opera tenor; Carla Bruni, the singer and former first lady of France; and Bertrand Blier, the director whose 1974 film “Going Places” vaulted Mr. Depardieu to fame. The letter came less than a week after President Emmanuel Macron of France mounted his own staunch defense of Mr. Depardieu and condemned a “manhunt” against him, prompting swift shock and bewilderment from French feminists.