Midday Report: Saturday, January 18, 2025

Winter weather is at our doorstep, A ceasefire in Gaza is sealed, A new AARP report finds that drug prices have been skyrocketing in recent years. Stay in "The Loop" with #iHeartRadio.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Cloudy and thirty nine degrees in the city at eleven o'clock.
Good Saturday morning. It's January eighteenth. I'm Sherry Small. Here's
what's happening, all right. Winter weather is at our doorstep.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
Well, see cloudy, ambreeze you the rest of today.

Speaker 3 (00:17):
A little bit of rain late this afternoon into this evening.

Speaker 1 (00:19):
And that's ECHI weather meteorologist John Feerick. Now a winter
storm watch is in effect north and west of Boston.
That's from tomorrow afternoon through Monday morning. We'll have more
on that in the full forecast that is coming right up.
A ceasfire in Gaza is sealed Israel's cabinet approving the

(00:40):
first phase of the deal. This morning. We get details
from the BBC's Lucy Williamson.

Speaker 4 (00:45):
This Ceasfire deal has now passed the final hurdle in
Israel's political process and is set to begin on Sunday
with the first in a series of prisoner exchanges. Israel
says three hostages are expecting to be released, with more
small groups free at regular intervals over the next six weeks.
It's also named the first group of Palestinians due to

(01:06):
be freed from Israeli jails in return.

Speaker 1 (01:10):
And since the deal was reached on Wednesday and then delayed,
at least one hundred and fifty fifteen people in Gaza
have died from deadly air strikes. Gaza should see a
huge surge in humanitarian aid and Israeli forces will pull
back from many areas of the devastated territory. Meanwhile, lawyers
for two graduate students charged in connection with a pro

(01:33):
Palestinian protest at Harvard Business School want the case dismissed.
Attorneys say that their two clients were singled out and
that prosecutors neglected to investigate other people because of their
skin color. They also claim there was a lack of
evidence that a crime was committed, a judge in the
case taking two motions under advisement during a hearing in

(01:56):
Brighton yesterday. Now, the two men were both at a
die in demonstration at Harvard Business School back in October
of twenty twenty three, that's just days after the war began.
Prosecutors say they surrounded a Jewish Israeli student who was
filming the protests asked him to leave, before bumping, shoving,
and allegedly pushing him out of the area. Martin Luther

(02:19):
King Day falling on Inauguration Day on Monday yesterday, local
leaders honor the life of the slain civil rights leader.
We get that from w PC's Madison Rogers.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
You reminded that there is work for all of us
to do to make sure that freedom rings in this country.
Roxbury Reverend Dark Gordon dressing a crowd from the Parkman
Bandstand where the Reverend Doctor King spoke sixty years ago.

Speaker 3 (02:43):
King once said, our most powerful weapon is organization.

Speaker 2 (02:48):
Local leaders like Congress Fromanyana Presley say MLK Day and
the upcoming inauguration are a moment for unity and community
over chaos. And when you feel bitterness creep in, remember
that radical love means loving every one. The Embrace Monument
glinting in the background a reminder of the power of

(03:09):
love on the common I'm Madison Rogers, WBZ Boston's news radio.

Speaker 1 (03:14):
And now the four dawbz ACU weather forecast fairly mild today,
that's if we compare it to what we're going to
see in the next days ahead. Mostly cloudy, breezy, a
little bit of rain late this afternoon and evening, with
a high of forty three degrees tonight's low thirty five,
mostly cloudy skies. But tomorrow we'll start out with some

(03:35):
sunshine and some clouds move in, then a mix of
rain and snow beginning later in the afternoon. Still fairly
pleasant or mild, I should say, Hi, it's forty to
forty four degrees. Then tomorrow evening the rain tapers off.
We'll see a mix of rain and snow becoming all
snow Tomorrow evening, snow accumulating three to six inches. That's

(03:58):
for most of the air west and north of Boston,
the south coast, south shore capein Islands, we'll see anywhere
from one to about three inches, so as you can
probably anticipate, expect some slippery travel Tomorrow night, also low visibility,

(04:18):
and then the low overnight into Monday morning is fifteen degrees,
so that's going to freeze all of that up on
the roadways. It'll be a blustery as we head back
to work on Monday, turning much colder, even though sunshine
will return. We'll only see a high twenty five Tuesday,
even colder, a high of twenty two degrees in the city.

(04:38):
Right now, we're seeing a cloudy skies and we've warmed
up to thirty nine degrees at eleven oh six on
this Saturday. Tragedy in Norton as a young girl dies
after being pulled from an icy pond. That story from
CBS News Boston's Timmy Mutassa.

Speaker 5 (04:54):
That's the heartbreaking outcome no one wanted. A missing six
year old girl with autism was pulled from an icy
pond near her home.

Speaker 3 (05:03):
She died.

Speaker 5 (05:04):
When neighbors found out the sweet girl disappeared, they didn't
hesitate to look for her around her Power Street community.

Speaker 3 (05:11):
It's a sad day and one we never liked to
have news like this.

Speaker 5 (05:14):
The nine one one call went out to police around
two thirty from the child's parents saying she was gone.

Speaker 3 (05:20):
We just walked down there and looked around, you know,
chicken coops and different things that a little child would
be hiding. So that's all we could do and hope
and pray that the professionals would be able to locate her.

Speaker 5 (05:34):
From the air and on the ground. The effort was
enormous to find the child, but ultimately Cruz surged the
icy water near Barrowsville Pond and Wading River wearing cold
water rescue gear.

Speaker 3 (05:46):
You push the button as soon as you can. I
mean we wanted as many resources there as possible.

Speaker 1 (05:51):
And the victim was a Norton Public School student. In
a statement, NPS offered their condolences to the family and
said that additional counseling service will services rather will be
available for students. A new AARP report finds that drug
prices have been skyrocketing in recent years. The latest report

(06:12):
finds it some drug prices rose dramatically. We're talking as
much as three hundred and four hundred percent. Many of
the medications are commonly used by older Americans. The twenty
five most commonly used drugs under medicare Part D have
nearly doubled in price since being introduced. Experts point fingers
at the lack of price control in the US and

(06:35):
brand names for jacking up the costs. Clean Up crews
have been hard at work a Newbery port where more
than a dozen homes get caught in the splatter zone
from a nearby wind turbine.

Speaker 6 (06:46):
It was just a short time ago that this Hill
Street residence had a new mahogany porch built. Now it's
stained with hydraulic fluid.

Speaker 4 (06:52):
Kind of a drug, yeah, kind of a drag.

Speaker 6 (06:54):
The fluid comes from a nearby windsair behind the company
that maintains it, Mark Ritchie Woodworking, says about a gallon
and a half for the stuff. Leakes mixed with rain
water and got picked up by heavy winds, splattering homes
for nearly a quarter mile. At Jennifer Lacroix home next door,
a crew hired by Mark Ritchie is at work cleaning
the side of her house, but she's still concerned.

Speaker 2 (07:12):
We have a large organic garden, we've got a koi pond,
so we actually just had somebody come and do soil
testing on our own so we can make sure everything
else is safe.

Speaker 6 (07:20):
The deep says the amount of fluid leak did not
trigger a response from them. Several residents I talked to, however,
are skeptical only a gallon and a half a fluid
could cause such a widespread splatter. Mark Ritchie did not
respond to an interview request from Newburyport Kendlebuild WBZ Boston's.

Speaker 1 (07:35):
Newsrate You are now in the loop. For news updates
throughout the day, Listen to WBZ News Radio on the
iHeart Radio app. I'm Sherry Small, WBZ Boston's news radio