We’ll see a great afternoon with low humidity and some thin clouds dimming out the sunshine through this evening. Highs reach the mid to upper 80s, slightly cooler some coastal communities.
More clouds overnight tonight, a bit muggy, as …
Massachusetts
New England to enjoy warm and dry Saturday
A superb weekend is before us. Temperatures warm well into the 80s with plentiful sun both days, and light breezes in the afternoon.
There is one small exception to this stellar weekend: a couple of random showers overnight Saturday and perhap…
Canton police investigate as bleach-filled balloons damage lawns of Karen Read supporters
Police in Canton, Massachusetts, say they are investigating after lawns were damaged by bleach-filled balloons.
Three people, all supporters of Karen Read, have had their property damaged. Two of the victims filed police reports.
“You can see it’s got a splatter,” Rita Lombardi said, pointing to her yard.
It started as a small section of browning.
“Then I noticed a balloon, a water balloon, that hadn’t been popped,” Lombardi said.
None of this made sense to Lombardi until she talked to her neighbor around the corner.
“Bleach thrown on her beautiful flowers and vegetables,” she said.
More on the Karen Read case
Over the course of a week, Lombardi noticed broken balloons in her yard near the brown grass. She called the Canton Police Department.
Brenda Sweeney also called police. She didn’t find balloons, but the smell of bleach and a destroyed garden.
“Normally, this whole fence is full of flowers in the front and vegetables in the back, and we started noticing patches of it dying,” Sweeney said.
It’s no secret Lombardi and Sweeney speak their minds at Canton Select Board meetings, along with Jenn O’Donnell.
“We are looking for truth and accountability, and a lot of it came to light with the John O’Keefe murder,” Lombardi said. “We had some issues in this town.”
Sweeney calls the incident extremely disappointing. Her husband spends hours working on his garden.
“Little kids come here and touch these figurines, and they’re throwing bleach on them,” Sweeney said.
On Friday, we learned O’Donnell also had some popped bleach balloons thrown in her yard.
And on Lombardi’s street, a bag of unpopped balloons was found.
“These people are stuck in middle school,” Lombardi said.
“Any type of act in this community, or any community for that matter, that places another in fear for their safety and/or diminishes their quality of life is unacceptable,” Canton Police Chief Helena Rafferty said in a statement.
Rafferty said the evidence will be transported to the Plymouth County Bureau of Criminal Investigation.
“These people are getting more and more unhinged, and if somebody doesn’t step in, somebody is going to get hurt,” Lombardi said.
The residents say they fear what could happen outside court on Tuesday when Read and her attorneys are scheduled to face a judge for the first time since a mistrial was declared.
‘He didn’t seem to recognize me’: Moulton says it’s time for Biden to drop out
Congressman Seth Moulton reiterated his call for President Joe Biden to drop out of the presidential race with anecdotes from their relationship.
The Democrat representing Massachusetts’ Sixth District said earlier this month in an interview with WBUR that Biden should step aside in the election against former President Donald Trump. NBC News reports that he was the third Congressional member of his party to make such a public statement, but more than 30 other lawmakers have followed.
Writing in the Boston Globe Friday, Moulton said the president had “earned an amazing legacy,” and that giving up his power could serve to solidify it.
The representative describes in the piece how Biden has supported him in his own political career dating back to 2014, calling the president a mentor and friend. But fast forward to 2024, and he describes how the president could not recognize him during an event at Normandy for the 80th anniversary of D-Day.
“Of course, that can happen as anyone ages, but as I watched the disastrous debate a few weeks ago, I have to admit that what I saw in Normandy was part of a deeper problem,” Moulton wrote.
He then lays out why he believes it’s time for Biden to step aside, driving home the point that Democrats must rally to beat Trump.
“We have a choice to make. To my colleagues who are deeply concerned but who haven’t said so publicly: Let’s demonstrate the courageous, forward-looking leadership that Americans tell us they want in their politics and rob the Trump-Vance ticket of the opponent they want,” he wrote.
U.S. Senator Maggie Hassan, D-New Hampshire, weighed in Thursday, making the same point about the need to defeat Trump, but taking the opposite stance from Moulton.
“We understand what the stakes are in this election. That’s the agenda that we need to pursue, that’s why I continue to believe that reelecting Joe Biden is the best way to protect our democracy, protect the individual rights of all Americans, and that it’s a sharp contrast to what the Republicans have to offer,” Hassan said.
Biden’s campaign insisted in a memo released Friday that he will not drop out of the race. However, sources tell NBC News that his family has discussed possible exit strategies. Friday alone, 13 more Congressional Democrats publicly called on Biden to step aside.
State lawmakers in Massachusetts have also joined that chorus, with seven senators on Beacon Hill writing a letter calling for Biden to pass the torch Thursday night before Trump spoke at the Republican National Convention.
“Selecting a new Democratic presidential nominee will inject badly needed excitement and grassroots energy into the party and its voters, especially young people,” wrote the group, which included Sens. Jo Comerford of Northampton, Jamie Eldridge of Marlborough, Paul Feeney of Foxborough, Pat Jehlen of Somerville, John Keenan of Quincy, Jason Lewis of Winchester, and Michael Moore of Millbury.
Information from State House News Service was used in this report
Signs of confusion: MBTA messaging affected by IT outage
The MBTA was one of many victims of the global Crowdstrike IT outage Friday morning. While trains and buses kept running, the issue made a mess of the boards T uses to communicate with its riders.
“You can’t miss the blue screen of death,” sai…
What can we take away from the crippling Crowdstrike IT outage?
Computer monitors around the world displayed a blue screen with a sad face Friday morning.
The company at the center of the outage says it wasn’t a security incident or a cyberattack, but many are questioning how something like this could happen?
“This is a really big mess, to be honest,” said Steve Zuromski, the vice president of Information Technology at Bridgewater State University.
Cybersecurity company CrowdStrike said Friday morning’s failure was the result of a routine update gone wrong.
Their software is installed on Microsoft Windows clients around the world.
“The software is designed to prevent cyberattacks and malicious activities from happening on those devices,” said Zuromski.
But the update, he said, caused Microsoft cloud computing systems to crash bringing up that dreaded blue screen.
“It’s a fairly routine update,” said Zuromski. “We do these things all of the time but unfortunately this one caused a major, major incident that’s affecting millions of people.”
He added that what made this more complicated is that the repairs can only be done with a manual update.
“What technicians are having to do, at least as of now, is manually go to each work station, boot it into what’s called safe mode, which is basically a diagnostic mode, delete the file that’s causing it to crash and then reboot,” said Zuromski.
Friday morning on NBC’s Today Show, CrowdStrike’s CEO apologized for the outage.
“We’re deeply sorry for the impact that we’ve caused to customers, to travelers, to anyone affected by this, including our company,” said George Kurtz, CEO of CrowdStrike.
Zuromski said CrowdStrike is a very reputable company.
“They have a suite of cyber security products,” he said. “Unfortunately this one got the best of them.”
Zuromski said a lot can be learned from this massive outage.
“Customers need to be prepared in the event that there is a global update or a major update like this,” he said. “How they’re going to recover from it, so make sure you dust off those incident response plans and be ready when something happens.”
