Affair

Facebook was supposed to soar. Instead, it plunged. After the social network's stock fizzled on Friday in its long-awaited debut, its stock fell 11 percent on Monday, even as the rest of the stock market rallied. The downward spiral has left some people sitting on big losses, and others scratching their heads. After all, nothing fundamental has changed at Facebook in the days since the much-hyped company came to the stock market — Facebook still has more than 900 million users, its 28-year-old founder Mark Zuckerberg controls the company, and it is still one of the few...

No matter what high school season it is, Lauren Ramirez is training for softball. In addition to playing field hockey and basketball, the Dracut junior spends her softball offseason training at Planet Fastpitch, committing hours to pitching and hitting. Her dedication to softball has paid off this season, as Ramirez has propelled the No. 1 Middies to a 12-1 record while throwing two no-hitters. Softball seems to run in the Ramirez family. Lauren's younger twin sisters, Allison and Shannon, also start for the Middies, and their father Ray is the assistant coach.

Am I the only woman over 50 who didn't sleep with JFK - or at least claim to have slept with him? The latest kiss-and-tell memoir comes nearly half a century after the president's death: "Once Upon a Secret: My Affair With President John F. Kennedy and Its Aftermath" by Mimi Alford. In 1962, Mimi Beardsley was a 19-year-old White House intern when, as she tells it, she was picked out of the press-office pool to have sex with the president when Jacqueline Kennedy was out of town.

GREENSBORO, N.C. - Another former close aide to John Edwards testified Thursday about bungled efforts to keep the former presidential candidate's affair hidden from staff members, including an awkward encounter when the woman showed up at a hotel weeks after her work filming Edwards had ended. For months in 2006, John Davis said that staff members had been concerned that Rielle Hunter, the woman hired as a videographer, was becoming too close to Edwards. For example, while other staff members called him Senator Edwards, Hunter called him Johnny or John, Davis said.

LONDON -- Monica Lewinsky begs to differ. The former White House intern scorned Bill Clinton's explanation that he had an affair with her "just because I could," and accused the former president of failing to correct the record and make clear their relationship was mutual in his new memoir. In her first public comments on the book, "My Life," Lewinsky accused Clinton of trying to destroy her with his characterization of the affair as something dirty and wrong, and argued the liaison was one of mutual affection.

LAS VEGAS - Senator John Ensign of Nevada, a leading Republican mentioned as a potential presidential candidate, admitted yesterday that he had an extramarital affair with a woman who was a member of his campaign staff. “Last year I had an affair. I violated the vows of my marriage,’’ Ensign said at a brief news conference in his home state. “It is the worst thing I have ever done in my life. If there was ever anything in my life that I could take back, this would be it.’’ An aide in Ensign’s office said the affair took place between December 2007 and August 2008...

MINNEAPOLIS -- Barry Tallackson made sure his final season as a Golden Gopher didn't end prematurely, scoring in overtime yesterday to give Minnesota another berth in the Frozen Four. The senior's goal at 4:31 of the extra frame gave Minnesota a 2-1 win over Cornell in the West Regional championship. Tallackson's initial shot was stopped by goalie David McKee, but the wing lifted the rebound past McKee's glove. The Gophers (28-14-1) join fellow Western Collegiate Hockey Association members North Dakota, Colorado College, and Denver in the Frozen Four, marking the first time that four...

PORTLAND, Ore. -- Days before a weekly newspaper was planning to break the story, former governor Neil Goldschmidt admitted having a sexual relationship with a 14-year-old girl in the 1970s, when he was mayor of Portland. Goldschmidt, 63, stepped down from two major jobs Thursday and issued a public apology. It was a sudden, shocking end to the career of a man known as a political rainmaker in Oregon. He also had been a top executive at Nike and transportation secretary under President Carter.

ATLANTA - Georgia’s powerful House speaker resigned yesterday after a suicide attempt and allegations by his former wife of an affair with a lobbyist. Glenn Richardson, the state’s first GOP speaker since Reconstruction, had won sympathy from even his political enemies when he revealed last month that he attempted suicide by swallowing sleeping pills. But then his former wife went on television and accused him of having “a full-out affair’’ with a lobbyist while they were married.

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum celebrated the opening of its new, multimillion-dollar wing last night with a black-tie bash. The first of several parties to fete the fabulous renovation by iconic architect Renzo Piano, last night's affair was invite-only, a preview for the museum's biggest donors and patrons. Design Collaborate's Jennifer Wheaton handled the arrangements, which included a champagne-flavored doughnut in guests' valeted cars to be enjoyed on the ride home.

GREENSBORO, N.C. — A former adviser to John Edwards recounted Wednesday how the former presidential candidate's now-deceased wife confronted her husband, baring her chest in front of staff members the day after a tabloid reported that he was cheating on her. During a session that saw Edwards's daughter leave the courtroom in tears, Christina Reynolds described how Elizabeth Edwards stormed away from her husband, then collapsed. She returned to confront her husband again. In front of several staff members, the woman who had endured treatments for breast cancer took off...

The Massachusetts Office of Consumer Affairs said Monday that it has been notified of data breaches affecting nearly 3.12 million people since late 2007 and Sept. 30 of last year. The vast majority of those breaches involved the loss of electronic information, such as Social Security or credit card numbers, and one reason why such information was so vulnerable was that it was often not properly encrypted, the office said. What happens in many cases is that a portable computer device is either lost or stolen.

Once upon a time? How about thrice upon a time? Why not admit we've lost count? The movies are in love with fairy tales again. "Mirror Mirror," a playful revamp of "Snow White" with Lily Collins as the heroine and Julia Roberts cracking wise as the Evil Queen, opens this Friday. Directed by the eccentric visionary Tarsem Singh Dhandwar ("The Fall"), the movie has won the battle of the competing bedtime stories, with "Snow White and the Huntsman" waiting until June 1 to hit theaters.

For Canton's Rooneys, getting back to Garden Hockey is a common thread at the Rooney residence in Canton. So, too, is taking the ice at TD Garden. Chris Rooney, a junior forward at Providence College, laced up his skates for the first time at the Garden on Saturday night in the Hockey East semifinals. The Friars were eliminated with a 4-2 loss to Boston College, the No. 1 team in the nation. His older brother, Joe, a 2007 graduate of Boston College, played at the Garden as a collegian.

With the exception of old-fashioned petting zoos, typically when young children reach out to touch "wild" animals, adult reactions range from annoyance to fear. At the New England Wildlife Center in Weymouth, that sight is greeted each week with smiles and encouraging cheers from both parents and staff members. The center itself is 28 years old, but it's been in its state-of-the-art, three-story "green" building on Columbian Street only since 2006. Wounded and abandoned wild animals are treated there.

RE "LIMBAUGH aside, JFK tale is latest outrage in sexual politics" (Letters, March 9): How can Valerie Landry judge Mimi Alford as "abused"? Mimi Alford's complicity in her affair with President John F. Kennedy was indulged; her refusal to continue respected. In the reviews and interviews and book, she never claims to have been abused, and restates her age ad infinitum. I doubt she'd be the grand marshal in a parade in Southie leading a contingent of those who have had sex with JFK, but she wrote out of her need.

LOS ANGELES — Neva Patterson, who played Cary Grant’s fiancee in the 1957 classic “An Affair to Remember,’’ has died. She was 90. Her daughter, Megan Lee, told the Los Angeles Times that Ms. Patterson died Tuesday at her home in the Brentwood area of Los Angeles. She suffered complications from a broken hip. Ms. Patterson already was a Broadway veteran when she was cast to play Lois for the Cary Grant movie. She originated the role of Helen Sherman in the 1952 Broadway play “The Seven Year Itch.’’ Her career in movies and TV ran...

Baseball analyst Steve Phillips has been fired by ESPN after admitting to an affair with an assistant at the cable network. ESPN spokesman Josh Krulewitz said last night the network determined Phillips’s ability to be an effective analyst was “significantly and irreparably damaged.’’ Phillips’s acknowledgment Wednesday of his relationship with 22-year-old Brooke Hundley was splashed across the New York tabloids for days, embarrassing the...

Jewish Family & Children's Services President Jackie Weinstein (left) and CEO Rimma Zelfand were just two of the guests dressed to impress at the organization's black-tie benefit over the weekend. The event, which was held at the Westin Waterfront, drew about 400 guests and 150 young professionals who showed up for late-night dessert and dancing.

Q.I have been married for five years, and a few months ago, while I was nine months pregnant with our second child, my husband slept with another woman. I was made aware of the affair when I found a note from the woman in his work bag written on hotel stationery. I confronted him, and he admitted to the affair. He had met the woman a few months earlier, while attending a conference for work. They kept in touch, and by coincidence (he claims) they were both in New York on business trips at the same time.