Greater Boston Focus Series: Herbal Supplements

If you’re looking to lose weight, gain muscle, or just improve your overall health – there’s no shortage of pills and powders that promise to do the trick.  Dietary supplements are a booming business – operating out in the open – but with little oversight.  In part two of this week’s Focus report – we look at the debate over the risks and rewards of dietary supplements.  WGBH News Reporter Stephanie Leydon has this story.  Continue reading >>>

Greater Boston: MBTA Student Protests

For Boston-area teenagers who are too young to drive – or don’t have access to a car – the MBTA is crucial to connecting them with friends – or transporting them to after-school jobs.  As of July 1st – a monthly T pass for middle and high school students will cost 29 dollars – compared to 75 for a standard monthly pass.  But that lower rate comes with a caveat.  Student passes are only good on school days.    Now some youth activists are demanding a more flexible – less expensive monthly pass for riders 12 to 21 years old.  The group “Youth Affordability Continue reading >>>

Boston Finds Its Calling: The City’s Only Music Festival

While Boston isn't the biggest city in the country, it can claim to have a huge number of young people, if only for a part of the year. Every fall, hundreds of thousands of students flock to Beantown to attend one of the one hundred colleges and universities in the Greater Boston area, making the city primed and ready for fun.If those numbers are true, it doesn't seem to make sense that Boston is suspiciously devoid of big parties and music events. Sure, planning a big festival within any city's limits can be tough, but surely there is someplace open enough Continue reading >>>

Report: Arts Bring $1.4 Billion Annually To Greater Boston

The Arts can be a nebulous term, including everything from street performances to grand concerts,  fringe theater companies to big Broadway-bound shows, local artists dotting canvases to masters gracing museum walls. What’s no longer nebulous though—the arts are an economic engine.  A new report by the non-profit group ArtsBoston reveals the arts are a $1.4 billion annual industry in Greater Boston. That’s no surprise to developer and philanthropist Ron Druker.  “I think the reasons why we have new flights coming in from Dubai and from Bejing and from Istanbul and from Tokyo is not Continue reading >>>

14 Moments from Boston’s Commencement Season You May or May Not Want …

After weeks of repeated pomp and circumstance, commencement season has finally come to a ceremonious close here in the Hub. The tassels have been turned, mortarboards thrown and fuzzy platitudes dished out by semi-famous speakers who, more or less, followed a formula. The last month hasn't been without its headline-worthy moments, however, 14 of which we couldn't resist rounding up so you could relive the horror, and hilarity, of the celebratory season again and again. LL Cool J Became a Doctor Northeastern University awarded the rapper-turned-NCIS: Los Angeles star with an honorary degree Continue reading >>>

Greater Boston Focus Series: Steroid Use

Even to the untrained eye – it was clear. Jared Remy – now serving a life sentence for murder – was a voracious steroid consumer.  The son of famed Red Sox announcer Jerry Remy went from a normal looking teenager – to a bulky brute.  And while no OFFICIAL link has been made between Remy’s drug use – and his violent behavior – it led us to wonder whether the two could be connected.  Even Jared Remy’s father wondered the same thing – discussing his son’s steroid use on WEEI just two months before Jared Remy pleaded guilty to murder.    In this week’s Continue reading >>>

Tips pour in about torso on Sandwich beach

Tips have come in from all around Greater Boston about the torso found on a Sandwich beach Wednesday night, Cape and Islands District Attorney Michael O’Keefe said Sunday. Authorities are hoping to complete DNA tests on the remains by Monday, O’Keefe said. They then hope to construct a DNA profile of the victim and see if they can match that to records in a database. Continue reading below O’Keefe said state authorities have received numerous calls since asking for the public’s help identifying the body, which was found Wednesday night on Town Neck Beach wrapped in a tarp and strapped Continue reading >>>

Democratic Convention Will Be Big Test For Coakley

In this January 2014 photo, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley addresses a breakfast meeting of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce at a hotel in Boston. Coakley, a Democrat, is seeking the governor’s office in the 2014 election. (Steven Senne/AP) BOSTON — The Massachusetts Democratic Convention looms as the biggest political test for gubernatorial hopeful Martha Coakley since an ill-fated U.S. Senate campaign against Republican Scott Brown more than four years ago. Analysts say anything less than a solid showing by the current attorney general at next weekend’s Continue reading >>>