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The Boston Globe

‘We made history’: Massachusetts low-income transit riders could soon see lower fares, similar to other states

The MBTA board of directors voted in favor of offering a reduced fare for adults with low incomes across its entire system.

MBTA to pay Chinese company another $148 million to get new Red and Orange Line cars by end of 2027

‘Country Roads’ lead to trouble for Woburn bar as ASCAP files copyright suit

The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers has accused Scoreboard Sports Bar and Grill of playing copyrighted music without paying royalties.

Forecast | Ken Mahan

Coastal rainstorm lets up this morning, leaving a strong breeze in its wake
The good news is the clouds will break apart. The bad news? It’s going to be windy.

Officials investigating after photo surfaces of Nantucket High students holding sign with ‘inappropriate racial slur’

“While this particular incident did take place outside of school hours, we are looking into the details, as it is having a large impact on our student body,” school officials said in a letter to families.

Harvard’s acceptance rate is 3.6 percent, a slight year-over-year uptick

Thursday was a big day for prospective students at the nation’s most prestigious universities, as thousands received offers and rejections from Ivy League campuses.

Milton fires back on state lawsuit over MBTA housing law

Town officials filed a response to Attorney General Andrea Campbell's lawsuit that challenges the validity of the ambitious housing law itself, and the attorney general’s ability to enforce it.

Cranes arriving to start removing wreckage from deadly Baltimore bridge collapse

Biden OKs $60M in aid after Baltimore bridge collapse as governor warns of ‘very long road ahead’

The coyote was backed into the corner of the fenced-in area and started to play dead.

Coyote that found its way to Beacon Hill is captured and released

The oldest argument on the North Shore: What is the North Shore?

Does it have to touch salt water? Is it simply everything north of Boston? Maybe it’s just a state of mind.

dan shaughnessy

FSG’s message to Red Sox fans seems to be ‘you walk alone,’ and other thoughts
After a demoralizing offseason, Boston baseball fans have every right to feel abandoned.

Rafael Devers was walking on air as he celebrated with Enmanuel Valdez after his two-run home run.

Red Sox 6, Mariners 4

Red Sox show plenty of spark and have some fun in Opening Day win over Mariners

Rafael Devers homered and Brayan Bello got the win, going five innings.

As office market struggles, Wu seeks commercial tax rate hike to bolster city budget
The mayor says falling commercial values could force the city to hike residential property taxes, or make painful cuts

In 2005, this downtown office tower sold for $121.7 million. It just resold for $78 million. After beam falls, construction resumes less than one week later at South Station Tower

Kara Baskin talked to several educators about what kind of AI use they’re seeing in classrooms and how they’re monitoring it.

PARENTING UNFILTERED

Is a robot writing your kids’ essays? We asked educators to weigh in on the growing role of AI in classrooms.

Kara Baskin used ChatGPT to plug in this prompt: “Write an essay on ‘The Scarlet Letter.’” Within moments, the software created an essay as thorough as anything she’d labored over in AP English. Is this cheating? Just part of modern life?

The exterior of the Ritz-Carlton Evrima with St. Lucia in the distance.

CHRISTOPHER MUTHER

At long last, a cruise ship designed for people who hate cruises

Maybe we should call it a "floatel." The Ritz-Carlton’s posh yacht is part of the first generation of hotel brands making the leap from land to sea.

Quarterback Drake Maye threw for NFL teams at North Carolina's Pro Day in Chapel Hill, N.C.

Patriots get an up-close look at quarterback Drake Maye at North Carolina’s Pro Day

Maye, who elected not to throw at the scouting combine, followed a 60-play script featuring a wide variety of throws — on the run, off platform, in the pocket, short, intermediate, long.

UConn is looking less like simply the No. 1 overall seed and more like an overwhelming favorite to win a second straight national title.

If possible, defending national champion UConn looks even hungrier to repeat

Of all the victories Dan Hurley and his Huskies have compiled this season — Thursday night’s No. 34 at TD Garden matched a school record — they just keep getting more impressive.

March Madness brings legions of fans, and big business, to bars around TD Garden

Erika Rumbley (right), director of horticulture, and a team installed the hanging nasturtiums at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum on March 27, an annual event marking the start of spring.

Nasturtiums make their brilliant annual debut at the Gardner Museum

The 20-foot vines, punctuated by vibrant orange blooms, cascade down the walls of the museum’s courtyard every spring.

Opinion

A French ad for the original PEZ candy marketed to adults as an alternative to smoking. The dispenser's resemblance to a cigarette lighter is unmistakable, though the company claims that the design was aimed at a more hygienic way of sharing candy.

IDEAS | OLIVER EGGER & ANABEL DEMARTINO

The surprising history of an iconic American candy

For anyone who has ever delighted in tilting back the head of a PEZ dispenser to release a sugar pellet that tastes vaguely of fruit but mostly of sugar, this story is for you.

No, DEI didn’t cause the Baltimore bridge collapse

Joan Wickersham

The tortoise, the hare, and the relentless polling

Steven C. Wofsy

Your laptop will soon fight climate change

Stopping Boston’s ‘doom loop’ means it must face its tax woes

More recent News

Warren, Markey seek information on Citigroup’s role in Steward transactions
The senators are focusing on a financial adviser that helped facilitate sale-leaseback deals involving hospital buildings.

Hawks 123, Celtics 122 (OT)

Hawks beat Celtics in overtime on Dejounte Murray's winning shot
The Atlanta star dropped 44 points on a career scoring night as Boston had no answers for him.

BLOTTER TALES

Cat gets stranded on a seawall, but help arrives just in time
A cat is rescued from a seawall, thieves steal used cooking oil, and other odd tales from local police and fire departments.

Teacher at Cambridge public school accused of raping two girls a decade ago
Jorge A. Bonilla, an elementary teacher in the Cambridge Public Schools, is under indictment for allegedly sexually assaulting two girls in 2013 and 2014, according to Middlesex District Attorney Marian T. Ryan and school officials.

Swansea police seek public’s help identifying a man who allegedly tried to lure two girls into his car

Around 2:45 p.m., a man who police believe to be “in his 60s” with gray hair and an average build approached two girls walking down a bicycle path on Milford Road to ask if they “wanted a ride,” according to Swansea Police.

Man arrested for allegedly setting Hawthorne Country Club in Dartmouth on fire in 2023, officials say

Shawn Medeiros, 31, is facing one charge of burning a building for allegedly setting the fire that left the country club on Tucker Road “a total loss,” officials said.

Recommended reads

The house on Sheep Pond Road recently sold for $600,000.

Its beach nearly gone, waterfront home on Nantucket sells for just $600k. What does the sale say about the island’s future?

The property was first listed in September for nearly $2.3 million. But after the shoreline lost a stunning 70 feet to erosion in just a matter of weeks, putting the home at imminent risk, the price plunged to $600,000 by year’s end.

‘Keep your filthy hands off Trump Tower!’ Possible seizure of Trump’s signature property hits him hard.
The former president has used the threat to his Manhattan skyscraper as a symbol of what he calls the unfair legal attacks on him and as a way to raise money for his campaign against President Biden.

WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH

Real women are still missing from the movies — the Bechdel Test proves it
“I only go to a movie if it satisfies three basic requirements,” one woman tells another in Alison Bechdel’s 1985 comic strip. In the wake of “Barbie,” the Bechdel Test has hit the mainstream.

Harvard University removes human skin used in binding of 19th-century book
The original owner, who died in 1933, took the skin from a deceased female psychiatric patient at a hospital where he worked, Harvard officials said.

Culture & Lifestyle

Boston Ballet's John Lam in Sabrina Matthews' "Ein Von Viel."

Boston Ballet announces its 2024-2025 season

From center to left: Lior Ashkenazi, Sam Woolf, Eva Feiler, and Amit Rahav as the Kurc family in "We Were the Lucky Ones."

A family driven apart in the shattering Holocaust drama ‘We Were the Lucky Ones’

Ronny Chieng plays four sold-out shows at the Wilbur this weekend.

Ronny Chieng finds the funny in being fed-up

Birds fly over a sign near the entrance of Mass MoCA in North Adams in 2017.

Topic: MassMoCA
Reporter: Malcolm Gay

Mass MoCA employees vote to ratify wage agreement, ending strike

Special Projects

Ashfield, MA 06/13//2023, At Sanderson Academy, books in a fourth-grade classroom.

Suzanne Kreiter\Globe staff

Lost in a World of Words

Learning to read is the greatest gift a school can give a child. And yet, in Massachusetts, outmoded teaching methods leave thousands of students struggling to gain this critical skill.

Beyond the Gilded Gate

People in and around Boston are being challenged, in ways never before, to address the region's unprecedented housing crisis.

stuart landing page illustration

Nightmare in Mission Hill

The story of how a murder in Mission Hill — the Carol Stuart shooting — terrorized and wounded a community of innocent people.

Boston, MA—12/14/2022 - Commuters wait for the T to arrive at Ruggles Station. (Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff)

Boston doesn’t work if the T doesn’t work

With the MBTA engulfed by issues, everyday riders are feeling the pain.

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Opinion, ideas, and commentary

Kevin "Prince" Works posed for a portrait in his Brighton apartment. Works struggled to live independently after aging out of the foster care system.

IDEAS | Shira Schoenberg

Cut loose at 18 and struggling into adulthood

Paul Grogan stepped down after almost two decades at the Boston Foundation, Jan. 27, 2020.

Paul Grogan looks back at an estimable career — and forward to the nonprofit future

The mass burial site in Izium, Ukraine, where over 400 bodies were recovered, Oct. 1, 2022.

The Ukraine-Russia war needs to end now, at the conference table

Luz Echeverry is paid as a personal care attendant to assist her mother, also Luz Echeverry, in Lawrence. The governor's proposed budget could restrict who is eligible for the home care program.

Governor Healey’s budget proposal threatens 50 years of disability rights

Dan Schneider, then Nickelodeon’s star producer, accepts a lifetime achievement award at the network’s Kids’ Choice Awards in 2014.

Child sexual abuse and the complicity of silence at Nickelodeon

Heather Hopp-Bruce/Globe staff; Adobe

Blueprints for a new downtown Boston

Metro

Cat gets stranded on a seawall, but help arrives just in time

A cat is rescued from a seawall, thieves steal used cooking oil, and other odd tales from local police and fire departments.

The oldest argument on the North Shore: What is the North Shore?

Does it have to touch salt water? Is it simply everything north of Boston? Maybe it’s just a state of mind.

Forecast | Ken Mahan

Coastal rainstorm lets up this morning, leaving a strong breeze in its wake

The good news is the clouds will break apart. The bad news? It’s going to be windy.

Coyote that found its way to Beacon Hill is captured and released

"They’re all over Boston,” said Dave Wattles, a state Division of Fisheries and Wildlife biologist. “There are coyotes that were born and raised, and lived their entire lives in the city."

Sports

Adam Duvall put up good numbers in an injury-shortened 2023 season but was not retained by the Red Sox; he signed with the Braves.

dan shaughnessy

FSG’s message to Red Sox fans seems to be ‘you walk alone,’ and other thoughts

After a demoralizing offseason, Boston baseball fans have every right to feel abandoned.

Rafael Devers was walking on air as he celebrated with Enmanuel Valdez after his two-run home run.

Red Sox 6, Mariners 4

Red Sox show plenty of spark and have some fun in Opening Day win over Mariners

Rafael Devers homered and Brayan Bello got the win, going five innings.

Seattle Mariners catcher Cal Raleigh can't get a tag on Boston Red Sox's Tyler O'Neill, who scored on a throwing error by Mariners third baseman Josh Rojas during the fourth inning of an opening-day baseball game on March 28 in Seattle.

Peter Abraham | On Baseball

For Openers, Tyler O’Neill sets a record in Red Sox debut

In addition to a home run, O’Neill drew a walk, stole a base, and scored a run in the fourth inning when an errant throw hit him in the helmet as he ran toward the plate.

ncaa tournament | Illinois 72, Iowa State 69

Illinois rides defense to take down Iowa State at TD Garden en route to first Elite Eight since 2005

ncaa tournament

UConn and Illinois will face off in the Elite Eight at TD Garden on Saturday. See how they got there.

If possible, defending national champion UConn looks even hungrier to repeat

Business

‘Country Roads’ lead to trouble for Woburn bar as ASCAP files copyright suit

The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers has accused Scoreboard Sports Bar and Grill of playing copyrighted music without paying royalties.

It’s a bittersweet Easter for chocolate lovers and African cocoa farmers but big brands see profits

Shoppers may get a bitter surprise in their Easter baskets this year

Sports betting won’t be legal in Georgia after lawmakers couldn’t agree on how to spend taxes

As office market struggles, Wu seeks commercial tax rate hike to bolster city budget

magazine

‘God, I wish I hadn’t seen that’: On the trail of Bigfoot in the Berkshires

Clockwise from top left: Flutist Nathalie Joachim; a scene from "Mrs. Krishnan's Party"; The Peony Dress, 2020, by Miss Sohee, from “Hallyu! The Korean Wave”; Attacca Quartet; Council; and Florence Welch.

30 top plays, concerts, book and arts events around New England this spring

Cooper Flagg, a 6-foot-9 basketball player from Maine, turned 17 in December and will not play his first minute of college basketball for months. But he's already captured attention from the basketball world, including NBA stars Jayson Tatum and LeBron James.

The NBA’s hottest prospect is a 17-year-old from Maine. Meet Cooper Flagg.

Time to embrace the sump pump. Flooded basements are the future of New England’s winters.

metro

A man tried to lure two 13-year-old girls into a four-door dark blue sedan that Swansea police said is possibly a Hyundai Sonata.

Swansea police seek public’s help identifying a man who allegedly tried to lure two girls into his car

Sutton magician sentenced to prison for child pornography distribution

Man arrested for allegedly setting Hawthorne Country Club in Dartmouth on fire in 2023, officials say

sports

There certainly were fireworks at Chase Field on Thursday night, as National League champion Arizona put on an offensive show to remember.

Flying start for Snakes: Diamondbacks post 14-run inning on Opening Day

Boston University advanced, but Maine and UMass did not. Follow along with more scores from the men’s NCAA hockey tournament.

Despite being idle, Bruins clinch eighth consecutive playoff berth

business

Home Depot is buying SRS Distribution, a materials provider for professionals, in a deal valued at approximately $18.25 billion.

Home Depot buying supplier to professional contractors in a deal valued at about $18.25 billion

4 takeaways about Boeing’s quality problems

Warren, Markey seek information on Citigroup’s role in Steward transactions

politics

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in 2020.

How Justice Thomas’s ‘nearly adopted daughter’ became his law clerk

Clinton, Obama join Biden for massive fund-raiser

Biden administration finalizes rule curbing use of short-term health plans

Nation

A demonstrator casts a shadow on a rainbow colored umbrella during a march to celebrate International Transgender Day of Visibility in Lisbon on March 31, 2023.

What to know about Day of Visibility, designed to show the world ‘trans joy’

Georgia lawmakers approve new election rules that could impact 2024 presidential contest

Former U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman and VP candidate to be remembered at hometown funeral service

World

In this image taken from video provided by eNCA, a bus carrying worshippers headed to an Easter festival plunged off a bridge on a mountain pass and burst into flames in Limpopo, South Africa, on Thursday, March 28, 2024, killing multiple people, authorities said.

A bus plunges off a bridge in South Africa, killing 45 people. 8-year-old child is only survivor.

Biden says Arab states ready to recognize Israel in future deal

Israel court freezes seminary funding in blow to Netanyahu

opinion

Demonstrators participate in a abortion-rights rally outside the Supreme Court as the justices of the court hear oral arguments in the case of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine on March 26, 2024 in Washington, DC. The case challenges the 20-plus-year legal authorization by the FDA of mifepristone, a commonly used abortion medication.

The conservative war on ‘agencies that protect us’

Child sexual abuse and the complicity of silence at Nickelodeon

Governor Healey should disclose her out-of-state trips in advance

lifestyle

Kara Baskin talked to several educators about what kind of AI use they’re seeing in classrooms and how they’re monitoring it.

Is a robot writing your kids’ essays? We asked educators to weigh in on the growing role of AI in classrooms.

The irony of Steve Martin’s life isn’t lost on him

King Charles stresses importance of kindness as he skips pre-Easter service amid cancer treatment

food & dining

Scoreboard Sports Bar and Grill in Woburn has been accused of playing copyrighted music without paying royalties.

‘Country Roads’ lead to trouble for Woburn bar as ASCAP files copyright suit

Fish Taco brings squid ink tortillas to Hanover Street; Boston Calling announces food lineup

At jam-packed June Bug, wood-fired pizza and more

travel

The exterior of the Ritz-Carlton Evrima with St. Lucia in the distance.

At long last, a cruise ship designed for people who hate cruises

Spring broke: Once there was a train in Spain — and I got booted off of it because of $7

Introducing the Shoreside Rooms in Maine and an e-pedal fishing boat

Arts

Raqib Shaw, Seeking Simurgh, 2018–19. © Raqib Shaw. Ovitz Family Collection, Los Angeles. (Raqib Shaw/White Cube/Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd.)

At the Gardner, the riotous maximalism of Raqib Shaw

Nasturtiums make their brilliant annual debut at the Gardner Museum

‘Hew Locke: The Procession’ featured in ICA Watershed’s 2024 season

Books

From left: "James" by Percival Everett and "Happy Place" by Emily Henry.

Local bestsellers for the week ended March 24

AGNI Magazine offers ‘Dispatches from Palestine’ online; Exeter LitFest takes place first weekend in April; and more

Author readings around Boston through April 6

Movies

Marlon Brando in "On the Waterfront."

Marlon Brando at 100

‘Godzilla x Kong’ = monster-movie mediocrity

Real women are still missing from the movies — the Bechdel Test proves it

Television

From left: Eiza González as Auggie Salazar, Jess Hong as Jin Cheng, Saamer Usmani as Raj Varma, Jovan Adepo as Saul Durand, and Alex Sharp as Will Downing in "3 Body Problem."

Hoping to see more of ‘3 Body Problem’

A family driven apart in the shattering Holocaust drama ‘We Were the Lucky Ones’

Martin Scorsese teams with Fox Nation to examine the lives of saints

music

Scoreboard Sports Bar and Grill in Woburn has been accused of playing copyrighted music without paying royalties.

‘Country Roads’ lead to trouble for Woburn bar as ASCAP files copyright suit

For Boston String Academy students, practice makes progress — all the way to Carnegie Hall

Boston Youth Symphony Orchestras fetes new home base

Theater/Dance

Kalyani Nagarajan (right) and Justin Rogers in "Mrs. Krishnan's Party."

At ‘Mrs. Krishnan’s Party,’ the hostess is at her most-est

In Anthony Rapp’s ‘Without You,’ there’s joy inside his tears

How Bobby became Bobbie in the gender-reversed revival of ‘Company’

Health

Roger Williams Medical Center in Providence, R.I.

Centurion Foundation was the ‘only viable’ buyer for Roger Williams, Fatima hospitals, CEO says

Agent Orange exposure damages the brain in ways similar to Alzheimer’s disease, new study says

R.I.’s largest hospital system may no longer take Cigna health insurance

Obituaries

Children’s books author Kate Banks in an undated family photo.

Kate Banks, children’s author who wrote about grief, dies at 64

Daniel P. Jordan, transformative leader of Monticello, dies at 85

Ramona Edelin, who advocated for using the term ‘African American,’ dies at 78