Placing flags on graves

BOSTON — The state’s hiring crunch is getting worse, according to a new report that finds more than half of all employers are struggling to fill vacancies.

The Massachusetts National Guard has in the last year-plus been pressed into duty to help keep the peace at large rallies, to provide security outside the U.S. Capitol Building, to step in during a shortage of school bus drivers and now to help with COVID-19 testing at schools and to be ready in the event of a Department of Correction staffing shortage.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — An Andover man who fraudulently sought COVID-19 relief money from the government and then tried to fake his own death was sentenced to more than four years in federal prison this week, authorities said.