Massachusetts

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) — Harvard University announced Wednesday it will turn down $8.7 million in federal coronavirus relief, a day after President Donald Trump excoriated the wealthy Ivy League school over taxpayer money it stood to receive.

Similar action was taken at Stanford, Princeton and Yale universities, which said they too will reject millions of dollars in federal funding amid growing scrutiny of wealthy colleges.

BOSTON (AP) — As she treated patient after patient infected with the coronavirus at a Veterans Affairs medical center in New York City, Heather Espinal saw stark warning signs.

So many nurses had called in sick, she said, that the Bronx facility was woefully understaffed. It lacked specially equipped rooms for infected patients, she said, and didn’t have enough masks, gloves and other protective gear to guard against the spread of the highly contagious disease.

19 April 2020; AFP: American families slammed by the coronavirus pandemic are turning more and more to food banks to get by, waiting hours for donations in lines of cars stretching as far as the eye can see.

And with 22 million people out of work seemingly overnight as business after business closes under the Great Lockdown, these charities feeding hungry and scared people fear the day will come when they cannot cope with the tsunami of demand.

BOSTON (AP) — States are pulling back the welcome mat for travelers from the New York area, which is the epicenter of the country’s coronavirus outbreak, but some say at least one state’s measures are unconstitutional.

Governors in Texas, Florida, Maryland and South Carolina this week ordered people arriving from the New York area —including New Jersey and Connecticut — and other virus hot spots to self-quarantine for at least 14 days upon arrival.

BOSTON (AP) — Two women were charged Friday with beating a woman and her daughter, who say they were targeted for speaking Spanish in public, prosecutors in Boston said Friday.

Jenny Leigh Ennamorati and Stephanie Armstrong, both 25 and of Revere, Massachusetts, are charged with misdemeanor assault and battery, as well as felony counts of violating a person’s constitutional rights with bodily injury, according to Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins.

EASTHAM, Mass. (AP) — The notorious crime boss James “Whitey” Bulger terrorized Boston from the 1970s into the 1990s with a campaign of murder, extortion, and drug trafficking, then spent 16 years on the lam after he was tipped to his pending arrest.

In 2013, Janet Uhlar was one of 12 jurors who found Bulger guilty in a massive racketeering case, including involvement in 11 murders, even after hearing evidence that the mobster was helped by corrupt agents in the Boston office of the FBI.

USA (AP) --- As concerns about China’s virus outbreak spread, universities all over the world are scrambling to assess the risks to their programs, and some are canceling study-abroad opportunities and prohibiting travel affecting hundreds of thousands of students.

From Europe to Australia and the United States, universities in countries that host Chinese students have reconsidered academic-related travel to and from China. In the U.S., the cancellations add to the tension between two governments whose relations were already sour.

BOSTON (AP) — Two college students from Iran have filed civil rights complaints with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, saying they were mistreated and illegally denied entry into the country by federal officials at Boston’s Logan International Airport.

Shahab Dehghani, who attends Northeastern University, and Reihana Emami Arandi, who had been set to start classes at Harvard University, recently filed separate complaints with the agency’s civil rights office, requesting the agency investigate the conduct of Customs and Border Protection officials.

BOSTON (AP) — A U.S. cybersecurity company says Russian military agents successfully hacked the Ukrainian gas company at the center of the scandal that led to President Donald Trump’s impeachment.

Russian agents launched a phishing campaign in early November aimed at stealing the login credentials for employees of Burisma Holdings, the gas company, according to Area 1 Security, a Silicon Valley company that specializes in e-mail security.

Hunter Biden, son of former U.S. vice president and Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden, previously served on Burisma’s board.

BOSTON (AP) — Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren marked one year of running for president on Tuesday by slamming billionaires from both parties who she says put corporate interests above the needs of the rest of the country, as many top Democrats looking to unseat President Donald Trump spent the last day of 2019 rallying core supporters. Warren addressed a raucous hometown crowd at Boston’s Old South Meeting House, a Congregational church famous for being the organizing point for the Boston Tea Party in 1773.