Water

After years of suffering from chronically inflamed and infected sinuses, I finally decided I'd had enough. I chose to do what 500,000 other Americans do every year - have sinus surgery. It wasn't an easy decision. I had to balance my need for a fix against my fear of surgery and research that raised questions about the procedure. I was miserable. My sinuses, those supposedly hollow spaces around the nose, had become clogged by scar tissue and the build-up of thickened mucus from decades of infections and inflammation.

The Massachusetts Department of Public Health has issued an advisory warning residents to avoid contact with Lake Attitash waters as a bloom of cyanobacteria, also known as blue-green algae, runs its course. The advisory began after a May 7 sample showed excessive levels of cyanobacteria, and will be continued until consecutive test samples show levels below the recommended threshold. The algae is capable of producing toxins that may be harmful to humans and pets. Beachgoers and boaters are warned not to swallow or rinse off with water containing the algae blooms.

The Mashpee Wampanoag tribe would make approximately $33 million in upfront payments to Taunton as part of a deal reached with the city's mayor to allow the tribe to build a resort casino in the southeastern Massachusetts community. The agreement announced Thursday by tribal chairman Cedric Cromwell and Mayor Thomas Hoye also calls for minimum annual payments of about $13 million to the city. The tribe has proposed a $500 million casino on 146 acres of land at the junction of Routes 24 and 140. The complex, to be built in stages over a five-year period, also would include three...

CAMBRIDGE — Two-year-old Verastem Inc., which raised $55 million in an initial public offering in late January, was one of the first biotechnology start-ups in years to take its shares public before its drugs had entered clinical trials, a coup in an era of skeptical investors. Four months later, as executives on Tuesday remotely rang the opening bell on the Nasdaq exchange from their research lab in Cambridge, the company's shares were buffeted by the volatile stock market as Verastem adjusted to life as a newly public company.

Mitt Romney is on a charm offensive. He took reporters' questions after a campaign rally Thursday instead of keeping them at bay. He brought them warm chocolate chip cookies for the flight from Jacksonville to Palm Beach, Fla. After he got off the plane, he walked over to show reporters a picture of his 5-year-old grandson, Parker. It was "wild hair day" at school and the grandfather of 18 had to share what had just come into his iPad. "You know how he did that? With Elmer's Glue and egg whites.

Repairs to the aging Sagamore Bridge during the spring have slowed traffic leaving Cape Cod to a crawl most nights and backed it up for miles on Sundays, culminating in a Mother's Day morass when the stalled line of cars stretched past multiple exits on Route 6 and triggered all-day gridlock on nearby Route 6A. "Whoever conceived of this plan should be fired," said Anne Kilguss, a Boston social worker and psychotherapist with a second home in...

DERRY, N.H. -- Try to imagine New England's earliest sawmills. They were called "pit saws," they required two men to operate, and they got their name because one man stood above a hole over which a log was laid, while another -- the "pitman" -- stood below it. Each held the end of a long saw blade, and the pitman's job was to pull the saw downward, which supplied most of the blade's cutting power. It was dirty, dangerous, laborious work, especially for the man in the pit, who was at constant risk of the log falling on him, and who endured a steady shower of...

Fifth in an occasional series profiling US Olympic hopefuls training for the Summer Games in London. It's not as though he was the first guy to splash around in Walden Pond. Henry David Thoreau paddled across it, generations of skinny-dippers have immersed themselves, and triathletes train there. But when Alex Meyer does his extended up-and-backs at the Concord swimming hole, he eventually attracts a cadre of the curious. "They'll look at me like I have two heads," said the 23-year-old Harvard graduate.

I assumed I had seen it all with Liberty Mutual. Once you learn about the chief executive's $50 million-a-year compensation package, the fleet of corporate jets, the $90,000 flights to Hawaii, the tens of millions of dollars for senior managers, the board of directors that doesn't feel the need to utter one public word of explanation, what more can there be? But as we've seen, there's always more, a fact that was never more apparent than when I was flipping through a mound of permit applications, building records, and engineering drawings on file in the Boston Inspectional...

When the shouts and the screams faded away and she was alone out on the water where the rip current had carried her, Cheryl Dyment thought back to what she'd been taught in swimming lessons years earlier. The teenager lay on her back and floated. The sun made the water sparkle like diamonds, and she could see the curvature of the earth. "I can smile when I think about it. [Floating] was a beautiful thing. I never felt scared; I never felt panicked. I was just appreciating being in the moment, I guess.

The water division has implemented the first phase of its water restriction program, which allows for odd/even watering, based on house numbers and calendar days. Watering by sprinklers is limited to 5 to 9 a.m., and 5 to 9 p.m. Hand-held hoses can be used at any time. Private wells must be registered with the Mansfield Board of Health and inspected by the Mansfield Water Division. Water restrictions will remain in effect until Sept. 4. Those with questions may call the Department of Public Works at 508-261-7330.

Voters at Town Meeting supported a $3.39 million water-system proposal, which will go before residents in a townwide election scheduled for June 12. The money would pay for well-field, pumping-station, and water-main work along West River Street. The question passed at Town Meeting by a two-thirds majority. Other votes taken at the May 10 session: a majority approved $398,000 for Town Hall renovation designs; a two-thirds majority green-lighted $70,000 for water main improvements along Hartford Avenue North; and the Police Department was given $15,000 to acquire Tasers for its officers.

Despite admitting to federal investigators that he falsified drinking water test results, the superintendent of the Avon Water Department remains on the job, and his bosses seem wary of making any changes until they learn more about the charges against him. Getting that information has been difficult, said Town Administrator Michael McCue. "We are not in receipt of any official documents, other than a press release which we received secondhand" from a newspaper reporter, he said via e-mail.

State and federal officials are marking National Safe Boating Week by reminding people to put on life jackets as soon as they step into a boat, and to behave responsibly in the water. Experts say accidents on the water can happen too fast to retrieve and put on a life jacket. Fifty-one boating deaths were reported in the First Coast Guard District in 2010. Safe Boating Week runs through May 25. (AP)

Nine players had or shared the lead during the third round of the Byron Nelson Championship. Yet when play ended Saturday, Jason Dufner was the one alone at the top of the leaderboard for the second day in a row. Unfazed by more breezy conditions, Dufner shot a 1-under 69 for an 8-under 202 total. He had a one-stroke lead over Jason Day, J.J. Henry and Dicky Pride. "Similar conditions as (Friday), so probably helped me a little bit, just being comfortable with the wind and how hard it was blowing," Dufner said.

State and federal officials are marking the National Safe Boating Week by reminding Massachusetts residents to put on life jackets as soon as they step into a boat and behave responsibly in the water. Experts say accidents on the water can happen much too fast to reach and put on a life jacket. Fifty one boating deaths were reported in the 1st Coast Guard District in 2010, including 44 people believed to have not been wearing life jackets. A representative of the state government and the Coast Guard Auxiliary are scheduled to launch the annual...

In late 2009, Dassault Systèmes, France's largest software company, launched a search for a location to establish a headquarters for its rapidly expanding operations in North and South America. It already had operations in Los Angeles, Charlotte, N.C., and Auburn Hills, Mich. But ultimately, the global technology firm decided there was only one place to be: Route 128. Dassault creates software that helps companies conceive, design, make, and improve products, and Route 128 has become the world's undisputed epicenter of this fast-growing technology, known as Product Lifecycle Management, or...

ST. LOUIS -- Jerry Toops heard his wife scream his name in the dark. He awoke to hear a roar he could only describe as a group of F-14 jets if combined with a fleet of trains. When a reservoir at AmerenUE's Taum Sauk hydroelectric plant broke in southeast Missouri on Dec. 14, the five members of the Toops family were caught up in about a billion gallons of water that swept away their home. Somehow, they survived. Toops, 42, wanted to rescue his children, but a wall of water hit him "like a head-on collision" in his bedroom.

Watts Water Technologies Inc.'s board authorized the repurchase of up to 2 million shares of the North Andover company's Class A common stock, with the timing and amount of any shares repurchased to be determined by management. Repurchases may also be made under a Rule 10b5-1 plan, which would permit shares to be repurchased when the company might otherwise be precluded from doing so under insider trading laws. The repurchase program will be funded using available cash.

Hot Water Music nicely balances aggression and craft on "Exister," its first album in eight years. Like its signature work from the '90s, the Florida troupe pushes the boundaries of melodic hardcore without sacrificing sharp edge. The band's four original members draw up songs steeped in defiance and resolve. The title track and opening "Mainline" are lacerating displays of good ol' punk rock, yet the album overall avoids formula. In "Drag My Body" there's an air of self-purification.