Free Republic

BOSTON - A 50-ton bowhead whale caught off the Alaskan coast last month had a weapon fragment embedded in its neck that showed it survived a similar hunt — more than a century ago. Embedded deep under its blubber was a 3 1/2-inch arrow-shaped projectile that has given researchers insight into the whale's age, estimated between 115 and 130 years old. "No other finding has been this precise," said John Bockstoce, an adjunct curator of the New Bedford Whaling Museum. Calculating a whale's age can be difficult, and is usually gauged by amino acids in the eye lenses. It's rare...

New Bedford leaders are livid at Hillary Clinton’s depiction of the Whaling City as a place where handicapped children were abandoned at home because the schools lacked accommodations for youngsters with special needs. “It’s not true,” former Mayor Jack Markey told the Herald yesterday. “I’m even a Democrat, but the truth is the truth. “We would take handicapped kids in a small van to schools that could take them,” said Markey, who served on a local board that helped disabled children before he was elected mayor in 1971. “I would have been aware of a child needing help to go...

The shipwrecks, and parts of other ships, that were found are most likely the remains of 33 ships trapped by pack ice close to the Alaskan Arctic shore in September 1871... The ships were destroyed in a matter of weeks, leaving more than 1,200 whalers stranded at the top of the world until they could be rescued by seven ships of the fleet standing by about 80 miles to the south in open water off Icy Cape. No one died in the incident but it is cited as one of the major causes of the demise of commercial whaling in...

(CNSNews.com) – Although no group has claimed responsibility for Monday’s deadly bomb blasts at the Boston Marathon, a leading al-Qaeda ideologue last year recommended that jihadists in America include sporting events in their list of prospective terror targets.

NEW BEDFORD — Agents wearing FBI and Department of Homeland Security jackets detained two men at the Hidden Brook apartment complex just hours after releasing three people believed to be associated with Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. A neighbor who declined to identify herself said the same two men were among the three people taken into custody by the FBI Friday afternoon. An FBI spokeswoman could not provide any information on the two men, both of whom were led away in handcuffs around 3:50 p.m. Saturday, or anything related to the apartment, citing the “ongoing” nature of the investigation....

Patrick, Frank tour blighted New Bedford neighborhoodOfficials launch new program to rehab foreclosed homes By Steve Urbon March 16, 2009 1:07 PM NEW BEDFORD — A statewide response to part of the national; housing crisis was unveiled late this morning in a blighted neighborhood in the near North End by U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., Gov. Deval Patrick and Mayor Scott Lang. Accompanied by the city’s state legislators, the three took a 45-minute tour of the area of Beetle, Tallman and North Front streets, eyeing abandoned or foreclosed property as city officials detailed the difficulties involved in turning the situation...

IF THE CHAOTIC immigration raid in New Bedford earlier this month troubled you, we have news: Immigration and Customs Enforcement, also known as ICE, is just getting warmed up. We know this because the New Bedford raid was part of a frighteningly ambitious plan laid out by the Department of Homeland Security in 2003 -- and it hasn't received nearly enough scrutiny. The plan is called Endgame, and its details are available online on our group's website (www.aclum.org/endgame.pdf). It's a 10-year campaign to track down and deport all the immigrants to the United States who are living and working here...

SUPPOSE SOMEONE offered to import 350 foreign workers to New Bedford to work for less than the minimum wage. Since the unemployment rate is over 8 percent, we would expect public outrage. The city needs jobs, not more unskilled laborers. So it is no surprise that citizens seeking jobs started lining up at the Michael Bianco plant after Immigration and Customs Enforcement uncovered 350 illegal immigrants.

NEW BEDFORD, Mass. - Dozens of young children were stranded at schools and with baby-sitters after their parents were rounded up by federal authorities who raided a leather goods maker suspected of hiring illegal immigrants, authorities said Wednesday. About two-thirds of the 500 employees of Michael Bianco Inc., mostly women, were detained Tuesday by immigration officials for possible deportation as illegal aliens. As a result, about 100 children were stuck with baby sitters, caretakers and others, said Corinn Williams, director of the Community Economic Development Center of Southeastern Massachusetts. "We're continuing to get stories today about infants that were left...

An army of 300 federal immigration agents raided a New Bedford leather manufacturer today and arrested the company's owner and three managers on charges that they hired illegal workers to meet labor demands fueled by millions of dollars in contracts with the US military. During the early morning blitz, agents also took into custody up to 350 employees who had been working at Michael Bianco Inc., a waterfront factory that employs about 500 people, predominantly immigrants from Guatemala and El Salvador. Some employees fled when agents stormed the building, and helicopters hovered overhead to alert authorities of escape routes, said...

What do you get when you try to check out Mao Tse-Tung's infamous "The Little Red Book" from the library? A visit from Homeland Security agents. At least that's what happened to a senior at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, according to the Standard-Times newspaper of New Bedford, Mass. The college student was visited by federal agents two months ago, after he requested a copy of Mao's tome on communism. Two history professors at UMass Dartmouth, Brian Glyn Williams and Robert Pontbriand, said the student told them he requested the book through the college library's interlibrary loan program. The student,...

When workers at the AML International fish processing plant arrived for their shifts at 7 a.m. Monday, officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement were waiting for them. Eight of the men, who could not provide identification, were handcuffed and loaded into a van. Officers arrested five more men at other plants.

Campaigns converge on New Bedford By JACK SPILLANE, Standard-Times staff writer NEW BEDFORD -- If there were any doubt about how important SouthCoast is in the closely contested gubernatorial election, it will be put to rest this morning in New Bedford. Not to be outdone by a Democratic Party drawing on a charismatic former president to drum up a big vote in the traditionally Democratic area, Republican Mitt Romney's campaign late yesterday announced it will start a statewide bus tour at a 9:30 a.m. rally on the steps of the main branch of the New Bedford Free Public Library....