VPR News

Last week cyanobacteria, commonly known as blue-green algae, showed up in blooms that closed beaches on Lake Champlain and Lake Carmi, disappointing swimmers looking for relief from the late September swelter. But more than an inconvenience, it also posed health concerns for people and pets who might come into contact with the bacteria. What is Vermont doing to prevent these blooms from happening? We asked Julie Moore, Vermont's Secretary of the Agency of Natural Resources.

A few weeks ago I heard a former Stanford University dean discuss the perils of overparenting. Julie Lythcott focused on college students, but her message also applies to younger children.

The high school sports season is in full swing and that means a lot of fun, but also the potential for injury. Across the country, about 300,000 young people get concussions playing high school sports each year. How do coaches, players and families balance the desire to play with the need to stay safe?

The shocking news from Las Vegas hit southwestern Vermont hard, after the community learned that a local woman was one of the 59 people killed at a country music concert Sunday. Sandy Casey's family goes back generations in Dorset and Manchester. People in the area were reeling Tuesday as they came to grips with the fact that one of their own was taken away in the carnage that unfolded in Las Vegas.

When I was eight, I took the NRA safety and target training at a camp in Maine. Two years later, my parents gave me a Winchester .22 long rifle. We kids would peddle our bikes up to the dump after it closed on Saturday to “pop” rats. During deer season the high school boys brought their 30.06s to school and left them in the principal’s office so they could hunt right after school before sundown.

Vermont prides itself on a history of leadership on civil rights issues, but it doesn't mean that there aren't complications — many of them — to the narrative of Vermont's unbroken civil rights leadership. It's American Archives Month, and former state archivist Gregory Sanford talked to us to illuminate some of the complications he's unearthed through his research in the Vermont state archives.

A group of electric utilities, car dealerships and government officials in Vermont are pushing incentives aimed at making electric vehicles more affordable.

It’s not often an-acre-and-a-half of contiguous downtown real estate is available all at one time. But that’s exactly what’s happened in Rutland.

Ben & Jerry's and Vermont dairy farmworkers have come to an agreement on a program they say will ensure "just and dignified working conditions" on the Vermont farms that supply milk for the ice cream company.

The Exonerated tells the story of six death row inmates who were wrongfully convicted and later had their convictions overturned and were released. We're talking to the director and an actor from a new production of the play at the University of Vermont. We'll discuss the play itself and the big issues it explores around incarceration and the justice system.

A newly issued legislative report says online home sharing services like Airbnb should be regulated locally. But one of the lawmakers who requested the study says oversight should happen on a statewide level.

As news develops after Sunday night's mass shooting in Las Vegas, how do Vermont hospitals prepare for the possibility of responding to large numbers of injured patients needing care?

As we learn more details about what happened last night in Las Vegas, you may be overwhelmed by your own heartbreak, fear, and anxiety. And it’s very difficult to know how to address what’s happening—or shield—the news from your children.

Zon Eastes, a longtime Brattleboro musician, is also now the founder and conductor of a new professional chamber orchestra in the area. The Juno Orchestra makes its debut Saturday , Sept. 30 , in what is also the first public concert in the Brattleboro Music Center's new hall.

When editor and author Judith Jones died last week at her summer home in Walden, Vermont, she was remembered as someone who forever changed our attitudes toward cooking and food. Jones was working for Alfred A. Knopf publishing when she discovered Julia Child, whose groundbreaking book on French cooking had been rejected by other publishers.