EXTRA...

Casino almost here? The mystery of Striped Bass; Doc bribed parents with Cape trip

Doctor who resigned from family planning post was cited by state
Charged with using Cape Cod junket at bribe for parents

BOSTON— A Marblehead doctor who abruptly resigned last week from a federal family planning post was warned by state officials in January not to prescribe drugs to people who weren't his patients or provide mental health counseling without proper training, according to a published report. Eric Keroack resigned March 29 as head of the U.S. Office of Population Affairs after he was notified that the state's Medicaid office had launched an investigation into his private practice. The U.S. Office of Population Affairs, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services agency, provides low-income women with contraception...

The complaint alleged Keroack overmedicated her mother by prescribing several powerful psychotherapeutic drugs, and "brainwashed" her mother into thinking she was severely depressed. The daughter, a former patient of Keroack's whose name was withheld, also said Keroack gave her parents money and presents, including a Cape Cod getaway...  Read the rest of this Telegram story here.  Leave a comment
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Trying to understand the mystery of Striped Bass in winter

Fishermen and scientists may never fully understand the striped bass, but they will never stop trying. Few fish have been studied as much as the striped bass has between spring and fall. Its wintering biology, however, is less understood.

During autumn, stripers entertain anglers as they migrate south from New England. Large individuals then winter in ocean waters, but many of their smaller counterparts, known as schoolies, travel to major estuaries that support striped bass spawning, namely the Hudson and Delaware Rivers and the Chesapeake Bay.

Some, however, ride out the cold months in systems where they do not reproduce, including the Housatonic and Connecticut Rivers in Connecticut and Scortons Creek on Cape Cod. Judging from fishermen’s catches, none of these hold anywhere near the sheer numbers of the upper Thames River in Connecticut, home to an unusual aggregation of wintering striped bass long known to fishermen but not to scientists... Read the rest of this New York Times story here.  Leave a comment
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EDITORIAL: Reasons To Love A Shark
And a Sanctuary from here to Canada 

For years, conservationists have argued for stronger protections for sharks. It's been a tough sell; sharks don't evoke a lot of sympathy.

But a study recently published in the journal Science explains why those protections are necessary. A team of Canadian and U.S. scientists reports that sharp declines in big sharks along the Eastern Seaboard over the past 35 years has produced a boom in rays, skates and smaller sharks that are destroying such well-regarded delicacies as North Carolina bay scallops and Chesapeake Bay oysters.

From 1970 to 2005, according to the study, the number of scalloped hammerhead and tiger sharks in the northwest Atlantic may have declined by more than 97 percent; populations of bull, dusky and smooth hammerhead sharks may have dropped more than 99 percent. The loss of these top predators has allowed other marine species to proliferate - especially the cownose ray, a large (its wingspan can reach 6 feet across) ray with a proportionately outsized appetite for scallops, oysters and soft-shell and hard-shell clams...  Reforms to the federal marine fisheries act adopted by Congress late last year promise improved protections. But the most promising, long-term solution, proposed by the Conservation Law Foundation and World Wildlife Fund-Canada, calls for the creation of a patchwork of 30 marine preserves from Cape Cod to Nova Scotia totaling 24,000 square miles...  Read the rest of this Hartford Cournt editorial here.  Leave a comment
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By any other name: Slots, bingo ... what’s the difference

As the Mashpee Wampanoags push Beacon Hill for a green light to open a Las Vegas-style casino, the tribe may hold the trump card: bingo slots.   If the tribe is denied the right to open a traditional gambling casino, tribal leaders contend they will move forward with a wagering resort that features bingo slot machines.

For some, seasonal visa woes nothing new
Some similar areas are turning to foreign student workers

While business owners on the East End frantically search for replacements for the hundreds of Irish waiters, Jamaican cooks and Dominican housekeepers who will not get their summer work permits this year, other places across the Northeast have developed ways to get seasonal workers in an increasingly competitive market... 

Cape Cod holds job fairs and runs an extensive outreach program, even going to New England ski resorts and asking winter H-2B workers to extend their visas and work for the summer. They also look for workers locally, in central Boston and smaller communities such as Fall River, Mass.  In New Jersey, some businesses have switched from the H-2B workers who can stay up to 10 months to foreign student workers who can only be employed for three months. They also send recruiters out to Texas and Florida, in an effort to get H-2B workers in those states to extend their permits for four months and come to work for them. In some ways, the resorts on the Maine coast and in Cape Cod and along the Jersey shore share the same labor problems as the Hamptons. They are isolated communities, far from population centers, with no easy transportation to bring in workers and little local housing...  Read the rest of this Newday story here.   Leave a comment
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A tour of history at  the Mass Maritime Academy
The USS DeWert,  named for a Taunton war hero, visits Bourne

BOURNE - With its guns pointing over the water and its radar antennas stretching over 120 feet into the overcast sky, the hulking 3,600-ton steel warship cast an imposing shadow over the Cape Cod Canal.  With its guns pointing over the water and its radar antennas stretching over 120 feet into the overcast sky, the hulking 3,600-ton steel warship cast an imposing shadow over the Cape Cod Canal.

The USS DeWert, named for a Taunton war hero, was docked at Massachusetts Maritime Academy in Buzzards Bay this past week. In addition to conducting some exercises with the academy's students, some crew members took a trip to the nearby National Veterans Cemetery in Bourne to pay their respects to the Navy frigate's namesake, Hospital Corpsman Richard DeWert...  Read the rest of this Taunton Gazette story here.