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State’s unemployment bill still unclear, lawmakers say fact finding continues

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:41:00 GMT

The state’s leaders are still not precisely sure how Massachusetts came to spend the wrong money on pandemic-era unemployment benefits, or even how much, but you can bet the erroneously spent dollars were a topic of discussion.Beacon Hill was abuzz last week, after a routine audit revealed that the Baker Administration, in the middle of his second term, apparently spent $2.5 billion in federal funds on unemployment insurance payouts that were supposed to be covered by Massachusetts tax dollars.Gov. Maura Healey was the attorney general when that money was spent, so it would be incorrect to imply there is blame to lay at her feet for the error, nevertheless, the state’s current chief executive was immediately asked to answer for the apparent misplacement of billions in COVID funds after she left an afternoon meeting with the House Speaker and Senate President.“This is something that we became aware of very, very recently,” Healey said alongside Speaker Ron Mariano and Sen. Pres...

Tax relief is coming despite state potentially owing billions to feds, Sen. Pres. says

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:41:00 GMT

Despite the obvious similarities, there will not be a repeat of last year’s failed effort to provide tax relief, the state Senate president said Monday when asked if reports Massachusetts owes billions to the feds might somehow mirror last year’s unexpected $3 billion tax rebate requirement.Related ArticlesPolitics | State’s unemployment bill still unclear, lawmakers say fact finding continues State Sen. President Karen Spilka, speaking to reporters after meeting with both Gov. Maura Healey and House Speaker Ron Mariano for one of the trio’s somewhat regular “leadership meetings,” said last summer’s sudden shelving of a unanimously accepted economic development bill, brought about after lawmakers learned they had taken too much from taxpayers and would need to send billions back under a rarely invoked 1986 law, will not serve as a precedent for a second slow-walk on tax relief.“We are proceeding with a tax relief package — as I’ve said for many months — we will...

Commission: Florida judge should be reprimanded for conduct during Parkland school shooting trial

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:41:00 GMT

By TERRY SPENCER (Associated Press)FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — The Florida judge who oversaw the penalty trial of Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz should be publicly reprimanded for showing bias toward the prosecution, failing to curtail “vitriolic statements” directed at Cruz’s attorneys by the victims’ families and sometimes allowing “her emotions to overcome her judgement,” a state commission concluded Monday. The Judicial Qualifications Commission found that Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer violated several rules governing judicial conduct during last year’s trial in her actions toward Cruz’s public defenders. The six-month trial ended with Cruz receiving a receiving a life sentence for the 2018 murder of 14 students and three staff members at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School after the jury could not unanimously agree that he deserved a death sentence. The 15-member commission found that Scherer “unduly chastise...

Approval for Idaho phosphate mine reversed after judge rules US didn’t assess prairie bird impact

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:41:00 GMT

A federal judge has yanked approval for a phosphate mining project in southeastern Idaho, saying federal land managers in the Trump administration didn’t in part properly consider the mine’s impact on sage grouse, a bird species that has seen an 80% decline in population since 1965.U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill’s Friday decision came five months after he found fault with the way the U.S. Bureau of Land Management approved the Caldwell Canyon Mine in 2019.The mine has been proposed by P4 Production LLC, a subsidiary of German pharmaceutical giant Bayer AG. Three environmental groups — the Center for Biological Diversity, Western Watersheds Project and WildEarth Guardians — sued.In January, Winmill agreed with the conservation groups that the federal agency violated the National Environmental Policy Act and other laws on several counts when it approved the mine, including failing to consider the indirect effects of processing ore at a nearby plant and the cumulative impacts on s...

Lawyer says Rep. George Santos would go to jail to keep identities of bond cosigners secret

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:41:00 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — Rep. George Santos’ lawyer said Monday the indicted New York Republican would risk going to jail to protect the identities of the people who cosigned the $500,000 bond enabling his pretrial release.The lawyer, Joseph Murray, urged a judge to deny a request by news outlets to unseal the names of Santos’ bond suretors, suggesting they could “suffer great distress,” including possible job losses and physical harm, if they’re identified publicly.“My client would rather surrender to pretrial detainment than subject these suretors to what will inevitably come,” Murray wrote in a letter to U.S. Magistrate Judge Anne Shields.Murray asked that she give them time to withdraw as cosignors if she decides to unseal the suretors’ names, which Shields kept off the public court docket at the lawyer’s request.Murray said he, Santos and Santos’ staff have been receiving threatening and harassing calls and messages, including death threats. The lawyer said...

Ex-correctional officer at federal prison in California convicted of sexual misconduct

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:41:00 GMT

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — A former federal correctional officer was convicted Monday of sexually abusing two inmates at a women’s prison in California where the warden and other employees were charged with similar conduct.A jury found the officer, John Russell Bellhouse, guilty on five counts of sexual abuse for incidents involving the two women between 2019 and 2020 at FCI Dublin, about 20 miles (30 kilometers) east of Oakland. Bellhouse, 40, was scheduled to be sentenced in August. “My clients feel heard,” Jessica Pride, an attorney for the victims, told KTVU-TV. “Regardless of a prisoner’s crime, sexual assault is not part of their punishment.”Prosecutors alleged in court documents that Bellhouse “began to express an interest in a particular female inmate and started calling the inmate his ‘girlfriend’” in 2020. Authorities said he inappropriately touched the woman and that she performed oral sex on Bellhouse twice in the prison’s safety office.All sexual activity between a pr...

Launch of search for graves at former Yukon residential school triggers raw emotions

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:41:00 GMT

CARCROSS, Yukon — Emotions ran high in a Yukon First Nations community Monday as officials announced the search for unmarked graves would begin at a former residential school site.Yukon’s Residential School Missing Children Project said ground-penetrating radar would be used to look for gravesites at the Chooutla Residential School in Carcross, Yukon, about 70 kilometres south of Whitehorse.Carcross-Tagish First Nation Chief Maria Benoit said the search is important for the community in its bid to find answers and peace in the residential school tragedy, where countless children taken from their families did not return home.“We are starting something here today that has been in the making for a long, long time,” Benoit said of the project, which was announced in 2021 after the discovery of more than 200 suspected unmarked graves on the site of the former Kamloops Residential School in B.C. “This all began in Carcross when it became clear that we had a respons...

West end shooting sends man to hospital with serious injuries

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:41:00 GMT

A man has been rushed to hospital with serious injuries after a shooting in the city’s west end on Monday evening. Police were called to the Keele Street and King George’s Drive area at around 6:18 p.m. and located the victim. He was taken to hospital in an ambulance.No further details were immediately available. More to comeSHOOTING: (UPDATE)Keele St & King George's Dr6:18 pm– police o/s– confirmed shooting– officers located a man w/ a gunshot wound– @TorontoMedics – took patient to hospital w/ serious injuries via emerge run– ongoing investigation– any info call 416-808-2222#GO1284476^al— Toronto Police Operations (@TPSOperations) June 5, 2023

US House panel investigates ties between US Interior secretary, environmentalists

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:41:00 GMT

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Republican members of the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources are raising concerns about ties between Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and an Indigenous group from her home state that advocates for halting oil and gas production on public lands. The members on Monday sent a letter to Haaland requesting documents related to her interactions with Pueblo Action Alliance as well as those of her daughter, Somah, who has worked with the group and has rallied against fossil fuel development.The request comes just days after Haaland decided to withdraw hundreds of square miles in New Mexico from oil and gas production for the next 20 years on the outskirts of Chaco Culture National Historical Park — an area considered sacred by some Native American communities.U.S. Rep. Bruce Westerman, the Arkansas Republican who chairs the committee, said Congress has a duty to oversee federal agencies and the cabinet secretaries who lead them and that what he called Haaland&#...

Suspect in Natalee Holloway disappearance to challenge extradition from Peru to US, lawyer says

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:41:00 GMT

LIMA, Peru (AP) — The lawyer for the main suspect in the unsolved 2005 disappearance of American student Natalee Holloway on Monday said his client has changed his mind and plans to challenge his extradition to the United States.Defense attorney Máximo Altéz announced the decision of Dutchman Joran van der Sloot just hours after the Peruvian government confirmed the extradition would take place Thursday. Altéz said van der Sloot reversed course following a meeting with Dutch diplomats.“He does not want to be extradited to the United States of America,” Altéz said, adding that he intended to file a writ of habeas corpus. “He was visited today by his embassy (representatives) who made him see the mistake he was making by being extradited without due process.”The attorney said van der Sloot was never notified of an open extradition process, and as a result, was not able to challenge it. Less than a week ago, Altéz had said his client explained in a letter he did not plan to challenge t...