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Matt McDonald, a Boston-area native, has decades of experience as a reporter, editor, and copy editor. His work has appeared in The Mashpee Messenger, Cape Cod News, and The Norfolk Boomerang.
Around New England
The city council of Belfast, Maine has voted not to allow the mayor to speak on behalf of the council after she implied in a local newspaper that councilors have reacted to her with "sexism, ageism and bigotry." Samantha Paradis, 27, who was elected mayor in November 2017,
Around New England
When Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker signed a bill earlier this month requiring that civics be taught in public schools, it was only after language was added designed to prevent political bias from becoming part of the instruction. Will that be the reality?
Around New England
Harvard University offers no paid staff to assist and advise graduate students who are homosexual, bisexual, or transgender and also doesn't sponsor events for them, activists say. The crisis became apparent to a doctoral student last May when she sat at a table for a student fair as
News
Massachusetts drivers rarely see civilian flagmen to direct traffic at road construction projects because state law ensures that they're not much cheaper than hiring cops, a new Pioneer Institute report says. A civilian flagman costs $43.44 an hour, far above the national average of $28.89, according
Around New England
St. Anne's Shrine, a spectacular double-spired granite church in Fall River built by French-Canadians in the 1890s and early 1900s, closed Sunday with a final Mass celebrated by the bishop of the diocese. The upstairs closed in 2015 because of failing plaster, and a recent study found it
Around New England
Fourteen employees of the Massachusetts Department of Corrections killed themselves between 2010 and 2016, according to state officials – a suicide rate about six times the state average. A state commission is reviewing suicide prevention programs and trying to come up with ways to make mental health services more available to
Around New England
Brown University students chanted and sang to protest an appearance by Tom Perez, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, because he supports allowing political action committees of oil companies and other fossil-fuel providers to donate money to the Democratic Party. One student said his family had to leave the African
Around New England
Kindergarteners and first-graders in the north central Massachusetts town of Orange have been attacking other students, threatening teachers, and causing evacuations of the school, parents said. About 30 parents and teachers took about an hour and a half during the Orange School Committee meeting last week describing incidents like stabbing