Massachusetts | featured news

Water is one of the most treasured natural resources on our planet, and effectively and safely providing it, and, after it's been used, taking it away and treating it, is becoming an increasingly more efficient process because of wireless technology. The Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, which offers wholesale water and sewer services to more than two-and-a-million Boston area residents, is deploying a wide array of wireless solutions and hardware that are saving invaluable time and money, preserving a most precious commodity.

A storm lingering off the coast is now expected to dump as much as 2 feet of snow on some areas of Massachusetts, and some areas of Boston could get 18 inches, the National Weather Service said this morning, upping previous snowfall predictions.

Former senator Scott Brown will not run for the seat of departing Sen. John Kerry in Massachusetts, saying Friday he was unsure "of returning to a Congress even more partisan than the one I left."

Author Dennis Lehane is offering an unusual reward for the person who finds his family's beloved missing beagle. Lehane says he'll name a character in his next book after whoever finds Tessa, who disappeared from the family's home in Brookline, Mass., this week. He says on his Facebook page that Tessa jumped a fence at the home, and even though she has been micro-chipped, she was not wearing her tags. Lehane says Tessa is "smart, fast, and immeasurably sweet."

Ben Affleck is taking his name off the list of possible candidates for U.S. Sen. John Kerry's seat, which would be open if the Democratic senator from Massachusetts is confirmed as secretary of state.

Open your notebooks and sharpen your pencils. School for thousands of public school students is about to get quite a bit longer. Five states were to announce on Monday that they will add at least 300 hours of learning time to the calendar in some schools starting in 2013. Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York and Tennessee will take part in the initiative, which is intended to boost student achievement and make U.S. schools more competitive on a global level.

Endangered sea turtles are becoming stranded on Massachusetts' Cape Cod shores so frequently that they are on track to break records.

Massachusetts tops perennial efficiency king California on the strength of a robust program to get utilities to make improvements.

Faced with the daunting task of evaluating more than 34,000 drug cases handled by a Massachusetts chemist accused of misconduct, prosecutors and defense attorneys are starting with 1,140 cases of people who are already serving prison sentences based on potentially tainted evidence.

...So Massachusetts used not just federal Medicaid money but federal dollars above and beyond that Medicaid money to finance their health reforms. It is difficult to see how Romney’s proposal to cut Medicaid spending and hand that reduced share over to the states would allow other states to follow Massachusetts’ example. It might not even permit Massachusetts to continue following Massachusetts’ example.