Massachusetts

Hospital signage and safety legislation pitched as a response to the tragic 2016 death of Laura Levis became law in Massachusetts on Friday, with Gov. Charlie Baker signing it in a ceremony at the State House. Under the law, the Department of Public Health will implement statewide standards requiring hospitals to improve lighting, signage, wayfinding and monitoring, aiming to ensure…

A Massachusetts police officer declined to charge two women accused of trying to steal groceries for their children — and instead bought them Christmas dinner. Somerset Officer Matt Lima responded to a report of shoplifting on Dec. 20 at a Stop & Shop located at 815 Grand Army Highway, where two women with two young children were accused of putting…

More than 40 cases of COVID-19 have been tied to several Christmas Eve services at a church in Woburn, Massachusetts. Genesis Church is currently closed. No in-person services were held last weekend and none are scheduled for this weekend as the church deals with the outbreak. “We are deeply saddened to learn that people within GENESIS tested positive for COVID-19…

Responses to the coronavirus pandemic and police brutality dominated legislative sessions in 2020 and led to many new laws that will take effect in the new year

A controversial statue featuring President Abraham Lincoln with a freed Black man on his knees has been removed from Boston’s Park Square. Boston officials decided over the summer to take down “The Emancipation Group,” a replica of a statue in Washington, after thousands of people signed a petition for it to be removed. Petition creator Tory Bullock said at...

A Boston doctor had an allergic reaction after receiving Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine on Thursday, according to the hospital where he works, but is doing well. Boston Medical Center confirmed Friday night that Dr. Hossein Sadrzadeh, who reportedly has a severe shellfish allergy, was taken to the emergency department after his first dose of the Cambridge-based company’s vaccine. It’s the...

New Jersey, Connecticut, Hawaii and Iowa filed a brief in a U.S. Supreme Court case that could determine the ability to tax nonresidents’ income.

Health care workers in Massachusetts began receiving the country’s second approved coronavirus vaccine Monday, developed by Cambridge-based Moderna. There were cheers at the East Boston Neighborhood Health Center when Dr. Jaime Gallegos became its first staffer to get the injection. He held a sign in his lap saying, “Take that, COVID!” Gallegos called the vaccine’s rollout a “great milestone,”...

A biotech conference held at a Boston hotel in late February that had already been blamed for the initial spread of the coronavirus in eastern Massachusetts has now been tied to hundreds of thousands of cases of the virus globally. The two-day Biogen conference at the Boston Marriott Long Wharf hotel is responsible for infecting as many as 330,000 people…

Retiring Rep. Joe Kennedy III has used his farewell speech from Congress to deride the “great lie of our times” that the government lacks the resources and will to help people in need

A mystery is unfolding at a park in Dorchester, Massachusetts, after a gaping, 40-foot deep, 3.5-foot wide sinkhole was discovered.  “It’s forty feet deep. You can’t even see the bottom of it,” said Kristin Bergeson, who was walking her dog in Ronan Park. “At first we thought they were redigging for a light post or something then we looked...

We caught up with the Massachusetts native a week after Election Day to ask about the #trackingKornacki hashtag, all attention he’s getting and exactly how long he stayed awake while at the touchscreen.

The strongest earthquake to hit southern New England in decades rattled homes and nerves Sunday morning, but didn’t cause any significant damage, authorities said. The quake was first reported as magnitude 4.0, but later downgraded to 3.6. It struck just after 9 a.m. and was centered in Bliss Corner, a section of Dartmouth, Massachusetts, according to the U.S. Geological Survey….

One of the most notorious figures in the Boston clergy sex abuse scandal has died, police said Friday. He was 89. Paul Shanley, a former Massachusetts priest who served 12 years in prison after he was convicted of raping a boy at a Newton church in the 1980s, died late last month, Ware police confirmed. A cause of death was…

Two former eBay Inc. employees were indicted Tuesday by a grand jury on charges that they participated in a campaign to terrorize a Massachusetts couple that included threats and disturbing deliveries of things like live spiders sent to their home.  James Baugh, 45, who was eBay’s senior director of safety and security, and David Harville, 48, former director of global…

If the red and blue political map turns your stomach green, look to Maine for an alternative vision for picking our presidents. On Election Day, the state will be the first to try a ranked choice voting system in a presidential general election. So what is ranked choice voting and why do its supporters say it’s a better way to...

Federal immigration officials acknowledged Thursday that they erroneously told some new U.S. citizens in Massachusetts that they could not vote in next week’s election because they had missed the state’s voter registration deadline.

Long-lost interviews with Bob Dylan have surfaced at a Boston auction house, and they contain some surprising new insights about the celebrated singer-songwriter. Transcripts of the 1971 interviews with the late American blues artist Tony Glover reveal that Dylan changed his name because he worried about anti-Semitism. They also show he wrote “Lay Lady Lay” for actress Barbra Streisand. Dylan,…

Public health and regulatory officials are investigating a listeria outbreak linked to deli meats that has sickened at least 10 people across three states and has been blamed for one death, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention announced Friday. Of the 10 sickened, seven are from Massachusetts, two are from New York, and the person who died was from…

Something fishy has people calling the police in a coastal Massachusetts town. And environmental officers are telling them to stop already. The Wareham Department of Natural Resources said Monday that it’s aware of the sunfish residing in Buzzard Bay’s Broad Cove, and there’s no need to call the cops about it. In a Facebook post, officials said they have...