The Republican National Convention will take place September 1st-4th in Minnesota. Party officials will meet and hear from speakers including President Bush, Vice President Cheney and John McCain. We’ll speak with three of New Hampshire’s Republican Delegates as they prepare to leave for Minnesota.

Guests

• Fergus Cullen, Chairman of the New Hampshire Republican State Committee
• Jayne Millerick, former Republican State party chair and current President of Marcucci Consulting
• Nancy Dwight, partner at Dwight Partners Inc and lifelong Republican currently living in Lyme

Governor John Lynch's office says federal officials have changed their minds about approving disaster aid for Merrimack and Strafford counties affected by last month's tornado.

The two counties had been left out of the original aid declaration, despite being included in the Governor's request.

They join Belknap, Carroll and Rockingham counties which had already been declared eligible for public assistance.

That tornado killed one woman and damaged more than a hundred homes when it ripped through the Granite State nearly four weeks ago.

It took 40 seconds for it to decimate the Deerfield nursery that Leslie and Peter van Berkum had spent 20 years building.

Now they're up and running again, but their business will never be the same.

NHPR Correspondent Elaine Appleton Grant visited the nursery to see how it was faring three weeks after the storm.

She files this report.

New Census numbers show the Granite State continues to grow, but not like in the past, when thousands flocked to New Hampshire from other states. Today it’s more an inside job, with births primarily responsible for that growth. Still, the trend is far from uniform statewide. We’ll examine the numbers and see how they’re affecting our communities.

Guests

• Thomas Duffy, former Senior Planner at the New Hampshire Office of Energy and Planning
• Ken Johnson, Demographer at the Carsey Institute at UNH

Next week leading Democrats across the state will head to Denver for the Democratic National Convention. for strategy meetings and troop-rallying. Before they head west, we speak to three New Hampshire delegates about their hopes for the convention and what they expect to hear there.

Guests

• Ray Buckley, Chair of the New Hampshire Democratic Party
• Ned Helms, former chair of the New Hampshire Democratic Party and director of the New Hampshire Institute for Health Policy and Practice at the University of New Hampshire
• Bette Lasky, Democratic state representative from Nashua who is currently running for State Senate

Once called the breadbasket of Africa, Zimbabwe now faces drought, mass starvation, hyperinflation, and government oppression by President Robert Mugabe. We’ll talk with an expert on the country as well as Zimbabweans living in the Granite State about the situation.

Guests

• Poppy Fry, Assistant Professor of History at Saint Anselm College, specializing in Southern Africa
• Tinashe Mufute, a senior majoring in Politics at Saint Anselm College originally from Harare, Zimbabwe
• Wadzanai Katsande, a freelance consultant currently living in Marondera, Zimbabwe; Wadzanai studied at Southern New Hampshire University this year and plans to return for her Masters in January

We'll also hear from

• Don Peterson, Democratic state representative from Brentwood who headed the US Embassy in Zimbabwe in 1991