Just in time for graduation, patrol officers issued safety inspection “report cards” to unoccupied cars in Burlington last week as part of a new educational program designed to increase public awareness about the risks of vehicle theft and petty larcenies. Scores of motorists got a failing grade.... Read more

Hop a flight from Burlington International Airport and you can jet off to Baltimore, Detroit, Atlanta, Chicago, Orlando, Newark, New York or Washington, D.C. But if you want to leave the continental United States on a foreign adventure, you can’t get there from here. Not on a direct flight, anyway.... Read more

A well-worn copy of The Little Engine That Could rests on top of an antique upright piano in Amy Braun’s classroom at the Hancock Village School. It’s a fitting image for the oldest operating school in the United States, which is about to become the Little School That Couldn’t: The townspeople voted this spring to close the two-room schoolhouse, citing declining enrollment, increasing costs, and worries about inadequate socialization among its 22 students.... Read more

A switchover from Verizon’s Internet servers to those of FairPoint Communications left an as-yet-undetermined number of Vermont businesses and consumers without Internet or email access for up to several days last week, a FairPoint spokesperson confirmed Friday.... Read more

Until the past year or so, Vermont’s organic milk producers defied the laws of dairy-farm economics: They actually made money. Sales of organic milk soared 20 percent nationwide in 2008 as an increasing number of shoppers put environmental and health concerns ahead of personal financial calculations. They were willing to pay more than twice as much for organic milk as for the conventional kind.... Read more

This week Vermont’s largest hospital will launch the first phase of a new electronic health records system that promises to reduce medical errors, improve patient care, lower health-care costs and make the hospital more efficient. The $58 million paperless chart system is known as PRISM, short for Patient Records Information System Management, and it’s been in the works for more than two years.... Read more

Governor Jim Douglas didn’t get his panties in a bunch over this line item — a new law that guarantees Vermonters the right to dangle their damp drawers outdoors so that Mother Nature can do her thing.... Read more

At 72, William Greider is still an optimist. That’s no easy feat when you’ve spent half a century shedding light on the myths, obfuscations and structural fallacies of the U.S. political system.

Despite his cynicism-breeding “beat,” Greider, who is one of the most respected names in journalism, retains a youthful idealism about the potential of everyday Americans to reclaim their government and revamp their economy.... Read more

Seventeenth-century explorer Samuel de Champlain didn’t need an enhanced driver’s license to cross the U.S.-Canada border. So, it’s ironic that this summer’s celebration of the two countries’ shared history coincides with new restrictions that make it harder for modern-day adventurers to retrace Champlain’s steps.... Read more

The Vermont Department of Corrections has pulled all of its inmates out of a privately run prison in Alabama after a state investigation confirmed that some of the men had been injured by their fellow inmates. The investigation was launched after the Vermont Prisoners’ Rights Office began receiving reports from clients who claimed inadequate security at Perry County Detention Center led to the inmate-on-inmate violence.... Read more