Mystery

With the blink of an LED sign, the Silver Line at Logan Airport has, finally, entered the late 20th century. Where do I stand? Is it really coming? Where does it go? All of those questions are now answered by a display sign counting down the minutes until the arrival of the next bus outside Terminal C, with more signs to follow at other terminals. That should demystify a ride that costs $2 ($1.70 with CharlieCard) and reaches South Station in 14 minutes - take that, LaGuardia; how do you like me now, O'Hare?

It was all sunshine, smiles and celebratory speeches as officials marked the arrival of an undersea fiber-optic cable they promised would end Cuba's Internet isolation and boost web capacity 3,000-fold. Even a retired Fidel Castro had hailed the dawn of a new cyber-age on the island. More than a year after the February 2011 ceremony on Siboney Beach in eastern Cuba, and 10 months after the system was supposed to have gone online, the government never mentions the cable anymore, and Internet here remains the slowest in the hemisphere.

LANDRUM, S.C. — The author who wrote 29 books in the “The Cat Who …’’ mystery series almost quit writing after the third book was published, because popular tastes had changed so much. Lilian Jackson Braun, who died last week in South Carolina, took an 18-year hiatus between “The Cat Who Turned On and Off’’ and “The Cat Who Saw Red,’’ published in 1986. She resumed because her husband encouraged her to return to writing after she retired from The Detroit Free Press in 1984.

Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan says his superstar son and daughter-in-law have named their baby girl Aaradhya. Speculation about the baby's name had swirled since she was born Nov. 16 to actors Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, a L'Oreal spokeswoman and former Miss World. The proud 69-year-old grandfather — referred to in Bollywood as "The Big B" — had been calling the baby "Beti B," using the Hindi word for "daughter. " On Sunday, he confirmed rumors that "Her name is Aaradhya," following a question from a fan on social networking site Twitter.

Framingham and State Police are trying to unravel the mystery of Nicholas Russo, a 21-year-old Hopkinton man who was found bleeding and unconscious on a Framingham street Tuesday afternoon. Russo was found near the corner of Elda and Eleanor roads at about 2 p.m. Police said he had a large laceration to his head. His injuries were so serious he was transported by medical helicopter to Boston Medical Center. Police are looking for two individuals who were in a tan vehicle that was spotted in the residential neighborhood at about...

Tired of traditional holiday fare, from "The Nutcracker" to "A Christmas Carol"? Tired, even, of the neotraditional anti-holiday fare, from "The Santaland Diaries" to, oh, staying home with a DVD of "Bad Santa"? Then you'll find yourself in good company at the Lyric Stage, where producing artistic director Spiro Veloudos has solved the December programming dilemma with a little counterintuitive counterprogramming of his own: "The Mystery of Irma Vep. " Charles Ludlam's high-camp Gothic pastiche has absolutely nothing to do with Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Solstice, or any other end-of-year...

Carl Pettersson might not be a "mystery Swede" much longer. Unknown even by the Swedish Golf Federation until a few years ago, Pettersson continued to make it look easy at Mirasol in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., yesterday with a 4-under-par 68 that gave him a three-shot lead in the Honda Classic, the largest 36-hole margin on tour this year. "I've never had a 36-hole lead," Pettersson said. "We'll see what happens. " He was at 13-under 131, three shots ahead of Brad Faxon and Todd Hamilton, who each shot 66. Fredrik Jacobson of Sweden had a 69 and was at 8-under...

NARRAGANSETT, R.I. -- A body discovered off Point Judith yesterday was identified as one of the three University of Rhode Island students who disappeared in March, the state medical examiner's office said. The body of Daniel Donahue, 20, of Glocester, was spotted about 100 yards offshore from the Point Judith lighthouse at about 8:30 a.m. by a fisherman. The fisherman informed the Coast Guard, who retrieved it. Helen Drew, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Health, said an autopsy to determine the cause of death is under way. She could not say when results would be available.

The Thirteenth Tale , By Diane Setterfield, Atria, 416 pp., $26 True book lovers are a breed apart. We're the ones who mark important occasions by what we are reading, and who recall our childhood through our favorite titles. Diane Setterfield seems to be such a person, with a passionate attachment to such romantic classics as "Jane Eyre," "Wuthering Heights," and "Rebecca. " Her heroine, the tome-loving Margaret Lea, certainly is. Raised in a rare-book store, Margaret is a minor biographer, writing brief academic studies of almost-forgotten bookish personalities somewhat like...

What happens to Adrien Brody in "The Jacket" shouldn't happen to a dog. It probably wouldn't happen to a dog or PETA would slap the producers with a lawsuit. Oscar-winning stars seeking that next jolt of career juice, on the other hand, can take a little abuse. Playing Gulf War soldier Jack Starks, Brody is: shot in the head by an adorable Arab tyke; nearly buried alive; left with retrograde amnesia; shipped home to Vermont, where he hitches a ride with a sleazebag who frames the poor, woozy sod on a cop-killing charge; railroaded into a mental institution that appears to...

Framingham and State Police are trying to unravel the mystery of Nicholas Russo, a 21-year-old Hopkinton man who was found bleeding and unconscious on a Framingham street Tuesday afternoon. Russo was found near the corner of Elda and Eleanor roads at about 2 p.m. Police said he had a large laceration to his head. His injuries were so serious he was transported by medical helicopter to Boston Medical Center. Police are looking for two individuals who were in a tan vehicle that was spotted in the residential neighborhood at about...

ROME - Forensic police swarmed the crypt of the Sant'Apollinare basilica on Monday to exhume the body of a reputed mobster as part of an investigation into one of the Vatican's most enduring mysteries: the 1983 disappearance of the teenage daughter of one of its employees. Medical technicians took samples from the remains of Enrico De Pedis and also took boxes of old bones from the nearby ossuary, according to a De Pedis family lawyer, as part of the investigation into whether Emanuela Orlandi may have been buried alongside him. Orlandi was 15 when she disappeared in 1983 after leaving...

A mysterious benefactor in Paris is spreading love, cash and hair appliances along a rugged stretch of New Zealand. Police are baffled by at least four packages that have been sent from different Paris addresses to residents of the South Island's sparsely populated West Coast. They contain either a hair dryer or hair clippers plus a sum of money — either one hundred New Zealand dollars ($78) or one hundred euros ($128). Two of the packages came with identical handwritten notes: "Thanks for being a true friend.

After combing through some of golf's meaningless statistics, this might be the best explanation for how Matt Kuchar won The Players Championship: He didn't empty all of his golf balls into the water when he played the island-green 17th hole in the final round. He was really on his game last week. He shot the lowest score. Golf is impossible to predict as it is. Throw in the mystery that is the TPC Sawgrass, and there's no telling who beats the strongest and deepest field in golf.

A postal worker says a mysterious leaking package from Yemen has left him seriously ill, but the U.S. Postal Service denies the package ever existed. The Florida Center for Investigative Reporting, in a story printed in Sunday's Miami Herald and The Ledger of Lakeland, reported ( http://hrld.us/M9QapW) that Jeffrey A. Lill suffers from extreme fatigue, tremors, and liver and neurological problems. The symptoms are consistent with toxic exposure, problems that he said began after he handled the leaking package on Feb. 4, 2011.

(Globe Staff file photo / By David L. Ryan) Could there be a monster living beneath the serene waters of Jamaica Pond? By Matt Rocheleau, Town Correspondent State officials released some 1,150 fish into Jamaica Pond last month, saying the bounty would feed the imaginations of local anglers as winter gives way to spring. However, some speculate that the annual hefty stock of trout and salmon could feed a different hunger: a mysterious monster that lurks beneath Boston's largest body of freshwater.

Only a writer as self-assured as Carolyn Parkhurst could begin a novel with the line, “There are some stories no one wants to hear.’’ She returns to a familiar subject in her third novel, “The Nobodies Album,’’ an ingenious, intricately structured story about the power of grief. In her wonderful first novel, the eccentric, best-selling “The Dogs of Babel,’’ a grief-stricken linguist attempts to teach his Rhodesian Ridgeback to talk so that the dog, the only witness to his wife’s mysterious death, can explain what happened.

THE SWERVE: How the World Became Modern By Stephen Greenblatt Norton, 356 pp., illustrated, $26.95 At the center of Stephen Greenblatt's dazzling new book, "The Swerve: How the World Became Modern," is a hero: Poggio Bracciolini (1380-1459 CE), "[a] short, genial, cannily alert man [who] reached out one day, took a very old manuscript off a library shelf, saw with excitement what he had discovered, and ordered that it be copied. " It may not sound heroic, but "behind that one moment was the arrest and imprisonment of a pope, the burning of heretics, and a great culturewide explosion of interest in...

LOUISVILLE - The bourbon had been stashed away and the hats returned to closets by the time someone found a groomer's body inside a barn at Churchill Downs, hours after the running of America's most famous horse race. Other workers on the backside of the track - a different world from the pageantry seen on race day - were left to wonder if a killer was among them: Why did someone want 48-year-old Adan Fabian Perez dead? How was the Guatemala native killed? And why did his killer leave him in a barn, a few stables away from where I'll Have Another would bask in the glory of winning the Kentucky...