6-year-old dies of influenza, officials say

A 6-year-old Suffolk County child has died from influenza, the state Department of Public Health announced yesterday. The child, who died last weekend, suffered from a number of other health woes, which probably intensified the effects of the viral illness. In most flu seasons, no more than two young people in the state die from the respiratory infection. The last fatal case of flu in a Massachusetts child was in March 2006, when a 2-year-old from Boston died.

A storm barreling toward Massachusetts this weekend is expected to bring 1 to 3 inches of rain that could cause small rivers and streams to spill over banks. While flooding is expected to affect small rivers and streams, officials are also keeping a close eye on several larger rivers including the Concord and the Merrimack. The storm is rumbling up the East Coast from the Southeast. The rain is expected to start falling in Massachusetts late tonight and become heavy by tomorrow morning. It is expected to last until late Saturday night. Winds may average 30 miles per hour in Boston and 40 miles per hour off the Cape and Islands.

Two teenagers were stabbed at the Roxbury Crossing MBTA station yesterday afternoon, authorities said. The stabbings happened on the outbound train platform at around 5:30, said Jake Wark, a spokesman for the Suffolk district attorney's office. Officials did not release the victims' names, but said one was 16 and the other was 18 years old. One victim was taken by ambulance to Brigham and Women's Hospital. The other was taken by his parents to Children's Hospital, Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority spokewoman Lydia Rivera said. Wark said both are expected to survive.

The Senate has approved a bill intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Massachusetts by the year 2020 to 20 percent below 1990 levels. By 2050, the goal is to have emissions drop to 80 percent below the 1990 levels. The bill also takes other steps to curb greenhouse gas emissions, including calling for garbage trucks to be updated to cut back on diesel emissions and establishing a new fund to spur the development of environmentally friendly buildings.

The National Institutes of Health has named a "blue ribbon panel" - including specialists on infectious diseases, public health, biodefense and environmental justice - to advise the agency on public safety and environmental issues posed by a Boston University laboratory designed to study the world's deadliest germs. In November, the National Research Council concluded that the NIH had failed to adequately address the potential risks to the South End and Roxbury neighbors of the Biosafety Level-4 lab if germs escaped from the facility on the Boston Medical Center campus. The panel will hold its first public meeting next Thursday in Bethesda, Md.

An acquaintance of former Boston police officer Roberto Pulido was charged yesterday with helping to plant drugs and a gun on an innocent man and then breaking into his apartment to steal a safe containing $18,000 in cash and jewelry. Jose "Tito" Alvarez, 42, of Boston, was arrested on a federal charge of conspiring to violate a person's civil rights. Alvarez and Pulido, who pleaded guilty Nov. 8 to federal cocaine-trafficking charges and is awaiting sentencing, conspired in spring 2005 to frame the operator of a car repair shop in which Pulido had a business interest, according to a sworn statement by an FBI agent. Pulido and the shop owner, who was not identified in the affidavit, had had a falling out. Pulido planted several bags of heroin and a gun inside his business associate's car, and Alvarez called the police, who arrested the repair shop owner, the affidavit said.

The Cape Cod Commission voted yesterday in favor of placing several restrictions on a 6,500-square-foot mansion slated to be built in Truro on rolling hills known as the "Hopper landscape," a stretch of salt-licked land that once painter and onetime Cape resident Edward Hopper. The restrictions require the homeowners, Donald and Andrea Kline, to protect 6.58 acres of their 9-acre property, prevent any other residential structure from being built on the land until 2028, and conduct an archeological survey before building their house.