New Hampshire Public Radio

Hello Bluesky! 🦋 We're New Hampshire Public Radio, a NPR member station covering the Granite State. Follow along for breaking news from New Hampshire and NPR, feature stories, moose sightings and more!

Oliver, the Amazon parrot who lived in the Churchill’s Garden Center greenhouse, has died.

After thousands of years in one seemingly precarious position, the hanging boulder at the Polar Caves in Rumney finally fell to the ground on Oct. 18.

Recent conversations, court actions and funding have given hope to stakeholders that the Bartlett Experimental Forest may be kept off the USDA chopping block.

Hockey is a costly sport to try, but Mischa's Little Stars gives kids a chance to get on the ice for free, while honoring a former youth hockey player who died in 2023.

The flu vaccine can help mitigate risk of serious illness for pregnant people, and protect newborns before they’re old enough for immunization.

Humana offers the only Medicare Advantage plan in Cheshire County, but the plan doesn't include Dartmouth Hitchcock or Cheshire Medical Center in it's coverage. However, a Dartmouth Health spokesperson said the health system is negotiating an agreement to join Humana's network.

🎧 Conversations with the Candidates: NHPR sat down with Libertarian candidate Stephen Villee, a Hampton-based software developer running for governor.

Providers say work requirements, which go into effect for some Medicaid recipients in 2027, do not align with reality for many patients.

Police are investigating the deaths of two adults at a home in Manchester, where an 8-year-old boy was found suffering from a non-life-threatening injury.

Although a mash of proposed restrictions and protections for AI data centers raised debate in the New Hampshire Legislature earlier this year, they largely failed to progress. Now, as early filings for the 2027 session show, some lawmakers are hoping to do more.

Every election season, thousands of campaign signs line the roads. Here's what state law say about campaign signs, where they can and cannot be placed, and how long they can remain on display:

With New Hampshire’s elections largely managed at the local level, experts and advocates say they aren’t expecting any hitches on Nov. 3.

At Keene State, students say they care about politics but don’t always feel comfortable discussing the subject with peers on campus.

Outside/In: We brought your food safety questions to Don Schaffner and Ben Chapman, scientists and hosts of the podcast 'Risky or Not?' 🥬

The U.S. Department of Justice will send monitors to polling locations in Manchester and Nashua on Election Day. Polling locations in the two cities were also visited by federal observers during the September state primary.

ClassicalNH: Join us for the perfect soundtrack to your Halloween festivities with Creepy Classics — Friday and Saturday, Oct. 30 and 31 at 5 p.m. 💀🎹

Reverend Ed Cardoza was chosen as the next bishop for the Episcopal Church of New Hampshire at its annual convention this weekend.

Last week, the Concord Planning Board urged the company proposing to build a “micro” data center on Concord's Locke Road to return with more precise information about the center’s electricity usage: https://bit.ly/3WMMkhO

New Hampshire's North Country foliage may be past peak in many spots, and inflation may be high. But local business owners say that hasn't slowed down tourists this season.

In a visit to Concord Friday, U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. cast doubt on the safety of the hepatitis B vaccine but wouldn’t comment on state legislation in New Hampshire that his agency inspired.

NHPR and the Granite State News Collaborative have cancelled next week's scheduled forum for candidates in the U.S. Senate race. In an email to NHPR Wednesday afternoon, a spokesman for Republican John Sununu said that the candidate could not attend the forum “given our schedule.”

The New Hampshire Executive Council has approved nearly $25,000 in federal funding for “emergency” work targeting invasive spotted lanternflies.

📺 WATCH: In front of a live audience in Manchester, Republican incumbent Gov. Kelly Ayotte and Democrat Cinde Warmington sparred over issues ranging from affordability, data centers, and education.

New Hampshire has a decade-old law strictly curtailing the use of license plate scanners. Sen. Maggie Hassan is now pressing one of the country’s leading providers of the technology to disclose if it is complying with state law.

Live From The Word Barn: Blurring the lines between folk, gospel, country and Americana, Oliver Wood plays songs from his solo debut and reimagined favorites 🎶

The U.S. Supreme Court is reinstating a ban on the use of school-issued photo identification for voting in New Hampshire, overturning a lower court’s ruling from earlier this month.

School board members and superintendents can take public positions on the school tax cap ballot question, but cannot use public resources to disseminate their position, according to new guidance issued by the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office.

In 2024, a group of parents sued the Bow school district after they were barred from silently protesting transgender athletes on girls’ sports teams. With winter sports starting soon, they are asking the court to grant them temporary permission to express themselves while the case plays out.

🎧 NH News Recap: Looming changes to Medicaid and Medicare in New Hampshire are leaving recipients with questions. Plus, the first episodes of the latest season of NHPR podcast "Bear Brook" are now available.

Amid fiscal challenges and low enrollment, Keene State announced 14 programs would be put on hold, including Bachelor of Arts in environmental studies, political science and sustainability studies.

A jury has sided with the state in a legal challenge to the $100 million-plus Exit 4A project, ruling that the state’s seizure of private land to build the new Interstate 93 interchange serves a legitimate public purpose.

Douglas Herlihy pled guilty Wednesday for beating his father to death in 2003, when Herlihy was 17.

A former chief medical officer at New London Hospital was sentenced to prison for billing Medicare $1.9 million for unnecessary medical devices he prescribed to patients he had never consulted with or examined.

📺 LIVE: Tune into a livestream of our gubernatorial candidates forum with Republican incumbent Kelly Ayotte and Democrat Cinde Warmington, starting at 6 p.m. on Oct. 22:

🎧 Conversations with the Candidates: NHPR sat down with independent candidate Robbie Mahrou, an entrepreneur and consultant from Walpole running for Congress.

Your Weekend in NH: If you're not in a spooky season mood, plenty of other options await — including craft workshops, a fall jubilee and the New England BIPOC Festival 🍂

“No Kings” rallies were held in over a dozen New Hampshire communities on Saturday, with a focus on voting and voting rights.

Manchester police say they are investigating more than a dozen incidents of racist, homophobic and antisemitic graffiti found in several areas of the city over the weekend.

Levitate Inc. CEO Ryan Howard said a micro data center envisioned for East Concord has a configuration and cooling technology that differ substantially from hyperscale data centers.

The “Refusing to Forget” project invites communities to make flags and remember people who have died in ICE detention or have been killed by ICE agents.

A new $11 million project will provide rural EMS providers in the Granite State with new equipment and technology, workforce training and partnership assistance for neighboring communities to share resources.

Politics is sometimes called the ultimate team sport. But in New Hampshire’s high-stakes U.S. Senate race between Congressman Chris Pappas and former Sen. John Sununu, the “team” aspects of their respective campaigns are playing out in very different ways.

Cecil Abels, the Democrat running to represent the city of Rochester and nearby towns in the state Senate, has ended his campaign after failing to meet mandatory residency requirements.

🎧 Democratic gubernatorial nominee Cinde Warmington sat down with NHPR to discuss top issues in the race and ask questions submitted by listeners. Here are a few takeaways from that conversation:

Gov. Kelly Ayotte is working with the federal government to make Medicare Advantage plans available in 2027 for seniors in Coos and Carroll counties after no plans were initially approved.

Across New England, communities are using tools of local control to slow or stop data center development within their borders.

As many as 29,000 people across the Granite State could lose Medicaid coverage by the time 2028 rolls around, according to a new report from the New Hampshire Fiscal Policy Institute.

Three months after the Lebanon City Council approved $2.05 million to build five homes on city-owned land on Barrows Street, the project’s future is uncertain again because not enough qualified buyers applied.

🎧 Gov. Kelly Ayotte, a Republican from Nashua, is seeking a second term in office. She sat down with NHPR to discuss top issues in the race and ask questions submitted by listeners.

The New Hampshire Supreme Court heard oral arguments last week in a class-action lawsuit around changes to the oversight of the YDC victims settlement fund.