Franklin Matters posts a copy of an alert from Town Administrator Jamie Hellen that a town employee provided what should have been secure login information that enabled a hacker to drain $522,000 from town accounts. Read more.
Photo by Westborough PD.
Police in the I-495 town of Westborough report four cunning cattle from the Uhlmans ice-cream stand went on the moove this morning before finding a particularly tasty lawn on Wachusett View Drive. Police say that with the help of the town animal-control officer and Uhlmans, they were able to wrangle the bovines back to the ice-cream stand.
The Massachusetts Appeals Court had to consider laws and court decisions dating to the 1600s to determine which quarreling neighbors could park and drive on an unpaved path down to a lake in central Massachusetts, but sent the case down to Superior Court yesterday for a judge there to determine whether one of the neighbors could keep his two-slip floating dock in the water at the end of the path. Read more.
The University of Massachusetts announced the furloughs today, citing a $169-million hole in its current budget. Among the losses: $67.4 million in anticipated housing and dining revenue caused by the school's decision to hold classes remotely this semester and a $30.6-million loss in tuition revenue.
Furlough status means the workers are still eligible for benefits, including health insurance.
Why, hello there, Holy Cross students! Sup?
The party in question was this weekend, several days after the school announced it was moving to online learning this fall. Holy Cross announced it is very, very disappointed in the students.
The Boston Sun recounts the life of Damien Hughes, stabbed to death outside the Southampton Shelter on July 31.
In a statement this morning, UMass Athletic Director Ryan Bamford announced: Read more.
UMass Amherst alerted students and parents today that due to "the worsening conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic nationally," the school will only let students return who have no choice but to take classes in laboratories and studios or who need to be in face-to-face interactions with professors. Read more.
The Massachusetts Appeals Court today dismissed a woman's suit against the Archdiocese of Boston for the way she was fired as director of musical ministries at a Franklin church without even considering her claim that the new parish priest didn't like either her age or gender. Read more.
A federal judge today ordered Michael Taylor and his son, Peter Maxwell Taylor, held at the Norfolk County jail as they await extradition hearings on a request from Japan to have them shipped there to face trial on charges they helped smuggle Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn out of the country in a large black box so he could avoid his own trial for alleged financial crimes. Read more.
Herrell's, in the bucolic city of Northampton (started by Steve Herrell, yes, that Steve, and his wife) reports several incidents in which people got so, so mad when they were told to put on a mask or to take their cone to go - one even threw the cone at the server when told they couldn't eat it inside.
H/t Drew.
A federal judge ruled today that Alvin "King Humble" Mojica of Worcester is too much of a flight risk to release on cocaine-distribution charges that could net him more than 10 years in prison and ordered him kept locked up pending his trial.
Read more.
A former Green Beret turned international security consultant and his son face a hearing this afternoon on the government's request to hold them without bail until they can be sent to Japan, where they face charges for allegedly smuggling the ousted Nissan CEO out of the country by hiding him in a large black box. Read more.
ProPublica takes a look at the Holyoke Soldiers Home:
Superintendent Bragged About VA Review of Short-Staffed Soldiers Home. Two Months Later, 73 Veterans Are Dead
Walmart thought it could re-open the store today or tomorrow after a deep cleaning, but Worcester said, yeah, right, not until you test all 400 workers, especially since most of the cases were diagnosed in the past week, WBZ reports.
Dr. Andrew Artenstein, chief physician executive at Baystate Health - which runs four hospitals in the Springfield area - describes the lengths he and his staff had to go to to secure some much needed respirator masks recently, in a a letter to the New England Journal of Medcine posted yesterday. Read more.
MassLive.com reports the Jew-hating alleged idiot tried to burn down a nursing home in East Longmeadow earlier this month by using a Christian religious pamphlet as a wick to light a five-gallon canister filled with gasoline, only the pamphlet stopped burning before the canister could catch on fire, which let investigators use DNA from the blood he somehow dripped on the pamphlet to connect him to the canister.
Update: Massachusetts is in as well, at least according to the governor of New Jersey.
The CT Mirror reports the governors of six Northeast states, including New York, Rhode Island and Connecticut have agreed to work together on planning for the gradual re-opening of their economies as public-health concerns warrant; they added other states are welcome to join in.
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