All Things Considered on WAMC

Mark Thomas is using a pay phone, but he isn't paying. And physically, he's not even that close to the phone.

He's sitting on a bench on the street in Astoria, Queens, checking email on his netbook. It's grabbing an Internet signal from a military-grade antenna on top of a pay phone down the block.

"It's not the speediest but you can't complain about free, right?" Thomas says.

Occupy groups and others plan to protest during the Conference of New England Governors and Eastern Premiers.

Demonstrations are planned Sunday and Monday.

Organizers say they want the governors and premiers to focus on the human rights of the people in the region and a process that engages them in holding their governments accountable for protecting their rights.

The 36th annual conference will be co-hosted by Gov. Peter Shumlin and Quebec Premier Jean Charest.

Vermont's public safety commissioner says problems with the time reports of a former trooper charged with falsifying his reports for June appear to stretch back at least two years.

Commissioner Keith Flynn of the Department of Public Safety says preliminary reports on the investigation into alleged false swearing by former Sgt. James Deeghan stopped short of calling the earlier time sheets evidence of criminal activity, but said there are what he termed anomalies.

As thousands gather in Washington, D.C., for the International AIDS Conference, the city is battling disturbing levels of HIV/AIDS, particularly in the black community.

According to the D.C. Department of Health, 4.3 percent of the black population in the city is living with the disease, and some advocates argue that black churches should be doing more to fight it.

Some Essex County officials are calling on the state to fix the popular scenic highway that travels up Whiteface Mountain near Lake Placid.

A member of the Essex County Board of Supervisors, Roby Politi, tells the Plattsburgh Press-Republican that the Whiteface Mountain Veterans Memorial Highway is in terrible shape and unsafe. He says thousands of people drive up the toll road to the summit of Whiteface each year but the state has paid little attention to maintenance.

A couple who own property on a mountaintop in Vermont's Rutland County have lost in their bid to prevent construction of a new utility communications tower there.

The state Public Service Board ruled for the Vermont Electric Power Co., saying it could erect the tower against the wishes of landowners Felix Kniazev and Olga Julinska, and will have to pay the couple less than $26,000 in compensation.

The board found the property atop Northeast Mountain in Wells would provide a key link in a new communications project VELCO is building around Vermont.

In the days since the movie theater shooting in Aurora, Colo., there's been little discussion of the laws that allowed the gunman to acquire his arsenal.

Authorities say suspect James Holmes, who was arrested at the scene of the shooting that killed 12 people and wounded dozens more, was armed with a modified assault rifle, two pistols, a shotgun and thousands of rounds of ammunition.

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, told CNN this weekend that the guns are not the problem.