Mary Ellen spotted a hummingbird topping off today in Newton's Nahantan Park before the long migration south for the winter.

Claire Sadar reports 9/11 truthers held banners over the turnpike at two locations in the Newton/Watertown area and bollixed traffic in Newton Corner during rush hour by deciding to hand out literature to motorists there about how jet fuel can't melt steel or something.

The Heights reports BC has decided that a high vaccination rate among both students and faculty and a desire to return to "a normal teaching environment," but that some 300 professors signed a letter respectfully suggesting that's dumb. Masks are required in other indoor spaces on campus.

State Police report a motorcyclist traveling at "a high rate of speed" on Rte. 128 northbound in Newton lost control around 9:30 p.m.

The Harley Davidson then crashed and the operator, a 32 year old man from Ludlow, was found unresponsive. EMTs performed CPR on the operator on scene, and he was transported to Newton Wellesley Hospital where he succumbed to his injuries.

Newton Police are investigating five break-ins over the past month that all involved homes owned by Asian-Americans. Read more.

The Times of London reports: Outcry as retired Catalan minister faces multimillion-euro ‘independence’ fine.

Andreu Mas-Colell, 76, who helped organize what the Spanish government insists was an illegal referendum on independence for Catalonia, lived on Temple Street in Newton until the mid-1990s, when he taught economics at Harvard, Ryan Grannan-Doll reports.

Ari Herzog could only watch in amazement this evening as Newton firefighters used a ladder truck, a thin lasso and a box to rescue a raccoon that had somehow survived crossing the turnpike and then climbed up the top of a light fixture sprouting from the Jersey barriers that separate the two sides of the highway.

Video: Read more.

The Heights reports BC is telling students, especially freshmen, they're cruising for a bruising, like maybe just sending students home for the rest of the semester, because of an uptick in Covid-19 cases of late.

Several students have been booted from campus housing - or even suspended - after "gatherings' over the past couple of weekends involving too many students in one place, many without masks on, the Heights reports.

Hannah Armstrong captured the flaming SUV on the Massachusetts Turnpike westbound, just before Exit 17 in Newton Corner, shortly after 1 p.m. today. State Police report no injuries and that Newton and Boston firefighters doused the flames.