Harvard

In the state's first decision involving juries and social media, the Massachusetts Appeals Court has called on judges to better police jurors' use of the Internet to make sure they do not discuss cases online, and thus risk a mistrial. The court said judges need to do more to explain to jurors that refraining from conversations about a case also means not posting anything about it on Facebook or Twitter, common practice in today's technology-driven world. "Jurors must separate and insulate their jury service from their digital lives," the court said in a ruling involving a Plymouth Superior Court...

The mother of a Cambridge man fatally shot inside a Harvard University residence hall in 2009 is suing the school and its officials, alleging that Harvard negligently allowed the mastermind of the killing to operate a "criminal enterprise" in the dormitory that resulted in the killing. Denise Cosby filed the wrongful death suit in Middlesex Superior Court last week, saying that the university and its officials failed to protect her son, ­Justin Cosby, 21. He was shot inside Kirkland Hall May 18, 2009, when a drug rip-0ff turned violent.

By Matt Pepin, Boston.com Staff and Jason Mastrodonato, Globe Correspondent Here's how the Harvard baseball team killed some time on the road during its Florida trip in March. The video, shot and uploaded to YouTube by pitcher Conner Hulse, features players getting down to the Carly Rae Jepsen song "Call Me Maybe," while traveling to play Bethune-Cookman. The players in the video (from left to right starting with the back row): Jack Colton, Jeff Reynolds, Steven Dill, Andrew Ferreira, Marcus Way, Kyle Larrow, Jon Smart, and Joey Novak.

In celebrating its 361st commencement today, Harvard University will reach back through the centuries to once again summon traditions deep and dear. Here is a look at some of the college's time-honored — and quaintly curious — graduation rituals. The Happy Committee Alumni just don't show up for the festivities and food. Members of the Committee for the Happy Observance of Commencement escort guests, dignitaries, and students at commencement; assist with the alumni "spreads," or lunches; and marshal the afternoon procession.

On a recent Friday morning, a classroom of teenagers at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School broke up into small groups and spent an hour not answering questions about Albert Camus's "The Plague. " It wasn't that the students were shy, or bored, or that they hadn't done the reading. They were following instructions: Ask as many questions as they could, and answer none of them. The kids wrote in rapid fire on sheets of butcher paper. "Why is everyone acting normal when people are dropping dead?"

Last Monday, leaders from Partners HealthCare System Inc. gathered in the dark-paneled office of Massachusetts House Speaker Robert DeLeo to lay out their objections to his expansive 278-page plan to tame health care costs. The House proposal, unveiled 10 days earlier, called in part for closer oversight of the prices and operations of hospitals and their physicians groups, especially more costly ones like those owned by Partners, and influential board chairman Jack Connors requested a meeting.

Of all the critical questions swirling in the public square this week - do we really have to live with Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren for the next five months, would it have been better if JPMorgan Chase just played blackjack with the $2 billion it lost - there is one issue that trumps all others. Who lies about a degree from Stonehill? The answer, of course, is Scott Thompson, the freshly ousted chief executive of the struggling Internet giant Yahoo. Stonehill, for those new to the area, is the quaint Catholic college in sleepy Easton, Mass.

Harvard University's president, Drew Faust, is posing a $100,000 challenge to students, asking them to find ways to solve big global problems. Enterprising undergraduate and graduate Harvard students who are interested in social issues will be eligible for the President's Challenge , a contest to create entrepreneurial solutions to global challenges, the university said yesterday. "This is an opportunity for students to pursue ideas that seem to be way out there, ideas that some people might dismiss as wacky," said Harvard's provost, Alan M. Garber.

E.O. Wilson is, by any available yardstick, one of the grand scientific figures of the second half of the 20th century. By the time he published his first book in 1967, Wilson, just 38 years old then, had already helped revolutionize the fields of physiology (with his discovery of pheromones) and ecology (with his research on island biogeography). Not bad for a myrmecologist — that's the technical term for someone who studies ants — from Alabama. As it turned out, he was just getting started.

In 1949, John Ashbery, then in his senior year at Harvard, came across a few poems submitted to The Harvard Advocate that moved him to befriend the junior who had written them: a young man named Frank O'Hara. The two college poets spent hours together by the banks of the Charles, discussing poetry, visual art, music, and philosophy, as spring deepened into summer. "We would see each other almost every day," Ashbery once reminisced. The friendship that they began at Harvard would continue in the decades to come, as both went on to great literary fame.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder told Harvard Law graduates he's not offended that he was the school's fourth choice for Class Day speaker, behind comedians Tina Fey and Jon Stewart, because the school wasn't his first choice either. Holder, who attended Columbia Law School, addressed students Wednesday as part of the school's commencement events. Joking aside, Holder told students he remembers the anxiety he felt upon graduating law school and entering an uncertain world.

(David L. Ryan/Globe staff) Fareed Zakaria to Harvard graduates: "When we come together, when we put aside petty difference, when we cooperate, the results are astounding. " By Johanna Kaiser, Town Correspondent Acclaimed journalist and author Fareed Zakaria told graduating Harvard University students on Thursday that the world is in the midst of an "astonishing age of progress" that they can help shape. "When we come together, when we put aside petty difference, when we cooperate, the results are astounding," Zakaria,...

Harvard University alumni attending their 50th class reunion this week are getting updates on classmates, but one person stands out among those sharing news about career moves, retirements and grandkids — Unabomber Ted Kaczynski. Kaczynski graduated in 1962 and is locked up in the federal Supermax prison in Colorado for killing three people and injuring 23 during a nationwide bombing spree between 1978 and 1995. In an alumni directory, he lists his occupation as "prisoner" and says his awards are "Eight life sentences, issued by the...

Jamie Oliver , the British-born "Naked Chef," who set out to turn around the Huntington, W. Va., school cafeteria program in the ABC series "Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution," and locked horns with the "lunch ladies," and who has done more to promote good children's nutrition than an army of nutritionists could, received the Healthy Cup Award from the Harvard School of Public Health Tuesday. The spirited chef, who turns 37 this weekend, was awarded an MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire)

In the midst of making history at the 1951 Amateur Athletic Union high school indoor nationals, Bob Rittenburg made a gesture that showed competition meant more to him than just filling a shelf with trophies. Mr. Rittenburg, a Boston Latin School senior from Dorchester, won gold medals in the high jump and 60-yard high hurdles, becoming the first Massachusetts track athlete to win two events at the nationals. But what he did behind the scenes in New York City's Madison Square Garden was reported by the Globe's John Ahern, who wrote that...

A two-day search for a missing Harvard University student came to a tragic end Tuesday when police divers recovered his body from Portland Harbor in Maine, a short distance from the waterfront Irish pub where Nathan Bihlmaier celebrated with friends before he disappeared. Just before noon, divers found his body on the harbor floor beside a wharf near the Ri Ra Irish Pub where Bihlmaier was last seen around 11:30 Saturday night. Authorities identified his body by his clothing.

Kelsey Beck was crowned Miss Boston at the Omni Parker House on Sunday night. She bested 10 other local women in the competition, which feeds into the Miss Massachusetts and Miss America pageants. Beck, who played the piano during the talent portion of the night, goes to Harvard and wants to be a lawyer who advocates for the elderly. By winning the Miss Boston title, Beck gets more than $7,500 in scholarships and prizes.

FOXBOROUGH - Years later, Mike Frey can't forget the sight, or the sound. The former left tackle at Harvard was watching his quarterback, Ryan Fitzpatrick, race toward the sideline with the ball in a 2004 game against Princeton. Zak Keasey, an All-America middle linebacker, was closing fast. But instead of taking the safe route and running out of bounds - the decision most quarterbacks would make - Fitzpatrick lowered his shoulder and charged the oncoming defender, helmets and pads colliding violently.

The Maine medical examiner's office says a Harvard Business School student's death was an accidental drowning. Nathan Bihlmaier (BILL'-mair) of Cambridge, Mass., went missing early Sunday after he was told to leave a waterfront bar for being visibly intoxicated. The 31-year-old's body was recovered from Portland Harbor by divers Tuesday, and the autopsy was conducted Wednesday in Augusta. Bihlmaier was last seen when he was asked to leave the Ri Ra Irish Pub where he was celebrating his upcoming graduation with two friends.

Ted Kaczynski — the domestic terrorist known as the Unabomber, who is serving life in prison for sending deadly mail bombs — will not be able to attend his 50th class reunion at Harvard College. But he did contribute a bizarre entry to the alumni report for the class of 1962. While many of his classmates sent in lengthy updates on their lives for the 2½-inch-thick "red book," the entry for Theodore John Kaczynski contains only nine lines. The listing says his occupation is "prisoner," and his home address is "No. 04475-046, US Penitentiary — Max,...