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State Joint Committee on the Judiciary takes public testimony on proposal to legalize magic mushrooms

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:14:34 GMT

A drug debate continued on Beacon Hill Tuesday with the state Joint Committee on the Judiciary taking public testimony on psychedelic drugs. Several political leaders and local doctors are looking to decriminalize such drugs by legalizing magic mushrooms and certain other plants and fungi containing psychedelic compounds. “I think it’s very clear that they offer immense potential benefit for a variety of different conditions,” said Dr. Franklin King of the Mass. General Center for the Neuroscience of Psychedelics. “It’s almost impossible to overdose on any psychedelics and it’s biologically impossible to become addicted to them,” King continued. “So, the legal structure that surrounds them is completely inaccurate.” Pending legislation would allow any person 18 years or older to grow, eat or share magic mushrooms in Massachusetts. Public testimony on the topic of psychedelic drugs came alongside other testimony before the Joint Committee on the Judiciary on dozen...

Middleboro student seeks action from judge after school bans ‘There are only two genders’ shirt

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:14:34 GMT

A seventh grade student in Middleboro has asked a judge to step in after his school ordered him to take off a shirt that said “There are only two genders.” The student wore the same shirt after the school asked him to take it off but covered a part of the statement to make the shirt instead say “There are genders.”The student is seeking an order from the judge to stop the ban from the school. Speaking on Tuesday, his attorney said the restrictions go against the student’s first amendment rights. “Schools can restrict speech when it actually disrupts what’s going on in school because, obviously, they have to run a school,” said lawyer Logan Spena. “But it can’t restrict speech just because it disagrees with the student’s viewpoint or thinks that it’s offensive or the like.”“The school is actually targeting and disparaging Liam, himself, when he’s not doing that to anybody else,” Spena said. School officials have made a sta...

June Gloom

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:14:34 GMT

Has June seemed overly cloudy to you? Well it’s not your imagination. June 2023 is (so far) the cloudiest June we’ve had since 2009. But as we talked about in yesterday’s blog, that doesn’t necessarily correlate to high rainfall amounts — just rainy days. If you missed it, here’s yesterday’s blog: Another Unsettled Week.The unsettled pattern rolls on this week but thankfully it’s a mild and unsettled pattern the next few days, unlike last week’s cool and unsettled pattern. Temperatures will try to hit 80° each day for the rest of the week, but it does look like the page will turn on that as we head into the weekend.Rain chances will spike the next couple of days but no day is a complete washout. Most of our rain and storm chances will be in the afternoon and evening with the morning’s being dry. In Thursday’s case, it’s only just a 10% chance altogether.Tomorrow will start off dry and we’ll have a mix of s...

Fox News tells Tucker Carlson to cease-and-desist

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:14:34 GMT

WASHINGTON — Fox News sent Tucker Carlson a cease-and-desist letter over his new Twitter series, Axios reported Monday, amid reports of a contract battle between the conservative network and its former prime-time host.Carlson was ousted from Fox in late April, less than a week after Fox agreed to pay Dominion Voting Systems nearly $800 million to settle an explosive defamation case. The network provided no explanation for the firing, but a wave of reports on damaging text messages and other statements Carlson made during his time at Fox have since piled up.Since leaving Fox, Carlson kicked off a “Tucker on Twitter” series — arguing that Twitter was “the only” major remaining platform that allows free speech as he denounced news media. The series, which has published two episodes so far, has appeared to escalate contract tensions between Carlson and Fox.Fox has demanded Carlson stop posting videos to Twitter, The New York Times also reported Monday — as the ne...

Waukegan mayor invites Chicago Bears to explore move to city; ‘(They) have been an important community partner in Lake County’

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:14:34 GMT

Waukegan Mayor Ann Taylor has joined other Chicagoland communities in trying to lure the Chicago Bears to their municipality.Taylor suggested to Bears President and CEO Kevin Warren in a letter written Monday that the Bears build a new stadium on lakefront property in Waukegan, expanding the team’s footprint in Lake County.Taylor said in her letter there are several locations with the necessary land to build a stadium and entertainment area with easy access to Interstate 94, U.S. Route 41 and public transportation. The Bears already train in Lake Forest, making Waukegan an excellent location for a stadium, she wrote.“The City of Waukegan has multiple large parcels including lakefront property which could be developed into both the state of the art stadium and entertainment district the team has publicly expressed in building,” Taylor said in the letter.The Bears acquired the former Arlington International Race for $197 million with plans to build a stadium and larg...

Cooling down: US Inflation slows 

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:14:34 GMT

U.S. inflation slowed in May, supporting the case for Federal Reserve officials to pause their run of interest-rate hikes this week.Both the consumer price index and the core CPI — which excludes food and energy — decelerated on an annual basis, highlighting inflation’s descent since peaking last year. At 4%, year-over-year inflation is now at its lowest level since March 2021, according to data out Tuesday from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.That said, a key gauge of prices closely watched by the Fed continued to rise at a concerning pace. The core CPI rose 0.4% for a third straight month, in line with estimates. The overall CPI, however, increased a smaller 0.1%, aided by lower gasoline prices.The outsize increases in core prices were driven mainly by rising rents and by another spike in used car prices. Real-time data suggests that increases in those categories will soon ease and help cool inflation.“Outside of those two components, the trend has become very encouraging,” Stephen...

Healey announces new ‘community climate bank’ dedicated to affordable housing

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:14:34 GMT

The Healey administration plans to shuttle $50 million in state funds to a “community climate bank” to help reduce greenhouse gasses in new and existing affordable housing, a move Mayor Michelle Wu said will help bring down the cost of living in Boston.Healey said the new bank will compete for private sector dollars and federal funds available under the Inflation Reduction Act to finance building retrofits that help the state meet “long-term climate objectives” and new construction of decarbonized buildings.”At an event inside the State House, Healey said the bank is the first of its kind in the nation because of its focus on affordable housing. Residents in the affordable housing market bear a disproportionate burden in energy costs and climate impacts, Healey said.“The climate bank is the financial engine for cutting emissions and improving health equity and financial security in our communities,” Healey said. “It’s going to unlock and advance a wide range of rebuildin...

Amazon cloud service outage causes some websites to go dark

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:14:34 GMT

Amazon’s cloud computing unit, Amazon Web Services, experienced an outage Tuesday affecting publishers who suddenly found themselves unable to operate their sites as former President Donald Trump appeared in court in Miami.The company said on its website that the root cause of the issue was tied to a function called AWS Lambda, which lets customers run code for different types of applications.Amazon said it was experiencing error rates for multiple AWS services in an availability zone based in Northern Virginia. Patrick Neighorn, a company spokesperson, declined to provide additional details about the outage.The outage was first confirmed shortly after 3 p.m.

East Sandwich man dies in construction accident at Brockton Hospital: Plymouth DA

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:14:34 GMT

Emergency responders are investigating a construction accident that killed one person at Brockton Hospital.A large presence of local, state and federal authorities have responded to the area of Quincy Avenue and Libby Street, on the Brockton Hospital campus.Brockton and Massachusetts State Police received a call around noon of a man “trapped by a Bobcat skid steer loader,” Plymouth County District Attorney Tim Cruz told reporters at about 3:45 p.m.Authorities said the man, identified as Roger Porter of East Sandwich, was pronounced dead on scene.Cruz made clear Porter was not driving the construction vehicle when the accident took place, but rather, the 63-year-old was “leveling out gravel as it was being put into a pit.”WCVB reported earlier Tuesday afternoon its news helicopter had flown over Brockton Hospital, finding a Bobcat construction vehicle had fallen over into a hole next to the facility’s foundation.Massachusetts State Police confirmed a piece of construction equip...

Storms forecast to bring rain, but also a risk of winds, lightning, as wildfires rage

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:14:34 GMT

Storms across the country could bring much needed rain, but meteorologists say it’s not enough to extinguish the danger as Canada experiences its worst wildfire season of the 21st century. “Unfortunately, we are not expecting to see enough precipitation to make a huge effect on this situation at this time, especially with how dry it is,” said Sara Hoffman, a meteorologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada. “But again any rain is appreciated and definitely helps.” There were 447 active fires in Canada on Tuesday afternoon, with 226 listed as out of control. Quebec’s public security minister said a rainy forecast in that province was bringing hope for progress in battling the blazes, as more than 7,200 people remained out of their homes due to fires. François Bonnardel said the fire effort was bolstered by the arrival this week of two contingents of American firefighters, with more reinforcements from Spain and Portugal expected to arrive W...