Leading our roundup of this week's news: Southern Vermont College in Bennington announced it will close in a few months amid mounting debt and sagging enrollment.

Boston Mayor Marty Walsh is asking questions of his own police department in the wake of a U.S. Department of Labor lawsuit filed last week in Bostons federal court. Two Boston police detectives are cited in the suit, which says the police cooperated with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the arrest of a construction worker. The suit alleges Boston-based Tara Construction retaliated against Jose Martin Paz Flores, who is not a legal resident of the U.S., after Paz filed a...

If they had known, they never would have bought the house on Bayou Glen Road. Sure, it was a beautiful lot, tucked in a bend of the creek, backyard woodsy and wild, the neighbors friendly and the street quiet. A little piece of nature just 20 minutes from downtown Houston. It was exactly what John and Heather Papadopoulos — recently married, hoping to start a family — were looking for in 2007. They didn't think much about the creek that ran along their yard, aside from appreciating the birds...

Birds in winter may be drab, like us, but they're there.

On Monday, at the annual State of the University address at the UMass Club, UMass President Marty Meehan announced the university system will move into adult online education, to better compete with Southern New Hampshire University and other big schools that offer courses and degrees online. Meehan said one big reason to move into online education is that the number of college students in New England is declining. In New England, there will be between 32,000 and 54,000 fewer college-aged...