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LA-based operator of Green Card mill pleads guilty to fraud

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:37:15 GMT

Call off the honeymoon — the wedding’s a fraud.Marcialito “Mars” Biol Benitez, 49, a Philippine national living in Los Angeles, pleaded guilty Wednesday in federal court in Boston to conspiracy to commit marriage fraud and immigration document fraud. The charges come with a sentence of up to five years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of up to $250,000.The feds say he operated a sham wedding agency in California that married off immigrants — including at least three Massachusetts residents — to U.S. citizens, often homeless women, for payment.Benitez operated what then-U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins called, at an April 2022 press conference announcing the indictment of Benitez and 10 others, a “one stop shop” for immigration fraud. Benitez is the seventh person indicted in the fraud to plead guilty.The feds say that a foreign client would pay between $20,000 to $30,000 for the service, which they saw as a quick route to permanent residency and possible future c...

Healey: ‘It’s time’ to look at MCAS changes

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:37:15 GMT

Gov. Maura Healey once again indicated her administration is “looking at” changes to the MCAS and the question of whether the test should remain a graduation requirement.“When it comes to something like MCAS, I think what’s important here is that we have a test that actually works,” Healey said on WGBH’s “Ask the Governor” segment Tuesday. “It’s there as an assessment tool. So I think it’s time, and I’ve charged my department with evaluating what it is we’re testing; are there changes that need to be made.”The governor’s comments come amid a legislative and high-profile ballot question push to overturn the MCAS graduation requirement spearheaded by the Massachusetts teachers’ union and advocates. If the MCAS ballot question gains enough signatures by mid-November, the opportunity to overturn the testing requirement will go to voters in November 2024.Healey did note that the ballot questio...

Senior grounds director Dave Mellor is unsung hero of second-rainiest Red Sox season on record

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:37:15 GMT

If there is an unsung hero in this dreary, disappointing Red Sox season, it’s David Mellor.Throughout endless rain delays, suspended games, and subsequent doubleheaders, Fenway Park’s senior grounds director is a ray of sunshine.“If it’s not the rainiest, it’s certainly one of the rainiest (seasons) in my Red Sox career and 39 years in the Majors,” Mellor told the Herald on the brisk but mercifully-sunny Wednesday afternoon, hours before the team’s final home game of the year.In fact, this was one of the rainiest summers on record for the city. Between June and August, Boston took on over 20 inches of rainfall, the second-highest total since the National Weather Service’s records began in 1872. Eight of the first 13 weekends of the baseball season included at least one rainy day, and made this year even busier for Mellor and his crew.Earlier on Wednesday afternoon, Alex Cora singled out Mellor, praising him for keeping the club afloat.“Shoutout to Dave again,” Cora said....

Enough fentanyl to kill more than 500K people seized in Lawrence

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:37:15 GMT

Police seized enough fentanyl from one trafficker in Lawrence to end the lives of 566,000 people.A collaborative investigation between the Massachusetts State Police and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration last Wednesday ended with the seizure of more than a kilo of fentanyl — wrapped up in aluminum foil like a burrito, according to photos provided by the State Police — from a single alleged trafficker.Police arrested Jacobo Medina-Mendoza, 39, of Lawrence, that day and he was later arraigned on related charges at Lawrence District Court.Police say that the package contained 1,132 grams of fentanyl. The DEA states that they consider any dose of 2 milligrams or larger to be a potentially lethal dose, meaning that the package was capable of killing as many as 566,000 people, depending on their size and weight.That’s 245 times the number of people who the state confirmed dead from opioid-related overdoses last year alone — 2,310, a record-high for the state and a number that is it...

‘Still segregated:’ Leaders reframe history of school desegregation, busing ahead of 50th anniversary

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:37:15 GMT

Leaders and stakeholders in the early movement to desegregate Boston school reflected on buried experiences and lessons of the period at the first forum marking the upcoming 50th anniversary of the momentous busing order — and pushed for continued action.“When we think about our schools today, we know that they’re still segregated,” said former Mayor Kim Janey, who moderated Tuesday’s event and was bused as a BPS student. “And we know that the quality that parents were fighting for 50 years ago, they’re still chasing that today.”The first forum in a series of five marking the anniversary, titled “Organizing for Education Equity, 1960-1974, Led by the Black Community; Before Busing,” was held Tuesday evening at Roxbury Community College.The anniversary series was announced on Sept. 7 by the 40-member Desegregation and Busing Initiative Committee, along with a plan to develop BPS curriculum about the period.The event featured...

Tech trade group ‘evaluating’ legal challenge to Legislature’s tax cap law reforms

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:37:15 GMT

The House approved a compromise tax relief bill Wednesday that lowers the state’s short-term capital gains tax and boosts several housing-related initiatives that top Democrats have said will help residents struggling with the cost of living.But as the bill advances to the Senate, where lawmakers are expected to take final votes Thursday, at least one group is weighing a potential legal challenge to a provision that requires refunds under a tax cap law known as Chapter 62F to be distributed in equal amounts to all residents regardless of how much they paid into the system.The Massachusetts High Technology Council argued the change to the distribution formula is unconstitutional. The voter-approved law has only been triggered twice, 1987 and 2022, and refunds were distributed based on personal income tax from the preceding tax year.The council is “evaluating” whether it will take the matter to court, said Elizabeth Mahoney, vice president of policy and government affairs at the Massa...

Red Sox notebook: Alex Cora says he’ll be back with Sox in 2024

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:37:15 GMT

When news first broke earlier this month that Chaim Bloom was being fired as chief baseball officer, Alex Cora was vague about his own future with the organization.Since then the Red Sox manager has been much more forthright, and Wednesday he unequivocally confirmed he’ll be back in 2024.“I’m good, I’ll be here next year,” Cora said when asked how secure he is in his future in Boston, repeating himself several times when asked if he’s been given a guarantee from ownership. “I’ll be here.”Later on Red Sox CEO Sam Kennedy dispelled any remaining doubt, saying on NESN that Cora will be the team’s manager in 2024.“It’s a nonissue from where I sit, he’s under contract for next year so he’s our manager and he’s going to be here,” Kennedy told NESN’s Tom Caron during the pregame show.Given that Kennedy previously said the next head of baseball operations will be empowered to make whatever ...

CVS responds quickly after pharmacists frustrated with their workload don’t show up

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:37:15 GMT

By JOSH FUNK (Associated Press)CVS found the right prescription on Wednesday to keep its stores open in the Kansas City area and avoid a repeat a work stoppage last week by pharmacists: It promised to boost hiring to ease workloads that sometimes make it hard to take a bathroom break.But it won’t be easy to resolve the problems that have been growing as pharmacists at CVS and other drug stores in the U.S. took on more duties in recent years and are gearing up to deliver this year’s latest flu and COVID-19 vaccines.“It all relates to not enough dollars going in to hire the appropriate staff to be able to deliver the services,” said Ron Fitzwater, CEO of the Missouri Pharmacy Association.Pharmacists in at least a dozen Kansas City-area CVS pharmacies did not show up for work last Thursday and Friday and planned to be out again this Wednesday until the company sent its chief pharmacy officer with promises to fill open positions and increase staffing levels.I...

Boston City Council approves firefighters contract with 10.6% pay raise

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:37:15 GMT

The City Council voted to fund a $27.35 million collective bargaining agreement with the Boston firefighters union that includes a roughly 10.6% bump in pay over a three-year period.The two 12-0 votes taken by the body on Wednesday, to both fund the contract in the fiscal year 2024 budget and reduce the city’s collective bargaining coffers by that amount, represent the final step in a lengthy bargaining process.Boston Firefighters Local 718 had been working with an expired contract for two and a half years prior to the new agreement, which was tentatively reached with the city on Sept. 3 and ratified by the union’s roughly 1,600 members on Sept. 15.“Boston firefighters and their families deserve this contract,” Local 718 President Sam Dillon told the Herald Wednesday. “Boston firefighters go to work every single day and they put themselves on the line for this city. To see that recognized at the bargaining table is what we like to see.”Dillon said he was “very satisfied with the res...

Bank records show accused was in the same city on day a B.C. girl was killed

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:37:15 GMT

VANCOUVER — A bank account registered toIbrahim Ali shows transactions in Burnaby, B.C., on July 18, 2017, the same day a 13-year-old was murdered in a city park, a senior investigator at Vancouver City Savings Credit Union testified Wednesday.Rick Mihic told Ali’s first-degree murder trial in B.C. Supreme Court that there were three purchases made from the man’s account that day, including one from a Freshslice Pizza and two others from a Chevron.He testified he wasn’t able to tell the address of the businesses or the time of the purchases from the records.However, under cross-examination, Mihic told the court he believes there is a way, through a third-party platform, to obtain timing information of Interact transactions. Ali has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder in the death of the teen, whose body was found in Burnaby’s Central Park early on July 19, 2017, just hours after her mother reported her missing.Crown attorney Isobel Keeley said in her op...