Today's Top Headlines

Friday, May 8

Good morning Wypierdalaj,

Happy Friday, everyone! Top news this morning includes a man's comments that went viral after a Marblehead town meeting, a cyberattack on Canvas, and sky-high costs for ambulance rides. We also have continuing coverage following the death of Massachusetts State Police Trooper Kevin Trainor. I'm Kaitlin McKinley Becker, and these are your headlines.

The family of fallen Massachusetts State Police Trooper Kevin Trainor is going through unimaginable pain right now, a pain that Anthony Bucci knows all too well.

Bucci’s daughter, Trooper Tamar Bucci, was also killed in the line of duty, while helping a disabled motorist on Interstate 93 in Stoneham in 2022.

This week, Anthony says, his whole heart goes out to Trainor’s family.

More than two million people have watched a viral clip of a man from Marblehead, Massachusetts, challenging the town’s planning board during this week’s meeting.

“Like are we kind of being pricks?” Dave Modica asks in the viral moment that is now shining a light on a bigger issue — compliance with the controversial MBTA Communities Act.

Massachusetts passed the law back in 2021, requiring cities and towns with T stations nearby to zone out multi-family housing. Now the good news is that most towns have done that, but some are still holding out.

A widely used education software appeared to be inaccessible for schools across the country Thursday evening amid an apparent cyberattack.

A cyberattack on the Canvas learning management system was reported by its parent company, Instructure, last week, and while its status page listed the issue as resolved as of Wednesday, Canvas was placed in maintenance mode as of Wednesday afternoon.

Meanwhile, Canvas was no longer accessible at schools across the country, including in Massachusetts — sites for Harvard and MIT were down, while Boston College posted a tech alert noting “a widespread outage” for Canvas that Instructure was working to resolve.

A Connecticut man turned to NBC10 Boston Responds for help after an ambulance ride left him facing a bill of nearly $6,000, raising questions about why emergency transport can be so expensive, and what options patients have when costs spiral.

Stephen Wass was working on a construction site in Chelsea, Massachusetts when he suddenly felt chest pain and became lightheaded. Concerned about his health, he asked for an ambulance to be called.

“It was a three-mile ride and a $6,000 bill,” Wass said.

If you have outdoor plans for Mother’s Day weekend, you might need a backup plan.

We’re tracking a few scattered showers here in Boston, though the entire weekend won’t be a washout.

As we move through this Friday, we’ll see a mix of clouds and sunshine. A few showers are possible this morning over parts of southeastern Massachusetts. Then, later today, a few spotty showers could develop over parts of Greater Boston. Rainfall amounts will be low.

Hantavirus, a rare but deadly virus carried by rodents, has killed three people and infected at least eight amid an ongoing outbreak on a cruise ship, prompting concerns about a possible pandemic and comparisons to COVID-19.

While hantavirus is dangerous, all of the experts TODAY.com spoke with stress that this outbreak situation is not similar to COVID-19, both due to the type of virus involved and ongoing containment efforts.

“While this is a serious incident, (the World Health Organization) assesses the public health risk as low,” WHO chief Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a press briefing on May 7.