Originally published in the Worcester Telegram May 31, 2015. BOSTON - About 100 students from Worcester’s South High Community School managed to pass a comprehensive immigration reform bill Friday, and they pulled it off before lunch.
Granted, it was just part of a simulation, held at the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate. But getting that many teenagers to work together on anything, much less one of the most complex and heated political issues in the country, is impressive.
Read MoreOriginally published in the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, Dec. 22, 2014. UXBRIDGE — In a wooded residential area off Route 122, a team of foresters and entomologists took turns looking through a scope at a small hole in the bark of a maple, maybe 55 feet up. Everyone agreed the damage came from a bird, probably a woodpecker, and not the Asian longhorned beetle.
A very good thing, since the invasive insect is not supposed to be this far beyond the infestation in Worcester.
But after six years of surveying 5 million potential host trees and removing about 34,000, the team fighting the beetle is taking a closer look at outlying areas that could be at risk of satellite infestations.
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