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Massachusetts agencies asked to spend $18 million with LGBTQ, disability-owned businesses in FY24

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:11:45 GMT

State agencies will need to work towards spending at least $18 million with LGBTQ- and disability-owned businesses during the fiscal year 2024 that starts on Saturday, the Healey administration announced Friday morning.The state already lays out agency spending benchmarks for businesses owned by veterans, minorities, and women. LGBTQ- and disability-owned businesses are the only categories without established benchmarks even though the state recognizes them in their Supplier Diversity Program, Gov. Maura Healey said.“Massachusetts is home to so many wonderful diverse and small businesses who are truly the backbone of our communities and our economy,” Healey said in a statement. “Our administration is committed to increasing opportunities for them to do business with the state, which will not only help their businesses grow but will also support the state’s equitable economic development.”The new benchmark is about $8 million short of the $10 million that state agencies spent with LG...

Bruins to buy out Mike Reilly

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:11:45 GMT

On the eve of free agency, the Bruins decided to give themselves a little more breathing room under the salary.On the last day possible, the B’s placed Mike Reilly on waivers for the purpose of buying out the veteran defenseman. The buyout would give the B’s a savings of $2.66 million in 2023-24, though it would cost the B’s a $1.33 million hit in 2024-25. The salary cap, however, is expected to go up more significantly than it did this year. The cap bumped up $1 million to $83.5 million this year.The B’s currently have approximately $13.6 million in cap space. They have only six forwards and one goalie currently under contract on the NHL roster, with Jeremy Swayman and Trent Frederic being arbitration eligible restricted free agents.Though Reilly is a serviceable NHL puck-moving defenseman, he was a cap casualty in 2022-23 when the B’s were loaded, spending most of his time in Providence where about a third of his $3 million cap hit was hidden. &n...

The Supreme Court will decide if some judges have gone too far in striking down gun restrictions

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:11:45 GMT

By MARK SHERMAN (Associated Press)WASHINGTON (AP) — A year after its sweeping gun rights ruling, the Supreme Court agreed Friday to decide whether judges are going too far in striking down restrictions on firearms.The justices will hear the Biden administration’s appeal of one such ruling that struck down as unconstitutional a federal law meant to keep guns away from people who have domestic violence restraining orders against them.Arguments will take place in the fall in the first case in which the court could define the limits on new standards for evaluating gun laws that its conservative majority set out last June. That decision in the case, which has come to be known as Bruen, has upended gun laws across the country. It’s led to a rash of rulings invalidating some long-standing restrictions on firearms, but also produced confusion about what laws can survive.Governments have to justify gun control laws by showing they are “consistent with the Nation’...

Police investigating ‘unattended death’ at Sterling police station, Worcester DA’s office says

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:11:45 GMT

State police and local authorities are investigating an “unattended death” last week at the Sterling Police Department,  a spokesperson for Worcester County District Attorney Joseph D. Early Jr. said Friday.“Massachusetts State Police Detectives assigned to the Worcester County District Attorney’s Office and Sterling Police continue to investigate the June 23 unattended death at the Sterling Police Department,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “Authorities are awaiting autopsy results which include toxicology reports.”Additional details were not available Friday morning.Sterling Police Chief Sean Gaudette did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Cuban boy castaway Elián González becomes a lawmaker

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:11:45 GMT

By ANDREA RODRÍGUEZ (Associated Press)HAVANA (AP) — Elián González has the same big, expressive eyes he did 23 years ago when an international custody battle transformed him into the face of the long-strained relations between Cuba and the United States.Now 29, González is stepping into Cuban politics. He recently entered his country’s congress with hopes of helping his people at a time of record emigration and heightened tension between the two seaside neighbors.“From Cuba, we can do a lot so that we have a more solid country, and I owe it to Cubans,” he said during an exclusive interview with The Associated Press. “That is what I’m going to try to do from my position, from this place in congress — to contribute to making Cuba a better country.”González has given only a handful of interviews since he was unwittingly thrust into the geopolitical spotlight as a boy. In 1999, at just 5 years old, he and his mothe...

In student loan and affirmative action rulings, advocates fear losses for racial equality

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:11:45 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — As a Black student who was raised by a single mother, Makia Green believes she benefited from a program that gave preference to students of color from economically disadvantaged backgrounds when she was admitted over a decade ago to the University of Rochester.As a borrower who still owes just over $20,000 on her undergraduate student loans, she had been counting on President Joe Biden’s promised debt relief to wipe nearly all of that away.Now, the student loan cancellation plan has been dismantled by the U.S. Supreme Court, which on Thursday struck down affirmative action in college admissions. Both policies disproportionately help Black students. To Green and many other people of color, the efforts to roll them back reflect a larger backlash to racial progress in higher education.“I feel like working people have been through enough — I have been through enough,” said Green, a community organizer. “From a pandemic, an uprising, a recession, the cost of livin...

Prosecutors in Rep. George Santos’ case say they have given his defense over 80K pages of material

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:11:45 GMT

CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y. (AP) — Prosecutors said Friday that they have turned over more than 80,000 pages of materials to U.S. Rep. George Santos ’ lawyers in the federal fraud and money laundering case against him. The documents weren’t publicly released, as is common during this stage of a case. The barely five-minute hearing at a Long Island courthouse focused on the case schedule, with the next court date set for Sept. 7. Santos didn’t speak in court, nor to journalists waiting outside. The New York Republican, known for fabricating key parts his life story, is free awaiting trial. Santos pleaded not guilty last month to charges that he duped donors, stole from his campaign, collected fraudulent unemployment benefits and lied to Congress about being a millionaire.Prosecutors have charged Santos with 13 counts of wire fraud, money laundering, theft of public funds and making false statements to Congress. He faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted. Taken together, the a...

Mourning begins for anti-gang community defense activist slain in Mexico

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:11:45 GMT

LA RUANA, Mexico (AP) — On the dirt road where Hipólito Mora, leader of an armed civilian defense movement, was killed only a large, charred spot on the ground remained Friday where his armored vehicle had burned.There was no visible presence of the National Guard, soldiers or police.At his home, a short distance away, about 15 people sat in chairs before Mora’s flower-covered casket on a patio. Dozens of additional chairs awaited others expected to come pay their respects.Mora was one of the last surviving leaders of Michoacan’s armed vigilante movement, in which farmers and ranchers banded together to expel the Knights Templar cartel from the state between 2013 and 2014.The Michoacan state prosecutors’ office on Thursday said unidentified gunmen cut off Mora’s vehicle and his bodyguards’ pickup on a street in his hometown La Ruana. They opened fire, riddling Mora’s vehicle with bullets, and then set it afire, the office said.Three other men, believed to be members of his sec...

Don Valley East MPP Adil Shamji to seek Ontario Liberal Party leadership: sources

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:11:45 GMT

A fifth candidate is set to join the leadership race for the Ontario Liberal Party. Sources tell CityNews Don Valley East MPP Adil Shamji is expected to make a formal announcement next week. Shamji, an emergency room physician at Michael Garron Hospital, became an MPP in last June’s provincial election. He currently serves as the Liberal critic for health, northern development, Indigenous affairs, and colleges and universities.Shamji will join a field that includes Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie, former Ottawa Centre MP Yasir Naqvi, Kingston and the Islands MPP Ted Hsu, and Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, MP for the Beaches-East York.The deadline to register for the leadership contest is Sept. 5.Party members will cast their votes by ranked ballot on Nov. 25 and Nov. 26, with round-by-round results and a new leader announced the following weekend on Dec. 2.The new leader will replace Steven Del Duca, who resigned after the party failed to win enough seats in last year’s election to...

50 shades of ballet? Melanie Hamrick on her steamy novel that makes ‘Black Swan’ seem tame

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:11:45 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — Melanie Hamrick, who knows her way around a quick pirouette, had to move fast when her 6-year-old son Deveraux recently picked up a copy of her new novel, “First Position,” as she was signing books.“I didn’t realize how well he was reading,” the former ballerina and first-time author says of her first-grader, whom she shares with partner Mick Jagger. “He opened it and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, give me that book!’” She suggested an alternative: “The Cat in the Hat.”Wise move. “First Position” (get the pun?) is what they call a romance novel but might easily have been called “Fifty Shades of Ballet.” Hamrick, who spent 16 years at American Ballet Theatre before leaving to raise Deveraux, writes about a young dancer, Sylvie, who joins a prestigious national ballet company and tries to make her mark.As the dancers move vertically up the workplace ladder, there’s also a lot of, er, horizontal action. Hamrick says she wanted to give readers a good time, but also a view of w...