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Director of Harvard humanitarian center apologizes after being filmed confronting mother whose daughter was playing outside her home and 'preventing her children from sleeping' Alyson Laliberte filmed some of her encounter with Theresa Lund on Saturday She posted the clip on her Facebook, where it has attracted 700,000 views In the clip, Lund repeatedly asks Laliberte if she lives in an 'affordable unit' Lund is the executive director of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative at Harvard University The director of a Harvard research center has apologized after she was filmed confronting a neighbor whose daughter was playing outside her home and...

Video. 2:02Upper West Side parents angrily rant against plan to bring more black kids to their schools

California’s housing market faces challenges that have been building for decades. The median home price in the state has increased at several times the rate of median home prices across the country, leading to lower-income Californians fleeing the state in droves. One analysis estimated that housing problems cost California $140 billion annually in lost economic output. Faced with a means of addressing this issue, these activists pressured California legislators into killing reform legislation in its first committee hearing. California suffers from a severe housing shortage, as the state ranks 49th in housing density. Local governments have failed to allow sufficient...

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Lawyers for the Mountain Valley Pipeline say if there are delays in the federal court system, the entire project could be delayed by at least a year. The pipeline developers wrote in a recent court filing that they need access to all the property no later than this coming Feb. 1 to comply with a window for tree clearing required by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “If MVP is unable to gain access to commence work on each respective deadline, construction of the entire MVP project may be delayed for as much as one year given...

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Federal regulators have approved two major natural gas pipelines that would start in West Virginia and supply the eastern seaboard. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission granted certificates to both the Atlantic Coast Pipeline and the Mountain Valley Pipeline on Friday evening. The pipelines would transport gas from the Utica and Marcellus shale deposits. One of the commissioners dissented, calling the public interest of the projects into question. Additional necessary permits are pending at the state level in both West Virginia and Virginia. The $5.1 billion Atlantic Coast Pipeline would span 600 miles from Harrison County and across...

Opposition is beginning to build against a regional transportation group’s plan to study a second Potomac River crossing in Montgomery County. On Tuesday morning, Montgomery County Council President Roger Berliner introduced a resolution that would formally put the council in opposition to the National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board’s plan to study the feasibility of a bridge that would help connect Virginia Route 28 to the Intercounty Connector in the county. Supporters of the proposed bridge say the connecting route would help ease traffic on I-270 and the American Legion Bridge on the Beltway and provide better connectivity to Dulles...

There were not many open seats at a pair of meetings last week over proposed routes that would send Interstate 11 through the Tucson area. Many of those in attendance were there to speak against two of the alternatives, which run west of Saguaro National Park West in the Avra Valley.“I understand the need to provide ways for people to move around," said Kimberly Baeza, "But it doesn't have to come at the expense of our open landscapes and beautiful Sonoran Desert.”The meeting is part of the second step in selecting the route I-11 could take through Arizona. The freeway...

If anyone was "worried" about the Verizon strike taking away 35,000 jobs from the pro forma whisper number of 200,000 with consensus expecting 160,000 jobs, or worried about a rate hike by the Fed any time soon, you can sweep all worries away: moments ago the BLS reported that in May a paltry 38,000 jobs were added, a plunge from last month's downward revised 123K (was 160K). The number was the lowest since September 2010! There is no way to spin this number as anything but atrocious.

There are few things I dislike more than paying taxes. As Americans, a third of all your hard earned dollars is confiscated by the U.S. government. Most of us get to determine what we do with our money – but not when it comes to taxes. However, there is the argument that taxes are a function of our democratic system. Those taxes are the result of laws implemented by freely elected representatives. If anything, we — the voters — are as much to blame for the muddied tax codes as are the nitwit politicians we elect.

Obama and his Democratic allies are busily breaking the bonds of property ownership with the complicity of a Republican Party that prefers to stand silent Recently Baltimore County came to a settlement with the City over a scheme to colonize affluent County neighborhoods with HUD housing. According to Fox News: “With crime in the inner city soaring and many of Baltimore’s neighborhoods plagued by gang violence, there was a push to integrate those communities into neighborhoods in the surrounding county. The NAACP and others sued Baltimore County over alleged housing segregation – and the county has now settled, agreeing to...

A shocking new survey has found that support for capitalism is dying in America. In fact, more than half of all adults in the United States under the age of 30 say that they do not support capitalism at this point. You might be tempted to dismiss them as “foolish young people”, but the truth is that they are the future of America. As older generations die off, they will eventually become the leaders of this country. And of course our nation has not resembled anything close to a capitalist society for quite some time now. In a recent article,...

Massachusetts Senate President Stanley Rosenberg on Wednesday called upon Berkshire Gas to lift its moratorium on new and expanded natural gas service in the region — but a spokesman for Berkshire's parent company, the publicly-traded Avangrid, told The Republican that the moratorium on new hookups would stay in place without a "permanent solution" for additional natural gas capacity in western Massachusetts. ... Berkshire Gas had hoped to purchase capacity on the line. Berkshire's parent company, Avangrid, had also signed on as an investor in the $5-8 billion Kinder Morgan pipeline. Berkshire more than a year ago imposed a moratorium on...

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg lashed out at Donald Trump last week at the annual developers conference over his proposed border wall paid by Mexico. Zuckerberg he heard “fearful voices calling for building walls” and halting immigration. Then Zuckerberg went back home to his walled off compound.

The Sentinel has offered to let me publicly take responsibility for my recent building code violation. I appreciate that. Until very recently, I have had a tenant in a small room behind my house. Renting out this unit was not permitted under the city’s Building Code. As someone making rules about housing, I should not have been breaking the rules. This was a mistake. I am sorry.

Police in New York arrested a number of protesters on Thursday who were apparently part of a movement to disrupt the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in order to demonstrate against the failure to indict Darren Wilson for shooting and killing Michael Brown. At least seven people were detained, according to the New York Post, which had warned in its front page today about a “plot against Snoopy.” The seven people who were arrested were apparently part of a group of people who overturned a trash can and tried to “run toward the floats,” according to WPIX-TV. “But an hour later,...

When Don Sage of Concord, N.H., learned his electric bill could rise by as much as $40 a month he got flustered. He and his wife make do on a bit less than $30,000 a year in Social Security payments, and they pay close attention to their electric bills. "When the invoice comes in the mail to get paid, I have a target amount that we can fluctuate up or down, based on our fixed budget," Sage says. "They don't need my permission to hike up their rates, but the fact is we're the ones that are paying these increases."...

Land-use conflicts between Barnett Shale wells and homes continues to pose a “major impediment” to Denton’s future quality of life and economic development, gas well administrator Darren Groth told the City Council Tuesday. The Council agreed, voting unanimously Tuesday to approve a moratorium on gas wells applications and permits through Jan. 20. This moratorium is separate from the Nov. 4 referendum to ban hydraulic fracking in the city of Denton, a first for Texas. The four-and-a-half-month extension gives city staff time to iron out problems with the city ordinance to prevent a repeat of what happened in the Vintage neighborhood...

A proposal to build a pipeline from the fracking fields of Pennsylvania to eastern Massachusetts by late 2018 is sparking concern among many property owners in the path of the pipe. But there’s a twist to this evolving story: a proposed surcharge added to electric bills that would force every ratepayer in New England to help pay for the interstate pipeline, which is expected to cost $2 billion to $6 billion. The route proposed for the pipeline’sMassachusetts segment runs through dense forests, wetlands and small towns in the northern tier of the state. Alternative routes, or modifications to the northern...

"The vacant property that the state of Connecticut has is too small to accommodate your needs (which clearly must be at least several hundred thousand square feet of building space alone) and is typically in a state of disrepair to the point where a certificate of occupancy would be difficult to obtain," Patrick M. O'Brien, assistant director of OPM's Bureau of Assets Management, wrote to an official at the U.S. General Services Administration's New England regional offices. "Indeed, many existing structures are beyond salvage and require environmental remediation and demolition."

Protesters and counterprotesters Tuesday made Arizona the second border state to become a national flashpoint over what to do with the surge of unaccompanied immigrant children entering the country illegally. Dozens of demonstrators gathered in Oracle, Arizona, about 100 miles north of the Mexican border, where federal officials were expected to send dozens of detained immigrant children for housing. One protester said his opposition to the transfer wouldn't scare the detained children because "after they've been all the way up through Mexico, I don't think anything is going to frighten them," Eldon Rhodes told CNN Tucson affiliate KVOA. "I'm protesting...