Area Briefs: July 4 peace walk to honor Frances Crowe, Paki Wieland

Award-winning play, 'Unreconciled,' comes to the Academy this weekend, tackles clergy sexual abuse with conviction and compassion

Date: April 13, 2007 To: Jaybird <Jay Sefton> From: Dad <Joe Sefton> Subject: the bastard. Link: Priest Defrocked Over Abuse Cases Jaybird, just saw this in the Inquirer. Please call me. Love, Dad “Holy s—,” Jay Sefton thought. His father — a lifelong Havertown boy, a diehard Catholic and Philadelphia Phillies fan, a chain-smoking Army [&hellip;]

Belchertown well project stalled amid drought, permit fight

BELCHERTOWN — The Belchertown Water District had hoped to drill a new well to expand capacity and boost drought resilience, but that effort has stalled after a year spent defending the district’s water withdrawal permit before state regulators. The Belchertown Water District has spent the last year fighting to maintain it water withdrawal allowance against [&hellip;]

Appeals court upholds Granby woman's manslaughter conviction in 2010 killing

The Massachusetts Appeals Court has affirmed Cara Rintala’s 2023 conviction in the killing of her wife in their Granby home 16 years ago, closing out what is believed to be the first murder case in Hampshire County to be tried four times. Rintala, now 59, was tried on a murder charge but ultimately convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the March 2010 strangulation death of her wife, Annamarie Cochrane Rintala, 37, in the couple’s Granby home. Rintala’s first two trials, in 2013 and 2014, ended in hung juries. In 2016, a jury convicted her of murder and she was sentenced to life [&hellip;]

Let the church bell ring, Williamsburg residents tell Select Board

WILLIAMSBURG — Two weeks after a resident asked that the Haydenville Congregational Church bell to fall silent overnight — a request that garnered significant attention in the community and on social media — the Select Board heard an overwhelming response Tuesday: Let the bell keep ringing. The Select Board took no action on High Street [&hellip;]

Columnist Carrie N. Baker: A groundbreaking UN resolution calls forced pregnancy what it is: reproductive violence

It took until July 7, 2026, for the world’s leading human rights body to call forcing someone to be pregnant — or forcing them not to be — what it is: reproductive violence. In a landmark resolution adopted unanimously, the UN Human Rights Council formally recognized “reproductive violence” as a specific, systemic form of gender-based [&hellip;]