If You Don't Like The Weather, Wait Five Minutes: The HUB

The HUB is a daily newsletter designed for what you want — to be caught up on the most interesting, important news in 5 minutes or less. It's a little bit of this, a little bit of that, but if there's something you want more or less of, email me at alex.newman@patch.com.

Today is Thursday, July 1. Let's get started.

Pick your poison: oppressive heat or destructive thunderstorms.

The same day that Boston marked its highest temperatures in nearly a decade, a thunderstorm rolled across the state, knocking out power for thousands and pulling down trees and wires.

Storm damage was reported in many communities around the state, including trees downed on wires in Chelsea, an electric poll snapped in half in Haverhill, and a large tree down on North Brookfield Road in Oakham, Kristie Smith, a National Weather Service meteorologist, told The Boston Globe. (Martin Finucane and Jeremy C. Fox, The Boston Globe)

It was almost enough to make you forget the last three days of sweltering heat, including Boston's first triple-digit day since July 22, 2011.

For the first time in a decade, the temperature in Boston has reached triple digits.

The city reached 100 degrees on Wednesday, something that has only happened 25 times in Boston history. It sets the record for hottest temperature ever recorded on June 30, breaking the record of 95 degrees set in 1945. (CBS Boston)

A veteran police officer is in hot water for creating a fake criminal complaint for his best friend's brother. The Massachusetts State Ethics Commission said Boston police officer James Clark filed the false arrest report to help the man explain missing his shift as an MBTA bus driver.

"Fearing he would lose his job after oversleeping and missing his shift on July 4, 2016, the bus driver decided to try to explain his absence by falsely claiming he got arrested," The Boston Herald's Rick Sobey reports.

A new commission created under the state's police accountability law recommends that police interacting with a child "remain calm, engage the minor child in dialogue, and attempt to gain cooperation and trust from the minor child whenever safe and feasible." The Massachusetts Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission found these interactions are often a child's first experience with the legal system, The Associated Press's Steve LeBlanc reports.

Finding out when and how the gunman in Saturday's rampage in Winthrop became radicalized is proving to be tricky for investigators. Nathan Allen was not affiliated with any hate group, making his path toward radicalization harder to chart, experts say.

"In years past, we had individuals that we could almost chart their trajectory from political awakening, political activism to political radicalism to eventually crossing the line and picking up a gun or throwing a bomb," Bruce Hoffman, the senior fellow for counterterrorism and homeland security at the Council on Foreign Relations, told WGBH's Phillip Martin and Hannah Reale. "And it was in service to some organization they that they belonged to, or they were following the orders or instructions of some leader."

A national look

Bill Cosby was released from prison after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned his 2018 indecent assault conviction, ruling that he was not protected against self-incrimination. (NBC News)

Former Secretary of Defense and architect of the Iraq War Donald Rumsfeld has died at 88. A divisive figure in Washington, Rumsfeld's handling of the conflict has been widely panned in the nearly 20 years since the invasion. Still waiting on those weapons of mass destruction. (CNN)

A Manhattan grand jury has filed criminal indictments against the Trump Organization and its CFO, Allen Weisselberg. The indictments won't be unsealed until Thursday afternoon, leaving it a mystery as to what charges the former president's company will face. (Washington Post)

What I'm reading today: In a reverse heel turn, the NCAA suspended its rules barring college athletes from selling the rights to their names, images and likenesses.

Weather

The National Weather Service says: A chance of showers before 10am, then a chance of showers and thunderstorms between 10am and 1pm, then showers likely and possibly a thunderstorm after 1pm. Cloudy, with a high near 82. West wind 5 to 7 mph becoming light and variable in the afternoon. Chance of precipitation is 60 percent. New rainfall amounts between a quarter and half of an inch possible.

Showers likely and possibly a thunderstorm Thursday night. Patchy fog after 11pm. Otherwise, cloudy, with a low around 65. South wind around 5 mph becoming calm. Chance of precipitation is 70%. New rainfall amounts between a half and three quarters of an inch possible.