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Mothers who experience an infection severe enough to require hospitalization during pregnancy are at higher risk of having a child with autism. Two new studies from MIT and the University of Massachusetts Medical School shed more light on this phenomenon and identify possible approaches to preventing it. In research on mice, the researchers found that the composition of bacterial populations in the mother’s digestive tract can influence whether maternal infection leads to autistic-like behaviors in offspring. They also discovered the specific brain changes that produce these behaviors. “We identified a very discrete brain region that seems to be modulating all...

An investigation into "discriminatory and highly offensive language" is ongoing at Westfield State University after a student reported finding a racial slur on her door. A senior at Westfield State shared a photo on social media alleging someone wrote "n****** live here" on a name tag taped to her door. The alleged incident reportedly happened in New Hall, a housing complex on campus for sophomore, junior and senior students. The black student tagged the college and Westfield State President Ramon S. Torrecilha in the post and received a quick response. Torrecilha sent a message to the campus community regarding the...

Complete Headline: EXCLUSIVE: Case dismissed! Max Kennedy gets away with a $150 fine after 'glassy-eyed' son of RFK was arrested at his out-of-control party at the family's Hyannis Port compound where he barked at police 'You don't know who you're messing with' Matthew 'Max' Kennedy, 52, paid a $150 fine in Barnstable, Massachusetts, on Tuesday The 52-year-old son of late senator Robert F Kennedy had his disorderly conduct charge dismissed with no admission of guilt He had been arrested with his daughter, 23, after a house party on August 20 The father-of-three screamed, threw himself at the wall, and smashed...

The Chicago-based group Truth in Reporting gives the state a grade of “F” in its new 50-state analysis of government spending and budgeting. Specifically, the report’s authors faulted New York for its relatively high pension and health care obligations, as well as its high tax burden. California, New Jersey, Illinois and Massachusetts earned similarly low scores from the group.

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Boston Mayor Marty Walsh will most likely bow to Boston Red Sox owner John Henry and change the name of Yawkey Way. Of that that there is little doubt. Henry has thrashed the late Tom Yawkey, the former longtime owner of the Red Sox for being an alleged racist over his long delay in hiring black baseball players when he owned the team from 1933 to 1976. Henry, who is “haunted” by the Red Sox being the last team in baseball to hire a black player, wants Yawkey Way, a street by Fenway Park, renamed “David Ortiz Way” or “Big...

David Ortiz is back with the Boston Red Sox. The Dominican slugger signed a contract tying his future with the organization in perpetuity. "Forever" was the word used by the team in a press release sent Wednesday announcing the new terms of their relationship. Ortiz will serve as a mentor of current players, will be active on free-agency recruiting efforts, will perform a series of special appearances for the team and will work on business venture development for Fenway Sports Management and its partners.

BOSTON -- Four fans seated above the Green Monster at Fenway Park dropped down a sign that read "Racism is as American as baseball" during the fourth inning of the Red Sox's game against the Oakland Athletics on Wednesday night. The sign was draped over the top middle section of the Green Monster and had a black background with white letters.

The country’s voting machines are susceptible to hacking, which could be done in a way so that it leaves no fingerprints, making it impossible to know whether the outcome was changed, computer experts told President Trump’s voter integrity commission Tuesday. The testimony marked a departure for the commission, which was formed to look into fraud and barriers to voting, but which heard that a potentially greater threat to confidence in American elections is the chance for enemy actors to meddle. “There’s no perfect security; there’s only degrees of insecurity,” said Ronald Rivest, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology....

I paid no attention to the fact that Hollywood was producing a biopic of Ted Kennedy’s famous “accident” at Chappaquiddick in 1969, and would have assumed that it was a typical gauzy pro-Kennedy puff piece if I had known. But Variety magazine, the main trade journal of Hollywood, offers a review that not only says that the forthcoming movie Chappaquiddick is suitably harsh on Teddy, but that he—and the Kennedy reputation—deserve it: The film says that what happened at Chappaquiddick was even worse than we think. Kopechne’s body was found in a position that implied that she was struggling to...

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The first Amherst College Republicans meeting of the year was targeted by flyers taped to the windows of the meeting space saying, “THIS IS OUR CAMPUS, NOT THE KLAN’S.” The group claims on its Facebook page that “while the flyers are related to another incident on campus that happened September 5, the deliberate placement of the text facing the room where it was known an ACR meeting was occurring leads us to suppose this is an accusation of ACR being connected to the KKK.”

A Tufts University student-made “disorientation” guide refers to Israel as a “white supremacist state” and slams the campus Hillel for “exploit(ing) black voices for their own pro-Israel agenda.” The guide, created by leftist activist students for those like themselves, “suggests resources for students of color, low-income students, the LGBT community and women,” according to Haaretz. Similar guides are offered at other colleges as “official” alternatives.

President Trump won the election fair and square, but more and more evidence keeps piling up that his big win might have been in spite of Democratic voter fraud. First there was the study suggesting millions of non-citizens voted, now there appears to be evidence that thousands of non-residents may have actually given a whole state to Hillary Clinton. New Hampshire House Speaker Shawn Jasper (R) reported numbers on Thursday that indicate more than 6,500 people registered to vote in New Hampshire using out-of-state drivers licenses, Washington Times reports. Since the election, many of those people, most of whom were...

Did voter fraud in New Hampshire save ObamaCare from being repealed? The Presidential Commission on Election Integrity is meeting Tuesday in New Hampshire and may eventually provide an answer. The election featured a photo-finish race for president – Hillary Clinton won by 2,467 votes – and in the race for the U.S. Senate. Democrat Maggie Hassan narrowly defeated incumbent GOP Sen. Kelly Ayotte by only 1,017 votes.

Specifically, they are having a Freaky Friday and demonstrating in the streets, the way students did in the 1960s. "Thirty-one professors from Harvard and other Boston-area universities were arrested Thursday for blocking traffic along Massachusetts Ave. in protest of President Donald Trump's decision to rescind an Obama-era program that gives legal protections to undocumented young people," The Harvard Crimson reported on September 7, 2017. "Professors took to the street outside Johnston Gate in a planned act of civil disobedience, forming a human chain and blocking traffic on Mass Ave. Before the arrests, Cambridge Police officers read a written statement warning...

Charles Murray is a libertarian social scientist who wrote a widely praised book about the decline of the white working class. He has half-Asian children with an ex-wife he met in Thailand. He’s also a “white nationalist” who “doesn’t belong” at Harvard University. The undergraduate student government’s black caucus is demanding the Open Campus Initiative, a student group that was formed to host events that “other groups are unwilling to have,” revoke its invitation to Murray to speak tonight.

NEW YORK — Fifteen states and the District of Columbia sued Wednesday to block President Donald Trump's plan to end a program protecting young immigrants from deportation — an act Washington state's attorney general called part of a "dark time for our country." The lawsuit filed in federal court in Brooklyn asked a judge to conclude that the president's action involving the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, is unconstitutional.

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A student group at an elite Ivy League school recently held a “convocation” meant specifically for black individuals. Harvard University’s Black Student Association hosted the school’s first-ever Black Convocation, an event that focused on the alleged “challenges” associated with “being black at Harvard,” according to Harvard’s student newspaper, The Harvard Crimson.