LOWELL CITY Councilor Corey Robinson’s status hearing on his two counts of assault and battery on his on-again/off-again girlfriend at her home in Dracut is set to take place Tuesday morning in a Lowell Judicial Center courtroom. Whether or not the case moves to trial, the Centralville district representative will join his colleagues at City Hall for that evening’s council meeting. Robinson is the first sitting city councilor to be arraigned on criminal charges in the history of Lowell’s Plan E government. The Sun has been tracking this case, which began Nov. 15, when, according to court docum ..read more

LOWELL — Lowellians showed up at Tuesday’s City Council meeting to speak against the scaled-down design changes proposed by the Lupoli Companies to its remaining undeveloped parcels in the Hamilton Canal Innovation District. In 2020, the city executed a $2 million land development agreement with Lupoli for phased development of five of the 11 vacant city-owned lots in the 15-acre HCID site. Centralville resident Timothy Collins led off a group of speakers who felt the local developer was taking advantage of the gateway city by not honoring its contractual obligations. “I come before you today ..read more

The Massachusetts House passed a $58 billion fiscal year 2025 budget Friday that includes hundreds of millions for emergency shelters, though still far below what Gov. Maura Healey has said is needed to fund the system. Representatives tacked on less than $100 million to the bill over three days of deliberations, nearly all of which took place behind closed doors except for a handful of policy debates around tax exemptions and credits, college credits, no-cost prisoner calls, and the state-run shelters. The budget that now heads over to the Senate for review largely responds to a post-pandemic ..read more

A former Boston School Committee student representative, now a leader of pro-Palestinian demonstrations at Columbia University, has come under fire for calling for the eradication of Zionists in a lengthy video that resurfaced this week. Khymani James, a 2021 graduate of Boston Latin Academy who cited “adultism” and “racism” when resigning his post on the School Committee that year, is in the midst of disciplinary proceedings with Columbia University around a social media post that stated he would “fight to kill Zionists.” “Zionists don’t deserve to live,” James said in a January video that ca ..read more

LOWELL — Christian Hill residents voiced alarm at a proposed development of 17 single-family homes being built around the perimeter of what they said was protected wetlands at the so-called Apple Orchard property in Lowell’s Centralville neighborhood. Berkeley Development LLC, a Pelham, NH firm, filed a request for determination of applicability from the Conservation Commission during its Wednesday night meeting as to whether the site is subject to the Wetlands Protection Act. According to the developer’s environmental and land planning expert, “no wetlands present – WPA not applicable,” for t ..read more

John T. Bennett | (TNS) CQ-Roll Call WASHINGTON — Joe Biden’s aviator sunglasses likely won’t be far away Saturday night when the president cracks some jokes at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. But not everyone will be laughing during Washington’s yearly spectacle — even if “Dark Brandon” makes another appearance. That’s Biden’s political alter ego, his team’s attempt to flip the conservative slogan “Let’s Go Brandon” on his foes. Biden ended his comedy set last year by slipping on his signature shades and pretending to morph into his edgier persona. Official Washingt ..read more

By Noah Bierman, Los Angeles Times WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump’s tough week showed as well as any to date why he is facing a new and unprecedented reality as a presidential candidate — as he ping-ponged among a dizzying array of court appearances, judicial rulings, competing allegations and subsequent grievances. By Thursday, he was complaining about the overlap in his busy legal schedule, railing that Judge Juan M. Merchan, who is presiding over his hush-money case in New York, wouldn’t let him leave that trial to attend a Supreme Court hearing in Washington, D.C ..read more

By Shalina Chatlani, Stateline.org In Humphreys County, Mississippi — about 70 miles north of the state capital, in the heart of the fertile Delta region — a third of the residents live in poverty. In Belzoni, the county seat, there are just a handful of health care clinics. The town’s only major hospital closed more than a decade ago, around the same time its catfish industry collapsed. Jobs in the area are scarce, said Wardell Walton, who was mayor of Belzoni from 2005 to 2013. But even if there were jobs, he said, a lot of Belzoni residents wouldn’t be able to get to them — they don’t own c ..read more

By Lillian Mongeau Hughes, KFF Health News MANTI, Utah — Garrett Clark estimates he has spent about six years in the Sanpete County Jail, a plain concrete building perched on a dusty hill just outside this small, rural town where he grew up. He blames his addiction. He started using in middle school, and by the time he was an adult he was addicted to meth and heroin. At various points, he’s done time alongside his mom, his dad, his sister, and his younger brother. “That’s all I’ve known my whole life,” said Clark, 31, in December. On the day of her release from Sanpete County Jail in rural Uta ..read more

By BRIAN NIEMIETZ | bniemietz@nydailynews.com | New York Daily News Hundreds of musicians including Billie Eilish, Dave Matthews, Duran Duran, Cyndi Lauper, the Pixies and Blue Oyster Cult petitioned Congress on Thursday to regulate concert ticket pricing. “We are joining together to say that the current system is broken,” reads a letter signed by nearly 300 performers and sent to lawmakers. “Predatory resellers and secondary platforms engage in deceptive ticketing practices to inflate ticket prices and deprive fans of the chance to see their favorite artists at a fair pric ..read more