VPR News

Last week, the National Weather Service in Burlington made it official: Lake Champlain has fully frozen over for the first time since February 2015. However with Thursday temperatures forecast to reach the 50s, the full freeze might not last much longer.

Springfield Hospital needs to trim about $6.5 million from the current year budget, and the administration announced recently that the childbirth center may be closed to save money.

About 200 gun rights advocates traveled to Randolph Tuesday evening to weigh in on proposed gun legislation that they say violates their right to bear arms.

A new art exhibit at Northern Vermont University's Johnson campus uses the invasive plant Japanese knotweed to explore concepts of invasiveness and colonization in a multimedia interactive experience.

In Vermont, almost 700 people have received care for HIV in the last few years. Vermont Edition spoke to Roy Belcher - an epidemiologist and HIV surveillance coordinator for the state - about what life looks like for Vermonters living with the virus, what has changed and what treatments are available.

Two small liberal arts colleges in Vermont will close at the end of this semester. Once students leave Green Mountain College and Southern Vermont College for the last time this spring, how will those schools go about actually shutting down their campuses?

You've heard of farm-to-table. But what about farm-to-pint-glass? Vermont Edition looks at locally-grown hops and grains used in some Vermont-made beers and spirits, why local ingredients can inspire — or bedevil — small brewers or distillers, and how Vermont's climate and soil can give hops and other ingredients distinctive flavors you can taste right in the glass.

Despite wide agreement that broadband internet access is crucial to the state's economic development, more than a quarter of Vermont residents are on the wrong side of that digital divide. We're talking about the scale of the challenge and what's being considered to deliver broadband to the state's rural areas, including a new bill that would help towns figure out how to make their own pushes for broadband projects.

To the great surprise of my family, about eight years ago I took up fly fishing. As the new Agency of Natural Resources Secretary, I thought first-hand experience hunting and fishing would let me better serve the Fish and Wildlife Department and its constituents. I quickly discovered how wonderful it is to stand in the middle of a river, listen to the running water, watch for the flash of fish, and cast a line in hopes of a catch. I was hooked!

There aren’t nearly enough inpatient beds in Vermont for children in mental health crisis. Instead, kids who are a danger to themselves and others wait idly — for days — in emergency rooms. Last year at UVM Medical Center in Burlington, 73 children spent an average three and a half days waiting for placement somewhere else. Many spent much longer. Parents, doctors, even hospital officials agree this is an urgent problem. There is a child psychiatric facility with twelve beds — six newly reopened

I’ve always been puzzled by the anti-vaccine movement. As a former health care reporter in Maine and Vermont, I interviewed parents who declined to immunize their children. They struck me as generally well-meaning but misinformed when they insisted that the health risks of vaccinations outweighed the benefits, even when faced with scientific evidence to the contrary.

The Vermont House of Representatives will vote next week on postponing implementation of a controversial school governance law.

Nine soldiers from the Vermont Army National Guard are now stationed at Maryland's Fort Meade as part of a year-long deployment supporting U.S. Army Cyber Command. One guardsman on the deployment, Col. Bill Wagner, tells Vermont Edition that even after a month of training, it's unclear what the small Vermont contingent will do day-to-day during the year-long missions.

Vermont legislative rules mandate that senators and representatives fill out forms to disclose information about their employment and finances. The idea is that the public should be aware of any potential conflicts of interest and be able to figure out what financial entanglements the lawmakers we vote for might have.

How are amendments made to the Vermont Constitution? And how many amendments have there been over the years? VPR's senior political reporter Bob Kinzel provides historical context around this process and a look at what amendments are proposed for this year.