Steward Health announced this morning that it will close the Nashoba Valley Medical Center in Ayer, a hospital that has served 16 central Massachusetts communities, including Harvard, since 1964.

In a July 19 letter to senate conferees, state Sen. Jamie Eldridge has asked that representatives of both the Devens Committee and the Devens Enterprise Commission (DEC) be included in the working group tasked by Gov. Maura Healey’s economic development bill with planning for increased housing in Devens.

Harvard has a new town administrator. Dan Nason has accepted Harvard’s offer and will begin work Monday, Aug. 5.

State senators finished work on Gov. Maura Healey’s economic development bill  late Thursday, July 11, and sent it to the House of Representatives, with a small but significant change to a section that deals with housing at Devens.

In an unusual late December Special Town Meeting that ended almost as soon as it began, 70 townspeople gathered in a sunlit upper Town Hall meeting room on Friday morning and, with no debate, quickly approved both articles on the meeting’s one-page warrant.

Harvard resident Paul Swider, 56, died of injuries suffered in a crash on the evening of Aug. 5, when his car, traveling westbound, left the road and struck a tree near 222 Still River Road

A Wednesday morning crash involving two tractor trailer trucks in the northbound lanes of Interstate 495 two miles south of the Boxborough exit left one 18-wheeler teetering on the edge of the bridge over Stow Road in Harvard.

Harvard Fire Department Chief Rick Sicard has notified residents that smoke in the area is a “direct result of wildfires throughout the U.S. and Canada.”

The Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs has denied the town’s request to opt out of state-authorized pesticide applications. 

By the School Committee’s Aug. 17 meeting, Superintendent Linda Dwight was able to estimate how many students would likely return for in-person classes.