Tagged: Law

Do indigent parents have a constitutional right to a lawyer when the state charges that parent with abuse or neglect of their child?

That’s the question put to the state’s top court.

Last year, lawmakers passed a historic budget – making cuts to General Fund spending for the first time since World War II.

One of the casualties....the $1.2 million dollars provided to indigent parents for legal representation in child abuse and neglect proceedings.

Over the past several years, 350-400 parents a year are charged, typically for neglect.

Federal prosecutors have charged five men with responsibility for some of the biggest computer hacks in the past few years. The FBI says the hackers penetrated the computer systems of businesses like Fox Broadcasting and Sony Pictures, stole confidential information and splashed it all over the Internet.

But what's most unusual about the case is how investigators cracked it — with the help of an insider who became a secret government informant.

At the federal court in Concord, lawyers made opening statements in a case involving Beatrice Munyenyezi, a Manchester woman accused of lying about her role in the 1994 Rwanda genocide to obtain US citizenship.

NHPR's Dan Gorenstein was in court; he tells All Things Considered host Brady Carlson about the first day of the trial.

Recent debates over the new health care law and rules over refugee settlements have been challenged by states, including New Hampshire. Meanwhile several bills by the Granite state legislature, would overturn certain authorities of towns and school boards. We’ll see who can write the rules and where the lines are drawn.

Guests:

This story is part of a collaboration between member station KQED and the Center for Investigative Reporting's California Watch.

Mendocino County in Northern California is expected Tuesday to end an unusual program that put pot growing under supervision of the local sheriff. It was the first effort of its kind in the nation and proved a success, at least in the eyes of many locals. But federal officials had a different view.

'Finally Part Of The County'

Since 1992, the New Hampshire Bar Association’s Domestic Violence Emergency Project has provided free legal services to low-income victims of domestic violence. Scott O’Connell is an attorney from Manchester who drives to a crisis center in Berlin once a month to volunteer his services, working there with local advocates. Donna Cummings is the director of the crisis center where O’Connell volunteers.

From this year’s popular revival of Jim Henson’s Muppets in a new film starring Jason Segal, to our recent coverage of Wakka Wakka’s production, Baby Universe, an interplanetary puppet odyssey that took the stage in Hanover, it seems like puppets are popping up just about everywhere.