-- A 7-year-old boy was shot last night amid the crossfire between warring youths. The child had been playing kickball near Smith Street on the Mission Hill end of Roxbury when he was apparently struck by ricocheting bullets. He remains hospitalized with multiple injuries. The shooting started when a man on a bicycle allegedly fired at two men in a Honda SUV, hitting the driver, who was later hospitalized at Brigham and Women's. The passenger,......

--Natives are fleeing Massachusetts, while the state is having trouble encouraging people to move here. Apparently four years of college--and four Boston winters--just about does it for a lot of people. [Boston Globe] --The debate over whether or not Pine Street Inn can open transitional housing in the South End rages on. The opposition says that those who were once homeless can always move elsewhere, as long as it's not their neighborhood. [Boston Globe,......

--Logan Airport is going greener by buying renewable energy credits, right in time for Earth Day. [Boston Globe] --When newsmakers become news: Local news stations are aiming their schadenfreude squarely at WHDH, whose GM, Randi Goldklank, got arrested for disorderly conduct at Logan Airport over the weekend. The police report indicates that Goldklank was, for lack of a better term, allegedly shitfaced. [WCVB, WBZ, Boston Herald] --Here's why you smelled a lot of pot......

Boston isn't the best place in the country to celebrate Earth Day, the pedagogical holiday started in 1970 by Senator Gaylord Nelson to teach people about environmental issues. Our own spring holiday involves more redcoats and Red Sox than anything that's green. But, if Earth Day is your bag, there are a few things around town for you to do today. Boston Children's Museum, which promotes itself as Boston's "first green museum," hosts a special......

--A three-alarm fire broke out at an apartment complex in Framingham yesterday afternoon. Three firefighters and three residents of the complex went to the hospital for minor injuries. [Boston Globe] --Two children died in a tragic fire in Holyoke on Thursday. Allegedly, a 6-year-old boy was playing with a lighter in his home, starting a fire that killed his 4-year-old brother and 9-month-old sister. [Boston Globe] --The pilot who was grounded after breaking away from......

--Everyone needs money, so it's not a surprise that Mayor Menino wants to increase fines for illegal parking in the city: "The largest increase will be for parking in a fire lane, which would rise from $40 to $100 under the mayor’s plan. Parking in front of a handicapped ramp would go from $50 to $100, while parking in front of a hydrant would rise from $75 to $100." [Boston Herald] --Former House speaker......

It turns out that Tisch Library at Tufts University is pervier than a Red Line train during rush hour. Under the headline ">"Public masturbation a persistent problem at Tisch Library," Tufts Daily reports that, in the past year, four women claim to have encountered inappropriate public acts of self pleasure in the library. It sounds hilarious, but it is sexual harassment. On February 10, a man was picked up by the police for "motions or......

--A 19-year-old is accused of killing his social worker, 53-year-old Diruhi S. Mattian, in North Andover last night. The accused is now in the hospital recovering from stab wounds he gave himself. [ http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2008/02/social_worker_i.html">Boston Globe] --A woman was found murdered in her Medfield home last night. The victim, 47-year-old Margaret Ninos, was a nurse at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. She died of head injuries. Police are investigating, and she leaves behind a 7-year-old daughter.......

--Yet another explanation for why you should have a sinking feeling in your tummy any time you go over a bridge in Massachusetts. [Boston Herald] --Another storm is expected for Friday, but it's not prompting the mass freakout that the last storm did. [WBZ] --The city of Boston will build a statue that honors Martin Luther King, Jr., and his wife, Coretta Scott King. [AP/Boston Globe] --The Committee on Children, Families, and Individuals With......

Four (Curious) Stories Monday, November 5, 2007 7-9pm (Music starts @ 6) The Enormous Room 567 Massachusetts Ave Central Square, Cambridge Admittance free and open to the public While "Tales of exploration, experimentation, and questioning" might conjure up images of coming out stories, tonight's installment of the Four Stories reading series isn't specifically tailored to that topic. It's just a bunch of curious tales, designed to step off the beaten (written?) path and spark some......

Honk! Friday, October 5, through Sunday, October 7 Honk!'s official site The full Honk! schedule Despite the festival's name, Honk! is about more than making noise. Street bands will be performing, but the purpose of the second annual Honk! celebration is to "Reclaim the Street for Horns, Bikes, and Feet!" Honk! is a sound, a lifestyle, and a movement, according to the Honk! mission statement: "Honkers have been providing a heartfelt musical antidote, a soundtrack......

Officials at Tufts University moved to uphold the first amendment after student-faculty groups tried to block racist, unsigned pieces from appearing in campus media. It all started when The Primary Source, a conservative outlet, published "O Come All Ye Black Folk" and a piece about violence in Islam. You can guess where they were going with those. Whoever wrote the pieces didn't have the cojones to put their name or names on it. The Committee......

The Phoenix posted the tenth annual Muzzle Awards. The listing, compiled by Media Nation blogger Dan Kennedy, showcases the offenses against free speech by local individuals and organizations. An apropos way to celebrate liberty for the Fourth of July. He gets the Muzzle this year by stifling the free speech of former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami by refusing to provide state-police protection to the visiting former head of state. Boston Police stepped up to provide......

Then again, don't answer that because that picture looks like a mugshot. This guy is renowned history professor Felipe Fernandez-Armesto of Tufts University. He has published academic books through Simon & Schuster, not just University of Eastern Podunk Press. But, after today, he'll be better known as the prof who somehow managed to get arrested in Atlanta. The AP reports that Atlanta police arrested Professor Fernandez-Armesto for jaywalking. That wasn't a problem, but Fernandez-Armesto......

One of Bostonist’s favorite weekend activities is catching up on all those trashy MTV reality shows that we often miss during the work week. And luckily, this weekend we were able to watch the premiere episode of "The Real World Key West", which we believe will be the most mentally unstable of all the seasons. This week’s episode included the standard “seven people picked to live in a house and have their lives taped” but......

It seems to Bostonist that news coverage of our area institutions of higher education tends to focus on the academic achievements of Harvard and MIT, or the sports achievements of BC (okay, maybe that's a simplistic statement but those schools do get much of the spotlight). So it's an exciting day northeast of the [Cambridge] border when Tufts University garners some media attention. And yesterday was exactly one such day. Unfortunately for Tufts, however, that......