Corps of Engineers gets new commander

Colonel Charles Samaris was ushered in as the new commander of the New England District of the US Army Corps of Engineers during a ceremony yesterday at Faneuil Hall. Samaris is a Methuen native who recently served as the Senior Service College Fellow in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Security Studies Program. He twice served in the Persian Gulf. Yesterday’s change-of-command ceremony is part of military tradition designed to emphasize the continuity of leadership despite changes in individual authority in the six-state New England region (AP)