A political ally said the former Massachusetts governor left the state in better shape than he found it.

Associated PressFILE - This Jan. 3, 2007, file photo shows outgoing Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, accompanied by his wife, Ann, as he takes the "lone walk" out of the Statehouse in Boston. A former aide who supervised the archiving of records from Romney's stint as governor says Romney's State House office was almost completely off-limits when officials transferred documents in late 2006 to the Massachusetts state archives. Romney said recently he authorized the purging of emails and other electronic records because of concerns that the files might contain confidential information. The former aide, John O'Keefe, said that only public schedules and a limited amount of other paper documents from Romney's executive office went to the archives. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola, File)

BOSTON — Former Massachusetts Gov. W. Mitt Romney failed to reach his potential in improving the state's economy or building the state's Republican party, but he helped solve major problems by overhauling health care and balancing the state's budget with no broad-based tax increases, analysts and others say.

Romney, who was elected in 2002 and served one term, left behind a complicated and disputed legacy in Massachusetts.

People are taking a fresh look at his record ahead of the March 6 presidential primary in Massachusetts.

Romney, making his second run for the Republican nomination for president, was key in creating a state financial control board in 2004 that helped turned around the finances of Springfield, the state’s third most populated city.

The winner of the Republican primary would face President Barack Obama in the November election.

Romney also angered some people with a giant round of hikes in fees for state services and with frequent out of state travels in office during his last year as governor in 2006 while testing a presidential bid for 2008.

Michael J. Widmer, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, said Romney gets an A for health reform, a B for state budget issues and a C-minus for economic accomplishments.

Widmer said Romney’s work on the economy was especially disappointing given that Romney campaigned on a pledge to open corporate doors and to improve the state’s ability to compete in the long term. Romney took office after a successful career highlighted by the founding of Bain Capital, one of the world's top private investment companies.

“He never followed up in any comprehensive fashion on being the businessman to help bring business to Massachusetts,” Widmer said.

During Romney’s years as governor, jobs in Massachusetts rose by only about a net 46,000, from 3.224 million in January 2003 to 3.270 million in January 2007, according to the state Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development. Under Romney, the state regained only about 25 percent of the nearly 200,000 jobs lost during the downturn of 2001 through 2003.

Romney unveiled his "Working for Better Jobs" economic stimulus blueprint in Springfield during the gubernatorial campaign in 2002. He talked about the need for boosting the economy in the Springfield region, but didn't follow through as aggressively as expected, critics said.

In the Springfield metro area, only 2,600 net jobs were created during the Romney years. Jobs in the region rose from 296,600 in 2003 to 299,200 in 2007.

Widmer said the state’s 2006 health care law is one of the most important accomplishments on Beacon Hill during the past 25 years. Widmer credited Romney and his aides with working with the state legislators, U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy and bringing together groups such as hospitals, consumers, employers and insurers.

The health care law has resulted in 411,000 newly insured people in Massachusetts. About 160,000 are covered in a subsidized program created in the law for low-income adults who are not offered employer-sponsored insurance and do not qualify for Medicaid, Medicare or certain other special insurance programs.

Slightly less than two percent of Massachusetts residents remain uninsured, according to a state estimate. The law also requires that most adults obtain health insurance or face a possible tax penalty, drawing criticism that it is too heavy handed.

Romney also left his mark on the debate over gay marriage. Romney opposes gay unions, but his administration put gay marriage into effect in 2004 after it was legalized in 2003 by the state Supreme Judicial Court.

Romney later riled up activists when he used a 1913 law to block out-of-state same-sex couples from marrying here unless they agreed to move to Massachusetts. State legislators in 2008 voted to abolish the old law, which critics said was originally created to block inter-racial couples from other states from marrying here.

Romney also supported a proposed constitutional amendment to stop future gay marriages, but the amendment was killed by legislators about six months after he left office.

In Western Massachusetts, Romney oversaw the 2005 opening of the $71 million MassMutual Center in Springfield. Romney in 2003 also forced out former University of Massachusetts President William M. Bulger after raising doubts Bulger’s relationship with his fugitive mobster brother, James "Whitey" Bulger.

View full sizeFile photo | The RepublicanMassachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney speaks to reporters before taping a segment of "The State Gov. W. Mitt Romney speaks to reporters before taping a segment of "The State We're In" yesterday at the studios of WGBY in Springfield.

Romney also signed a law to establish a state-dominated control board in Springfield and to give the city up to $52 million in no-interest loans to help it out from a financial hole.

Sen. Gale D. Candaras, a Wilbraham Democrat, said Romney was aloof as governor and a letdown on the economy, but she said she was grateful for his work with legislators in establishing the control board.

The board helped eliminate $41 million budget shortfall and balance the city’s budget. The board was abolished in 2009 after approval of a new law to establish a chief administrative and financial officer for the city.

“The control board was something that had to be put in place,” Candaras said.

But Candaras criticized the ambitious former governor, saying he always had his eye on another job and was woeful on the economy in Western Massachusetts. Romney traveled out of state for all or parts of more than 200 days during his final year in office, according to an analysis at the time by The Boston Globe.

“There is no legacy,” Candaras said. “He was governor here but we never had his full attention.”

Sen. Stanley C. Rosenberg, an Amherst Democrat, said Romney deserves credit because “he believed the Amherst campus as a flagship (of the University of Massachusetts) had a lot more to offer and needed to be treated more fairly.”

But Rosenberg said Romney basically had a narrow agenda and was generally not an activist governor like former Democrat Michael S. Dukakis or Gov. Deval L. Patrick. At times, Romney seemed kind of disconnected from Beacon Hill, similar to former Republican Gov. William F. Weld, Rosenberg said.

“He wasn't living for the job,” Rosenberg said of Romney.

Romney did not raise taxes on people, but he did turn to fees for generating state revenues.

File photo | Associated PressSpringfield, Mass., Mayor Michael Albano, standing left, welcomes Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, right, to a meeting of the western Massachusetts chambers of commerce in Agawam, Mass., Friday, Jan. 31, 2003. Albano had harsh words for Romney's budget cuts during a radio appearance earlier in the day. Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., is seen seated front. (AP Photo/Nathan Martin)

During his first year in office, Romney and state legislators raised fees by about $500 million, including doubling the fee for a learner’s permit to drive, 50 percent increases for state licenses for about 200 professions and some miserly fees including a $10 annual fee on blind people, except for those on federal disability, to prove they are blind in order to receive tax breaks and public housing. Homeowners also were forced to pay 3.5 times more just to file a document to protect their property from legal judgments.

The fee hikes, along with reserves, spending cuts and a $200 million increase in certain corporate taxes, helped close a $3 billion deficit in the state’s then $22.3 billion budget.

Dennis B. Hale , an associate professor of political science at Boston College, said Romney was a good executive, partly based on his handling of state budgets.

“Generally, he was an effective governor,” Hale said. “Things moved along pretty smoothly during the time he was here.”

Romney was, however, ineffective at expanding the state’s Republican party.

In 2003, Republicans held six state Senate seats and 23 seats in the state House of Representatives. Four years later, when Romney departed office, there were five Republican senators and 19 house members. Now, there are four Senate Republicans and 33 in the House.

Romney's lieutenant governor was the party's nominee to succeed him but she lost to Patrick in 2006 in a landslide, ending 16 years of Republican rule in the corner office.

Romney helped finance and organize some accomplished Republican candidates for the Legislature in 2004, but all incumbents who ran for re-election were re-elected.

Former Senate Minority Leader Brian P. Lees, who worked closely with Romney for four years, said it was hard for Romney to get things done on Beacon Hill, with nowhere near the ability to sustain his veto in the Democrat-dominated Legislature. "He obviously had differences with legisators," said Lees, who is clerk of courts in Hampden County.

House Minority Leader Bradley H. Jones Jr., a Republican from North Reading, said Democrats in the Legislature “co-opted” much of Romney’s reform agenda in a tactical move that came ahead of the 2004 election.

Jones, who campaigned for Romney for four days before Romney’s victory in the New Hampshire primary, said Romney passed “the ultimate test” as governor.

“He left the state in better shape than he found it,” Jones said.

The Mitt Romney Archive reveals the GOP presidential hopefuls positions over the years on issues such as health care, abortion, gay marriage, taxes and job creation.

The first big moment of the political career of W. Mitt Romney happened in Springfield in May of 1994 when he received the Republican nomination to run against legendary U.S. Senator Edward M. Kennedy. The rest is history.

We would like to share that history with readers of The Republican and MassLive.com in a series that will begin today utilizing some of the more than 10,000 articles and stories in The Republican archives.

The Mitt Romney Archive features the actual stories from our archives, from Romney's announcement in February 1994 of his candidacy to unseat Massachusetts' senior Senator to his current bid for the presidency. Weekly installments in The Sunday Republican will be supplemented on MassLive.com – at http://www.masslive.com/romney – with archival stories and pictures of Romney’s days in Massachusetts.

Relive the days of Romney’s failed bid to unseat Teddy Kennedy, his successful run for governor, his tenure in that office and finally his attempts four years ago and presently to become president.

In real-time history readers can follow the debates and the issues over the last 18 years. We think you’ll find it interesting and informative.

The Apostolic Signatura, the highest judicial authority in the Roman Catholic Church, ruled that the Diocese of Springfield can merge St. Stanislaus Kostka with neighboring Notre Dame Church to from the new Blessed Pope John Paul II Parish.

Photo provided

ADAMS – St. Stanislaus Kostka Church, which protesters have been occupying non-stop for more than three years, will once again become a site for regular Catholic worship under a Vatican ruling announced Saturday.

The Apostolic Signatura, the highest judicial authority in the Roman Catholic Church, ruled that the Diocese of Springfield can merge St. Stanislaus Kostka with neighboring Notre Dame Church to from the new Blessed Pope John Paul II Parish. But this high court also said the diocese cannot reduce the St. Stanislaus building to “profane”, or secular, use.

Details on just how the St. Stanislaus building will be staffed with priests and the building used will be announced at services later Saturday afternoon, according to a news release.

Laurie Haas, a spokeswoman for the vigil group at St. Stanislaus, said the goal all along was to restore Catholic worship to St. Stanislaus. The status of the parish was always secondary.

" I consider this a wonderful, wonderful, victory," Haas said. "I guess If you believe in something strongly enough and work hard, you can accomplish anything."

A similar, but not as final, ruling came from the Vatican’s Congregation for Clergy a year ago. Back then, St. Stanislaus parishioners were told that their church could be used as a mission, a chapel, a basilica or a shrine attached to the Blessed Pope John Paul II Parish.

That preliminary ruling also included St. George and St. Patrick churches in Chicopee.

But there is no final word yet on the fate of St. George and St. Patrick, said Mark E. Dupont, spokesman for the diocese.

“No one should draw any conclusions about how the Adams situation was resolved,” Dupont said. “These are local decisions.”

He said Saturday’s announcement has no bearing on Mater Dolorosa in Holyoke where parishioners have been staging their own 24/7 vigil since June 30, 2011. The Vatican upheld the Diocese’ decision with Mater Dolorosa although Mater Dolorosa has appealed.

The relationship between the Mater Dolorosa vigil participants and the diocese has been confrontational complete with trips to the civil courts and a quarrel over the ownership and use of a Christmas nativity scene.

Protesters at St. Stansilaus, an ethnically Polish parish like Mater Dolorosa, garnered national attention, including write-ups in the New York Times and Time Magazine, for their fight to keep the church’s doors open. Founded in 1902, the diocese closed it in December 2008. The round-the-clock vigil began immediately

The Diocese of Springfield has eliminated 69 parishes in Western Massachusetts since the year 2000 in response to declining attendance and finances and a shortage of priests. other diocese in Massachusetts have taken similar steps.

Parishioners in seven churches across Massachusetts are conducting vigils. So far, St. Stanislaus Kostka is the only group that has managed to restore Mass to its building.

Check back with Masslive.com and Sunday's editions of The Republican for more details.

The new vocational high schoo is 80 percent complete and awaiting delivery of furniture and equipment.

Photo by Mark M. Murray / The RepublicanConstruction is ahead of schedule and under budget at the new Roger L. Putnam Vocational Technical Academy.

SPRINGFIELD – School Committee member Norman Roldan likes the changes occurring at the city’s vocational high school – even the slight name change that took effect recently.

Roldan, a 1984 graduate of the Roger L. Putnam Vocational Technical High School, said he supported the recent decision to drop the words “high school” from the school’s name and replace them with “academy.”

The name change occurs as a $114 million school construction project takes place on State Street, to replace the existing deteriorated vocational school. Students will move into the new building in September and the old building will be demolished.

“I’m excited for the new school, the new year, and the new principal (Gilbert E. Traverso),” Roldan said. “I think it’s heading the right way and the kids will have a great building and great education.”

Roldan said he and many others rejected suggestions to change, shorten or modernize the school name any further, saying it was important to keep it named in memory of Roger L. Putnam.

Putnam served as mayor of Springfield for three terms, first elected in 1937, and founded Springfield Trade School in 1940. It was renamed in his honor in 1972.

“We decided to keep the Putnam name in there,” Roldan said. “It’s not fair to some of us who graduated from Putnam to take the Putnam out.”

The school was renamed after various options were reviewed and some on-line surveys took place involving students, parents and staff, Traverso said.

Roldan and School Vice Chairman Christopher Collins said there has been a trend in some areas of the country to change the designation of vocational high schools to vocational academies as a more modern description.

“It’s more reflective of what they are calling vocational institutions now,” Collins said. “They are preparing people in a different way from a high school.”

The new name is less cumbersome, while “indicative of where we’re going,” Traverso said.

“I have to respect the sense of community and people wanting to retain the (Putnam) school name,” Traverso said.

Increasingly, the old vocational-technical schools are changing into “career academies,” said Stephen DeWitt of the Association for Career and Technical Education in Alexandria, Va., according to a published report.

Roldan and Collins also did not favor an idea of removing “vocational” from the name of the school, saying that vocational training is part of the school’s mission.

Construction of the new school is 80 percent complete, concentrating now on interior work, and is a month ahead of schedule and under budget, said Rita L. Coppola-Wallace, the city’s director of capital asset construction. The $114.3 million budget is for all costs including architectural and management costs, and the city is $7.3 million under that cap, Coppola-Wallace said.

Furniture and equipment will start moving into the building next month, and the building will be ready well before classes begin, she said.

The state is providing 90 percent reimbursement of eligible costs.

No one knows how the medal migrated from the pilot's home state of Michigan to the Philadelphia suburbs.

AP PhotoIn this Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2012 photo, 84-year-old Connie Hadley Bachman, of Lexington, Mass., center, holds an oversized photograph of her fallen brother, U.S. Air Force 1st Lt. Thomas E. Hadley II, left, as her husband Charlie Bachman, right, looks on in their Lexington home.

Connie Hadley Bachman's phone rang recently, and a stranger started speaking about something that's made the 84-year-old's heart ache for decades.

The caller spoke of Bachman's younger brother, an Air Force pilot who died in combat in North Korea in 1951. This time, the Lexington woman's tears for him would be bittersweet.

The man on the phone was a military officer who wanted to return a Purple Heart medal that belonged to her brother, 1st Lt. Thomas E. Hadley II.

Six decades after his death, Bachman would be getting back a symbol of her brother's service that she didn't even know was missing.

A Pennsylvania family had had the medal since at least 1967, Vermont Army National Guard Capt. Zachariah Fike told Bachman. No one knows how the medal migrated from the pilot's home state of Michigan to the Philadelphia suburbs.

"It's a neat story," said Larry Moore, whose family had the medal. "I wish I had more pieces of the puzzle."

The 48-year-old police sergeant said he found the medal among belongings he inherited when his father died last year. His father was a Marine Corps veteran who served in Korea.

"When I was a kid, I used to sneak up into his things and play with it," Moore said.

Moore's grandfather worked as a city sanitation supervisor in Upper Darby, Pa., and originally found the medal. Moore, who lives and works in Lower Chichester, Pa., doesn't know whether his grandfather saved the medal from a trash pile or got it another way.

But when Moore found the Purple Heart after his father's death, he knew he had to find its owner. The combat decoration honors U.S. military members who suffer wounds or die in action.

AP PhotoThis Feb. 13, 2012 photo provided by Zachariah Fike shows the back of the Purple Heart that was awarded to U.S. Air Force 1st Lt. Thomas E. Hadley II in 1951.

This medal was missing its ribbon but had the pilot's name engraved on the back. With only that to go on, Moore sent out several emails last February. He got no answers.

In December, he picked up the cause again by emailing The Military Order of the Purple Heart. The group connected him with Fike, a Purple Heart recipient who has reunited four other families with lost Purple Hearts.

The 30-year-old Army captain researched military and ancestry records online before linking the late pilot to the man's sister in Lexington. Then he made the call to Bachman.

"This is Captain Fike with the U.S. Army," he told her. "I've got some strange news for you that might catch you off guard."

She was suspicious at first.

"I thought, 'What kind of scam is this?'" Bachman said. "So I started asking questions, and he answered them all."

After Fike won her over, the two talked more about the brother whose sacrifice for his country has been both a source of pain and pride for his family.

Hadley was 22 when he died on a mission to bomb North Korean supply trains.

Fike said a combination of military, newspaper and family accounts show Hadley's plane crashed after he intervened to save the life of another pilot who was under attack. The family expects to get Hadley's full service records soon.

The military listed him as missing in action for years because no one could see whether Hadley ejected before his jet crashed. Bachman said the family had to live with the thought that he might be dead or alive in an enemy prison.

But in 1956, the military recovered the pilot's remains and returned them to his family for burial.

The government awarded the pilot a Purple Heart and the Distinguished Flying Cross for his heroics, a letter the Air Force sent the family shows. The letter also shows the pilot already had won another Purple Heart months before his death for wounds suffered in action.

Bachman and her husband, Charlie, a retired inventor in software engineering, suspect it was the first Purple Heart that ended up in Pennsylvania.

She remembers mailing some of her brother's medals to Washington state in the 1980s to the woman he married shortly before his deployment. But Bachman said she never met her brother's widow, whom she said now also is deceased.

Whatever happened, the family celebrated the medal's return Saturday.

Fike joined dozens of the late pilot's family members, veterans and other guests at a ceremony inside the Bachmans' retirement community. The Army officer presented the Purple Heart to the Bachmans in a shadow box including replicas of Hadley's other medals.

Bachman's husband said they were "delighted."

"It was a very nice turnout here," with at least 100 people in the audience, he said.

Moore, the man whose family had the medal, said he had been "wishing they'd find the actual Thomas E. Hadley" but "I was glad they found his sister, and she can have it."

Bachman said the medal's return almost makes up for the time her brother was listed as missing in action.

"It's a finalization," she said. "... It's important that Thomas Hadley gets his recognition."

Brown was upset after he was told he could not be seated with his companions.

Singer Bobby Brown, left, stands outside the New Hope Baptist Church during funeral... (AP Photo/Mel Evans)

NEWARK, N.J. (AP) — Whitney Houston's ex-husband, Bobby Brown, has briefly appeared at her funeral before leaving.

Brown arrived as the service began. He walked to the casket, touched it and walked to the back of the New Jersey church Saturday.

Security guards were saying Brown would be seated but the people he arrived with had to sit apart from him. Instead, Brown left and appeared upset.

A message seeking confirmation of whether Brown was invited to the private service was sent to Houston's publicist.

Houston died Feb. 11. A cause of death hasn't been determined.

Houston and Brown were married 15 years and have one daughter. In 2003, police responding to a domestic violence call about Brown found Houston with a cut lip and bruised cheek. Their tumultuous relationship ended in 2007.

Superintendent of Schools Marie Doyle said the school system is seeking a $448,660 increase from the current fiscal year budget.

Marie C. Doyle

LONGMEADOW– The School Department is requesting three technology education specialists, a literacy coach and literacy materials for fiscal year 2013.

Superintendent of Schools Marie C. Doyle said the school system is proposing a $33.3 million budget, a $448,660 increase from the fiscal year 2012 budget.

Doyle said the district is doing well in many areas particularly attendance and graduation rates which are well over 95 percent. She said more work needs to be done with literacy and math skills.

Doyle said the schools have several goals for the coming fiscal year including increasing teacher collaboration, reducing special education referrals, increasing the integration of technology, implementing a teacher evaluation system and improving literacy at the elementary and middle school levels.

Doyle is requesting an elementary school literacy coach which would be shared by the three elementary schools and cost $60,000.

She is also requesting $36,000 for text and materials to improve literacy as well as $30,000 for teacher literacy training.

Technology is also a big focus of the budget especially since the town technology has been consolidated with the school technology under the school’s Information Technology Director Kevin Warenda.

The school system is looking for $165,000 for three technology integration specialists at each of the elementary schools as well as $181,500 for school and town technology upgrades.

“We want to continue town-wide technology consolidation and increase online services to residents,” she said.

Doyle said the district has seen a decrease in grant funding of more than $200,000 for the upcoming fiscal year as well as a loss of $133,000 in special revenue.

She said the budget does rely heavily on the general fund with more than 90 percent of the school budget being funded by the town.

“I think our students get a great education because of the support of the town, the parents and the School Committee,” she said. “This is a town that values education and provides an excellent education to our students.”

The Moroccan man was accused of plotting to carry out what he thought would be a suicide bombing at the U.S. Capitol.

The Associated Press / Dana VerkouterenThis artist rendering shows Amine El Khalifi before U.S. District Judge T. Rawles Jones Jr. in federal court in Alexandria, Va., Friday. El Khalifi, a 29-year-old Moroccan man was arrested Friday near the U.S. Capitol as he was planning to detonate what he thought was a suicide vest, given to him by FBI undercover operatives, said police and government officials.

By ERIC TUCKER

WASHINGTON – The Moroccan man accused of plotting to carry out what he thought would be a suicide bombing at the U.S. Capitol told acquaintances that America’s war on terrorism was a war on Muslims and that they needed to be ready for battle, according to authorities.

Then the 29-year-old unemployed man started preparations of his own and believed he was working with an al-Qaida operative on the plot, according to court documents and an affidavit. A man brought him an automatic weapon. He got a suicide vest, scouted out targets and practiced setting off explosives, the documents say.

On Friday, Amine El Khalifi’s goal to detonate the vest at the Capitol ended with his arrest in an FBI sting, said U.S. authorities who had been monitoring him for nearly a year. Undercover operatives – not an al-Qaida representative as he believed – gave him a gun and explosives that didn’t work, according to an affidavit. He had those items with him when he was taken into custody at a parking garage near the Capitol, a counterterrorism official said.

He was charged in a criminal complaint with knowingly and unlawfully attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction against property that is owned and used by the United States. He made a brief appearance Friday afternoon in federal court in Alexandria, Va., where a judge set a bail hearing for Wednesday.

El Khalifi, who is not believed to be associated with al-Qaida, expressed interest in killing at least 30 people, officials said. Two people briefed on the matter told The Associated Press the FBI has had him under surveillance around the clock for several weeks. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

He came to the U.S. when he was 16 years old and overstayed his visitor visa, which expired in 1999, making him in the country illegally, according to court documents.

Before settling on a suicide bombing plot, he considered targeting an office building in Alexandria, where military officials worked and a restaurant in Washington to target military officials who gathered there. He even purchased nails for the operation, according to the affidavit.

But he settled on the Capitol after canvassing that area a couple of times, the counterterrorism official said. He met with an undercover law enforcement officer, who gave him an automatic weapon that didn’t work. El Khalifi carried the firearm around the room, practiced pulling the trigger and looking at himself in the mirror.

He later asked his associates for more explosives that could be detonated by dialing a cell phone number. In January, he told an undercover agent he wanted to know if an explosion would be large enough to destroy an entire building. The same month, he went with undercover operatives to a quarry in West Virginia to practice detonating explosives, according to court documents.

El Khalifi’s activities drew the suspicions of a former landlord in Arlington, who called police a year and a half ago.

Frank Dynda said when he told El Khalifi to leave, the suspect said he had a right to stay and threatened to beat up Dynda. The former landlord said he thought El Khalifi was making bombs, but police told him to leave the man alone. Dynda had El Khalifi evicted in 2010.

El Khalifi had at least one man staying with him and claimed he was running a luggage business from the apartment, Dynda said, doubting that was true because he never saw any bags.

“I reported to police I think he’s making bombs,” Dynda said. “I was ready to get my shotgun and run him out of the building, but that would have been a lot of trouble.”

Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center imam Johari Abdul-Malik, who along with other Muslim leaders meets regularly with the FBI, said he was contacted by an agency official after El Khalifi’s arrest and was told that Khalifi was not someone he needed to worry about.

He said the official told him that Khalifi was “not a regular at your mosque or any mosque in the area.”

He said he offered to supply the FBI with surveillance video of the mosque in Falls Church, Va., in case it helped with their investigation but was told that was it not necessary.

Police are close to arresting one of El Khalifi’s associates on charges unrelated to the terror conspiracy, the counterterrorism official said. The associate was said to also be a Moroccan, living here illegally. Police are investigating others El Khalifi associated with, but not because they believe the associates were part of a terror conspiracy, the official said.

Associated Press writers Nedra Pickler, Eileen Sullivan, Matt Apuzzo, Adam Goldman, Laurie Kellman, Jessica Gresko, Eric Tucker, Sarah Brumfield and Brett Zongker contributed to this report.

They said Tehran has put finishing touches for the installation of thousands of new-generation centrifuges at the cavernous facility -- machines that can produce enriched uranium much more quickly and efficiently than its present machines.

VIENNA – Iran is poised to greatly expand uranium enrichment at a fortified underground bunker to a point that would boost how quickly it could make nuclear warheads, diplomats tell The Associated Press.

They said Tehran has put finishing touches for the installation of thousands of new-generation centrifuges at the cavernous facility – machines that can produce enriched uranium much more quickly and efficiently than its present machines.

While saying that the electrical circuitry, piping and supporting equipment for the new centrifuges was now in place, the diplomats emphasized that Tehran had not started installing the new machines at its Fordo facility and could not say whether it was planning to.

Still, the senior diplomats – who asked for anonymity because their information was privileged – suggested that Tehran would have little reason to prepare the ground for the better centrifuges unless it planned to operate them. They spoke in recent interviews – the last one Saturday.

The reported work at Fordo appeared to reflect Iran’s determination to forge ahead with nuclear activity that could be used to make atomic arms despite rapidly escalating international sanctions and the latent threat of an Israeli military strike on its nuclear facilities.

Fordo could be used to make fissile warhead material even without such an upgrade, the diplomats said.

They said that although older than Iran’s new generation machines, the centrifuges now operating there can be reconfigured within days to make such material because they already are enriching to 20 percent – a level that can be boosted quickly to weapons-grade quality.

Their comments appeared to represent the first time anyone had quantified the time it would take to reconfigure the Fordo centrifuges into machines making weapons-grade material.

In contrast, Iran’s older enrichment site at Natanz is producing uranium at 3.4 percent, a level normally used to power reactors. While that too could be turned into weapons-grade uranium, reassembling from low to weapons-grade production is complex, and retooling the thousands of centrifuges at Natanz would likely take weeks.

The diplomats’ recent comments came as International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors are scheduled to visit Tehran on Sunday. Their trip – the second this month – is another attempt to break more than three years of Iranian stonewalling about allegations that Tehran has – or is – secretly working on nuclear weapons that would be armed with uranium enriched to 90 percent or more.

Diplomats accredited to the IAEA expect little from that visit. They told the AP that – as before – Iran was refusing to allow the agency experts to visit Parchin, the suspected site of explosives testing for a nuclear weapon and had turned down other key requests made by the experts.

Iranian officials deny nuclear weapons aspirations, saying the claims are based on bogus intelligence from the U.S. and Israel.

But IAEA chief Yukiya Amano has said there are increasing indications of such activity. His concerns were outlined in 13-page summary late last year listing clandestine activities that either can be used in civilian or military nuclear programs, or “are specific to nuclear weapons.”

Among these were indications that Iran has conducted high explosives testing and detonator development to set off a nuclear charge, as well as computer modeling of a core of a nuclear warhead. The report also cited preparatory work for a nuclear weapons test and development of a nuclear payload for Iran’s Shahab 3 intermediate range missile – a weapon that could reach Israel.

Iran says it is enriching only to make nuclear fuel. But because enrichment can also create fissile warhead material, the U.N. Security Council has imposed sanctions on Tehran in a failed attempt to force it to stop.

More recently, the U.S., the European Union and other Western allies have either tightened up their own sanctions or rapidly put new penalties in place striking at the heart of Iran’s oil exports lifeline and its financial system.

The most recent squeeze on Iran was announced Friday, when SWIFT, a financial clearinghouse used by virtually every country and major corporation in the world, agreed to shut out the Islamic Republic from its network.

Diplomats say the choke-holds are being applied in part to persuade Israel to hold off on potential military strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities – among them Fordo, a main Israeli concern because it is dug deep into a mountain and could be impervious to the most powerful bunker busting bombs.

Diplomats told the AP earlier this month that Iran had added two new series or cascades of old-generation IR-1 centrifuges to its Fordo operation, meaning 348 centrifuges were now operating in four cascades.

Olli Heinonen, who retired last year as the IAEA’s chief Iran inspector, recently estimated that these machines, and two other cascades at Natanz can produce around 15 kilograms (more than 30 pounds) of 20-percent enriched uranium a month, using Iran’s tons of low-enriched uranium as feedstock.

The low and higher enriched uranium now being produced “provides the basic material needed to produce four to five nuclear weapons,” Heinonen said.

But he suggested “an altogether different scenario” – a much quicker pace of enrichment to levels easily turned into weapons-capable uranium if Iran starts using newer, more powerful centrifuges at Fordo. That, said the diplomats, is exactly what Iran appears to be on the verge of doing by finishing preparatory work recently for new centrifuge installations.

Just three days ago Iran’s semiofficial Fars agency reported that a “new generation” of Iranian centrifuges had gone into operation at Natanz, in central Iran.

A diplomat accredited to the IAEA, which monitors Iran’s known nuclear programs, said the “new generation” of centrifuges appeared to be referring to about 65 IR-4 machines that were recently set up at an experimental site at Natanz.

Fordo, which can house 3,000 centrifuges, was confidentially revealed to the IAEA by Iran in 2009, just days before the U.S. and Britain jointly announced its existence.

Iran announced last year that it would move its 20-percent uranium production to Fordo from Natanz and sharply boost capacity. It started making higher grade material two years ago saying it needed it to fuel a research reactor.

But the U.S. and others question the rationale, pointing out that Iran rejected offers of foreign fuel supplies for that reactor and is making more of the higher-enriched material than that small reactor needs.

While saying that the electrical circuitry, piping and supporting equipment for the new centrifuges was now in place, the diplomats emphasized that Tehran had not started installing the new machines at its Fordo facility and could not say whether it was planning to.

Still, the senior diplomats – who asked for anonymity because their information was privileged – suggested that Tehran would have little reason to prepare the ground for the better centrifuges unless it planned to operate them. They spoke in recent interviews – the last one Saturday.

The reported work at Fordo appeared to reflect Iran’s determination to forge ahead with nuclear activity that could be used to make atomic arms despite rapidly escalating international sanctions and the latent threat of an Israeli military strike on its nuclear facilities.

Fordo could be used to make fissile warhead material even without such an upgrade, the diplomats said.

They said that although older than Iran’s new generation machines, the centrifuges now operating there can be reconfigured within days to make such material because they already are enriching to 20 percent – a level that can be boosted quickly to weapons-grade quality.

Their comments appeared to represent the first time anyone had quantified the time it would take to reconfigure the Fordo centrifuges into machines making weapons-grade material.

In contrast, Iran’s older enrichment site at Natanz is producing uranium at 3.4 percent, a level normally used to power reactors. While that too could be turned into weapons-grade uranium, reassembling from low to weapons-grade production is complex, and retooling the thousands of centrifuges at Natanz would likely take weeks.

The diplomats’ recent comments came as International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors are scheduled to visit Tehran on Sunday. Their trip – the second this month – is another attempt to break more than three years of Iranian stonewalling about allegations that Tehran has – or is – secretly working on nuclear weapons that would be armed with uranium enriched to 90 percent or more.

Diplomats accredited to the IAEA expect little from that visit. They told the AP that – as before – Iran was refusing to allow the agency experts to visit Parchin, the suspected site of explosives testing for a nuclear weapon and had turned down other key requests made by the experts.

Iranian officials deny nuclear weapons aspirations, saying the claims are based on bogus intelligence from the U.S. and Israel.

But IAEA chief Yukiya Amano has said there are increasing indications of such activity. His concerns were outlined in 13-page summary late last year listing clandestine activities that either can be used in civilian or military nuclear programs, or “are specific to nuclear weapons.”

Among these were indications that Iran has conducted high explosives testing and detonator development to set off a nuclear charge, as well as computer modeling of a core of a nuclear warhead. The report also cited preparatory work for a nuclear weapons test and development of a nuclear payload for Iran’s Shahab 3 intermediate range missile – a weapon that could reach Israel.

Iran says it is enriching only to make nuclear fuel. But because enrichment can also create fissile warhead material, the U.N. Security Council has imposed sanctions on Tehran in a failed attempt to force it to stop.

More recently, the U.S., the European Union and other Western allies have either tightened up their own sanctions or rapidly put new penalties in place striking at the heart of Iran’s oil exports lifeline and its financial system.

The most recent squeeze on Iran was announced Friday, when SWIFT, a financial clearinghouse used by virtually every country and major corporation in the world, agreed to shut out the Islamic Republic from its network.

Diplomats say the choke-holds are being applied in part to persuade Israel to hold off on potential military strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities – among them Fordo, a main Israeli concern because it is dug deep into a mountain and could be impervious to the most powerful bunker busting bombs.

Diplomats told the AP earlier this month that Iran had added two new series or cascades of old-generation IR-1 centrifuges to its Fordo operation, meaning 348 centrifuges were now operating in four cascades.

Olli Heinonen, who retired last year as the IAEA’s chief Iran inspector, recently estimated that these machines, and two other cascades at Natanz can produce around 15 kilograms (more than 30 pounds) of 20-percent enriched uranium a month, using Iran’s tons of low-enriched uranium as feedstock.

The low and higher enriched uranium now being produced “provides the basic material needed to produce four to five nuclear weapons,” Heinonen said.

But he suggested “an altogether different scenario” – a much quicker pace of enrichment to levels easily turned into weapons-capable uranium if Iran starts using newer, more powerful centrifuges at Fordo. That, said the diplomats, is exactly what Iran appears to be on the verge of doing by finishing preparatory work recently for new centrifuge installations.

Just three days ago Iran’s semiofficial Fars agency reported that a “new generation” of Iranian centrifuges had gone into operation at Natanz, in central Iran.

A diplomat accredited to the IAEA, which monitors Iran’s known nuclear programs, said the “new generation” of centrifuges appeared to be referring to about 65 IR-4 machines that were recently set up at an experimental site at Natanz.

Fordo, which can house 3,000 centrifuges, was confidentially revealed to the IAEA by Iran in 2009, just days before the U.S. and Britain jointly announced its existence.

Iran announced last year that it would move its 20-percent uranium production to Fordo from Natanz and sharply boost capacity. It started making higher grade material two years ago saying it needed it to fuel a research reactor.

But the U.S. and others question the rationale, pointing out that Iran rejected offers of foreign fuel supplies for that reactor and is making more of the higher-enriched material than that small reactor needs.

The land purchase ensures that no one could develop on the unpaved portion of the road.

NORTHAMPTON – The city will soon be a half-mile shorter as it discontinues a section of Turkey Hill Road.

Earlier this week, the city closed on the first of two parcels of land at Mineral Hills Conservation Area, which will allow for the city to discontinue that half-mile portion of Turkey Hill.

Until the city bought the property, someone could have bought and developed a lot there leaving the city liable to maintain and plow the road, said Planning Director Wayne Feiden.

Currently the city does not plow or maintain that section of the road, which is unpaved.
“If we hadn’t bought the property we had the potential for liabilities.” But by buying the land we “physically get it off the map,” Feiden said.

The city will continue maintain 4,120 feet of the paved section of Turkey Hill Road but once the discontinuing winds its way through various committees, 2,500 feet will be discontinued, he said.

Feiden said the Planning Department submitted the request to discontinue that section of the road to the City Council and the request is being referred to the Board of Public Works and Planning Board as part of the review process.

The city closed on a 5.822-acre parcel, the first of the two bookend pieces at the area, and expects to close on the 96-acre parcel in early April.

That is awaiting completion of joint fundraising project with Kestrel Land Fund. More than 400 acres of woodland and hillside have been already been protected.

The city was helped in the Mineral Hills project by a $408,000 state grant, complementing $302,000 in Community Preservation funds.

In other land acquisition news this week, the city closed on 36 acres for the Forest Legacy/Laizer/Anciporch addition to the Broad Brook-Fitzgerald Lake Greenway.
The city had owned three sides of the parcel and “this fills a major inholding within the conservation area and allows for better protection of and public access to this parcel,” Feiden said in a prepares statement.

Her triumphs and tragic end were recalled by celebrity friends and family at a New Jersey church.

Clapping hands and swaying to gospel hymns in the church where Whitney Houston's powerful voice once wowed her congregation, the biggest names in entertainment sang along with the choir to remember the pop superstar at her hometown funeral Saturday.

"We are here today, hearts broken but yet with God's strength we celebrate the life of Whitney Houston," the Rev. Joe A. Carter told the packed New Hope Baptist Church after the choir behind him sang "The Lord is My Shepherd."

Mourners including singer Jennifer Hudson and Houston's mother, gospel singer Cissy Houston, stood, swayed and clapped along in the aisles as gospel singers BeBe Winans and the Rev. Kim Burrell joined with pop stars like Alicia Keys in paying tribute to the 48-year-old pop superstar who first began singing in the Newark church.

"You wait for a voice like that for a lifetime," said music mogul Clive Davis, who shepherded Houston's career for decades.

Others were more mournful; singer Ray J., who spent time with Houston during her last days, broke down crying. His sister, singer Brandy, put her arm around him. Cissy Houston and Houston's daughter, 18-year-old Bobbi Kristina, clutched each other in the front of the row. Toward the end of the service, Bobbi Kristina and Ray J. embraced at length and spoke. Others gathered near the front of the church and hugged each other.

Actor Kevin Costner, her co-star in "The Bodyguard" that spawned her greatest hit, remembered a movie star who was uncertain of her own fame, who "still wondered, 'Am I good enough? Am I pretty enough? Will they like me?'"

"It was the burden that made her great and the part that caused her to stumble in the end," Costner said.

Filmmaker Tyler Perry praised Houston's "grace that kept on carrying her all the way through, the same grace led her all the way to the top of the charts. She sang for presidents."

Stevie Wonder and Oprah Winfrey were among the biggest names gathered to mourn Houston, along with Hudson, Monica, Brandy and Jordin Sparks - representing a generation of big-voiced young singers who grew up emulating her. Houston's voice, a recording of "I Will Always Love You," was to close the funeral.

Houston's cousin Dionne Warwick presided over the funeral, introducing speakers and singers and offering short comments about Houston between them.

Houston's mother was helped by two people on either side of her as she walked in and sat with her granddaughter and other family to begin the service. Houston's ex-husband, Bobby Brown, briefly appeared at her funeral, walking to the casket, touching it and walking out. Security guards said Brown was upset that he would have to sit separately from the people he arrived with, and left. A Brown representative didn't immediately comment.

Mourners fell quiet as three police officers escorted Houston's casket, draped with white roses and purple lilies. White-robed choir members began to fill the pews on the podium. As the band played softly, the choir sang in a hushed voice, "Whitney, Whitney, Whitney."

Close family friend Aretha Franklin, whom Houston lovingly called "Aunt Ree," had been expected to sing at the service, but she was too ill to attend. Franklin said in an email to The Associated Press that she had been up most of the night with leg spasms and sent best wishes to the family. "May God bless and keep them all," she wrote.

A program featuring a picture of Houston looking skyward read "Celebrating the life of Whitney Elizabeth Houston, a child of God." Pictures of Houston as a baby, with her mother and daughter filled the program.

"I never told you that when you were born, the Holy Spirit told me that you would not be with me long," Cissy Houston wrote her daughter in a letter published in the program. "And I thank God for the beautiful flower he allowed me to raise and cherish for 48 years."

"Rest, my baby girl in peace," the letter ends, signed "mommie."

The service marks one week after Houston, one of music's all-time biggest stars, was found dead in a Beverly Hills hotel in California. A cause of death has yet to be determined.

To the world, Houston was the pop queen with the perfect voice, the dazzling diva with regal beauty, a troubled superstar suffering from addiction and, finally, another victim of the dark side of fame.

To her family and friends, she was just "Nippy." A nickname given to Houston when she was a child, it stuck with her through adulthood and, later, would become the name of one of her companies. To them, she was a sister, a friend, a daughter, and a mother.

"She always had the edge," the Rev. Jesse Jackson said outside church Saturday. "You can tell when some kids have what we call a special anointing. Aretha had that when she was 14. ... Whitney cultivated that and took it to a very high level."

A few fans gathered Saturday morning hours before the service as close as they could get to the church, some from as far away as Washington, D.C., and Miami. Bobby Brooks said he came from Washington "just to be among the rest of the fans."

"Just to celebrate her life, not just her death," said Brooks, "just to sing and dance with the people that love her."

Others were more entrepreneurial, setting up card tables to sell silk-screened T-shirts with Houston's image and her CDs. But only the invited would get close to the church; streets were closed to the public for blocks in every direction. But their presence was felt around the church, with a huge shrine of heart-shaped balloons and personal messages that covered the street corner around the church entrance.

Houston's death marked the final chapter for the superstar whose fall from grace while shocking was years in the making. Houston had her first No. 1 hit by the time she was 22, followed by a flurry of No. 1 songs and multi-platinum records.

Over her career, she sold more than 50 million records in the United States alone. Her voice, an ideal blend of power, grace and beauty, made classics out of songs like "Saving All My Love For You," ''I Will Always Love You," ''The Greatest Love of All" and "I'm Every Woman." Her six Grammys were only a fraction of her many awards.

But amid the fame, a turbulent marriage to Brown and her addiction to drugs tarnished her image. She became a woman falling apart in front of the world.

Her last album, "I Look To You," debuted on the top of the charts when it was released in 2009 with strong sales, but didn't have the staying power of her previous records. A tour the next year was doomed by cancellations because of illness and sub-par performances.

Still, a comeback was ahead: She was to star in the remake of the movie "Sparkle" and was working on new music. Her family, friends and hard-core fans were hopeful.

The funeral is for invited guests only. Houston is to be buried next to her father, John Houston, in nearby Westfield, N.J.

Warren, who rose to fame as both a Harvard Law professor and a consumer advocate, spoke with pride about creating a new federal consumer protection agency: United States Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The Republican / Dave Roback02-18-12-Springfield-Staff Photo by Dave Roback-Candidate for the United States Senate Elizabeth Warren talks with ward five caucus chair Leon Moultrie at the Mill Pond School in Springfield on Saturday morning. In the backround is State Senator James Welch D-West Springfield and Matt Szafranski of Springfield, reporting for the University of Connecticut (UConn) student law paper Pro-Se who was following Warren at her stops in Western Massachusetts on Saturday.

SPRINGFIELD – U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren is spending the weekend crisscrossing Western Massachusetts in advance of the state Democratic Convention June 2 at the MassMutual Center here.

“I want to you to that I’m out here working for this nomination,” Warren told a the Ward 5 Caucus Democratic Caucus gathered Saturday Morning at the Mill Pond Middle School, 91 Old Acre Road. “And if I am the nominee, I’ll be right back out here working just as hard.”

Warren, who rose to fame as both a Harvard Law professor and a consumer advocate, spoke with pride about creating a new federal consumer protection agency: United States Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

“They said it couldn’t be done, that the lobbyists wouldn’t let you,” Warren said. “But how you do it is you get people behind you and you go around the opposition. What a positive story.”

Other Democrats in the he race are Middleton immigration lawyer Marisa DeFranco or Dover attorney James C. King.

The senate seat is currently held by Sen. Scott P. Brown. Brown beat current state Democratic Attorney General Martha Coakley. Coakley was criticized for not campaigning hard enough against the energetic Brown.

Warren late attended the Ward 4 Caucus at Highland House on Oak Grove Avenue in Springfield, then events in Amherst, Palmer and Ware.

Friday, she toured the Kringle Candle Factory in Bernardston.

Obituaries from The Republican.

Americo Esteves

Americo "Coco" Esteves, 90, of Ludlow, passed away on Thursday. Born in Ludlow, he was a lifelong resident and worked for many years at the Ludlow Mills before retiring. Esteves was a U.S. Army veteran of World War II, serving with the 804th Tank Destroyer Battalion. He was the recipient of the European, African and Middle Eastern Service Medals with 4 Bronze Stars, as well as the Good Conduct Medal and 4 Overseas Service Bars. He was a former member and soccer player for the Gremio Lusitano Club.

Obituaries from The Republican:

• Baruffaldi, John S.
  




• 
  Basile, Francesco "Frankie"
  



• 
  Begin Sr., Guy R.




• 
  Coburn, Calvin Cutler "Cal"
  



• 
  DiMatteo, Pauline A. "Polly"
  




• Edwards, David M.
  




• 
  Egan, Paul Francis
  



• 
  Esteves, Americo "Coco"




• 
  Fotiathis, Stella L. "Tina"
  



• 
  Gardner, George L.
  




• Gauthier, Lorraine (Bourque)
  




• 
  Heywood, Andrea Grace (Cornfoot)
  



• 
  Johnson, Elsie Myrtle




• 
  Johnson, Louis
  



• 
  Jurkowski, Stanley
  




• Lusignan, Raymond R. (Gaudet)
  




• 
  Shugrue, Edna M. (Fountain)
  



• 
  Singer, June C.




• 
  Valenti, Frank V.
  



• 
  Williams, Alma
  




• Wojcik, Emily (Woszczyna)
  




• 
  Zvach, Mary E. (Dibala)
  

The group will work in Monson, Brimfield, Hampden, Holland, Palmer, Wales, Warren, Wilbraham and Stafford, Conn., providing free home repairs from July 1 to 7, through the Group Cares program, sponsored locally by the Nomads of hope.

submitted photoMonson High School students are shown on a trip to a Navajo reservation in Utah as part of the Nomads of hope program.

MONSON – Nomads of hope plans to bring 450 teenagers and adults to the Monson area this summer to improve the homes of elderly, low-income and handicapped residents.

The group will work in Monson, Brimfield, Hampden, Holland, Palmer, Wales, Warren, Wilbraham and Stafford, Conn., providing free home repairs from July 1 to 7, through the Group Cares program, sponsored locally by the Nomads of hope.

Nomads of hope is a ministry partner of the First Church of Monson that creates action-oriented service trips, domestically and internationally. Group Cares, a non-profit based in Colorado, is an interdenominational Christian volunteer home repair organization. The work camp will be housed at Quarry Hill Community School, and Group Cares will reimburse all costs it incurs there.

At each work camp, teenagers and adults volunteer a week of their time to repair homes throughout the communities.

“This represents about 12,000 hours of volunteer labor, with a total economic impact to the communities of over $300,000,” said Linda Shorette, co-director of Nomads of hope.

"These really are remarkable young people," said Jeff Thompson, of Group Cares, in a statement. "Each one is actually paying for the privilege of working in your communities. Work camp registration fees are used to cover our costs for food, insurance and building materials."

Repairs offered through the Monson work camp include interior and exterior painting, weatherization, porch and wheelchair ramp construction, shed construction, tornado and snow storm clean up, and other work.

Residents interested in applying to receive assistance should go to the Nomads of hope website, www.nomadsofhope.com, print the application and mail it to Nomads of Hope, 122 Peck Brothers Road, Monson, 01057, or check the local library or Senior Center for the form. Applications must be returned by March 7.

Survey results will be presented at the March 14 workshop, and will reveal preferred development patterns, such as streetscape treatments, lot characteristics for new developments, building types and styles, and civic spaces.

The Republican/Lori StabileJames M. Mazik, right, deputy director of the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission, talks with residents at the Monson Visioning Workshop on Wednesday night at Monson High School. Holding the posterboard behind him is Erica Johnson, also with PVPC.

MONSON – More than 70 Monson residents, business owners, and community officials attended a workshop in September to create a vision for how the community would like to rebuild its tornado affected downtown and adjacent neighborhoods.

The results of this workshop are now being used to develop an updated master plan and recreation plan for the downtown residential neighborhoods and central business district.

Over the course of the next five months, Pioneer Valley Planning Commission staff will host a series of public workshops to present data and gather feedback about the impacted areas.

The first workshop will be held on March 14 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at the Hillside Building, 29 Thompson St.

Prior to the workshop, the commission is seeking participation in a community survey about Monson Center.

This survey shows a collection of photographs, and respondents will be asked to indicate preferences for development styles. Visit www.surveymonkey.com/s/MonsonCenter to take the survey.

Survey results will be presented at the March 14 workshop, and will reveal preferred development patterns, such as streetscape treatments, lot characteristics for new developments, building types and styles, and civic spaces.

For information, contact Danielle McKahn at dmckahn@pvpc.org or (413) 781-6045.

“This is a validation of what I’ve worked so hard for,” the 20-year-old said just after being crowned by 2011 grand colleen.

Manon Mirabelli photoBrianna M. Fitz, 20, of Holyoke, is crowned grand colleen Saturday during an event at the Log Cabin Banquet and Meeting House in Holyoke.

HOLYOKE – For Brianna M. Fitz, being named the 2012 grand colleen is a validation of the time, effort, emotion and love she has put into the endeavor and is proof that any goal can be achieved by moving forward persistently.

“This is a validation of what I’ve worked so hard for,” the 20-year-old said just after being crowned by 2011 grand colleen Meaghan A. Leahy Saturday night at the Log Cabin Banquet and Meeting House.

“It’s a wonderful feeling knowing that you can do great things by taking small steps,” Fitz added.

Her mother, Kate F. Fitz, said her daughter’s dream of becoming the grand colleen began at a young age and never diminished as the years passed.

“I couldn’t be more thrilled for her,” she said. “She’s wanted this ever since she could walk and talk.”

Fitz, of Holyoke, is a student at Boston College and is planning on pursuing a career as a physician and working for Doctors Without Borders. She is currently an emergency medical technician and an intern with the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Helping her win the coveted crown was Fitz’s answer to the same interview question asked of all five young women: What is the most important part of being the grand colleen?

Fitz responded that beauty, not just the beauty that is visible, but most importantly inner beauty, is a quality that is necessary as the colleen because it is that inner quality that reveals one’s true personality.

The grand colleen will be joined on the float during the St. Patrick’s Parade by her court comprised of Kelli A. Laramee, 21, Allison B. Lapointe, 18, Juliette R. Chenier, 17, and Kelly W. Donahoe, 22, all of Holyoke, who were culled from a group of 16 contestants during the 58th Annual Colleen Pageant last month at Holyoke High School.

Colleen contestant Maggie E. Kuntz was honored with the Bonnie Baker Miss Congeniality Award.

Mayor Alex B. Morse and his Executive Assistant Tessa Murphy-Romboletti, a 2007 colleen, also attended the event.

Police said the suspect asked the clerk if he could inspect the $78 cigarette carton, then grabbed it out of the clerk’s hands and ran out the store’s front door.

submitted photoThis is an image provided by Longmeadow police of the alleged cigarette thief at CVS.

LONGMEADOW – Longmeadow police are looking for the public’s help in identifying a male suspect who stole a carton of Newport 100 cigarettes at CVS at 410 Longmeadow St. on Saturday night.

The unarmed robbery happened just before 6 p.m., according to Sgt. Andrew Fullerton.

He said the suspect was described as white, in his early 20s, 5 feet, 10 inches tall or 6 feet tall, and with a week’s worth of facial hair growth. He was wearing a dark, hooded jacket, black knit cap, gray cargo-style pants, and white and black sneakers.

Fullerton said the suspect asked the clerk if he could inspect the cigarette carton, then grabbed it out of the clerk’s hands and ran out the store’s front door. Fullerton said the carton cost $78.

If anyone has any information they can call the detective bureau at (413) 567-3311.

“The church was filled with about 500 people who all cheered at the news,” said Laurie Haas, a spokeswoman for the vigil group at St. Stanislaus.

This is an update of a story posted at 12:52 p.m.

Greg LaFreniere / Diocese of SpringfieldSt. Stanislaus Kostka Parish in Adams

ADAMS – The bells rang Saturday at St. Stanislaus Kostka, which protesters have been occupying non-stop for more than three years, signaling the church’s reopening as a site for regular Catholic worship under a plan announced that day.

“We are thrilled,” parishioner Robin J. Loughman said. “It’s what we were hoping for and what we expected.”

Father Daniel Boyle, pastor of the Blessed John Paul the Great Parish community, made the announcement to the congregation on Saturday.

Boyle said that the diocese approved a plan he had submitted to reopen St. Stanislaus Church as a “chapel-mission” of the parish. His plan followed a Vatican decision to keep the church in religious use.

“The church was filled with about 500 people who all cheered at the news,” said Laurie Haas, a spokeswoman for the vigil group at St. Stanislaus.

The first Mass will be Palm Sunday, April 1, at 8 a.m., and Mass will be held once a week on Sunday mornings, as it was previously. The church also will celebrate Mass for Holy Days and special occasions, and will be open for funerals, weddings and baptisms.

Approximately 200 people have participated in a round-the-clock vigil to keep the church open since it closed in December 2008 and was merged into the new Blessed John Paul the Great Parish.

Loughman noted the announcement came on the 1,150th day of the vigil.

The merger was upheld by the Apostolic Signatura, the highest judicial authority in the Roman Catholic Church, which also affirmed the finding of the Congregation for Clergy that adequate cause had not been demonstrated for the Diocese of Springfield to reduce St. Stanislaus Church to “profane” or secular status.

That means that Blessed John Paul the Great remains the established Catholic parish community for Adams with the primary worship site being the former Notre Dame Church, but it also signifies the reopening of St. Stanislaus.

“We had a close knit parish with a lot of Polish traditions and we wanted to keep that going,” said Loughman, adding she thinks the vigil helped their case, a position rejected by the diocese’s spokesman.

“I think it helped keep pressure on the diocese to show our dedication . . . These are the Catholics you want to keep,” Loughman said.

The goal all along was to restore Catholic worship to St. Stanislaus, and the status of the parish was always secondary, Haas said.

Haas said she is grateful to Bishop Timothy A. McDonnell and Father Boyle.

A similar, but not as final, ruling came from the Vatican’s Congregation for Clergy a year ago. Back then, St. Stanislaus parishioners were told that their church could be used as a mission, a chapel, a basilica or a shrine attached to the Blessed John Paul the Great Parish.

That preliminary ruling also included the closed St. George and St. Patrick churches in Chicopee.

But there is no final word yet on the fate of St. George and St. Patrick, said Mark E. Dupont, spokesman for the diocese.

“No one should draw any conclusions about how the Adams situation was resolved,” Dupont said. “These are local decisions.”

Dupont said it would be “wrong to assume the vigil played any role in the decision. The Vatican would be neutral or blind to activity.”

He said Saturday’s announcement has no bearing on Mater Dolorosa in Holyoke where parishioners have been staging their own 24/7 vigil since it closed on June 30, 2011. The Vatican upheld the diocese’s decision on Mater Dolorosa although Mater Dolorosa has appealed.

The relationship between the Mater Dolorosa vigil participants and the diocese has been confrontational complete with trips to the civil courts and a quarrel over the ownership and use of a Christmas nativity scene.

Still, parishioners involved with the vigil at Mater Dolorosa were heartened by the news regarding the Adams church.

“It absolutely shows that the bishop’s not always right. But more important, for the Adams people, it’s three years worth of persistence and trying. Their faith is incredible . .. Three years is a long time, to maintain hope. They certainly deserve to have their Masses brought back,” Peter J. Stasz, an attorney involved with the Mater Dolorosa vigil, said.

Stasz said they are holding out hope that their church also will reopen.

Victor M. Anop, of Chicopee, another attorney involved with Mater Dolorosa, called it a “tremendous victory for the people.”

“It’s what our religion is supposed to be about, the people . . . The diocese in Springfield should do this with all the churches that have appealed,” Anop said. “I think it’s a wonderful day for the people in Adams.”

Protesters at St. Stanislaus, an ethnically Polish parish like Mater Dolorosa, garnered national attention, including write-ups in the New York Times and Time Magazine, for their fight to keep the church’s doors open. It was founded in 1902. When it closed, it had approximately 560 parishioners.

The Diocese of Springfield has eliminated 69 parishes in Western Massachusetts since the year 2000 in response to declining attendance and finances and a shortage of priests. Other diocese in Massachusetts have taken similar steps.

Parishioners in seven churches across Massachusetts are conducting vigils. So far, St. Stanislaus Kostka is the only group that has managed to restore Mass to its building.

Said Bishop McDonnell, “I pray that the entire Catholic community of Adams rejoices today. I am grateful that, in consultation with others, Father Daniel Boyle has developed a plan which not only provides a sustainable solution for the Catholics of Adams but promises as well to be a vehicle for healing and growth.”

Dupont said there are no “sour grapes” on the part of the diocese.

“If in two or three years this is a sustainable solution and it works for them and they’re paying their bills, nobody will be happier than the diocese,” Dupont said.

Staff writer Jim Kinney contributed to this report.

Brown issued a statement explaining why he walked out of the funeral service shortly after it began.

View full sizeBobby Brown, former husband of the late Whitney Houston performs with New Edition at Mohegan Sun Casino in Uncasville, Conn. on Saturday, Feb. 18, 2012. During an introduction segment between songs, Brown pointed skyward and offered blessings for his ex-wife and said he loved her. (AP Photo/Joe Giblin)

UNCASVILLE, Conn. – Following his brief appearance at ex-wife Whitney Houston's funeral Saturday in Newark, N.J., Bobby Brown performed hours later with New Edition at the Mohegan Sun Arena.

Joining the show late in planned fashion, Brown strolled on 10 minutes into the concert for "Hit Me Off " his rough growl a little rougher than the old days. He embraced his five bandmates with an easy smile, and when he addressed the crowd, he soaked in its adulation before offering a brief reference to his place in the news, USA Today reported.

"I want to give blessings to my ex-wife, Whitney Houston, I love you. I want to give blessings to my kids, my fiancée (Alicia Etheridge), my brothers, and each of you."

Brown left Houston’s funeral at New Hope Baptist Church shortly after the service began Saturday afternoon.

In a statement reported by ABC News, he explained, “My children and I were invited to the funeral of my ex-wife Whitney Houston. We were seated by security and then subsequently asked to move on three separate occasions.

“I fail to understand why security treated my family this way and continue to ask us and no one else to move,” he said. “Security then prevented me from attempting to see my daughter Bobbi-Kristina. In light of the events, I gave a kiss to the casket of my ex-wife and departed as I refused to create a scene. My children are completely distraught over the events. This was a day to honor Whitney. I doubt Whitney would have wanted this to occur. I will continue to pay my respects to my ex-wife the best way I know how.”

In the aftermath of Houston’s death on Feb. 11 in a Beverly Hills hotel room, the New Edition tour with Brown was uncertain.

He performed in Mississippi the night Houston died, but skipped subsequent concerts in Cincinnati and Nashville. He rejoined New Edition later in the week for concert dates in Memphis, Baltimore and Greensboro.

Houston and Brown divorced in 2007 after a 14-year tumultuous union. They had a daughter, Bobbi Kristina Brown.

In 2008, a financially strapped Brown sued Houston for spousal support and joint custody of their daughter, and for a time he was in arrears in support for a child from a previous marriage.

Brown has a checkered legal past with charges of assault against Houston, traffic violations, drug use and driving under the influence.

He has bristled at reports that he contributed to Houston's downfall.

“I never used cocaine until after I met Whitney. Before then, I had experimented with other drugs, but marijuana was my drug of choice,” Brown wrote in “Bobby Brown: The Truth, the Whole Truth and Nothing But.” "At one point in my life, I used drugs uncontrollably. I was using everything I could get my hands on, from cocaine to heroin, weed and cooked cocaine."

Houston battled substance abuse and reports of erratic behavior over the past two decades. The cause of her death has not been determined, pending the conclusion of toxicology tests.

Warren, whose chairmanship of the Congressional Oversight Panel on the Troubled Assests Relief Program (TARP) brought a flood of publicity, is in a heated campaign against Republican U.S. Sen. Scott Brown of Massachusetts. Watch video

The Republican | Dave RobackU.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren, left talks with Agnes Kearon of Springfield before the Ward 5 Democratic caucus at the Mill Pond School in Springfield on Saturday morning.

Elizabeth Warren is hardly an enigma on the national stage.

Her high-profile chairmanship of the Congressional Oversight Panel on the Troubled Assests Relief Program (TARP) brought a flood of publicity. She had both the unenviable task of wading through the TARP handouts to big businesses after the 2008 credit crash – and the enviable task of teeing off on U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on national television over billions in big-bank bailouts that ultimately spurred Occupy Everywhere movements.

As chairman of the panel, Warren and a modest staff dug into where the bail-out money went and for what. And, perhaps most importantly – with what restraints. Warren has told Congress and pundits and President Barack Obama himself that what she discovered left her aghast. The TARP grants were tantamount to blank checks, she reported.

“We were giving money to the nine largest banks on a no-strings basis. I assumed the U.S. government would attach restrictions,” before delving into the research, Warren said during an recent interview. "I assumed no one would give away $100 billion to the largest banks without meaningful restrictions.”

Prior to the moment when crippled financial giants went begging to the government, according to Warren, they played the market and ultimately the American people. The tinkered with interest rates and mortgage rates and lending rates, then reeled in liberal lending polices so the bubble not only burst, but splattered.

“The credit industry broke the American economy one lousy mortgage at a time,” she said.

Warren, 62, a Harvard Law School bankruptcy professor from Cambridge, has seized the grim financial zeitgeist and her intimate knowledge of its origins to spark a heated race against Republican U.S. Sen. Scott Brown, the freshman senator who pulled off one of the grandest upsets in Massachusetts political history when he plucked the seat from the Democrats in 2010.

But, even having her life’s work on the plight of the middle-class emerge as a national preoccupation, Warren, who with Marisa DeFranco and James Coyne King are seeking the Democratic nomination, still finds herself battling a perception problem – fueled by the highest reaches of the GOP – and a visibility problem on a local level.

Case in point: During two recent campaign stops, the contrast between her national and local profiles couldn’t have been more evident.

Campaign stop number one: the Lucky Strike restaurant on Grattan Street in the heart of Chicopee Aldenville section. Its cheap, yummy comfort food and familiar, efficient staff make it a perennial favorite among working class locals.

Think $5 lunch specials, faded carpeting and Tiffany-style lamps over Formica tables; a tall refrigerated display case with what appear to be homemade pies and another with jugs of wine and beer; and a sign near the cash register that reads: “A meal without wine is called breakfast.”

Warren has been called “Obama’s heir,” “a left-wing idol” and a “crusader” by various national media outlets. Fittingly, local elected officials came to receive her, knowing they may be in the presence of greatness, but she made nary a ripple among the customers – presumably her target audience.

Chicopee Mayor Michael D. Bissonnette briefly interrupts an interview with a reporter to introduce Warren to one of the locals, believed to be something of a lucky charm, according to the mayor.

“This is Romeo Lussier; he’s shaken the hand of the last four (U.S.) senators who won the seat,” Bissonnette tells her.

Warren stands graciously and responds: “Thank you, Romeo. I hope I can earn your vote,” which earned her a polite smile and noncommittal: “Yes, I hope so.”

Fast forward an hour or so, Warren continues on to Westover Job Corps to a luncheon that included low-income students, faculty and labor advocates. Despite regular appearances on "Frontline," the "Bill Maher Show" and CNN, Warren did not even get keynote billing in the speakers line-up in Chicopee.

However, keynote speaker Dale Melcher, a professor at the University of Massachusetts Labor Center who teaches on women’s labor issues and inequality in the workplace, nearly swooned when she got up to speak after Warren.

Courtesy Elizabeth WarrenElizabeth Warren's high school graduation photo.

“I never expected to follow Elizabeth Warren. I want to make it clear that’s not anything anyone wants to do. I could listen to her for a long time; she’s got a lot of great ideas,” Melcher told the audience enthusiastically.

Again, not exactly a wave of excitement among the lunchers as Warren spoke and took her seat beside a young certified nursing assistant student in purple scrubs.

But when she spoke, Warren did show a quick understanding of her audience by tapping into her young adulthood: married at 19; attending Rutgers University Law School while pregnant; paying her own tuition and child care costs.

“As many of you know, child care for a ‘dependably potty-trained’ child is much cheaper ... So I carried around three bags of M&Ms and fed them to that child every time she did the right thing,” she said during her speech, drawing knowing laughs from many women in the audience.

In a telephone poll taken on Oct. 5 by Western New England University, 30 percent of respondents said they “hadn’t heard of” Warren as opposed to only 5 percent who were unaware of Brown. However, this was not nearly a month after she entered the race. But in the same poll, 42 percent of registered voters stated a preference for Warren versus 47 percent for Brown. The gap has tightened in the ensuing months, according to more recent polls, with some reporting the two were in a dead heat.

Despite Warren’s apparent imbalanced recognition factor, her lifelong tenure at Harvard and recent disclosure of $429,981 in income during 2010 and 2011 from Harvard, Brown’s labeling of Warren as “an elitist” in populist clothing seems a bit of a stretch.

View full sizePhoto courtesy Elizabeth WarrenPhoto courtesy of Elizabeth Warren | Elizabeth Warren stands in the driveway of her family home in Oklahoma as a young girl.

Warren grew up in Oklahoma, in a modest home surrounded by wheat fields, with three much older brothers. As she told the Job Corps crowd, her father worked as a maintenance man and sold fences until he had a heart attack when she was 12. Her mother then went to work doing catalog sales for Sears to help pay the bills.

“We kind of bounced along after that, some years were better than others,” she said, adding that the family car was repossessed at one point.

Warren was a stand-out student and graduated high school at 16. She married a man she had been dating since she was 13, Jim Warren, and went to college on a debate scholarship. She transferred colleges when her then-husband, a NASA engineer, moved the couple to Houston. She graduated law school when she was nine months pregnant and did not take a job, but passed the bar and did real estate closings and personal injury work from her living room.

The couple divorced in 1978. Warren met her current husband, Bruce Mann, also a Harvard professor, a year later.

Warren began advising legislators on financial policy in more recent years and was asked by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to head the oversight panel in 2009.

Once the panel spurred the president to push for the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in July, Warren seemed the obvious pick to lead it. However, she had become a political lightning rod and widely disliked by Republicans who found her attitudes toward Wall Street too strident. She ultimately lost the post to Richard Cordray, through a “recess appointment” by Obama, which incensed Senate Republicans who accused the president of doing an end run.

“President Obama called me in to the Oval Office and said ‘We have a problem. They’re going to block your appointment,” Warren recalled. “If we were doing the right things for Americans and the right things for small businesses, (I thought) there would be no objection over getting a good director. I really thought that’s what it would be about: We were doing the right thing.”

Despite her disappointment in the politics that drove the process, Warren insists she harbors no sour feelings about losing out on the appointment. Her concern, she said, is that the agency thrive and do the work it was intended to do: to look out for consumer rights.

Warren announced her intention to run for the Massachusetts Senate seat in September, her first bid for public office. Her critics have said (among other things) that Warren is too light on experience and too heavy on ideology.

But, one newcomer who skyrocketed to success during his first campaign said what amounted to: “And their point is?”

“I don’t think having decades of political experience is necessarily an asset,” said 23-year-old Holyoke Mayor Alex Morse, who landing a stunning win over an incumbent in November. “I hope to bring fresh ideas to Holyoke, and I think Elizabeth Warren can do the same thing for Massachusetts.”

Morse offered his comments as Warren stopped at the future site of that city’s high performance computer center. She marveled at a three-dimensional rendering of the construction site and even at the muddy swath of land where the hard-hat work was taking place.

“I love this stuff. I could have been a construction worker, but you didn’t do that with three brothers where I grew up at the time I grew up,” she told project managers at the cavernous site.

The race for Brown’s Senate seat will no doubt be among the most closely watched along politicos and elected officials across the country. With 33 Senate seats in play, certain races, including the one for the Massachusetts seat, could tighten the partisan margin to within a vote or two.

Warren is mindful of this.

“This race is really about the urgency of the moment,” she said.

She reported raising a startling $5.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2011, while Brown’s war chest hovered at just under $13 million for the same reporting period.

A former student of Warren and attorney who worked with Warren on the oversight panel said the implication that Warren is an out-of-touch academic is off the mark.

“She does not fit the Harvard profile. She came up the hard way in academia and she’s still very cognizant of how far she’s come. Elizabeth hasn’t forgotten where she came from,” Georgetown University Law Center bankruptcy professor Adam Levitin said. “The concerns that affected her family were the same as the concerns that affect families today. That imbues her scholarship as well as her politics.”

Despite her success, Levitin said her tastes remain simple.

“I haven’t been inside her closet, but I know someone who has and it’s filled with, like, L.L. Bean. She’s not a highfalutin person.”