Free Republic

Boston health officials said Friday the city’s COVID-19 updated booster rate is lagging as other virus indicators trend upwards with family and indoor gatherings for the winter holiday season around the corner. As of Tuesday, particles of COVID-19 in local wastewater increased by 66% over the past week, and by 70% over the past two weeks, according to the Boston Public Health Commission. And as of Monday, COVID-19 cases have increased by 14% over the past two weeks while the city has seen a 24% increase in new virus-related hospitalizations as of Wednesday, officials said. That comes as only 11%...

The fugitive accused of stabbing an elderly Massachusetts couple to death after an argument over a barking dog was captured in Florida, cops announced. Christopher Keeley, 27, was arrested Thursday at 8:20 p.m. in Miami Beach, over 1,500 miles from where he allegedly bludgeoned Carl and Vicki Mattson, both 70, in their Marshfield home, the Plymouth County District Attorney’s Office said. Police believe Keeley killed the couple after an argument over a barking dog.

Investigators searching for the fugitive wanted in connection with the double homicide of a elderly Massachusetts couple say the vehicle he was last seen driving in has been found abandoned. Christopher Keeley, 27, of Weymouth, remains on the run Thursday after Carl and Vicki Mattson were discovered "stabbed and bludgeoned to death" inside their home in Marshfield on Tuesday night, according to Plymouth County District Attorney Tim Cruz. "The Jeep has been located unoccupied," Massachusetts State Police tweeted, without elaborating on its whereabouts. "We continue to seek Christopher Keeley." Cruz said Wednesday that the Mattsons, both 70, were found dead...

A plus-sized woman said her husband loves her curves, but cruel strangers accuse her of being in a sham marriage with a man who is “out of her league.” Gina Miyares, 28, and her husband Josh Miyares, 24, from Boston, Massachusetts, often have to deal with people calling Josh “gay” or claiming their marriage is “fake,” SWNS reported. The loved-up couple has been married since August 2019 and has been trying for a baby. Ever since posting about their relationship and fertility struggles on social media, they’ve been inundated with rude comments. “I’ve had people say: ‘Oh wow, I’m surprised...

We have been discussing the virtual elimination of Republican and conservative scholars from many faculties despite the fact that roughly half of the country regularly votes for Republicans or conservative causes. Now a new survey by The College Fix of 65 departments in various states found that 33 do not have a single registered Republican. For these departments, the systemic elimination of Republican faculty has finally reached zero, but there is still little recognition of the crushing bias reflected in these numbers. Others, as discussed below, have defended the elimination of conservative or Republican faculty as entirely justified and commendable....

High-profile Republican members of Congress gained tens of thousands of Twitter followers in the first few weeks of Elon Musk’s reign over the social media network, while their Democratic counterparts experienced a decline, according to an analysis by The Washington Post. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) all lost about 100,000 Twitter followers in the first three weeks of Musk’s ownership of Twitter, while Republican Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) and Jim Jordan (Ohio) gained more than 300,000 each.

New York City pharmaceutical heiress Annabella Rockwell is claiming that her mother paid a $300-a-day "deprogrammer" after believing her daughter had been "brainwashed" by attending an all-female elite liberal college that left the young woman "totally indoctrinated" and estranged from the parents who raised her. "I left school very anxious, very nervous, very depressed and sad," Rockwell, now 29, recently told the New York Post. "I saw everything through the lens of oppression and bias and victimhood. I came to the school as someone who saw everyone equally. I left looking for injustice wherever I could and automatically assuming that...

Tufts research school has diagnosed museum curation with a bad case of white supremacy, and it’s offering a post-graduate cure.

The previously unimaginable has happened: The storybook island of Martha’s Vineyard, the seasonal home of billionaires and hundreds of elite cultural and political movers and shakers, not to mention one of three year-round homes of the Obamas, has finally experienced that rarity previously limited to the mainland: violent gun crime. And surprise: The alleged perpetrators are not MAGA white nationalists. Rather, evidence so far points to migrants, possibly of the illegal kind. This is a bitter pill for most Vineyard residents to swallow. The island’s six towns have all declared themselves to be sanctuary communities. Last September, the island rallied...

The Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH) is facing a class action lawsuit for allegedly working with Google to install “spyware” onto the Android devices of a million state residents without their knowledge during the COVID-19 pandemic.Plaintiffs Robert Wright and Johnny Kula were among 1 million Massachusetts residents who had the state’s “COVID Exposure Settings: US-MA” app auto-installed without their consent, according to the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA), the nonpartisan civil rights group that filed the lawsuit (pdf) on Tuesday.The app, once automatically installed, didn’t appear on the device’s home screen as newly-installed apps typically do. Instead, it was...

Provident Bancorp in Amesbury, Massachusetts, is grappling with a sizable cryptocurrency hit that it expects will result in a third-quarter loss. The $1.8 billion-asset bank this week delayed its latest earnings filing but estimated a third-quarter loss of $27.5 million related to loans to a cryptocurrency miner. That would compare with net income of $5.1 million reported for the third quarter of 2021. Provident cautioned in a regulatory filing Tuesday the official loss could exceed its estimates. It cited the highly publicized meltdown of the cryptocurrency mining industry in recent months. The "volatility in Bitcoin and rising energy costs called...

The Massachusetts Public Health Department (DPH) allegedly “worked with” Google to install its COVID-19 contact tracing app onto more than one million android devices without users’ permission or knowledge, a New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) lawsuit claims. The app was first released in April 2021, but the DPH had a version secretly installed onto devices beginning that June after few Massachusetts residents installed it voluntarily, according to the lawsuit filed Monday in the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts. The app allegedly causes devices to emit and receive Bluetooth signals even when users do not opt into COVID-19 exposure notifications, and...

I wrote earlier about the dustup between Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) and Elon Musk but there are a few more points that I wanted to hit on. Markey blamed Musk for a Washington Post reporter impersonating Markey with a fake account with a blue check mark. Now, I wrote about some of the confusion created by the Twitter Blue subscription, by people getting blue checks by paying for the service. Yes, that created some questions and Musk suspended the service to work out the kinks and reports are that it will likely be coming back next week. While Markey wanted...

A new study shows that more than 30% of households in Michigan are going without necessities like food and medicine in order to pay the utility bills. Researchers at lendingtree.com looked at a survey from the U.S. Census Bureau. They found that just over 21% of household in Michigan were unable to pay at least part of one energy bill in the past 12 months. More than 20% of households kept their home at a temperature that felt unsafe or unhealthy due to the high cost of utilities. News 8 spoke with Lending Tree’s chief credit analyst about some of...

The state has canceled the upcoming fire civil-service promotional exam and “will not score” the recent statewide exam for police in light of a recent Boston-based court case. The court case in question is Tatum et al v. Commonwealth of Massachusetts, a suit from several Black or Hispanic police officers filed back in 2009 as they claimed that the civil-service sergeants’ promotional exam disadvantaged minority test takers, leading to lower scores and therefore delayed or missed promotions through the centralized and highly regimented process used by many police and fire departments.

The popular Boston-area coffee chain Darwin’s Ltd. announced plans to close the store’s original Harvard Square location at the end of the month, prompting some workers to stage a protest at Cambridge City Hall on Sunday denouncing the move. The Mount Auburn St. location is set to close its doors after 30 years this December, owners Steven and Isabel Darwin announced in an Instagram post on Oct. 26. Darwin’s United — a union representing the chain’s employees — responded by organizing a protest at City Hall, where workers rallied on Sunday before gathering outside the Darwins’ Cambridge home. “We have...

Boston has agreed to pay $2.1 million in legal fees and other expenses after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the city for refusing to allow a Christian flag to fly outside City Hall. The settlement included an agreement to pay Harold Shurtleff and his Camp Constitution non-profit for legal costs incurred during the dispute. “We are pleased that after five years of litigation and a unanimous victory at the U.S. Supreme Court, we joined with Hal Shurtleff to finally let freedom fly in Boston, the Cradle of Liberty,” Liberty Counsel Chairman Mat Staver, whose organization represented Shurtleff, said in...

Yale University announced it will now require students to get a bivalent COVID-19 vaccine booster by the start of the 2023 spring semester. “Based on recent CDC recommendations, the university will require all undergraduate, graduate, and professional students—other than those with an approved medical or religious exemption—to receive an updated, bivalent COVID-19 vaccine booster by the start of the spring semester, even if they have previously received a monovalent booster,” Stephanie Spangler, Vice Provost for Health Affairs and Academic Integrity, wrote in a message to the Yale Community. She explained that the booster is necessary because “experience and research have...

Maura Healey is going from the basketball court to the Massachusetts governor's house, with a little under 30 years in between. The current Attorney General of Massachusetts is projected to defeat Republican Geoff Diehl, flipping the office back to Democrats after two terms under Charlie Baker. Not only is Healey the first woman to be elected to the office, she's also the first open lesbian to be elected governor in U.S. history.(Emphasis Mine)

Joe Biden and other Democrats promise to curtail U.S. domestic oil production, the northeastern United States could face a historic energy crisis as temperatures fall this winter, burdening an energy economy already beset by record-high prices and oil shortages. Signs of vulnerability in the Northeast have been apparent in recent months, Bloomberg reported, with retailers already rationing oil as stockpiles of diesel and heating oil are at a third of their normal levels. Those unfavorable conditions could bring about challenges to the Northeast's energy infrastructure that would be unprecedented in most Americans' lifetimes, according to Bloomberg: Add some cold to...