WAMC Northeast Report on WAMC

In President Obama’s State of the Union address Tuesday, he talked a bit about the budget, and the need to reduce the deficit. He referenced a series of federal budget cuts set to go into effect in a few weeks.

Farmers and agricultural advocates are rallying behind a piece of legislation that promises to expand the potential for local meat and poultry processing in Massachusetts.

Last week a sports writer visited campus to talk with students. Before the big presentation, a student asked him what he thought about Orlando Cruz, a professional boxer who recently announced he is gay, the first and only professional boxer to do so. And the writer simply said this issue is going to be the Jackie Robinson of this generation. The handful of 20 year olds sitting around the table got what he meant, maybe even more than 70 year olds that lived through baseball’s integration.

Your afternoon regional weather summary with meteorologist Garett Argianas.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has proposed closing two correctional facilities. One is in the Hudson Valley, and it’s the state’s only minimum security prison for women. And now there is concern about what will happen to the programs available to these women.

Public hearings on the future regulation of medical marijuana in Massachusetts will be held this month, but as a deadline approaches, some are concerned that the state’s final regulations may come later than expected.

Beginning Wednesday evening, state officials from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health will hold a series of public listening sessions before the implementation of medical marijuana regulations.

View Interactive

Hydraulic Fracturing has made a lot of headlines in recent years but the practice of extracting natural gas has been around since the early 20th century - The beginnings of fracking go back to 1908... some 40 years later the technology became "commercially viable."

The Shumlin Administration released its Health Care Reform Financing Plan late last week.  This week a group of advocates and Republican lawmakers criticized the report, saying it offered no real outline for financing the state’s proposed single payer health care system.

Robust patent activity is regarded as an economic boon for any metro area -  a survey of national patent activity shows three Northeastern metro areas have been identified as places in the country most likely to be "inventive" - The survey entitled “Patenting Prosperity: Invention and Economic Performance in the United States and its Metropolitan Areas”  tracks U.S. patent activity from 1980-to-2012: the Brookings Institution finds that some of the most inventive metropolitan areas in the nation include Burlington, Vermont, New York's "North Country" and the cities of Albany and Poughkeepsie.