The Mayor's Office announced today that there are more homeless families in Boston. Mayor Thomas Menino and company held their annual Homeless Census and got the bad news. The number of homeless families shot up by 22%, from 2,535 to 3,084 this year.* This rise is alarming. The press office notes, "The number for families is higher for the third year in a row, meaning that children continue to be our fastest growing homeless population."......

--We're not sure if this qualifies as Blotter or accident. Whatever it is, it's terrible. Police in Lawrence are trying to find out if a woman was killed by a snow plow. WBZ reports that two people found a body by the side of Route 114 on Sunday. The snow plow theory emerged because the body was near plowed snow. Police haven't found witnesses. --Gia Nagy, the 17-year-old arrested as an accessory in the murder......

Santa Speedo Run Saturday, December 15, 1:00 pm Lir, 903 Boylston, Boston Run goes down Boylston to Berkeley and back up Newbury Official Site For some reason, people are compelled to prove their strength by taking off their clothes in winter and running around, displaying their pasty, quivering flash to one and all. (Tufts, we're talking to you.) But the people participating in the 8th annual Santa Speedo Run are stripping down to their skivvies......

Somebody's in trouble. The trucker who took a turn too fast in Everett and caused the tanker explosion and fire that left 60 people homeless at last count had a lead foot. Casey Ross at the Herald writes: Chad LaFrance, 30, of Dover, N.H., has three speeding violations between 2000 and 2002 in New Hampshire, with one citation for going 83 mph in a 55-mph zone in 2001, according to a spokeswoman for N.H.......

Too stuffed with turkey to do much else on Thursday night, we took in an ample amount of ABC's Thursday night television: "Ugly Betty," "Grey's Anatomy," and a "sneak preview" (read: kind of sort of why don't they just call it the season premiere?) of season two of "October Road." The last in the lineup has been oft-maligned since it made its series debut last year, and EW.com recently pondered whether it deserved a second......

Boston Comedy Festival Preliminary Rounds --Monday, October 8, Comedy Connection, Faneuil Hall, 7:00 and 9:00 pm --Tuesday, October 9, Comedy Connection, Faneuil Hall, 7:00 and 9:00 pm --Wednesday, October 10, Comedy Connection, Faneuil Hall, 7:00 and 9:00 pm All tickets for the preliminaries are $15 The comics rush up onstage and change right before your eyes. One moment, they gaze into the camera and at the audience like classic deer before headlines. Then, an internal......

So many big court cases went down this week, so we're wrapping up the latest. --The first witness testified Tuesday in the Franklin Park Zoo Amok Ape Trial, which will determine the amount that will be awarded to a 2-year-old girl was attacked by an ape in 2003. The girl's mother, Terrasita Duarte-Scott, is suing Zoo New England because her daughter was injured and probably has a flood of nightmares thanks to the episode. Courtney......

--One man was shot to death and two were wounded in Dorchester last night. One resident told the Herald that the man was exactly who the shooters were looking for, and they shoved him into the hallway of an apartment building on Shandon Road and started firing. Two men were killed at that spot back in July. Last night's victim is the 49th homicide of the year. Later last night, two other people were shot......

--Yesterday afternoon, a person was shot in the chest and side in Roxbury on Langdon Street. The Globe noted that the incident was a block away from a playground. That's bad enough, but the Herald connected more dots and noted that the shooting was in front of the same house where a standoff between Cape Verdean gang members and police took place. --A homeless man died in an accident yesterday at the Pine Street Inn.......

--An explosion at an Easton home that may have resulted from a gas leak sent six people to the hospital this morning. The blast was so strong that it flattened the two-story structure. Four students from Stonehill College were living in the home. Three had minor injuries, and one is recovering at Brigham and Women's. Two Bay State Gas employees were working nearby at the time of the explosion, and they were also sent to......

Those Daily Show jokes about killing a hobo for kicks seem awfully funny until someone actually does it. On Friday, two men were arrested for murdering two homeless men in Hingham in 2005. Yesterday, they pled not guilty in Hingham District Court. Eric Snow, of Bridgewater, and James Winquist, of Weymouth are accused of beating William Chrapan and David Lyons to death with baseball bats in Bare Cove Park. Chrapan and Lyons were found in......

Happy first weekend of September - and happy Labor Day weekend, too, for our American cities! Let's take a look at what's been happening around the Ist-a-verse. The deaths of two firefighters shook Bostonist this week. Boston's firefighters bent over backwards all week long - first, they fought flames pouring from the Boston Tea Party museum, and then a restaurant fire killed two and injured many more. Their efforts make everything else - like Tom......

It's official – police are now cracking down on the Common. The bullet in the State House, public OD's, and freaked-out tourists pushed the city brass over the edge, and the BPD is making a move. Now, the BPD will be enforcing curfew on the Common, which means people are required to "move on" from whatever legal or illegal activity they are up to at 11 pm. Of course, that doesn't seem to solve anything......

Ok – it's a hard state to spell. What if I my true god was…a sandwich? Eugene Mirman, one of Bostonist's favorite comedians, and a former Cambridge resident, comes back to the Bay State and interviews schmucks homeless tourists people in hopes of getting to better know Massachusetts. Watch the video posted to Super Deluxe as Mirman taunts Harvard students, orders (based on market price) about $100 worth of food at Summer Shack, wonders who......

--The 7-year-old allegedly kidnapped and killed by her 20-year-old first cousin has been identified as Joanna Mullin of Weymouth. The cousin, Ryan Bois, has been described by various sources as addicted to drugs and homeless. But no one thought he would be capable of killing a child. His own mother said, "The drugs and the drinking just ruined him." Bois allegedly took Mullin from her grandmother's house, and police found a ladder leaning against the......

--Police have charged a man with kidnapping and murdering a 7-year-old girl in Weymouth overnight. The man kidnapped the girl from a sleepover at her relatives' house. They pulled over Ryan Bois for driving "erratically." Bois led them on a high-speed chase, and, when they corralled him and the car, the police found the body of a missing girl in the backseat. As of right now, police say Bois is homeless but may have known......

Rumors are flying today about the possible death of Mr. Butch (Harold Madison, Jr.), the former "King of Kenmore Square" exiled to Allston in the mid-1990s. According to the unconfirmed stories reported on message boards today, the homeless man/local musicians/unofficial face of Boston was riding on a scooter this morning when he was involved in a collision with a car. His Wikipedia and MySpace have already been updated to announce the news. Bostonist contacted Boston......

The Armenian Memorial, a proposed park, would pay homage to the Armenian Genocide that saw the loss of an estimated 1.5 million lives in 1915. The memorial has been on and off in the news mostly for their intention to develop a parcel of the Greenway near Christopher Columbus park as the site of the memorial. Tom Menino has voiced his opinion: no way. He doesn't want the Greenway to become home to a number......

Last night, author Dave Zirin said that when sports radio tries to tackle politics, the results are so ugly that "it's like imagining Mitt Romney wearing cornrows." Something's just not right. Zirin spoke at Brookline Booksmith last night about his fruitless experiences debating sports-radio chatterboxes. When Zirin tried to delve deeper into why people just love to hate on San Francisco Giant Barry Bonds, the host kept asking Zirin if he'd ever measured Bonds' head......

Holy smokes! Giant fish on the MTA, Paris Hilton in jail, then out, then in again, Al Gore, goatses, blumpkins, Matt Damon, and baby art critics! It's been a busy week across the Ist-A-Verse, and here's a smattering of what's been going on. In Gothamist's neck of the woods, they found out that many things are possible: A man caught a 40+ pound fish off the Rockaways and took it home on the subway. Graffiti......

The Bobby Brown and Whitney Houston split has gotten uglier. It was pretty plain that he had little money to spare since Houston cut him off and he couldn't pay his child support. But now he's announced it for all the world that he is broke and is "for all intents and purposes, homeless." Houston also has custody of her daughter with Brown, and he would like to reverse that. But his recent behavior isn't......

This from WBZ: A two-alarm fire that started at about 8:20 pm shut down the Longfellow Bridge. Trains were stopped, traffic was diverted, and heavy smoke forced the Charles-MGH station to shut down. The MBTA has posted the alert on its website and offered a few terse details: "A homeless man started a fire underneath the Longfellow Bridge. As a result the Boston Fire Department has stopped all traffic. Subway Red Line service is being......

It's rare when we get to cross into Matt Taibbi turf, but Celtic Sebastian Telfair's gun-and-speeding charge allows us to do so. The Redux has already pointed out that Telfair didn't get the memo when he was busted for packing heat in 2006. Shira Springer points out that Telfair's latest incident in Yonkers is his "third brush with [the] law in 14 months." If only Telfair put the same amount of time in his basketball......

--More information has emerged about one of the victim's during one of last Friday's many shootings. James Jacobs was an Army veteran who was shot and killed not in Iraq, where he fought, but in Dorchester. He was also going to school for an engineering degree. This is the kind of thing that makes you sick - someone who was making a contribution, who was fighting for us, was likely gunned down by some stupid,......

--First it was tainted spinach. Then it was tainted peanut butter. Now it's tainted pet food. Some dogs and cats have been vomiting after eating wet pet food. About 10 pets died. Since the manufacturer, Menu Foods, is such a big player in the market, this impacts many brands. So if your pet prefers cuts and gravy, you might want to switch to the dry stuff until this gets cleared up. Fido might howl about......

--As Quinntessa Blackwell died, the victim of a shooting in broad daylight, she uttered the words, "Cedric." And the young man who got shot at Centre and Highland was named "Cedrick." The revenge motive automatically springs to mind. Local media started putting two and two together right away. Boston isn't Dodge City, and, no matter how the movies glamorize it, vigilante justice isn't the best idea. Besides, what if the killer or killers got the......

And you thought the library stacks were quiet! Well, just because people are quiet doesn't mean they aren't up to something. Last Friday, a 59-year-old Marshfield man was caught gazing upon child porn on his computer – while the library was jam-packed with kids. It was his own laptop, but he was allegedly using the library's wireless for evil. Just a few days ago, WCVB reported on bad things happening within the Boston Public Library.......

A homeless man was found over the weekend, frozen to death on a basketball court. And it's likely another similar tragedy may occur during this week of continuing cold temperatures. The Herald talked to the city's emergency shelter director, Jim Greene, who said that outreach vans will be out to help bring the homeless to a warmer shelter. Wondering what people can do if they see anyone who needs shelter from the cold, Bostonist dialed......

The mercury hit 70 three weeks ago, didn't it? Overnight tonight forecasters are calling for single digit temperatures, tomorrow they'll barely break into the double digits. Wind chill temps will make it seem like the temps are actually below freezing. These bitter cold temperatures will combine with sustained northwest winds of 15 to 20 mph to produce below zero wind chills. Wind chills will drop to between 5 and 15 below zero late tonight... and......

Texas is thawing, the Northeast is freezing, and a sort of natural order seems almost restored to the Ist-A-Verse. Almost. Londonist HQ—that is to say, the city of London—was battered by heavy winds, making it a bad time to be a twelve-meter (nearly forty-foot) tall snowman. Still, not everyone decided to keep warmly covered. Meanwhile, back indoors, the Big Brother racism is now causing all kinds of headaches for international diplomats, and Londonist got into......