Mary Ellen spotted this blue grosbeak at Millennium Park in West Roxbury today.

The wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round, round and round, until the bus driver gets on Storrow Drive and skee-ronches right into the infamous Bridge of Double Storrows by Mass Eye and Ear. Tom Leonard couldn't help but photograph the scene this morning, given that the stuck bus was backing up traffic like nobody's business.

A federal appeals court yesterday upheld an earlier lower-court ruling that a woman who was suspended from the theology master's program at Boston University for refusing to take the nasal Covid-19 tests the university once required has no case because the school no longer requires the tests.

The court's rejected Caitlin Corrigan's argument that BU could bring back the testing regimen in the future and that she needed protection should she in fact take the school up on its offer to resume the classes she stopped not long after she started at the BU School of Theology, and so her case remains as moot.

Because it is absolutely clear that BU ended its mandatory testing program in response to encouraging public health data and there are no signs that the pandemic will worsen, it is not reasonable to expect that BU again will impose a similar testing program.

Corrigan, who loves horse deworming paste as much as she hates Covid-19 vaccines, was represented by Robert Meltzer, a Concord attorney who has had his own problems convincing federal judges that public-health efforts to combat Covid-19 are evil incarnate. In his case, a federal judge rejected his lawsuit against the Massachusetts state court system for requiring masks after courts reopened, in which he claimed the requirement was the equivalent of waterboarding and a violation of the United Nations Convention Against Torture.

Meltzer's work on Corrigan's case was supported by Children's Health Defense, the anti-vax group run by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. at least until he officially declared he was running for president. Last fall, Kennedy told the group that if elected, he would stop all government research into communicable diseases for at least eight years.

In addition to declaring her suit moot in general, the court also rejected Corrigan's claim that Boston University had somehow stealthily enacted and then rescinded its testing requirements too quickly for a court to have considered them - which would give the appeals court an exception under mootness rules to consider them. Referring to the two years the BU requirement was in place, the court said:

It is struthious at best to suggest that a resource-intensive effort continuously spanning almost two years is so fleeting that a court could never have time to pass on its legality.

"Struthious" is a word referring to the behavior of ostriches, which are sometimes thought to bury their heads in the sand - and an indication for people who have yet to read the full opinion that it was written by Judge Bruce Selya, who has long been known for making lawyers and other judges reach for their dictionaries.

Patrick spotted the Nuclear Emergency Support Team's radiation-sensing helicopter over Boylston Street today, doing the annual pre-Marathon check of background-radiation levels, just in case.

A concerned citizen filed a 311 complaint asking for help for an injured turkey on Beacon Street near Exeter in the Back Bay:

There is a hurt turkey, all alone at 270 Beacon Street. It appears to have an injury to one of its legs. It had been here for three days. I have already contacted three wildlife preservationists and they won’t help because turkeys are “aggressive”. This turkey is hurt and needs to be relocated. What can be done?

Chris Hugenberger shows us his Marathonned house on Albano Street in Roslindale.

Also see: Mrs. Mallard and her ducklings are ready.

Jess Riley shows us the car flipped on its roof on Alston Street in Somerville, near McGrath Highway.

WCVB reports the incident shortly before 6:40 p.m. began as a drive-by shooting and that the car flipped just feet away from a woman and her young child.

Two people were transported to a Boston hospital; a third person was treated at the scene.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that SEPTA, Philadelphia's equivalent of the MBTA, has cancelled a $185-million contract for new commuter-rail cars with the Chinese company building new Orange Line and Red Line trains, after already spending $50 million on the deal and not having actually gotten a single car four years after they were supposed to have started rolling in.

The Philadelphia cars were supposed to have been built at the same Springfield plant that is slowly building those new T cars.

Just last month, the T board voted to give CRRC an extra $148 million to make sure all the remaining Orange and Red Line cars are finally delivered by 2027 - and to waive millions more in late penalties. That would be roughly four years after we were supposed to have all the new cars.

Cambridge Police today released their most detailed update yet on how a CPD officer's gun came to discharge in a restroom at Cambridge Rindge and Latin. As you may recall, in the last update we were told, the officer had entered the stall to use the facilities and somehow the gun went off. In today's update, we learn the gun fired as he was getting ready to leave:

Based on information developed in the preliminary investigation, Police Commissioner Christine Elow announced that while in a single-stall staff restroom Officer Frank Greenidge removed his department-issued firearm from its holster and placed the firearm on a bathroom stall hook by the trigger guard. The firearm reportedly unintentionally discharged as it was removed from the hook. There were no injuries, and the school day continued uninterrupted.

The officer remains on administrative leave as the investigation continues. Police add:

The Cambridge Police Department has strict policies and standards regarding the use, maintenance, and storage of all department-issued firearms. Conduct by a member of the Cambridge Police Department that is found to be non-conforming with department policies and standards will be thoroughly and objectively investigated to assure that there is accountability.

The Harvard Crimson talks to City Councilor Liz Breadon (Allston/Brighton) about the city's proposed budget for capital projects, noting that supposed projects to build a new Jackson-Mann school and community center are still only marked as "to be scheduled" and that the neighborhood is dead last in proposed capital projects, behind even smaller neighborhoods.

Shamus Moynihan was on Causeway Street yesterday afternoon and watched the ride and escort a kid from Dorchester got from the Make a Wish Foundation on his way to fulfill his wish to meet the Celtics.

The Supreme Judicial Court ruled today that Leon Robinson got a fair trial on charges he gunned down Recardo Robinson in Robinson's Commonwealth Avenue barbershop during an argument in 2001, which means Robinson will spend the rest of his life in prison.

The court did vacate Robinson's conviction for unlawful possession of a firearm, however.

The court's ruling provides a summary of the evidence against Robinson, which led a Suffolk Superior Court jury to convict him of first-degree murder for shooting Robinson in his Commonwealth Avenue shop just a couple of weeks before he was planning to close it for good and move to North Carolina to join his wife, who had gotten a job there, and six young children.

On the afternoon of February 21, 2001, the shop saw many visitors, as the victim was closing down the shop before moving to North Carolina. Among the visitors that afternoon were Maurice McIntosh, a friend of the victim who had previously worked at Hair Textures, and James Rainey, who was a regular at the shop. The defendant, who was not a regular at the barbershop but was a family friend of the victim, was also present, having received a haircut at the shop earlier in the afternoon. By around 4:20 P.M., only four men remained in the barbershop: the defendant, the victim, McIntosh, and Rainey.

The victim began lecturing the defendant about how the defendant needed to "straighten up" and change the way he was living his life in order to take better care of his children. The lecture upset the defendant, and the defendant showed the men in the barbershop that he was carrying a black revolver. The victim looked at his cell phone, and the defendant asked the victim who he was calling. The victim told the defendant he was not calling anyone, and again began lecturing the defendant on how to live his life. The entire conversation between the victim and the defendant lasted about five minutes, at the end of which the defendant pulled out his gun and shot the victim once in the chest. The victim fell, and the defendant shot the victim twice in the back and once in the back of the head. Rainey ran to the back of the barbershop and descended a staircase to the basement, where he hid until he was found by police. McIntosh fled out the front door and ran to a nearby pizza shop, where he called 911.

Dorinda Carter was parking her car on Commonwealth Avenue outside Hair Textures at the time of the shooting. She saw the defendant pull a gun from his waist area and shoot at the victim. The victim fell, and the defendant shot twice more. The defendant left the barbershop.

The court recounted that additional evidence against Robinson included finding clothes in his West Roxbury apartment that matched that described by witnesses, along with a stain on his left jacket sleeve that turned out to be blood, with DNA that matched Robinson's.

The court rejected Robinson's argument that police didn't have probable cause to search his apartment on Spring Street, saying witness descriptions gave them a reason to look for Robinson and evidence linking him to the murder. Robinson had earlier sued police and then Mayor Tom Menino in federal court on the issue, but lost there as well.

Update: Haverhill Police report 911 is back up.

Reports are coming in from police and fire departments across the state that the 911 system that connects you to your local first responders isn't working, so if you're having an emergency and 911 doesn't work, you'll have to look up your city's or town's direct numbers.

The BPDA board yesterday approved Core Development's plans for three life-sciences lab and office buildings - two 13 stories, one 12 - as part of its massive On the Dot project to remake a stretch of Dorchester Avenue from Andrew Square north along the Southampton train yard.

The buildings are part of the developer's long-term plans to turn 21 acres of former industrial land - including a scrapyard - into a new complex combining lab and office space and more than 1,400 residential units, tied into the BPDA's own long-term plans to remake the Dorchester Avenue corridor between Andrew Square and Broadway. Its northern border would be next to a large complex proposed by another developer.

After the final buildout (buildings approved yesterday on the left):

As part of the approval for the three buildings, Core will pay $16.7 million to the city for its affordable-housing fund and $3.1 million for job training.

The buildings will have ground-floor retail space; the plans include an acre of public open-space.

Because the buildings sit on a floodplain - the Southampton train yards were once part of South Bay, when South Bay was an actual bay - Core will elevate the site to guard against the increasingly fierce flooding anticipated with climate change.

The BPDA approved the company's overall master plan for the site last year and two of the residential buildings earlier this year.

Rendering of one of the three buildings:

505 Dorchester Ave. and Ellery Street filings.

A group of Black women who tried to cheer on Black Marathon runners yesterday sued Newton and the BAA to demand they not be physically separated from runners like they say they were during last year's Boston Marathon.

In the lawsuit, filed in US District Court in Boston, members of TrailblazHers Run Co. are also seeking damages large enough to make the police and race organizers think twice about even thinking of doing that again.

The group alleges that 100 mostly Black people gathered at Mile 21 to cheer on Black runners - found themselves harassed and bottled up by Newton cops with bikes, allegedly for getting onto the race course in the same exact way other specatators have long done without police bullying, like the screaming students of Wellesley College.

On Marathon Day in 2023, acting in concert with the BAA, the Newton Police Department singled out spectators from TrailblazHers Run Co. and other running crews that serve primarily people of color, racially profiling, targeting, and harassing them. This culminated in NPD officers forming a human barricade to physically separate the running crews of color from the event. Similarly-situated white spectators received no such treatment. While white spectators viewed and enjoyed the event in peace, the people of color were racially profiled and discriminated against.

The complaint gives the group's side of what happened specifically:

Plaintiffs arrived at Mile 21 at approximately 5:30 A.M. on April 17, 2023, to set up tents, including one for the DJ, prepared cheering materials such as pompoms and confetti cannons, and arranged grills for food. As more members joined, the atmosphere became vibrant with support for their fellow runners.

Around 12:30 P.M., a spectator of color joyfully celebrated by launching a confetti cannon as a known runner passed the Mile 21 cheer zone. In response, an NPD officer, Paul Boyle, immediately approached. The officer fisted the front of the spectator's shirt, demanded identification, and threatened an arrest for allegedly running in the course. The spectator remained calm and explained to the officer that he was not obstructing any runners. The incident heightened tensions among many members of Plaintiffs' running crew who observed the police misconduct. Plaintiffs and other members were also confused by the NPD police reaction, as it is not uncommon for marathon spectators to briefly enter onto the course in moments of excitement.

Approximately fifteen minutes later, Plaintiffs noticed NPD officers continuing to yell and instruct spectators in TrailblazHers' Mile 21 cheer zone to move back, even though no one was obstructing runners. Plaintiffs did not observe Officer Boyle, or any other NPD officer, instructing white spectators in nearby cheer areas to move back.

NPD's presence and conduct was creating apprehension, fear, and tension. NPD officers continued to harass and hassle this specific Black cheer area. Many of TrailblazHers' members became upset and cried out of frustration as they observed only their section get penalized for celebrating and demonstrating excitement. Many asked themselves, "why us?" NPD's actions made Plaintiffs and their members feel unsafe and unwelcomed, both in the neighborhood and at the marathon. ...

Witnessing running crew members becoming upset and tearful at the officers' actions made Plaintiff Powder, Rock, and Ramirez anxious, fearing a potential escalation. As Black women who have experienced past negative encounters with law enforcement, they were acutely aware of the risks of escalation when people of color are surrounded by police.

As the law enforcement response unfolded, NPD officers stated that they were responding to a complaint from the BAA. To address this matter, Plaintiffs' guest contacted Suzanna Walmsley, BAA's Director of Community Engagement and a leader on the Running Collaborative Steering Committee, and expressed concerns about NPD officers surrounding the running crews. Walmsley was asked to call them off.

After a few minutes, NPD officers left the scene briefly. However, Plaintiffs' peace was again disrupted moments later when an even larger group of approximately twenty NPD officers on bikes reappeared and formed a human barricade along the course, physically separating the Plaintiffs and their members from runners, obstructing their view, and preventing them from seeing passing runners in order to cheer them on. Additional NPD officers on motorcycles stationed themselves on the street behind the Plaintiffs' cheer zone, effectively surrounding and penning in the people in the cheer zone of color.

Plaintiffs were taken aback by the substantial police presence and show of force. They feared for the safety of their members who were spectating, and also for the safety of those running. Many BIPOC runners were shocked to see police officers concentrated at the only section of the marathon route with many spectators of color.

Despite efforts by several TrailblazHers' leaders to deescalate the situation with the officers, the officers remained unresponsive and unwilling to engage.

On information and belief, BAA did not direct a similar police response, and NPD did not engage in a similar police response, to other similarly-situated groups of non-Black spectators. The NPD officers' actions inflicted significant emotional distress and lasting damage to the dignity of Plaintiffs. Plaintiffs Powder, Rock, and Ramirez struggled to sleep the nights following the incident, affecting their daily life and performance at work. The incident dominated Plaintiffs' mental health for months, highlighting its profound impact.

The complaint lists several examples of behavior by White spectators that did not result in them being surrounded by uniformed officers:

For example, just before reaching Mile 21, around Mile 15, a Wellesley family hosted a block party for runners, featuring a 10-foot blue and yellow balloon arch placed within the course for runners to pass through. In contrast to Plaintiffs' cheer section, this area, comprising mostly of white spectators, lacked police presence or instructions to stay off the course. No one threatened or intimidated the white spectators to remove the obstructing balloon arch.

In another instance, as seen in a viral Tik Tok video, a white male spectator offered a doughnut to runners, and then ran alongside the man who finally accepted it. Yet no BAA officials or police officers intervened.

The suit formally charges Newton, Newton Police and the BAA with violating the Black spectators' rights to equal protection and public accommodation and conspiring to violate their civil rights.

Complete complaint (5.1M PDF).

KTC won't forget where he was 30 years ago tonight - or 30 years ago tomorrow:

I spent my last evening at the old Boston Garden with Pearl Jam Cobain died a few days before and no one knew what to expect. The show started in pitch black, the 1st song Release. Epic. Saw them next night at Orpheum.

Liam Martin, who had been the morning anchor at WBZ, explains why he quit: The job was keeping him from his family:

It was a spectacular, sunny day on Cape Cod. And yet I was devastatingly sad. While my kids and wife were happily getting ready for the beach, gathering our sandcastle tools and packing up peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches and juice boxes, I had quietly stepped outside as I had several times over the past few months - to cry privately. Secretly.

The Boston Fire Department reports firefighters responded to 101 Northampton St. around 4:50 a.m. on Wednesday for a fire on the third floor.

The department reports one resident was taken to a local hospital and that a total of 15 residents were displaced.

Damage was estimated at $700,000.