Boston News

• Lead law puts thrift stores in lurch
  A federal law designed to protect children from lead products has caused several Masschusetts thrift stores to stop selling kids' clothing, shutting off an important shopping alternative for families struggling in this recession.
• Tougher penalties sought in deaths
  Lawmakers proposed increasing the fine for corporations convicted of manslaughter from $1,000 to at least $250,000 yesterday as part of an overhaul of an antiquated law sparked by the 2006 fatal ceiling collapse in the Big Dig.
• Nature, abuse imperil a harbor island heritage
  Yellow fever was sweeping through terrified Boston in 1798. The sick - along with their disease-ridden beds, sheets, and belongings - were carried by boat to the rocky, windswept harbor island of Rainsford, where they were left, most likely to die, in the wards of a quarantine hospital. As they perished, hundreds were hastily buried in a nearby field.
• Winds of change blow through a neighborhood
  For 30 years, former House speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi represented the North End, not just as its legislative emissary on Beacon Hill, but as proud guardian of its Italian-American traditions.
• More officers to hit streets in plainclothes
  Goodbye Officer Friendly. Hello Serpico. This week, Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis reversed an edict he had issued just six months ago, requiring dozens of the department's plainclothes patrol officers to return to uniform. The order had been touted as a way of increasing police visibility on the streets and of making residents feel safer, key elem […]
• Stimulus deal deters city union concessions
  Mayor Thomas M. Menino has praised the federal stimulus package as an "unprecedented investment in America's cities," but in one respect it appears to be making it more difficult for the city to balance its budget for next year.
• Whoa! Neighbors fight horse farm
  WESTWOOD - Typically residents of idyllic towns like this one are known for fending off the big footprints of encroaching development to preserve their open fields and horse farms. Here, residents seem to be working with a doctored script. They're trying to block a horse farm.