Diane Sullivan is devoted to her dogs, Winnie and Whitey, and she's counting on her brother to give them a home if anything should happen to her and her boyfriend.

WORCESTER - Timothy Niles lived most of his 40 years in the tidy white clapboard, two-family house at 93 Armory St. in South Worcester.

The charges against two women arrested in connection with the alleged forced prostitution of a West Boylston teenager have been dropped, after the Suffolk district attorney's office determined that the main defendant in the case, Michael A Smith Jr. of Flushing, N.Y., abused the women to force them to comply with his scheme.

On March 28, the Worcester Fire Department conducted a ceremony honoring Lt. Donald M. Quinlan, who the department said had died in the line of duty from complications related to a broken ankle suffered while responding to a New Year's Eve fire in 2007.

WORCESTER - A Ball Street man charged with stabbing a woman in the neck and back last year has been found mentally competent to stand trial.