NESN SportsDesk anchor Hazel Mae reading The Somerville News in her studio at Fenway Park.

NESN SportsDesk, the network’s sports news and highlights program that airs live every night following NESN’s Red Sox coverage, or 10 p.m. on non-game nights and 5 – 9 each morning.

Fire Chief Kevin Kelleher accepted the Red Cross’ Clara Barton Humanitarian Award for Community Partners April 22 at the organization’s awards gala held at Boston’s Fairmont Copley Plaza hotel.

Shown with the chief (left to right): Nancy L. Leaming, Red Cross board vice chairwoman and CEO of Tufts Health Plan; William S. Cohen, former Defense Secretary; Kelleher; Janet Langhart Cohen; Barry L. Smith, Red Cross board chairman; Deborah C. Jackson, CEO Mass. Red Cross.

Emerson film students will show trailers from their own movies at the Third Annual
Warlords Movie Screening May 1, starting at the 7 p.m. in the Bill Bordy Theatre at
216 Tremont St in Boston.

The Warlords is a specific group of students at Emerson who specialize
in action movies. The Warlords will show different types of works in progress including TV
episodes, short movies and short series.

The featured piece will be "Redemption," the story of a  snobby, self-centered college student has been given
Godly powers and must try to find his good side before his nature
corrupts his soul.

Also shown will be trailers from the films:  "Vampire Game–Episode 5," "Work Warriors" and "Team Dangerforce."
 

Somerville choreograper Wendy Jehlen and her husband composer Nandlal Nayak will present a multi-cultural, multi-disciplinary performance of dance and music for three shows at Boston University’s Dance Theater at 919 Commonwealth Ave in Boston.

The performances will be Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., and Sunday at 3 p.m.

More information is available at (617) 861-7930

Check out Akhra Web site

  Speaking to a hushed chamber of his peers, State Rep. Carl M. Sciortino Jr., made his maiden speech as a member of the Great and General Court of the Commonwealth tonight in support of his amendment to the state budget bill appropriating funds for the pre-construction engineering work on the extension of the Green Line through the city and onto Medford.

"No other issue unifies my district more than this," said the freshman legislator.

Sciortino said the people of Somerville and Medford would not give up the fight to extend the Green Line, despite attempts by members of the Romney adminstration to derail it.

The state has a legal obligation to complete the project by 2011, yet unless construction begins soon, there is no way the work can be completed on time, he said.

The funding of the engineering work on the potential track and station sites is an important first step, he said.

Only Boston stop on 2005 tour for one night only

Barry has opened for Yo La Tengo, The Shins, Aimee Mann, They Might Be Giants, and Luna.  He has appeared at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival in Australia, the Just For Laughs Festival in Montreal, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland, and US Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, where he won the Jury Award for Best Stand Up Comic. 

Opening for Barry on this exceptional night of comedy will be comedians Rusty Ward and Peter Dutton.  Shortly after arriving in New York City, Rusty Ward beat out 175 other comics to appear on Good Morning America as part of their Make Us Laugh Comedy Competition.  Later he performed in Comedy Central’s Laugh Riots in 2001 and 2002.  He currently lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., and most recently appeared on Comedy Central’s Premium Blend. 

Check out Todd Barry CD "Falling Off the Bone"

The 2002 Somerville High School graduate, whose "War Diary" is a regular feature of The Somerville News won honors in the Department of the Army’s 2004 Maj. Gen. Keith L. Ware Journalism Awards Competition.

Spec. Matthew McLaughlin, a member of Headquarters and Headquarters Company, Installation Troop Command, captured first place in the feature articles category for his story titled “Fearless citizens risk lives for Iraqi future.”

Mays shines; portrays own wife, 35 other folks

The bizarre, real life story of an in-the-open, East Berlin transvestite languishing first under the bloodlust of Nazism, later enduring the oppression of communism “I Am My Own Wife” is an award-winning play by Playwright Doug Wright, presented by Broadway in Boston and Clear Channel Entertainment at the Wilbur Theatre.

Doug Wright seized the idea for his 2004 Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning play when in 1990, a journalist-friend, John Marks, introduced him to Charlotte Von Mahlsdorf and the fascinating story of her life-caught-in-turmoil journey.

Friends and backers of Ward 5 Alderman Sean T. O’Donovan’s are struggling to hold together his bid for the 2nd Middlesex District state senate seat left vacant by the death of Charles E. Shannon Jr.

Despite the backing of Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone and DPW Commissioner Stanley Koty, O’Donovan’s campaign received a body blow when the mayor’s sister started telling others she had entered the fray.

Tuesday night, Maria C. Curtatone held a private party at her Prospect Hill home for backers  where she was expected to confirm to them what she had been telling individuals close to her for the last week.  Instead, it was a quiet dinner with no talk of politics. Hmmm.

The O’Donovan camp is said to have done a poll showing that only 5,000 votes will be coming out of Somerville, making it even more difficult to overcome candidates from outside the city if other Somerville politicians are in the race.

The most bizarre twist is that O’Donovan, who begged the mayor and Koty for the green light to oppose in the Sept. 14 Democratic Primary State Rep. Patricia D. Jehlen, D-Somerville, and was denied, must hope that Jehlen wins Shannon’s senate seat, so he can run for her then open state rep. seat.

So far, the only other "announced" Somerville candidate for state senate seat is Jehlen, who with Shannon secured funding to repair the Lowell Street Bridge in the last weeks of his life.

The other Somerville candidates in the mix are: Shannon’s Chief of Staff Sean J. Fitzgerald, former state representative Joseph Mackey and Alderman-at-large William A. White Jr.

White would run in the Republican Primary. All others are running for the Democratic nomination.

The primary is scheduled for Aug. 30 with a final election Sept. 27.