Today's Top Headlines

Monday, June 16

Good morning and welcome to a new week. This morning, verdict watch continues in Karen Read's second murder trial. The case was sent to the jury after fiery closing arguments on Friday. Plus, we're tracking the latest in the ongoing and escalating attacks happening between Israel and Iran. Also, check out our forecast for when we could hit 90 degrees this week. I'm Matt Fortin with your morning headlines.

Karen Read and the Commonwealth will continue their wait for the jury’s verdict in her second murder trial, after handing the case over to the jurors for deliberation on Friday.

The 12-person panel will decide whether or not she is responsible for the death of her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O’Keefe.

For more than two hours on Friday, the jurors listened to both the defense and the prosecution make their final case, before they were sent off to deliberate.

We’re about to sizzle in the summer heat and humidity this week. On top of that, we’ll have to dodge a few showers and potential storms.

As we move through this Monday, patchy morning fog will give to a mix of clouds and sunshine. An isolated shower or two can’t be ruled out, but most areas should remain dry.

An onshore flow will keep high temperatures in Boston and along the coast in the mid and upper 60s in the afternoon. Inland communities will see highs in the 70s. At night, temperatures will drop into the mid 50s, under mostly cloudy skies.

Some workers at Fenway Park and nearby MGM Music Hall have voted to authorize a strike amid contract negotiations with their employer, Aramark, their union announced Sunday.

If the workers — who include cooks, beer sellers, cashiers and souvenir vendors — do strike, union UNITE HERE Local 26 said it would ask people who attend Boston Red Sox games not to buy food or beverages inside Fenway Park, referring to that in a news release as the picket line.

The union said the workers have been without a contract with Aramark since the end of 2024 and, while negotiations are ongoing, they aren’t close to agreements on wages, scheduling and technology. The Boston Globe reported this week that the technology concerns involve automated self-checkout concession machines that are now in use at the stadium.

A masked person threw a brick with a pro-Palestinian message through the window of a kosher grocery store in Brookline, Massachusetts, early Sunday morning, police said.

The Butcherie’s owner reported the incident to Brookline police on Sunday, the department said.

Investigators found that a group of at least two people, wearing masks, turned from Coolidge Street onto Harvard Street and threw the brick through the window, according to police. Written on the brick, in large red letters, was the phrase, “Free Palestine.”

Iran fired a new wave of missile attacks on Israel early Monday, triggering air raid sirens across the country as emergency services reported at least five killed and dozens more wounded in the fourth day of open warfare between the regional foes that showed no sign of slowing.

Iran announced it had launched some 100 missiles and vowed further retaliation for Israel’s sweeping attacks on its military and nuclear infrastructure, which have killed at least 224 people in the country since last Friday.

The attacks raised Israel’s total death toll to at least 18, and in response the Israeli military said fighter jets had struck 10 command centers in Tehran belonging to Iran’s Quds Force, an elite arm of its Revolutionary Guard that conducts military and intelligence operations outside Iran.

It was 160 years ago that enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, learned they had been freed — after the Civil War’s end and two years after President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.

The resulting Juneteenth holiday — it’s name combining “June” and “nineteenth” — has only grown in one-and-a-half centuries. In 2021, President Joe Biden designated it a federal holiday — expanding its recognition beyond Black America.

This year will be the first Juneteenth under President Donald Trump’s second administration, which has banned diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, or DEI, in the federal government. This has included removing Black American history content from federal websites. Trump officials have also discouraged some federal agencies from recognizing other racial heritage celebrations.