Today's Top Headlines

Wednesday, May 7

This morning we're tracking a return of sunshine - but we're not done with the rain for the week just yet. We're also following implementation of the REAL ID, as well as continued testimony in Karen Read's retrial. These are your top headlines today.

Prosecutors in Karen Read‘s second murder case on Tuesday introduced a series of angry voicemails that she left for her Boston police officer boyfriend in the hours before he was found in the snow.

These recordings, along with evidence of scores of missed calls to John O’Keefe, followed testimony from a meteorologist who described the snowstorm that night as a “classic nor’easter,” and said freezing temperatures would have made the “ground impenetrable.”

Prosecutors say Read, 45, backed her SUV into O’Keefe, 46, and left him to die after dropping him off at a party hosted by a fellow officer. Her lawyers say she was framed in a police conspiracy and that someone inside the home that night in January 2022 must have killed him.

Better weather is in sight!

We know, we get it. We’re starting to sound like a broken record after all the gloomy weather we’ve seen over the past few days. But hang on! We’re tracking a light at the end of the tunnel – with actual sunshine on the way!

The cutoff low that has kept our weather unsettled over the past few days continues to push north of the Commonwealth. As a result, we can’t rule out a few more scattered showers and isolated storms today. However, we’re not expecting widespread rain across the Greater Boston area.

Travelers who haven’t obtained a REAL ID by this week’s deadline received assurances from the head of Homeland Security that they will be able to fly after additional identity checks. Her comments came Tuesday as people were waiting in long lines outside of government buildings from California to Chicago trying to update their IDs before the long-delayed deadline.

Kristi Noem told a congressional panel that 81% of travelers already have IDs that comply with the REAL ID requirements. She said security checkpoints will also be accepting passports and tribal identification when the deadline hits Wednesday.

Those who still lack an identification that complies with the REAL ID law “may be diverted to a different line, have an extra step,” Noem said.

A man described the moments he found a capsized boat miles off the coast of Cape Cod and rescued three soaking squid fisherman from the hull late Monday.

Philip Tran described it as an act of God that he happened upon the other boat in the dark five to 10 miles off Hyannisport. Cellphone video taken by Tran, also a squid fisherman, shows the three men scramble onto his boat.

“It was windy, big waves — and if that boat sank, they would’ve died,” he told NBC10 Boston in an exclusive interview.

Education was the “lifeline” towards stability and opportunity for Emily Romero Gonzalez, who moved to the U.S. at the age of 3.

“I grew up undocumented, and knew from a young age that I was different from other students. I couldn’t travel to visit my family in Peru, I didn’t qualify for certain programs that my peers did, my parents and I couldn’t own our own home, and I was constantly visiting lawyers’ offices,” Romero Gonzalez, now an education advocate at Massachusetts Advocates for Children, recalled.

“But the one thing I knew that I had access to, no matter what, was school, was an education,” she added.

App-based drivers who obtained the authority to unionize through a Massachusetts ballot law last year are opposing a bill that they say “masquerades as a data privacy measure” and blocks their ability to unionize until mid-2026.

“We have to call the legislation before us today what it is: an attempt by billion-dollar tech companies to undermine the will of Massachusetts voters, to undermine democracy and delay justice for thousands of workers who are ready to form a union,” said Mike Decoco, a business representative for International Association of Machinists District 15.

Decoco spoke during a hearing of the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy, chaired by Sen. Michael Barrett and Rep. Mark Cusack. Cusack, the newly appointed House chair of the committee, filed the bill that Decoco and others railed against.