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Coronavirus
COVID-19: THE LATEST

About 4,000 Christmas Eve and Christmas Day flights are canceled as Omicron spreads

Mass. reports 10,040 confirmed COVID-19 cases, the highest total reported in a single day

Here’s a look at the latest coronavirus numbers in Massachusetts, including case numbers, deaths, demographics, and more.
How to know if those are Omicron symptoms, or maybe just the common cold

One model projects a sobering outlook for rising COVID-19 cases in the US and Mass. as Omicron surges

What to do if you test positive for COVID

What if returning to the office doesn’t involve an ‘office’?

Companies are working from anywhere, including former restaurants, apartments, design studios, and even auto body shops.

Weather forecast | dave epstein
A winter weather advisory is in effect from 1 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday, Christmas Day.
Travel will be icy on Christmas Day in Massachusetts, and a winter weather advisory will be in effect
Freezing rain is expected in the Boston area on Christmas morning, making travel on the roadways and walking possibly slippery and dangerous.

Mass. coronavirus at a glance
Vaccinations
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Trend:
1+ dose received:
Fully vaccinated:
Cases and deaths
Total cases:
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Total deaths:
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Other resources:
Last updated: . NOTE: Mass DPH releases data Monday-Friday starting July 2021. Mass. population of 6,892,503 is used to calculate vaccination percentages. SOURCE: Mass. Dept. of Public Health
A Beautiful Resistance | Jeneé Osterheldt

From bell hooks to Virgil Abloh to your local creatives, the arts contribute to radical change

Activism requires organizers, policy, and protest. But first, there is imagination.
The Questions, featuring Derecka Purnell Follow @abeautifulresistance on Instagram See more from A Beautiful Resistance
Big Lux's Beautiful Resistance: A Veteran's Violin Sings Black Lives Matter
Created and produced by Jeneé Osterheldt/Globe Staff, Directed and edited by Daymian Mejia, Supervising Producer Caitlin Healy/Globe Staff, Illustrations by Paula Champagne, Photo by Craig F. Walker/Globe Staff
Opinion
Respiratory Therapist Angelika MacClellan (left) talks with nurse Natasha Cacciatore through a patients door in the Special Pathogens Unit ICU at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, on April 27, 2020.
EDITORIAL

The best tribute to health care workers? Follow the guidelines for staying healthy.

This year, the holiday spirit means respecting the burden on those who treat the sick and wounded.
A nurse from Brigham and Women's Hospital watches as demonstrators gather outside the Massachusetts State House in September to protest COVID-19 vaccination and mask mandates
Jeffrey L. Schnipper

Pandemic Christmas at the Brigham
Alex Beam

No, no, nocebo!
A utility crew places a toxic lead water pipe onto the road after extracting it from an apartment building and under the street in Newark, N.J., on Oct. 21. Newark city officials say crews have removed more than 22,000 lead pipes from private residential properties over the last few years and replaced them with new copper pipes.
Katherine Clark

Cleaning up America’s lead water pipes
It was Dec. 17, and I still had no tree.
Mary Ann D'Urso

This year, Christmas at my house got canceled
Bill Belichick and the Patriots are 9-5 heading into Sunday's rematch with the Bills.
Dan Shaughnessy

In the spirit of the season, there are more than enough apologies to go around, and a few other thoughts

Taking cues from the greatest coach of all time, our columnist would like to say he's sorry to those who may have been offended in this space over the course of 2021.
In 2001, Tom Brady (12) led the Patriots to a 17-16 road victory over the Jets, a Week 12 game that featured a second-half comeback.
Chad Finn

A close look at Mac Jones’s season reveals an eerie resemblance to Tom Brady, circa 2001

The rookie has shown a similar, almost uncanny, knack to ‘01 Brady in his ability to get his act together before it’s too late.
Marie Verner, nursing supervisor at Park Avenue Health Center in Arlington, helped to hold up her sleeve as she received a booster shot last month.

Mass. offers cash incentive to nursing homes to increase staff booster shots

Less than half the workers have gotten the shots, despite the federal recommendation.

More recent stories

The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe regained legal status for its reservation land in southeastern Massachusetts this week following a decision by the US Department of the Interior. Brian Weeden, chairman of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribal council, called the decision "a small step in the right direction when we talk about justice."
Mashpee Wampanoag reservation regains legal status; Taunton casino project’s future unclear
The reservation’s status had been in limbo since March 2020 when the Interior Department, then under Donald Trump’s administration, ordered the land to be taken out of trust.

Man who tried to kidnap student from Roxbury elementary school held without bail

Charles Marriro, 58, allegedly approached three students at the David A. Ellis Elementary School on Dec. 15 and grabbed one by the arm in an attempt to pull the child away from their classmates, Suffolk District Attorney Rachael Rollins said in a statement. Marriro asked another student to “come play basketball with him,” the statement said.

One dead in Hopkinton crash; icy roads cause accidents across state

The man, whose identity was not released, was alone, driving his 2004 Ford F250 southbound at around 8:30 a.m., when the pickup left the road and slammed into the Fruit Street overpass on the right side of the highway, State Police said in a statement.

Elderly couple pulled from flaming Nahant home

Firefighters responded to the single-family home around midnight and found the front half of the structure engulfed in heavy flames, officials said.

Manchin told White House he would support version of tax on billionaires

Despite its endorsement from the most conservative Democrat, the tax on billionaires still faces long odds to approval as part of the final legislation, as it has been greeted skeptically by other Democratic lawmakers in both the House and Senate.

LOVE LETTERS
Love Letters
My new relationship is upsetting my twin
"She feels left out and replaced."

Globe Santa

Merry Christmas to all, and to all, a THANK YOU!

Thousands have made the decision to help Globe Santa, and the campaign is profoundly grateful.

LEARN MORE ABOUT GLOBE SANTA

 Read the latest stories Make a donation. Make a difference.

Best of the holidays

People under the holiday lights on Boston Common.

9 places around Boston where you can get into the holiday spirit (for free)

Every holiday season comes with a gamut of things to do and gifts to buy, and it can take a toll on the old wallet. That got us thinking about some activities in and around the city where you can revel in the holiday spirit for free.
Boston is dressed in its wintery best. Here’s where to see Christmas trees, menorahs, and other decorations 20 family-friendly events to put you in the holiday spirit

Recommended reads

Tom Romano and his son, Robert, before Robert was deported and Tom severed his spinal cord in a fall.
KEVIN CULLEN

The best Christmas present ever

The last few Christmases have not been so merry and bright for the Romanos.

Dr. Michael Mina.
Michael Mina can’t stop talking about the need for rapid COVID tests. The country may finally be listening. But is it too late?
“I feel we’ve learned so little despite so much pain,” said the former Brigham and Women’s epidemiologist.

Harvard scientist Charles Lieber leaves the John Joseph Moakley United States Courthouse midday, after a morning of jury selection in his trial. He is accused of lying to federal investigators about his ties to a Chinese talent program.
Harvard professor’s conviction brings scrutiny of China Initiative
After Harvard Professor Charles Lieber became the first academic convicted at trial under the Justice Department’s China Initiative, the former prosecutor who brought the case said the government should stop targeting researchers and focus on cases involving espionage and the theft of trade secrets.

Rapid tests are a good way to get an immediate answer so you can start quarantining to protect others if you do test positive, said Dr. Brian Hollenbeck, chief of infectious disease at New England Baptist Hospital, but they should be followed up with a PCR test if you have symptoms or have been exposed.
PCR or rapid antigen? Here’s how to use COVID tests to gather safely for the holidays
PCR tests detect the genetic material from the virus, while rapid antigen tests detect specific proteins from the coronavirus. Here is the best time to use each, and how to use them to gather safely with friends and family.

video

Culture & Lifestyle

Ellis Paul closes out the year with a run of full-band shows at Club Passim.
THE TICKET

Things to do around Boston this weekend and beyond
Boston Ballet dancer Chyrstyn Fentroy (center) performs in the company's "Bach Cello Suites," at Jacob's Pillow in Becket in 2019.

‘Crying happy tears’: Chyrstyn Fentroy promoted to principal dancer at Boston Ballet
Pages from "Woody Guthrie: Songs and Art * Words and Wisdom," a new book curated by his daughter, Nora Guthrie

In a new book about Woody Guthrie, his daughter tells his story through what he left behind

Billy Conway died at age 65 after battling cancer for several years.
APPRECIATION

It didn’t take a lot for drummer Billy Conway to make a big impression

Special Projects

An older lobsterman passed by Tanner Lazaro as he hauled up his traps in his boat, Used N Abused, on Aug. 24. During the summer Tanner hauled his own traps on whatever days his mentor Frankie Thompson or another lobsterman didn't need his help.

The lobster trap

The plentiful catch that brought wealth to fishing families is at risk, as climate change warms the Gulf of Maine. A way of life is on the line, but lobstermen can't, or won't, imagine another.

The 2021 Top Places to Work in Massachusetts

Is your employer among the 150 companies to make the list?
Jeneé Osterheldt

A Beautiful Resistance

Black joy, Black lives, as celebrated by culture columnist Jeneé Osterheldt.

‘On the Street’: The changing face of Greater Boston neighborhoods

The changing face of Greater Boston neighborhoods.

Opinion, ideas, and commentary

NASA technicians lift the James Webb Space Telescope inside a clean room at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., in 2017.
EDITORIAL

Peering into the darkness of the past to see a brighter future
"I didn’t have a plan. I didn’t know how I’d pull it off." The author runs along a dilapidated street in Maracaibo.
IDEAS | ANTONIO MATHEUS

The lunacy of the long distance runner
Kerry Higdon gives her son Kol, 10, a math lesson in their home in Edinburg, Va., in September.
IDEAS | AMY CRAWFORD

Do-it-yourself education is on the rise
LETTERS

2021, in Globe readers’ own words
Joan Vennochi

A gift that touches the heart
IDEAS | ABDALLAH FAYYAD

Editing the Constitution

Metro

Coronavirus Live Updates

About 4,000 Christmas Eve and Christmas Day flights are canceled as Omicron spreads

The latest news and guidance on the state of the COVID-19 pandemic in New England and beyond.

‘Perfect way to celebrate safely’: Christmas churchgoers brave freezing outdoor services amid Omicron surge

As surging coronavirus cases prompted many churches to cancel Christmas services nationwide, some parishes in Massachusetts were determined Friday to maintain their annual Christmas Eve traditions, no matter the obstacles.
RI NEWS

Just in time for Christmas, a special homecoming

Yarielis Paulino-Pepin was born into the pandemic with a heart defect and a rare genetic disorder. Now, for the first time in her life, the 17-month-old girl is leaving the hospital to live at home.

Mashpee Wampanoag reservation regains legal status; Taunton casino project’s future unclear

The reservation’s status had been in limbo since March 2020 when the Interior Department, then under Donald Trump’s administration, ordered the land to be taken out of trust.

Sports

Sunday's Patriots-Bills is sure to be as intense as the last meeting between the teams.
Chad Finn I Unconventional Preview

This Patriots-Bills matchup is the kind of game we missed last season

The outcome of Sunday's game at Gillette Stadium will go a long way in determining the AFC East champion.
Who's on your all-time Bruins team?
bruins

We held an all-time Bruins draft. Here’s how four Globe journalists chose their teams

Our hockey experts compiled their rosters from team history, picking one after another. Team president Cam Neely weighed in on the four resulting teams — including one that featured him.
Boston College forward Taylor Soule, a nominee to the Cheryl Miller Award, which recognizes the nation’s top small forward, is averaging a team-leading and career-high 16.8 points per game this season.
women's college basketball notebook

Taylor Soule has been `The Mayor’ on and off the court at Boston College

A 5-foot-11-inch forward on the BC women’s basketball team, Taylor Soule is one of the top on-court performers in the highly-competitive Atlantic Coast Conference.
SPORTS LOG

IIHF cancels U18 women’s championship over COVID-19 concerns for second consecutive year
Patriots notebook

Patriots to be without Rhamondre Stevenson and Nelson Agholor
NFL notebook

Washington’s Deshazor Everett involved in fatal car wreck

Business

About 4,000 Christmas Eve and Christmas Day flights are canceled as Omicron spreads

Thousands of frustrated travelers hoping to fly to Christmas celebrations faced a wave of last-minute cancellations, as a spike in coronavirus cases sidelined airline workers who had contracted the virus or had been exposed to the Omicron variant.

What if returning to the office doesn’t involve an ‘office’?

Companies are working from anywhere, including former restaurants, apartments, design studios, and even auto body shops.

Bosses have a new headache: How long should sick workers isolate?

Explainer: What next as high court wades into COVID mandate?

STAT

Dr. Monica McLemore, Associate Professor in the Family Health Care Nursing Department at UCSF, stands for a portrait at the Frank H. Ogawa Plaza on Friday, September 10th, 2021 in Oakland, Calif.
‘Health equity tourists’: How white scholars are colonizing research on health disparities
A STAT investigation shows that researchers with little or no background or training in health equity research are rushing in to scoop up grants and publish papers.

Covid winter illustration
Winter is coming, again: What to expect from Covid-19 as the season looms
STAT spoke with infectious disease experts and others about what to expect from Covid-19 as the seasons change.

Funeral goers sing during a service for Daisy Pace at New Bethel Missionary Baptist Church in January 2021.
DISTANCED: Pandemic stories of Black life in the rural South
Photographer Bethany Mollenkof spent six months documenting the impact of Covid-19 on residents of rural Black communities in the South.

Boston, MA -- 05/12/21 -- Dr. Matthew Carty examines patient Jerry Majethic at Brigham and Women's Faulkner Hospital on May 12, 2021, in Boston, Massachusetts. (Kayana Szymczak for STAT)
Groundbreaking arm amputation surgery makes a ‘phantom’ hand seem real
The procedure aims to restore proprioception, the ability to sense where our limbs are in space and how fast and forcefully they’re moving.

magazine
Jonathan Way plays with two coyotes he helped raise at the Stone Zoo in Stoneham in 2004.
GLOBE MAGAZINE

This scientist bottle-fed and bayed with coyotes. Was he sidelined for loving them too much?
PERSPECTIVE

We’re all feeling fine. We really are. Except we’re not.
This week's daters: Gordon and Jackie.
Dinner with Cupid

Blind date: ‘He and his friends had planned their own questions to ask when getting to know someone’
Quiche With Mushrooms, Bacon, and Gruyère
Cooking

Recipes: A make-ahead New Year’s brunch menu featuring quiche

metro

Thank you letters with children's art sent to Globe Santa.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all, a THANK YOU!

Mass. reports 10,040 confirmed COVID-19 cases, the highest total reported in a single day

Why five-star forward Taylor Bowen could be New England’s next great basketball star

sports

Taylor Bowen is a 6-9 small forward.

Why five-star forward Taylor Bowen could be New England’s next great basketball star

Boston Public Schools put sports activities on pause because of latest pandemic surge

Natick wrestling’s culture, history to be put to the test as Redhawks take on Division 1

business

A vial of the drug Remdesivir

Remdesivir could help high-risk COVID patients outside the hospital, study finds

Omicron is latest blow to pandemic-weary front-line workers

Israel plan to push ahead with fourth COVID jab may be scuttled

politics

U.S. President Joe Biden speaks on Covid-19 and the omicron variant in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Tuesday, Dec. 21, 2021.

Explainer: How will Biden’s COVID-19 test giveaway work?

$2.5b headed to tribes for longstanding water settlements

Trump asks Supreme Court to block release of Jan. 6 records

Nation

Delta Air Lines airplanes at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL) in Atlanta, Georgia, US, on Tuesday, Dec. 21, 2021.

About 4,000 Christmas Eve and Christmas Day flights are canceled as Omicron spreads

The first Christmas as a layperson: Burned out by the pandemic, many clergy quit in the past year

About 4,000 Christmas Eve and Christmas Day flights are canceled as Omicron spreads

World

Pope Francis.

Pope celebrates Christmas Eve Mass as virus surges in Italy

South Africa ends quarantines and contact tracing, and authorizes booster shots

South Korea to pardon ex-president Park Geun-hye, imprisoned for corruption

opinion

California Governor Gavin Newsom has broached a gun-control initiative that borrows strategy from Texas' recent controversial abortion ban.

Democrats should apply Supreme Court’s abortion decision to firearms

This year, Christmas at my house got canceled

Peering into the darkness of the past to see a brighter future

lifestyle

President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden speak with the NORAD Tracks Santa Operations Center on Peterson Air Force Base, Colo., via teleconference in the South Court Auditorium on the White House campus in Washington, Friday, Dec. 24, 2021.

COVID-19 makes Biden’s 1st White House Christmas less merry

Live Santa tracker 2021: Use Norad and other sources to follow path

My new relationship is upsetting my twin

food & dining

Bartender Lillian Ferranti pouring a Manhattan inside Hyde, a new speakeasy in Providence, Rhode Island.

Top places to ring in the New Year in Rhode Island

Where to find the best whoopie pies around New England

Wusong Road softly opens in Harvard Square; Vermont’s Spruce Peak serves comfort food, slope-side

travel

.

New Year’s at the Mystic museum, curling at the Liberty Hotel, and a test lab in the palm of your hand

Jenna Rubaii seeks out parks and the unexpected when traveling

It’s OK to vacation like an adult

Arts

Visitors at "Imagine Van Gogh" at the SoWa Power Station.

‘Imagine Van Gogh’ doesn’t leave much to the imagination

Adria Arch, known for airborne sculptures, grounds herself with ‘The Visitors’

Italy obscura: Photographer Abelardo Morell opens the mind’s eye

Books

Away in a manger in ‘The First Christmas’

She reads about politics — and everything else

Examining truth and consequences in ‘Trust’

Movies

Just another night in 1973, from "Licorice Pizza."

Movies set in the ’70s: Getting beyond disco and double knits

A Boston woman posted to TikTok offering to swap homes with a stranger like the movie ‘The Holiday.’ She leaves for England next week

Doc Talk: Slavery today, the tragic end of a rap legend

Television

From left: Ken Bolden, Sandra Oh, and Mark Philip Stevenson in a scene from "The Chair."

‘The Chair’ got academia right, romance wrong

Natasha Rothwell is ready to be the lead of her own rom-com

‘Summer of Soul,’ ‘Drive My Car’ make Oscars shortlist

music

Billy Conway died at age 65 after battling cancer for several years.

It didn’t take a lot for drummer Billy Conway to make a big impression

A Far Cry makes space for complex grief with ‘Flames to Ashes’

On Christmas Eve, Eric Jackson plans a cool Yule while Oedipus unwraps some radio rarities

Theater/Dance

"The Christmas Revels" canceled its six remaining post-Christmas shows at the Sanders Theatre in Cambridge.

Enter, stage left: Omicron

On Boston stages, these three supporting players are showstoppers

‘Fiddler on the Roof’ still strikes a powerful chord

globe local

South Boston12/22/21 A long line formed early Wednesday morning at the South Boston branch of the Boston Public Library as antigen rapid test kits for COVID-19 were handed out free. The tests give results in15 minutes and four for household were given out. Each kit performs two tests. John Tlumacki/Globe Staff (metro)

Boston is almost out of free rapid COVID tests, officials say, but a few remain available Thursday night

She dances for the two of them, with grace and love

Should Massachusetts require eligible voters to cast ballots in November elections?

Obituaries

Author Joan Didion in her New York apartment in 2005. Didion has died at age 87, her publisher announced.

Joan Didion, peerless prose stylist, dies at 87

Chuck Hunt, the state’s first ‘first husband,’ remembered for his ‘kindness toward the least powerful’

Anne Emerman, champion of disability rights, dies at 84