News

At New Hampshire’s eighty or so farmer’s markets, you can choose from organic produce, local honey and freshly baked breads.

The idea for doubling the value of food stamps at farmer’s markets came to Gus Schumacher in 1980. He was in Boston helping his brother, a farmer, clean up at the end of the day.

"I was packing up a box of pears at the Dorchester Fields Corner Farmer’s Market. And the box fell apart, and all the pears went into the gutter."

Schumacher figured he’d have to throw away the pears.

Public Health officials have announced that approximately 6,000 more patients of Exeter Hospital need to be tested for Hepatitis C. Anyone who had inpatient surgery or treatment in the ICU between April, 2011 and May, 2012 are encouraged to attend a testing clinic at Exeter High School this weekend.

Last week, 32-year old David Kwiatkowski was charged with stealing syringes of pain medication before  reusing them on patients in the Cardiac Catheterization Lab, where we has employed as a medical technician.

A year ago Thursday Celina Cass was reported missing from her home in West Stewartstown. About a week later her body was found in the Connecticut River.

NHPR’s Chris Jensen reports.

A year ago Thursday afternoon senior assistant attorney general Jane Young was driving up to West Stewartstown.

The state police had been investigating a report that 11-year-old Celina Cass was missing.

Turning control over to someone like Young - specializing in homicide investigations - was an ominous sign.

But Young says heading north she was trying to be optimistic.

A group of New Hampshire lawmakers will meet Wednesday to begin discussing how the state should move forward under the nation’s health care law.  One of the big questions for the Joint Health Care Reform Oversight Committee is whether New Hampshire should expand its Medicaid program.

The recent Supreme Court ruling on the Affordable Care Act gives states the option to extend Medicaid to more low-income residents. Under the new law, beginning in 2014, an adult who brings home less than $15,000 a year and a family of four with income under about $30,000 will qualify.

New Hampshire Speaker of the House Bill O’Brien says he would again seek to outlaw gay marriage in the state if he wins another term as Speaker.

New Hampshire House Speaker Bill O’Brien says the University of New Hampshire and its workers need to be more efficient. O’Brien, while speaking on NHPR’s the Exchange, defended lawmaker’s nearly fifty percent cut to higher ed funding, the largest in the nation. The Speaker also criticized UNH for increasing its tuition and, he says, not making the cuts necessary to become efficient.

 “Its union is seeking a 16 percent increase in its pay. Its workers are inefficient and unproductive. They don’t teach as many hours as they can.”

We’ve recently noticed a trend of all-boys ballet classes popping up in dance schools, including the Southern New Hampshire Dance Theater in Bedford. Word of Mouth Senior Producer Rebecca Lavoie, herself the mother of two boys, wanted to find out more about all-boys ballet, so she reached out to that school’s artistic director, Patricia Lavoie (just coincidence…no relation) for more on their all-boys ballet program, and the trend of these classes popping up all over the country.

For the first time since 2009 a guide to the White Mountains is being printed on paper produced in the North Country.

There have been two very distinct trends during the economic recovery: the first has been very slow growth in private sector hiring. The second has been a series of losses in public sector jobs, from state employees to firefighters to schoolteachers.

The US Attorney’s office says two fires at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard were caused by a civilian shipyard worker. The first fire caused massive damage to the USS Miami nuclear submarine.

The New Hampshire Retirement System says last year the fund that pays for the pensions of the state’s public sector works grew by only .7 percent. That was seven percent shy of what the fund’s directors hope for.