The Vermont Attorney General’s Office announced Monday that it found “no criminal misconduct” following a five-year investigation of the Brattleboro Retreat, a mental health treatment facility in southern Vermont.

In Connecticut, a debate is underway about what to do with a protected stretch of watershed land between a public drinking water supply and an old stone quarry.

A Nature Conservancy project in northern Vermont will store carbon to meet California’s greenhouse gas reduction goals. The group says proceeds from the sale of these “carbon credits” will pay for future land protection projects.

Getting ready for a rare appearance, the Manzi Family Band was in full rehearsal on a recent summer afternoon in a basement in Longmeadow, Massachusetts.

The town of Stonington is considering a move to ban all single-use plastic bags and straws. It wouldn’t be the first Connecticut town to contemplate bagging the bag — Greenwich recently passed a ban and Westport did away with them years ago.

Some Maine lobster dealers who have seen sales to China shoot up over the last decade are now suddenly shut out. Late last week, China more than doubled tariffs on lobster from U.S. sources as part of the emerging trade war between the two countries. But the lobster industry as a whole, and lobstermen in particular, are trying to take it all in stride.

In late June, a gun store in Charlemont, Massachusetts, posted a letter on Facebook from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. The 2011 letter notified gun dealers that just because someone has a state medical marijuana card, it doesn’t mean it’s legal for them to purchase a gun.

Under a Department of Justice rule, the Border Patrol is allowed to conduct these checkpoints 100 miles from a border, and they have been since 1953. What’s harder to know is whether or not these checkpoints are happening more frequently.

Remember acid rain? In the 1970s and ‘80s, scientists found that rain 100 times more acidic than normal was harming the mountain forests of New England and New York. The pollution was linked to fossil fuel plants in the Midwest. Now, a new study shows red spruce trees are recovering thanks to tighter pollution laws.

Kakhtiranova, now 36 years old, is friendly and talkative – often hanging out and laughing with church staff and volunteers in the kitchen. So it’s easy to forget she’s a fugitive from the government.