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A horrific week of violence in Boston — seven slayings in less than a week — led to calls on Sunday to end the bloodshed and for a serious investment in mental-health services in the city. A woman was shot to death early Sunday morning in Dorchester, according to police who reported the seventh killing in Boston since Tuesday. “It’s just absolutely terrible,” Mary Franklin, founder of the Women Survivors of Homicide Movement, told the Herald. “If our city would invest in serious mental-health services for poor communities, we would be able to decrease a lot of the crime and...

If Abraham Lincoln and Christopher Columbus no longer pass woke muster in Boston, then it’s time for the Kennedys to go. And everything with their names plastered on it — the JFK Library and JFK federal building, his statue at the State House, the Kennedy School of Government across the river, the Rose Kennedy Greenway, the Edward M. Kennedy Whatever They Call It, etc. Everything must go! Profiles in Courage? The Kennedys were more like Profiles in Caucasity, as that woke Harvard gal said this week before she too got canceled. Let’s start with President Kennedy. Just for starters, he...

BOSTON (AP) - Gyms, casinos, museums, movie theaters and guided tours are some of the businesses and cultural activities that can begin welcoming back customers and visitors in Massachusetts as the state launches Phase 3 of its reopening plan on Monday. In order to open, the facilities will have to meet specific safety protocols, including limiting capacity or instituting timed entries to control how many people are allowed in at a given time, Gov. Baker said Thursday. Tour buses and duck boats will be limited to 50% capacity. In Boston, the Phase 3 reopening will begin a full week later,...

The Boston Arts Commission voted unanimously Tuesday night to remove a public monument depicting President Abraham Lincoln standing before a freed slave. The Emancipation Memorial in Park Square — a replica of the original standing in Washington, D.C. — will be taken down with an art conservator “to document, recommend how the bronze statue is removed, supervise its removal and placement into temporary storage,” the motion reads. “As we continue our work to make Boston a more equitable and just city, it’s important that we look at the stories being told by the public art in all our neighborhoods,” Boston...

Last month, Joe Biden got some practical campaign advice from a maestro: Keep speeches, interviews, and tweets short and crisp, former president Barack Obama told the presumptive Democratic nominee, according to The New York Times. With President Trump imploding daily, there’s little else to add except stay cool, drink plenty of water, and avoid mistakes like saying 120 million Americans have died from COVID-19, as Biden recently did, before quickly correcting himself. **SNIP** So now it’s time for the Trump campaign to hit Biden with accusations of dementia. An ad run by a pro-Trump PAC raises the question: “Does Joe...

COVID-19 peak dates for every state Wake Forest coach to isolate from wife for entire season The Boston Globe logoThe prosecution of Michael Flynn is not over yet On Wednesday, two accounts of the Department of Justice — one grounded in fact, the other in fiction — were on display in the nation’s capital. The first occurred before the House Judiciary Committee, where Andrew Zelinksy, a career prosecutor currently working at the Justice Department, took the extraordinary step of testifying about political interference in criminal cases from “the highest levels of the Department,” namely by Attorney General William Barr. Zelinsky...

""I'm here to speak on behalf of the legacy of Charlotte Scott," said Marcia Cole, a member of the Female RE-Enactors of Distinction (FREED) who portrays Scott. FREED is an auxiliary organization of the African American Civil War Museum. "I understand there's a big campaign trying to raise money to either take it down or mend it, and I say 'no' on behalf of Ms. Charlotte," she said. "People tend to think of that figure as being servile but on second look you will see something different, perhaps. That man is not kneeling on two knees with his head bowed....

President Donald Trump launched his comeback rally amid a pandemic on Saturday by declaring that “the silent majority is stronger than ever before,” but what was meant to be a show of political force was instead met with thousands of empty seats and new coronavirus cases on his campaign staff. Ignoring health warnings, Trump went through with his first rally in 110 days in Tulsa, Oklahoma, one of the largest indoor gatherings in the world during a coronavirus outbreak that has killed more than 120,000 Americans, put 40 million out of work and upended Trump's reelection bid. Advertisement In the...

King viewed Boston as his second home. He had earned his doctorate at Boston University and met his wife, Coretta Scott, during his graduate studies in the city. King had returned to Boston many times to preach his message of nonviolence, shared prosperity and racial harmony. He was assassinated on April 4, 1968, while supporting a sanitation workers’ strike in Memphis, Tenn. In what became known as the Holy Week Uprising, riots broke out in more than 100 U.S. cities. Boston, though, remained peaceful because of the legendary James Brown concert at Boston Garden. Minor violence broke out in North...

BOSTON—A Harvard University professor pleaded not guilty on June 16 to charges that he lied to US authorities about his ties to a recruitment program run by the Chinese regime and funding he received from the Chinese government for research.Charles Lieber, the former chair of Harvard’s chemistry and chemical biology department, pleaded not guilty to making false statements during a video conference held before a federal magistrate judge in Boston.Marc Mukasey, his lawyer, said Lieber, 61, will fight the charges and that the “government has this wrong.”Lieber’s case is one of the highest-profile to emerge from a U.S. Justice...

Aubri Esters treated with compassion those whose lives many consider disposable, such as drug users she sometimes could save - and sometimes couldn’t. “I have lost a lot of friends to overdoses, many in front of my eyes,” she once said during an academic panel discussion as she pushed for safe injection facilities that could reduce risks for those coping with addiction. Informed by her own experiences using drugs and living on the streets, and fierce when necessary, she let her eloquent voice ring out in City Hall, on a state commission, and in groups advocating on behalf of those...

Abraham Lincoln Statue In Boston 'Has To Go,' Petition Demands The statue, located near the Boston Common, depicts a freed slave kneeling at Lincoln's feet while wearing shackles. By Neal McNamara, Patch Staff | Updated Jun 13, 2020 2:21 pm ET The Emancipation Memorial, also known as the Freedman's Memorial or the Emancipation Group, is sometimes referred to as the "Lincoln Memorial." The Emancipation Memorial, also known as the Freedman's Memorial or the Emancipation Group, is sometimes referred to as the "Lincoln Memorial." (Shutterstock/Dominionart) BOSTON — Statues across the nation are being toppled amid an uprising against racism following the...

Boston Mayor Martin Walsh announced this morning he is declaring racism a public health crisis and will transfer $3 million from the police overtime budget to help put his order in motion immediately. Walsh said there is a “new urgency” to erase racism in the city and added Boston’s budget for the coming year will reallocate a total of $12 million to programs for youth and more. That will start with the $3 million for the declaration.

Cannabis shops that were broken into during the last weekend of May in the wave of civil unrest following the brutal killing of George Floyd are reeling from the financial toll. Though several have said they supported the protests, the burglaries and looting perpetrated by a number of individuals has left some business owners worried about whether their operations can survive. Dispensaries were hit hard; Leafly reports that 43 businesses in California and Oregon were ransacked. Boston’s Pure Oasis — the first minority-owned adult-use dispensary on the East Coast — reportedly lost $100,000. Chicago’s Mission Dispensary South Shore was “mostly...

Boston’s Berklee College of Music is now apologizing for "perpetuating feelings of oppression, silencing, and marginalization” by allowing the city’s police officers to use its bathrooms. The school’s public safety department, in a Facebook post, said Boston Police have been staging officers near the institution since a May 31 demonstration in memory of George Floyd. This past Sunday, officials let the cops use the Berklee Performance Center’s restrooms after an informal decision was “made on the spot." “We have heard from many of you personally and across social channels of your hurt and anger that this access was permitted, especially...

Authorities are investigating after the head was removed from a statue of Christopher Columbus in Boston overnight. Boston police said officers responded to a report of the beheaded statue near the North End’s waterfront around 12:30 a.m. on Wednesday. According to police, officers located the head as well as “various pieces” of the statue at the scene near 110 Atlantic Ave.

City Councilor Andrea Campbell and minority police officer advocates are calling for an end to internal BPD tests they say are discriminatory, while discouraging calls of “defunding” police. The call for change comes as minority officers struggle for internal reforms.

BOSTON — As more people discuss and confront racism in the country, a group is renewing an effort to rename an iconic Boston landmark. New Democracy Coalition hosted a speak-out at City Hall Plaza Monday afternoon to call for Boston officials to change the name of Faneuil Hall. The group has pushed for a change in recent years because activists say the building's namesake, Peter Faneuil, was a slave owner and trafficker.

Exactly 123 years to the day that it was dedicated, the Shaw Memorial, a monument honoring the first all-volunteer black regiment of the Union Army in the Civil War, was defaced by rioters demanding justice for African-Americans. On May 31, 1897, the monument was erected on Boston Commons to honor the 54th Massachusetts Regiment of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, who bravely attacked Confederate forces at Fort Wagner. One of the soldiers, Sgt. William Harvey Carney carried the American flag throughout the battle, never dropping it despite being shot 7 times. Carney was the first black American to win the Congressional...

They were dressed head to toe in camouflage, but against the backdrop of one of the city’s toniest neighborhoods, it did little to conceal the troops that have lined the streets of Boston in recent days. Over by the Panera Bread on Boylston Street on Thursday, a handful of soldiers stood in their fatigues, one leaning against a black van, arm resting on the rifle slung over his shoulder. A block away, in front of an upscale women’s fashion boutique, a soldier sat on the hood of a massive military vehicle, feet dangling. And on Newbury Street — where the...