Boston and MBTA Police are stepping up patrols this week and warning the public after a flurry of street robberies targeting women that may be the work of a single, armed bandit. The incidents have all targeted women who were walking home from Red Line stations, including JFK-UMass, Savin Hill, Shawmut and Ashmont.

“We’re concerned about it,” said Captain Richard Sexton, commander of the Area C-11 police district. “It seems like it’s one person right now. We’ve had a few others on the district recently, but there’s definitely a pattern going here along the Red Line.”  Read more

Polls open across the city at 7 a.m. on Tuesday and close at 8 p.m., at which point results for Boston will start to trickle in on City Hall’s website (www.cityofboston.gov).

So here’s a few numbers, provided by Mayor Thomas Menino’s press office and the city’s Election Department:

-- Thanks to the ballot questions, the ballot will be 18 inches long.  Read more

Tenean Beach Last week’s front-page story in the Reporter (“Tenean Beach lags behind in quality of water,” June 14, 2012) likely came as no surprise to those who have visited Dorchester’s beaches in recent years. The story highlighted a Save the Harbor-Save the Bay report showing that Tenean Beach is one of two in the neighborhood that are bringing up the rear in terms of water pollution over the first half of the year. It’s not a new problem, but rather one that is more pronounced now that most of the city’s beaches are so much better off than they were in decades past.

There have been significant improvements all along the Harbor beaches since the court-mandated clean-up in the 1990s, led by the MWRA, largely ended the periodic dumping of raw sewage into the waters off Boston. Since then, follow-up projects — including one recently completed in South Boston— have sought to close a gap in the shoreline defense by sealing off combined sewer overflows (CSOs) that would dump untreated rainwater and related waste into Dorchester Bay.  Read more

Attorney General Martha Coakley’s office has filed a housing discrimination lawsuit against the owner of an apartment building in the Port Norfolk neighborhood.

According to the lawsuit filed in Suffolk Superior Court, Shirley Smith Bragel allegedly told a potential tenant that she could not rent an apartment at 12 Lorenzo St. because the potential tenant received a Section 8 federal housing subsidy. The potential tenant is a single mother, who lost her Dorchester home last year and has a 21-year-old daughter and a four-year-old son, according to court documents.  Read more