NH News

New Hampshire’s electrical utilities are reporting scattered power outages with today’s foul weather. The state’s four utilities say at the peak there were just more than 17,000 customers without power -- mostly scattered up and down the western half of the state and on the Seacoast. 

Murray: Now that may be the peak of the trouble, it seems to be clearing and we are hoping or anticipating that we will not have a large number of new outages and can make some good inroads on restoring power to all customers.

New Hampshire Attorney General Michael Delaney is warning against scams seeking donations for families and victims of the Connecticut school shooting.

Delaney says there have been no complaints in New Hampshire of fraudulent phone calls seeking money for victims.

But there have been reports of phone scams in Connecticut.

Delaney urges people to be wary of phone calls seeking money and says you should always ask for solicitation materials in writing.

Illegal tobacco sales to New Hampshire youth increased over the past year.

The Department of Health and Human Services on Thursday released the results of compliance checks of tobacco sales from across the state.

During those checks, sales to minors increased from nearly 8 percent last year to more than 13 percent this year. Nearly 300 tobacco retailers were surveyed in this year’s check.

Bureau of Drug and Alcohol Services Director Joe Harding says while this year’s figure is well below the federal requirement of 20 percent, the increase is concerning.

New Hampshire’s homeless population is down by 4 percent this year.

The data is included in a report released Thursday by the New Hampshire Coalition to End Homelessness.

Director Cathy Kuhn says the slight drop is good news, particularly after an 11 percent increase from 2010 to 2011.

But big picture, Kuhn says the issues isn’t going away.

A New Hampshire judge has ruled that a high school girl can continue to play on the boys' varsity ice hockey team even though her school has formed a girls' team.

Seventeen-year-old Shelby Herrington made the boys' varsity team at Bishop Brady High School three years ago, when there was no girls' team.

Herrington is fighting a decision by the New Hampshire Interscholastic Athletic Association that she needs to switch to the girls' team formed jointly by her school and Trinity of Manchester.

A state computer contract that’s now 5-years behind schedule has received another extension from the executive council.

At an original price of $61 million NH’s agreement with Affiliated Computer Systems, or ACS was the largest computer contract in state history.

Under the deal ACS was to create a system to track Medicaid payment and information.

After numerous problems and several contract amendments, Health and Human Services Commissioner Nick Toumpas says he believes ACS, now a subsidiary of Xerox, will have the system up and running on April 1st.