Category Archives: Serious News

CHICAGO (AP) – The architect’s concept is breathtaking: a spiraling, 115-story tower that would pierce the sky along Chicago’s lakefront and grab the title of the nation’s tallest building. Off the drawing board, though, history shows that such plans often … Continue reading →

The Dowbrigade loves using the daily newspaper (usually the Boston Globe) with his foreign students, be they lawyers or business students or reprobate party animals.  What a wonderful repository of language and cultural information! What a great guide to a … Continue reading →

Rest in Peace Peter Jennings Jennings smoked for about 30 years beginning in the 1950s at age 13. He quit for 20 years, then resumed smoking after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Jennings noted that he resumed smoking because ”I … Continue reading →

LOWELL — Responding to a tip from neighbors, police seized a methamphetamine lab in an apartment of a multifamily house at 800 Broadway St. yesterday morning, evacuating nearby homes and removing three pipe bombs found inside. Residents of the house, … Continue reading →

Today’s Boston Globe features further proof that we are now officially living in a Petrocracy… Under the energy bill, which President Bush is scheduled to sign next week, energy companies based in Texas will be eligible for billions in tax … Continue reading →

A Harvard economics professor accused of stealing horse manure from a 98-year-old Rockport farmer received a market lesson yesterday as charges against him were dismissed but restitution was set at an amount he once deemed ”artificially inflated." Martin Weitzman, 63, … Continue reading →

Chronically violent prison inmates, who officials were forced to relocate when doors in their Walpole cellblock began mysteriously opening without cause, lashed out in two other prisons where they were transferred this week, prison officials said. Inmates from the notorious … Continue reading →

THIS is not a pretty picture," declared Eliot Spitzer, the New York attorney general, at a press conference on Monday to trumpet his office’s yearlong investigation into corrupt dealings between big music companies and broadcasters. "What we see is that … Continue reading →

Motorwoman on Knees to Avoid Drug Test The MBTA quietly tightened its drug-test policy on the Red Line shortly after a T worker testified recently that a supervisor, in exchange for oral sex, twice tipped off a motorwoman that she … Continue reading →

Seven former Boston police officers, all African-Americans who were fired after testing positive for cocaine in drug tests using samples of their hair, sued the police department yesterday, alleging the screening technique is biased against African-Americans. Rheba Rutkowski, an attorney … Continue reading →

Vardan Kushnir, notorious for sending spam to each and every citizen of Russia who appeared to have an e-mail, was found dead in his Moscow apartment on Sunday, Interfax reported Monday. He died after suffering repeated blows to the head. … Continue reading →

Reacting to the NYPD’s announcement Thursday afternoon that police would randomly – but routinely – search the bags of commuters, one concerned New Yorker quickly created a way for civil libertarians to make their views black-and-white. In a few outraged … Continue reading →