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🌬️Windy and rainy but warmer, with highs in the 50s.
Law enforcement officials say a man they suspect in both the shooting at Brown University last weekend, in which two students died and another nine people injured, and the killing of MIT physics Prof. Nuno F.G. Loureiro in Brookline two days later died by suicide at a storage facility in Salem, New Hampshire.
Claudio Neves Valente, 48, had taken graduate physics classes at Brown in the 2000-01 school year. He and Loureiro, who went on to lead MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, had studied in the same program at the university Instituto Superior Técnico in Portugal in the 1990s.
Though police are not looking for more suspects, they’ll continue to investigate what happened and why.
“We don’t know why now, why Brown, why these students and why this classroom,” said Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha. There are “a lot of unknowns,” he said.
Four Things to Know
1. Senator Ed Markey introduced a bill seeking to prohibit the federal government from telling immigrants who have gone through the years-long process of getting U.S. citizenship that they cannot become naturalized because of their countries of origin. This comes after federal officials pulled immigrants waiting for their citizenship ceremony at Faneuil Hall out of line earlier this month and told them they could not be sworn in because their countries of origin are considered hostile by the Trump administration.
“The Trump administration has no right to deny it to those who have been approved for citizenship,” Markey said. “My Naturalization and Oath Ceremony Protection Act ensures that those who earned the right to this meaningful ceremony cannot have it arbitrarily taken away from them.”
2. A second executive at the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority has announced he’s stepping down from his job before his term expires, following the departure of CEO Marcel Vernon Sr. last week. chris bijoux was head of organizational development and learning. Vernon was hired at The MCCA, which runs Boston’s convention centers, after an independent investigation found a pattern of racial discrimination there. Two years later, bijoux said he had been optimistic about the agency’s ability to change, but found an organization full of “manufactured dysfunction.”
“Had I stayed, I would have violated my sense of duty to the work, I would have violated my own ethical code and I would have violated what my ancestors sacrificed by staying,” bijoux said. “Unfortunately, what I have seen in this work across the state and across this country is that we are left on an island by ourselves, and no one supports us.”
3. In New Bedford, Bristol County Sheriff Paul Heroux is advocating for closing the 137-year-old Ash Street Jail, moving around 100 people kept there to the county jail in Dartmouth, and redeveloping the land into housing, a museum, or a park. The move would have upfront costs — about $10 million to upgrade the jail in Dartmouth, he said. But he also estimated it would save $4 million a year in overtime and $800,000 in utilities and maintenance.
New Bedford’s mayor, Jon Mitchell, said he isn’t against the plan, but said it’s not a top priority at the moment. “We’re building new schools and public safety facilities, as well as port facilities and a number of other things that require state capital investment,” he said. “...We’ve got plenty of other fish to fry right now.”
4. The MBTA carries passengers for almost 1 million trips per day, the highest levels of ridership since before the COVID pandemic began, agency officials said. Overall ridership is at 77% of what it was in 2019, and weekday ridership at 73%, Chief Operating Officer Ryan Coholan said.
And those riders have more frequent trains to board: T General Manager and interim MassDOT Secretary Phil Eng said scheduled weekday trips are up 55% on the Red Line, 50% on the Orange Line, and 16% on the Blue Line since spring 2024.
A kids and teens media guide to 250 years of the American Revolution
Do you have a kid or teen in your life who is curious about the United States’ 250th birthday next year? Are you looking for books, TV shows, or games to get the young people in your life more engaged? Rob Waldron, former CEO of the educational materials publisher Curriculum Associates, gave GBH’s Esteban Bustillos a few suggestions. You can find his full free guide here.
“We’re gonna have fireworks and picnics and all the fun things at the Fourth of July, but for the 250th I think we also need to come back to the original lessons,” Waldron said.
Among his suggestions: The book “George vs George: The American Revolution As Seen From Both Sides” by Rosalyn Schanzer, appropriate for kids ages 6-9; and the book “A Spy Called James: The True Story of James Lafayette, Revolutionary War Double Agent” by author Anne Rockwell and illustrator Floyd Cooper. That book, appropriate for kids ages 7-11, tells the story of James Lafayette, an enslaved man who was a double agent for the American cause and denied freedom after the war.
There are also video games from the nonprofit iCivics that let teenagers, ages 12 and up, play as people living during Revolutionary times.
Find Bustillos’ story about the guide here.
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