A special legislative committee met in Montpelier Wednesday to hear from a number of key players on child safety issues.

State police officials, local police chiefs and prosecutors were all represented at today’s hearings, which were spurred by two toddler deaths earlier this year that resulted from abuse. Dave Yacovone is the Commissioner of the Department for Children and Families. He says that despite recent problems, today’s hearings show the state’s commitment to child safety.

Pomfret Businessman Scott Milne has formally entered the race to win the Republican nomination for governor.

Milne says his moderate approach on issues will be in sharp contrast to what he calls “the radical agenda” of incumbent Gov. Peter Shumlin.  

On Wednesday, about 100 people crowded into the community room of the Aldrich Public Library in Barre to be part of Milne’s campaign kickoff. The group included many Republican lawmakers from central Vermont, as well as Lt. Gov. Phil Scott, and former governor Jim Douglas.

Here’s how one critic of Vermont Health Connect describes the experience of many of the customers who bought their insurance through it:  

“It’s occupying people’s whole days. It’s invading their sleep. It’s keeping people up at night. It’s causing a tremendous amount of stress for a lot of folks.”

Writer and Vermont resident Julia Alvarez captured critical acclaim with her novels How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents and In the Time of the Butterflies. Now, she’s about to receive the National Medal of Arts in a White House ceremony on Monday. Alvarez joins us to discuss her work.

If you had to take a standardized test right now, how do you think you would score? Now imagine that test is in a language you can barely read. Since the English language dominates our educational system, a gap in English language ability is often equated with a gap in intelligence.

We talk to Shawna Shapiro, assistant Professor of Writing & Linguistics at Middlebury College, and Susan Blethen, an ELL teacher at Burlington High School, about the challenges facing English language learners and what some educators are doing to bridge the gap.

Imagine you’re fresh out of law school. Instead of going to work in a place where there are people to learn from and turn to for support, you’re a one-person firm on your own. 

A new program is helping young lawyers establish solo practices in hopes of helping both law school graduates and those who need legal services.

Dennis Sparling spent more than a year making a 9-foot-tall sculpture of Leonardo Da Vinci. The 70-year-old sculptor dreams of taking it to an institution where he would teach sculpture and other disciplines with a curriculum focused on the life of Da Vinci, a man whose career spanned painting, sculpture, architecture, engineering and other disciplines.

Earlier this month Sparling put his sculpture in a trailer and drove down to Long Island, hoping to interest someone there in this Da Vinci project.

Anti-pipeline activists launched a "fish-in" at the Public Service Board office in Montpelier this afternoon. They want construction of a natural gas pipeline halted while state regulators review a 40 percent increase in the project's cost estimate.

Demonstrators outside the Public Service Board office wore fishing garb and sang protest songs while sitting in a land-bound canoe. One of the protesters was Burlington resident Andy Simon, who is a Vermont Gas ratepayer.

An economist who helped the Obama administration design the Affordable Care Act is coming to Vermont to help Gov. Peter Shumlin develop a proposal for single-payer health care. And his work will help decide which taxes Shumlin will propose using to raise the $2 billion needed to support the new system.

The invasive water plant Eurasian watermilfoil has made its way into waterways around Vermont, and is nearly impossible to eradicate. At Dewey's Mills Pond, in Quechee, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the state of Vermont and the town of Hartford have been working together since 2003 to keep the invasive species at bay. This Saturday, the Hartford Parks & Recreation Department is hosting a volunteer day, to help in the effort.