New Bedford

New Bedford has unveiled the winning design for a statue of renowned Moby-Dick author Herman Melville, to be installed outside the Seamen’s Bethel.

“There is a whole lot of anxiety out there about elections right now,” New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell said Wednesday.

New jobs data from Vineyard Wind show the project has employed more than double the 500 union workers it promised. But how many workers come from southeastern Massachusetts is impossible to say — because of the way Vineyard Wind is collecting the data.

Midway through early voting, election workers in our region say turnout has been strong.

The public sculpture will be located at the Seamen’s Bethel.

The expansion is one of the main elements of a decade-long redevelopment plan for the Port of New Bedford, and it aims to serve multiple industries, including commercial fishing and offshore wind.

“We've arrived at a point where there's a greater need for people to think about the possibility of an evacuation,” he said, due to more volatile weather and rising sea levels.

New Bedford’s Feast of the Blessed Sacrament, a cultural festival with religious roots, is billed as the largest Portuguese feast in the world. It’s more than a century old, but this year, behind the scenes, something very big is changing. For the first time — and under threat of a lawsuit — women have been allowed to join the Feast Committee.

Some commercial property owners in New Bedford are receiving six-figure payouts from settlements with the city's tax assessor's office after appealing their assessments to lower their bills.

The state is looking for prospective tenants for a new center for ocean energy in New Bedford.