Deputy Director

Jason Moreno isn’t the type of student you’d expect to receive extra attention from his teachers. Moreno plays sports and serves on student council at the Snowden International School in Boston, where he’s a sophomore. Teachers say he’s bright and funny. He has plenty of friends, and he goes home each night to a supportive family.

In a lab in Lowell, Massachusetts, there is a belief in a better way to clean without using potentially dangerous chemicals. “There is still a perception that the stronger it smells, the better it works, the stronger the bleach, the more it will kill the germs,” Liz Harriman, deputy director of UMass Lowell’s Toxics Use Reduction Institute, said Thursday.

With the dangers surrounding cleaning chemicals at the forefront, researchers are working to make products safer.

Can old dogs teach us new tricks? Scientists are looking for 10,000 pets for the largest-ever study of aging in canines. They hope to shed light on human longevity too. The project will collect a pile of pooch data: vet records, DNA samples, gut microbes and information on food and walks. Five hundred dogs will test a pill that could...

Researchers from Texas A&M and the University of Washington are planning to study a slowed aging process pill on dogs.

It looks like this winter could be a bit milder than usual, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Winter Outlook unveiled Thursday. Warmer-than-average temperatures are likely across much of the U.S. this winter, according to the NOAA Climate Prediction Center’s Winter Outlook for December through February.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has identified 1,080 cases of lung illnesses linked to vaping, an increase of 275 since last week, NBC News reported. The numbers are likely to continue to increase, as state health departments have confirmed to NBC News that they’re investigating more than 1,300 cases. “The data that we’re getting does not suggest this...

Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, a frequent target of President Donald Trump’s wrath, faces the prospect of an indictment after his attorneys were unable to persuade senior Justice Department officials not to pursue charges that he lied to internal investigators. Two people familiar with the matter said Thursday that Deputy Attorney General Jeff Rosen declined an appeal from McCabe’s...

President Donald Trump skirted the law when he appointed Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II as one of his administration’s top immigration officials, and certain actions by Cuccinelli’s office should have no force or effect, according to a lawsuit. The complaint was submitted to the U.S. district court for Washington, D.C. Friday by the Democracy Forward Foundation, Proskauer Rose LLP, Catholic Legal...

FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, a frequent target of President Donald Trump’s ire, sued the FBI and the Justice Department on Thursday over his firing. The lawsuit, the second this week from an ex-FBI official challenging the circumstances of his termination, says the firing was part of Trump’s plan to rid the bureau of leaders he perceived as disloyal to...

A veteran FBI agent who wrote derogatory text messages about Donald Trump filed a lawsuit Tuesday charging that the bureau caved to “unrelenting pressure” from the president when it fired him. The suit from Peter Strzok also alleges he was unfairly punished for expressing his political opinions, and that the Justice Department violated his privacy when it shared hundreds of...

Thousands of protesters have joined a swelling effort to stop construction of a telescope they have long tried to keep off a mountain considered sacred to some Native Hawaiians, but state officials doubled down Wednesday on their commitment to ensure the project will be completed. After a day of growing crowds and arrests of elderly demonstrators, Hawaii Gov. David Ige...

A Missouri commissioner on Friday ruled that the state’s only abortion clinic can continue providing the service at least until August as a fight over its license plays out, adding that there’s a “likelihood” that the clinic will succeed in the dispute. Administrative Hearing Commissioner Sreenivasa Rao Dandamudi granted what’s called a “stay,” which will allow the St. Louis Planned...

A federal appeals court in Washington ruled Friday against a Trump administration policy it described as a “blanket ban” preventing immigrant teens in government custody from getting abortions, and it kept in place an order blocking the policy. The policy, which dates to 2017, prohibited shelters from facilitating abortions for children held in government shelters after entering the country illegally....

Today, hundreds of volunteers fanned out across the City of Lawrence in an effort to revitalize 28 different sites.

Today, hundreds of volunteers will fan out across the City of Lawrence in an effort to revitalize 28 different sites.

The ringleader of a thwarted plot to bomb the New York City subway system in 2009 was effectively sentenced to time served on Thursday, according to his attorney.

Reports of military sexual assaults jumped by 13% last year, but an anonymous survey of service members released Thursday suggests the problem is vastly larger. The survey results found that more than 20,000 service members said they experienced some type of sexual assault, but only a third of those filed a formal report.

Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó took to the streets with a small contingent of heavily armed troops early Tuesday in a bold and risky call for the military and people to rise up and oust socialist leader Nicolas Maduro.