WAMC Northeast Report on WAMC

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.

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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.

There will be no senate comeback bid this year for Scott Brown. The former Republican senator announced Friday he will not run in the special election to fill the vacancy left by  John Kerry’s departure.

Brown  who became a national Republican star with his upset victory in the 2010 special election for senate in Massachusetts, then lost to Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren last year, has decided to sit out this year’s senate campaign.

Your afternoon regional weather summary with meteorologist Garett Argianas.

A coalition of groups is again calling on Vermont’s leaders to impose a tax on  sugar sweetened beverages to combat obesity.        

The Alliance for a Healthier Vermont is once again proposing that the state impose a one cent per ounce tax on sugar sweetened beverages. The Alliance has failed to get such a measure through the Legislature in past sessions.  American Heart Association Vermont Government Relations Director Tina Zuk says formal legislation will be introduced next week.

John Kerry is spending his final day as a United State Senator thanking the people of Massachusetts. Events were scheduled in the state’s three largest cities, with the farewell tour beginning in Springfield.

After 28 years representing Massachusetts in the United States Senate John Kerry said closing that chapter of his career is bittersweet.

There’s a danger for commentators who gather listeners with age.  It’s a trap to be avoided at all costs; too easy to fall into and escapable only with the greatest of difficulty…  as this commentator can now attest, from bitter experience.  The trap?  A wily metamorphosis that turns commentators into ‘cussed’ curmudgeons.