WBUR News

It's getting harder for immigrants to win release from custody, even when they're in dire health.

The job market is lagging, according to numbers and firsthand accounts from job recruiters. The people who help connect job seekers and employers say navigating the job market has changed significantly compared to prior years.

“We chose the statues of Michael and Florian to honor Quincy's first responders, not to promote any religion,” said Quincy Mayor Thomas Koch.

In a campaign video released Wednesday morning, Moulton said the Democratic Party "has clung to the status quo," and it's time to "change course."

For many parents, giving a child their own smartphone is a fraught milestone. But some are finding ways to avoid its pitfalls and still keep their pre-teens connected to friends: they're getting landlines.

In the few weeks since announcing his run for Senate, political outsider Graham Platner is drawing big crowds and raising lots of money. But Maine's incumbent, Republican Sen. Susan Collins, is no easy political mark. Nor is Democratic Gov. Janet Mills, who may soon enter the race.

On its opening night in 1900, Boston's Symphony Hall drew patrons in more than 250 carriages and headlines nationwide. Today, the landmark's revolutionary acoustics — engineered by a Harvard physics professor — continue to set the standard for concert halls worldwide.

Chelsea is an industrial hub for the region and has a troubled highway overpass that cuts through it. But there's a real cost. Chelsea residents have been fighting to improve the city's environment and in turn, their own health. The latest setback to that ongoing battle: the cancellation of a federal grant to mitigate flooding.

Every year in the early weeks of fall, Aroostook County potato farmers race to dig up their fields before the first frosts hit. Since at least the 1940s, students get a break from school to help out during the busy season.

Cities are confronting waves of extreme climate challenges in their neighborhoods. Solution-driven designers and architects like Brazier are engaging communities in new ways.

Artist crystal bi is transforming Boston's public spaces with interactive events that invite residents to reflect on memory, belonging, and the power of imagination. Through collaborative experiences inspired by ancestral traditions and local history, bi encourages Bostonians to envision a more inclusive and hopeful future for their city.

In downtown Boston, the artist's installation “SONG/LAND/SEA: WAI Water Warning” rings out a message about climate change.

The Providence musician released his first album of Black mountain music during America's racial reckoning. Amid Trump's DEI purge and environmental collapse, his Afrofuturist folk hits different.

Activists connected through an immigrant advocacy group called LUCE are documenting arrests throughout the state. The "ICE watchers" record the names of those detained to make sure they're accounted for, and help family members connect to resources.

Known for projects that explore heritage, motherhood, and resilience, Nixon-Silberg uses repurposed fabrics and deep-rooted storytelling to help Boston's young people find meaning in their histories and repair what has been lost — one stitch at a time.

Using materials like plaster, glass and wire, the artist creates abstract, textured wall sculptures inspired by forms found in nature. Nanajian tries to represent all the ways that human memory can be preserved, changed or lost.

The Nipmuc cultural steward teaches traditional Indigenous arts and advocates for Indigenous communities to be able to access, and even help manage, conservation land.

If you ride the MBTA, chances are you've seen an alert about a signal problem delaying your train. The T is in the middle of a project to improve the signal system on the Red and Orange lines so it can react to problems faster.

The Iranian-born artist transforms memories and conversations into visual stories. Exploring longing, displacement, and belonging, Sarabi charts connections between cultures, people and place, even from oceans apart.

The Boston artist is using her background in environmental science and activism to train and empower the next generation of dance leaders. “Culture is really an integral part of resiliency and survival,” Molinar said.

The audio explorer and plant DJ collaborates with gardens and trees to turn up the volume on their hidden role in our environment.

The Boston mayor's race may be all but decided, as incumbent Michelle Wu runs unopposed, but there are other races afoot. In the election for City Council, a conservative-leaning, "lunch-bucket Democrat" says he wants to bring more “balance” to a largely progressive body.

Scott Brown and the Diplomats — the name a nod to his time as ambassador — played a string of dates this summer across New Hampshire. Brown is an unlikely frontman considering he is again running for New Hampshire's U.S. Senate seat in 2026.

Joan Brugge's research into breast cancer is one of hundreds of projects at Harvard caught up in an ongoing dispute with the Trump administration over the university's handling of antisemitism on campus. Last spring, the administration froze nearly $3 billion in research grants and contracts to punish Harvard.

Quincy Mayor Thomas Koch has defended comments he made this week that the clergy sexual abuse scandal that rocked the Archdiocese of Boston in the early 2000s was more about homosexuality than pedophilia.

Local suicide prevention organizations are trying to fill a gap left by President Trump's policies. Reporter Paul C. Kelly Campos takes us inside a group based in Fall River that's working to provide the care people need.

The City Council last year approved a pay raise that would put Mayor Thomas Koch's salary above the mayors of Boston and New York City. That sparked a movement that had its first big win this week — a signature drive to get a question on the November ballot that lets voters decide on the pay hike.

Suya Joint owner Cecelia Lizotte has served up Nigerian dishes at her Roxbury restaurant for 10 years. But early this summer her brother and operational manager, Paul Dama was detained by ICE. Typically, he helps run the restaurant, but his absence has upended Lizotte's business. It's an example of how Trump's immigration actions can take a toll on restaurants.

Bicknell's thrush travel thousands of miles every year to nest and raise their young in some of the most rugged places in New England. But their populations are declining, and scientists are trying to learn more about them in hopes they can reverse the trend.

The president has not called out Boston as a city in need of a military presence, but Boston has been doing battle with the Trump administration in other ways for months. Most local elected leaders are united against any National Guard presence in Boston. But the nation, and some in the city, are deeply split.

Telehealth vans parked outside Harvard and Northeastern are connecting college students with counseling support.

Fall migration in Massachusetts is to birds as Sept. 1 is to students in Boston: some are moving in, some are moving out, and others are just passing through. Here are three things to keep in mind if you want to head out to see or hear these commuters.

While Kirk espoused many controversial views, he also provided comfort to conservative college students who often feel dismissed, unheard or threatened.

A Supreme Judicial Court ruling changed Nate Benjamin's life. In January 2024, the state's highest court ruled that those under 21 who commit a crime cannot receive life without the possibility of parole sentences. 

ICE has said it's rare for people to be detained inside its Burlington field office for more than a few hours, but a new WBUR analysis finds that hundreds were detained for more than a day this past spring and summer.

Hundreds of students have left Chelsea public schools this year, as families exit a community — and a state — that's become a prime target for immigration enforcement.

Josh Kraft has dropped out of the Boston mayor's race, two days after incumbent Michelle Wu trounced him in the city's preliminary election.

Massachusetts has one of the shortest deadlines in the country for prosecuting rape, even when DNA could help prove the case.

Mayor Michelle Wu and challenger Josh Kraft will go head to head on the November ballot for Boston mayor.

Hundreds of thousands of low-income Massachusetts residents could lose Medicaid coverage over the next 10 years — a result of the massive tax and spending bill President Trump signed in July.

The Department of Homeland Security did not specify how long the ICE crackdown would last around the state. Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said she expects federal agents to follow local and state laws, warning "we are prepared to take legal action at any evidence to the contrary."

Legal specialists say the federal government can't require Boston to carry out its deportation agenda and predicted the lawsuit will fail in court.