Current News

Vermont Business Magazine The ACLU of Vermont is expressing its support for the family of a Richmond student targeted with transphobic harassment from within and outside of Randolph Union High School. After an inaccurate and misleading local media report about the student was picked up by multiple outlets, including Fox News and the British tabloid Daily Mail, the Orange Southwest Supervisory District’s website was hacked and flooded with transphobic messages, forcing the district to shut down its website and social media accounts.

Vermont Business Magazine The Vermont Attorney General’s Office and the Grand Isle County State’s Attorney’s Office today announced the conclusions of their independent reviews of the officer-involved shooting incident that occurred on June 14, 2022, in Woodstock, Vermont. Attorney General Susanne Young and Grand Isle County State’s Attorney Douglas DiSabito have declined to prosecute Woodstock Police Sergeant Joseph Swanson for charges related to the use of deadly force in a shooting incident involving Jay Wilson. State’s Attorney DiSabito agreed to conduct an independent review of the investigation, as the Windsor County State’s Attorney’s Office recused itself.

Vermont Business Magazine The coronavirus pandemic has dominated health headlines but there is a second health crisis happening. Online insurance broker QuoteWizard analysts have found that there has been a 21% increase in drug related overdose deaths in Vermont over the last year - that’s the 5th highest increase nationwide. New Hampshire had the second-highest rate of increase at 26%. Viriginia's rate fell 31%. October is National Substance Abuse Prevention Month, which helps bring awareness and shed light on a growing health crisis that’s killed over 100,000 Americans.

by Dr Jennifer Scott, Executive Director, Southern Vermont Area Health Education Center (AHEC) October is Health Careers Awareness Month in Vermont, an opportunity to highlight the importance of health careers in our state. Vermont still has one of the highest shortages in the nation of medical professionals per capita, a fact that not only impacts access to care for Vermonters but increases health disparities in our rural and underserved communities.

Vermont Business Magazine The LoveYourBrain Foundation, a Vermont-based nonprofit, has announced its fourth annual fundraiser in partnership with Revel Bikes. Since 2019, Revel has hosted a bike giveaway to raise funds and awareness for LoveYourBrain, and to date, the celebrated bike company has raised nearly $170,000 for the organization. To celebrate its fourth giveaway, Revel is donating two bikes from their collection - a Rail29 Mountain Bike and a Rover Gravel Bike. People are invited to donate to LoveYourBrain, a national organization providing free in-community and online mindfulness-based programs for people affected by traumatic brain injury (TBI), including concussion.

Vermont Business Magazine The next guest on Southwestern Vermont Medical Center’s Medical Matters Weekly is Linda Vahdat, MD, MBA, a leading breast cancer researcher who has developed breast cancer drugs that have saved hundreds of lives. The show airs on Facebook Live at noon on Wednesday, October 5. Dr Vahdat is the section chief of Medical Oncology and the interim section chief of Hematology at Dartmouth Health and a professor of medicine at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. She earned her medical degree at Mount Sinai School of Medicine and completed an internal medicine residency at Mount Sinai Hospital, both in New York City. She completed a fellowship in Hematology/Oncology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.

Vermont Association of Hospitals & Health Systems This past week, over 120 health care leaders came together in-person for the first time since COVID-19 to discuss and tackle many of our more difficult health care challenges. It was incredibly nice to be together after such a long time apart. We are enormously proud of our work together over the past several years—making policy, collaborating and problem-solving over Zoom calls. There is really nothing, however, like being together again.

Vermont Business Magazine The Vermont Retail and Grocers Association is presenting Representative Peter Welch with a Hero of Main Street award October 5 at Bailey Road in Montpelier. The Hero of Main Street award was created by the National Retail Federation in 2013 to recognize legislators that have taken key votes and sponsored bills that advance retailer’s priorities. Congressman Welch is a longtime advocate of and champion for Vermont retailers. On September 19th Welch introduced the House companion bill to the bipartisan Credit Card Competition Act of 2022, which will bring competition and choice to the Visa-Mastercard dominated credit card network market.

Vermont Business Magazine Standing in front of the Royall Tyler Theatre this afternoon, surrounded by a gathering of students and faculty, Executive Director Kelley Di Dio, PhD, formally introduced the University of Vermont’s new School of the Arts. This unique, collaborative arts community brings programs in Music, Theatre, Dance, Art, Art History, Creative Writing, and Film and Television Studies together for the first time. Led by world-class, award-winning faculty dedicated to nurturing the artistic voices of the future, the School of the Arts offers small classes, inclusive liberal-arts curricula, and an extensive array of community partnership opportunities to create a rich, student-centered environment of technical advancement, exploration within and across media, professional development, and experiential learning.

Vermont Business Magazine The Agency of Commerce and Community Development (ACCD) is hosting a delegation of Montreal area businesses and entrepreneurs looking to expand into the US market. This event will bring together entities from both sides of the border to share best practices, encourage innovation, and increase bi-lateral trade including: investors, economic development organizations, associations, regional institutions, sector representatives, state officials, financial investment and legal firms, and existing Vermont-based Canadian companies.

Vermont Business Magazine US Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) will join Vermont Farm to School and Early Childhood Network to celebrate the success of Farm to School in Vermont in Duxbury Tuesday afternoon. That event will be followed by an event in Waterbury hosted by the Vermont Network Against Domestic and Sexual Violence, the Vermont Center for Crime Victims Service, and the National Center for Restorative Justice at Vermont Law School, who will be honoring Senator Leahy for his efforts to assist victims of crime throughout his career in the Senate.

Vermont Business Magazine Vermont has launched the first phase of a new incentive program to help residents with lower incomes replace older, high-polluting light-duty vehicles with clean transportation alternatives. Under the Replace Your Ride program, incentives of $3,000 are available on a first-come, first-served basis to income-eligible Vermont residents who retire an operational high-polluting vehicle that is at least 10 years old and switch to a new or used plug-in electric vehicle (PEV). Only California offers a similar scrap-and-replace program (Clean Cars 4 All) to transition drivers to electric vehicles.