This is a web edition of GBH Daily, a weekday newsletter bringing you local stories you can trust so you can stay informed without feeling overwhelmed.
☁️Cloudy and windy, with a chance of showers and highs in the 50s. Sunset will be at 6:47 p.m.
The Kraft Group and the local host committee for the World Cup games have reached an agreement with the town of Foxborough to pay the town’s security expenses around this summer’s games at Gillette Stadium. Town officials and game organizers have been going back and forth for weeks about $7.8 million, which was supposed to come from the Federal Emergency Management Agency but has not yet materialized because Congress has not extended the funding of its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security.
“All of our funding concerns have been addressed,” said Bill Yukna, chair of the town’s Select Board. The agreement says that “the Town of Foxborough will not incur any cost or financial burden related to the FIFA World Cup,” and that the local host committee, Boston Soccer 2026, will pay security costs up front “with Kraft Sports + Entertainment’s backing.”
The town’s select board is now ready to give the games an event permit next week. The first game, Haiti v Scotland, is set for June 13.
Four Things to Know
1. Sen. Ed Markey said he doesn’t believe the Trump administration has a plan for ending the war in Iran. In the 12 days since the U.S. and Israel launched attacks, Reuters estimates that about 2,000 people have been killed across the Middle East, about 1,270 of them in Iran and 594 in Israeli strikes on Lebanon. “In terms of what was the plan in order to end the war, they had nothing which they could offer up to us in order to ensure that we could have some communication with the American people about what the plan was,” Markey told GBH’s Boston Public Radio. “They do not have a plan.”
Meanwhile, regular unleaded gas is about 50 cents more expensive per gallon in Massachusetts than it was a week ago, a result of market uncertainty and actual supply chain issues. “Since the invasion, we’ve seen a really rapid escalation in prices every day of the week,” said Mark Schieldrop, senior spokesperson for AAA Northeast. “It’s not like they can just flip a switch and bring the production back overnight. … Closing down a refinery or dialing back oil field production — it’s kind of like turning around a giant cruise ship.”
2. Worcester’s city government will give a tax break to a developer looking to convert office space downtown into 48 apartments, despite the developer’s history of using a subcontractor that the state Attorney General’s office found had stolen wages from its employees. The developer, the Menkiti Group, has suggested it could cancel the project without the tax break, estimated to give them $613,211 in savings over 10 years; receiving it allows the Menkiti Group to qualify for additional state-level tax incentives.
Mayor Joseph Petty said that though he voted in favor, he would be open to revoking the tax break if the company violates the city’s responsible development ordinance. “I am in support of this now,” Petty said. “We can claw this back if we have to.”
3. Federal immigration agents detained a 14-year-old girl in Marlborough on Tuesday and took her out of state to New York. A federal judge in Boston yesterday ordered the Department of Homeland Security to release her to her aunt. Attorneys for the Trump administration said the agents detained the girl because she wasn’t in school and was without parents or guardians.
Congresswoman Lori Trahan, who represents Marlborough, called on ICE agents to stop detaining children and teenagers. “They’re doing it again here in Massachusetts and this tactic of using children, just… it has to stop. It has to stop immediately,” she said.
4. Gov. Maura Healey sent the Trump administration a letter asking that every household in Massachusetts be given $1,745 as a refund for tariffs the Supreme Court struck down last month. “On behalf of the people of Massachusetts, I demand a refund,” she wrote.
But she doesn’t think we’ll start seeing checks in the mail. “I don’t expect to be paid, but I am trying to make a point. That’s real money to people that they’ve had to pay over the past year,” Healey said yesterday. “And my point to the president was: ‘You did this. There was no reason to. You did this, it had a consequence — and give the money back to the American people.’”
New England sled hockey players represent U.S. at Paralympic Games
What’s sled hockey? Here’s the rundown from Danny Santos, who has competed in the adaptive sport for 25 years.
“Full contact, full checking, penalties, same puck, same net, same rules,” Santos told GBH’s Craig LeMoult. “It’s just hockey, sitting down. So it gives people a chance to play hockey who might not play otherwise on their legs.”
The U.S. Paralympic ice hockey team has a fair amount of hardware: they won gold in 2002, 2010, 2014, 2018 and 2022. And four of its members also compete with a New Hampshire adaptive sports program called Northeast Passage.
One of them is David Eustace of Stoneham, Mass.
“At first, I wasn’t the biggest fan of it, to be honest,” he told LeMoult. “I kind of just wanted to stand-up skate like anybody else. But second or third time trying it, I really fell in love with it — fell in love with the speed of it and physicality. That’s a fun part too.”
The team is playing Czechia in the semifinals tomorrow for a shot at competing in the finals on Saturday.
One note: the Paralympics have ice hockey competitions only for men. That’s something 22-year old sled hockey player Ailin Zheng said she hopes will change.
“We’re working towards that,” Zheng said. “So we need eight different teams, basically countries, to be able to have that division in the Paralympics. Hopefully by 2030 is what we’re hoping for.”
Read LeMoult’s full story (and see more photos of the team) here.
Dig deeper:
-‘Surreal’: Cape Cod wheelchair curler will compete for US medal at Paralympics
-Wheelchair fencing is becoming more popular. Boston hopes it catches on.
