Emily Corwin

Road closures as of 5:30 pm

The Portsmouth Naval Shipyard has prepared for Hurricane Sandy.  There are three ships on the premises now. The Shipyard’s commander, Captain Bryant Fuller, says two of them are safe from Sandy in their dry dock.   Bryant says one ship -- the ex-USS Memphis -- is tied to the pier, and exposed to the elements: 

If Congress cannot agree on a deficit reduction deal by January, a series of automatic tax increases and spending cuts known as the “fiscal cliff” will kick in. Today, a national bipartisan has launched in New Hampshire to make sure that doesn’t happen.

After a bipartisan debt-reduction plan commissioned by President Obama failed to gain support in Congress, its authors – Republican former Senator Alan Simpson and Democrat Erskine Bowles – went grassroots. They started the Fix The Debt Campaign -- a national group with state chapters.

The 12th annual New Hampshire Film Festival will run from Thursday through Sunday this week at venues throughout Portsmouth. There will be question and answer sessions for audience members and workshops for filmmakers alongside the screenings of independent films. Nicole Gregg is the executive director of the New Hampshire Film festival. She says there are too many films showing to choose favorites.

This week, New Hampshire’s Department of Health and Human Services identified the season’s first case of influenza. Beth Daly, chief of infectious disease surveillance at DHHS, is encouraging Granite Staters to get vaccinated.

"It’s not too early to be vaccinated," Daly says, "and the flu vaccine this year does contain different strains of the virus, so it’s important that people be vaccinated this year even if they were vaccinated last year as well."  

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Maggie Hassan says she will create a panel of lawmakers, state agencies and economists to build consensus around budget numbers. 

It would be called the Consensus Revenue Estimating Panel, Gubernatorial candidate Maggie Hassan told members of the Portsmouth Rotary Club on Thursday.  During her lunchtime address at  the Portsmouth Country Club, Hassan said the panel will help provide lawmakers with accurate budget numbers that they can agree on.

When StateImpact reporter Emily Corwin set out to understand what the slogan 'we built this' means for business and the economy in New  Hampshire, she thought she’d find a lot of disagreement. But in the end – it didn’t work out that way.

The University System of New Hampshire’s board of trustees is requesting that the legislature restore its state funding. At a board meeting Tuesday they approved a budget request for the near-$50 million that was cut last year.  In exchange for the funds, the USNH is offering to freeze tuition for two years.   

University chancellor Ed MacKay says that New Hampshire’s tuition costs are among the nation’s highest not because of inefficiencies, but because of a lack of funding from the state.

Maggie Hassan gave her acceptance speech at her victory party tonight in Manchester, comparing her stance on free kindergarten and abortion rights with her now-opponent, Ovide Lamontagne.  Her biggest round of applause came when she announced that "women should be able to make our own health-care decisions." She continued by thanking her family and supporters.

A crowd is forming at the Hassan victory party, although not all attendees are entirely enthusiastic.  Alex Cohen of Dover came to the Hassan victory party with his friend Linda, a campaign volunteer from Newmarket.  He's sporting a Hassan campaign sticker, but says "I always find myself voting for the lesser of two evils."