State tax revenue up $21m last month

Tax collections in Massachusetts were up $21 million last month from the same time in 2007, but they would have been sharply off without sizable one-time corporate tax payments, and the state's financial outlook remains troubled. Revenue Commissioner Navjeet K. Bal said yesterday that the preliminary total for December tax collections was $1.866 billion, $55 million above benchmarks set in October. (AP)

The state Legislature used all but the closing minutes of the 2007-08 session to send Governor Deval Patrick a waterfall of bills, adjourning 109 minutes before its authority was due to expire at midnight last night. Lawmakers granted final passage to dozens of bills, including a financial relief measure for cash-strapped Springfield, one cracking down on domestic violence, new elevator regulations, tax credits for land donated to conservation groups, and a slew of authorizations for new liquor licenses. The two branches could not agree on amendments to a law they passed earlier this year aimed at protecting children from sexual predators. (State House News Service)

An 11-year-old boy was in fair condition yesterday after falling from a third-floor apartment window, police said. Keith Mao was conscious after the 7 a.m. accident on Pine Street but was experiencing leg pains when emergency personnel arrived, Police Captain Randall Humphrey said. Mao was taken to a local hospital, then to Massachusetts General Hospital. The child's mother, identified as Sophy Mao, 27, was present when he fell. Lowell police are investigating the fall, which appeared to be an accident, police said.

A New Bedford man has been arrested in the deaths of two women whose bodies were found in an apartment after the building's landlord smelled natural gas. The Bristol district attorney's office said just after midnight last night that Gary Gomes, 35, was arrested at another house where he was found barricaded with a third person. Gomes faces arraignment in New Bedford District Court this morning on two murder charges and one kidnapping charge. The victims' names have not been released. (AP)

A three-alarm fire in Worcester late last night engulfed the top floor of a building and sent one man to Saint Vincent Hospital in extremely critical condition, said Frank DeLiddo, district chief for the Fire Department. Firefighters found the unidentified man lying unconscious in a third-floor bedroom shortly after they entered the Haynes Street building at about 10 p.m., DeLiddo said. All other residents escaped unharmed.

The former Walpole High School athletic director who is accused of raping a 15-year-old girl was released from jail yesterday. Daniel Villa, 44, met his $7,500 bail and was released after a hearing in Wrentham District Court, an assistant court clerk said. Villa will be monitored by a global positioning system. He surrendered an expired passport, said David Traub, Norfolk district attorney spokesman. Villa, a 44-year-old married father of four from Walpole, is a former Patriots lineman.

Braintree police were working with the FBI and other law enforcement agencies to determine what happened to an injured woman who was dropped off at the South Shore Plaza yesterday after being beaten and possibly raped, said police Major Ronald Blackmar of Cranston, R.I. Blackmar said the 37-year-old woman may have been abducted at a salon in Cranston and left at the mall at about noon.