News

Nine Northeast states and the District of Columbia will plan a new program to price and reduce carbon emissions from the transportation sector.

The initiative, announced Tuesday, does not yet include New Hampshire, Maine or New York.

Passenger vehicles and other forms of transit are the country's biggest sources of carbon emissions that drive climate change.

A former principal in Manchester has filed a wrongful termination and whistleblower lawsuit against the Manchester School District SAU 37. 

Sarah Lynch alleges she was wrongfully fired from Webster Elementary School in October and is seeking compensatory damages from the District and its superintendent, Dr. Bolgen Vargas, and assistant superintendent, Amy Allen.

A federal jury on Tuesday found a former physician assistant guilty of participating in a kickback scheme involving fentanyl.

Christopher Clough of Dover was convicted of overprescribing the painkiller to patients in exchange for receiving compensation from the drug’s manufacturer.

In one of his first major acts as House Speaker, Democrat Steve Shurtleff will try to bring back a ban on weapons inside the House chamber.

The ACLU filed a lawsuit in federal court Tuesday against New Hampshire's attorney general, claiming the state's criminal defamation statute is unconstitutional.

The suit takes up the case of Robert Frese of Exeter who was arrested after he posted an online comment referring to a law enforcement officer as a quote "dirty cop."

An independent group of scientists says they believe the concrete cracks at Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant are under control.

The report from the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards agrees with earlier findings from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The groups conclude that Seabrook's owner, NextEra, has a sufficient plan in place to monitor changes in and effects from the cracks over time.

A Florida man is facing charges that he voted illegally in Hooksett during the 2016 general election.

A man accused of threatening gun violence at a New Hampshire Police Academy graduation has been released to his parents' home in Connecticut.

Classmates said 24-year-old Laconia Police Department recruit Noah Beaulieu talked about shooting fellow recruits and bringing machines guns to a graduation that took place last Friday.

Eversource’s residential customers will likely see their bills increase in February, after the utility asks state regulators to approve a proposed rate hike this week.

New Hampshire's largest utility says it needs to increase its default electric service rate for the first half of next year by about half a cent per kilowatt-hour.  

Exeter Hospital's nearly five-year effort to recoup money it paid to patients after an employee infected them with hepatitis C is coming to an end.

The hospital sued a credentialing organization and several staffing agencies in early 2014, two years after the arrest of David Kwiatkowski, a traveling cardiac technologist.

Biologists will be out in the snow again this winter monitoring New Hampshire's endangered New England Cottontail population.

Officials with the state Fish and Game department will be checking areas with dense vegetation for rabbit pellets and tracks in the snow. They say collecting the pellets on the snow preserves the DNA in the pellets and allows for species and even individual rabbits to be identified.

Members of the public also are encouraged to report rabbit sightings to the state.

The federal government will give Manchester $3.7 million to address lead paint issues in city homes.

The money comes from the Department of Housing and Urban Development as part of grants given out across the country.

New Hampshire's Congressional delegation praised the funding as a way to help vulnerable families in the city's oldest housing.

A federal court in Maine has charged a couple from Concord, N.H., with running a sex trafficking enterprise.

According to an indictment unsealed by the court Thursday, two Chinese nationals have been accused of running a prostitution ring between July 2016 and February of this year.

New Hampshire's U.S. senators have joined calls for one of the nation's top energy regulator to recuse himself from future decisions on coal and nuclear power.

The Senate voted along party lines in November to narrowly confirm Bernard McNamee as the latest member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC.

Saturday marks the start of snowmobiling season in New Hampshire.

It's still early, though, so out of the more than 80 snowmobile clubs in New Hampshire, only about 11 have trails that are ready for riding.

Steve Hight is with the Littleton Off Road Riders. He says wind storms in the spring led to some downed trees in the area, so only some of their trails are open this weekend.

An effort to put the New Hampshire Republican Party in President Donald Trump's corner ahead of the state's leadoff presidential primary is facing both private and public pushback.

The state party has a long tradition of not taking sides during primaries, even when a Republican is in the White House and running for re-election.

Most wetlands permits issued in New England would not be affected by a proposed change in federal environmental rules.

The Trump administration wants to narrow which wetlands receive federal protection under the Clean Water Act to only those that directly feed navigable waters.

U.S. commercial fishing generated more than $144 billion in sales in 2016, buoyed by growth in key species such as sea scallops and American lobsters, the federal government reported on Thursday.

Students at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut have been sent home for the day after a bomb threat forced an evacuation on the sixth anniversary of the massacre that killed 20 first-graders and six educators.

Newtown police say the threat was made at about 9 a.m. Friday and the school was evacuated. Lt. Aaron Bahamonde says there's a heightened level of anxiety in town on the anniversary and the school superintendent decided to cancel remaining classes.

It's unclear whether the threat was related to the bomb threats made nationwide Thursday.

A new study from the University of New Hampshire and the real estate website Zillow shows the impact rental housing affordability has on a community's rate of homelessness.

Researchers found that once residents are paying more than 32 percent of local median income to rent, the expected homelessness rate goes up sharply.  

UNH assistant professor of decision sciences Chris Glynn says this is most extreme in places like Los Angeles, where rents are nearly half of the median income and the homelessness crisis is clear.

According to court documents Jichun Zhang of Durham used a college credit account funded by a NASA grant to purchase almost $7,000 worth of items from Amazon, eBay and other websites.

The case was a joint investigation conducted by the UNH police department, the FBI, NASA and other law enforcement agencies.

Zhang will be sentenced in March of 2019.

This is the second former UNH employee to plead guilty to misusing federal grants, with another researcher admitting last week to a similar scheme.

Every other Friday on Morning Edition NHPR’s Sam Evans-Brown tracks down answers to questions about the environment and outdoors for our listeners in a segment we call “Ask Sam.”

Matt from Concord asks: We were out hiking the other day and we saw these ice crystals coming up out of the ground and pushing moss up off the ground. They look like these long thin needle-like things. What causes that? Thank you!

  A man accused of threatening violence at the New Hampshire Police Academy graduation has been sent to Concord Hospital for a mental health evaluation.

According to court documents, fellow classmates say 24-year-old Laconia Police Department recruit Noah Beaulieu talked about bringing 30-round magazines of ammunition and shooting those attending the academy graduation scheduled for Friday.

Attorney Mark Sisti is representing Beaulieu. He said his client has no criminal record or mental health history.

New research shows that, overall, VA hospitals compare well to nearby private hospitals.

Over the years, studies have shown that VA healthcare is as good as or better than private sector care. In this new study, researchers wanted to look at how a given VA hospital compared to private hospitals nearby.