Daniela Allee

Immigration advocates in Lebanon have enough signatures for a proposed “welcoming ordinance” to move forward.  

With 680 signatures, the petition will head to the Lebanon City Council for a public hearing on January 22. 

Under the ordinance, city employees could not ask about a person’s immigration status or participate in immigration enforcement actions.

This year dozens of people in the Upper Valley were detained by federal immigration authorities during roving patrols and at a checkpoint on I-89.

About 100 people attended a town hall meeting put on by Dartmouth College on Wednesday to update community members on a plan to improve campus climate.

The Campus Climate and Culture Initiative has been in place for a year and focuses on eliminating sexual misconduct and abuse of power on campus.

The initiative, which had been in the works since 2018, was rolled out last January after seven women filed a federal lawsuit alleging Dartmouth failed to protect them from sexual harassment and abuse.

State legislators, staff and members of the public will have an additional space to nurse or pump breast milk in the state house complex this year.

The legislative office building will have a lactation pod, which includes outlets for breast pumps and running water, in its lower level.

Permits to build single-family homes and multi-family units in New Hampshire increased last year according to a report from the state’s Office of Strategic Initiatives.

Last year, close to 4,300 units were permitted, making 2018 the year with most number of units permitted since 2008.

A proposed bill in the New Hampshire House would expand a grant program from the state's agriculture department to include energy efficiency projects on farms.

The grant program currently supports farmers to better manage their fertilizer and manure to cut down on water pollution.

This bill would expand those grants to support energy efficiency projects such as sugar house equipment upgrades or on-farm electrical generation and storage.

The ACLU of New Hampshire has filed a lawsuit against the Merrimack police department in federal court, arguing that the department illegally detained an immigrant.

Willy Fernando Godoy-Ramirez was a passenger in a car that broke down along Daniel Webster Highway on August 29, 2019.

Police had asked for the driver and Godoy-Ramirez’s identification, and told both to stay in the vehicle for about an hour until Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrived, according to court documents.

Both Godoy-Ramirez and the driver provided identification from Guatemala.

A Grafton Superior Court judge has denied Littleton Regional Healthcare's request for an injunction related to the opening of a private urgent care facility in town.

Immigration advocates in New Hampshire are preparing for it to become more expensive to apply for citizenship and legal residence.

It currently costs $640 to apply for citizenship. But a proposed rule by the federal government would bump that application fee to $1,170 starting in 2020. Other fees are set to rise as well, though some will go down. [Go to Table 19 on this PDF to see the proposed fee changes, or view them in the slideshow above.]

Bruno Soares is an immigration advocate in Nashua. He says the changes could put citizenship out of reach for some legal residents.

School leaders from the Sunapee School District met with U.S. Sen. Maggie Hassan Friday to talk about cybersecurity. The district was the recent target of an attempted ransomware attack.

Sunapee Technology Director Mike Montore was going through his Sunday night routine on Columbus Day Weekend when he noticed he could no longer log into the district's servers.

"I came in Monday morning, and it was real obvious, real quick as soon as I started," he said. 

A Grafton Superior Court judge says he'll rule later on an injunction filed by Littleton Regional Healthcare related to the opening of an urgent care facility in the town.

Littleton Regional filed the injunction in October against the Department of Health and Human Services, after the commissioner determined that there would be no adverse effect on the hospital if a ConvenientMD clinic opened less than 3 miles away.

Immigration advocates in Lebanon are hoping to get a "welcoming" ordinance approved in that city. 

Under the ordinance, city employees could not ask about a person’s immigration status or participate in immigration enforcement actions. 

Yolanda Huerta is with Rise Upper Valley, an activist organization working on immigration issues. She says she and others have lost faith that reforms will happen on the federal level. 

An application to build what could be New Hampshire's largest solar array cleared its first step at a public meeting Tuesday with the state's Site Evaluation Committee.

Committee members unanimously voted that NextEra Energy’s application was complete.

The 30 megawatt solar array in Fitzwilliam could be the state’s largest and is the first solar proposal to come before the SEC.

NextEra had requested a waiver for on certain decommissioning requirements of the solar array.  But the committee unanimously voted to defer ruling on that request until later in the process.

Dartmouth College scientists have discovered a gene in plants that’s controls how much iron the plant takes in from the soil.

Mary Lou Guerinot, a professor of biological sciences at Dartmouth, was part of the team that discovered the gene. 

“What we’ve been studying is how plants take up iron from the soil with the goal of making food people eat more nutritious,” she said.

The gene Guerinot and other researchers discovered, Upstream Regulator of I-R-T-1, also known as URI, controls when genes should be expressed in the root of the plant to begin iron uptake.

Several towns in Cheshire and Coos counties are getting $300 thousand dollars in federal rural development grants.

The Northern Forest Center received about two-thirds of that grant money to expand broadband access and digital literacy in Lancaster.

The town of Northumberland received $50 thousand dollars to buy defibrillator technology that will help first responders better discern symptoms related to heart attacks or overdoses.

A Keene organization that helps low-income residents with energy efficiency improvements also received some grant money.

Claremont residents have approved a measure to spend one-time relief money the school district received from the state on three special education programs.

Dartmouth Hitchcock Health is reaching out to teens and families as part of its new anti-vaping campaign.

The campaign, called No Safe Vape, focuses on presenting facts about the dangers of vaping to kids and their families. It also aims to provide local and national resources people can access.

Brian O’Sullivan is a pediatric pulmonologist at Dartmouth Hitchcock. He says educating parents to look for signs of vaping is important because often, they're unaware it's happening.

Immigration advocates in New Hampshire are working on ways to get presidential candidates more engaged with their issue.

About 30 advocates from around the state met today in Manchester to talk about what’s happening in New Hampshire's immigrant communities.

Many said they don't feel immigration is getting enough attention.

The Granite State Organizing Project has been setting up meetings with presidential candidates to talk about the issue.

Franklin Pierce University is creating a new institute that’ll focus on combating climate change.

The Institute for Climate Action will focus on community outreach, education on campus, finding ways to make campus operations more sustainable and partnering with local organizations.

Last year’s report on climate change from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change spurred the creation of the institute. The report said that significant actions need to be taken in the next decade to curb the effects of climate change.

Carroll County Commissioners voted 2 to 1 Wednesday against continuing the county jail's current Medication Assisted Treatment program, also known as MAT. MAT provides anti-opioid medications, along with counseling and therapy, to help people with substance use disorders.

Rockingham, Strafford, Cheshire, Grafton and Sullivan counties, along with the state prison in Berlin, and the men and women’s prison in Concord, currently offer this type of treatment.

Carroll County's MAT program has been in limbo since commissioners voted 2 to 1 in October against having an MAT policy.

People in West Lebanon had a chance to tour New Hampshire’s first net-zero multi-family residential building. 

About 400 solar panels will power Tracy Community Housing. Some are on the roof, and others are on the south side of the building. Each apartment has a mini-split unit that’ll cool or heat the apartment using air source heat pumps.

At an art gallery in Lebanon on Tuesday night, surrounded by photographs of compost, community members gathered to talk about trash.

Saran wrap, an empty box of broth and plastic firemen’s hats sat in neat display at the feet of Marc Morgan, Lebanon’s solid waste facility manager and Evelyn Swett, a photographer.

The two facilitated a conversation with a group of twelve people about waste, and finding ways to reduce it.

The judge overseeing the proposed $14 million settlement between Dartmouth College and nine plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit has some concerns about the agreement.

The Valley News reports that at a preliminary hearing on Thursday, Judge Landya McCafferty expressed worries that legal precedent could prevent her from approving the settlement class, and that the group was potentially too broad.

A group of advocates will address the issue of domestic violence in immigrant communities this weekend.

The event Saturday was spurred by incidents in the Brazilian community in New Hampshire and neighboring states, including several women killed by their partners.

About 60 people attended a discussion about Indigenous People's Day Monday afternoon at Keene State College.  Panelists focused on education, land and local history of Native Americans.

Jeniffer Afualo-Robinson is a senior at Keene State. As part of an independent study, she created a timeline of the lives of the Western Abenaki people who lived in the area before colonization.

She says the project made this history much more visible to her.

Carroll County Commissioners voted two to one last Wednesday against a policy that would provide medication assisted treatment to inmates who aren't on that program before they get to jail.

But the Carroll County Jail superintendent still plans to move forward with the proposed policy. 

Medication assisted treatment provides anti-opioid medications, in combination with counseling and behavioral therapies, to help people dealing with substance use disorders.