Boston, MA
Receiver of troubled Boston nursing home defends hire of disgraced ex-senator Dianne Wilkerson
A court-appointed receiver of a financially-strapped Boston nursing home defended his hire of disgraced ex-senator Dianne Wilkerson, after “allegations of nepotism and self-dealing” were lodged against her in Superior Court last month.
In a post-hearing order, Suffolk Superior Court Judge Christopher Belezos, who is overseeing hearings regarding the receivership of Roxbury’s Edgar P. Benjamin Healthcare Center, raised “significant concerns” about the considerable pay Wilkerson testified that she was making at a facility on the brink of bankruptcy.
“On April 16, the court heard testimony from several witnesses regarding allegations of nepotism and self-dealing by a member of the receivership’s team,” Belezos wrote in the April 22 order. “The subject of such allegations, Ms. Wilkerson offered, under pains of penalties of perjury, testimony that she is an employee of the EPBHC, receiving full benefits, being paid at a rate of $82 per hour, working an average of 90 hours per week.
“If such testimony is accurate, it raises significant concerns as to the rate of remuneration being paid to Ms. Wilkerson by an institution in receivership with a projected 2025 loss in the area of $4.4 million,” the judge added.
Wilkerson, an ex-state senator whose political career ended after she was busted by the feds for taking a bribe, is executive assistant to Joseph Feaster, the court-appointed receiver of the troubled nursing home.
She was present for a hearing held Thursday in Superior Court, but didn’t take part in the day’s proceedings, and deferred comment to Feaster.
Speaking with reporters after a roughly half-hour hearing, Feaster defended his decision to hire Wilkerson and her compensation, in the wake of last month’s mismanagement allegations. He described Wilkerson as “talented” and said she was thoroughly vetted before being added to the facility’s receivership team.
“Donald Trump has a past, and he’s president of the United States,” Feaster said when asked about Wilkerson’s checkered past. “She served her time. She doesn’t have a CORI. She has nothing which would preclude her from working, and so that has to be the determinant.
“So that was looked at, because I certainly am not going to have any situation which would be problematic for the organization or for me,” he said. “She’s employable and she’s talented.”
Wilkerson resigned from the state Senate in 2008 and spent more than two years in jail after agreeing to plead guilty to charges tied to a federal corruption bust. She was infamously shown stuffing $1,000 in cash bribes into her bra in a photo that was released by the feds.
Feaster said Wilkerson didn’t perjure herself on the stand last month, when she testified about her compensation. He said there was a “misinterpretation” about his assistant’s testimony, when she said she works 90 hours a week, when in fact, she gets paid on a bi-weekly basis for a total of 80 hours.
“I think that she was saying I work more hours than what I get paid for, and what we wanted to confirm is that … she only gets paid for bi-weekly, 80 hours,” Feaster said.
Wilkerson told the Herald last month that it’s true that she makes $82 an hour and works 90 hours a week, but “no one asked me a third question.”
“How many hours do I actually get paid for? And the answer to that question is 40. That’s all,” she said at the time.
Feaster also said he saw Wilkerson’s hourly rate as reasonable, given that he makes $450 an hour as the facility’s receiver.
Benjamin Healthcare, which has roughly 80 patients, was placed into receivership last April to avoid the facility’s closure and allow it to begin a financial turnaround. Wilkerson was hired as Feaster’s executive assistant upon his appointment as receiver at that time.
This week’s hearing centered around the facility’s finances, whether receivership should be continued and what the court-appointed team’s contingency plan was if a buyer doesn’t materialize from the bid process.
In a May 14 court filing from Feaster, the “receiver informed the court” at the April 16 hearing “that the most viable path forward for the facility to continue operating would be through soliciting proposals for third party owner/operator.”
Belezos, the judge, pressed for a breakdown of the facility’s financial information from the receivership team, and set a deadline for May 29.
A lawyer for Attorney General Andrea Campbell’s office, which represents state agencies like the Department of Health, said the state wants to keep the Roxbury facility open, rather than move forward with a closure and transfer of patients.
To try to recover funds, Feaster is pursuing a civil lawsuit that has been filed against the facility’s former administrator, Tony Francis, who ran the Benjamin before he was appointed as receiver, Commonwealth Beacon reported.
The lawsuit alleges that Francis “siphoned” more than $3 million in funds from the facility, per a prior court filing from Feaster.
The matter returns to court on June 28.
Boston, MA
Bruins dealing with another significant injury on defense
The good news for Marco Sturm and the Bruins is that the team could get defenseman Henri Jokiharju back in action Tuesday night in Seattle.
But the potential return of Jokiharju, who has been out of Boston’s lineup since sustaining an injury back on Nov. 28, does not give Sturm a healthy blue line. Instead, the Bruins are apparently dealing with yet another injury ahead of Jokiharju’s return to action, this time with Hampus Lindholm back on the shelf with an injury.
And one that certainly sounds concerning based on what Sturm said.
“It’s not going to be a day-to-day thing,” Sturm, whose team is on a three-game point streak, said following Monday’s practice when asked about Lindholm’s injury status. “Hopefully it’s not too long, but he’s definitely going to be out for a little bit. We’ll have to do more testing when we’re back in Boston so we can go from there.”
Sturm added that Lindholm has “been hurt,” though it’s unclear if he meant that Lindholm has been hurt in the last contest if he’s been playing hurt for the last little bit here. Lindholm did finish Saturday’s game without issue (at least one that was visible), and finished with an assist and logged a pair of overtime shifts in a 22:47 night.
Lindholm is also less than a week removed from what was one of his best games of the season, with a goal and an assist in Boston’s 6-2 win over the Oilers last Wednesday.
Lindholm has not traveled back to Boston ahead of schedule, though that admittedly means very little with just one more game on deck for the B’s on this road trip.
“We just had our first appointment [Sunday] and we’re going to wait until we get back because there’s nothing we can do right now,” Sturm said when discussing Lindholm’s injury. “And then we’ll let our doctors decide our next steps.”
Lindholm, who has three goals and 14 points through 34 games this year, has already missed eight games due to a lower-body injury earlier this season.
Sturm noted that Jokiharju looked “pretty good,” which is a positive development when it comes to his potential availability for Tuesday against the Kraken. If Jokiharju is unable to go, Vladislav Kolyachonok would slide back into the Boston lineup.
The Bruins come into Tuesday’s head-to-head with the Kraken with five of a possible eight points on this road trip banked away, but are a woeful 2-6-0 with Lindholm on the shelf this season.
Boston, MA
Police investigating deadly shooting overnight in Mattapan
Police are investigating a deadly shooting that occurred overnight in Boston’s Mattapan neighborhood.
Boston police said they responded to a report of a person shot in the area of 24 Stow Road in Mattapan around 12:12 a.m. on Monday.
When they arrived, officers found a vehicle parked in front of 24 Stow Road with a man inside suffering from multiple gunshot wounds. Boston EMS transported the man to a local hospital, where he later died.
No arrests have been announced.
The shooting remains under investigation, and anyone with information is being asked to call homicide detectives at 617-343-4470. Anonymous tips can be submitted by calling 1-800-494-TIPS, texting the word “TIP” to 27463 or online.
Boston, MA
How Boston Dynamics upgraded the Atlas robot — and what’s next
In 2021, 60 Minutes visited the offices of robotics company Boston Dynamics and met an early model of its humanoid robot, Atlas.
It could run, jump and maintain its balance when pushed. But it was bulky, with stiff, mechanical movements.
Now, Atlas can cartwheel, dance, run with human-like fluidity, twist its arms, head and torso 360 degrees, and pick itself up off of the floor using only its feet.
“They call it a humanoid, but he stands up in a way no human could possibly stand up,” correspondent Bill Whitaker told Overtime. “His limbs can bend in ways ours can’t.”
Boston Dynamics CEO Robert Playter told Whitaker that Atlas’ “superhuman” range of motion is keeping with the company’s vision for humanoid robots.
“We think that’s the way you should build robots. Don’t limit yourself to what people can do, but actually go beyond,” Playter said.
Whitaker watched demonstrations of the latest Atlas model at Boston Dynamics’ headquarters in Waltham, Massachusetts. Rather than turning around to walk in the other direction, Atlas can simply rotate its upper torso 180 degrees.
“For us to turn around, we have to physically turn around,” he told Overtime. “Atlas just pivots on his core.”
Boston Dynamics’ head of robotics research, Scott Kuindersma, told Whitaker that Atlas doesn’t have wires that cross its the joints of the limbs, torso and head, allowing continuous rotation for tasks and easier maintenance of the robot.
“The robot’s not really limited in its range of motion,” Kuindersma told Whitaker. “One of the reliability issues that you often find in robots is that their wires start to break over time… we don’t have any wires that go across those rotating parts anymore.”
Another upgrade to the Atlas humanoid robot is its AI brain, powered by Nvidia chips.
Atlas’ AI can be trained to do tasks. One way is through teleoperation, in which a human controls the robot. Using virtual reality gear, the teleoperator trains Atlas to do a specific task, repeating it multiple times until the robot succeeds.
Whitaker watched a teleoperation training session. A Boston Dynamics’ machine learning scientist showed Atlas how to stack cups and tie a knot.
Kuindersma told Whitaker robot hands pose a complex engineering problem.
“Human hands are incredible machines that are very versatile. We can do many, many different manipulation tasks with the same hand,” Kuindersma said.
Boston Dynamics’ new Atlas has only three digits on each hand, which can swing into different positions or modes.
“They can act as if they were a hand with these three digits, or this digit can swing around and act more like a thumb,” Kuindersma said.
“It allows the robot to have different shaped grasps, to have two-finger opposing grasp to pick up small objects. And then also make its hands very wide, in order to pick up large objects.”
Kuindersma said the robot has tactile sensors on its fingers, which provide information to Atlas’ neural network so the robot can learn how to manipulate objects with the right amount of pressure.
But Kuindersma said there is still room to improve teleoperation systems.
“Being able to precisely control not only the shape and the motion, but the force of the grippers, is actually an interesting challenge,” Kuindersma told Whitaker.
“I think there’s still a lot of opportunity to improve teleoperation systems, so that we can do even more dexterous manipulation tasks with robots.”
Whitaker told Overtime, “There is quite a bit of hype around these humanoids right now. Financial institutions predict that we will be living with millions, if not billions, of robots in our future. We’re not there yet.”
Whitaker asked Boston Dynamics CEO Robert Playter if the humanoid hype was getting ahead of reality.
“There is definitely a hype cycle right now. Part of that is created by the optimism and enthusiasm we see for the potential,” Playter said.
“But while AI, while software, can sort of move ahead at super speeds… these are machines and building reliable machines takes time… These robots have to be reliable. They have to be affordable. That will take time to deploy.”
The video above was produced by Will Croxton. It was edited by Scott Rosann.
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