A number of affiliated North Country hospitals are pledging to continue working together despite a recent decision by the group's largest member, Littleton Regional Healthcare, to go its own way.

The hospitals include Androscoggin Valley in Berlin, Weeks Medical Center in Lancaster, and Upper Connecticut Valley in Colebrook.

They came together less than four years ago in an attempt to cut costs and keep care accessible to the largely rural communities they serve.

Claremont police have confirmed the city's interim superintendent of schools was at the center of a dispute last week that resulted in officers responding to an emergency call from the district's administrative offices.

According to the police report, Interim Superintendent Keith Pfeifer was in the process of being suspended, and Nathan Lavanway, the district’s assistant director of business and finance, had asked Pfeifer to leave the building.

The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday approved a bill to add new positions to the state’s cold case unit.

The bill would hire two new detectives to investigate cold cases and two new attorneys to prosecute them. The unit is currently staffed with one attorney and four detectives, two of whom work part-time.

The bipartisan bill comes after the federal money that helped launch the unit in 2009 was depleted.

The New Hampshire Senate has voted to approve a bill that would allow the Transportation Department to access existing federal funds to complete a commuter rail expansion analysis from Boston to Nashua and Manchester.

Last year, Gov. Chris Sununu and the Governor's Advisory Commission on Intermodal Transportation included federal funding for project development in the state's 10-year Transportation Improvement Plan.

Inmates with substance use disorder will now have someone to help them get recovery services after they leave state prison.

The initiative was piloted in 2018 in the women's prison in Concord and is now expanding to the men's prison in Berlin.

Department of Corrections Commissioner Helen Hanks says re-entry coordinators are needed because so many people in prison are struggling with addiction and many are in recovery. They face a high chance of recidivism or overdosing post release.

Littleton Regional Healthcare has announced plans to pull out of an affiliation agreement with three Coos County medical centers.

The hospitals formally joined together less than four years ago under a non-profit umbrella organization, North Country Healthcare, in an attempt to cut costs and improve accessibility of care for patients.  

The state's top health official told legislative budget writers Thursday that he believes the Medicaid reimbursement rates included in Governor Sununu's proposed budget are sufficient.

But top demcorats say those rates need to be boosted to improve access to care for low-income Granite Staters.