BRUSSELS (AP) — Once a happy-go-lucky student at one of Brussels' most prestigious high schools, Saint-Pierre d'Uccle, Abdelhamid Abaaoud morphed into Belgium's most notorious jihadi, a zealot so devoted to the cause of holy war that he recruited his 13-year-old brother to join him in Syria.
The child of Moroccan immigrants who grew up in the Belgian capital's scruffy and multiethnic Molenbeek-Saint-Jean neighborhood, the fugitive, in his late 20s, was identified by French authorities on Monday as the presumed mastermind of the attacks last Friday in Paris that killed 129 people and injured hundreds.
Gov. Charlie Baker has rolled out major energy, opioid and charter school proposals and now the administration has a draft economic development plan on the table that aims to attract and retain highly-skilled workers, strengthen the state's competitive business clusters, and produce middle-market housing, especially near public transit.
State law requires each new administration to publish an economic development plan and implementation strategy within the administration's first year. Baker's team says its "Opportunities for All" plan, which will be the basis for legislative initiatives, was assembled after "thousands of conversations" with business groups and economic experts, meetings with 67 legislators, more than a dozen listening sessions, and feedback gathered during visits to 110 cities and towns this year.
