Barracks

The Vermont Attorney General's office says a former Vermont state trooper has been cited for assault. Eric. J. Howley of Wilmington will be arraigned on two counts of simple assault on June 12. Howley resigned from the Brattleboro barracks on Tuesday after having been on paid administrative leave since April 8 following a complaint about his conduct while he was on duty. The attorney general's office did not provide any details about the alleged assault on Thursday.

Suspected drug cartel gunmen opened fire on a hotel being used as a police barracks then attacked it with a car bomb Thursday, wounding eight officers less than 4 miles (6.5 kilometers) from the U.S. border, Mexican officials said. A Tamaulipas state official said authorities believed the Zetas cartel, one of Mexico's two most powerful criminal organizations, carried out the attack on the Hotel Santa Cecilia in Nuevo Laredo, a city across the border from Laredo, Texas. The Zetas, founded by Mexican special forces defectors, have carried out a number of sophisticated attacks, but...

FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. - Specialist Kaila Colvin is looking forward to getting married for the usual reasons, and for one more particular to a soldier: not having to live in Fort Campbell's decrepit barracks anymore. Specialist Loren Dauterman, who trained at Fort McCoy in Wisconsin last month with the National Guard, found something good to say about the falling-apart floors and ceilings in her quarters. "It is better than sleeping out in the woods," Dauterman said last week, "but not a whole lot better.

The Vermont Attorney General's office says a former Vermont state trooper has been cited for assault. Eric. J. Howley of Wilmington will be arraigned on two counts of simple assault on June 12. Howley resigned from the Brattleboro barracks on Tuesday after having been on paid administrative leave since April 8 following a complaint about his conduct while he was on duty. The attorney general's office did not provide any details about the alleged assault on Thursday.

The new Alexander Sokurov movie, "Alexandra," is like most of Sokurov's movies: far more beguiling than its title sounds. "Russian Ark," for instance, from 2002, was more than a walk around the Hermitage Museum. It was a choreographed waltz that elevated history into reverie. This time the surfaces are prosaic, too. He's sent an old woman named Alexandra Nikolaevna to visit her soldier grandson at a barracks during Russia's second war with Chechnya. But because the filmmaker is Sokurov, ever keen to bridge matters of the heart with the practice of art, this isn't just any old lady dropping in...

WARSAW - Polish and US officials are engaged in intense talks to determine the fate of a sensitive object: barracks that once housed doomed prisoners at the Nazis' Auschwitz death camp and are now on display at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Poland is demanding the return of the artifact, which has been on loan to the Washington museum for more than 20 years and is an important element in its permanent exhibition. But the US museum says the barracks should not be moved, partly because it is too fragile.

BY ALL reasonable measures, the old Army barracks at Devens is a perfect place to build housing. The barracks at Devens's Vicksburg Square sit near an active rail line, down the street from a growing cluster of jobs. Utilities are already in place. Building at Devens means putting a historic development back into productive use, instead of bulldozing forests to build far-flung subdivisions. It's exactly what planners envision when they talk about building smart. But this is Massachusetts, so reasonable measures don't apply.

COMAYAGUA, Honduras (AP) — Honduran officials confirmed Wednesday that 358 people died when a fire tore through an overcrowded prison, making it the world's deadliest prison fire in a century. With 856 prisoners packed into barracks, the farm prison in the Comayagua province north of the capital was at double capacity, said Supreme Court Justice Richard Ordonez, who is leading the investigation. Ordonez told The Associated Press the fire started in a barracks where 105 prisoners were bunked, and only four of them survived.

Suspected drug cartel gunmen opened fire on a hotel being used as a police barracks then attacked it with a car bomb Thursday, wounding eight officers less than 4 miles (6.5 kilometers) from the U.S. border, Mexican officials said. A Tamaulipas state official said authorities believed the Zetas cartel, one of Mexico's two most powerful criminal organizations, carried out the attack on the Hotel Santa Cecilia in Nuevo Laredo, a city across the border from Laredo, Texas. The Zetas, founded by Mexican special forces defectors, have carried out a number...

CHELSEA - Authorities have identified the man who was killed Wednesday when the motorcycle he was driving plunged 30 feet from an elevated portion of Route 1 in Chelsea down to the street below. State Police said in a statement yesterday that Cory White, 40, of Chelsea, was driving a 2001 Triumph motorcycle shortly before 7 p.m. when the bike went off the roadway and landed on Sixth Street. White was pronounced dead at the scene. His relatives could not be reached for comment yesterday.

A woman was indecently assaulted while biking on Memorial Drive in Cambridge Wednesday night, State Police said. The woman, 23, called police at 7:35 p.m. to report she was riding eastbound on Memorial Drive when a man on a bicycle came up and grabbed her buttocks from behind and then fled on his bike over the Boston University Bridge. Troopers searched the area but could not find the man, State Police spokesman David Procopio said. Police interviewed the woman at the Boston barracks and then drove her home.

State Police, elected officials, and relatives of Sergeant Douglas Weddleton gathered in Foxborough Tuesday to honor the trooper, who died in the line of duty in 2010, by dedicating the bridge at the Mansfield interchange of Interstates 495 and 95 in his honor. The bridge, which is near where Weddleton died, will now be known as the "Sergeant Douglas Weddleton Memorial Bridge," State Police said. "The Sergeant Douglas Weddleton Memorial Bridge is a concrete symbol, literally, to the strong, solid, devoted man we remember today," State Police Colonel Marian McGovern said.

Historic Vicksburg Square, the once-grand centerpiece of the Devens property, faces an uncertain future after last week's rejection of the latest bid to redevelop the abandoned barracks complex. Voters in Ayer and Harvard decisively defeated a proposal that would have converted Vicksburg Square into affordable housing targeted at military veterans and the elderly. Voters in Shirley, the third area community with a stake in the former Army base's redevelopment, approved the proposal.

After being part of a 20- to 30-man crew that closed the Salem Air Station in 1970, Edwin Merta never returned to the defunct Coast Guard base on Winter Island. Until Monday morning that is, when 15 retired Coast Guardsmen who were stationed there gathered at the old dilapidated hangar for an unofficial reunion and photo shoot. "I just about cried when I saw the condition of the facility," said Merta, 76, who flew in from Bellingham, Wash., after learning about the event only about two weeks ago. "We knew the city was going to get" the property.

The three towns bordering the former Fort Devens property will vote yet again Wednesday on whether to convert its historic and long-empty Vicksburg Square section into a centerpiece residential development. And this time, the stakes could not be higher. After spending two years trying to build local support, the project's developer, Trinity Financial, would pull the plug on its drive to turn historic barracks at the old Army complex into new apartments if voters in Ayer, Harvard, and Shirley reject the proposal, according to a company spokesman.

WARSAW - Polish and US officials are engaged in intense talks to determine the fate of a sensitive object: barracks that once housed doomed prisoners at the Nazis' Auschwitz death camp and are now on display at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Poland is demanding the return of the artifact, which has been on loan to the Washington museum for more than 20 years and is an important element in its permanent exhibition. But the US museum says the barracks should not be moved, partly because it is too fragile.

Governor Deval Patrick recognized three Massachusetts state troopers yesterday for bravery after they helped rescue a woman whose car had gone off a rain-slicked Interstate 95 in Danvers this week. The vehicle ended up in a ditch and was quickly surrounded by floodwater. Trooper Patrick Ahl of the Danvers barracks waded into the water, broke the passenger window, and pulled the woman out. Troopers David Martinelle and Robert O’Neil of the Newbury barracks also entered the water to help the woman to safety.

Connecticut troopers are urging people with wheelchairs they don’t use to donate them to charity at their local state police barracks this weekend. State police are helping the Bloomfield-based nonprofit organization Chariots of Hope collect used wheelchairs and cash donations across Connecticut from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday. Donations will be accepted at all state police barracks, except Troop W at Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks. It’s Chariots of Hope’s 13th annual collection event.

A Massachusetts state trooper pleaded not guilty to domestic assault and battery today after he was arrested early this morning for allegedly abusing his wife in their Brimfield home. Donald S. Pillsbury, 42, posted $250 cash bail after being booked at the Sturbridge barracks and appeared in Palmer District Court this afternoon, where he was told that he cannot drink alcohol, possess firearms, or commit any abuse will he awaits his trial. He will next appear in court March 20 for a pre-trial conference.

The U.S. Army says a soldier from New Hampshire found unresponsive in his barracks room in Fort Benning, Ga., was later pronounced dead. Twenty-two-year-old Spc. Matthew R. Woods of Lyman was found Sunday morning. Woods entered service Jan. on 13, 2009. He was a 2007 Lisbon Regional School graduate. Woods was in the 3rd Squadron, 1st Calvalry Regiment, 3rd Heavy Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division. He was deployed to Iraq during his time in the brigade. His death is under investigation.