Lucas Willard

A U.S. Army soldier from the Berkshire County town of Dalton was among three killed Tuesday in an attack in Afghanistan.

According to military officials 24-year old Army Spc. Mitchell Kirk Daehling was killed along with fellow soldiers Spc. William Joseph Gilbert and Sgt. 1st Class Jeffrey C. Baker. The soldiers were killed by an improvised explosive device.

Daehling was a 2006 graduate of Wahconah Regional High School. On the school’s website a statement reads in part, “Mitch was a true "Warrior" in every sense of the word.” The school’s mascot is the Warrior.

A community forum focused on biking in the Northern Berkshires was recently held, where panelists discussed the challenges and future for expanding the potential for biking in the region.

Jonathan Butler, Adams Town Administrator, said that that the Ashuwillticook Rail Trail – an 11.2 mile railroad corridor turned bike path that runs from Lanesborough up through Adams – has had an impact on the town’s economy that he calls “nothing short of significant”.

A group of visitors from Sweden, students from Maine, and state workers from Massachusetts traveled to the Berkshires to get a first-hand look at some of the cooperative efforts underway to study and restore stream crossings in Western Massachusetts.

At a stream crossing in a wooded area on the outskirts of Pittsfield, Jane Winn, of the Berkshire Environmental Action Team shows a small crowd of students from the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine, and a group of Swedish visitors, a culvert running underneath a rural road…

The state's gambling commission has voted to allow failed applicants for casino licenses in eastern or western Massachusetts the opportunity to compete for the sole license in southeastern Massachusetts.

The motion was approved on Thursday by the panel, which had earlier voted to open the southeast region to commercial casino bids. The Mashpee Wampanaog tribe previously enjoyed exclusivity in the region while it pursued regulatory approvals for a proposed resort casino in Taunton.

Representatives of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, General Electric, and the state governments of Connecticut and Massachusetts, recently met with stakeholders to provide updates on the cleanup plan for removing PCB’s from the Housatonic River and Silver Lake in Pittsfield.

At an EPA Housatonic River Citizens Coordinating Council meeting at the Lenox Library Wednesday evening, community stakeholders raised concerns over information presented on a status update of the cleanup project at Silver Lake in Pittsfield.

A new report from the Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group highlighting the decline in the average number of miles driven by the average American is supporting the call for investments in public education in the commonwealth.

The report released by the MASSPIRG Education Fund titled “A New Direction: Our Changing Relationship with Driving and the Implications for America’s Future” says that on average, the amount of miles driven by Americans has been on the decline for the past eight years.

A nuclear physicist from UMass Amherst is among a select group of researchers that will be working on a experiment that hopes to find more about the way tiny subatomic particles behave in nature. WAMC’s Lucas Willard spoke with David Kawall about the basics of the Muon g-2 experiment, which hopes to solve some of biggest mysteries in physics…

For more information please visit: http://www.umass.edu/researchnext/lords-muon-ring

The Board of Selectmen in Williamstown has given town manager Peter Fohlin the authorization to sign off on a $6.1 million grant for the town to acquire and close a mobile home park partially destroyed in 2011 by Tropical Storm Irene.

Fohlin said that before Williamstown can accept the FEMA grant which would be used specifically to remove housing from the Spruces Mobile Home Park, the town will have to negotiate a transfer of ownership and operation of the park from current owners Morgan Management.

The office of Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley has announced the open application period for a grant program that seeks to revitalize vacant properties across the the state.

The Distressed Properties Identifications and Revitalization grant program, or DPIR, was created to help cities and towns in Massachusetts identify distressed and vacant properties in order to then advocate for their rehabilitation.

A campaign aimed at parents and teenagers to encourage a safe prom season kicks off today in the Berkshires and online.

The three-week Safe Prom Berkshire County campaign is a project of the Pittsfield Prevention Partnership and the Berkshire Family Focus. With information passed on to teens and parents through community businesses and partners, and an online social media strategy, the campaign hopes to encourage safe behavior and prevent automobile accidents.