News

A list of the top-ten most-read stories on nhpr.org and StateImpact- NH website.

With so many Americans out of work and so many companies claiming they can’t fill vacant positions, many have blamed a so-called 'skills gap'. But business professor Peter Cappelli says this is just blaming the unemployed victim, and in fact, many companies are responsible for this bind. He says they're relying on automated, unreliable applicant tracking systems and refusing to train perfectly acceptable candidates.  We'll look at this debate.

Guests

The Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration is seeking more than 173,000 dollars in fines against 10 construction contractors who worked on building the Merrimack Premium Outlets.

The contractors came from six different states to work on the Merrimack Outlet construction. OSHA’s Concord Area Office conducted the investigation starting in January, according to New Hampshire area director Rosemarie Ohar.

Bleak. Troubled. Struggling. Take the phrase “North Country economy”, and you’ll almost inevitably hear one of those adjectives attached to it.

And to a certain extent, it’s true; the northern New Hampshire economy has had a difficult run since the bottom fell out of the mill economy. But can a handful of downbeat adjectives really characterize a whole region’s economy?

A study from the US Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service shows that New Hampshire is the most forested of the 48 contiguous states. According to the USDA study 88.9 percent of New Hampshire is covered by trees, beating out neighboring states Maine at 83.1 percent and Vermont at 81.5

The study’s lead author David Nowak says evaluators looked over 80,000 points dropped randomly onto satellite photos from around 2005 to complete the study.

At D-Acres in Dorchester staff and interns work on sustainable food production and education programs for the public. For Scott Codey, who arrived fresh from New York City, the work he does is about more than growing food.

Scott: Our role is as an educational institution where we essentially teach and learn about permaculture farming and community living. Permaculture stands for permanent agriculture, and the idea is to live with the land rather than live on the land. We really try to develop farming practices which mimic what’s going on in nature.

We got a call in the newsroom this morning telling us that a car had collided with a bear just outside of Concord.

We're still learning exactly what happened in that incident, but we thought it would be a good time to check in on how bears and humans have been coexisting in the Granite State this year.

The Department of Health and Human Services has revised its plan for testing patients who were exposed to the Hepatitis C outbreak at Exeter Hospital.

DHHS says that during the past week the estimated number of patients who might have been exposed to Hepatitis C has been reduced to around 3,300, because many of the names on the list were repeats. They say in the new plan to test those patients there are 4 locations: in Stratham, Plaistown, Manchester and Rochester starting August 10th.  

The Environmental Protection Agency is proposing a higher limit for Nitrogen discharge from Portsmouth’s wastewater treatment plant.  But city officials are still unsure whether it will actually save the city money.

Next week on the Exchange, we begin with an update from space, as our own “Sky Guys” give us the latest on the landing of a new Mars space laboratory, increasing solar activity and a new mission to Jupiter.  Then the author of a new book challenges what many call the skills gap”, as companies say they can’t find the right workers. And later we explore the current debate over religious freedoms in America.  E-mail us at NHPR dot org and join us all next week for the Exchange each morning  at 9/and again at 8 p m, here on NHPR!

The First Lady defended the president's health care law before a very receptive crowd in the Laconia Middle School Gym.

Track and field has a numbers problem. As in, there are just too many of them. The 60, 26.2, 4-by-8, 2-oh-3, 5, 8, 10k…

Back in the 1950s, there was one number that mattered.

"I think there are only a handful of achievements like breaking 4 minutes for the first time, in any sport, that comes close to what Roger Bannister has done." 

Eighty-one percent of Coos County’s 2009 high school graduates say they don’t see job opportunities for themselves at home. And, more than 60 percent say they see those opportunities getting scarcer. That's according to the most recent survey results from the Carsey Institute's 10-year Coos Youth Study, published this week.