By Matt Viser and Roy Greene, Globe Staff

Governor Deval Patrick today assailed the speaking invitation that a group of UMass Amherst faculty extended to a convicted terrorist, even after criticism from state and university leaders scuttled earlier plans for a speech.

"I am more than a little disappointed about this invitation having been extended,'' Patrick said at a State House news conference. “I fully get the point, and respect the idea of free speech. But I think it is a reflection of profound insensitivity to continue to try and have this former terrorist on the campus.”

Ray Luc Levasseur, the founder and former leader of the radical revolutionary group United Freedom Front, is scheduled to speak Thursday night. An earlier invitation for him to speak at a library symposium was canceled last week amid pressure from Patrick's office and from family members of victims of his group's attacks, which included the April 1976 blast on the third floor of the Suffolk County Courthouse that injured two dozen people.

But a group of faculty members independently decided to invite him, university officials said.

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Statement from UMass President Jack Wilson on the Levasseur invitation:

We share Governor Patrick’s concerns and strongly disapprove of Raymond Luc Levasseur’s pending appearance on campus. We believe that Levasseur sets a deplorable example for our students and for the University community.

The use of violence as a means of achieving political goals is antithetical to everything we stand for as a University. We also regret the pain and anguish his visit causes for victims and survivors. It is important to note that Levasseur has not received a formal invitation from the University of Massachusetts or from any of its officials. The decision to invite him was made by a small number of faculty members.

With that decision having been made, we see no way of preventing a speaking appearance, based on the free speech and free assembly rights we enjoy in this country and based on well-established principles of academic freedom. While we see no legitimate way to prevent this event from taking place, Chancellor [Robert] Holub and I have instructed that no state funds be used to support this activity. We know that Governor Patrick strongly supports us in this position.”

By Michaela Stanelun, Globe Correspondent

A teenage father from Haverhill was charged with assault and battery on his infant daughter, after severely injuring her by shaking her on Monday, Essex County prosecutors said.

Ivan Rosario, 18, who called 911 after his daughter's eyes rolled into the back of her head and she had trouble breathing, pleaded not guilty to the charge in Haverhill District Court Tuesday morning.

Prosecutors allege that on Monday night, Rosario began shaking his crying 3-month-old daughter, Yolisse Rivera, in the apartment he shares with the baby's mother. The mother, who was not identified, was preparing a bottle for the infant in another room when Rosario allegedly shook the baby.

The baby was taken to Lawrence General Hospital and then transferred to New England Medical Center in Boston. Her injuries are "very serious," said Essex district attorney's spokesman Steve O'Connell.

If convicted, Rosario could face the maximum penalty for assault and battery on a child causing substantial bodily injury, which is 15 years in state prison or 2 1/2 years in jail, prosecutors said.

Dina Rudick/Globe Staff

Former US Attorney Donald K. Stern unveiled the results of the report at a news conference, with Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis (left) standing by.

By Shelley Murphy, Globe Staff

An independent report released today cleared Boston police officers in the death of a 22-year-old Boston Celtics fan who was arrested during revelry on the night of the 2008 championship game. But the man's parents weren't satisfied with the report and called it a coverup.

David Woodman

Police made a number of "missteps" when they arrested David Woodman, but none of the mistakes contributed to his death, according to the report released by former US Attorney Donald Stern.

"We believe that, by and large, the police officers acted reasonably and in no way anticipated or could have predicted the outcome," the report said.

But during a press conference this afternoon at their lawyer's office on Canal Street, Kathy and Jeff Woodman said they believe there has been a coverup and they are convinced that their son would be alive today if not for his encounter with police.

"I think they're lying," Cathy Woodman said. "In my opinion, those officers, those nine officers, the ones who handled him and the ones who witnessed, are to blame for his death."

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Wendy Maeda/Globe Staff

Gerald M. Hill hid his face at his arraignment today.

By John R. Ellement and Jonathan Saltzman, Globe Staff

A 47-year-old convicted murderer who was released from prison in September was ordered held on $1 million cash bail this morning after his arraignment on charges that he was one of two men who robbed a taxi company at gunpoint Monday morning in Boston's Fenway area

Victim Max Fishman

Gerald M. Hill faces a variety of charges, including armed robbery while masked and two counts of unlawful possession of a firearm, in the heist at the the Boston Cab dispatch office on Kilmarnock street in the Fenway.

Hill's criminal record includes a manslaughter conviction in a 1977 stabbing and a second-degree murder conviction for the slaying of Max Fishman, a Randolph oil delivery man making emergency deliveries during the Blizzard of 1978, prosecutors said. He had been released on parole on Sept. 3, according to the state Department of Correction.

"His family says he worked too hard to get home for him to be involved in anything like this. … They said he was living with his mother, trying to adjust to life on the outside as best that he could under the circumstances," said Hill's lawyer, Gregory St. Cyr.

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By Matt Viser, Globe Staff

US Representative Michael E. Capuano, in a major departure from his forceful arguments yesterday, now says he would vote against a final health care bill if it includes a provision restricting federal funding for abortion.

“Mike will fight to improve the bill and if the Stupak amendment is left intact he will vote no,” his spokeswoman, Alison Mills, said in a statement.

It is a startling reversal given the language Capuano used yesterday to hammer away at Attorney General Martha Coakley, who had said she opposed the bill that passed the House Saturday because it included restrictions on abortion funding, a deal liberal House members made to win narrow passage of the overall package.

Capuano, who voted in favor of the plan, even went so far to call Coakley's comments "manna from heaven" for his campaign, blasting her for not knowing how Washington worked, and for being willing to torpedo a major health care overhaul over this one provision.

“If she’s not going to vote for any bill that’s not perfect, she wouldn’t vote for any bill in history. She would have voted against Medicare, the Civil Rights bill," he said Monday. "Realism is something you have to deal with in Washington."

Kimberly Cornuelle/BU Today

The scene of the crime

By Globe Staff

Police and the FBI are investigating after a bank robbery today on a busy thoroughfare near Boston University.

The heist happened this morning at 846 Commonwealth Ave., said Boston FBI spokeswoman Gail Marcinkiewicz.

The robber was described as a black male with a mustache wearing a black puffy coat, she said.

No further details were immediately available.

By Kathy McCabe, Globe Staff

LYNN - Mayor Edward J. Clancy Jr. said today he will file for a recount of the Nov. 3 general election, which the eight-year incumbent lost by 27 votes to challenger Judith Flanagan Kennedy, a 10-year city councilor.

"It's so close, within a statistical margin of error, I think I owe it to everyone to take a look at the ballots and see if the vote stands," Clancy said in an interview. "No system is perfect."

Kennedy, the first woman elected mayor of this North Shore city, received 8,043 votes to Clancy's 8,016, or 49.94 percent to 49.78 percent, according to election results released by the Lynn city clerk's office.

Clancy, a former Democratic state senator and representative from Lynn, said he has hired Haskell Kessler, a Boston lawyer who specializes in election law, to oversee the recount for him. It is not yet known when the recount will start. Clancy said his campaign staff have collected the signatures of 10 registered voters from each of the city's 28 precincts, as required by state election law, to file for the recount.

Kathy McCabe can be reached at kmccabe@globe.com

The following comment came in reaction to the Metro Desk story on the quick-thinking MBTA personnel who saved a woman's life on the Orange Line on Friday:

Her last words would have been to me. I was waiting at the end of the platform to make sure I would get on the subway after the Celts game. She walked past me and asked "Are you going to be mad if I smoke a cigarette? I will go all the way to (the) end."

I said I didn't care and she walked all the way to the end. But she stood at the edge by the tunnel on the yellow line. I remember I heard the first ding of the "orange line is approaching." I finished a text message (in the video from the other angle, I am the one in the center looking down at my phone at first) then I hear people screaming as I watched her take her last steps before diving into the pit. It was not suicide. She clearly lost her balance and was too drunk to recover. However, nobody was close enough to grab her as she was trying not to get smoke on anyone. She was all by herself. No friends with her before or after the incident.

The train was there within 10-15 seconds of her falling in. In these pictures you can see the headlights are already there. I assumed she laid down so that the subway would go over her, but maybe she was just too drunk to get up.

It all went by so fast. In the end, there was just no time. I 100% thought I was going to have someone die right in front of me. It was the scariest moment. People were running away and screaming. I saw women crying.

I can't believe the girl is alive. I couldn't get any sleep Friday night over this. This is a situation I can't even handle in a movie, let alone right in front of me. Great job by the conductor, as she had almost no time to react. The people waving their arms on the yellow line really helped.

-- Mike Connolly, Walpole

The Commandant's Own US Marine Drum and Bugle Corps played on Monday at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center for the celebration of the Marine Corps' 234th birthday.

(Bill Greene/Globe Staff)

Ted Gartland, a dayside photo editor at the Globe, has been taking pictures in Greater Boston since 1971. Each weekday, he highlights an outtake that did not appear in the morning paper. To view the work of more Globe photographers, click here. To watch Gartland's weekly segment on NECN, click here.

(MBTA)

By Noah Bierman, Globe Staff

MBTA Orange Line operator Charice Lewis saw the passengers at North Station flailing their arms. At about the same time, she heard a train inspector on her onboard radio telling her to pull the emergency brake to avoid hitting a woman who had fallen on the track.

Lewis didn’t have time to think. She just did it.

The brakes stopped the heavy subway car just inches – if that – from the woman who had tumbled off the T platform Friday night. The woman has not been identified.

(For a photo gallery of the incident, click here. For an eyewitness account, click here.)

“It was so close, I thought it was not good,” Lewis said today, recounting her emotions in the seconds after the incident.

“Afterward she came up with a big smile on her face and I’m like ‘Oh my God, you really scared me,' ” Lewis said. “The most exciting part for me is she crawled out from under.”

The woman had scraped knees but was otherwise all right. She told police she had been drinking at a nearby bar, authorities said.

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By John R. Ellement, Globe Staff

A West Roxbury man today was identified as the person who was stabbed to death in Allston after bars and nightclubs closed early Sunday morning.

Gregory A. Phillips was stabbed once in the heart while he and a group of friends argued – first verbally and then physically – with a second group of people after leaving The Kells, Suffolk Assistant District Attorney Paul Treseler said in court today.

A woman who answered the door at the Phillips family home in West Roxbury declined comment this afternoon.

No one has been charged with stabbing the 24-year-old Phillips, but Treseler broadly outlined the circumstances of Phillips's death during the arraignment of Corey D. Patterson, who is charged with being an accessory after the fact of murder.

Treseler said that after closing time, Phillips and Patterson were with competing groups of people who began arguing on Brighton Avenue around 2:20 a.m. The disagreement – Treseler did not say what the issue was – escalated in intensity until Phillips had been stabbed and was lying on the street near Brighton and Harvard avenues.

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By Andrew Ryan and Shelley Murphy, Globe Staff

In Massachusetts, marriage really still does mean until death do you part -- even after divorce.

The Supreme Judicial Court today rejected a push to stop most alimony payments when someone reaches retirement age. The decision, which came in the divorce case of a former federal magistrate and state judge, noted that alimony payments can be lowered or, in some cases, cut off to reflect a person's actual income after retirement.

However, Associate Justice Ralph D. Gants wrote in the decision that a spouse paying alimony "may be expected temporarily to postpone retirement or to find part-time work to help the recipient spouse weather difficult financial circumstances."

The court rejected the argument that its decision gives a former spouse "veto power" that could prevent their ex from ever retiring.

"We hold that voluntary retirement … is simply one factor, albeit an important one, to be considered by the judge in deciding whether to modify the alimony obligation set forth in a divorce judgment," Gants wrote in the decision.

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Globe staff photo by Pat Greenhouse

Dr. Astrid Desrosiers (left) assisted by an unidentified woman at Desrosiers home in Belmont today.

By David Abel, Globe Staff

The psychiatrist stabbed by a patient last month at a Massachusetts General Hospital clinic returned to her Belmont home today.

Dr. Astrid Desrosiers has recovered from the injuries she suffered on Oct. 27, when she was repeatedly attacked by her patient Jay Carciero, 37, of Reading, police say. Off-duty security guard Paul Langone responded and fatally shot Carciero.

Just before noon, Desrosiers exited a vehicle driven by her husband, Claude, and went into the house without commenting to reporters. She appeared to be splints on both arms. Mylar balloons that say "Welcome Home" lined the walk.

"She's just happy to be back home,'' her husband said. "She looks forward to getting back to her patients. She loves her patients.''

She isn't sure when she will return to work. "We're going to have to take it one day at a time,'' he said.

He said she wanted to thank everyone for their prayers and for the help from colleagues at MGH.

After a preliminary investigation, prosecutors determined that Langone's shooting of Carciero was justified that day in the hospital's bipolar clinic and research program at 50 Staniford St.

By Michaela Stanelun and Jack Nicas, Globe Correspondents

Two armed men robbed a taxi-dispatcher office in the Fenway today and pistol-whipped an employee, police said.

A police officer working a nearby detail arrested one suspect just after the robbery, and authorities are looking for a second suspect. Police closed off three blocks, from Peterborough to Queensberry streets, during the police search.

Officer Joe Zanoli said the two men walked into the Boston Cab dispatch center at 60 Kilmarnock St. shortly before 10 a.m. with loaded guns. During the robbery, one employee sustained a head injury, and an unspecified amount of money was taken, Zanoli said.

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By Michaela Stanelun, Globe Correspondent

All lanes are back open this afternoon on Route 128 in Woburn after a truck carrying scrap metal rolled over.

The crash this morning spilled debris and had closed two northbound lanes of the roadway.

By Donovan Slack, Globe Staff

Mayor Thomas M. Menino underwent emergency surgery this morning to repair a torn tendon in his left knee, an injury he suffered when he fell at his son's house Sunday evening, his spokeswoman said today.

Mayor Thomas M. Menino

Menino, 66, was taken by ambulance last night to Brigham and Women's Hospital, according to a person briefed on the matter. He "missed a step" while walking into the house with his grandchildren, according to Menino's spokeswoman, Dot Joyce.

The two-hour surgery "went very well," according to a statement released by Dr. Thomas Thornhill, chief of orthopedic surgery at Brigham and Women's.

"We were able to repair the tendon directly back to the bone and did not have to use any supplemental material," Thornhill said.

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By Matt Viser, Globe Staff

Attorney General Martha Coakley said this morning that she would have voted against the landmark health care bill approved by the House over the weekend because it includes a provision restricting federal funding for providers of abortion services.

Coakley this morning, in an interview on WTKK-FM, said her opposition to that aspect of the legislation is so strong that she would have voted against the overall bill, which would provide coverage for 36 million Americans, establish a limited public insurance plan, and prohibit insurers from discriminating against people with preexisting conditions.

Her position opens up a potentially major fissure in the US Senate race, with Coakley now on the opposite side of the issue from rival US Representative Michael Capuano, who voted in favor of the plan. Though Capuano voted against the so-called Stupak-Pitts amendment restricting abortion coverage, he voted in favor of the bill.

Capuano, giddy over a discernible difference with the presumptive front-runner, called Coakley’s comment “manna from heaven.”

“I find it interesting and amazing and she would have stood alone among all the pro-choice members of Congress, all the members of the Massachusetts delegation,” Capuano said in an interview. “She claims she wants to honor Ted Kennedy’s legacy on health care. It’s pretty clear that a major portion of this was his bill.”

“If she’s not going to vote for any bill that’s not perfect, she wouldn’t vote for any bill in history,” Capuano added. “She would have voted against Medicare, the civil rights bill. Every advancement this country has made has been based on bills that had flaws in them ... Realism is something you have to deal with in Washington.”

The other two candidates in the Democratic primary, Stephen Pagliuca and Alan Khazei, did not immediately respond to requests for how they would have voted.

The health care debate now moves to the Senate, where the abortion provision will surely be a major point of debate.

Coakley, who is counting on strong support from women voters who support abortion rights, released a statement Sunday criticizing the amendment in the House plan.

"The inclusion of the Stupak/Pitts amendment violates the very intent of health care reform, which is meant to guarantee quality, affordable health care coverage for everyone," she said. "I believe that the Senate has a responsibility to fix this by eliminating the provision in whatever reform legislation moves forward."

Matt Viser can be reached at maviser@globe.com.