摩頓市警察局 4/30 拍賣自行車

City of Malden Bike Auction

Tuesday, April 5, 2016

Need a bike? The City of Malden Police Department will be holding a Bike Auction on Saturday, April 30, 2016 from 10-11 AM at the Malden Police Department Garage at the Corner of Exchange and Commercial Streets. Parking is available on Pleasant Street, and the LAZ parking garage on Jackson Street. Please do not park behind the station on Exchange Street.  These spaces are reserved for emergency vehicles only.

There will be nearly 30 bicycles and bids start at $1. All bicycles are sold in “as is” condition. Come on down and strike a deal!

劍橋市議員張禮能 4/7 將正式宣佈參選麻州參議員

Cheung Launches Field Operations, Reports Fundraising Ahead of Campaign Kickoff

Cambridge, MA - Cambridge City Councillor Leland Cheung’s campaign for State Senate continues to expand and garner support. Cheung has more than enough certified signatures to qualify for the ballot and launched field operations in Cambridge, Medford, Somerville, and Winchester over the weekend.

Cheung raised more than $25,000 in the month of March. “I’m very grateful for the tremendous support I’ve received from across the district,” Cheung said. “I look forward to building on this momentum by engaging with residents and sharing my innovative ideas for the district.”

Leland will meet with supporters at his campaign kickoff event and fundraiser this Thursday, April 7th, in Somerville. He invites members of the community to join him at Redbones BBQ, 55 Chester St. in Somerville from 6:00-8:30pm. Leland will be making remarks at 7:00pm.

Former Senior Executives of Global Financial Services Company Charged in Scheme to Defraud Clients through Secret Trading Commissions

Former Senior Executives of Global Financial Services Company

Charged in Scheme to Defraud Clients through Secret Trading Commissions

 

BOSTON – Two former high-ranking executives of a Boston-based financial services company, which is one of the world’s largest asset managers and custody banks, have been charged with engaging in a scheme to defraud at least six of the bank’s clients through secret commissions applied to billions of dollars of securities trades. 

 

Ross McLellan, 44, of Hingham, Mass. and Edward Pennings, 45, who is believed to be living abroad, were charged in a five-count indictment with conspiring to commit securities fraud and wire fraud, as well as two counts each of securities fraud and wire fraud.  McLellan, a former executive vice president of the bank who served as president of its U.S. broker-dealer unit, was arrested this morning in Hingham and will appear in U.S. District Court in Boston later today.   

 

U.S. Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz of the District of Massachusetts, Assistant Attorney General Leslie R. Caldwell of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and Special Agent in Charge Harold M. Shaw of the Boston Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation made the announcement.

 

“The secret conversations and backroom plotting laid bare in today’s charges paint a vivid picture of a brazen fraud,” said U.S. Attorney Ortiz.  “The defendants never thought anyone would hear those conversations – conversations in which they plotted to overcharge their clients by millions of dollars, and to hide their tracks.  With each trade, they chipped away at the savings of thousands of retirees whose pensions they were charged with safeguarding.  Bankers who abuse their clients’ trust in this way must be held accountable.  And we will work hard to ensure that they are.”

 

“The defendants are charged with reaping millions of dollars of illicit profits by abusing their clients' trust and secretly setting their own inflated compensation," said Assistant Attorney General Caldwell.  "The charges announced today reflect our continued commitment to hold individuals accountable for toying with the integrity of our financial system."

 

"As alleged, Ross McLellan and Edward Pennings cheated and lied to investors so that the bank could line its pockets. Actions like theirs undermine investor confidence. This case demonstrates the FBI's commitment to unraveling elaborate and complex schemes, motivated by sheer greed, that ultimately undermine our financial markets," said Special Agent in Charge Shaw. 

 

        The Indictment alleges that, between February 2010 and September 2011, McLellan and Pennings, together with others, conspired to add secret commissions to fixed income and equity trades performed for at least six clients of the bank’s “transition management” business, which helps institutional clients move their investments between and among asset managers or liquidate large investment portfolios.  The commissions were charged on top of fees the clients had agreed to pay the bank, and despite written instructions to the bank’s traders that generally reflected that the clients were not to be charged trading commissions.  McLellan and Pennings then allegedly took steps to hide the commissions from the clients and others within the bank, including by directing that the commissions not be broken out in post-trade reports. 

 

        For example, the Indictment alleges, among other things, that:

 

• In a telephone call in March 2010, Pennings instructed an unidentified co-conspirator in the transition management unit not to talk about the plans to charge hidden commissions on one transaction “with anyone . . . because it’s not going to help our story.  Don’t even share it with the rest of the team, to be honest.”
• In June 2010, McLellan and the unidentified co-conspirator requested that the bank’s traders provide them with the reported daily high and low prices of securities the bank had traded for the client so that they could determine the amount of the commissions to be applied to each security without attracting the client’s attention by exceeding the bounds of reported prices. 
• In March 2011, McLellan instructed a U.S. fixed income trader to charge a one basis point (0.01%) commission to each trade conducted for another client – notwithstanding that the written trading instructions for the transaction said to charge zero commissions – and subsequently instructed the trader to delete any reference to the commissions from the trading results he sent to the transition manager assigned to the project.

In June 2011, when one of the affected clients inquired about whether it had, in fact, been charged commissions in breach of its agreement with the bank, it is alleged that Pennings initially denied that any commissions had been charged.  Later – at McLellan’s direction – Pennings acknowledged only that some commissions had been “inadvertently” charged on securities traded in the United States, but did not disclose that they had, in fact, been intentionally charged, in the United States and in Europe.  McLellan and Pennings then allegedly sought to mislead the bank’s compliance staff into believing that the commissions had been charged in error and that the amount of the overcharges was limited to the commissions applied on U.S. securities.

       

The ongoing investigation is being conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.  The United States Attorney’s Office and the Fraud Section have also received valuable assistance from the Securities & Exchange Commission as well as from authorities in the United Kingdom, including the City of London Police.  The Criminal Division’s Office of International Affairs also provided assistance.  The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen E. Frank, Deputy Chief of Ortiz’s Economic Crimes Unit and Trial Attorney Aisling O’Shea of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section. 

 

波士頓公校增加200幼稚園學位 東波士頓兩校增開學前班

 BPS Adds 216 New Pre-kindergarten Seats, Expands Early-Education Opportunities For Boston Families

BOSTON — April 5, 2016 — The Boston Public Schools (BPS) announced today that two East Boston schools will be offering pre-kindergarten classes for the first time, including one that is a dual-language program, as part of a commitment by Mayor Martin J. Walsh, the Boston School Committee, and Superintendent Tommy Chang to expand early-education opportunities for Boston families.

“Boston families deserve expanded access to high-quality, early-educational experiences,” said Mayor Walsh. “This is about strengthening the foundation of learning for our children. The experiences they have before entering kindergarten will shape their ability to learn, and I’m proud that we’ll be able to give more children the strong start they need to succeed within Boston Public Schools and beyond.”

The new pre-K seats at the Donald McKay K-8 School and the Mario Umana Academy are among the more than 200 additional K1 seats created as strategic investments in the BPS FY17 budget that was approved on March 23 by the Boston School Committee.

K1 classes are available to children who turn four years old by Sept. 1 of a school year.

The McKay’s new K1 program will have 22 seats, and the Umana will have 20 seats in its English-Spanish dual-language program. They are among a group of five schools that were recently selected for the expansion of K1 seats for the 2016-17 school year.

In addition to the McKay and Umana, the other three schools, which already have existing K1 programs, are: Baldwin Early Learning Pilot Academy in Brighton; Young Achievers Science and Math K-8 in Mattapan; and Mildred Avenue K-8 in Mattapan. Each of these classes is expected to have a full capacity of 22 seats.

These five schools are now available to families interested in registering for a K1 seat as part of the enrollment process for the coming school year. Families interested in these schools and others should visit one of the BPS Welcome Centers between now and the April 15 registration deadline.

Altogether, BPS will be expanding K1 classes next year school to a total of ten schools, including five other schools that were previously included in an earlier round of school enrollment. These schools are: the West Zone Early Learning Center; Curley K-8; Harvard/Kent Elementary; Josiah Quincy Elementary; and Charles Sumner Elementary.

With the expansion of new seats, BPS next school year will be providing K1 education of some form to a total of approximately 2,800 students at 96 percent, or 76 of the district’s 79 elementary schools in the district.

Noting that Boston Public Schools is considered a national leader in early childhood education, Boston School Committee Chairperson Michael O’Neill said participation in the BPS K1 program has consistently shown that it helps to reduce achievement gaps in later grades.

According to national and district research, Black and Hispanic/Latino students who participate in BPS K1 outperform white students who do not participate in K1. Meanwhile, students who participated in the BPS K1 program were also 50 percent more likely to be “ready for kindergarten” than students who did not participate and they outperformed their peers in math and literacy tests by 20 percent.

“Closing the achievement gap is one of the School Committee’s and the district’s top priorities,” said O’Neill, citing the creation of the School Committee’s Achievement and Opportunity Gaps Task force. “It is critical that we begin doing this as early possible in a child’s life in order to give our students a jump start on succeeding in school.”

Recently, a Harvard study published by the Society for Research in Child Development found the academic gains achieved by students in the BPS early-childhood programs are the “largest found to date in evaluations of large-scale public pre-kindergarten programs.”

 “At an early age, our​ students are learning valuable foundational skills, including the ability to work with peers, count and solve complex problems. ​This expanded access to pre-kindergarten programming will improve our children's math and literacy readiness, and we're confident that this opportunity will put them on a pathway to continued success," Dr. Chang said.

Claudia Gutierrez, principal of the Umana, said the new dual-language K1 class will strengthen her school’s dual language program for the upper grades by helping students who enter kindergarten be prepared for the academic rigor.

"The Mario Umana Academy is excited to offer East Boston families the first dual language K1 class in our community. These students will be the first to complete a full K1 through grade 8 dual-language program in East Boston. Biliteracy in both English and Spanish gives Umana students an edge in an increasingly globalized world,” Gutierrez said. "The younger you are when you learn a language, the easier it is to attain fluency.”

Jordan Weymer, principal of the Donald McKay School, said his school is excited to be expanding educational opportunities for young children and their families in East Boston.

“The addition of a new K1 classroom will be an essential element in increasing the academic outcomes of our children by providing them with a solid foundation for future success,” Weymer said.

摩頓市Forestdale學生學習反霸凌 為關注自閉症籌款

Forestdale School Students Work to Make a Difference

Tuesday, April 5, 2016

Forestdale School Students have been working hard to make a difference. One a month, the entire fifth grade comes together as a group for “Connections” and participates in team building exercises. These valuable lessons have become the foundation for an anti-bullying curriculum, encouraging working with others, respecting one another’s differences, and advocating for students to come together for a common goal. The experience has carried over into the students’ daily work in and outside of school and has inspired them to give back to the community. Assisted by Grade 5 teacher Ms. Susan Horvitz, the fifth graders decided to collaborate to raise money for Autism Awareness and made pins and ribbons, sold them during the school day and raised $1,000!  The money raised will be donated entirely to the ten ILP (Individualized Learning Program) classrooms at the Forestdale School. Way to go!

波士頓市長請民眾舉報道路坑洞

MAYOR WALSH ASKS RESIDENTS TO REPORT POTHOLES, DISPATCHES CREWS TO REPAIR

BOSTON - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - Mayor Martin J. Walsh today announced he is dispatching 15 Public Works Department (PWD) trucks to repair potholes across the City.  The combination of freezing temperatures, a thaw and precipitation make roads especially susceptible to defects. The Mayor is encouraging residents to report potholes through any of the City's several different platforms, including:  Mobile: Download the free BOS:311 app on iOS or Android (previously known as Citizens Connect) Online: Boston.gov/311 Social Media: Tweet @BOS311 Phone: Dial 3-1-1 (previously the Mayor's 24-hour hotline 617-635-4500. For those with VoIP and for calls from outside Boston, callers should continue to dial 617-635-4500.)

OVC is Awarding Funding to Enhance Specialized Services for Victims of Human Trafficking

The Office for Victims of Crime (OVC) is now accepting applications under the FY 2016 Specialized Services for Victims of Human Trafficking Solicitation.

OVC will make awards of up to $600,000 to enhance the quality and quantity of specialized services available to assist all victims of human trafficking, including services for underserved or unserved populations such as men and boys, American Indians and Alaska Natives (AI/AN), African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Latinos, Native Hawaiians, Pacific Islanders, or individuals who identify as straight, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or questioning (LGBTQ). Funding will also support efforts to increase the capacity of communities to respond to human trafficking victims through the development of interagency partnerships, professional training, and public awareness activities.

Applications must be submitted by May 12, 2016 through Grants.gov. Applicants are encouraged to begin the application process well in advance of the deadline. For technical assistance with submitting an application, contact the Grants.gov Customer Support Hotline at 800–518–4726 or 606–545–5035, or via e-mail tosupport@grants.gov. The Grants.gov Support Hotline hours of operation are 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, except federal holidays.

For assistance with any other requirements of this solicitation, applicants can contact Ivette Estrada, Victim Justice Program Specialist, by telephone at 202-307-0932, or by email at ivette.estrada@usdoj.gov.