Bay State

Everyone at peace now? With everyone involved having obtained some sense of "mental peace" in the aftermath of Manny Ramírez's trade to the Dodgers, the Red Sox went about the business of moving on and welcomed the aptly named new guy, Jason Bay, to the Bay State in last night's 2-1, 12-inning victory over the Oakland A's. "Mental peace? Are you quoting Manny?" Sox manager Terry Francona asked in a moment of pregame jocularity. "Well, when we win games, that's when we feel better," Francona said.

By Jonathan Simmons, Guest Columnist Dave Watson, the director of MassBike, has been riding to work for the past six years. Dave used to be a practicing attorney. He also used to be 25 lbs. heavier. His weight loss secret? "I started riding my bike to work. " From both his experience as a bicycle commuter and the director of MassBike, Dave has witnessed huge changes in the Boston bike scene in the past six years. "The demographics have visibly shifted. In 2006 I noticed that many of the people who commuted were what I called super-commuters: older men wearing spandex on racing or...

One in a series of occasional articles looking at the careers and records of the Massachusetts candidates for US Senate. WASHINGTON - Scott Brown's frustration and dismay boiled over one September night, in a rambling speech on the Senate floor. Suffering from what he said was a bout of pneumonia and sipping from a glass of water, the Massachusetts Republican launched into an unfiltered tirade, a diatribe against the Democrats in power, against his critics, against partisan squabbling, against gridlock.

With the opening this week of the new Johns Hopkins Hospital, there's now a little bit of Massachusetts in Maryland. That's because the $1.1 billion building - one of the largest hospital projects ever undertaken in the United States - includes the Charlotte R. Bloomberg Children's Center, named for the longtime Medford resident whose son is New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a Hopkins alum and benefactor. (Charlotte Bloomberg died last June at the age of 102.) But that's not the only local connection.

Salem State awarded honorary doctorates to Dennis Drinkwater, founder and president of Giant Glass, and Molly Baldwin, founder and executive director of Roca during the university's 2012 graduate school commencement Thursday night. From left to right: Drinkwater, valedictorian Whitney Nelson - who received her master of education in school counseling - Baldwin, and Salem State President Patricia Meservey. Photo by Ryan Mooney By Ryan Mooney, Globe Correspondent The most common place to find Dennis Drinkwater this time of year is at Fenway Park, sitting...

The number of Massachusetts supporters contributing the maximum to President Obama's campaign fund has plunged nearly 50 percent compared with his 2008 fledgling run, reflecting a sharp drop in enthusiasm after the president's first term. The decline has forced Democrats to make up the difference with bigger contributions from fewer donors. Cash from an elite corps of Massachusetts backers has gushed into the Democratic National Committee, which has much higher contribution limits than the Obama campaign.

Consider this as you brace for a multimillion-dollar US Senate race this fall that hijacks the commercials amid your favorite TV shows, fills the newspaper, and is propelled by verbal barrages between Republican Scott Brown and Democrat Elizabeth Warren. With six months to go, only 5 percent of voters are undecided and able to be convinced by it all. That was one eye-catching finding overnight from the latest Suffolk University/WHDH-TV poll about the race. Brown and Warren were in a statistical tie, with the incumbent senator at 48...

By Jonathan Simmons, Guest Columnist Dave Watson, the director of MassBike, has been riding to work for the past six years. Dave used to be a practicing attorney. He also used to be 25 lbs. heavier. His weight loss secret? "I started riding my bike to work. " From both his experience as a bicycle commuter and the director of MassBike, Dave has witnessed huge changes in the Boston bike scene in the past six years. "The demographics have visibly shifted. In 2006 I noticed that many of the people who commuted were what I called super-commuters: older men wearing spandex...

HARRISBURG, Pa. - Before he was captured in Massachusetts, Adam Leroy Lane was drawing blood in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, authorities said. Police in central Pennsylvania filed a murder charge Wednesday against the North Carolina trucker accused of carrying out several violent attacks against women and a teenage girl along the East Coast last summer. Lane fatally stabbed Darlene Ewalt on July 13, 2007, while she was on the phone on the rear patio of her suburban Harrisburg home at 2 a.m., police said.

The world is yet to know Danny O'Connor, not at the level he hopes to be known, which would be to have his name up in lights, money in the bank, and a world boxing championship belt strapped around his hardened, tattooed belly. But for now, Danny O'Connor is just a guy with a dream, an infant son, a loving woman he plans to marry, and a hope that his fight Thursday night at the House of Blues is a first giant step in the right direction. Is a nightclub just beyond Fenway Park's center field wall finally where the world gets to know Danny?

Massachusetts' economy grew at more than double the pace of the US economy in the first three months of this year, largely due to the renewed strength of the state's high-tech sector, according to two reports issued Friday. Massachusetts saw gains in consumer confidence, spending, and business sales, particularly in the global semiconductor market, a bellwether for the state economy, while growth in the US economy eased largely due to declines in federal government and military spending.

Bay State blondes wowed the crowd at the Tribeca Film Festival on Wednesday night. Burlington's Amy Poehler attended the screening and party for the Emily Blunt-Jason Segel romantic comedy "The Five-Year Engagement," as did Pittsfield's own Elizabeth Banks, who stars in the soon-to-be-released "What to Expect When You're Expecting. " In other Tribeca Film Festival news, the Massachusetts film "Fairhaven" premieres on Friday. "Knuckleball!" the documentary featuring Tim Wakefield, will screen on Saturday.

WASHINGTON -- Massachusetts' Senators Scott P. Brown and John F. Kerry are lobbying the Navy to name a new warship after a Bay State war hero and longtime veterans advocate, in what would be a rare honor for a living person usually bestowed only on American presidents and other political leaders. Brown, a Republican, and Kerry, a Democrat, on Thursday urged Navy Secretary Ray Mabus to back a proposal to name a vessel after retired Navy Captain Thomas J. Hudner, a Fall River native.

Massachusetts is steeped in the American Revolution, but a commission has kicked off a campaign to commemorate the Bay State's contributions in the Civil War as part of the sesquicentennial of the conflict that pitted North against South. "The contribution of Massachusetts to the war effort was profound: The state provided more than 140,000 troops," Robert Wolfgang, a State House ranger and chairman of the Massachusetts Sesquicentennial Commission, said in a speech in the House chambers Monday, the 147th anniversary of the surrender of Confederate forces.

My overcrowded calendar in March had me attending a tech conference in San Francisco, dining in Manhattan with people who run "accelerator" programs for start-ups, meeting entrepreneurs and MBA students in Istanbul, and, back in Boston, speaking with trade representatives from Spain's Catalonia region. Leaving the neighborhood and collecting perspectives from other places is one good way to take the measure of the innovation economy here. So where does Massachusetts stand in 2012, as it tries to maintain - and build upon - its track record as a center of innovation in an...

A Massachusetts man is in custody in Colorado after allegedly arranging what he thought was a sexual tryst with a mother and her two underage children, when in fact he was corresponding with an undercover federal agent, court documents show. Yaron Segal, an Israeli citizen in his early 30s living in the Boston area, corresponded with the agent over email and by telephone for several weeks before traveling to Colorado on March 28 for an expected encounter with a mother and her children, who the agent said were under the ages of 16 and 12, according to the criminal complaint...

For many years, Massachusetts has enjoyed the unofficial title as the Education State. It is the mecca of American higher education with over 50 universities and colleges in the Boston area alone. Bay State K-12 students rank first in national reading and mathematics test scores. High school graduation rates may not be best in the country but with four in five freshmen receiving diplomas within four years, it is toward the head of the class and well above the national average.

This is the time of year when all the wonderful college students flock back to our fine metropolis, when the streets of Back Bay and the Fenway are clogged with so many vans, moving trucks, and Volvo station wagons that Boston becomes, for all intents and purposes, Mogadishu-on-the-Charles. If you think it's bad trying to negotiate your way down Bay State Road, that's nothing compared with standing in the middle of a U-Haul office, and that's where Joe Welch found himself the other day. Welch is a fine fellow, lives in Hingham, and two weeks ago went onto the U-Haul website to...

MANCHESTER, N.H. — Mitt Romney offered a tepid defense of the Massachusetts health care law, suggesting to an audience last night at the Granite State's first forum of the 2012 presidential campaign that he would sign it again if given the chance. "I went to work to try and solve a problem," Romney said. "It may not be perfect — by the way, it is not perfect. " The statement was in response to a question asked of the former Massachusetts governor after he delivered a short address that was equal parts patriotic fervor and attacks on President Obama's economic policies.

No one has to wonder where Mel Miller stands on the controversial question about the historic black Boston church and the big loan it failed to repay to the nation's largest black-owned bank. Miller thinks the Charles Street African Methodist Episcopal Church is pursuing a "bankrupt" strategy by aggressively resisting the collection efforts of OneUnited, the bank that extended the credit and now seeks to foreclose on the church. He thinks church officials should face up to their obligations more seriously.