Today was the annual Japanese festival on Boston Common. As you might expect from his user name, Aviation Librarian was particularly drawn to the Japan Airlines display, where you could learn how to make an origami airplane and how to taxi a JAL 787 across a tarmac.
A man who was charged in Dorchester court in March with raping three underage teens was arraigned last week on additional charges, including child rape, videoing the girls in the act and forcing them to sell drugs for him, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports. Read more.
Early risin' Matt Frank caught the moon while on the hunt for a cold brew in Chelsea's Prattville about an hour before sunrise this mornin'.
Mary Ellen spotted a bunch of birds at Millennium Park yesterday, including this l'il plumper, otherwise known as a palm warbler.
And there's this common grackle, looking like something you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley, or, well, anywhere else: Read more.
Boston Police report a man was shot at Blue Hill Avenue and Fremont Street around 4:45 a.m. Read more.
The FCC says it's grown tired of a man it says has been running an illegal radio station via transmitters in Mattapan, Randolph and Brockton for nearly two decades, so it's now proposing to fine him $597,775 in an attempt to get him to stay off the air. Read more.
A federal judge yesterday sentenced a former State Police lieutenant to five years in federal prison and ordered him to pay $508,000 in restitution, fines and fees for approving they way he controlled bogus overtime payments to troopers - including himself - in the scandal-plagued traffic-enforcement unit, the US Attorney's office in Boston reports. Read more.
Two letter carriers were held up in Dorchester this morning, one on Mora Street around 11:15 a.m., and the second about ten minutes later and a couple blocks away on Fuller Street.
In the Mora case, the suspect appeared to have a gun. In the other case, the robber tried to grab the mailman's master mailbox key, but failed to get it. In both cases, the robber got away in a white sedan.
One day after it dismissed a lawsuit by some Nantucket residents against wind turbines now being installed south of their island, a federal appeals court dismissed a similar lawsuit by the president of a solar-energy company who has a summer home there. Read more.
The MBTA reported a Red Line train expired at Charles/MGH around 3 p.m.
A developer says it will soon file plans for eight condos in four buildings at 90 Allandale St. in Jamaica Plain, just up the road apiece from Boston's only free-range Scottish Highland bulls and across from the rear of Faulkner Hospital. Read more.
The Boston Licensing Board yesterday granted Las Delicias Colombianas 2, 1231 River St. in Hyde Park, permission to extend its closing time from 11 p.m. until 1 a.m. Read more.
A federal judge yesterday sentenced Mohammed Chowdhury, 47, to 92 months in federal prison for trying to hire somebody to kill his wife after she kicked him out of their house and took up with another man - whom he also wanted dead. Read more.
Update: Transit Police report they've IDed the guy.
Transit Police report they are looking for a guy they say started harassing a woman on the Green Line at Kenmore and finished by punching her in the left side of her face at Park Street, shortly before 10 p.m. on April 17. Read more.
At 11:47 a.m., the MBTA reported Red Line delays due to "a signal issue" at Park Street.
A company renovating the skyscraper at 1 Lincoln St. in Downtown Crossing yesterday won the right to buy a liquor license for a currently unoccupied space to serve what it says is a growing demand for full service restaurants as more people return to office work by opening at least one restaurant, but possibly more. Read more.
Fire and firetrucks light up the sky. Photo by Ryan.
Boston firefighters responded to the Fens off Boylston Street around 11:30 p.m. on Thursday for what turned out to be a dumpster fire, not the more traditional spring brush fire, which may have become a thing of the past, anyway, now that the reeds have all been cut down.
A federal judge yesterday sentenced William Giordani of Manchester, NH to three years probation for the way he showed up at the Harvard Science Center with a bag full of Roman candles, bottle rockets and wires in it at the bidding of somebody who hired him through Craigslist - who then called police at Harvard seven times to warn them that bombs had been planted around the campus and to demand a large Bitcoin payment to keep them from going off. Read more.
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