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West of 495

By adamg - 7/29/22 - 10:42 am

The Supreme Judicial Court ruled today that state law requires police to get an OUI suspect's permission to have his blood tested before they can hand over the results to prosecutors. Read more.

By adamg - 7/28/22 - 11:23 am

The Supreme Judicial Court ruled today that a western-Massachusetts man who says he was raped repeatedly in the 1960s by various Catholic Church clergy, including the then bishop of Springfield, can make his case to a jury that he is owed damages not only for that but for the way the church handled his case after he came forward in 2014. Read more.

By adamg - 6/9/22 - 3:50 pm

The Massachusetts Appeals Court ruled today that there's far more to painting stripes to mark off parking-lot spaces than you might think, enough to make it "bespoke," even, which means a man who striped 21 spaces in a Gardner restaurant's lot does not have to pay any damages to a motorcyclist who alleged the layout of the spaces led to a crash in which he lost his leg. Read more.

By adamg - 6/7/22 - 1:56 pm

GBH reports Mohammed Bone Saw's favorite golf tournament is coming to some course in Bolton - after a round at a Trump-owned course - but because nobody outside of Massachusetts has ever heard of Bolton, they're calling it the LIV Golf Invitational Boston. Would be a real shame if people showed up on Ballville Road in Bolton holding large photos of Jamal Khashoggi.

By adamg - 4/23/22 - 9:24 pm

Wonkette sums up the case against Jeremy Hanson, a Californian who posted threats to blow up Springfield-based Merriam-Webster over the way it defined several gender-related words, including "girl." Read more.

By adamg - 2/18/22 - 2:45 pm
Gillespie with shield

Gillespie using a police shield to batter his way into Capitol, from FBI affidavit.

Update: Released on $10,000 bail, has until Wednesday to get all the guns out of his house. Next court hearing is Thursday.

An Athol man was charged today with using a shield to ram police officers as he screamed "traitor!" and "treason!" at them during the failed coup at the Capitol last Jan. 6, the US Attorney's office reports. Read more.

By adamg - 1/13/22 - 10:07 am

Trains reports that Amtrak and CSX have reached an agreement that will let Amtrak start running more trains between Boston and Albany. Read more.

By adamg - 12/6/21 - 12:18 pm

NBC Boston reports a sheep at a Bolton farm killed a volunteer by ramming her repeatedly.

By adamg - 12/6/21 - 9:13 am

WBZ reports UMass Memorial terminated the employees on Dec. 1 after they missed a Nov. 1 deadline to get fully vaccinated against Covid-19. UMass Memorial has some 15,000 total workers.

By adamg - 11/19/21 - 5:26 pm

Kokou Kuakumensah, 31, of Worcester, was sentenced to five years in federal prison today after admitting he programmed blank credit cards with other people's digits and then used them at ticket kiosks at MBTA stations to buy monthly passes he'd then sell through Craigslist and at the Grafton station on the Worcester line, the US Attorney's office reports. Read more.

By perruptor - 10/20/21 - 6:04 pm

1st District Rep. Richard Neal has rewarded his insurance corporation sponsors by proposing an alternative to Biden's Paid Family Leave plan that would benefit those corporations at the expense of ordinary citizens.

By adamg - 9/25/21 - 4:04 pm

A Springfield minister whose son is a senior majoring in architecture at UMass Amherst has posted a copy of a racist email sent to Black students on campus. Read more.

By adamg - 9/23/21 - 1:43 pm

Update, 8:07 p.m.: He's made it to Philadelphia and discovers that "SEPTA is evil."

Jules Wang set out early this morning to see just how far south he could get strictly on public transit (not including Amtrak). Read more.

By adamg - 9/8/21 - 11:25 am

The Supreme Judicial Court today said a man on involuntary commitment to Bridgewater State Hospital has to be transferred to a less restrictive state mental hospital and that the state Department of Corrections can't simply disregard a judge's order to do so. Read more.

By perruptor - 8/19/21 - 7:56 pm

ProPublica and WBUR investigated the Civil Asset Forfeiture practices of Worcester County DA Joseph D. Early Jr.

Massachusetts is an outlier among states when it comes to civil forfeiture laws. Prosecutors in the commonwealth are able to keep seized assets using a lower legal bar than in any other state.


By adamg - 8/4/21 - 11:47 am

The Mexican government, which has failed to stop an unceasing supply of illegal, high-powered weaponry from entering the country, is trying another tack: Suing American gun makers and a Billerica-based gun wholesale in Boston federal court. Read more.

By adamg - 6/23/21 - 11:21 am

Kenny Rogers - The Gambler

The Supreme Judicial Court ruled today that blackjack players who won at the cheap tables at the Encore and MGM Springfield casinos, then sued to get the higher winnings they would have gotten at higher-stakes tables, should have quit while they were ahead. Read more.

By adamg - 6/17/21 - 10:20 pm

Western Mass News reports the Commonwealth's Flagship Campus has decided that after nearly 60 years, it no longer has space for a permanent home for the Science Fiction Society, which has a library of some 10,000 science-fiction books - second in size in the country only to MIT. Read more.

By adamg - 6/15/21 - 1:27 pm

WBZ reports.

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